Remembering Our Ancestors

Ancestors Posing For Posterity

~ Anne Deon 

My Ancestors Were Beautiful

~ Joe Gilmore 

My GrandParents, My Parents And I

~ Frida Kahlo 

GrandParents

~ Elena Flerova 

Riding With GrandFather

~ Wright Barker 

A Walk In The Clouds

~ Leonardo Ruggieri 

GrandFather And GrandSon In Canola Field

~ The Vangobot (Doug Marx And Luke Kelly) 

The GrandFather

~ Pavlos Triantafillou 

GrandFather

~ Ajay K Jacob

 *****

BECAUSE we have forgotten our ancestors,

our children no longer give us honor.

BECAUSE we have lost the path our ancestors cleared

kneeling in perilous undergrowth,

our children cannot find their way.

BECAUSE we have banished the God of our ancestors,

our children cannot pray.

BECAUSE the old wails of our ancestors have faded beyond our hearing,

our children cannot hear us crying.

BECAUSE we have abandoned our wisdom of mothering and fathering,

our befuddled children give birth to children

they neither want nor understand.

BECAUSE we have forgotten

how to love ..

~ Maya Angelou

*****

The Tree Of Genealogy

Turning 40 !

It's easier to get older than it is to get wiser..

***

Every man over forty is a scoundrel.

~ George Bernard Shaw

***

The first forty years of life give us the text; the next thirty supply the commentary.

~ Arthur Schopenhauer

***

We don't understand life any better at forty than at twenty, but we know it and admit it.

~ Jules Renard

***

Whoever, in middle age, attempts to realize the wishes and hopes of his early youth, invariably deceives himself. Each ten years of a man's life has its own fortunes, its own hopes, its own desires.

 

~ Goethe

 

***

 

From forty to fifty a man must move upward, or the natural falling off in the vigor of life will carry him rapidly downward.

 

~ Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr

 

***

 

At age 20, we worry about what others think of us. At 40, we don't care what they think of us. At 60, we discover they haven't been thinking of us at all.

~ Ann Landers

***

After You Turn 40 ~

Your idea of weight lifting is standing up!

Your best friend is dating someone half the age

and isn't breaking any laws!

It takes longer to rest than it did to get tired!

You have more patience; but actually,
it's just that you don't care any more!

You confuse having a clear conscience

with having a bad memory!

Your mouth is in gear and

your brain is in neutral!

 Before crossing a room you look both ways!

People no longer view you as a hypochondriac!

Your secrets are safe with your friends
because they can't remember them either!

Your joints are more accurate
than the National Weather Service!

You don't care where your spouse goes,
just as long as you don't have to go along!

 Your semi-annual erection becomes

an annual semi-erection!

Your new easy chair has more options than your car!

You sit in a rocking chair and can't get it going!

I Wish I Could Speak Like Music ~ Hāfez-e Šhīrāzī

I wish I could speak like music.

I wish I could put the swaying splendor

Of the fields into words

So that you could hold Truth

Against your body

And dance.

I am trying the best I can

With this crude brush, the tongue,

To cover you with light.

I wish I could speak like divine music.

I want to give you the sublime rhythms

Of this earth and the sky's limbs

As they joyously spin and surrender,

Surrender

Against God's luminous breath.

Hafiz wants you to hold me

Against your precious

Body

And dance,

Dance.

____________________________________

Excerpted From "The Gift"

By
Hāfez-e Šhīrāzī
(1325 ~ 1390)

Translated By Daniel Ladinsky

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