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On love There are two kinds of love: we love wise and kind and beautiful people because we need them, but we love (or try to love) stupid and disagreeable people because they need us. This second kind is the more divine because that is how God loves us: not because we are lovable but because He is love, not because He needs to receive but He delights to give Clive Staples Lewis  1950 I'm sure I fit in the 2nd category of the stupid. It's good to be loved 😎 Pastor / Chaplain  John Mark Thomas  iPhone 

"You ask about The Pursuit of Happiness at a good time in my life.  I have pursued life itself over many years now and with varying degrees of happiness. Some of my happiness still comes form trying to be in my own small way a true 'point of light.' I believe I was right when I said, as President, there can be no definition of a successful life that does not include service to others. SO I do that now, and I gain happiness. I do not seek a Pulitzer Prize. I do not want press attention. I don't crave sitting at the head table or winning one of the many coveted awards Offered by the many organizations across the land. I have found happiness. I no longer pursue it, for it is mine." President George H W Bush Pastor / Chaplain  John Mark Thomas  iPhone 

    "...Man does not exist for his own sake. 'Thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created' [Revelation 4:11]. We were made not primarily that we may love God (though we were made for that too) but that God may love us, that we may become objects in which the Divine love may rest 'well pleased'..." - Clive Staples Lewis             1940 Pastor / Chaplain  John Mark Thomas  iPhone 

1 John 2:13   I am writing to you fathers because you know Him who is from the beginning.                                         I am writing to you, young men, because you have overcome the evil one.                                                                                                                                                                                                  ...

Self-Preservation is an aspect of unhealthy shame that defines itself. The extent of preserving "you" means you will go to great lengths to justify the most heinous sin or act, by saying, "I know what I did was wrong but it was your projection upon me as a person that made me do it." Its understandable, in theory; the human instinct of needing to blame others for your own personal failure, crimes, infidelities etc.. It's an inherent default setting . To appease the conscience of Unhealthy Shame, the human mind will subconsciously seek out co-conspirators which enable the self-preservationist to transfer blame. This is a key aspect of the fight or flight syndrome. Enablers assist in s edating the shame, n umbing guilt, and transferring responsibility. Everything becomes a target of the"unjust" argument. The home environment, the workplace, the classroom; practically anything one is tied to, becomes the target of - "everything i...

     I think the thrill of the Pagan stories and of romance may be due to the fact that they are mere beginnings—the first, faint whisper of the wind from beyond the world—while Christianity is the thing itself: and no thing, when you have really started on it, can have for you then and there just the same thrill as the first hint. For example, the experience of being married and bringing up a family cannot have the old bittersweet of first falling in love.   This next part struck me as a great inspiration and mature realization for many that I counsel; myself included .     jmt But it is futile (and, I think, wicked) to go on trying to get the old thrill again: you must go forward and not backward. Any real advance will in its turn be ushered in by a new thrill, different from the old: doomed in its turn to disappear and to become in its turn a temptation to retrogression .   Delight is a bell that rings as you s...