Illinois ladies facing bc

IllinoisLady

As I look back at the entire tapestry of my life, I can see from the perspective of the present moment that every aspect of my life was necessary and perfect. Each step eventually led to a higher place, even though these steps often felt like obstacles or painful experiences. -Wayne Dyer

IllinoisLady

Blessed are they who have learned to admire but not envy, to follow but not imitate, to praise but not flatter, and to lead but not manipulate. -William Arthur Ward

IllinoisLady

Faith is a friend by our side. When we allow it in, faith acts as a floor beneath our feet. When we make choices rooted in faith, we trust that there is a power, an unseen force, guiding us. When we have faith, we know that we are being taken care of. Faith gives us the ability to look beyond our immediate circumstances and imagine brave new choices for the future. Faith means trusting in something beyond what we know. Having faith that we are part of a bigger whole allows us to melt away our separateness. Faith gives us strength and reassurance and leaves us bathed in the wisdom that we are never alone. -Debbie Ford

IllinoisLady

The simplification of life is one of the steps to inner peace.
A persistent simplification will create an inner and outer well-being
that places harmony in one's life.
- Peace Pilgrim

IllinoisLady

Our fear is even stronger when we think we are responsible for others--our children, for example. We want to spare them pain, and so we forget to listen to the Sound of Creation. No one learns from someone else's mistake. If we respect others, we must recognize that they have a right to their own dance. Their own spirits will guide them. -unattributed

IllinoisLady

There is no more searching test of the human spirit than the way it behaves when fortune is adverse and it has to pass through a prolonged period of disappointing failures. Then comes the real proof of the person. Achievement, if one has the ability, is a joy; but to take hard knocks and come up smiling, to have your mainsail blown away and then rig a sheet on the bowsprit and sail on—this is perhaps the deepest test of character. -Harry Emerson Fosdick

IllinoisLady

It seems, oddly enough, that it's people with a strong faith who are best able to live in the present moment. Enjoyment of the present, care for the quality of life: these are a kind of reverence, a kind of faith in life itself. The present is valuable, this faith tells us: it is all we have.

Karen Casey

IllinoisLady

Don't expect perfection and things to go the way you want them to when it comes to people, business, your prospects, and your social life. When things don't go according to your desires, when the weather of life is foul, be creative and consider what may be the higher reasons why this is happening and why you must adjust. Perhaps it's to gain forbearance, patience, inner strength, flexibility, or the ability to withhold criticism while serving as a loving model. -Michael Goddart

IllinoisLady

You are goodness and mercy and compassion and understanding. You are peace and joy and light. You are forgiveness and patience, strength and courage, a helper in time of need, a comforter in time of sorrow, a healer in time of injury, a teacher in time of confusion. You are the deepest wisdom and the highest truth; the greatest peace and the grandest love. You are these things. And in moments of your life you have known yourself as these things. Choose now to know yourself as these things always.

Neale Donald Walsch

IllinoisLady

We need to find the "middle way" in our own lives. It is the art of finding balance. Reflecting upon our lives, we soon discover what serves us well--nurturing calmness, ease, and simplicity. We also discover what it is that leads to entanglement, confusion, distress, and anxiety. Wisdom is being able to discern the difference, then knowing what we need to nurture and what we need to learn to let go. -Christina Feldman

IllinoisLady

"Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that."

-- Martin Luther King Jr.

IllinoisLady

It costs you nothing to make another happy -
and you gain your true self through the act of spreading joy.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

IllinoisLady

Human beings are parts of the whole called by us a universe—parts limited in time and space. They experience themselves, their thoughts and feelings, as something separate from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of their consciousnesses. This delusion is a kind of prison for us; it restricts us to our personal decisions and our affections to a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. -Albert Einstein

ChiSandy

The Woodfield SUV human pinball is under observation at a local hospital's psych ward. He might not be charged, as nobody was seriously hurt, the meds he was on were apparently taken as prescribed, so he lacked the mental capacity to form a criminal intent. Amazingly, all the mall's "non-anchor" entrances had those post-9/11 concrete anti-vehicle barriers, but not the Sears entrance. The anchor store's entrances are their own, not mall, property and they have the option to protect them or not. Betcha Sears is gonna cough up the bucks now and put them up.

Gordy had to have Leslie drive him to work down in the Loop today: his CTA line (Brown) and Purple are out of service after two trains collided near the Sedgwick/North Ave. station this morning. If the damaged train cars haven't been detached and towed to a repair siding by midnight, he'll have to walk 1/2 mi. to the Red line, change to the Brown (running to/from 3 stops north of the accident scene) or take a Lyft home. No injuries have been reported...that will change when my legal-profession brethren start coming out of the woodwork (cynical, eh? You be the judge).

We have a new BCO sister, though she hasn't divulged her handle yet: ABC7 Chicago meteorologist Tracy Butler (joining her colleague, traffic/events reporter Roz Varon). Yesterday she announced that after a routine mammo, she was diagnosed last Christmas. She had surgery & rads (her radioloigical oncologist was her guest on the morning news yesterday) but didn't say whether she's on endocrine therapy. I doubt she had chemo: she didn't miss a broadcast and her hairdo never changed from how it's always been. (She did take time off for each of her pregnancies).

IllinoisLady

You have choice. You can select joy over despair. You can select happiness over tears. You can select action over apathy. You can select growth over stagnation. You can select you. And you can select life. And it's time that people tell you you're not at the mercy of forces greater than yourself. You, indeed, are the greatest force for you. Now, you can't do it for me, but you can do it for you. -Leo Buscaglia

IllinoisLady

Be grateful simply for being alive. When you are grateful for life, pure and simple, your life becomes one you can be grateful for. That may strike you as circular or even backward logic, but your attitude really does have an effect on how things work out. When you can't change your life any other way, you can still change your attitude. When you do, your life changes. You find more chances to love, and you will be surprised to see how much more love is returned to you.
The next time someone says, "It's a lovely day," try saying, "Yes, it is." Today is always the best day of your life.
-Bernie Siegel

IllinoisLady

Without forgiveness, we remain tethered to the person who harmed us.
We are bound with chains of bitterness, tied together, trapped.
Until we can forgive the person who harmed us,
that person will hold the keys to our happiness; that person will be our jailer.
When we forgive, we take back control of our own fate and our feelings.
We become our own liberators.
Forgiveness, in other words, is the best form of self-interest.
This is true both spiritually and scientifically.
We don't forgive to help the other person.
We don't forgive for others.
We forgive for ourselves.
- Desmond Tutu

IllinoisLady

People who take the risk make a tremendous discovery: The more things you care about, and the more intensely you care, the more alive you are. This capacity for caring can illuminate any relationship: marriage, family, friendships--even the ties of affection that often join humans and animals. Each of us is born with some of it, but whether we let it expand or diminish is largely up to us. To care, you have to surrender the armor of indifference. You have to be willing to act, to make the first move. -Arthur Gordon

IllinoisLady

To be a beneficial presence in the world,
cultivate a conscious awareness of your unity with Spirit.
Expect good in your own life.
Desire good for all others as well.
See and affirm abundant blessings of peace,
health, and plenty for everyone.
Align your thoughts with peace and happiness,
and realize that these qualities are your true nature.
- Kathy Juline

IllinoisLady

It's all a matter of paying attention, being awake in the present moment, and not expecting a huge payoff. The magic in this world seems to work in whispers and small kindnesses. -Charles de Lint

IllinoisLady

We the decent people of the world stand for the kind of life that will be good for all of the people, all of the time, everywhere. We believe that this is a beautiful universe and that it is made for love and not for hate; for peace and not war; for freedom and not slavery; for order and not riot; for compassion and not violence; for happiness and not misery. We believe that the ultimate decency is to help people and never harm people, to lift people and not degrade them, and to respect the dignity of all people as individual human beings. -Wilferd A. Peterson

IllinoisLady

Don't undermine your worth by comparing yourself with others. It is because we are different that each of us is special. -Brian Dyson

I cannot say this too strongly: Do not compare yourselves to others. Be true to who you are, and continue to learn with all your might. -Daisaku Ikeda

IllinoisLady

Compassion is the basis of all truthful relationship: it means being present with love--for ourselves and for all life, including animals, fish, birds, and trees. Compassion is bringing our deepest truth into our actions, no matter how much the world seems to resist, because that is ultimately what we have to give this world and one another. -Ram Dass

IllinoisLady

"A life of spirit, regardless of what path you choose,

begins with a person's acceptance

that they are part of something

larger than themselves."

~ Mark Nepo

IllinoisLady

Life is an exercise in the development of feeling. When we repress feelings, we become sour and judgmental. When we live awash in great feeling over small things, we become jaded long before we have even begun to enjoy. When feelings are in balance they sweeten long days and great distances with gratitude and hope. -Joan Chittister, Seeing with Our Souls

IllinoisLady

However much or little you have,
"Thank You" is always a more powerful prayer than, "I need more."
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Whoever does not regard what he has
as most ample wealth, is unhappy,
though he be master of the world.
- Epictetus

God gave you a gift of 86,400 seconds today.
Have you used one to say "thank you?"
- William Arthur Ward

IllinoisLady

A smile is the light in your window that tells others that there is a caring, sharing person inside. -Denis Waitley

Every time you smile at someone, it is an action of love, a gift to that person, a beautiful thing. -Mother Teresa

One word or a pleasing smile is often enough to raise up a saddened and wounded soul. -Therese of Lisieux

IllinoisLady

Life is made up of a series of challenges designed to bring us to fullness of growth. Meeting them with hope in the future is the real test of the spiritual person.

Joan Chittister

IllinoisLady

Give yourself the gift of forgiving others,
not because THEY deserve it,
but because YOU deserve the serenity and joy
that comes from releasing resentment and anger.
Unconditional forgiveness is the path to your own inner peace.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

IllinoisLady

Listening is the oldest and perhaps the most powerful tool of healing. It is often through the quality of our listening and not the wisdom of our words that we are able to effect the most profound changes in the people around us. When we listen, we offer with our attention an opportunity for wholeness. Our listening creates sanctuary for the homeless parts within the other person. That which has been denied, unloved, devalued by themselves and others. That which is hidden.
In this culture the soul and the heart too often go homeless.
Listening creates a holy silence. When you listen generously to people, they can hear the truth in themselves, often for the first time. And in the silence of listening, you can know yourself in everyone. Eventually you may be able to hear, in everyone and beyond everyone, the unseen singing softly to itself and to you. -Rachel Naomi Remen