no one is destined to fail - free printable

Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.

- Henry David Thoreau

This kind of says it all.  I love my house and yard.  I love our little hennies.  I love that we have room to garden and plant and grow so many things, like this little spot of dirt which yearly becomes our herb garden.  I love our busy children.  I even love their busy mess, because it means they DO things.  It's a blessed life.  I love every little bit of it.

my job

"It is easier to build strong children than repair broken men."  - Frederick Douglass

But it's still a pretty hard job.

imagine

Sometimes the kids don't know what to do with themselves.  That's when forbidden words like "bored" get spoken.  Other times the kids disappear for hours into an imaginary world of pretend.  I peak at them from a distance, and see them exploring the world from the safety of their own minds.  They try on attitudes and actions for size and see which ones make a good fit.  They explore personalities and conflict with the chance to retreat back to reality if it all gets too hard.  They become other people, or often the best or worst versions of themselves.


“Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life's coming attractions.”
“The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.”
- Albert Einstein

beauty all around

"There is a great work for the Saints to do. Progress, and improve upon and make beautiful everything around you. Cultivate the earth, and cultivate your minds. Build cities, adorn your habitations, make gardens, orchards, and vineyards, and render the earth so pleasant that when you look upon your labors you may do so with pleasure, and that angels may delight to come and visit your beautiful locations. In the mean time continually seek to adorn your minds with all the graces of the Spirit of Christ."

-Brigham Young

"The more you trust and rely upon the Spirit, the greater your capacity to create. That is your opportunity in this life and your destiny in the life to come. Sisters, trust and rely on the Spirit. As you take the normal opportunities of your daily life and create something of beauty and helpfulness, you improve not only the world around you but also the world within you."

-Dieter F. Uchtdorf

beauty

The thought that is beautiful is the thought to cherish. The word that is beautiful is worthy to endure. The act that is beautiful is eternally and always true and right. Only beware that your appreciation of beauty is just and true; and to that end, I urge you to live intimately with beauty of the highest type, until it has become a part of you, until you have within you that fineness, that order, that calm, which puts you in tune with the finest things of the universe, and which links you with that spirit that is the enduring life of the world.

-Bertha Bailey

pleas

"I offer a plea that each of us will seek to live closer to the Lord and to commune with Him more frequently and walk with increased faith.

"Fathers and mothers, pray over your children. Pray that they may be shielded from the evils of the world. Pray that they may grow in faith and knowledge. Pray that they may be directed toward lives that will be profitable and good. Husbands, pray for your wives. Express unto the Lord your gratitude for them and plead with Him on their behalf. Wives, pray for your husbands. Many of them walk a very difficult road with countless problems and great perplexities. Plead with the Almightly that they may be guided, blessed, protected, inspired in their righteous endeavors...

"Pray for wisdom and understanding as you walk the difficult paths of your lives. If you are determined to do foolish and imprudent things, I think the Lord will not prevent you. But if you seek His wisdom and follow the counsel of the impressions that come to you, I am confident that you will be blessed."

-Gordon B. Hinckley

follow your genius

"I had this advantage, at least, in my mode of life, over those who were obliged to look abroad for amusement, to society and the theatre, that my life itself was become my amusement and never ceased to be novel. It was a drama of many scenes and without an end. If we were always, indeed, getting our living and regulating our lives according to the last and best mode we had learned, we should never be troubled with ennui. Follow your genius closely enough, and it will not fail to show you a fresh prospect every hour."

- Henry David Thoreau, Walden

creativity

“We have to regard it as our sacred responsibility to unfold and develop each individual’s creative ability as dim as the spark may be and kindle it to whatever flame it may conceivably develop.”

-V. Lowenfeld “Basic Aspects of Creative Thinking,” 1961

genius

“A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the luster of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his.

“In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty. Great works of art have no more affecting lesson for us than this. They teach us to abide by our spontaneous impression with good-humored inflexibility than most when the whole cry of voices is on the other side. Else tomorrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another.”

-Ralph Waldo Emerson “Self-Reliance,” 1844

will and contentment

“So it was that I came to the conclusion that the ordinary everyday perception of things which serves us pretty well when going about daily practical affairs is not the only kind of perceiving that the mind can do….Only a tiny act of will was necessary in order to pass from one to the other, yet this act seemed sufficient to change the face of the world, to make boredom and weariness blossom into immeasurable contentment.”

Joanna Field A Life of One’s Own, 1936