Ten Stages of Deadly Depression

Ten Stages of Deadly Depression

1.    Disturbance - Need for readjustment and reconsideration
2.    Disappointment - Need for reappointment and reconsecration
3.    Discouragement - Need for reaffirmation and rediscovery
4.    Disillusionment - Need for realignment and redetermination
5.    Deflation - Need for re-inflation, recrudescence and rejuvenation
6.    Despair - Need for reason, reconfirmation and renewal
7.    Doomsaying - Need for reappraisal and redefinition
8.    Desperation - Need for rescue and reconstruction
9.    Derangement - Need for reclamation, recuperation, rehabilitation and reconditioning
10.  Death - Need for resurrection (Divine intervention)

-- Lionel Hartley, Deliverance from Deadly Depression (Booklet),
Dayspring Health Services, Morisset, NSW, 1986

Creating a Positive Pleasing Personality

Creating a Positive Pleasing Personality.

As you will have already realised, to get the most out of life, you will need to be able to get along with people. This means that others will like you and want to do things for you.
Your personality is your attitude in action.
When you get along with people it is because they find your personality positive and pleasing.  How can we create a positive personality? Here are a few tips:

1. To make and keep a friend, Be a friend; be friendly.
2. Think what type of person you would like to have as a friend - how you would like to be treated, then be that type of person yourself for others.
3. People need to feel wanted, loved, needed, so help create these feelings in others.
4. Be kind to others - You may not feel you can love them, but at least you can be kind.
5. Learn to love yourself because others will often treat to you the way they see you treating yourself.
6. Let others impress you rather than trying to impress them.
7. Honesty often hurts, often makes us vulnerable, but honesty always wins in the end.
8. Deliberately do and/or say things to make others feel important: Praise, encouragement, support, co-operation, courtesy (please & thank-you).
9. Be enthusiastic - it is contagious, it motivates others as well as you, it builds bonds within relationships.
10. Call others by name, repeat it often in conversation.
11. Learn to listen. People are warmed more by how you listen than what you say.
12. Be positive, as positive attitudes are attractive to others. We like to be around positive people - negative people repel us (if we are negative, we repel others).
13. Be cheerful and pleasant. Smile often - smile with your eyes as well as your mouth.
14. Before you choose to argue, stop and place a value on your friendship.
15. Help others to like themselves. Remind them that you like yourself better when you are with them.
16. Show a genuine interest in others, listen as you invite them to talk about themselves. Seek their opinions, ideas, viewpoints.
17. If you can’t say something good about a person, keep silent.
18. Allow the other person to be “right” sometimes.
19. If you really must poke fun at someone, be sure it is you.

-- Lionel Hartley PhD, Deliverance from Depression (Booklet), Dayspring Health Services, ©1986

Destination Heaven

Destination Heaven
[In June 2001] my wife and I were about to enter a restaurant for lunch when our daughter contacted us on the mobile telephone. She would be taking a part in a programme that evening and asked if I could provide a short snippet for her to present as an ice-breaker for the programme. The theme was ‘outer space’, reflecting on our readiness for heaven. Because my wife and I were away from home, my library was inaccessible. So I penned the following free verse fragment in the restaurant while waiting for our meal to be served. It is an announcement supposedly heard over an airport public address system:

“Your attention please, Ladies and Gentlemen.
Welcome to Eternity Intergalactic Airport.
Please check in today for Destination Heaven.
Your tickets need to be in order before you board the flight.
And passports, visas and papers must be checked and all right.
Leave luggage & baggage at the boarding gate to Heaven- you won’t need it there.
And your passport of faith has been stamped with your fate (when you chose to accept the free airfare).
For your ticket is paid for by the Pilot’s own Son.
And He sent you His Holy Steward to help you to come.
So Ladies and Gentlemen, your attention please.
You all can be ready by the Company’s Grace.
So pack up your worries, invite your friends and take your ease.
The ticket is paid and we’ve reserved you a place.
All flights are in standby mode; you must be ready at all times.
And as we only offer one destination, passengers not ready must travel by another airline.”

-- Lionel Hartley, FreEzineMagazine, Issue Vol 2 # 6  June 2001

Marriage is not a word

Marriage is not a word, it's a sentence -- not a 'jail sentence' -- but a relationship encompassing entire lexicons.
-- Lionel Hartley ©

Sink into my arms...

"Men, be prepared to put your arms into her sink before you expect her to sink into your arms. (If you think dishwashing is women's work, read Matthew 23:25-26 which talks about men doing the washing-up and 2 Kings 21:13 which talks about men drying the dishes.)"
-- Lionel Hartley PhD, Thank God For Sex, Stereo Publications, 1976

Matthew 23:25-26  Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, but within they are full of extortion and excess. 26 Thou blind Pharisee, cleanse first that which is within the cup and platter, that the outside of them may be clean also.

2 Kings 21:13  And I will stretch over Jerusalem the line of Samaria, and the plummet of the house of Ahab: and I will wipe Jerusalem as a man wipeth a dish, wiping it, and turning it upside down.

Why did Jesus bother with parables?

Why did Jesus bother with parables if, as he said in Matthew 13:13, They seeing see not; and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand?

Many years ago, in my youth, I used to do marathon walking, up to 50 miles (80 kilometres) a day. One evening I was walking at dusk, and just as I wondered if I was coming close to the next town, or whether I should rest on the side of the road until the morning, a motor vehicle drove past, headlights blazing, illuminating a reflective sign on the roadside ahead telling the distance to the next town. No, I hadn't seen the sign ahead in the darkness, but the reflected light from the vehicle was all that I needed for it to be visible. Jesus' parables were like that sign in the dark. Truth couldn't be seen until light was shed upon it. Truth was there, it just couldn't be seen. Jesus' parables are within our reading or hearing. We need the light of God's Spirit for us to be able to see them so that seeing we will see and hearing we will hear and understand.
-- Lionel Hartley.

Pride Vs Humility

Pride Vs Humility
If you want to see the stars at any time, day or night, there is an easy way to do this. All you need is a fireplace with a tall straight chimney - and look up the chimney. However, to see the stars you need to get down as low as possible and possibly get dirty in the process. The same with life. If we want to reach for the stars we need to accept that humility is the best course, even if it means getting our hands soiled in the process.
-- Lionel Hartley ©