“Smart people spend time alone. They don’t fill their days with appointments from 8 am to 10 pm as many politicians and executives do. Great science does not emerge from hard logic and grinding hours. It comes from the mysterious resources of the human brain and soul. Inspiration is nurtured by activities like raking leaves and chopping wood, preparing dinner and reading to the kids. These activities soften the rigid pace of the day’s pursuits and allow all our God-given intuition to work its unlogical magic. Only then can we reach our fullest potential. Only then can we leap from thinking to understanding.” - Philip K Howard and featured in the Points to Ponder column of the October 1995 issue of the Reader’s Digest.
I was out raking leaves this afternoon. It was the first time for me this year. A neighbor across the street had a Judas tree on his front lawn. He’s been raking leaves all through September. I was out by the road filling a leaf bag when I heard his truck pull up behind me. I think he was secretly glad that the rest of us were starting to catch up to his early efforts.
One final thought tonight…
“I was listening to a radio talk the other day about a lady who had regained her sight after many years of blindness. She was so thankful to be able to see the miracles of creation again that she kept exclaiming, ‘How beautiful the grass is! How green it is!’ She picked up lovely autumn leaves and took them home in a box because the sight of them was so precious. ‘Why don’t people say they are so beautiful?’ she said. It made me realise how much we take for granted, not really noticing things because we rarely see them every day. The world is filled with beautiful sights. Let’s take time to look at them!” - excerpt from the 1989 edition of The Friendship Book of Francis Gay published by D.C. Thomson and Company.
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Don Jackson