Morning Briefings

I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.

– Ezekiel 36:26

Winter is a season of some very real losses. The flowers of springtime are gone; leaves fall. Trees stand bare and revealed. But from these losses are gifts to be had.

– Kathleen R. Fischer
Winter Grace: Spirituality and Aging

Yahoo’s long-awaited layoffs are expected to begin this week with a massive restructuring that may result in thousands of job cuts. The company layoffs, notes the digital website, doesn’t include all the people who work on contract who also may be cut.

– Mary Ann Milbourn
The Orange County Register

When my time comes, forget the wrong that I’ve done. Help me leave behind some reasons to be missed. Don’t resent me, and when you’re feeling empty, keep me in your memory, leave out all the rest. Leave out all the rest.

– Linkin Park
Leave Out All the Rest

You don’t choose a life, Dad, you live it.

– from Emilio Estevez’s
The Way

Nearly one-third of the unemployed — nearly 4.5 million people — have had no job for a year or more. That’s a record high. Many are older workers who have found it especially hard to find jobs.

– AP
A job is becoming a dim memory for many unemployed

No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.

– John 15:13

Presence is noun, not a verb; it is a state of being, not doing. True presence, or ‘being with’ another person carries with it a silent power–to bear witness to a passage, to help carry an emotional burden, or to begin a healing process.

– Debbie Hall from
This I Believe

No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.

– John 15:13

Writer and philosopher Laurent van der Post in his memoir said, ‘We live not only our own lives but, whether we know it or not, also the life of our time.’ We are actors in a moment in history, taking part in it, moving it this way or that as we move forward or back. The moment we are living in now is a strange one, a disquieting one, a time that seems full of endings.

– Peggy Noonan, The Wall Street Journal
There’s No Pill for This Kind of Depression