More Thoughts of a Godseeker

"If you believe that God is everywhere, then you will find Him as easily in a church as in a garden, but if you wonder if God is anywhere, then you might want to look in the garden first."


"To be certain of God is to be just one doubt away from denying Him. Better to have accepted Him on a prayerful faith."


"I respect more the person who struggles with his faith than the person who is confident in his skepticism."


"Arriving at church for services, we leave our toddlers in the basement child care center and proceed upstairs -- as if God were likely to be upstairs."


"Be it God or the Big Bang, most of us will accept an unexplainable thing if it explains everything else."


"What we see as truth has principally to do with who taught it to us."


"As you reach for understanding, you find that your ladder of facts isn't long enough, and you try to extend it by adding a rung of faith. Eventually you see that the task is hopeless, and you put away your ladder of facts and go get a ladder of faith."


"When you have tried all your life to solve a mystery, and have never solved it, you must consider the possibility that it is not a mystery."


"I've concluded, after many years, that my mind works by process of elimination.  Problem is, it hasn't eliminated anything yet."



A Miscellaneous Mix of Old and New

"For every person who succeeds by stubbornly holding course, ten succeed by daring to change course -- and vice-versa."


"Yes, I accept reality. I accept it as one possibility."


"Life is such a clever distraction that you can't help wondering from what."


"The odds against you don't mean a thing, unless you bet on them."


"When you are one of the pieces, it doesn't seem like a game."


"If you hand over your integrity on a silver platter, they will want it on gold."


"I try to forgive and forget, but I keep forgetting I forgave."


"If you allow people to treat you like a doormat, they will expect you to say WELCOME."


"There is many a relationship that would be improved by one more degree of separation."




~~ Robert Brault

The Woman in the Check-Out Line

At the end, the Alzheimer’s had left his mother a lost, old woman who would sit all day in her geriatric chair staring off into the distance. He would visit her at the church home and sit by her side, trying his best to lure the old light back into her eyes, hoping to see for just a moment the spark of recognition that would sometimes reappear out of the blue.

On their last day together she was particularly feeble, and the afternoon had been long with silence. He had turned sadly to leave when he felt her hand reach for his. When he looked back into her eyes, they were soft and alive, and he could see that his mother recognized him. He felt her hand tighten around his. She leaned close and said, in words just above a whisper, “There was a woman in the check-out line who thought you were the most beautiful baby.”

That was all. Soon her eyes went dull, and there was no elaboration, and he knew that none would come. The next morning, the call came from the home, and they told him that his mother had died in the night.

In the years that followed he thought often about his mother’s last words to him and about the woman in the check-out line. She was in his thoughts when he wrote, “Sometimes the most lasting memory is of the smallest kindness,” and again, “There is no effect more disproportionate to its cause than the pleasure bestowed by a small compliment.”

There was a woman once who took a moment to compliment a young mother on her baby. Did she ever think again of her kind gesture? Did she imagine that her words would be carried in another person’s memory for a lifetime? Did she guess that fifty years later, a dying old woman, searching her crippled memory for words to console a grieving son, would say to him, “There was a woman in the check-out line who thought you were the most beautiful baby.”

~~ Robert Brault

Thoughts from the Oceanside

Here are a few thoughts that occurred to me this week while staring out at the ocean from under a beach umbrella. I've appended a few of my less-quoted oldies.


"In counting your blessings, be sure to count the things you can be happy without."


"If tomorrow you were granted everything you ever wished for, you could put on a heckuva yard sale."


"What a unique treasure are the things we have learned to live without, for no thief can take them from us."


"Whew, I just had this nightmare where a burglar broke in and left stuff."


"I am never five minutes into stripping the clutter from my life before I start running into the clutter that is my life."


"Eventually you come to realize that most people aren't looking for a fight but for someone to surrender to."


"I would love to go back and travel the road not taken, if I knew at the end of it I'd find the same set of grandkids."


"Insanity is a growing certainty that you haven't lost your mind after all."


"I would like to be the sort of friend that when I come visiting, you tidy up and not chase around trying to erase all signs of previous life."



Some of my less-quoted oldies

"Through both their lives, a mom never stops chasing her toddler down to the water's edge."

"How often we choose the safe path only to discover that it was not one of the choices."

"The human life span is an unresolved issue between God and garlic."

"Skepticism is a religion very rich in evangelists but very short on saviors."

"There's a book in all of us, which, in most cases, is a good place for it."

"Nobody has a stroke of dumb luck without thinking they can have a stroke of dumber luck."

~~ Robert Brault

Sparsely Sage, Mostly Rosemary and Thyme

"Never mind the odds against you.  If you doubled your effort, what would the odds against you do -- send for reinforcements?"


"I know this about myself -- that the most lasting triumphs of my life have been triumphs of acceptance, and the happiest triumph a willing surrender."


"Then, too, if you don't take the Bible literally, you have to wonder why it was written in letters."


"A chance here, a circumstance there, pretty soon you're talking a destiny."


"The only argument against a loving God is our stubborn insistence that He created the planet Earth."


"Someday scientists will know everything -- and wonder why it doesn't explain everything."


"Often, in consoling a child, you try to get to the fact of the matter, only to realize that the matter doesn't have any fact."


"You become more knowledgable as you learn.  The great mystery is how you become more ignorant."


"The thing we have in common with the ancients is that they didn't know they were living in biblical times, either."


You think you know someone, and then at their memorial service, a stranger comes in, sits for ten minutes alone, speaks to no one, and quietly leaves."




T-Shirts, Bumper Stickers and Road Signs

"Beginning Ponzi schemes, suitable for ages 2 to 4.

"The Family Ponzi Game -- Send granny to the poorhouse."

"Road fines doubled next 36 miles.  Various reasons."


"Mel's honing pigeons.  Knives, cutlery sharpened."

"Speed monitored by radar-equipped humming birds."

"MINE BLACK HOLES.  Ad paid for by International Papeweight and Doorstop."

"Caution: This car decelerates in the passing lane."


~~ Robert Brault