It's so quiet here tonight. Any poetic words of wisdom to drift off to sleep by?

A long time ago I thought that love was something that you reserved for some special set of people that you had judged worthy of it.

After a while I got to thinking about what Jesus had said about turning the other cheek and loving our neighbor I put the two together and realized that he had made no exceptions in these statements. It became obvious to me that he intended that we exclude no one from the love that we are supposed to be giving. I started thinking about my idea of love and suddenly realized that I had not been loving anyone at all. I had simply been judging everyone and every thing.

Judging someone worthy of love is not love, it is only judgment. I actually started to cry when I realized this. I saw just how much of my life I had wasted being judgmental, thinking of myself as a Christian, when I was actually doing just the opposite of what Jesus had asked us to do.

I thought about the verse judge not lest ye be judged, and I understood it for the first time.

I realized that I have a lot of catching up to do. So many opportunities were wasted. I now try to apply the love that I have for the world in a universal way like Jesus asks us to do.

If I start to feel afraid and think that I see someone that I should not love because of something I have thought or heard I try to catch my mistake as soon as possible. I tell myself that I have forgot the truth and have fallen for the same old trick that had cost me so many opportunities to be loving in the past. The horror of this realization is often all that is necessary to bring me back to my senses and make me drop the judgmental nonsense I was thinking.

I still have a lot to learn about love, but at least I’m making progress.

Love and blessings

Your brother

don

1. The Road Not Taken

TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth; 5

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same, 10

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back. 15

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference. 20

dolphin's cry-gary r. hess

If I was a dolphin and you were the sea

How would I get to be with thee

Trapped in this land alone and tired

Can't get out from the horrid treachery

Swimming along night and day

Waiting for the time to pass me by

Somebody save me and let me go

Somebody please let me go

lost world-gary r. hess

Love's restricted to those we know

Care not for others but ourselves

When doctors and lawyers are criminals

What's gone wrong with this world

Love lost, panic started

Do something to change it

Before it's perished

The world is lost without our love

Cherish it, adore it

Before it's lost

by Gary R. Hess

Our True Nature

by AuroraDawn

What would be our true nature

If we were devoid of conscience

Carrying around no baggage

No training from birth in the Ten Commandments

Would we, on our own, think of others?

Or, like water seeks it's own level,

Would we put ourselves first?

Doing what suits our own wants, needs and desires

Like infants demanding mother's milk

Or baby birds with beaks open wide

Is that our true nature to be self-absorbed

Cutting off the part of us that loves and cares

Like some ethical amputation

Lobotomizing the love center of the soul

Would we even be human?

How long would we exist without

That part of us that reaches out to others

Cementing a bond of brotherhood

That engenders in our hearts

The desire to provide for and protect

Those around us...as a family

Passing this feeling on like an affection infection

Would we realize that good is what pleases?

And bad is what makes us unhappy?

And that love is the final equation?

And all the rest is just so much allegory.

well, I like this poem, it's one of my favorites,

Sailing to Byzantium

THAT is no country for old men. The young

In one another's arms, birds in the trees

- Those dying generations - at their song,

The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,

Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long

Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.

Caught in that sensual music all neglect

Monuments of unageing intellect.

An aged man is but a paltry thing,

A tattered coat upon a stick, unless

Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing

For every tatter in its mortal dress,

Nor is there singing school but studying

Monuments of its own magnificence;

And therefore I have sailed the seas and come

To the holy city of Byzantium.

O sages standing in God's holy fire

As in the gold mosaic of a wall,

Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,

And be the singing-masters of my soul.

Consume my heart away; sick with desire

And fastened to a dying animal

It knows not what it is; and gather me

Into the artifice of eternity.

Once out of nature I shall never take

My bodily form from any natural thing,

But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make

Of hammered gold and gold enamelling

To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;

Or set upon a golden bough to sing

To lords and ladies of Byzantium

Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

"there are always three versions of the truth, mine, yours, and what actually happened." -Val Kilmer

“They laughed at Galileo. They laughed at Newton. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.” -Carl Sagan

“What's the harm of a little mystification? It sure beats boring statistical analyses.” -Carl Sagan

“For most of human history we have searched for our place in the cosmos. Who are we? What are we? We find that we inhabit an insignificant planet of a hum-drum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe."

-Carl Sagan

"art is never finished, only abandoned" - Leonardo Da Vinci

“There are three classes of people: those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see.”

-Leonardo da Vinci

“As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so a life well spent brings happy death” -Leonardo Da Vinci

"A road with no obsticals leads to no where."

"life is the art of drawing without an eraser."

“Why does the eye see a thing more clearly in dreams than the imagination when awake?”

"dont worry about your health, it will go away!"

------- and finally-------------------------

"The only time it's ever like work is when you don't like what you've done." -Val Kilmer

Love is whatever you make of it,

Love is the universe takes over when you realize you can't do it anymore.

Love is the only force that holds us together.

Love is the only thing that makes life worth living

Love is not just husband and wife.

Love is not just your children.

Love is Knowing you are safe in the creators arms and may your rest be peaceful.

If you always do what you always did you will always get what you always got. That can be taken two ways. Believe in God and have faith. Say your prayers and watch them be answered like the ones before them. Or, pray in vain and watch all the blessings that were meant for you, be given to someone else. Keep your faith, keep your smile, keep your charity and keep God in your heart. The results, if you haven't already noticed, will be abundant.

Not a poem but The Lords Prayer

Proverbs 9:10 "The fear of Jehovah is the start of wisdom. and the knowledge of the Most Holy One is what understanding is."

Your perception is your reality. Attitude; the difference between an ordeal and an adventure. Nothing there poetic sorry.