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Musings for the time before Lent: Mardi Gras & Fat Tuesday! Music, feasting and celebration.

Laissez les bons temps rouler. ‘Let the good times roll.’ — Unattributed

In the house of lovers the walls are made of songs, the floor dances and the music never stops. — Rumi

The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience. ― Eleanor Roosevelt

Busy, they were, busy being original, complicated, changeable—human, I guess you’d say. — Toni Morrison, Jazz

Doing the work you’re best at doing and like to do best, hearing great music, having great fun, seeing something very beautiful, weeping at somebody else’s tragedy—all these experiences are related to the experience of salvation because in all of them two things happen: (1) you lose yourself, and (2) you find that you are more fully yourself than usual. — Frederick Buechner

Questions to consider:

  • What would you like to celebrate just before Lent? Will you indulge a bit too much, sip or chew one last time, or do something a while longer? Mardi Gras feasts come, in part, from using up the food items in a home and kitchen that would spoil, once religious observances began prior to Easter.
  • What forms of celebration give you the greatest connection to life-sustaining, exuberant emotions and experiences? Eating? Dancing? Music? Something else?
  • What do you do with overstock when you’re trying to spring clean and pare down, or simplify life?
  • During Lent, do you choose to give up something (abstain or fast in some way), give over something (relinquish control of something to a higher power), give to something (contribute time, attention, energy or resources to a specific cause or issue)? What is your spiritual practice, starting next Ash Wednesday?

Recipes for Mardi Gras

Music for Mardi Gras

Background on Mardi Gras and Fat Tuesday

Brief explanation of Mardi Gras and Fat Tuesday as a time of celebration prior to Lent, as a time of festival and celebration, including the tradition of using up household oils and fats prior to a season of fasting and abstinence:

Shrove Tuesday (also known … as Pancake Tuesday or Pancake Day) is the day … immediately preceding Ash Wednesday (the first day of Lent), which is celebrated in some countries by consuming pancakes. In others, especially those where it is called Mardi Gras or some translation thereof, this is a carnival day, and also the last day of “fat eating” or “gorging” before the fasting period of Lent.

This moveable feast is determined by Easter. The expression “Shrove Tuesday” comes from the word shrive, meaning “absolve” … observed by many Christians … who “make a special point of self-examination …

As this is the last day of the liturgical season historically known as Shrovetide, before the penitential season of Lent, related popular practices, such as indulging in food that one gives up for the upcoming forty days, are associated with Shrove Tuesday celebrations. The term Mardi Gras is French for “Fat Tuesday”, referring to the practice of the last night of eating richer, fatty foods before the ritual fasting of the Lenten season, which begins on Ash Wednesday.

On Feasting & Mardi Gras Celebration

Fasting and feasting are universal human responses, and any meal, shared with love, can be an agape. — Elise M. Boulding

We don’t hide the crazy. We parade it down the street. — Unattributed

[The] dinner party is a true proclamation of the abundance of being — a rebuke to the thrifty little idolatries by which we lose sight of the lavish hand that made us. It is precisely because no one needs soup fish, meat, salad, cheese, and dessert at one meal that we so badly need to sit down to them from time to time. It was largesse that made us all; we were not created to fast forever. The unnecessary is the taproot of our being and the last key to the door of delight. Enter here, therefore, as a sovereign remedy for the narrowness of our minds and the stinginess of our souls, the formal dinner…the true convivium — the long Session that brings us nearly home. ― Robert Farrar Capon

… food is not simply organic fuel to keep body and soul together, it is a perishable art that must be savoured at the peak of perfection. ― E.A. Bucchianeri

Mardi Gras is the love of life. It is the harmonic convergence of our food, our music, our creativity, our eccentricity, our neighborhoods, and our joy of living. All at once. — Chris Rose

The incarnation took all that properly belongs to our humanity and delivered it back to us, redeemed. All of our inclinations and appetites and capacities and yearnings are purified and gathered up and glorified by Christ. He did not come to thin out human life; He came to set it free. All the dancing and feasting and processing and singing and building and sculpting and baking and merrymaking that belong to us, and that were stolen away into the service of false gods, are returned to us in the gospel. ― Thomas Howard

Feasting is also closely related to memory. We eat certain things in a particular way in order to remember who we are. — Jeff Smith

Gratitude can turn a meal into a feast. — Melody Beattie

Leave a little sparkle wherever you go. — Unattributed

Mardi Gras is a state of mind. — Ed Muniz

This mask can’t hide my crazy. — Unattributed

Are you aware that your spirit needs to be fed? Did you know that your spirit would be delighted to partake in a feast of spiritual food? … prayer … maybe a few hours of succulent self-reflection? Perhaps a piping-hot selection … served by the side of a lake or under a tree, would satisfy your spiritual hunger. Can you imagine feasting for a few hours … uplifting music … some forgiveness … topped with compassion? — Iyanla Vanzant

Thoughts on Jazz

If you have to ask what jazz is, you’ll never know. ― Louis Armstrong

… like jazz … is one of those dazzling diamonds of creative industry that help human beings make sense out of the comedies and tragedies that contextualize our lives. ― Aberjhani

I’m always thinking about creating. My future starts when I wake up in the morning and see the light. ― Miles Davis

To be a jazz freedom fighter is to attempt to galvanize and energize world-weary people into forms of organization with accountable leadership that promote critical exchange and broad reflection. The interplay of individuality and unity is not one of uniformity and unanimity imposed from above but rather of conflict among diverse groupings that reach a dynamic consensus subject to questioning and criticism. As with a soloist in a jazz quartet, quintet or band, individuality is promoted in order to sustain and increase the creative tension with the group–a tension that yields higher levels of performance to achieve the aim of the collective project. This kind of critical and democratic sensibility flies in the face of any policing of borders and boundaries of “blackness”, “maleness”, “femaleness”, or “whiteness”. ― Cornel West

Jazz is not just ‘Well, man, this is what I feel like playing.’ It’s a very structured thing that comes down from a tradition and requires a lot of thought and study. ― Wynton Marsalis

There’s something beautifully friendly and elevating about … playing music together. This wonderful little world that is unassailable. It’s really teamwork, one guy supporting the others, and it’s all for one purpose … for a while. And nobody conducting, it’s all up to you. It’s really jazz … that’s the big secret. Rock and roll ain’t nothing but jazz with a hard backbeat. ― Keith Richards

It was the music. The dirty, get-on-down music the women sang and the men played and both danced to, close and shamelesss or apart and wild … It made you do unwise disorderly things. Just hearing it was like violating the law. ― Toni Morrison

Jazz presumes that it would be nice if the four of us–simpatico dudes that we are–while playing this complicated song together, might somehow be free and autonomous as well. Tragically, this never quite works out. At best, we can only be free one or two at a time–while the other dudes hold onto the wire … jazz only works if we’re trying to be free and are, in fact, together. ― Dave Hickey

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Saying I’m Sorry, making amends, seeking and offering forgiveness: themes from Detective Gamache’s final sentence (handled as a prayer)

Never forget the nine most important words of any family-
I love you. You are beautiful. Please forgive me. – H. Jackson Brown Jr.

Any good apology has 3 parts: 1) I’m sorry 2) It’s my fault 3) What can I do to make it right? Most people forget the third part. — Unattributed

Remember, we all stumble, every one of us.
That’s why it’s a comfort to go hand in hand. – Emily Kimbrough

How can I tell you
That I love you, I love you
But I can’t think of [the] right words to say
— Cat Stevens

It’s sad, so sad, Why can’t we talk it over?
Oh, it seems to me, That sorry seems to be the hardest word
— Elton John
I’ve been tryin’ to get down, To the heart of the matter
Because the flesh will get weak, And the ashes will scatter
So, I’m thinkin’ about forgiveness, Forgiveness
Even if , even if you don’t love me— Don Henley

You gotta go and get angry at all of my honesty
You know I try but I don’t do too well with apologies
I hope I don’t run out of time, could someone call a referee?
‘Cause I just need one more shot at forgiveness
— Justin Bieber

Questions to consider:

  • What is the difference between saying “I’m sorry” and apologizing? What makes an apology meaningful?
  • How do you understand ‘making amends’?
  • On the other side of apologizing and making amends, is the process of forgiveness. Is it helpful to think about forgiveness as a path or a journey, rather than as a finite, one-time act?

Apology Is More Than Saying I’m Sorry.

Songs about saying I’m Sorry, expressing Regret, seeking Forgiveness, experiencing Grace & Mercy:

Pop, rock, hip hop, country, indie, metal, blues:

Religious/Christian rock, pop, Gospel, ballad, country:

Being Sorry, Making Amends, Apologizing, Seeking Forgiveness

Sacrifice is at the heart of repentance. Without deeds, your apology is worthless. — Bryan Davis

Would ‘sorry’ have made any difference? Does it ever? It’s just a word. One word against a thousand actions. – Sarah Ockler

Right actions in the future are the best apologies for bad actions in the past. – Tyron Edwards

To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover the prisoner was you. — Lewis Smedes
  In some families, please is described as the magic word. In our house, however, it was ‘sorry.’ – Margaret Laurence

Nothing is easier than to condemn the evildoer, nothing is harder than to understand him. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Before we can forgive one another, we have to understand one another. — Emma Goldman
The best apology is changed behavior. Apologies are not meant to change the past; they are supposed to change the future. — John Farrar

Forgiveness does not change the past, but it does enlarge the future. – Paul Boese

True remorse is never just a regret over consequence; it is a regret over motive. – Mignon McLaughlin

Accept everything about yourself – I mean everything, You are you and that is the beginning and the end – no apologies, no regrets. – Henry Kissinger

Apologies only account for that which they do not alter. – Benjamin Disraeli

The ability of a person to atone has always been the most remarkable of human features. – Leon Uris

You can make up a quarrel, but it will always show where it was patched. – Edgar Watson Howe

The most important trip you may take in life is meeting people halfway. – Henry Boye

Forgiveness Project: What is Forgiveness?

… forgiveness means many different things to different people. It is deeply personal, often private and far from the soft option many take it to be … often forgiveness is difficult, costly, painful – but potentially transformative.

  • Above all, forgiveness must be a choice because to expect someone to forgive can victimize them all over again. Forgiveness is also a journey and not a destination: in other words it is rarely a one-off, fixed event or a single magnanimous gesture in response to an isolated offence. It is part of a continuum of human engagements in healing broken relationships.
  • You can forgive small acts or big acts; acts against an individual , or a group, or a god. Such acts may or may not be crimes, for example adultery or betrayal.
  • Forgiveness is often considered the mental, and/or spiritual process of relinquishing resentment, indignation or anger against another person for a perceived offense, or ceasing to demand punishment. It is quite separate from justice (meted out by the state through the courts or some other delegated authority). But forgiveness does not preclude justice.
  • … forgiveness can be a useful life skill which can liberate a person who has been hurt, releasing them from the grip of the perpetrator. It is connected with acceptance and moving on. Some have said forgiveness is ‘giving up all hope of a better past.’ In this sense forgiveness is also an act of self-healing, rather than an act of kindness towards someone who has hurt you.
  • In some contexts, forgiveness may be granted without any expectation of compensation, and without any response from the perpetrator (for example, you can forgive a person who shows no remorse or a person who is dead). In other contexts, it may be necessary for the perpetrator to offer some form of acknowledgment, an apology and/or reparation in order for the wronged person to believe they are able to forgive,
  • Finally, forgiveness does not condone or excuse the action. It is a gift from one individual to another. It is therefore debatable whether institutions, governments or nameless officials can actually be forgiven. Some say that with extreme offenses while you may forgive a person for what he or she has done, the act itself remains unforgivable.

Certainly, if somebody is really apologetic and takes responsibility—“My bad. I really hurt you. No excuses.” Then forgiveness is easier. It’s not just bad because you got hurt, but I did something wrong. When someone says, “I’m sorry because you’re hurt,” well, that can make the person who’s been injured feel at fault because they were hurt. That’s an offensive kind of apology. It’s different when you say: “Boy, I did wrong, independently of whether or not you got hurt. I also see how that wrong has impacted you, and I’m sorry for that.” So there are two steps—“I did wrong, and that wrong hurt you.” Then the next step is, “Since it’s my responsibility, what can I do to make it better for you?” That’s a true apology, and that makes a real difference. — Frederic Luskin

From What’s Really Behind ‘I’m Sorry’ Versus ‘I Apologize’& How To Move One — Good Men Project

When you’re saying “I’m sorry,” a sincere apology usually includes the following:

  • a detailed account of the situation
  • acknowledgement of the hurt or damage done
  • taking responsibility for the situation
  • recognition of your role in the event
  • a statement of regret
  • asking for forgiveness
  • a promise that it won’t happen again
  • a form of restitution whenever possible

Making Amends – Learning from the Twelve-Step Program

Making Amends in Addiction Recovery … Step Eight and Step Nine … call this approach “making amends” (full article on Betty Ford site)

  • Step 8: Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
  • Step 9: Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

Below, experts at Hazelden Betty Ford’s Connection™ recovery coaching program answer frequently asked questions about this reconciliation process and why it’s so vital to addiction recovery and spiritual health.

What is a Direct Amend?

In Twelve Step recovery from alcohol or other drug addiction, a direct amend refers to the act of personally addressing issues with people who have been harmed by our behavior or our treatment of them. The practice involves going back to those individuals to acknowledge the harm or hurt we have caused them and demonstrate our changed ways in order to provide them with the opportunity to heal. Whenever possible, a direct amend is made face-to-face rather than over the phone or by asking someone else to apologize on your behalf.

What’s the Difference Between Making Amends and Offering an Apology?

Think of amends as actions taken that demonstrate your new way of life in recovery, whereas apologies are basically words.
In active addiction, our actions and intentions aren’t aligned. For example, we might intend to go to a friend’s birthday party but, in actuality, we fail to show up for the event. While we might apologize later for missing the party, our apology consists of words rather than actions or changed behavior.

In recovery, our actions and intentions are aligned. An example would be telling someone how sorry you are that you stole from them and actually giving back what you took.

Are There Times When Direct Amends Are Not Advisable?

Yes. Step Nine states that we make amends “except when to do so would injure them or others.” We don’t want our actions to cause further damage, harm or stress. Also, we might owe amends to people we can’t reach. In those cases, we can make amends in a broader sense by taking actions such as donating money, volunteering our time or providing care.

It’s also important to take great care when making amends to someone who is in active addiction because our primary responsibility is to safeguard our own health and recovery from substance abuse.

Should I Try to Make Amends with Someone Who Doesn’t Want to Hear From Me?
No matter how much you feel the need to make things right, forcing another to meet with your or hear from you is not part of the Steps. When those we’ve hurt are not able or willing to accept our amends, we can still move in a positive general direction by taking intentional steps to be of service to others.

How Will Making Amends Help my Recovery?

Taking these actions helps us to separate ourselves from the disease of addiction. We come to understand that we are good people with a bad disease. Step 8 and Step 9 help us to move out of the shame we have lived in, shame that feeds the cycle of substance use and addiction. We strengthen and reinforce healthy recovery whenever we do our part to repair relationships or reach out to others with support and understanding.

What If my Attempt to Make Things Right Goes Wrong and Things Get Worse?

It’s important to have a plan in place before you reach out. We can’t know for certain how another person will respond—or even how the interaction might affect us emotionally. So be sure to talk with your sponsor and/or support group about your plan in the event you would need support. Remember, this is a Twelve Step process that can provide a platform for healing, but the person you are reaching out to may not be at the same place in healing as you are. We are only in control of our part—making and living the amends. We cannot control how others respond, whether they will forgive, or whether they will hold onto negative feelings or resentments.

Should I Work on Step Eight Alone?
Generally speaking, people work through the Steps of Alcohol Anonymous with an addiction treatment counselor and/or sponsor. You can also turn to AA’s Big Book and Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions (the 12×12) for guidance specific to Step 8.

When first writing your list, don’t worry about including everyone you have wronged. Start by listing the people closest to you. Over time, as you strengthen and deepen your recovery from alcohol or drug addiction, you will undoubtedly revisit Steps 8 and 9 many times. Eventually, you will find you are making amends day by day through the positive actions you routinely take in living by Twelve Step principles.

What is the Best Way to Make Amends?

There really isn’t a “best way” for everyone. You need to find the approach that works best for you. Talk with your sponsor or others in your recovery community about what has worked for them. If your actions match your intentions and you reach out in person, you are doing the next right thing to right past wrongs. It’s simple, but not easy. And remember, if you are feeling ashamed about mistakes made and damage done during your using days, you are not your disease.

How Soon Do I Start to Make Amends Once I am Sober?

There isn’t a set timeline for working Step 8 and Step 9, so you might want to ask your sponsor and recovery support network for their insights about whether you’re ready. In Twelve Step recovery, your pace is your own to determine. No doubt, you will experience challenges and setbacks along the way. But by prioritizing your recovery on a daily basis and doing whatever that next right thing might be for you, you will keep moving forward in living a life of good purpose.

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Reflections on Song as Prayer

Man is that being who invented the gas chambers of Auschwitz; however, he is also that being who entered those chambers upright, with the Lord’s Prayer or the Shema Yisrael on his lips. — Viktor E. Frankl

Life is like a recycling center, where all the concerns and dramas of humankind get recycled back and forth across the universe. But what you have to offer is your own sensibility, maybe your own sense of humor or insider pathos or meaning. All of us can sing the same song, and there will still be four billion different renditions. ― Anne Lamott

There is a very important distinction to be made between listening and hearing. Sometimes we listen to things, but we never hear them. True listening brings us in touch even with that which is unsaid and unsayable. Sometimes the most important thresholds of mystery are places of silence. To be genuinely spiritual is to have great respect for the possibilities and presence of silence. …When you listen with your soul, you come into rhythm and unity with the music of the universe.
~ John O’Donohue

Songs as forms of prayer and spiritual expression:

One Song — Rumi

Every war and every conflict between human beings
has happened because of some disagreement about names.

It is such an unnecessary foolishness,
because just beyond the arguing
there is a long table of companionship
set and waiting for us to sit down.

What is praised is one, so the praise is one too,
many jugs being poured into a huge basin.
All religions, all this singing, one song.
The differences are just illusion and vanity.
Sunlight looks a little different on this wall
than it does on that wall
and a lot different on this other one,
but it is still one light.

We have borrowed these clothes,
these time-and-space personalities,
from a light, and when we praise,
we are pouring them back in.

Sound & Song as Prayer

…music is about as physical as it gets: your essential rhythm is your heartbeat; your essential sound, the breath. We’re walking temples of noise, and when you add tender hearts to this mix, it somehow lets us meet in places we couldn’t get to any other way. ― Anne Lamott
 
Prayer does not use up artificial energy, doesn’t burn up any fossil fuel, doesn’t pollute. Neither does song, neither does love, neither does the dance. — Margaret Mead

To give pleasure to a single heart by a single act is better than a thousand heads bowing in prayer. — Mahatma Gandhi

My grandmother took me to church on Sunday all day long, every Sunday into the night. Then Monday evening was the missionary meeting. Tuesday evening was usher board meeting. Wednesday evening was prayer meeting. Thursday evening was visit the sick. Friday evening was choir practice. I mean, and at all those gatherings, we sang. — Maya Angelou
 
The desire is thy prayers; and if thy desire is without ceasing, thy prayer will also be without ceasing. The continuance of your longing is the continuance of your prayer. — Saint Augustine

The music that I have learned and want to give is like worshipping God. It’s absolutely like a prayer. — Ravi Shankar

Singing in the midst of evil is what it means to be disciples. Like Mary Magdalene, the reason we stand and weep and listen for Jesus is because we, like Mary, are bearers of resurrection, we are made new. On the third day, Jesus rose again, and we do not need to be afraid. To sing to God amidst sorrow is to defiantly proclaim, like Mary Magdalene did to the apostles, and like my friend Don did at Dylan Klebold’s funeral,t hat death is not the final word. To defiantly say, once again, that a light shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot, will not, shall not overcome it. And so, evil be damned, because even as we go to the grave, we still make our song alleluia. Alleluia. Alleluia. ― Nadia Bolz-Weber

Silence is one of the major thresholds in the world. . . . Meister Eckhart said that there is nothing in the world that resembles God so much as silence. Silence is a great friend of the soul; it unveils the riches of solitude. It is very difficult to reach that quality of inner silence. You must make a space for it so that it may begin to work for you. In a certain sense, you do not need the whole armory and vocabulary of therapies, psychologies, or spiritual programs. If you have a trust in and an expectation of your own solitude, everything that you need to know will be revealed to you. These are some wonderful lines from the French poet Rene Char: “Intensity is silent, its image is not. I love everything that dazzles me and then accentuates the darkness within me.” Here is an image of silence as the force that discloses hidden depth. Silence is the sister of the divine.
— John O’Donohue

On Prayer
 
In prayer it is better to have a heart without words than words without a heart. — Mahatma Gandhi
 
I know that the Lord is always on the side of the right; but it is my constant anxiety and prayer that I and this nation may be on the Lord’s side. — Abraham Lincoln
 
In prayer, we stand where angels bow with veiled faces. There, even there, the cherubim and seraphim adore before that selfsame throne to which our prayers ascend. And shall we come there with stunted requests and narrow, contracted faith? — Charles Spurgeon
 
Prayer is simply a two-way conversation between you and God. —Billy Graham

You carry Mother Earth within you. She is not outside of you. Mother Earth is not just your environment. In that insight of inter-being, it is possible to have real communication with the Earth, which is the highest form of prayer. — Thich Nhat Hanh

Just as in earthly life lovers long for the moment when they are able to breathe forth their love for each other, to let their souls blend in a soft whisper, so the mystic longs for the moment when in prayer he can, as it were, creep into God. — Soren Kierkegaard
 
‘Thank you’ is the best prayer that anyone could say. I say that one a lot. Thank you expresses extreme gratitude, humility, understanding. — Alice Walker

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Reflections on the opportunity to experience ‘not knowing’ as a form of spiritual practice.

My head is bursting
with the joy of the unknown.
My heart is expanding a thousand fold.
Every cell,
taking wings,
flies about the world.
All seek separately
the many faces of my Beloved.
‑ Rumi

It’s an uncomfortable feeling, but it pushes us to seek a deeper understanding of the world around us. — Sara Gottlieb-Cohen

Articles on ‘not knowing’:

Questions to consider:

  • Does God learn? Can God be wrong, make mistakes, and change God’s mind?
  • Can God be known?
  • Did Jesus ever show us that he reconsidered a situation, learned, and grew to know more?
  • How do you handle the tension of ‘not knowing’?
  • What opportunities does doubt, uncertainty, or not-knowing offer?
  • When have you admitted, or responded to a situation, by saying “I don’t know?” What happened?
  • How could ‘not knowing’ become a prayer?
  • What don’t you know?

I don’t know why life isn’t constructed to be seamless and safe, why we make such glaring mistakes, things fall so short of our expectations, and our hearts get broken and out kids do scary things and our parents get old and don’t always remember to put pants on before they go out for a stroll. I don’t know why it’s not more like it is in the movies, why things don’t come out neatly and lessons can’t be learned when you’re in the mood for learning them, why love and grace often come in such motley packaging. — Anne Lamott

I know you’ll ask me, “How can I think on God as God, and who is God?” and I can only answer, “I don’t know.” Your question takes me into the very darkness and cloud of unknowing that I want you to enter. We can know so many things. Through God’s grace, our minds can explore, understand, and reflect on creation and even on God’s own works [as we should!], but we can’t think our way to God. That’s why I’m willing to abandon everything I know, to love the one thing I cannot think. [God] can be loved, but not thought. [John of the Cross and many other mystics say the same thing. We could have saved ourselves so much fighting and division if we had just taught this one truth!] By love, God can be embraced and held, but not by thinking. It is good sometimes to meditate on God’s amazing love as part of illumination and contemplation, but true contemplative work is something entirely different. Even meditating on God’s love must be put down [let go of] and covered with a cloud of forgetting. Show your determination next. Let that joyful stirring of love make you resolute, and in its enthusiasm bravely step over meditation [cognitive reflection] and reach up to penetrate the darkness above you. Then beat on that thick cloud of unknowing with the sharp arrow of longing and never stop loving, no matter what comes your way. . . . — Richard Rohr

When we find ourselves immersed in struggle, we find ourselves trafficking in more than the superficial, more than the mundane. That’s why maturity has very little to do with age. That’s why wisdom has more to do with experience that it does with education. We begin to feel in ways we could never feel before the struggle began. … After we ourselves know struggle, we begin to weigh one value against another, to choose between them and the future, rather than simply the present, as our measure. Some things, often quite common things, we come to realize—peace, security, love—are infinitely better than the great things —the money, the position, the fame—that we once wanted for ourselves. Then we begin to make different kinds of decisions. — Joan Chittister

Not Knowing

Who would set a limit to the mind of man? Who would dare assert that we know all there is to be known? — Galileo Galilei

Everyone has inside of him a piece of good news. The good news is that you don’t know how great you can be! How much you can love! What you can accomplish! And what your potential is! — Anne Frank

I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I didn’t know. — Mark Twain

Twasn’t me, ’twas the Lord! I always told Him, ‘I trust to you. I don’t know where to go or what to do, but I expect You to lead me,’ an’ He always did. — Harriet Tubman
 
You can’t be afraid to fail. It’s the only way you succeed – you’re not gonna succeed all the time, and I know that. — LeBron James
 
Nobody cares how much you know, until they know how much you care. — Theodore Roosevelt

I don’t know. ― Jack Kerouac
 
You never know when a moment and a few sincere words can have an impact on a life. — Zig Ziglar

The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing. — Socrates

I know nothing, except the fact of my ignorance. — Diogenes
 
Luck? I don’t know anything about luck. I’ve never banked on it and I’m afraid of people who do. Luck to me is something else: Hard work – and realizing what is opportunity and what isn’t. — Lucille Ball

Be happy with being you. Love your flaws. Own your quirks. And know that you are just as perfect as anyone else, exactly as you are. — Ariana Grande

Part of the issue of achievement is to be able to set realistic goals, but that’s one of the hardest things to do because you don’t always know exactly where you’re going, and you shouldn’t. — George Lucas

If you don’t know where you make your mistakes, that’s your worst mistake: not knowing where your mistakes are at. — Meek Mill

How can people change their minds about us if they don’t know who we are? — Harvey Milk

What I’ve come to know is that in life, it’s not always the questions we ask, but rather our ability to hear the answers that truly enriches our understanding. Never, never stop learning. — Lester Holt

We still do not know one thousandth of one percent of what nature has revealed to us. — Albert Einstein

Knowledge is knowing that we cannot know. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

To know yet to think that one does not know is best; Not to know yet to think that one knows will lead to difficulty. — Lao Tzu

It isn’t what we don’t know that gives us trouble, it’s what we know that ain’t so. — Will Rogers

How You Know— Joe Mills
How do you know if it’s love?
she asks, and I think if you have to ask, it’s not,
but I know this won’t help.
I want to say you’re too young to worry about it,
as if she has questions about Medicare or social security,
but this won’t help either.
“You’ll just know” is a lie,
and one truth, “when you still want to be with them the next morning,”
would involve too many follow-up questions.
The difficulty with love, I want to say,
is sometimes you only know afterwards
that it’s arrived or left.
Love is the elephant and
we are the blind mice unable to understand the whole.
I want to say love is this desire to help
even when I know I can’t,
just as I couldn’t explain electricity, stars,
the color of the sky, baldness, tornadoes,
fingernails, coconuts, or the other things
she has asked about over the years,
all those phenomena whose daily existence
seems miraculous. Instead I shake my head.
I don’t even know how to match my socks.
Go ask your mother. She laughs and says,
I did. Mom told me to come and ask you.