Thought for the Week

From University Minister Ira DeSpain

These weekly thoughts are intended to stimulate your thinking and provide a context and backdrop for your life, work and study for the week ahead.

May 6-12

How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.
—Anne Frank

April 29-May 5

Nothing is impossible, the word itself says 'I'm possible'!
—Audrey Hepburn

April 22-28

One never notices what has been done; one can only see what remains to be done.
—Marie Curie
A good reminder for this time of the school year. We have accomplished so much!

April 15-21

Education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make [man] a more clever devil.
—C.S. Lewis

April 8-14

Before God we are all equally wise – and equally foolish.
—Albert Einstein

April 1-7

It is a wholesome and necessary thing for us to turn again to the earth and in the contemplation of her beauties to know of wonder and humility.
—Rachel Carson

It sounds as though Rachel Carson has tickets to the baseball season opener of the Chicago Cubs – or perhaps she was a golfer.

March 25-31

It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad.
—C. S. Lewis

March 18-24

I not only use all the brains that I have, but all that I can borrow.
—Woodrow Wilson

The great thing about living in community is we get to borrow many brains with many gifts!

March 4-10

Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art . . . It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival.
—C.S. Lewis

Remember to make room in your life for unnecessary things.

February 25-March 3

The most important thing to remember is this:
To be ready at any moment to give up what you are for what you might become.
—W.E.B. DuBois

February 18-24

Don't ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it.
Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.
—Howard Thurman

February 11-17

We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty.
—Maya Angelou

February 4-10

Nature is an unlimited broadcasting station, through which God speaks to us every hour, if we only will tune in.
—George Washington Carver (1864-1943)

February is that great transition month when God becomes more audible. What have you heard in the cold wind of winter?

January 28-February 3

This week's thought is a reflection on Groundhog Day:

Alas! must it ever be so?
Do we stand in our own light, wherever we go,
And fight our own shadows forever?
—Edward Robert Bulwer Lytton

January 21-27

A nation or civilization that continues to produce soft-minded [men] purchases its own spiritual death on the installment plan.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.

January 14-20

If you want to lead the orchestra, you must turn your back on the crowd.
—Max Lucado

January 7-13

Everyone is a genius at least once a year. The real geniuses simply have their bright ideas closer together.
—Georg C. Lichtenberg

I pray for an entire year of bright ideas!

December 10-16

This is the last of my weekly communications with you until after the New Year begins. My hope and prayer is for each of you that you have wonderful, joyous, meaningful times over this Holiday season. May each of you know lasting love, find strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow. That is the message of the Season.

December 3-9

No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.
—Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962)

November 26-December 2

Here's a good reminder in our fast-paced world, especially if we are recovering from Black Friday shopping:

Patience is the companion of wisdom.
—Saint Augustine (354-430)

November 19-25

Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today and creates a vision for tomorrow.
—Melody Beattie

November 12-18

Veterans' Day is November 11. In honor of that, I offer the following thoughts for this week:

In war, there are no unwounded soldiers.
—José Narosky

I dream of giving birth to a child who will ask, "Mother, what was war?"
—Eve Merriam

Thank a veteran this week!

November 5-11

As the pressure of completion and achievement mount, I found this reminder quote:
Failure is an event, never a person.
—William D. Brown

October 29-November 4

In the Christian calendar, November 1 is All Saints Day – a day to remember mentors and role models, living and dead, who have influenced our lives. The quote below is offered in honor of All Saints Day this year: 

All of the places of our lives are sanctuaries; some of them just happen to have steeples. And all of the people in our lives are saints; it is just that some of them have day jobs and most will never have feast days named for them.
—Robert Benson

October 22-28

Be as smart as you can, but remember that it is always better to be wise than to be smart.
—Alan Alda

October 15-21

This is in honor of Maple Leaf Festival.

For humanity, autumn is a time of harvest, of gathering together.
For nature, it is a time of sowing, of scattering abroad.
—Edwin Way Teale

I think it’s interesting to think that a season can be two things at once. What do you need to harvest? What do you need to plant?

October 8-14

God is the friend of silence.|
See how nature-trees, flowers, grass-grows in silence;
see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence...
We need silence to be able to touch souls.
—Mother Teresa (1910-1997)

My hope and prayer for each of you is that you will find time and space for silence.

October 1-7 (Homecoming Week)

Home is any four walls that enclose the right person.
—Helen Rowland

Our school, our families, our places of security are always more about people than structures. We are blessed to be around such a group of outstanding and wonderful people who truly make Baker a place that will always invite us home.

September 24-30

The reason we struggle with insecurity is because we compare our behind-the-scenes with everyone else’s highlight reel.
—Steve Furtick

September 17-23

It is not worth an intelligent man's [woman’s] time to be in the majority. By definition, there are already enough people to do that.
—G. H. Hardy

September 10-16

We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality.
—Albert Einstein

September 3-9

It is the characteristic excellence of the strong man that he can bring momentous issues to the fore and make a decision about them. The weak are always forced to decide between alternatives they have not chosen themselves. 
—Dietrich Bonhoeffer

August 27-September 2

Friendship . . . is not something you learn in school. But if you haven't learned the meaning of friendship, you really haven't learned anything.
—Muhammad Ali

August 20-26

This is a day of new beginnings,
Time to remember and move on,
Time to believe what love is bringing,
Laying to rest the pain that’s gone.

God is alive and goes before us
To show and share what love can do.
This is a day of new beginnings;
Our God is making al things new.
—Brian Wren