“Prayer steadies one when he is walking in slippery places – even if things asked for are not given.” – Benjamin Harrison
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First Principles: Prayer Steadies One When He Is Walking In Slippery Places – Even If Things Asked For Are Not Given
Posted in First Principles
Tagged Asked, Benjamin Harrison, First Principles, Not Given, Prayer, Slippery Places, Steady, Walk
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Thought For the Day: Just As One Candle Lights Another and Can Light Thousands of Other Candles, So One Heart Illuminates Another Heart and Can Illuminate Thousands of Other Hearts
” Just as one candle lights another and can light thousands of other candles, so one heart illuminates another heart and can illuminate thousands of other hearts.” – Leo Tolstoy
Posted in Thought For the Day
Tagged Candle, Heart, Illuminate, Leo Tolstoy, Light, Thought For the Day, Thousands
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A Spring’s Walk
A Spring's Walk
by Michael Doyle
Someone once said something like a homily
That the worst misfortune is to have been happy.
To have lost this feeling becomes its own misery,
Born in our life as it's tragic inequality.
Once felt, the search begins for a remedy.
Where can be better than the woods, naturally?
There, among the trees, where birds often talk,
It is just the path to get lost within a walk.
The warblers know their songs of compassion,
While the pileated woodpeckers know their fashion.
There's no need to render their notes into words,
The tune is enough without nouns or impeccable verbs.
Walking in mindfulness, finding peace along the way.
This is the best of a breezy, sunny sort of day.
Up in the air are clouds aloft in the sky of blue,
And just as suddenly as you were down, nothing bothers you.
In a splendid woodland, it is easy to find the wonderful.
It is everywhere, all around, in all that is beautiful.
It occurs to me that it is God's brilliant artistry
That I see beside the trails laid out as a floral tapestry.
If only we might learn again to listen as we peek,
We might learn that all animals know how to speak.
It's only that human beings have forgotten to listen,
We would see the world as it is with a clearer vision.
(c) May 14, 2025 Michael Doyle
All Rights Reserved
Posted in Poetry and Poems
Tagged All Animals, Artistry, Beautiful, Birds, Bother, Compassion, Fashion, Feeling, Floral Tapestry, Forgotten, God, Happy, Homily, Listen, Mindfulness, Misery, Misfortune, Natural, Notes, Nouns, Path, Peace, Peek, Pileated Woodpeckers, Poetry and Poems, Remedy, Render, Search, Sky of Blue, Song, Speak, Spring, Sunny, Talk, The Woods, Tragic Inequality, Trails, Trees, Verbs, Vision, Walk, Warbler, Wonderful, Woodland, Words, World
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First Principles: When I Hear of the Destruction of A Species, I Feel Just As If All the Works of Some Great Writer Have Perished
“When I hear of the destruction of a species, I feel just as if all the works of some great writer have perished.” – Theodore Roosevelt, in a Letter to Frank Michler Chapman (February 16, 1899)
Posted in First Principles
Tagged All the Works, Destruction, First Principles, Hear, Perished, Species, Theodore Roosevelt, Writer
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Thought For the Day: Knowing Trees, I Understand the Meaning of Patience. Knowing Grass, I Can Appreciate Persistence
“Knowing trees, I understand the meaning of patience. Knowing grass, I can appreciate persistence.” – Hal Borland
Memory’s Connection
Memory's Connection
by Michael Doyle
Memory goes beyond mere collection.
Below the skin is the synaptic connection.
Life is weathered by the sun and the rain,
Until there is no awareness left in the brain.
Dementia is nature's worst solitude,
Alone in the night where emptiness intrudes.
Alzheimer's scraps away at the memory
Until you don't even remember your family.
Lost deep inside the valley where we forget,
Life has lost all meaning but that of regret.
Deep inside the eyes of the lost is the burn
Of thinking of how much a soul can unlearn.
One by one, though we try our best to trace,
One by one, we somehow forget the loving face.
The one we have known deeper than our very own,
Lost memories bruise us deeper than the bone.
Self-identity oozes away until it is gone entirely.
Grounded in feelings of touch, we lose our humanity.
It's inescapable how timelines collapse into a blur,
And fragments of thought can't quite form to occur.
Lost deep inside the valley where we forget,
Life has lost all meaning but that of regret.
Deep inside the eyes of the lost is the burn
Of thinking of how much a soul can unlearn.
Thoughts become tethered fractals of a tree
That rips out the core of what passed as memory.
It is a cruel world in which to be left alone,
We lose ourselves in a whirlwind twilight zone.
Plunging face first into this unbreakable wall,
The memories carried are not just what we recall.
It's for the kids and the hope to break the chains,
That the wounded refuse to slip down memory's drains.
Lost deep inside the valley where we forget,
Life has lost all meaning but that of regret.
Deep inside the eyes of the lost is the burn
Of thinking of how much a soul can unlearn.
(c) May 13, 2025 Michael Doyle
All Rights Reserved
Posted in Poetry and Poems
Tagged Alzheimer's, Awareness, Brain, Bruise, Burn, Collection, Connection, Dementia, Emptiness, Eyes, Family, Forget, Fractal, Fragments of Thought, Huanity, Life, Loss, Lost, Love, Loving Face, Meaning, Memory, Poetry and Poems, Regret, Self-Identity, Soitude, Soul, Tether, Timelines, Touch, Trace, Unlean, Valley, Weathered
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First Principles: The Greatest Kindness One Can Render To Any Man Consists In Leading Him From Error To Truth
“The greatest kindness one can render to any man consists in leading him from error to truth.” – Thomas Aquinas
Posted in First Principles
Tagged Consist, Error, First Principles, Kindness, Lead, Mankind, Thomas Aquinas, Truth
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Thought For the Day: One’s Virtue Is All That One Truly Has, Because It Is Not Imperiled By the Vicissitudes of Fortune
“One’s virtue is all that one truly has, because it is not imperiled by the vicissitudes of fortune.” – Boethius
Posted in Thought For the Day
Tagged Boethius, Fortune, Imperiled, Thought For the Day, Virtue, Viscisitudes
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Hard In the Stumble
Hard In the Stumble
by Michael Doyle
It seems we are all morally inarticulate.
It was nothing that I thought to anticipate.
I'm holding on to constellations that won't speak,
No matter how much stardust begins to leak.
American depression has become today's obsession.
Drugs, alcohol, and suicide claim souls in succession.
In our age of conspiracy, trauma drives polarization
Into the numbing down of minds across our nation.
Finding myself starting to grumble,
I caught myself hard in the stumble.
Moving on like a modern Marlon Brandon,
I found myself sketchy like Picasso.
Circling back on all of my hesitations,
It was a moment filled with frustration.
How is it that it's not a movie scene?
I look around, and everyone's gotten too mean.
The social media grind constantly serves to remind
How far it is that we have gotten ourselves behind.
No one can afford to have an economy,
And even if they did, it wouldn't suit the sociology.
Maybe we shouldn't give our selfishness free rein.
It could be that doing so is where we are most insane.
A selfie-world doesn't lend itself to consideration
Of all the others that make up our American nation.
Finding myself starting to grumble,
I caught myself hard in the stumble.
Moving on like a modern Marlon Brandon,
I found myself sketchy like Picasso.
Circling back on all of my hesitations,
It was a moment filled with frustration.
How is it that it's not a movie scene?
I look around, and everyone's gotten too mean.
I don't know what I'm scratching for in advice,
Is it just the hope that we can become more nice?
Let's become the sort of people who show up for one another.
Let's remember we are sisters and brothers.
The morals of mankind are something of grave consequence.
Perhaps this is why it's more than sheer coincidence
Our founders focused on character in our society
And that we have forgotten this truth in all of our complexity.
Finding myself starting to grumble,
I caught myself hard in the stumble.
Moving on like a modern Marlon Brandon,
I found myself sketchy like Picasso.
Circling back on all of my hesitations,
It was a moment filled with frustration.
How is it that it's not a movie scene?
I look around, and everyone's gotten too mean.
(c) May 12, 2025 Michael Doyle
All Rights Reserved
Posted in Poetry and Poems
Tagged Age of Cospiracy, Alcohol, American Depression, Anticipate, Circling Back, Constellations, Drugs, Frustration, Grumble, Hard, Health, Leak, Life, Marlon Brando, mental-health, Mind, Morally Inarticulate, Numbing Down, Obsession, Picasso, Poetry and Poems, Polarization, Relationships, Speak, Statdust, Stumble, Sucession, Suicide, Trauma, Writing
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First Principles: All Courses of Action Are Risky, So Prudence Is Not In Avoiding Danger (It’s Impossible), But Calculating Risk and Acting Decisively
“All courses of action are risky, so prudence is not in avoiding danger (it’s impossible), but calculating risk and acting decisively. Make mistakes of ambition and not mistakes of sloth. Develop the strength to do bold things, not the strength to suffer.” – Niccolo Machiavelli
Posted in First Principles
Tagged Act, Ambition, Bold, Calculate, Courses of Action, Danger, Decisive, First Principles, Mistake, Niccolo Machiavelli, Prudence, Risk, Sloth, Strength, Suffer
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ALOHA PROMISES FOREVER 