The School of Athens by Raffaello Sanzio daUrbino
Life Academy
We dream; we grow;
We move; we flow;
We laugh; we glow.
While here below,
We live in anticipation
Of pomp and circumstance
And graduation.
We are matriculated in the school of life
Articulated by toil and tears and strife.
We are students of all that passes
Work and play, day by day, our classes.
We are classmates with our fellow creatures.
These also are our students and our teachers.
And this is our assignment:
Absolute and total realignment.
And someday through the pain and stress of it.
We will celebrate the gain and success of it.
We dream; we grow and
by God's grace we move and flow
And laugh and glow
While here below,
We live.Live well.
Live Long.
Prosper and overcome.
Be all that you can be.
You are more special than you know.It is an honor to be considered among your friends.
- Tom Sims
From Wikipedia – A Guide to Raphael's Painting and Characters (with links and references).
1: Zeno of Citium[17] 2: Epicurus[17] 3: unknown[18] 4: Boethius[17] or Anaximander[17] 5: Averroes[17] 6: Pythagoras[17][13][19] 7: Alcibiades[17] or Alexander the Great[17] or Pericles[20] or Xenophon[21] 8: Antisthenes[17] or Xenophon[17] 9: unknown,[18] possibly Pico della Mirandola,[21] (sometimes identified as Hypatia in recent popular sources)[22] or Fornarina as a personification of Love[23] (Francesco Maria della Rovere?)[16][24] 10: Aeschines[17] 11: Parmenides[16] or Nicomachus[16] 12: Socrates[17][21] or Anaxagoras[20] 13: Heraclitus[16] (Michelangelo?)[16] 14: Plato[16] (Leonardo da Vinci?)[25] 15: Aristotle[16] (Giuliano da Sangallo?)[26] 16: Diogenes of Sinope[16][27][28][29][30] or Socrates[20] 17: Plotinus?[16] or Solon[21] 18: Euclid[16][31] or Archimedes[16] (Bramante?)[16] 19: Strabo[16] or Zoroaster?[16] (Baldassare Castiglione?)[16] 20: Ptolemy[16] R: Apelles[16] (Raphael)[16] 21: Protogenes[16] (Il Sodoma,[16] Timoteo Viti,[32] or Perugino)[33]
Who Are Your Teachers and Mentors?
Habits of the First Half of Life
"It seems, in fact, that, the second half of a man's life is made up of nothing but the habits he has acquired during the first half." – Fyodor Dostoevsky
As much as I love Dostoevsky, I am not buying that … at least not for my personal collection of life artifacts.
I can see where one might make the observation and where it might be the norm. However, I want to defy it.
One must grant that the resistance to reinventing oneself is heavy and the force of habit is strong. The road to establishing new patterns of thought and practice is uphill and treacherous. But there exists such a path and one can choose to take it.
We preach resurrection hope this Sunday. That means that we do not have to be defined by inertia whether we are objects at rest or in motion.
Centrifugal force is only as strong as our commitment to break free while relying on a Power that is far greater than ourselves.
May your second half be your best.
Pastor Tom's Community 
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