Talefolk™ - Strength and Compassion

“Your care, compassion, and benevolence must increase in proportion to your strength, ability, and intelligence,” he said.  “Otherwise your power will hurt and destroy all the more in your careless and angry moments.”

Talefolk - Your Calling in Life

"Stop searching for your calling in life," she said. "Your life is your calling. Waking up each day and facing its challenges and loving those around you. You will find your calling as you stop looking for it."

"Opportunity"

by Walter Malone

They do me wrong who say I come no more
When once I knock and fail to find you in,
For every day I stand outside your door
And bid you wake, and rise to fight and win.

Wail not for precious chances passed away,
Weep not for golden ages on the wane!
Each night I burn records of the day;
At sunrise every soul is born again.

Laugh like a boy at splendors that have sped,
To vanished joys be blind and deaf and dumb;
My judgments seal the dead past with its dead,
But never bind a moment yet to come.

Tho' deep in mire, wring not your hands and weep;
I lend my arm to all who say, "I can!"
No shamefaced outcast ever sank so deep
But yet might arise and be again a man.

Dost thou behold thy lost youth all aghast?
Dost reel from righteous retribution's blow?
Then turn from blotted archives of the past
And find the future's pages white as snow.

Art thou a mourner? Rouse thee from thy spell;
Art thou a sinner? Sins may be forgiven;
Each morning gives thee wings to flee from hell,
Each night a star to guide thy feet to Heaven.

(I was introduced to this poem from a talk given by Vaughn J. Featherstone at a BYU devotional on 12 September 1995.)

Talefolk™ - The Three Degrees of Glory

"I know, I know," he said rolling his eyes.  "Bad people go to the Telestial kingdom, good people go to the Terrestrial kingdom, and super-good people go to the Celestial kingdom."

"I think you're missing something," she replied.  "There may be a minimum standard, but no one earns their way into the Celestial kingdom.  You make covenants with God and you keep them.  God even helps you keep them.  I don't think it's possible to keep them without His help.  That's the secret.  The Celestial have learned how to ask for and receive God's help and grace.  They have come to trust Him, more than anything else."

Talefolk™ - Listening

“Some people don't hear things until you've told them many times,” she said.  “It used to drive me crazy, but now I find myself doing the same thing.  Life just throws too much at you; it's the patient repetition I've learned to listen to.”

Talefolk™ - Faith

“The hardest thing about Faith,” he said, “is knowing whether it means to act or to wait.”

Talefolk™

The coach said, "I don't care if you can slam dunk the ball from the foul line.  I don't care about your fancy dribbling or your expensive shoes.  I don't want a hot shot that does his own thing.  I want players that play as hard in the fourth quarter as they do in the first.  I want players who execute our plays as a team with precision.  I want someone I can give the ball to with seconds left, and know they will drill that 3 pointer."