Volume 1, Number 1                                                                                                                                                           June 1998


 
 
 
MYERS-BRIGGS TYPE INDICATOR
16 PERSONALITY TYPES

 
 
 

" Joan's Finds" 
[INFP]
 

Love is as a gentle snow, falling..
Upon my face..
Walking..flakes melting..
Becoming me.

Love is as a gentle autumn breeze..
Soft wind caressing..
Scarlet leaves skipping..just beyond my reach..
Elusive.

Love is as a spring rain..
Creating..
Giving birth to the newly awakened life..
Within the earth..
Of me.

Joan Langill

 
 

"Elie Wiesel, author of "Souls on Fire", makes a powerful statement that may just be the tonic for you.  He reflects that when we die and go to meet our Maker, we're not going to be asked why we didn't become a messiah or didn't find a cure for cancer.  Instead, we will be asked, "Why didn't you become 'you'?"
 
 
 

"Becoming you" includes both the joy and the privilege of learning to recognize the marvelous differences that exist in those around you.  "Becoming you" also frees you to reach your potential, using the talents God has given you.
 

"The Speaker's Sourcebook"


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"WHAT CAN ONE MAN DO"

"The individual in today's world feels cut off from the forces or movements that determine his future.  This leads to fatalism and default.  Albert Schweitzer demonstrated that one man can make a difference.  He had no specific prescription or formula for the individual.  All he hoped for was that the individual would be able to peel off the layers of hardened artificialities that separate him from his real self.  Man's resources do not exist outside him.  His responses must come from within.  Certainly, we can't all be Schweitzers.  But each man has his own potential.  The awareness of that potential is the discovery of purpose, the fulfillment of that potential is the discovery of strength."



 

Norman Cousins
Foreword, "Albert Schweitzer:  Reverence for Life"


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"The meaning of life is not to be found in looking back over this continuous strand from childhood to old age.  Life is more than simply being born, growing up and maturing.  If life's meaning is to be discovered, it is intrinsic in each stage as we assume the challenge of actualizing every moment of every day as we live it.  We have the basic tools necessary--our inborn potentials; our time of life and death...a life which is ours to be "outlived".  The self that we are now contains the actualization potential which will fulfill us.  The challenge is ours...

"Meister Eckhart, an astonishingly perceptive Christian philosopher of the 13th century, stated, "The shell [Persona] must be cracked apart if what is in it is to come out, for if you want to know the kernel [the Self],  you must break the shell...the shell has been cracked apart, the kernel is exposed,  awaiting you."



 
 

LEO BUSCAGLIA
FROM THE BOOK "PERSONHOOD"


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"First of all, although men have a common destiny, each individual also has to work out his own personal salvation for himself in fear and trembling.  We can help one another to find the meaning of life no doubt.  But in the last analysis, the individual person is responsible for living his own life and for "finding himself".  If he persists in shifting his responsibility to somebody else, he fails to find out the meaning of his own existence.  You cannot tell me who I am, and I cannot tell you who you are.  If you do not know your own identity, who is going to identify you?"


THOMAS MERTON


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"FARMING THE SOUL "

"Thoreau was sure that we could have an original love affair with the universe, but only if we decline to marry the world, and he suspected that the divine man is the man uncontrolled by social obligation.  We can sense the boundaries of our soul, whose stakes are set thousands of miles out in space, only if we disintegrate property boundaries here on earth.  When we fight for the soul and its life, we receive as reward not fame, not wages, not friends, but what is already in the soul, a freshness that no one can destroy..."



 
 

ROBERT BLY, AMERICAN POET AND TRANSLATOR
FROM THE BOOK " SOUL AN ARCHAEOLOGY"
EDITED BY PHIL COUSINEAU 


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"Why have we failed to believe that we can be lazy about the inward journey
as well as the outward ones?  Aren't we slothful when we:

Refuse to make the costly choices that will best free and develop the
gifts that are ours?

Become a workaholic so that we will free ourselves of the responsiblity to
do the hard work that is involved in self-discovery and self-sharing?

Care more for the easy outer goals than for the quest for inner integrity?

Do not invest energy in rethinking our faith, our values, our goals?

When we take risks that we believe are for life, we will certainly suffer but will also reap rich inner rewards.  Risk induces anxiety.  It is filled with abundant tension, but this is how we grow more conscious of who we are, who God is, and of how important those who love us are to us."



 

From the book "Growing Strong at Broken Places"  by Paula Ripple

 

"Courage is an inner resolution to go forward despite obstacles.  Cowardice is submissive surrender to circumstances.  Courage breeds creative self-affirmation.  Cowardice produces destructive self-abnegation.  Courage faces fear and masters it.
Cowardice represses fear and is mastered by it." 


From the book "Growing Strong at Broken Places" by Martin Luther King, Jr.

 

"The search for hidden treasures buried on ships on the ocean floor, and the inner attitudes of those who carry it out, bear strong similarity to each person's quest to discover the hidden self.  The same sense of adventure and quality of personal investment is required.

If we lack a sense of inner adventure, lack a willingness to risk for life, lack a resolve that wins out over pain and obstacles along the way, we will not likely find our own hidden treasures. Courage is one of the keys that unlocks those areas that must be opened if our lives are ever to unfold."


       From the book "Growing Strong at Broken Places"