Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
Dr. Murray sums up the Old Testament, and the New one, in just a dozen words.
Rambling recollections from Yours Truly, in an e-mail to my father just a few minutes ago, aided by some doses out of Valle de Tulum, Bodegas Callia, 2010.
Back in ’83, you’ll recall, as [brother] was closing in on the final days before his first marriage, it was all-drama-all-the-time, and he was chasing off in an endless pursuit of wise advice that he wasn’t really ready to absorb. For reasons I cannot recall, I was “in tow” at one of these unproductive match-ups, in front of Dr. Murray; [brother] asked him if he had any advice. [Sister-in-law] looked down at the ground, and beamed, which was customary for her. Dr. Murray rambled onward about some obscure point, and [brother] felt the necessity of finishing his sentence for him “it’ll all work out?”
Keith radiated across the room a smile that would have embarrassed a crocodile…and just maybe might have swallowed one. “I think you’ll find that ‘it’ has a habit of doing just that!”
You know, it’s awfully strange. In those three decades, with people getting brain tumors and dying, with divorces, accidental pregnancies, cars blowing out their head gaskets, kids being “diagnosed” with Autism, or ADD, or bipolar, I see this wisdom from Keith Murray is the one little snippet that has come out right. I mean, against reality…if you take the time and trouble to absorb it over the longer term.
Dr. Keith Murray was one of my mother’s instructors from her college days. But he was a great deal more than that. You don’t get to be an adviser to my mother’s sons, on the eve before his marriage, just because you’re one of her old professors. No, Dr. Murray was a respected family friend, not for his intellect, or for his values, but because of an irreplaceable amalgamation of those two things.
Optimism is cheap. Reality…not quite so cheap, it can have its redeeming value, I suppose. Optimism that naturally gels with reality — that’s priceless, and I’m not talking about something that fits into a MasterCard commercial.
What I’m talking about is: We make our wonderful plans, the rigid plans, the brittle plans, the plans that get all the angels laughing. All of our weaknesses factor into these plans, and none of our strengths do…
…but, by the time the toast falls all the way down to the carpet, it is still butter-side-up. And why? How? Because of our wisdom? Oh…don’t get those angels laughing yet one more time, please. Even Heaven’s Host can get a case of acute hernia…
No, it distills down into a simple mathematical equation. You have the outcome. Contrasted with that, you have the challenge that we meet, added to the resourcefulness we show when we meet it — multiplied by the wisdom we have with regard to with is truly going on…
Once you factor all that in, you have no choice but to go insane, or to logically conclude there is a superior force watching over us.
Dr. Murray nailed it. To the wall, in a way Jedi Master Yoda never did. “I think you’ll find ‘it’ has a way of doing exactly that.” [Working itself out]
My mother chose her mentors exceptionally well. It looked like a pure accident, to me; that’s because she left when I was twenty-six.
Twenty-six feels like adulthood, when you’re there. This year, if I make it that far, I’ll be forty-five. I see wisdom where I did not see it before. Things do not look the same.
This means, in a cruel twist of fate, that as one Winter Solstice rolls on by after another…it becomes acutely perceptible that my mother might as well have passed on to the next world while I was 3 or 4. And her memory continues to fade, and fade, and fade some more… but, every now and then I become aware of those who became her heroes. Her mentors. And I am reminded that this is a woman who showed great wisdom, well beyond her years, about who was deserving of her respect. Keith Murray absolutely, without a doubt, goes into the “win” column. And this pithy phrase of his, in my mind if if in no other, is one of his keystones.
It survives him, makes him immortal — because it is, when all’s said & done, what life is really all about. We were put here. Therefore, we must have been put here by someone who knows better…and for a reason.
For all of our everyday worries, and they certainly can be overwhelming at times I know…we really don’t need to worry about anything outside of that, do we?
It will all work out. ‘It’ has a habit of doing that…and you will find that out.
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My own personal version is “Life is self correcting”.
- wtng2fish | 02/12/2011 @ 19:16On Darwin’s birthday, though, that bears a distinct departure from what I think Dr. Murray was trying to say.
- mkfreeberg | 02/12/2011 @ 23:01