My Life, My World

December 28, 2025 a thought for the day, Pull gently at a weak rope. Dutch Proverb

Photos of my life yesterday

The first challenge was “family”. This is a symbol of my family. These two are young people now and still growing to adulthood in my beautiful family.

Next is “my choice” and another of my current series of a "touch of color."

The last for yesterday way was “food”. This is the Christmas ham being sliced by m son-in-law.

Life today. This has been a fairly eventful day as far as Sundays go. I got a good start on this letter and mild stops for researching before I left for church. I left a half hour early so that I could print the poinsettia dedication sheet that we should has had in the bulletin the Sunday before Christmas.

We had a couple of visitors that haven’t been there for a while. It was nice to see them. The sermon was very thought provoking as is normal when we have this regular visiting minister. As I look forward to and is usual for me it was good to share the beginning of the new week with my church family.

I made a stop at Kroger on the way home. I needed to pick up some medication and some things I forgot to put on my regular grocery order. I made a couple of short detours on the way home for photo shots.

Now that the holiday busyness is over I hope to get back to working on my “dream” (explanation in due time), then for free time to get to enjoying some of my Christmas gifts.

The rest of today is the “keep the Sabbath day holy” and to refresh and restore.

The word today is possess. Memory is a man's real possession...In nothing else is he rich, in nothing else is he poor. Alexander Smith. Dignity consists not in possessing honors, but in the consciousness that we deserve them. Aristotle. Before we set our hearts too much upon anything, let us examine how happy those are who already possess it. Francois de La Rochefoucauld. Be entirely tolerant or not at all; follow the good path or the evil one. To stand at the crossroads requires more strength than you possess. Heinrich Heine. All my possessions for a moment of time. Elizabeth I. To have little is to possess. To have plenty is to be perplexed. Lao-tzu. I have everything, yet have nothing; and although I possess nothing, still of nothing am I in want. Terence. Happiness is the perpetual possession of being well deceived. Jonathan Swift . Oh, bird of my soul, fly away now, For I possess a hundred fortified towers. Rumi. To have another language is to possess a second soul. Charlemagne. I hope I shall possess firmness and virtue enough to maintain what I consider the most enviable of all titles, the character of an honest man. George Washington. I have held many things in my hands, and I have lost them all; but whatever I have placed in God's hands, that I still possess. Martin Luther. Weak character will neutralize all of the other possible good qualities a person might possess. Robert Greene. All the knowledge I possess everyone else can acquire, but my heart is all my own. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Hope is the only good that is common to all men; those who have nothing else possess hope still. Thales. Man is the only animal capable of reasoning, though many others possess the faculty of memory and instruction in common with him. Aristotle. The true triumph of reason is that it enables us to get along with those who do not possess it. Voltaire. He who possesses art and science has religion; he who does not possess them, needs religion. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. To be perfectly happy it does not suffice to possess happiness, it is necessary to have deserved it. Victor Hugo. Good nature is worth more than knowledge, more than money, more than honor, to the persons who possess it. Henry Ward Beecher. He does not possess wealth; it possesses him. Benjamin Franklin. Whatever you cannot understand, you cannot possess. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. To possess taste, one must have some soul. Luc de Clapiers.

Article summary. I thought the title to this article fit the season though it is passing into a new year of gatherings of different kinds than the holiday sort. The title is: How family gatherings unlock forgotten childhood memories that help us understand who we really are. Jane Aspell, Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience, Faculty of Science and Engineering, Anglia Ruskin University. At theconversation.com. It started by mentioning that many times as the holiday gatherings begin to happen there is some trepidation of being together with members of the family who there your childhood gatherings every year. You may feel that they will be thinking back to the years when were the child seeing year as you grew. You may feel they will treat you as though your were still that young person. The memories of the things we learned as we grew may have caused embarrassments and silly childish times. As there is worry about this kinds of memories there is also the other side of the coin. There is the chance to share forgotten memories the many that were of happy times. These memories all come together to show how you have become the person you are today. A description of this process is likened t to a jigsaw puzzle. As I read in the article there was a study to see how this process works. There was a method of having people in the study see themselves in a “childlike version”. In part of the study they found that when they were able to “see” themselves as children they were more able to recall their memories. They were able to “see” how they moved to the person they are tody. The article ended by saying “all our past selves are etched into our brains” and finally “Christmases past never really melt away.”

I found a recipe for a pizza that fits my “three way” diet (three health issue I experience). That will be dinner.

Photo in my life today