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5831224
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He doesn't believe in talking too much about art, especially while you're looking at it. The pressure to appreciate is the great enemy of actual enjoyment. Most people don't know what they like because they feel obligated to like so many different things. They feel they're supposed to be overwhelmed, so instead of looking, they spend their time thinking up something to say, something intelligent, or at least clever.
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Robert Hellenga |
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5041432
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Fussing over food was important. It gave a shape to the day: breakfast, lunch, dinner; beginning, middle, end.
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breakfast
middle
daily-life
dinner
lunch
end
cooking
food
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Robert Hellenga |
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2b31999
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It took him half an hour to reach the little mission chapel. From his position on his back in the river he could see just the tip of the steeple, but for the most part he gazed upward at the constellations. Rudy knew his constellations, because each one of his daughters had done a science project on them and they'd spent hours lying on their backs in the middle of the Edgar Lee Masters campus looking up at the sky. As the river bent to the ..
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life
river
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Robert Hellenga |
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09924e5
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Sometimes it takes a little jolt to make us appreciate what we've got.
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gratitude
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Robert Hellenga |
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c36c574
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People say that God works in mysterious ways when they really mean that life, or something in their own lives, doesn't make any sense, but I think that's wrong. I think it means that we can't make any sense out of life until we give up our deepest hopes, until we stop trying to arrange everything to suit us. But once we do, or are forced to . . . That's what's mysterious.
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Robert Hellenga |
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ce4e282
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Death was a lens that would reveal things as they really were: what was important would assume its true importance; what was unimportant would recede into the shadows.
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death-and-dying
inspiration
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Robert Hellenga |
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5cc7caa
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There was a time I didn't know your name Why should I worry, cry in vain but now she's gone, and I don't worry cause I'm sittin' on top of the world.
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Robert Hellenga |
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2f5c727
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The only meaning our lives have is the meaning we give them.
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Robert Hellenga |
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c04c713
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She heard melody and harmony and counterpoint; he heard something calling him from far, far away.
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Robert Hellenga |
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fd4f39c
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Sometimes pain is God's megaphone, his only way to get our attention.
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pain
god
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Robert Hellenga |
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286fd9b
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However far back you go you will find all experiences linked by slender threads.
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time
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Robert Hellenga |
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2e862b8
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He knew that he'd known her for less than a week, but now that she was gone he was continually probing his feelings for her, the way he might probe a sore tooth with his tongue, engaging her in imaginary conversations, imagining her saying such delightful things.
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love
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Robert Hellenga |
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5716e79
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The advice he reads in Ann Landers - good advice as long as you don't need it, perfectly sensible as long as you don't have any use for it.
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Robert Hellenga |
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9a08149
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What to do with the past? There was so much of it.
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reconciling-the-past
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Robert Hellenga |
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37158e3
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He wondered what you had to do to lose your driver's license in Italy.
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Robert Hellenga |