Michael Sliney

“Swallowing words before you say them is so much better than having to eat them afterward.” Amish Proverb

“If you look for perfection, you’ll never be content.”  Leo Tolstoy

“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view…Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.”

—Harper Lee    Several years ago, I had a conversation with a homeless man in NYC.  He started by asking me a few questions: “Reverend, have you ever been out in the street for 3 weeks in the winter when the temperature gets in the teens?  Have you ever gone 3 weeks without showering?  Have you ever had on 4 pairs of socks, but your feet are still frozen? Have you ever had anyone offer you a cold bottle of water at 1 am in the morning on a freezing night and tell you to “stay warm”?  That is hard for me, but the hardest thing is that I am  no longer treated like a human being.  Just a few years ago, I was working finance in this town, and now I feel like a piece of garbage on the street that most people want to avoid… 

“Dead people receive more flowers than the living ones because regret is stronger than gratitude.” Anne Frank