TOUCHSTONES AND WISE WORDS

I am a Prepper -- but unlike some, for me prepping is not just a matter of stockpiling stuff but more so of mental and spiritual preparedness.

I am prepping to endure and survive the coming hard times, whatever they may be. . .but I AM prepping. I will not give up without giving life that good old college try.

As for Stuff and Food prepping, I am doing what I can with the resources I have. The how and why arguments and skills are readily available to all. Each of us can do this – it is to keep the physical body going during other than Pollyanna Times.

At the deepest core of a human, is another type of prepping – Spiritual. This is what gives each of us the moxie to actually survive and still to retain our humanity and hope for a better world. This is an individual thing – how or what your spiritual anchor is, is yours to find. . . I cannot tell you, I cannot give you this, I cannot direct you to a list of how-tos. You must find your own Spiritual anchor – that which makes your soul sing and gives you comfort. Those are the Touchstones which make you the YOU that you are striving to become.

But there is third area of prepping – the mental, the philosophical, those things which are the core values that develop into a sense of community or laws and of actions and beliefs. These are the things which make you a sheep, a wolf or a sheepdog.

Here are the values which make your heart sing – or weep - at what you see happening around you. Here are your passions, your hopes and fears for yourself, your family, your country and your world. Here are the things which let you get up in the morning and keep on keeping on to improve the world around you. Here are the values and directions that allow you not to just sit staring blankly like a deer in the headlights in times of rapid change. Here are your ideals of what should be and what should NOT be. And how to make those changes or move towards that ideal you see.

As we age and mature these values may change or refine – that is a part of maturing. They may also change in importance…that which you would have gladly died for in your twenties, may or may not be a part of those ideals that have importance today – that does not make you wrong, just a human developing through the different stages of life.

Along this journey, we each tend to pick up quotations which exemplify who we are and what we believe. I call these WISE WORDS, and I have been collecting them all my life – some I have kept since childhood – some are new and some have moved up or down on the personal importance scale. And some I look at and ask myself, “WHAT were you thinking?” But each of them is a thread in the tapestry of who I am.

This post is to encourage you to find YOUR ‘WISE WORDS’. Not your spiritual Touchstones, but your mental and philosophical words and quotations to contemplate and to live by – the threads in your own personal tapestry.

What are your WISE WORDS? Please share them with those who are dear to you – and broaden the symphony our hearts sing.

Here are some of mine:

“Though no one can go back and make a brand new start, anyone can start from now and make a brand new ending.”
Carl Bard

“We've taken to shallow breaths in case we should miss something; some subtle thing that lets us know the very thing we need to know to save our life. We sleep lightly in case our enemy should slip in while our eyes are closed.

We are the watchers. The preparers. The ones who will protect the young and will try to secure things when it all goes to Sh*t. We may also be the ones who will re-build our world.

Then again...maybe nothing will happen.”
Milk Maid / TB2K

"God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. ... And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to the facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure."
Thomas Jefferson

Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote.
Benjamin Franklin (1706 - 1790)

These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as freedom should not be highly rated.
----The Crisis, Thomas Paine
December 23, 1776

Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.
Mark Twain

Your talent is God's gift to you. What you do with it is your gift back to God.
Unknown

The best way to predict your future is to create it.
Unknown

"The trouble with small furry animals in a corner is that, just occasionally, one of them is a mongoose."
Terry Pratchett, Witches Abroad