Readings for each day of the week
Alcoholics Anonymous, pages 86 to 88; Step Eleven, morning
Friday
On awakening let us think about the twenty-four hours ahead. We consider our plans for the day. Before we begin, we ask God to direct our thinking, especially asking that it be divorced from self-pity, dishonest or self-seeking motives. Under these conditions we can employ our mental faculties with assurance, for after all God gave us brains to use. Our thought-life will be placed on a much higher plane when our thinking is cleared of wrong motives.
Saturday
In thinking about our day we may face indecision. We may not be able to determine which course to take. Here we ask God for inspiration, an intuitive thought or a decision. We relax and take it easy. We don’t struggle. We are often surprised how the right answers come after we have tried this for a while. What used to be the hunch or the occasional inspiration gradually becomes a working part of the mind. Being still inexperienced and having just made conscious contact with God, it is not probable that we are going to be inspired at all times. We might pay for this presumption in all sorts of absurd actions and ideas. Nevertheless, we find that our thinking will, as time passes, be more and more on the plane of inspiration. We come to rely upon it.
Sunday
We usually conclude the period of meditation with a prayer that we be shown all through the day what our next step is to be, that we be given whatever we need to take care of such problems. We ask especially for freedom from self-will, and are careful to make no request for ourselves only. We may ask for ourselves, however, if others will be helped. We are careful never to pray for our own selfish ends. Many of us have wasted a lot of time doing that and it doesn’t work. You can easily see why.
Monday
If circumstances warrant, we ask our wives or friends to join us in morning meditation. If we belong to a religious denomination which requires a definite morning devotion, we attend to that also. If not members of religious bodies, we sometimes select and memorize a few set prayers which emphasize the principles we have been discussing.
Tuesday
There are many helpful books also. Suggestions about these may be obtained from one’s priest, minister, or rabbi. Be quick to see where religious people are right. Make use of what they offer.
Wednesday
As we go through the day we pause, when agitated or doubtful, and ask for the right thought or action. We constantly remind ourselves we are no longer running the show, humbly saying to ourselves many times each day “Thy will be done.” We are then in much less danger of excitement, fear, anger, worry, self-pity, or foolish decisions.
Thursday
We become much more efficient. We do not tire so easily, for we are not burning up energy foolishly as we did when we were trying to arrange life to suit ourselves.
It works—it really does.
We alcoholics are undisciplined. So we let God discipline us in the simple way we have just outlined.
Calendar readings
01 July 2025
The present is the only time in which any duty can be done or any grace received.
C. S. Lewis, Learning in War-Time (1939)
02 July 2025
I learned that he that [wants to] be a hero will barely be a man; that he that [wants to] be nothing but a doer of his work is sure of his manhood.
George MacDonald, Phantastes
03 July 2025
If my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain, I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true … and hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms.
J. B. S. Haldane, Possible Worlds
04 July 2025
The centre of me is always and eternally a terrible pain — a curious wild pain — a searching for something beyond what the world contains, something transfigured and infinite. The beatific vision — God. I do not find it, I do not think it is to be found — but the love of it is my life … it fills every passion that I have. It is the actual spring of life within me … but whether foolish or not, it is the source of whatever is any good in me … I seek escape from it, though I don’t believe I ought to . . .
Letter from Bertrand Russell to Colette O’Neil, 21 October 1916
05 July 2025
I knew that my father … was some sort of luckless failure before I knew what ‘failure’ meant, before I knew anything about money, status, power, fame or any of those coveted prizes whose myriad forms have led me throughout my life that dervish dance which is now, I trust, over.
Iris Murdoch, The Sea, The Sea
06 July 2025
You know, I rather think I agree with those poet-and-philosopher Johnnies who insist that a fellow ought to be devilish pleased if he has a bit of trouble. All that stuff about being refined by suffering, you know. Suffering does give a chap a sort of broader and more sympathetic outlook. It helps you to understand other people’s misfortunes if you’ve been through the same thing yourself.
P. G. Wodehouse, The Aunt and the Sluggard
07 July 2025
‘I wish I could give up drink, it’s a symbol of depravity, a proof that one’s a slave. Being in love, that’s another slavery, stupid when you come to think of it, mad really. You make another person into God. That can’t be right. Thank heavens I’m out of that trap. Real love is free and sane. Obsession, romance, does one grow out of them? Lizzie and I used to talk about that. Real love is like in a marriage when the glamour is gone. Or love when you’re older, … It’s good to feel how different it is from the old craving. Not exactly that I don’t want anything for myself, but going that way. Love. God, how often we uttered that word in the theatre and how little we ever thought about it.’
Iris Murdoch, The Sea, The Sea
08 July 2025
God is interested in every detail of your life. He wants to help with everything in your life. He stands by us at all times waiting for the first available opportunity to enter in and give us the help and strength we need. Ask for help as often as you need it. We have not because we ask not, so ask and ask and ask. Keep on asking so that you may receive, and your joy may be full.
Joyce Meyer
09 July 2025
War threatens us with death and pain. No man—and specially no Christian who remembers Gethsemane—need try to attain a stoic indifference about these things: but we can guard against the illusions of the imagination. … there is no question of death or life for any of us; only a question of this death or of that—of a machine gun bullet now or a cancer forty years later.
C. S. Lewis, Learning in War-Time (1939)
10 July 2025
Now … I took, at first, what perhaps was a mistaken pleasure, in despising and degrading myself. Another self seemed to arise, like a white spirit from a dead man, from the dumb and trampled self of the past.
George MacDonald, Phantastes
11 July 2025
[Humility] is the displacement of self by the enthronement of God. Where God is all, self is nothing.
Andrew Murray, Humility
12 July 2025
We spend our whole lives justifying the decisions we made in the past, constructing our own intricate versions of the truth. When you live with deceit for long enough, it rubs off. You learn to mould every situation to your own advantage.
Shahbaz Karim in Mrs Wilson
13 July 2025
Do you know why Michiel de Ruyter brilliantly won three maritime battles against the English, even though he had fewer resources and less money? He would undertake scenario planning. He engaged as little as possible in predictions but instead prepared himself carefully for circumstances that could arise. In mock battles, mariners were drilled in responding to sudden changes in weather, for instance the development of thick fog or a change in wind direction. If those circumstances arose during the battle, the English were taken entirely unawares, whilst De Ruyter’s fleet knew exactly what to do.
Martien van Winden, Het Financieele Dagblad (Dutch newspaper), 29 March 2008
14 July 2025
MIRANDA: How came we ashore?
PROSPERO: By providence divine.
William Shakespeare, The Tempest
15 July 2025
Self will come to life even in the slaying of self; but there is ever something deeper and stronger than it, which will emerge at last from the unknown abysses of the soul: will it be as a solemn gloom, burning with eyes? or a clear morning after the rain? or a smiling child, that finds itself nowhere, and everywhere?
George MacDonald, Phantastes
16 July 2025
War makes death real to us: and that would have been regarded as one of its blessings by most of the great Christians of the past. They thought it good for us to be always aware of our mortality. I am inclined to think they were right. All the animal life in us, all schemes of happiness that centred in this world, were always doomed to a final frustration. In ordinary times only a wise man can realise it. Now the stupidest of us knows.
C. S. Lewis, Learning in War-Time (1939)
17 July 2025
… you wouldn’t feel real if you weren’t surrounded by people most of the time telling you how wonderful you are. I’m not blaming you. Some people are simply just like that.
Betty, in Unexplained Laughter, by Alice Thomas Ellis
18 July 2025
ARIEL:
I told you, sir, they were red-hot with drinking;
So full of valour that they smote the air
For breathing in their faces; beat the ground
For kissing of their feet
William Shakespeare, The Tempest
19 July 2025
Even in this world, of course, it is the stupidest children who are most childish and the stupidest grown-ups who are most grown-up.
C. S. Lewis, The Silver Chair
20 July 2025
County Down in the holidays and Surrey in the term—it was an excellent contrast. Perhaps, since their beauties were such that even a fool could not force them into competition, this cured me once and for all of the pernicious tendency to compare and to prefer—an operation that does little good even when we are dealing with works of art and endless harm when we are dealing with nature. Total surrender is the first step towards the fruition of either. Shut your mouth; open your eyes and ears. Take in what is there and give no thought to what might have been there or what is somewhere else. That can come later, if it must come at all.
C. S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy
21 July 2025
Do:
- Forgive
- Be honest with yourself
- Be humble
- Take it easy—tension is harmful
Al-Anon Dos and Don’ts (Part 1)
22 July 2025
At 5.45 Lydia walked down the path to the car, marvelling at the power which people like Betty could wield merely by threatening to sulk.
Alice Thomas Ellis, Unexplained Laughter
23 July 2025
Do:
- Play—find recreation and hobbies
- Keep on trying whenever you fail
- Learn all the facts about alcoholism
- Attend Al-Anon meetings often
- Pray
Al-Anon Dos and Don’ts (Part 2)
24 July 2025
Don’t:
- Be self-righteous
- Try to dominate, nag, scold or complain
- Lose your temper
- Try to push anyone but yourself
Al-Anon Dos and Don’ts (Part 3)
25 July 2025
Don’t:
- Keep bringing up the past
- Keep checking up on the alcoholic
- Wallow in self-pity
Al-Anon Dos and Don’ts (Part 4)
26 July 2025
It is no doubt for my own good that I have been so generally prevented from leading [a particular ideal of life], for it is a life almost entirely selfish. Selfish, not self-centred: for in such a life my mind would be directed towards a thousand things, not one of which is myself. The distinction is not unimportant. One of the happiest men and most pleasing companions I have ever known was intensely selfish. On the other hand I have known people capable of real sacrifice whose lives were nevertheless a misery to themselves and to others, because self-concern and self-pity filled all their thoughts. Either condition will destroy the soul in the end. But till the end, give me the man who takes the best of everything (even at my expense) and then talks of other things, rather than the man who serves me and talks of himself, and whose very kindnesses are a continual reproach, a continual demand for pity, gratitude, and admiration.
C. S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy
27 July 2025
Don’t:
- Make threats you don’t intend to carry out
- Be over-protective
- Be a doormat
Al-Anon Dos and Don’ts (Part 5)
28 July 2025
Satan, who finds work for idle hands to do, also fills idle minds with fruitless speculation.
Alice Thomas Ellis, Unexplained Laughter
29 July 2025
KENT
I do profess to be no less than I seem; to serve
him truly that will put me in trust: to love him
that is honest; to converse with him that is wise,
and says little; to fear judgement; to fight when I
cannot choose; …
King Lear
30 July 2025
MISTRESS PAGE
… better a little chiding than a great deal of heart-break.
The Merry Wives of Windsor
31 July 2025
His manner was perfect: no familiarity, no hostility, no threadbare humour; mutual respect; decorum. ‘Never let us live with amousia,’ was one of his favourite maxims: amousia, the absence of the Muses. And he knew, as Spenser knew, that courtesy was of the Muses.
C. S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy
01 August 2025
PAGE
What cannot be eschew’d must be embraced.
The Merry Wives of Windsor
02 August 2025
When Man goes straight he goes crooked. When he follows his nose he manages somehow to put his nose out of joint, or even to cut off his nose to spite his face.
G. K. Chesterton, St Francis of Assisi
03 August 2025
Good, better, best. Never let it rest. Until your good is better and your better is best.
St Jerome
04 August 2025
‘An hour hence and you will not care. A day hence and you will laugh at it. Don’t you remember on earth—there were things too hot to touch with your finger but you could drink them all right? Shame is like that. If you will accept it—if you will drink the cup to the bottom—you will find it very nourishing: but try to do anything else with it and it scalds.’
C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce
05 August 2025
ALBANY
Striving to better, oft we mar what’s well.
King Lear
06 August 2025
How It Is With Us, And How It Is With Them
We become religious,
then we turn from it,
then we are in need and maybe we turn back.
We turn to making money,
then we turn to the moral life,
then we think about money again.
We meet wonderful people, but lose them
in our busyness.
We’re, as the saying goes, all over the place.
Steadfastness, it seems,
is more about dogs than about us.
One of the reasons we love them so much.
Mary Oliver
07 August 2025
It was plainly much easier to join the legions of the wicked who weren’t fussy and were rather more eager for recruits than the exclusive god-fearing. Satan ran the sort of club which anyone could join. Realising this, Lydia decided that she would have to aspire to the other. This conclusion made her bad-tempered, since being good necessitated much thought and hard work, whereas any fool could be bad.
Alice Thomas Ellis, Unexplained Laughter
08 August 2025
Now and here. What is real is only this: the good face of an old man, unmasked for an unguarded moment, without past and without future.
Dag Hammarskjöld, Vägmärken (‘Road Signs’)
[To post but not to read out: Nu och här. Verkligt är endast detta: en gammal mans goda ansikte, naket ett obevakat ögonblick utan förflutet och utan framtid.]
09 August 2025
To lean on the arm of someone older than myself was an experience that carried me back to childhood, and with this support I found the going tolerable: so much so, indeed, that I flattered myself my feet were already growing more solid, until a glance at the poor transparent shapes convinced me that I owed all this ease to the strong arm of the Teacher.
C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce
10 August 2025
FOOL
Let go thy hold when a great wheel
runs down a hill, lest it break thy neck with
following it: but the great one that goes up the
hill, let him draw thee after.
King Lear
11 August 2025
The three travellers were taken ashore and marched up into the City. Crowds of Earthmen, no two alike, rubbed shoulders with them in the crowded streets, and the sad light fell on many sad and grotesque faces. But no one showed any interest in the strangers. Every gnome seemed to be as busy as it was sad, though Jill never found what they were so busy about. But the endless moving, shoving, hurrying, and the soft pad-pad-pad went on.
C. S. Lewis, The Silver Chair
12 August 2025
And all the chamber filled was with flies,
Which buzzed all about, and made such sound,
That they encumbered all men’s ears and eyes,
Like many swarms of bees assembled round,
After their hives with honey do abound:
All those were idle thoughts and fantasies,
Devices, dreams, opinions unsound,
Shows, visions, soothsays, and prophesies;
And all that feigned is, as leasings, tales, and lies.
[leasings = falsehoods]
Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene
13 August 2025
‘Where’s God?’ asked Lydia, rather petulantly. ‘Here, of course,’ said Beuno. ‘But no more here than anywhere else. You’ll find him just as easily on Paddington Station if you happen to be looking.’
Alice Thomas Ellis, Unexplained Laughter
14 August 2025
There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, “Thy will be done,” and those to whom God says, in the end, “Thy will be done.” All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. To those who knock it is opened.’
C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce
15 August 2025
You are your own god—and you are surprised that the wolf pack is hunting you down over the winter ice’s dark desolation.
Dag Hammarskjöld, Vägmärken (‘Road Signs’)
[To post but not to read out: Du är din egen gud—och förvånas över att vargkopplet jagar dig över vinterisars mörka ödslighet.]
16 August 2025
How is it, that this mood in me ye blame,
And in your self do not the same advise?
Him ill beseems, another’s fault to name,
That may unawares be blotted with the same.
Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene
17 August 2025
MORDO: I wanted the power to defeat my enemies. You gave me the power to defeat my demons. And to live within the natural law.
THE ANCIENT ONE: We never lose our demons, Mordo. We only learn to live above them.
Doctor Strange
18 August 2025
Concerning Éric Rohmer:
He was well known for his need for personal privacy and sometimes wore disguises, such as a false moustache at the New York premiere of one of his films. Rohmer’s mother died without ever knowing that her son was a famous film director.
19 August 2025
FOOL
That sir which serves and seeks for gain,
And follows but for form,
Will pack when it begins to rain,
And leave thee in the storm.
King Lear
20 August 2025
‘That’s what we all find when we reach this country. We’ve all been wrong! That’s the great joke. There’s no need to go on pretending one was right! After that we begin living.’
C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce
21 August 2025
You cannot toy with the animal within you without becoming completely animal yourself, toy with the lie without losing the right to the truth, toy with cruelty without losing the mind’s softness. Anyone who wants to keep his garden pure does not reserve land for weeds.
Dag Hammarskjöld, Vägmärken (‘Road Signs’)
[To post but not to read out: Du kan inte leka med djuret inom dig utan att bli helt djur, leka med lögnen utan att förlora rätten till sanningen, leka med grymheten utan att mista sinnets mjukhet. Den som vill hålla sin trädgård ren reserverar icke mark för ogräs.]
22 August 2025
Let one word fall that may your grief unfold,
And tell the secret of your mortal smart;
He oft finds present help, who does his grief impart.
Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene
23 August 2025
Ill, by example, good doth often gain.
Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene
24 August 2025
REGAN
How, in one house,
Should many people, under two commands,
Hold amity? ‘Tis hard; almost impossible.
King Lear
25 August 2025
The narrow way—to live for others to preserve one’s soul. The broad way—living for others to preserve one’s self-regard.
Dag Hammarskjöld, Vägmärken (‘Road Signs’)
[To post but not to read out: Den smala vägen—att leva för andra för att rädda sin själ. Den breda—att leva för andra för att rädda sin självaktning.]
26 August 2025
‘You are heartless. Everyone is heartless. The past was all I had.’
‘It was all you chose to have. It was the wrong way to deal with a sorrow. It was Egyptian—like embalming a dead body.’
C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce
27 August 2025
They must be distributed in the round
If not: what purpose do they serve
Other than to decorate gravestones?
Claudio Capéo, Si j’avais su
[To post but not to read out: Les mots faut pas qu’on les conserve / Faut les distribuer à la ronde /
Sinon les mots à quoi ils servent / À part à décorer les tombes?]
28 August 2025
THE ANCIENT ONE: You’re a man who’s looking at the world through a keyhole, and you spent your whole life trying to widen that keyhole. To see more, know more. And now, on hearing that it can be widened in ways you can’t imagine, you reject the possibility?
Doctor Strange
29 August 2025
REGAN
O, sir, to wilful men,
The injuries that they themselves procure
Must be their schoolmasters.
King Lear
30 August 2025
The more faithfully you listen inwardly, the better you will hear what is ringing out around you. And only he who hears can speak. Is this where the path leads to unification of the two dreams: to be able, in clarity, to reflect life—to be able, in purity, to shape life?
Dag Hammarskjöld, Vägmärken (‘Road Signs’)
[To post but not to read out: Ju trognare du lyssnar inåt, desto bättre skall du höra vad som ljuder omkring dig. Och blott den som hör kan tala. Går här vägen till en förening av de två drömmarna: att i klarhet få spegla livet—att i renhet få gestalta liv?]
31 August 2025
Truth, goodness, and beauty are “patches of Godlight” here in “Shadowlands.” Their home is Yonder. The form they will take there will dazzle us forever, for they are what God is made of. Far from being “escapism,” this gives each of us the ultimate meaning of our individual existence in this world …
Peter Kreeft, Lewis’s Philosophy of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty, in C. S. Lewis as Philosopher
01 September 2025
In all things, thus, I was Manichaean. Black and white. I against me. Fiction, of course, and comedy.
Hervé Bazin, La mort du petit cheval
[To post but not to read out: En toutes choses, ainsi, j’étais manichéen. Blanc et noir. Je contre moi. Fiction, bien sûr, et comédie!]
02 September 2025
… but faulty men use oftentimes
To attribute their folly unto fate,
And lay on heaven the guilt of their own crimes.
Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene
03 September 2025
STRANGE: There is no such thing as spirit! We are made of matter, and nothing more. We’re just another tiny, momentary speck within an indifferent universe.
THE ANCIENT ONE: You think too little of yourself.
Doctor Strange
04 September 2025
When a time of troubles came upon the world, through barbarian invasions, and to the Church, through internal dissension, he helped those in need.
Description of the life of St Jerome in Universalis
05 September 2025
If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end. If you look for comfort, you will not get either comfort or truth, only wishful thinking to begin with and, in the end, despair.
C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
06 September 2025
HAWKEYE: Okay, we gotta go. It’s this way.
WANDA: I’ve caused enough problems.
HAWKEYE: Look, you wanna mope, you can go to high school. You wanna make amends, you get off your ass.
Captain America: Civil War
07 September 2025
Openness to life gives a lightning-swift insight into others’ situation. One requirement: to drive the problem from the realm of emotion to a clearly understood intellectual form—and accordingly to act.
Dag Hammarskjöld, Vägmärken (‘Road Signs’)
[To post but not to read out: Öppenheten för livet ger en blixtlik insikt i andras livssituation. Ett krav: att från känslostinget driva problemet till en klart fattad intellektuell gestaltning—och handla därefter!]
08 September 2025
In AA I’ve learned to dip my spoon in my own bowl.
Anonymous AA member
09 September 2025
Let your mind rest from continually rotating around and around your problems, searching for answers. Use it to remember past victories and to fight the good fight of faith. Replace that bad habit with the good habit of letting your mind rotate around and around the promises of God.
Joyce Meyer, The Answer to Anxiety: How to Break Free from the Tyranny of Anxious Thoughts and Worry
10 September 2025
The point of that very simple and practical article is that if you put first things first and second things second, both flourish. If you put second things first and first things second, not only do you lose the first things but also the second.
Peter Kreeft, Lewis’s Philosophy of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty, in C. S. Lewis as Philosopher
11 September 2025
A person whose wisdom exceeds his good deeds is likened to a tree whose branches are numerous, but whose roots are few. The wind comes and uproots it and turns it upside down. But a person whose good deeds exceed his wisdom is likened to a tree whose branches are few but whose roots are numerous. Even if all the winds of the world were to come and blow against it, they could not budge it from its place.
The Talmud, Avot 3:22
12 September 2025
THE ANCIENT ONE: You cannot beat a river into submission. You have to surrender to its current and use its power as your own.
Doctor Strange
13 September 2025
Judgement and criticism are fruit of a deeper problem: pride. When the ‘I’ in us is higher than it should be, it will always cause the kind of problems we are discussing. The Bible repeatedly warns us against being high minded.
Joyce Meyer, Battlefield of the Mind
14 September 2025
The choice available to me: I can be a servant in heaven or a master in hell.
Anonymous
15 September 2025
A major problem is brewing in your mind when you ponder your opinion until it becomes a judgement. The problem grows bigger the more you think about it until you begin to express it to others, or even to the one you are judging … You may be able to save yourself future problems by simply learning to say ‘this is none of my business’.
Joyce Meyer, Battlefield of the Mind
16 September 2025
The value given to the testimony of any feeling must depend on our whole philosophy, not our whole philosophy on a feeling.
C. S. Lewis, Religion: Reality or Substitute
17 September 2025
THE ANCIENT ONE: Your intellect has taken you far in life. But it will take you no further. Surrender, Stephen. Silence your ego and your power will rise.
Doctor Strange
18 September 2025
Now, we cannot always prevent ourselves from having opinions but we do not have to express them. I believe we can even grow to the point where we do not have so many opinions, and those we do have are not of a critical nature.
Joyce Meyer, Battlefield of the Mind
19 September 2025
… you had the intention of saving us, and, in the eyes of the Lord, it is as if you had succeeded.
Alexandre Dumas, La Tulipe Noire
[To post but not to read out: … tu avais l’intention de nous sauver, et, aux yeux du Seigneur, c’est comme si tu avais réussi.]
20 September 2025
According to Aquinas, beauty is “that which, being seen, pleases.” Though beauty is derived from truth and goodness, it has the greatest power over our souls. This is why most addictions come from something that appears beautiful, whether Gollum’s ring, a false “Precious,” or a drug or alcohol high, which is a false mystical experience, or a false love that apes married love but lacks its truth. And therefore the only effective cure for addiction must come from something that appears even more beautiful than the addiction. As Aquinas says, the only thing strong enough to overcome an evil passion is a more powerful good passion. The beauty of a sober saint, to which the alcoholic aspires, is a powerful cure for alcoholism.
Peter Kreeft, Lewis’s Philosophy of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty, C. S. Lewis as Philosopher
21 September 2025
He said ‘Joyce, you look at yourself through rose-coloured glasses but you look at everyone else through a magnifying glass’. We make excuses for our own behaviour, but when someone else does the same thing we do, we are often merciless.
Joyce Meyer, Battlefield of the Mind
22 September 2025
4 Do not toil to acquire wealth;
be discerning enough to desist.
5 When your eyes light on it, it is gone,
for suddenly it sprouts wings,
flying like an eagle toward heaven.
Proverbs, Chapter 23
23 September 2025
THE ANCIENT ONE: I see what I’ve always seen: your over-inflated ego. You want to go back to the delusion that you can control anything, even death, which no one can control. Not even the great Doctor Stephen Strange.
Doctor Strange
24 September 2025
God’s goodness differs from ours not as white differs from black, but as a perfect circle from a child’s first attempt to draw a wheel, to use one of Lewis’s familiar images.
Peter Kreeft, Lewis’s Philosophy of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty, C. S. Lewis as Philosopher
25 September 2025
The condition of passivity can be overcome, but the first step to overcoming passivity in actions is to overcome passivity in the mind … Right action follows right thinking.
Joyce Meyer, Battlefield of the Mind
26 September 2025
There’s always free cheddar in a mousetrap, baby.
Tom Waits
27 September 2025
Happiness, by contrast, how praiseworthy it is! It is so mindless, so easy, so vulgar to be unhappy. To want to be unhappy, or merely to accept it, is really to want nothing at all.
Hervé Bazin, La Mort du petit cheval
[To post but not to read out: … Pourtant, le bonheur, comme c’est méritoire ! Il est si bête, si facile, si commun d’être malheureux ! Vouloir l’être ou seulement l’accepter, c’est ne rien vouloir.]
28 September 2025
THE ANCIENT ONE: Arrogance and fear still keep you from learning the simplest and most significant lesson of all.
DOCTOR STEPHEN STRANGE: Which is?
THE ANCIENT ONE: It’s not about you.
Doctor Strange
29 September 2025
I think the most fundamental and most universal of all moral principles is what I call the “Three R’s Principle”: Right Response to Reality.
Peter Kreeft, Lewis’s Philosophy of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty, C. S. Lewis as Philosopher
30 September 2025
I like to describe worry or anxiety as spending today trying to figure out tomorrow. Let’s learn to use the time God has given to us for what He intended.
Joyce Meyer, Battlefield of the Mind
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