CareyMorgan.com - heart

Liberty vs Orthodoxy

Fri, 31 Oct 2008 10:57:42 -0700

Unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without the need for any official ban ... At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question ... Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing, either in the popular press or in the highbrow periodicals ... If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.

— George Orwell

Teach them to Long For

Fri, 25 Jul 2008 13:15:23 -0700

If you want to build a ship, don't herd people together to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.

— Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Energies of Love

Wed, 06 Feb 2008 10:16:17 -0800

Someday after mastering winds, waves, tides and gravity, we shall harness the energies of love, and then, for the second time in the history of the world, man will discover fire.

— Teilhard de Chardin

Responsibility and Action

Mon, 08 Jan 2007 09:14:18 -0800

Action springs not from thought, but from a readiness for responsibility.

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

PersonalDNA - Personality Test

Thu, 20 Jul 2006 23:03:04 -0700

Yet another personality test, true, but this one seems to accommodate a wide range of variation using sliding scales instead of numbers or letters.

The relative size of each colored box reveals the strength of a particular personality trait. Hover the mouse to see each trait, or click on the name of my type to read a profile or to take the test yourself...

Starting with Evil - Ending with Trust

Mon, 17 Apr 2006 12:12:50 -0700

I recently received this thought-provoking story via email identifying Albert Einstein as the student. Always skeptical of such attributions, I looked it up on the sites that investigate these things and it turns out not to be an actual account involving Albert Einstein. His name was added to the story in 2004, but a nameless version of the story was around before that so I've removed his name and printed it anyway. Read it for yourself, then I have a comment or two...

Does evil exist?

The university professor challenged his students with this question. Did God create everything that exists? A student bravely replied, "Yes, he did!"

Stein: Confessions for the Holidays

Tue, 28 Mar 2006 10:35:32 -0800

CHARLES OSGOOD, host: We all have our own thoughts about the holidays. Here's Ben Stein with his.

BEN STEIN: Here at this happy time of year, a few confessions from my beating heart. I have no freaking clue who Nick and Jessica are.

(Footage of People magazine; Us magazine)

STEIN: I see them on the cover of People and Us constantly when I'm buying my dog biscuits. I still don't know. I often ask the checkers at the grocery stores who they are. They don't know who Nick and Jessica are, either. Who are they? Will it change my life if I know who they are and why they've broken up? Why are they so darned important?

(Footage of People magazine)

STEIN: I don't know who Lindsay Lohan is either, and I don't care at all about Tom Cruise's baby.

(Vintage footage of congressional hearing)

STEIN: Am I going to be called before a Senate committee and asked if I'm a subversive? Maybe. But I just have no clue who Nick and Jessica are. Is this what it means to be no longer young? Hm, not so bad.

Next confession: I am a Jew and every single one of my ancestors was Jewish, and it does not bother me even a little bit when people call those beautifully lit-up, bejeweled trees Christmas trees.

(Footage of Christmas trees)

STEIN: I don't feel threatened. I don't feel discriminated against. That's what they are — Christmas trees. It doesn't bother me a bit when people say 'Merry Christmas' to me. I don't think they're slighting me or getting ready to put me in a ghetto. In fact, I kind of like it. I shows that we're all brothers and sisters celebrating this happy time of year.

It doesn't bother me one bit that there's a manger scene on display at a key intersection at my beach house in Malibu.

(Footage of manger scene; menorah)

STEIN: If people want a creche, fine. The menorah a few hundred yards away is fine, too. I do not like getting pushed around for being a Jew, and I don't think Christians like getting pushed around for being Christians. I think people who believe in God are sick and tired of getting pushed around, period. I have no idea where the concept came from that America is an explicitly atheist country. I can't find it in the Constitution and I don't like it being shoved down my throat. Or maybe I can put it another way. Where did the idea come from that we should worship Nick and Jessica and aren't allowed to worship God as we understand him? I guess that's a sign that I'm getting old, too. But there are a lot of us who are wondering where Nick and Jessica came from and where the America we used to know went to.

— Stein, Ben. "Confessions for the Holidays." CBS News Transcripts. 18 December 2005.

TIME Magazine: Simple Churches in America

Wed, 08 Mar 2006 20:47:14 -0800

You know something new has become something real when TIME Magazine covers it with such a reasonable tone. Read their article There's No Pulplit Like Home.

What Andrew would say to the young emerging church in north america

Tue, 14 Feb 2006 11:21:41 -0800

Andrew over at Tall Skinny Kiwi gave voice to feelings of misunderstanding between numerous critics and leaders in the conventional church and the movement of churches known as "emerging church". I appreciate his encouragement to not only stay the course, but to speak up and help others understand what the movement is really all about.

Carrot, Egg, or Coffee Bean

Sat, 14 Jan 2006 20:27:40 -0800

A young woman went to her mother and told her about her life and how things were so hard for her.

She did not know how she was going to make it and wanted to give up. She was tired of fighting and struggling. It seemed as one problem was solved, a new one arose.

Her mother took her to the kitchen. She filled three pots with water and placed each on a high fire. Soon the pots came to boil. In the first she placed carrots, in the second she placed eggs, and in the last she placed ground coffee beans. She let them sit and boil, without saying a word.

In about twenty minutes she turned off the burners. She fished the carrots out and placed them in a bowl. She pulled the eggs out and placed them in a bowl. Then she ladled the coffee out and placed it in a bowl.

Turning to her daughter, she asked, "Tell me, what do you see?" Carrots, eggs, and coffee," she replied. Her mother brought her closer and asked her to feel the carrots. She did and noted that they were soft. The mother then asked the daughter to take an egg and break it. After pulling off the shell, she observed the hard boiled egg.

Finally, the mother asked the daughter to sip the coffee. The daughter smiled as she tasted its rich aroma. The daughter then asked, "What does it mean, mother?"

Her mother explained that each of these objects had faced the same diversity ... boiling water. Each reacted differently.

The carrot went in strong, hard, and unrelenting. However, after being subjected to the boiling water, it softened and became weak.

The egg had been fragile. Its thin outer shell had protected its liquid interior, but after sitting through the boiling water, its inside became hardened.

The ground coffee beans were unique, however. After they were in the boiling water, they had changed the water.

"Which are you?" she asked her daughter.

Unwanted Truth

Tue, 04 Oct 2005 13:36:45 -0700

Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened.

— Winston Churchill

Heart Vision

Mon, 03 Oct 2005 14:16:39 -0700

A man sees in the world what he carries in his heart.

— Opening scene of "Faust"

Inordinate Affections

Mon, 03 Oct 2005 07:05:08 -0700

Thou hast commanded, and so it is, that every inordinate affection should be its own punishment.

— St. Augustine (354-430)

Will you be alive then, Daddy?

Wed, 28 Sep 2005 09:14:02 -0700

Last night as I was talking and praying with my 5-year-old daughter Evelyn, she asked me about something to which I answered "When you're all grown up." Then she asked when that would be, so I told her she'd go off to college in about 13 years. Her next question grabbed my attention, "Will you be alive then, Daddy?" I at first said, "Of course, I'll only be 53!" But then it sunk in that I couldn't make that promise at all. Not only could I die of accidental causes, but I might fulfill my hereditary destiny of dying of heart disease by then. It would only require that fall in line two years earlier than my Dad had his gratefully non-fatal heart attack.

Courage and Fear

Wed, 21 Sep 2005 10:02:07 -0700

Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear.

— Ambrose Redmoon