Holiday Casualty Count

Holiday Casualty Count           

November 30, 2025    

Dr. Roger Ray

click here to see the video

 

I hope that you all had a good Thanksgiving whether it was a big family gathering or a Friends-giving like I had at my house. I say, “I hope”, knowing that for a lot of people, traditional family gatherings are something to be dreaded. 

 

I have always said of my family of origin that I believe that I had one of the less miserable childhoods. For 45 years I have done quite a bit of pastoral counseling, and I have heard the horror stories of families with a history of child abuse, both beatings and sexual assault. I have done a lot of work with drug and alcohol addicted people and their family members. And I have known people who lived in such chronic poverty that trying to prepare a holiday meal was more a humiliation of charity or profound hunger. 

 

My family had none of that. There was no violence, so sexual abuse, no one drank any alcohol, and we were pretty comfortably ensconced in the middle class of rural Kentucky. Our house was clean and safe, our clothes were clean, we went to the doctor when we were sick, we went to church every Sunday, and there was a family understanding that the children, unlike our parents, would all earn college degrees.

 

None of the people who scheduled appointments with me in my church office would have described their family in the way that I described mine just now. However, when I did go away to college, and my first college was just 30 miles from my hometown, I was always amazed by my university peers who got home sick. And as the Thanksgiving break loomed large, most of them talked about how eager they were to get to go home. 

 

For me, living at college was an escape from the constant criticism, bickering, judgement, and guilt. What made my peers homesick, what made them long to go home was an anticipation of warmth, affection, acceptance, of having a place, a sense of belonging. While we had a nice house, car, clothes, plenty of good food, medical care, education, and a church life, there were almost no warm fuzzies. No comfortable sense that you could let your hair down and just be yourself. My mother was a puritan lady who was suspicious of happiness. My father was WWII veteran whose mind was wounded by the war’s carnage, and he lived every day in the anger he used to mask his constant fear. 

 

My 3 siblings and I all married young, while we were still in college. That often happens to children who grew up in homes that were devoid of love. You want love, intimacy, affection, but for us, that’s kind of like ghosts …. Something that everyone talks about, but no one has ever really seen. 

 

I shouldn’t speak for my siblings but at least for me, our attempts at finding the love and warm fuzzies we longed for were cursed by the baggage we took from home with us. It took me a long time to understand what was wrong with my family of origin and even longer to learn a better way of creating a happy home life. The harsh perfectionism that ruled our childhoods and made us successful in our careers, never worked well at home. It should have been obvious but, as is true of most things that should be obvious, it wasn’t.

 

My siblings found reasons to rarely be around my parents once they were on their own but my sense of obligation was strong, and I made sure that they were not alone on the holidays until they had passed away. My oldest brother, having at the time the most stable work and family situation, rolled up his sleeves and took on the task of caring for them in their last years. My sister passed away, and I have only seen my brothers at each parent’s funeral. Other than occasional FaceBook comments, we have fallen into the icy silence that is our family inheritance.

 

Ironically, shortly after writing that previous paragraph, I received a text message from my oldest brother telling me that he had cancer that was not responding to chemo therapy and that he likely only had weeks left to live. Forgive me for sharing such a personal issue but it would seem to me to be dishonest to not tell you. For all of us who hope to heal family divisions, we should all be aware that we are not guaranteed another holiday season or, in my case, maybe not even Christmas. Even without a terminal diagnosis, folks, we should view these things with a certain sense of urgency. 

 

I wanted to raise the issue of family conflict today, in the shadow of Thanksgiving, because the great thing about this season is that the second big family holiday is just a month away. If Thanksgiving was a failure in your family; good news, you get a second chance to make it better in just a month!

 The opening line of Leo Tolstoy's novel Anna Karenina, succinctly says:  “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” There are libraries full of books about the various hells we create for unhappy families – alcohol, violence, sexual abuse, infidelity, gambling and drug addiction, various mental health issues, and, in our day, political and moral differences. We had a kind of diagnosis in pastoral counseling called “conflict habituated families,” families that simply didn’t know what to do if they were not in conflict. No one could express themselves unless they were shouting or talking through gritted teeth, as if anger is the only motivation for communication. 

 

I spent years sending letters to my siblings reminding them that we could recreate our family. We could be happy and loving if only we could decide that we all wanted that. The most articulate answer I ever received to those entreaties was, “no thanks.” It takes at least two people to play tennis. After a few years of lobbing a ball over the net and never getting a ball hit back, you give up. But still, it didn’t have to be that way in my family, and it certainly doesn’t have to be that way in your family. 

 

In the most severe cases, reconciliation may be nearly impossible. Sometimes there are root causes than should not be dismissed or swept under the rug. 

And sometimes, the burden of resentments is so large that you can’t even imagine letting go of it. 

 

I did my master’s thesis on the treatment of alcoholism and after a couple of years of going to four or five AA meetings every week, I can tell you that I have heard a lot of nightmare scenarios. Most of the time, whenever there is an AA meeting, there is an Al Anon meeting at the same time in another room in the same building. The recovering alcoholics called the Al Anon room where the family members of Alcoholics meet, the “sick room.” That seems dismissive but, I can tell you that it is not entirely inaccurate. Alcohol addiction is not a problem that typically arrives at a family’s door unaccompanied. 

 

But here is the irony: every group has its success stories and often times, it was the sickest people who eventually find their way into being the most healthy. And sadly, a lot of time, the people who seemed to have the most to live for and the fewest serious problems, were the ones who just couldn’t find a way to minimize their conflict and maximize their joy. 

 

I will tell you with some shame that some of my lowest functioning counseling clients, the ones who exhausted and exasperated me, the ones that I wished would just stop wasting my time, turned into some the most remarkable success stories. 

 

You may think that your family is just impossible and maybe you are right but what if they are not entirely impossible? What if there was a chance that your family of origin could become, if not an astounding success, at least a lot more healthy than it has been in the past? 

 

I am not one of those “pie in the sky” preachers who will tell you that everything can be fixed with forgiveness and unconditional love. There are offenses that are so evil that any kind of unconditional love or forgiveness would be, in and of itself, very sick. However, the things that cause distance in most families are typically so venial that they would embarrass Charles Darwin.

The famous Austrian psychiatrist, Victor Frankl, after he had survived a horrifying Nazi death camp during the holocaust, said, “Suffering is like a gas. It expands to fill the space allowed to it.” Even in the torture and deprivation of the holocaust, each individual has a certain roll in choosing how much of your skull you are going to rent to your suffering. 

 

I’m not saying that your drunk uncle didn’t insult you at Thanksgiving. I didn’t say that your parents didn’t who more love and approval to one of your siblings than they ever did you. It may be that your brother even owes you money that he clearly has no plans to repay. 

 

Seven years ago two women coauthored a book that became a NewYork Times best seller that was cryptically titled, “Let that Shit Go.” That’s not to say that you ignore the co-worker who is sexually harassing you . . . report them to HR or maybe even get a restraining order, but don’t let them live rent free in your head. You play a part in choosing how much of your life will be given over to suffering. 

 

At least one over zealous marketing person has even tried to sell coffee mugs with the saying and an image of the Buddha, to suggest that it was Buddha who first told us to just “let that shit go.” And that, I can assure you, is a false attribution . . . however, even though I am certain that Buddha didn’t say it just that way, he did teach that life is suffering and the only way out of suffering is detachment, to let go expectations and resentments, so, in rather coarse vernacular, the Buddha would tell you, before your family Christmas gathering, to try to just let that shit go and save room in your heart and your head to have a more loving and joyous holiday. 

 

Turn on some music. Open a bottle of wine. Tell a non-offensive joke. And try not to make it so obvious that you think that your Trump supporting family members are idiots. That’s my opinion.

 

Lucifer in LA

 Lucifer in LA    

 November 16, 2025    

 Dr. Roger Ray

click here to see the video

 

 

 

I didn’t think that I would care much for the Netflix theological fantasy, Lucifer. In fact, I managed to assiduously avoid it for nearly a decade until, for want of other options, I gave it a try. It was mostly what I expected . . . simultaneously childish while salacious with all of the dialogue depth of a Saturday morning cartoon, albeit, with a lot more sex. And yet, I got sucked in for the very reasons I expected to hate it. The characters in the series are mostly based on Catholic mythology but blended with and told in somewhat the style of Greek mythology, featuring demigods with very fragile human egos. 

 

As such it explores and exploits a lot of what I detest about organized religion. Beliefs which hail from ancient times that have somehow managed to survive into the modern world. In many ways, the existence of orthodox Jews, Christians, and Muslims, is an indictment of the failure of reason in modern civilization.  As Karen Armstrong famously said, "If your understanding of the divine made you kinder, more empathetic, and impelled you to express sympathy in concrete acts of loving-kindness, this was good theology. But if your notion of God made you unkind, belligerent, cruel, or self-righteous, or if it led you to kill in God's name, it was bad theology"

On one level, we can say that faith or spirituality is an attempt at interpreting our experience of life through a lens that is focused on ethics, morality, justice, and character. Sadly, however, when the myths and ancient expressions of personification of nature are taken literally, that’s not just juvenile or primitive thinking, it is dangerous thinking that leads to all manner of prejudices, abuse, and even violence. 

 

Just as a footnote: the personification of nature is a gift that comes to us from the most ancient time when humans were first becoming thinking beings. We experience the world through our feelings, our emotions, our person, and so the ancients projected personhood onto aspects of nature, the sun, the moon, oceans, rivers, and forests. Explaining the seasons, natural disasters, rain and droughts, on the moods of the gods, and the chaos of the universe, life and death itself, was explained in mythic tales about the romances and battles between the gods. 

 

These tales can inspire art and poetry but when they are taken literally they discourage critical thinking and blur the lines between reality and make believe.

Last weekend my wife and I went to a Thai Buddhist temple in Melbourn, Florida to participate in the Loy Krathong ceremony in which we floated small boats in a body of water. One of the things I love about Thai Buddhism is that it does not cling to any kind of Buddhist orthodoxy. This ceremony is mostly Hindu and maybe even older than Hinduism. 

Originally, it was in honor of the goddess of the river, seeking favor with the goddess to provide water in times of need but not too much water in the monsoon season. But like everything in Thai Buddhism, it is subject to reinterpretation in a modern age when the meaning of things needs to evolve. Now the emphasis of the Loy Krathong ceremony is respect for the river, avoiding pollution and trying to clean up our relationship with the river. . . not a primitive belief that the river is a goddess who might get jealous and flood your fields and towns.

 

We are on a vegetarian diet this week because my wife wanted to show gratitude to Buddha for having finally gotten her visa to come live in the United States. However, I am aware that the real reason is to help me lose weight. It is a religious gesture aimed at better health, not that Buddha is really keeping count of how much fried chicken we eat.

 

However, western religions seem to encourage adherents to continue to deny reality and invest themselves in fantasy beliefs. It can be funny when, on an episode of Lucifer, he is embarrassed by his angel wings popping out at inconvenient moments, but it is seriously embarrassing when people take that stuff seriously.

 

I would remind you that Harry Reid, the former Democratic majority leader of the senate, in 2007, helped to create a government agency to investigate sightings of UFOs. He did so, not because he believed that he had been abducted and possibly probed but because he is a Mormon and a part of the Mormon list of hilarious beliefs is that God lives on the plant Kolob and that there are many inhabited planets in the universe. There may be intelligent life in many places in the universe but the silly imaginings of Joseph Smith about good Mormon men getting their own planet to rule over in the afterlife should be enough to have made people abandon the Mormon religion generations ago but true believers, like Harry Reid, who for many years was third in line for the presidency of the United States, promote belief in UFO sightings, even wasting tax dollars on the search, in order to support the absurd teachings of his church.

 

I am confident that when Donald Trump says that he is trying to get into heaven, that he does not mean that literally, but, sadly, more than 70% of Americans believe that heaven is real, and about 60% believe that a literal burning hell is real . . . when makes the Lucifer Netflix series as much of a documentary as the evening news. 

 

I am eating a lot of salads and vegetable soups, ostensibly to fulfill a promise my wife made to Buddha, though I know that if Buddha ever lived, he has been dead for more than 2000 years and he doesn’t care or know if I sneak in a hotdog at Sam’s Club, but I am willing to participate in the vegetarian observance because it is good for my health and it is good for the health of the planet. 

 

But when I drive by one of the mega churches in Florida on a Sunday morning and sea the ocean of cars in the parking lot, I shudder to think that so many people continue to indoctrinate their children into the mythological beliefs of conservative Christianity. If I could believe that all of those people were, in community, encouraging one another to greater acts of kindness, compassion, empathy, and greater sensitivity to the differences which are a part of humanity, then I could be glad that such institutions continue to thrive . . . but, sadly, I know that what they are being taught is myths about a God who supports and encourages their belief that women are second class citizens who cannot be trusted, that gays, lesbians and the transgendered among us are an abomination to be loathed and punished for simply existing. I know that they are being trained to doubt science whether that is in regard to global climate change or the efficacy of vaccines. 

 

As Carl Sagan said in the previous century, “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” Still, if a person painting park benches puts a sign on a freshly painted park bench that reads “wet paint” you can bet that someone will come along and touch it to see if the paint is, in fact, wet. It is not a terribly important claim and yet the cynics among us are not inclined to just believe a sign . . . we will test it. But tell a young teenager that they will go to hell for having sexual thoughts and many of them will have anxiety about the fact that they can’t help having sexual thoughts. What evidence is there for the literal existence of a place of eternal burning punishment and torture? There is none and yet we continue to groom century after century of young people to be gullible enough to simply believe the most extraordinary claim with no evidence at all.

 

Though they often try to deny it now, the Mormon church historically teaches that exceptionally good Mormon men will one day rule over a planet of their own and that sounds just stupid to the ears of those who were not brought up to be Mormons. But how different is it from the claim that we all have immortal souls and that we will not ever die but the righteous will live forever in heaven, enjoying the rewards of our piety. There is no more evidence in support of the classic Christian, “die and go to heaven in Jesus’ name,” that there is for the Mormon promise of your own planet. People who cannot successfully keep a houseplant alive for six months believe that a part of themselves, their essence, their consciousness, will remain intact for billions and trillions of years without ceasing! The absurdity of the claim should embarrass anyone with enough sense to operate a doorknob and yet, this morning, cathedrals and megachurches are packed with doctors, lawyers, professors, and baristas who shamelessly believe this drivel without question. 

 

For nearly 30 years I had to pretend to give lip service to these beliefs when I was a pastor in the Disciples of Christ. I knew better. My staff knew better. I assume that most of our members knew better. But still, there was this employment, denominational prison in which you had to make gestures of agreement with the whole heaven and hell thing. When I finally burned that bridge and decided to start a progressive church without any pretending about ancient myths we latched onto the Jamaican Reggae singer, Bob Marley’s song, Get Up, Stand Up, as our anthem.

 

We sang it church very often, especially in the early days as a reminder of the mental prison from which we had escaped. I wish I could play it for you but that isn’t legal… I’ll stretch the law enough to tell you a part of what the song says:

Preacher man don't tell me heaven is under the earth
I know you don't know what life is really worth
It's not all that glitter is gold
Half the story has never been told
So now you see the light, ay You stand up for your right

Get up, stand up Stand up for your right
Get up, stand up Don't give up the fight
….

Most people think great God will come from the sky
Take away everything, and make everybody feel high
But if you know what life is worth
You would look for yours on earth
And now you see the light
You stand up for your right, yeah

….

We're sick and tired of your ism and schism game
Die and go to heaven in Jesus' name, Lord
We know and we understand
Almighty God is a living man
You can fool some people sometimes
But you can't fool all the people all the time
So now we see the light (what you gon' do?)
We going to stand up for our right (yeah, yeah, yeah)

Folks, do not be easily fooled. Don’t let your religion be about an unknown and unknowable after life. Your spirituality is here and now. Social justice is our religious practice so, even though my preaching career is coming to a close soon, please, don’t give up the fight. 

The Hallowing of America

The Hallowing of America      November 2, 2025         Dr. Roger Ray

click here to see the video

It was 100 years ago this year that America’s most influential poet, T. S. Eliot, published his work, The Hallow Men. Eliot was an adult convert to Catholicism and as is often true with adult converts, he was very ardent about his faith.

Eliot, apart from his rather inexplicable work devoted to cats, was a fairly somber person both before and after his conversion. He seemed to find people to be simultaneously vain and entirely void of meaningful content. And I tend to side with him on that point; there are few things as annoying as an arrogant person who is clearly below average in every meaningful way. As a Catholic, he seemed to view most of his peers as being religious in name but bereft of the kind of passion and devotion that made faith meaningful. 

He opens this poem ominously saying, “We are the hollow men, he stuffed men, leaning together, headpiece filled with straw. Alas!” I don’t know what made him see the world of 1925, in that time between the two great world wars, as being occupied by animated scare crows, stuffed with nothing but straw in their heads, but the poem ends in judgement:

This is the way the world ends 

This is the way the world ends 
Not with a bang but a whimper.

This poem appeals to me as it seems to go beyond talking merely about good people or bad people. Elliot’s concern was not simply a failure to be a good or a spiritual person, and more than becoming bad, or criminal, or even evil. 

He seems to see the direction of civilization to be going towards something that is not just bad but rather more pathetic. Hollowed out people . . . people with heads full of straw. . . . lacking substance or virtue. I’m going to have to ask you to tolerate me being a bit Socratic today, taking some time to explore what we mean by being a good or a virtuous person.

 

We mean something different, don’t we, when we talk about a good dog or a good cat. A good dog is loyal, brave, maybe even noble. Dogs are pack animals and so they exhibit concern for their pack, their family. They exhibit what we interpret to be love, compassion, empathy, and certain breeds even have a work ethic. These are senseless aspects if we are talking about cats. Humans enjoy living with cats without expectations of courage and loyalty. They interact with us, but what makes a cat a good cat is entirely different from what makes a good dog. And, of course, we could go on to say what makes a good caged bird, or a good fish in an aquarium. Good and bad, in this sense is predicated in the context of expectations.  

 

To a degree, virtue and sin in regard to people is also sometimes based on context. We Americans might easily conclude that Vladimir Putin is a bad person, maybe even a monster, a war criminal. He has led a war against Ukraine with apparent indifference to whether he is killing civilians or members of the military. He has not even shown much concern about the lives of his own soldiers, sacrificing lives and infrastructure, and resources to accomplish an expansion of Russia’s territory and power. We can easily dismiss his value as a good person, but it should not surprise you that there are many in Russia who do not view him this way because they have a belief that Russia should be more powerful, more significant on the world stage. That their superiority to Ukrainians, Poles, and Americans, and British, should be reflected in their dominance of other nations.

 

Even though the Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip was provoked by a despicable surprise attack by Hamas terrorists, the way that Benjamin Netanyahu  has conducted that war, indiscriminately killing the residents of the Gaza Strip and taking away food, medicine, housing, and education from a population of 2 million people would make him a war criminal and a monster as well, however, many in Israel, who have lived in fear of their Muslim neighbors, either publicly or privately applaud not only his courage and determination, they may also applaud his techniques. I don’t agree with Russians who love Putin or Israelis who love Netanyahu but you have to acknowledge that there is a reason for their views.

 

We Americans certainly have an existential experience of this same thing. The MAGA supporters of Trump seem to be willing to tolerate dishonesty, anti-democratic actions, deportations, military strikes, graft, and political bribes, largely  because Trump validates their own racism, their sense of American superiority, their prejudice against women, gays and lesbians, and their fear of immigrants, transgender folk, and, apparently, educated people. For about half of us, we easily conclude that Trump is a great threat to everything that might have been virtuous about America and to the other half, he is restoring what they believe to be the rightful inheritance of privilege and American status. 

 

As a pastor, as a theological professional, I contend that we can, regardless of where we live or where we were raised, we can arrive at an objective view of human virtue. We may very well slide into an era of being entirely hollow people but we don’t have to. We can think. We can be honest. We can discern the difference between objective facts and self-serving propaganda. 

 

We seem to have 20-20 vision when we are looking at the past. People in our age can almost universally use the name of Adolph Hitler to represent a pinnacle of human evil and yet, there are young people in many countries, races and religions, who identify with Hitler, his goals and his methods. 

 

Nazis pointed to certain philosophers who seemed to advocate for their perspective. Specifically, Fredrich Nietzsche talked about the Ubermench, the superman, who lived out a will to power, dismissing weaknesses and vulnerability and pursuing personal transcendence and strength. You can see how that would appeal to Hitler, even though I don’t think Nietzsche meant what Hitler got out of his philosophy. But, it is possible for a twisted person to find virtue in what is, in retrospect, obviously sin.

 

Consider the Trump administration’s decision to cut out almost all of America’s USAID program that provided emergency food and medicine to impoverished countries. The argument was made by Elon Musk and DOGE that America does not owe compassionate aid to the poor and starving, a harsh and hard perspective on what it means to be a good American but even if you can go there, when we became aware that there was millions of dollars of food in warehouses that we had already paid for that was being allowed to rot by simply not distributing it, even to the point of not allowing aid agencies to buy it and distribute it when America no longer would. There was, apparently, a preference for making a point by choosing to waste millions of dollars of food by preventing it from being given to starving masses. . . as hard as it is to imagine, there are those who take some satisfaction in even this heinous policy. 

 

The hollowness of our current presidential administration is reinforced daily. Consider the ways in which Trump uses the presidency to enrich himself and his family:

1)   Near the end of his first term, Rudy Guiliani was caught trying to sell pardons, apparently for his own gain as well as Trump’s.

2)   But in this second term, pardons are flying off of the President’s desk for convicted criminals who made large political donations or who invest in his crypto or other businesses and in return, they are relieved of their obligation to pay huge fines to the government for their crimes. In just the past three months, Trump has waved off $1.3 billion in fines in exchange for business deals and political donations in much smaller amounts. Apparently, you not only can buy a pardon from Trump, but you can save yourself more than time in prison, you can shave off hundreds of millions of dollars that you owe the American government in the process. Trump is running the Kmart “blue light special” of selling pardons. 

3)   He recently has asked for more than $200 million from the Justice Department to repay lawyer fees and for punitive judgements against the justice department for indicting him for crimes which he clearly committed and for which he has dodged prison time only by having been re-elected president. 

4)   Beyond this, he sells Trump named products and arranges for federal staff and foreign dignitaries to backdoor millions of dollars into his pocket by arranging for them to spend lavishly at his hotels, resorts, and golf courses. 

Trump may not have actually been very wealthy when he was first elected. Most of his properties were leveraged to the eyebrows, but he is rich now, almost exclusively by taking money from the American people through shameless exploitation. 

 

Though this administration has tried to do everything they can to change the subject and avoid producing evidence about Trump’s involvement with Jeffrey Epstein and his whole pedophile prostitution business, it becomes more clear every week that Trump’s role was something that he desperately needs to keep hidden. Casting the self-proclaimed super-Christians like Speaker Mike Johnson into a nearly full-time role of concocting lies to protect pedophiles from public exposure and accountability. 

 

I’ve not had any moral expectations of Trump for years because he is clearly a malignant narcissist for whom talk about moral judgement is just a misnomer, but Johnson came into the spotlight amidst proclamations of his Biblically focused ethic and moral superiority. He is now almost the poster child for Elliot’s “Hollow Men” as everything he says is a lie or a misdirection, all just to hold onto power while he funnels government money into his wife’s Christian LLC without ever reporting the mount of her enormous government income. 

 

Texas congresswoman and my personal hero, Jasmine Crocket, tried to pin Mike Johnson down as to the degree of the graft being funneled into the Johnson LLC on the floor of the Congress but Johnson, having no answer that would not be self-incriminating, just stood up and left the house.

 

This is the way the world ends,

This is the way the world ends,

Not with a bang, but a whimper. 

 

If these people are Christians then Christianity no longer means anything. Neither Christianity nor Judaism, neither Buddhism nor Islam, have managed to create a meaningful conversation in this country about character, honesty, public service, self-sacrifice, or virtue. If I may make a suggestion for those of you who are still church goers, especially those of you who are pastors:

Take a couple of months out to study the sayings of Confucious either personally or in a class. Confucianism is not a religion, maybe it isn’t even a philosophy. Most of the sayings you see on the internet that are attributed to Confucious are not real. The real sayings of confucious are moral teachings about how to be a good person, a person of conscience and content. Someone with something more than straw in their heads. Barnes and Noble has a nice $5 collection of the Sayings of Confucious and to get you started, I will copy 4 pages of my favorite quotes at the end of the manuscript for this sermon that you can find on our website. If you can’t find our website, write to me at RevDrRay@outlook.com and I will send it to you. 

 

Dear listeners, Confucius said that “The fault is to cleave to the fault.” You know that the MAGA movement is without virtue, character, substance. You may have been tricked or seduced or mislead in the past, but the fault is to stick with what you know is wrong. Attach yourself to quest to find and embody virtue.

 

The Sayings of Confucius (Barnes & Noble)

 

Confucius                  “I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.”

 

24.       The master said:         “To worship the ghosts of strangers is fawning. To see the right and not do it is want of courage.”      p. 9

 

3.         The master said:        “A man without love, what is courtesy to him? A man without love, what is music to him?”      p.11

 

1.         The master said:         “Love makes a spot beautiful: who chooses not to dwell in love, has he got wisdom?” p. 17

 

2.         The master said:         “Loveless men cannot bear need long, they cannot bear fortune long. Loving hearts find peace in love, clever heads find profit in it.”

 

4.         The master said:         “A heart set on love will do no wrong.”

 

14.       The master said:         “Be not concerned at want of place; be concerned that thou stand thyself. Sorrow not at being unknown, but seek to be worthy of note.” p. 19

 

24.       The master said:         “A gentleman wishes to be slow to speak and quick to act.” p.20

 

9.         The master said:        “Rotten wood cannot be carved, nor are dung walls plastered.” p. 24

 

11.       Tzu-Kung said:           “What I do not wish to have done unto me, I likewise wish not to do unto others.” 

 

The master said:         “This is still beyond thee, Tz’u.”   p. 24

 

 

11.       The master said to Tzu-hsia: “Read to become a gentleman; do not read as the vulgar do.”   p. 32

 

20.       The master said:         “To rank the effort above the prize may be called love.” p.33

 

21.       The master said:         “Wisdom delights in water; love delights in hills. Wisdom is stirring; love is quiet. Wisdom enjoys life; love grows old.”

                                    p. 34

 

28.       “To learn from the near at hand may be called the key to love.” p. 35

 

3.         The master said:         “Neglect of what is good in me; want of thoroughness in study;   failure to do the right when told me, lack of strength to  overcome faults, these are my sorrows.” p 37

 

15.       The master said:         “Living on coarse rice and water, with bent arm for pillow, mirth may be ours; but ill-gotten wealth and honors are to me a wandering cloud.” p. 40

 

9.         The master said:         “The people may be made to follow: they cannot be made to understand.” p. 47

 

10.       The master said:         “Love of daring, inflamed by poverty, leads to crime: a man without love, if deeply ill-treated, will turn to crime.”

 

11.       The master said:         “All the glorious gifts of the Duke of Chou, if coupled with pride and meanness, would not be worth one glance.”

 

17.       The master said:         “Study as though the time were short, as one who fears to lose.” p. 48

 

17.       The master said:         “I have found none who love good as they love women.”

 p. 54

 

21.       The master said:         “Some sprouts do not blossom, some blossoms bear no fruit.” p.55

 

25.       The master said:         “Three armies may be robbed of their leader, no wretch can be robbed of his will.” p. 55

 

Poem which pre-dates Confucius: “A flaw can be ground from a scepter white;

                                                         A slip of the tongue no man can right.” p. 64

 

11.       Chi-lu asked what is due to the ghosts of the dead. 

The master said: “We fail in our duty to the living; can we do our duty to the

dead?”

 

He ventured to ask about death.

“We know not life.” said the master, “how can we know death?” p. 65

 

2.         Chung-kung asked, “What is love?”

The master said: “Without the door to behave as though a great guest were

come; to treat the people as though we tendered the high sacrifice; not to do

unto others what we would not they should do unto us; to breed no wrongs in

the state and breed no wrongs in the home.”

 

Chung-kung said: “Dull as I am, I hope to live by these words.” p. 74

 

6.         The master said: “The man of upright life is obeyed before he speaks: commands even go unheeded where the life is crooked.” p. 83

 

3.         The master said: “The scholar who loves comfort is not worthy the name.” p. 89

 

5.         The master said: “A man of worth can always talk, but talkers are not always men of worth. Love is always bold, though boldness is found without love.” p. 90

 

21.       The master said: “If the tongue have not fear, words are hard to make good.” p.94

 

25.       The master said: “Men of old learned for their own sake: the men of today learn for show.”

 

29.       The master said: “The fault is to cleave to a fault.” p. 104

 

4.         Confucius said: “There are three friends that do good, and three friends that do hard. The friends that do good are a straight friend, a sincere friend, and a friend who has heard much. The friends that do harm are a smooth friend, a fawning friend, and a friend with a glib tongue.” p. 109

 

5.         Confucius said: “There are three joys that do good, and three joys that do harm. The joys that do good are joy in dissecting courtesy and music, joy in speaking of the good in men, and joy in a number of worthy friends. The joys that do harm are joy in pomp, joy in roving, and joy in the joys of the feast.

 

6.         Confucius said: “Men who wait upon princes fail into three mistakes. To speak before the time has come is rashness. Not to speak when the time has come is secrecy. To speak heedless of looks is blindness.” p. 110

 

7.         Confucius said: “A gentleman has three things to guard against. In the days of thy, ere thy strength is steady, beware of lust. When manhood is reached, in the fullness of strength, beware of strife. In old age, when thy strength is broken, beware of greed.”

 

8.         Confucius said: “A gentleman has nine aims. To see clearly; to understand what he hears; to be warm in manner, dignified in bearing, faithful of speech, painstaking at work; to ask when in doubt; in anger to think of difficulties; in sight of gain to remember right.”   p. 110

 

17.       The master said:         “Honeyed words and flattering looks seldom speak of love.”

                                    p. 117

 

24.       “I hate those who mistake spying for wisdom. I hate those who take want of deference for courage. I hate evil speaking, cloaked as honesty.” p. 119

 

1.         Tzu-Chang said: “The scholar who in danger will stake his life, who in sight of gain remembers right, who is lowly in heart at worship, and sad at heart when mourning, may pass muster.” p. 127

 

8.         Tzu-husia said: “The vulgar always gloss their faults.” p. 128

 

17.       Tseng-tzu said: “I have heard the master say: ‘Man never shows what is in him unless when mourning one near to him.” p. 130

 

1.         “Loving hearts are better than men that are near of kin.” p. 134