The Dawg Run

Quote of the Day

2013-06-19T06:03:00.004-07:00

Let people feel the weight of who you are and let them deal with it

- John Eldredge in Wild at Heart

Quote of the Day

2013-06-18T05:39:00.002-07:00

"I like to smile at people who don't like me . . . because I'm an asshole."

- Bill Murray

Beware of Criticizing Others

2013-06-17T07:18:00.000-07:00

by Oswald Chambers

Judge not, that you be not judged —Matthew 7:1

Jesus’ instructions with regard to judging others is very simply put; He says, “Don’t.” The average Christian is the most piercingly critical individual known. Criticism is one of the ordinary activities of people, but in the spiritual realm nothing is accomplished by it. The effect of criticism is the dividing up of the strengths of the one being criticized. The Holy Spirit is the only one in the proper position to criticize, and He alone is able to show what is wrong without hurting and wounding. It is impossible to enter into fellowship with God when you are in a critical mood. Criticism serves to make you harsh, vindictive, and cruel, and leaves you with the soothing and flattering idea that you are somehow superior to others. Jesus says that as His disciple you should cultivate a temperament that is never critical. This will not happen quickly but must be developed over a span of time. You must constantly beware of anything that causes you to think of yourself as a superior person.

There is no escaping the penetrating search of my life by Jesus. If I see the little speck in your eye, it means that I have a plank of timber in my own (see Matthew 7:3-5). Every wrong thing that I see in you, God finds in me. Every time I judge, I condemn myself (see Romans 2:17-24). Stop having a measuring stick for other people. There is always at least one more fact, which we know nothing about, in every person’s situation. The first thing God does is to give us a thorough spiritual cleaning. After that, there is no possibility of pride remaining in us. I have never met a person I could despair of, or lose all hope for, after discerning what lies in me apart from the grace of God.

http://utmost.org/beware-of-criticizing-others/

Quote of the Day

2013-06-17T04:37:00.003-07:00

Friendship is even, if you like, angelic. But man needs to be triply protected by humility if he is to eat the bread of angels without risk.

- CS Lewis

The Swiss Family Robinson

2013-06-17T04:13:00.002-07:00

by Ron Padgett

I never quite understood who
the Swiss Family Robinson were.
The inversion of their name
confused me at an early age,
just as the name of Mary Baker Eddy
sounded as though she started out
as a woman and turned into
a guy named Eddy. At Walt
Disney World there is an attraction
called Swiss Family Robinson that
involves a tree house, so I assume
they lived in a tree. Why they did
I don't know. It sounds rather
stressful to me, the fear
of falling out. I could look up
the Swiss Family Robinson
in a reference book, but
it's interesting not to know
something that everyone else knows.
However, I would like to know if there
are many people named Robinson
in Switzerland. If there are,
I would know something that
most people don't know.

"Nap Time" at Sea World

2013-06-16T16:28:00.001-07:00

Wait, which one of us is supposed to be napping?

Happy Father's Day

2013-06-16T06:52:00.000-07:00

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=6bc_1340211107

Happy Father's Day

2013-06-16T00:01:00.002-07:00

http://youtu.be/xT6S-YCagzQ

Happy Father's Day to Special Needs Dads

2013-06-16T00:01:00.001-07:00

http://youtu.be/Q4foXehDmWs

Happy Father's Day

2013-06-16T00:01:00.000-07:00

http://youtu.be/liZBFdKXKIE

Steel Bars

2013-06-10T04:12:00.000-07:00

http://youtu.be/YingC-Y-n3E

Where Feet May Fail

2013-06-10T02:46:00.002-07:00

http://youtu.be/dy9nwe9_xzw

Quote of the Day

2013-06-09T09:15:00.002-07:00

Quote of the Day

2013-06-09T08:55:00.002-07:00

"Assumptions are the termites of relationships."

- Henry Winkler

Quote of the Day

2013-06-09T08:49:00.000-07:00

"Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself."

- George Bernard Shaw

Wishes

2013-06-07T03:50:00.001-07:00

by Ted Berrigan

Now I wish I were asleep, to see my dreams taking place
I wish I were more awake
I wish a sweet rush of tears to my eyes
Wish a nose like an eagle
I wish blue sky in the afternoon
Bigger windows, & a panorama—light, buildings & people in street air
Wish my teeth were white and sparkled
Wish my legs were not where they are—where they are
I wish the days warmly cool & clothes I like to be inside of
Wish I were walking around in Chelsea (NY) & it was 5:15 a.m., the
sun coming up, alone, you asleep at home
I wish red rage came easier
I wish death, but not just now
I wish I were driving alone across America in a gold Cadillac
toward California, & my best friend
I wish I were in love, & you here

Quote of the Day

2013-06-01T05:41:00.002-07:00

When you choose to love someone who is damaged . . . you take on the weight of
their past,
their pain,
their guilt.

You must be strong.
You must be patient.

You can stop the bleeding . . .
And help them scar over.
But they will always, always
be a little broken.

If you can handle that . . .
if you can accept the dents and cracks . . .
if you can get them to trust you . . .
You will never find a better ally than one who is damaged.

Above all else: they know about survival.
After all, they are still here . . . wondering if someone like you will ever love them.

- Shayne McClendon - The Good Girl

Who the Meek Are Not

2013-05-30T04:55:00.002-07:00

by Mary Karr

Not the bristle-bearded Igors bent
under burlap sacks, not peasants knee-deep
in the rice paddy muck,
nor the serfs whose quarter-moon sickles
make the wheat fall in waves
they don't get to eat. My friend the Franciscan
nun says we misread
that word meek in the Bible verse that blesses them.
To understand the meek
(she says) picture a great stallion at full gallop
in a meadow, who—
at his master's voice—seizes up to a stunned
but instant halt.
So with the strain of holding that great power
in check, the muscles
along the arched neck keep eddying,
and only the velvet ears
prick forward, awaiting the next order.

At the Vietnam Memorial

2013-05-27T06:36:00.000-07:00

by George Bilgere

The last time I saw the name Paul Castle
it was printed in gold on the wall
above the showers in the boys'
locker room, next to the school
record for the mile. I don't recall
his time, but the year was 1968
and I can look across the infield
of memory to see him on the track,
legs flashing, body bending slightly
beyond the pack of runners at his back.

He couldn't spare a word for me,
two years younger, junior varsity,
and hardly worth the waste of breath.
He owned the hallways, a cool blonde
at his side, and aimed his interests
further down the line than we could guess.

Now, reading the name again,
I see us standing in the showers,
naked kids beneath his larger,
comprehensive force—the ones who trail
obscurely, in the wake of the swift,
like my shadow on this gleaming wall.

Quote of the Day

2013-05-26T20:17:00.000-07:00

"A friendship that can end never really began"

- Publilius Syrus

Quote of the Day

2013-05-26T05:29:00.004-07:00

“Child,' said the Lion, 'I am telling you your story, not hers. No one is told any story but their own.”

- Aslan - The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe

The Runner

2013-05-25T12:29:00.002-07:00

The first lessons are almost always the best lessons, and it was no different here: Running is a kind of truth serum. It brutally strips away everything you put on and leaves you with only yourself. The runner on the road, hunched over or otherwise, knows something that the passenger in the car doesn't. Down to the core, the runner knows who he is. The runner has to. He's so tired, who he is is all that's left.

. . . the run makes trash of every bauble and artifact, layer upon layer, whether it's something in your form, or something on your body, or something in your mind, until you're empty and bare and raw.

The runner knows who he is. The farther he runs, the more he knows, the more that shows.

- Marc Parent in Runner's World
http://www.runnersworld.com/runners-stories/running-helps-you-find-your-inner-self

Quote of the Day

2013-05-25T05:05:00.003-07:00

"Why hurt yourself when there are others who will gladly do it for you"

- unknown

To a Daughter Leaving Home

2013-05-24T04:57:00.003-07:00

by Linda Pastan

When I taught you
at eight to ride
a bicycle, loping along
beside you
as you wobbled away
on two round wheels,
my own mouth rounding
in surprise when you pulled
ahead down the curved
path of the park,
I kept waiting
for the thud
of your crash as I
sprinted to catch up,
while you grew
smaller, more breakable
with distance,
pumping, pumping
for your life, screaming
with laughter,
the hair flapping
behind you like a
handkerchief waving
goodbye.

Romantics

2013-05-21T05:22:00.001-07:00

by Lisel Mueller

Johannes Brahms and Clara Schumann
The modern biographers worry
"how far it went," their tender friendship.
They wonder just what it means
when he writes he thinks of her constantly,
his guardian angel, beloved friend.
The modern biographers ask
the rude, irrelevant question
of our age, as if the event
of two bodies meshing together
establishes the degree of love,
forgetting how softly Eros walked
in the nineteenth century, how a hand
held overlong or a gaze anchored
in someone's eyes could unseat a heart,
and nuances of address, not known
in our egalitarian language
could make the redolent air
tremble and shimmer with the heat
of possibility. Each time I hear
the Intermezzi, sad
and lavish in their tenderness,
I imagine the two of them
sitting in a garden
among late-blooming roses
and dark cascades of leaves,
letting the landscape speak for them,
leaving nothing to overhear.