by George Loftus Noyes
Thanks to a Friend for sending us this beautiful art
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On my desk lies a letter from a friend, a clergyman. "The trouble with most of us," he writes, "isn't active or deliberate wickedness; it's lethargy, absence of caring, lack of involvement in life. To keep our bodies comfortable and well fed and entertained seems to be all that matters. But the more successful we are at this, the more entombed the soul becomes in solid, immovable flesh. We no longer hear the distant trumpet and go toward it; we listen to the pipes of Pan and fall asleep." And this good man goes on wistfully: "How can I rouse my people, make them yearn for something more than pleasant, socially acceptable ways of escaping from life? How can I make them want to thrust forward into the unknown, into the world of testing and trusting their own spirit? Oh, how I wish I knew!" There's only one answer, really. Each of us must be willing, at least sometimes, to chop wood instead of sitting by the fire. Each of us must guard against the influences that lull and seduce us toward a state of nonliving. Each of us must fight our own fight against the betrayal of life that comes from refusing to live it.
~Arthur Gordon
A Touch of Wonder
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The world is a dangerous place to live;
not because of the people who are evil,
but because of the people who don't do anything about it.
~Albert Einstein
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Apathy is one of the characteristic responses of any living organism when
it is subjected to stimuli too intense or too complicated to cope with.
The cure for apathy is comprehension.
~John Dos Passos