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hi all on Fri, 1 Sep 2000 11:39:08 -0300, joao paulo wrote, in part: >No horse gets anywhere until he is harnessed. No steam or gas >drives anything until it is confined. No Niagara is ever turned >into light and power until it is tunneled. No life ever grows >great until it is focused, dedicated, disciplined... >Congrats and welcome back... thank you, joao paulo! we 'goddesses' do need to go back to 'halo' school once in awhile! the 'harnessing of a horse' idea reminds me of one of my favourite passages written by M. Scott Peck in his book "A World Waiting to be Born: Civility Rediscovered": "... While always free, the human will seems to vary in strength from person to person. ... I believe a strong will is the greatest blessing that can be bestowed upon a person - not because it guarantees success, but because a weak will guarantees failure. All blessings are potential curses. "It is a strong will that creates a Hitler as well as an Albert Schweitzer. ...One of the side effects of a strong will, for instance, is the tendency to temper. It is strong-willed people who wrap golf clubs around trees because that damn little ball won't go where they *want* it to. "Having a weak will is like having a donkey in your back yard. It can't do much for you, but it can't hurt you very much either. About the worst it can do is chomp on your tulips. "Having a strong will, on the other hand, is more like having a dozen Belgian horses in your backyard. Unless they are properly trained, disciplined, and harnessed, they will eventually knock your house down. Yet if they are properly trained, disciplined, and harnessed, then with them you can literally move mountains. "The notion of harnessing the will raises a profound issue. What is it to be harnessed *to*? It cannot simply be harnessed to itself, because then it will remain unharnessed. "No, if the will is to be voluntarily harnessed, you must choose to harness it to something *higher* than oneself, than one's own will. It can only be harnessed to a Higher Power...." i have always enjoyed the contrast between the visions of a tulip-chomping-donkey versus a team of budweiser-belgian-horses! janet aka list goddess janet paterson 53 now / 44 dx cd / 43 onset cd / 41 dx pd / 37 onset pd tel: 613 256 8340 url: "http://www.geocities.com/janet313/" email: [log in to unmask] smail: POBox 171 Almonte Ontario K0A 1A0 Canada