The Green Thing

In the line at the store, the cashier told the older woman that plastic bags weren’t good for the environment. The woman apologized to her and explained, “We didn’t have the green thing back in my day.”

That’s right, they didn’t have the green thing in her day. Back then, they returned their milk bottles, Coke bottles and beer bottles to the store.

The store sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilized and refilled, using the same bottles over and over. So they really were recycled. But they didn’t have the green thing back her day.

In her day, they walked up stairs, because they didn’t have an escalator in every store and office building. They walked to the grocery store and didn’t climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time they had to go two blocks. But she’s right. They didn’t have the green thing in her day.

Back then, they washed the baby’s diapers because they didn’t have the throw-away kind. They dried clothes on a line, not in an energy gobbling machine burning up 220 volts – wind and solar power really did dry the clothes. Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing. But that old lady is right, they didn’t have the green thing back in her day.

Back then, they had one TV, or radio, in the house – not a TV in every room. And the TV had a small screen the size of a pizza dish, not a screen the size of the state of Montana. In the kitchen, they blended and stirred by hand because they didn’t have electric machines to do everything for you. When they packaged a fragile item to send in the mail, they used wadded
up newspaper to cushion it, not Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap.

Back then, they didn’t fire up an engine and burn gasoline just to cut the lawn. They used a push mower that ran on human power. They exercised by working so they didn’t need to go to a health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity. But she’s right, they didn’t have the green thing back then.

They drank from a fountain when they were thirsty, instead of using a cup or a plastic bottle every time they had a drink of water. They refilled pens with ink, instead of buying a new pen, and they replaced the razor blades in a razor instead of throwing away the whole razor just because the blade got dull. But they didn’t have the green thing back then.

Back then, people took the streetcar and kids rode their bikes to school or rode the school bus, instead of turning their moms into a 24-hour taxi service. They had one electrical outlet in a room, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances. And they didn’t need a computerized gadget to receive a signal beamed from satellites 2,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest pizza joint.

But that old lady is right. They didn’t have the green thing back in her day.

Desire higher.

HEAVEN #3689 Great Intentions, December 31, 2010

We can have anything We want. The fact is, the world appears according to the thoughts in the world. Understand the mettle of your thoughts, and desire more, and desire higher.

Unless the world is the way you want it, you haven’t desired enough. Desire more. Set the intention of the world. Point the rudder. The world can only be what you say it can. Say that the world is beautiful, God-serving, generous, kind, loving, and that’s what the world will be. The world is what you say. The world will be as you say. You are the limit-setter, or you are the one who raises the bar.
 

Random Acts of Culture

Imagine you went shopping on Saturday, October 30th of this year- to Macy's in Philadelphia - the once magnificent Wanamaker's Department Store with its vast pipe organ at the store's "center court."    You are a bit surprised to see decorations for Christmas and in the midst of your shopping you hear the music from the organ.  Then suddenly you get hit with this "random act of culture."  Catch the expressions and sense of spontaneous worship. last Saturday - to Macy's in Philadelphia - the once magnificent Wanamaker's Department Store with its vast pipe organ at the store's "center court."    You are a bit surprised to see decorations for Christmas and in the midst of your shopping you hear the music from the organ.  Then suddenly you get hit with this "random act of culture."  Catch the expressions and sense of spontaneous worship.

True to me

When something has been true of my experience and I find myself thinking about it and relating it to my present state and the future,
I stop and ask myself if this is what I want my new experience to be. If not, I stop again and pause. This time realizing that at that moment I hold immense power in my hands, within my being.

Just be cause something was, doesn't mean it is or has to be. I have the power within me to change my experience. I can rethink the situation by thinking what I want my experience to be. I AM, with the power of THE WORD, the point of power for my life.

Courage

"There's plenty of intelligence in the world, but the courage to do things differently is in short supply."



Marilyn vos Savant -Columnist, Author and Lecturer

Never put your dreams on hold.
- Debra Clemente, intuitive visionary artist

You can't eat happiness

You can't eat happiness.

You can't buy it.


You can't wear it.

You can't drive it, or drink it, or sell it, or steal it.

You can't lock it away.


You can't negotiate for it.

You can't win it, you can't marry it, you can't inherit it, you can't cheat it.

You can't smoke it, or inject it, or rent it or borrow it.


You can't campaign for it or beg for it, or talk other people into giving you theirs.

You can live happiness.

You can create it.

You can be it.

You can give it to others.

You can enjoy it.

You can share it.

You can claim it.

You can have as much as you wish.

You can enjoy it as much as you want, at any time, under any circumstance.

You can work with it, play with it, worship, travel, eat, and sleep with it.


Happiness is yours to live and yours to give, if only you will.


It comes from the inside, and the best way to experience it is to get it flowing out.


Forget about trying and striving to get happy.

Just decide to be happy, and happiness is yours.

Ralph Marston

Evening Calm - Debra Clemente 8 x10"

give thought another thought

"Whatsoever things you desire when ye pray, believe that you receive them and ye shall have them." - Jesus

My mind withdrew its thoughts from experience, extracting itself from the contradictory throng of sensuous images, that it might find out what that light was wherein it was bathed... And thus, with the flash of one hurried glance, it attained to the vision of That Which Is. - Saint Augustine

We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world. - Buddha

The highest possible stage in moral culture is when we recognize that we ought to control our thoughts. -Charles Darwin

Think what you want. - Debra Clemente

Once you replace negative thoughts with positive ones, you'll start having positive results. - Willie Nelson

"Indeed, for both the rich and the poor, life is dominated by an ever growing current of problems, most of which seem to have no real and lasting solution. Clearly we have not touched the deeper causes of our troubles. It is the main point of this book that the ultimate source of all these problems is in thought itself, the very thing of which our civilization is most proud, and therefore the one thing that is "hidden" because of our failure seriously to engage with its actual working in our own individual lives and in the life of society." -D. Bohm & Mark Edwards, Changing Consciousness

Prayer is a thought, a belief, a feeling, arising within the mind of the one praying. - Ernest Holmes

Bondage is - subjection to external influences and internal negative thoughts and attitudes. - W. Clement Stone

A man is but the product of his thoughts what he thinks, he becomes. - Mohandas Gandhi

Drag your thoughts away from your troubles... by the ears, by the heels, or any other way you can manage it. - Mark Twain

The more man meditates upon good thoughts, the better will be his world and the world at large. - Confucius

Change your thoughts and you change your world. - Norman Vincent Peale

Your life is what your thoughts make it. - Marcus Aurelius

The soul becomes dyed with the color of its thoughts. - Marcus Aurelius

Good thoughts bear good fruit, bad thoughts bear bad fruit. - James Allen

The secret of living a life of excellence is merely a matter of thinking thoughts of excellence. Really, it's a matter of programming our minds with the kind of information that will set us free. - Charles R. Swindoll

It takes but one positive thought when given a chance to survive and thrive to overpower an entire army of negative thoughts. - Robert H. Schuller

Great thoughts and a pure heart, that is what we should ask from God. - Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Except our own thoughts, there is nothing absolutely in our power. - Rene Descartes

Our life is what our thoughts make it. A man will find that as he alters his thoughts toward things and other people, things and other people will alter towards him. - James Allen

You are today where your thoughts have brought you; you will be tomorrow where your thoughts take you. -James Allen

To be free from evil thoughts is God's best gift. - Aeschylus

If we examine our thoughts, we shall find them always occupied with the past and the future. - Blaise Pascal

How often misused words generate misleading thoughts. - Herbert Spencer

Nurture your minds with great thoughts. To believe in the heroic makes heroes. - Benjamin Disraeli

There are no dangerous thoughts; thinking itself is dangerous. - Hannah Arendt

Worry is a cycle of inefficient thoughts whirling around a center of fear. - Corrie Ten Boom

Our thoughts and imagination are the only real limits to our possibilities. -Orison Swett Marden
The universe is one of God's thoughts. - Friedrich Schiller
Are we controlled by our thoughts, or are we controlling our thoughts? - Raymond Holliwell

Thoughts create a new heaven, a new firmament, a new source of energy, from which new arts flow. - Paracelsus

Let each man think himself an act of God, His mind a thought, his life a breath of God; And let each try, by great thoughts and good deeds, To show the most of Heaven he hath in him. - Philip James Bailey

I don't eat junk foods and I don't think junk thoughts. - Peace Pilgrim

There are thoughts we must not think. - Friedrich Durrenmatt

To reflect is to disturb one's thoughts. - Jean Rostand

free choice

“You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself in any direction you choose. You're on your own. And you know what you know. You are the guy who'll decide where to go.” - Dr. Seuss