You have taken back the promise
That you spoke so long ago;
Taken back the heart you gave me-
I must even let it go.
Where Love once has breathed, Pride dieth,
So I struggled, but in vain,
First to keep the links together,
Then to piece the broken chain.

But it might not be-so freely
All your friendship I restore,
And the heart that I had taken
As my own forevermore.
No shade of reproach shall touch you,
Dread no more a claim from me-
But I will not have you fancy
That I count myself as free.

I am bound by the old promise;
What can break that golden chain?
Not even the words that you have spoken,
Or the sharpness of my pain:
Do you think, because you fail me
And draw back your hand today,
That from out the heart I gave you
My strong love can fade away?

It will live. No eyes may see it;
In my soul it will lie deep,
Hidden from all; but I shall feel it
Often stirring in its sleep.
So remember that the friendship
Which you now think poor and vain,
Will endure in hope and patience,
Till you ask for it again.

Perhaps in some long twilight hour,
Like those we have known of old,
When past shadows gather round you,
And your present friends grow cold,
You may stretch your hands out towards me-
Ah! You will-I know not when-
I shall nurse my love and keep it
Faithfully, for you, till then.

What can be said in New Year rhymes,
That's not been said a thousand times?
The new years come, the old years go,
We know we dream, we dream we know.
We rise up laughing with the light,
We lie down weeping with the night.
We hug the world until it stings,
We curse it then and sigh for wings.
We live, we love, we woo, we wed,
We wreathe our brides, we sheet our dead.
We laugh, we weep, we hope, we fear,
And that's the burden of a year.

(Ella Wheeler Wilcox)

To pile like
Thunder to
its' close
Then crumble
grand away
While Everything
created hid
This--would
be Poetry--

Or Love--the
two coeval come--
We both and
neither prove--
Experience either
and consume--
For None see
God and live--

(Emily Dickinson)

I found out about this book via olenenyok 's LJ some months ago--"Winning with people" by John C. Maxwell.

As promised, here is an excerpt, which I'll translate into Russian...

The Mirror Principle

The First Person to Cause Me Problems Is Myself--Self-Honesty

Comedian Jack Parr quipped, "Looking back, my life seems like one big obstacle race, with me being the chief obstacle."  He was making a joke, but what he says is still true for most of us. Pete Rose isn't alone in his ability to cause problems for himself. That's an issue for me. And it's for you too. If we could kick the person responsible for most of our troubles, we wouldn't be able to sit down for weeks.  What can save us is the willingness to look in the mirror and get honest about our shortcomings, faults, and problems.

A couple of years after I graduated from college, I had lunch with a friend who had been a fellow student. Like me, he was in his first job as the pastor of a small church. As we ate, he began talking to me about the people in his congregation. He said he had a problem with this ding-a-ling on his church board and with that ding-a-ling in committee meetings and with another ding-a-ling he was counseling. After about the fifth ding-a-ling, I was getting irritated. How can you lead people when you don't like or respect them? I thought.

"Fred, do you want to know why you have so many ding-a-lings in your church?" I asked.

He stopped eating and said with great interest, "Yeah, I really would."

"It's because you're the biggest ding-a-ling of them all."

He was shocked.

Perhaps that was not my finest hour relationally because Fred wasn't much interested in my explanation after I said that. But it was obvious to an outsider that Fred was the problem. It wasn't long afterward that he left his church and went to another one. And it didn't take long for him to think that his new church was filled with ding-a-lings too.

It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory."
--W. Edwards Deming,
American statistician, professor, author, lecturer and consultant