Dennis Merritt Jones

"Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?" -- George Carlin

George Carlin makes a good point when he implies that anyone driving other than how we do has got it wrong. Clearly he is poking...

Take rest; a field that has rested gives a bountiful crop. -- Ovid

I love the quote above from the ancient Roman Ovid: He reminds us that for millennia farmers have known that every so often they must allow a field to "rest" or go fallow between...

The greater the contrast, the greater the potential. Great energy only comes from a correspondingly great tension between opposites. -- C. G. Jung

There was a great experiment done in the early 1980s in the desert called the biodome. It was an exercise to create the perfect living environment...

We are each driven by a deep urge to form an intimate connection with the world around us and most of us do this through relationships. If you take a soul look at this, you will see that your need for relationship actually stems from your basic human need to...

"Do something every day that you don't want to do. This is the golden rule for acquiring the habit of doing your duty without pain ... Duties are not performed for duty's sake, but because their neglect would make the man uncomfortable. A man performs but one duty -- the...

"Tis the good reader that makes the good book; in every book he finds passages which seem to be confidences or sides hidden from all else and unmistakably meant for his ear; the profit of books is according to the sensibility of the reader; the profound thought or passion sleeps...

"Time is the reef upon which all our frail mystic ships are wrecked." -- Sir Noel Coward, Blithe Spirit

With daylight saving time happening on March 11, I have been thinking about how much of our lives are spent trying to manage and often manipulate something that doesn't really exist....

"By having a reverence for life, we enter into a spiritual relation with the world. By practicing reverence for life we become good, deep, and alive." -- Albert Schweitzer

Where I live in Southern California we are blessed with year-around weather that encourages growth of just about anything planted...

"Originality consists in trying to be like everybody else--and failing." -- Raymond Radiate

Recently, I read about an experiment involving the first successful attempt to clone a cat. The researchers were somewhat baffled by the fact that the original cat, Rainbow, is a typical calico with very distinct...

"When we prayed together we were somehow a greater opening than we would have been praying alone. That we did it together made it all the more empowering: We became spiritual witness for each other's successes and growth. We didn't have to face our obstacles alone because we had a...

"How often do you have to practice the presence of gravity? All the time! Any time you forget about gravity, and fail to practice your relationship with it, you fall on your face. So it is with practicing the presence of God. We are told to 'pray without ceasing.'...

"The Pause; that impressive silence, that eloquent silence, that geometrically progressive silence which often achieves a desired effect where no combination of words, however so felicitous, could accomplish it." -- Mark Twain

"For many of us, the waters of our daily life are anything but calm because we don't create...

"If I had the chance to live my life over, I'd do things a little different... I'd have more friends." -- Ty Cobb

Like many others who spend more than a little time on the computer, I've also been pulled into the vortex of the Facebook phenomena. Facebook, as an...

"To love and be loved is to feel the sun from both sides." -- David Viscott

Having recently viewed a very moving video posted on YouTube, I am moved to share an awareness that arose in me as I watched. The video is a wonderful tribute to the words "I...

"Spirituality is not about being perfect but about aspiring to a life of heart-filled integrity. It is a journey and not a destination. When we are spiritually fit and balanced we are a powerfully exquisite blend of human fallibility and divine perfection. It is this dynamic tension that gives us...

"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." -- Albert Einstein

I have always believed that rituals, done as a contemplative practice with feeling, can have a very positive effect on our lives. Over the years as a workshop facilitator, on the last...

"Whether you think you can or whether you think you can't, you're right." -- Henry Ford

Few will disagree with the fact that we are being pummeled daily by the media with how "bad" things are today. If we are not mindful, it's easy to get seduced into agreement...

"I define joy as a sustained sense of well-being and internal peace -- a connection to what matters."
-- Oprah Winfrey

Have you ever given thought to the emotion of joy? With the "season of joy" upon us, I am making a commitment to myself to become the...

And the Grinch, with his Grinch-feet ice cold in the snow,
Stood puzzling and puzzling, how could it be so...?
It came without ribbons. It came without tags.
It came without packages, boxes or bags.

"Somebody should tell us, right at the start of our lives, that we are dying. Then we might live life to the limit, every minute of every day. Do it! I say. Whatever you want to do, do it now! There are only so many tomorrows." -- Michael Landon

We...