Today's Story

The Butterfly Experiment

2007-08-11T08:29:00.000-07:00

Feature Article: The Butterfly Experiment
By: Lori Hamann, Evolve Life Coaching

Several years ago my children and I made up "the butterfly song", with full intention to call butterflies into our experience. (I have taught them early!) Every time we would see one, we get excited, not only relishing the beauty of the butterfly, but also in our ability to attract them. Such confirmation and proof that "what you think about, you bring about" and "what you focus on grows".

I personally stand in awe of the lesson that I learned from my little conscious creators, who never waver in certainty of their creator being-ness, and without question trust that butterflies are coming. It just is, and they just will. Add in a heaping dose of passion, love and honey and guess what we get...butterflies, and loads of them.

Imagine what would happen if you, as an adult, took on creating your reality like that of a child. With unhindered visualization, and complete trust that what you desire is on it's way. Ask and it is given. No belief systems to stop you, just pure connectedness. Just imagine...

There is a shift to be recognized...and it's to go from chasing butterflies (like your dreams!) to attracting them. Instead of getting out your net, you choose to create a butterfly garden and bring them to you. Metaphorically speaking - what does the garden of your life look like? Will it attract your dreams? If you stood within it does it resonate with beauty, joy, passion, courage, peace, softness, and gratitude? Imagine if these words were flowers what your garden might look like. What are you attracting to it? Your dreams and desires or just the exact opposite?

Abraham-Hicks, defines the Law of Attraction like this: "That which is likened to itself is drawn." Catherine Ponder, author of the Dynamic Law of Prosperity defines the Law of Attraction like this: "What you radiate outward in your thoughts, feelings, mental pictures, and words you attract into your life." Guess what? That's the stuff that grows and fertilizes your "garden"!

Yes, like attracts like, and when you are focused upon what you WANT to create in your life you will attract that....and when you are focused upon what you DON'T WANT to create in your life, you will attract that too. It means that you are a magnet, and you draw to you what ever energy comes from you. It's law.

So.....with that said...

Who wants to participate in a free 30 day exercise in manifestation?

It's called.... The Butterfly Experiment.

You will learn about the Law of Attraction, setting intention, and allowing things to flow in life...namely, for the purpose of this experiment...BUTTERFLIES! But...you will be able to take this experiment, and use what you have learned in all areas of your life.

After years of calling then in and attracting them and I began to think about how wonderful it would be to have a group come together and do this as a manifestation exercise....wow and no kidding...as I write this a butterfly just flew past my window. Love it.

If you do participate I request that you be very committed to the process for the full 30 days - to get the full experience. Each day you will receive tips and exercises manifesting butterflies...it may be an email exercise, an audio recording, or a group meeting via conference call.

Of most importance...I would appreciate if you would carry your camera with you to snap shots of butterflies that show up in your life - and send them to me :) Or if you have an awesome story to tell, send that too. Keep a journal if you like.

Why? Because at the end of this experiment I will be putting together a movie, showing the results of our experiment, on my site and the Manifest Station. (Trust me I have some cool ideas for this!) You will be credited at the end for your support and participation as well.

So, if you walk outside and you have manifested butterflies in your garden...snap it. Or you are shopping and low and behold all of the butterfly paper plates are on sale...snap it.

What you focus on grows...and you will begin to see butterflies all over your life. They will become a part of your experience. Remember...it does not even have be the "right climate" because butterflies are everywhere...you will begin to manifest and notice them everywhere.

Sound cool? It is and will be. We will also come together as as group a few times during the course of our exercise - to beat the drum of what's working and have an open discussion about the Law of Attraction.

If you are interested...please send a blank email to
ljhamann1-263188@autocontactor.com and remember to confirm your subscription!

You will receive confirmation of your registration right away. And, don't forget to confirm your registration.

We will be getting started on August 15th, 2007 - so mark your calendars!

Please forward this newsletter to anyone you think might benefit from this co-creative experiment!

Peace and Prosperity,

Lori Hamann
www.lorihamann.com

Back from the Dead:The Story of Shelley Yates

2007-06-30T09:27:00.000-07:00

FIRE THE GRID
by Shelley Yates
THE STORY

We are now in a time when natural disasters like hurricanes, earthquakes and tidal waves are dramatically affecting our planet, and our lives on it. We now have the power to destroy this beautiful Earth quickly, with atomic power, or more slowly, with pollution and devastation of our resources and overpopulation. I have been guided to tell you that we also have the very real power to save this planet and to make it a loving and healthy place for ourselves and for future generations. Please take a few minutes to read my story. It will hopefully save our Earth.

I have a story to tell you that I know will be hard to believe in parts, but it has happened to me, and I cannot erase or deny any of it, though at times I wish I could. I am a normal woman who grew up in simple yet chaotic times. I am much like you in most every way. I always thought I would be the last one to have a miracle occur in her life, much less two miracles and all that has happened since. Therefore the tale I tell could be of your life, and not mine. But seeing it is mine, I guess I was meant to tell it.

What I want to establish first is the fact that miracles do happen, and they happen to people like you and me. What we need to make these miracles happen is to open ourselves to the communication that is all around us every day—communication not from this world but from the world of our Creator, the Cosmos and the Universe. The message comes from a distance, but you find it by going inside and believing. We can all create miracles within our lives, and that is one of the main points in writing this for you. I have no special tricks. Simply open yourself to the possibility that what I tell you is possible and that it is available to every person.

I will refer to God in many ways throughout this story. This is strange for me to refer to God in any sense, as I believed He had abandoned me a very long time ago. But I will refer to a Prime Creator of the Cosmos and the Universe, along with this Earth that we live on every day. I call God the Prime Creator because I want all those to understand that this story is completely unbiased and unprejudiced to any affiliation with any religion, and the God of my understanding is not only an Earthly God, but a Universal God. I will also refer to God as Mother Earth, Gaia, which I came to learn through this journey is the female piece of God. As in everything that is in our Universe, you must balance darkness with Light, peace with war and recognize the two faces of God, the female and the male. We are all pieces of this Prime Creator. We are a part of God.

Two miracles happened in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. My son and I drowned in a flooded marsh and not only lived to tell the tale, but we are better than ever. I was dead for fifteen minutes. I was told by Beings of Light how to save myself and my small son, and I was given a message on how to heal the Earth.

As you are reading this, I ask you with all my heart to open yourself to the possibility of what I say. I feel it is imperative that we unite this world as one planet with one common goal—to establish peace and prosperity for all, not just the select few who were blessed to be in the right place at the right time. We are entering a new phase of Humanity, and what I will tell you in this website, www.firethegrid.org , will help us as a race to assimilate the changes that the future will bring.

I have not had God in my life for forty years. I did, however, as a child, chase the possibility of God. I felt that those people who had undying faith were the lucky ones, and the fact that I believed in nothing made me the loser. As a child I often spoke to God but never felt heard or connected. It took life throwing me into a flooded marsh and drowning me to open my eyes to the reality of how much we are all connected to the Divine Power.

It is showing up now more than ever. You can go on the Internet and find thousands of hits about the next phase of Humanity, the Era of Enlightenment and the time of change. These stories are in our religions and in the stories of the ancient cultures such as the Mayans, the Egyptians and the Native Americans. We have all been waiting for the moment when things would be different, for surely God will do something to save us from ourselves.

Well, there is something in the works, but God is merely directing it through people like me, and it will take the faith of people like you to create the reality. Once again I am getting ahead of myself, but in the messages I am receiving, I am being given a way for us all to participate in a healing of Mother Earth, and a launching of the human race into a time of health, peace and positive change. But for this to happen, you will need to sit in meditation for just one hour of your life.

I once heard in the Star Trek series, resistance is futile. I did not want to be a messenger for God, but when God wishes our awakening, it will happen. So now I will tell you the Truth of what happened to me after a car accident that occurred in November 2002.

My son and I were traveling to a friend’s house for an afternoon of play when disaster hit. My car was swept into a flooded marsh after hydroplaning. The car landed upside down in this boggy marsh and sank to the bottom. I tried to open the car’s windows, but the power windows failed, and we were trapped inside. I spoke with my tiny son who was four at the time and assured him that Mommy would get him out.

The car was filling up quickly with the cold, murky water, and I held my son’s coat tightly in my hand while I waited to be fully submerged. I hoped that I could open the door after the car equalized with water and we would swim out. My final words to my little boy as the water came over his head were, “Hold your breath, honey; Mommy will have us out soon.” I watched him take a large gulp of the remaining air, and the water took him. When I felt the last air pocket escape the car, I tried the door. It wouldn't budge! The other door was equally stuck. I struggled with the doors several times, to no avail. We were trapped and going to die.

At this point I took Evan’s little body and pushed it over the seat, hoping beyond hope that he would find air. As I struggled to free us from this coffin on wheels, I realized I had to breathe. As I drank the deep breath of water into my lungs, the fiery feeling added panic to the moment. I wanted my baby back, and I swung my arms feverishly about in an effort to find his body. I couldn't; and I needed to breathe again.

That is when I heard a voice, a calm majestic voice, directing me to relax. This voice cooed in my ear, reassuring me that all would be well. I was infused with the knowledge that if I fought the water, my rescuers would not be able to revive me when they arrived. The voice said that if I fought the water, I would drown.

The voice continued to give me instructions about what was to happen and that all would be well if I just followed the instructions. I relinquished myself to this voice from beyond and passed quietly into the other side.

While on the other side I saw Beings of Light who once again assured me that my son and I would not only get out of this car, but we would both be fine. They were definite in explaining that I must follow instructions implicitly and not lose faith in their words. I was told to have faith, that I would be Divinely directed, and I was.

It took my rescuers fifteen minutes to pull my lifeless body from that car and another seven minutes of CPR to revive me. As my body bolted upright, I blurted “get my baby out of the car.” Twenty-two minutes had passed. The rescuers jumped back into the freezing bog to retrieve my son, knowing against hope, that he was dead. It took rescuers another five minutes or so to get my boy free from that car. His limp body was transported to the IWK Children’s Hospital, where he was immediately hooked to every machine known to mankind.

The team of emergency doctors and neurologists were waiting for me. They assured me that my sweet little boy was indeed brain dead, and in addition to this, his internal organs were full of blood. He was hemorrhaging throughout his body, and his organs were non-viable. Things were the most bleak I have ever known. That is when the voice came to me again. “Have faith, child.”

The doctors advised me to unplug my baby and let him pass peacefully, for even if a miracle happened and he did live, he would be a vegetable. “No quality of life” is all I remember thinking. Once again I heard the voice, “have faith.” For that moment the doctors agreed to keep Evan on life support, but advised me not to hold out any hope. He had less than one percent chance of living, and then he would continue to be hooked to all these machines for the rest of his life. Remember, I had no God, so I could not even call for guidance.

It was in the quiet of my first moment alone that I was given the instructions. “Follow the instructions implicitly.” Memories of the visions and the voice in the lake flooded back to me. There was someone there with me, I was sure of it, and I decided to listen carefully. I was instructed to rebuild my son’s aura by infusing his little body with the auras of others. Twenty minutes at a time was one of the first rules, for if it was longer, you would drain the aura of the giver.

They instructed me to parade loving people through Evan’s room, each depositing their own energy field into his lifeless body. They were to do this by connecting their flesh to his flesh and allowing their energy to run through his body, and then to give Evan their Gift. If they sang, they were to sing. If they were story tellers, tell a story, and so on. Infuse him with positive energy and your love and your talents, and this will revive him.

I proceeded against hospital protocol to send loving humans into my son’s room every half hour. They then followed the instructions and gave their gift of love. This procession lasted twenty-four hours a day, for three days. Dozens and dozens of people came. They “camped out” every day and every night—loving, trusting souls infusing his lifeless body with fresh energy.

The fact that I was able to convince the hospital to allow this unorthodox behavior to happen was a miracle in itself, but on the third day, after 72 hours of constant vigil, my boy opened his little eyes and recognized me. He was back!!!

The doctors were baffled. They continued to tell me that he would never walk or talk or be a normal child again. However their words this time had no effect on me. The guidance and direction from my spiritual Light Beings had proved to me beyond a shadow of a doubt that he would be fine; after all, my “friend” in the lake had told me so.

Within the first week Evan had recovered all his body functions, and by the end of the second week he was running down the halls to the hospital playroom. This was indeed an incredible miracle. What had I done to deserve such reprieve by our Almighty Creator? I didn't know nor did I care. I wanted to take my son home and be done with the whole nightmare. This is when I realized that I might be done with my Light friends, but they were not done with me.

I continued to hear the voices and be directed with both visions and seeing auras. Needless to say, I was more than a little freaked out. As time passed, I would ask, “What do you want of me?” They would speak of the love for the Universe and how things have gone terribly wrong. Humanity has spiraled out of control and has lost its true connection to God and to this Earth.

They want desperately for me to give the humans of this world a message from “beyond”—that we have inside of us the power to unite this planet as one race with peace and prosperity for all. This power lies inside us all, and when combined with the loving energy of other humans, we can do for this planet what we did for my son. We can revive this Earth and catapult it into healing. With this healing will come a new phase of Humanity. We will have a time of peace and harmony. All it will take is our intention as a united group—and one hour of our time.

So as the voices and visions unraveled, I was given the guidance of how to make this all happen. However it will take many of us on this planet to see to the success of the project. As they told me to rotate the humans through my son’s room, they have told me to unite Humanity from every corner of the globe—not every human, just representatives from every corner. We can do this. We need to unite enough people to fire the Divine Energy System of this planet and jump start it like we did with my boy.

This global project of loving intention is completely possible. Your intention to make it happen can change the outcome of this planet. I will discuss the details of the plan in the next section of this E-mail. I will give you the directions to follow, and you will see how little it will take for you to become an ambassador of Light to our home, Planet Earth. I beseech you to join me when we fire the Earth grid on July 17, 2007, and add your energy to this project.

I promise you, just one hour of your time, and you can help heal this planet and help create peace among all people. My son and I are examples of the power of positive energy and what humans are truly capable of when they unite with the intention of love. Love is the universal language of our world and the world beyond.

Light and Love be with you, and welcome to the next phase of Humanity; be part of the excitement and please join us.

The Light Beings have told me we can stop much of the harmful behavior and destruction on Earth if enough humans decide that they want to become spiritually connected. It is possible to re-form a grid connection between us that will allow us to realign the energy of this planet and with each other.

The Beings of Light have told me that on July 17, 2007, THERE WILL BE A SURGE OF CREATION ENERGY, which will make our reconnection possible. Please read about this in The Plan. There is hope for a miracle!

THE PLAN

For the past two-and-a-half years, Light Beings have been communicating with me frequently. At first, I was very uncomfortable with this, as it was so foreign to what I believed and how I lived. But as time has gone on, I have grown enormously in my faith in our Creator and my belief that there is much more to life than what we generally physically experience. There are other dimensions that are just as real as ours, and there are forces of good that truly want to help us.

The Light Beings have explained to me that we are all connected by Source energy. This connection has a grid-type configuration, so to make things simple, I'm just calling it “the Grid.” There are small grids connected to the large grid. For instance, each species of animal has its own grid. This allows easy communication between animals. I'm sure you've wondered how salmon know when to travel upriver to spawn or how monarch butterflies all know to fly to Mexico or geese to fly in perfect formations. Their connection to their grid allows them to know where to go and when to go. In the Asian tsunami, very few animals died. That is because they were informed through their grids that danger was coming.

Human Beings chose many thousands of years ago to disconnect themselves from a collective grid, so that they could have free will. This severance has allowed us to make our own decisions and be independent. But it has also allowed us to make many mistakes, which have adversely affected this planet. And it has made our direct communication with The Source more difficult. We are now at a turning point when our disconnection could mean the end of the Earth, as it now exists.

This Earth is being harmed by us. This is the section I happily present as the plan to help remedy the situation in which we find ourselves. This is the plan which will allow us to more fully connect to the Earth grid and begin the healing of this planet. Together we will reset Mother Earth with a bio-electric “SURGE OF LOVE” from Humanity.

When we do sit in meditation simultaneously and fire the Grid for one hour, we will unite the globe and connect all the regions of the Earth simultaneously. In the process, we will unite our souls in love, peace, harmony and collective cooperation for a better world for our people, today and in the future.

The plan was given to me by the same Light Beings that guided me while I was drowning in the lake. They have been with me since that time and have been delivering to me information about our world and how we, with love and unification, can pour our loving intention of peace and healing into this Earth. They want to set us on the path for a healthy planet, viable and working now and for the generations that follow. They also want to direct us to the way to enlightenment and union with the Divine.

The Light Beings use the term “fire the grid” when they speak of the energizing of Humanity with Divine Power on July 17, 2007. They say firing the grid will accomplish two things. First, it will pulse healing energy into the center of the Earth and regenerate the core or the heart of the planet. Just as we poured our energy into my dying son, we will individually give the gift of our true intention, the gift of our individuality and the gift of our healing energy. As they explained, my son’s energy field was badly deteriorated, as is the Earth’s.

We must pour some of our living energy into the Earth, and the accumulation of our combined energy will regenerate the Earth. They told me humans are like little lightening rods channeling God’s energy to the planet.

Because we have separated ourselves from our complete connection to The Source by not having a fully functioning Human grid, God’s energy has not been able to easily flow into the Earth. If we choose to come together to rebuild our grid, then the natural flow of energy between us and God, God and the Earth and from person to person will be restored. Do you see what a wonderful gift you will give? This energy will live on eternally with the Earth and its inhabitants—the splendor of the Creator’s intention for us realized in the creation of this new energy field for our planet.

How do we do this you ask? The time has been set for July 17, 2007, at 11:11 A.M. Greenwich Mean Time, that is 4:11 a.m. PDT or 7:11 a.m. EDT. I have been given no indication about why this date and time have been chosen, but this date has been told to me over and over again. I have been asked to bring together as many humans as possible throughout the world, from every corner of the globe, to simply sit and pray or meditate for one hour during that time.

Hopefully, with your help, we will amass a union of humans such as the world has never seen. Loving humans having one intention can heal our planet and awaken our souls to our true purpose—to become One with our Source of Light.

This planned sitting of the people of Earth will demonstrate the love and faith we feel for the goodness of our world and her inhabitants. We are the catalyst to the healing of Earth. A true believer has the power of tenfold, so if you only think you may believe, know that the faith of the others will boost your own faith, and the power will be intensified.

That is why we must all sit at the same time. We will feed each other’s power, strengthening the force of delivery and compounding the energy we send into the core of our home planet. Each and every one of us is important alone, but together we are a very powerful source of creative energy. Remember, we are all a piece of God and that energy of creation lives in all of us.

There are three types of humans today that will bring power to this project. First, we have those of you already practicing in an organized religion. I am not asking you to change any of your faiths or Truths, just know that if the God of your understanding is truly omnipotent, then all things are possible—so why not this? What better use of our human energy and prayer than to heal the Earth and unite mankind with God’s Grace and Goodness.

Then we have those who have been searching outside the organized religions to find a different, more individual way in which to believe and live in the Light of our Creator. We each search for a more individual way in which to know God. These people I refer to as the New Age Lightworkers. These Lightworkers will feel the Truth of these words and will simply know deep inside that the plan of which I speak is indeed a Truth, a clear direction in which you can be of assistance to the Earth.

The fence sitters make up the third type. I call you fence sitters because you truly wish you had faith, but the state of the world has beaten any faith out of you. You long for the loving touch of faith, however you feel that God has abandoned us. Two-and-a-half years ago this was me. I had become hardened to the reality of the world and had no faith that God would ever intervene and save us. I was angry at God for letting us down and delivering us such chaos.

However, I have seen that God has only provided us with that which we desired. We believed we were sinners and not worthy of God’s Love. We were lost to the fact that we are a piece of God and therefore able to participate in our lives with the Creator. Now to all of you who were like me, I issue a challenge: Suspend your skepticism for just one hour of your life, and just sit, alone or with others, to think about the beauty of this planet, to appreciate all that you have and all that you are, and to give hope for an improved future for us all.

This plan involves only one hour from each of us. Our combined energies will work to direct energy to the Earth and to each other. I ask you to choose the way in which you deliver your intention. For those of you that pray, then pray for the hour asking for the faith and power to accomplish this tremendous task. Those of you who meditate, meditate and see the intention of your thoughts swirling deep inside our Earth, delivering the love and healing.

Those of you who have no ritual of faith may simply develop one that works for you. You may sit quietly and repeat a phrase of your intention, such as “I offer you my energy to heal this world and its people.” Any positive words of hope, love and desire for change will manifest these thoughts as reality— our new reality.

If possible, gather with others during this hour. I have found that the intensity of my meditation heightens when I am sharing the experience with other people.

As we enter a time of more loving energy, the frequencies of our Earth will heighten. We need only open ourselves to this possibility to feel the gift. You are a part of God entitled to all the wonder and splendor of the Creator’s Earthly gifts.

This project is going to work. Remember this process brought back a dying boy, and I have been promised it will work on a global scale if we can find the humans to participate.

In the Bible, it is said that they could not save Sodom and Gomorrah for want of ten good people. We are being offered the opportunity to save ourselves by offering only an hour of our lives. We can call out to the Universe that Earth has good people here. We can show the Divine Creator that there are enough of us here who truly want to evolve and become what we were intended to be.

I have been told that help is being sent to us. We can help create a miracle. My son is now running out in the yard, delighting in his life. A miracle saved him.

This gift of Divine energy, and our willingness to help make it happen, will save us all. Please join us on July 17, 2007, at 11:11 A.M. Greenwich Mean Time, to bring the power of God’s Love to us all. In choosing to participate, you will be defining your intentions to the Universe and you will also be defined as a Human who desires positive change for this planet.

Be defined and ignite a beacon of Light in your soul, so that we may be recognized by the world, the Universe and each other.

Shelley Yates

A Note from Lisa Nichols

2007-03-25T04:18:00.001-07:00

Dear Carroll Wright,

Are you committed to your possibility...
or your past?

If you want to attract a fulfilling love relationship into your life, you better commit to possibility.

So often people looking for love haven't readied themselves for the prospect. Women waiting for "Mr. Right" to show up haven't become "Mrs. Right" yet. Men searching for their "dream woman" might not be so dreamy themselves.

Remember, the Law of Attraction states "like attracts like." You can't expect someone to come in and make you right, fix you up, and make you whole.

You have to be the person you want to
attract. You have to be the person you want to date, the person you want to spend the rest of your life with.

If you're already in a committed relationship or married, listen up, too, because this is important. Last week we talked about how critical it is to express gratitude for everything in your life -- even your difficult relationships. Remember? "I am grateful for the opportunity to create a better relationship with my spouse."

A big part of creating a better relationship or attracting a perfect mate is making yourself ready for love. That work requires owning your past, the good and the bad, dealing with it, being grateful for it, and moving on to your possibility.

Getting ready for love is an active process that comes with laughter, comes with confrontation, comes with tears, comes with surrender, comes with prayer, comes with belief, comes with forgiveness... it comes with everything.

Be grateful for every experience you've come through, and those are key words -- come through -- because they've helped to make you the person you are today.

That's the work. That's when the universe says, "Oh, hey, Lisa is over there and she's making a shift. She's changing the way she's relating to her life. Okay, let's get ready, because something is about to happen. In a moment she is going to make a bold, outrageous request, and she's ready, because she finally believes she is worthy of healthy, long-term, God-like love."

Your job is to be whole and complete in you so that when you're ready, the universe is sure to say, "Here you go. Here is everything you want!"

So go and do the work -- right now. Stay committed to your possibility.

I love you,

Lisa Nichols

Gratitude

2007-03-05T02:40:00.000-08:00

Get more in life by being grateful - how gratitude (and my gratitude rock) are changing my life. I know Oprah talked about the Secret recently has always talked about having a gratitude journal. I suck at journaling. I could never stick to it. But I have found something simple to help me remember to be grateful. It’s called a gratitude rock.

In January I attended Marica Weider’s Dream Coach program and one of the things she gave us was our own gratitude rock. If you have watched the Secret, they talk about a gratitude rock.

Here’s the story.

A man in the US had a visitor from Africa, his son was very sick. He gave the man a special gift called a gratitude rock and told him to everyday hold onto the rock and think about all he has to be grateful for. And within a few weeks, an amazing thing happened. The man’s son got better!

Now this African man lived in a very poor village. And when he told of the miracles that happened because of his gratitude rock and by taking time to be grateful everyday, the whole village went to find their own gratitude rocks. They started a gratitude rock business and now the whole town is doing well financially. All of this change happened because of a positive change in focus. Instead of looking at their problems, they focused on what they had. And that alone started transforming their whole life.

I believe that we get more of what we focus on in life. I am living proof that the power of gratitude works. My husband lost his job a week ago and because we focused on our blessings and were positive, not only does he already have a new job, but it’s for more money than he was making before.

I don’t know what your beliefs are, whether you pray to Buddha, God, the Universe etc, but if you change your mindset to focus on being thankful for what you have, the Law of Attraction helps you attract more abundance in your life.

To me, it’s like when you give your kid a new toy and they are so grateful. If your child has that great attitude, appreciates the gift, and takes care of it, doesn’t it makes you want to give them more? Well, I see God (or the Universe) as equally abundant. When we are grateful for what we have, take care of it, use our resources wisely, we are given more.

Will you join me in 30 days of gratitude? I’m going be grateful every morning for 30 days. Let’s all do it together and see what kind of transformation comes in our lives.

Slave or Master?

2006-10-01T03:33:00.000-07:00

Every Sunday morning on the plantation all of the slaves gathered at the home of the old deacon for singing, prayer and scripture reading. After an hour of informal sharing, they had a closing ritual. Everyone stood in a circle holding hands. The old deacon walked around inside the circle, looked in each person’s eyes and said “Now remember, children, this week. You ain’t no nigger, you ain’t no slave, you is a child of God. Serve with gladness!”

On Making a Difference

2006-09-28T03:46:00.000-07:00

"There are two types of people who will tell you that you cannot make a difference in this world: Those who are afraid to try themselves, and those who are afraid that you will succeed." -- Ray Goforth

The Young Man and the Starfish
Author Unknown

Once upon a time there was a wise man who used to go to the ocean to do his journal writing. He had a habit of walking on the beach before he began his work.

One day he was walking along the shore. As he looked down the beach, he saw a human figure moving like a dancer. He smiled to himself to think of someone who would dance to the day. So he began to walk faster to catch up.

As he got closer, he saw that it was a young man and the young man wasn't dancing, but instead he was reaching down to the shore, picking up something and very gently throwing it into the ocean.

As he got closer he called out, "Good morning! What are you doing?"

The young man paused, looked up and replied, "Throwing starfish in the ocean."

"I guess I should have asked, why are you throwing starfish in the ocean?"

"The sun is up, and the tide is going out. And if I don't throw them in they'll die."

"But, young man, don't you realize that there are miles and miles of beach, and starfish all along it. You can't possibly make a difference!"

The young man listened politely. Then bent down, picked up another starfish and threw it into the sea, past the breaking waves and said, "It made a difference for that one."

There is something very special in each and every one of us.
We have all been gifted with the ability to make a difference. And if we can become aware of that gift, we gain, through the strength of our visions, the power to shape the future. We must each find our starfish. And if we throw our stars wisely and well, the world will be blessed.

On Making a Difference

2006-09-28T03:40:00.003-07:00

On Making a Difference

2006-09-28T03:40:00.002-07:00

On Making a Difference

2006-09-28T03:40:00.001-07:00

On Making a Difference

2006-09-28T03:40:00.000-07:00

Anger in a Homeless Shelter

2006-09-04T16:37:00.000-07:00

By Baerbel Froehlin, I brought EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) into a homeless shelter and taught the women there to use EFT for anger management. I stressed the use of emphatic language (yelling) while doing EFT. Yelling the EFT phrases can be most useful in these circumstances.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

By Baerbel Froehlin

I was invited into the local homeless shelter, to introduce EFT to a group of women there. It was quite an experience, something I’d like to share.

On my way to the homeless shelter I started to think about how I would best start out to get the attention of those women. They all live under extreme conditions; all are in need of shelter, food and many other things that are required to survive. When I got into the room and looked around, I could sense the abuse many had suffered. Latent fear and aggression were overpowering in the room. So I started out with:

Even though I am angry….. I am okay
Even though I’m filled with it …. I am okay
Even though this anger takes my breath away…. I accept myself the way I am

Without hesitation everybody followed, some quietly, most of them looked as if I had suddenly awakened them, as they went along. Personally, I like to yell when I talk about being angry. It feels very freeing to me, and the results are always powerful and quick. So everybody in the room started to yell with me:

I am soo angry….life is unfair….. I am angry …. very angry …. this anger needs to get out …. but I’m okay anyway

I want it to leave….. I want to breathe easy again … this anger is strangling me …. I feel like yelling and screaming …. like kicking and hissing ….. I’m sooo full of anger …. takes my breath away …..hard to imagine I’ll be better soon… but I am okay anyway

Even though this anger needs to get out now ….. it’s heavy and pressing me down … still takes my breath away ….takes up too much space inside… life is so unfair …. and I feel like I can’t do a thing…. to get out of this situation …. out of this mess …. feels hopeless …. and very sad…. but I accept myself and my anger totally and completely

As we went through several rounds I reminded them at each tapping point to “stop, breathe and stay with your issue. “
We went on with:

Even though I am still angry….. I now choose to be open to believe… that good things can happen to me …. and probably will …. because I can calm down now …. at least some …

I choose to understand … that what I am sending out … is what I am getting back ….
I choose to remember this …. at least once in a while ….
That’s why I choose to calm down now…. to breathe deeply …and relax a little …. and imagine myself smiling …. in a good way … and people will smile back to me …. that makes me feel good … accepted … and part of life out there….

The women looked at each other; some had bright, happy smiles, some smiled more timidly.

I choose to find …. that smiling makes me feel good …. makes me look good …. I like myself …. I like when others smile back to me ….

I choose to feel accepted as the person I am …. that feels good …. and I notice …. I can breathe and feel calm and relaxed …. I feel good …. I am well …. I feel motivated …. I can do things … for myself and others …. and that feels good ….

All is well with me!

When asked for their 0-10 intensity numbers (which had been very high in all cases), many of them had a two, several a zero. They felt excited and started asking a lot of questions. When it was time for me to leave, the women already talked about using it daily from now on, to keep the anger under control. My short demonstration had accomplished what I had wanted so badly for all of them: to give them back control, at least some!

And don’t you always love it when that happens? I do for sure.

The Elderly Caretaker

2006-08-28T03:49:00.000-07:00

The elderly caretaker of a peaceful, lonely cemetery received a check every month from a woman, an invalid in a hospital in a nearby city. The check was to buy fresh flowers for the grave of her son, who had been killed in an automobile accident a couple of years before. One day a car drove into the cemetery and stopped in front of the caretaker's ivy-covered administration building. A man was driving the car. In the back seat sat an elderly lady, pale as death, her eyes half-closed.

"The lady is too ill to walk," the driver told the caretaker. "Would you mind coming with us to her son's grave…she has a favor to ask of you. You see, she is dying, and she has asked me, as an old family friend, to bring her out here for one last look at her son's grave."

"Is this Mrs. Wilson?" the caretaker asked. The man nodded. "Yes, I know who she is. She's the one who has been sending a check every month to put flowers on her son's grave." The caretaker followed the man to the car and got in beside the woman. She was frail and obviously near death. But there was something else about her face, the caretaker noted…the eyes dark and sullen, hiding some deep, long-lasting hurt.

"I am Mrs. Wilson," she whispered. "Every month for the past two years--" "Yes, I know. I have attended to it, just as you asked." "I have come here today," she went on, "because the doctors tell me I have only a few weeks left. I shall not be sorry to go. There is nothing left to live for. But before I die, I wanted to come here for one last took and to make arrangements with you to keep on placing flowers on my son's grave."

She seemed exhausted…the effort to speak sapping her strength. The car made its way down a narrow, gravel road to the grave. When they reached the grave, the woman, with what appeared to be great effort, raised herself slightly and gazed out the window at her son's tombstone. There was no sound during the moments that followed…only the chirping of the birds in the tall, old trees scattered among the graves.

Finally, the caretaker spoke. "You know, Ma'am, I was always sorry you kept sending the money for the flowers."

The woman seemed at first not to hear. Then slowly she turned toward him. "Sorry?" she whispered. "Do you realize what you are saying…my son..."

"Yes, I know," he said gently. "But, you see, I belong to a church group that every week visits hospitals, asylums, prisons. There are live people in those places who need cheering up, and most of them love flowers…they can see them and smell them. That grave-' he said, "over there-there's no one living, no one to see and smell the beauty of the flowers..." he looked away, his voice trailing off.

The woman did not answer, but just kept staring at the grave of her son. After what seemed like hours, she lifted her hand and the man drove them back to the caretaker's building. He got out and without a word they drove off. I've offended her, he thought. I shouldn't have said what I did.

Some months later, however, he was astonished to have another visit from the woman. This time there was no driver. She was driving the car herself! The caretaker could hardly believe his eyes.

"You were right," she told him, "about the flowers. That’s why there have been no more checks. After I got back to the hospital, I couldn't get your words out of my mind. So I started buying flowers for the others in the hospital who didn't have any. It gave me such a feeling of joy to see how much they enjoyed them…and from a total stranger. It made them happy, but more than that, it made me happy."

"The doctors don't know," she went on, "what is suddenly making me well, but I do!"

Author unknown

Unexpected Strength!

2006-08-20T03:40:00.000-07:00

There are two ways of exerting one's strength: one is pushing down, the other is pulling up. --Booker T. Washington

Fact of the Day:
Tom Boyle and his wife were leaving a shopping center when they saw a young man pinned underneath a car and shrieking for help. "As soon as I get to the car, the boy is just screaming his head off, and I could tell he was in a lot of pain," Boyle said. His fatherly instincts kicked in, and adrenalin rushing, Boyle did the only thing he could do: he lifted the car! "As I was lifting the front end of the car off of him, he was just saying, 'Mister, mister, higher, higher.'" Boyle then held the boy until paramedics arrived. "All I could think is, what if that was my son," he said. "I'd want someone to do the same for him, to take the time and rub his head and make him feel good until help arrived." [ more ]

Be The Change:
Challenge assumptions you may have about your own strength in the face of someone's need.

Charity Focus

A Slower/Better Mindset

2006-08-13T09:56:00.000-07:00

An unhurried sense of time is in itself a form of wealth. --Bonnie Friedman

We can often find ourselves living for the moment instead of in it. Prompted by this fast (and getting faster) lifestyle of our world, a handful of key high-tech thinkers from San Francisco recently created the Long Now Foundation to provide a counterpoint to today's "faster/cheaper" mind set and promote "slower/better" thinking. Read this essay by a founding member of Long Now on The Ten Thousand Year Clock and how it encourages long-term thinking.

Be The Change:
Check out the Ten Thousand Year Clock, which ticks only once a year, with a hand that advances only once a century, and which strikes only on the millennium!

A Novel Invention

2006-07-23T03:07:00.000-07:00

In the rural villages across South Africa, some 5 million people don't have access to clean drinking water. To get a sense of the severity of the water scarcity there, you have to go back to the early 1800s when Europeans and others started colonizing the country.

When these settlers arrived, they brought with them nonnative seeds and plants with the idea that they would be able to re-create the thick forests and vegetation of their homeland.

Two hundred years on, the pines and eucalyptus trees, along with 161 other invasive plants introduced to the country, are soaking up billions of gallons of water that used to flow into mountain streams and support wetlands and other precious arteries in this largely arid country. Add to that the needs of South Africa's growing population and you have a situation in which the competition for water has become fierce.

Which brings us in a roundabout way (no pun intended) to this week's Rough Cut -- reporter Amy Costello's surprisingly upbeat tale about a canny entrepreneur who decided to tackle South Africa's water woes in his own novel and enterprising way.

Trevor Field, a retired advertising executive, had done well in life and wanted to give back to his community. He noticed that in many rural villages around the eastern Cape, the burden of collecting water fell mainly to the women and girls of the household. Each morning, he'd see them set off to the nearest borehole to collect water. They used leaky and often contaminated hand-pumps to collect the water, then they carried it back through the bush in buckets weighing 40 pounds. It was exhausting and time-consuming work.

"The amount of time these women are burning up collecting water, they could be at home looking after their kids, teaching their kids, being loving mothers," Field tells Costello. He knew there had to be a better solution.

Field then teamed up with an inventor and came up with the "play pump" -- a children's merry-go-round that pumps clean, safe drinking water from a deep borehole every time the children start to spin. Soup to nuts, the whole operation takes a few hours to install and costs around $7,000. Field's idea proved so inventive, so cost-efficient and so much fun for the kids that World Bank recognized it as one of the best new grassroots ideas.

In true ad-man style, Field's next idea was to use the play pump's water towers as makeshift billboards, selling ad space to help pay for the upkeep. He reserves a spot for the national loveLife campaign, which helps educate children about HIV and AIDS. "We've got to get the message through to them before they become sexually active," he says. "It seems to be working."

In the film, Costello and producer/photographer Cassandra Herrman drive out to a small village where the taps have been dry for a week. There, a crew sets to work installing a play pump near a children's play area, boring 40 meters down until they hit the fresh water table below. As soon as the last colorful piece of the puzzle is in place, dozens of children show up to play -- much to Field's delight -- pumping cool, clean water to the surface as they spin.

The indefatigable entrepreneur wants to build thousands of these pumps to help water-stressed communities across South Africa, then expand to other African countries. He says, "It would make a major difference to the children, and that's where our passion lies."

Jackie Bennion

One Creative Idea Can Lead to Another

2006-07-20T04:19:00.000-07:00

Taking a paper clip and turning it into a house sounds like a cheesy magic trick or a phony instance of resourcefulness on the 1980s TV show "MacGyver."

Kyle MacDonald, however, has pulled it off.

One year ago, the 26-year-old blogger from Montreal set out to barter one red paper clip for something and that thing for something else, over and over again until he had a house. (Watch how a snow globe and Corbin Bernsen led to house -- 1:49)

On Wednesday the quest is ending as envisioned: MacDonald is due to become the proud owner of a three-bedroom, 1,100-square-foot home provided by the town of Kipling, Saskatchewan. MacDonald and his girlfriend, Dominique Dupuis, expect to move there in early September.

"This is such a cool community project. It feels right," MacDonald said. "And now that I think about it, I can't believe that another small town didn't think of it. It will literally put them on the map."

What's in it for the town? The answer requires a quick MacDonald recap, featuring a menagerie of friendly folks, radio talk show hosts and aging celebrities, all bound together by the Internet.

It began when MacDonald, an aspiring writer, doer of odd jobs and apartment dweller, advertised in the barter section of the Craigslist Web site that he wanted something bigger or better for one red paper clip. He traded it for a fish-shaped pen, and posted on Craigslist again and again.

Roaming Canada and the United States, he exchanged the pen for a ceramic knob, and in turn: a camping stove, a generator, a beer keg and Budweiser sign, a snowmobile, a trip to the Canadian Rockies, a supply truck and a recording contract. Next, in April, he got himself really close, obtaining a year's rent in Phoenix.

His adventure became an Internet blockbuster. He did Canadian and Japanese TV and "Good Morning America." He made dozens of local radio appearances -- one of which, in Los Angeles, was heard by a man who ended up as a pivotal figure.

That man is Corbin Bernsen. You may remember him from his roles in "L.A. Law" and "Major League."

Hip to the publicity-generating machine that is Kyle MacDonald, Bernsen contacted him to say he was writing and directing a movie and would offer a paid speaking role as an item available for trade.

MacDonald was thrilled. But he feared the integrity of his journey would be compromised if he accepted the role without trading Bernsen something he really could use. Say what you want about "Major League 3," but Bernsen has done well enough that he doesn't need a free apartment in Phoenix.

So MacDonald kept Bernsen's offer off his blog, but plowed ahead with an eye to finding something Bernsen would legitimately want.

Seemingly disregarding good economic sense, MacDonald traded the year's rent for an afternoon with rocker Alice Cooper. (MacDonald's response: "Alice Cooper is a gold mine of awesomeness and fun.") Then in a move that really confused his blog readers, MacDonald bartered time with Cooper for a snow globe depicting the band Kiss.

Re-enter Corbin Bernsen.

You see, since the days when he'd get free stuff on promotional tours for "L.A. Law," Bernsen has amassed a collection of 6,500 snow globes. "One off, they look sort of goofy," Bernsen said. "Put them all together and they sort of look like pop art."

So MacDonald gave Bernsen the Kiss model and encouraged his blog readers to send the actor even more globes in exchange for autographed pictures.

All this delighted the elders in Kipling, a town of 1,140 believed to have been named in honor of author Rudyard Kipling.

Like many rural towns, Kipling is eager to stave off the perils of dwindling population by attracting new businesses, tourism and above all, attention. When the local development coordinator, Bert Roach, heard about MacDonald's odyssey, he suggested at the next council meeting that Kipling lure him.

Quickly the town purchased an unoccupied rental house on Main Street and offered it to MacDonald. Roach won't disclose the price because MacDonald says he doesn't want to know. But Roach says it was well under the going rate in Kipling, which is about $50,000 Canadian (U.S. $45,000).

The town also pledged to put a giant red paper clip at a highway rest stop and hold an "American Idol"-style competition for the movie role. Participants will have to make a donation to the town's parks department and a charity.

When MacDonald agreed last week, "I was holding back tears, I was so bloody happy," Roach said. "It's going to be such a great project for our community."

Bernsen says that if the right person emerges in the talent show, he'd be willing to cast him or her as a lead. "Maybe a career is going to get started. Maybe it's going to be huge. Maybe that's the magic of Kyle."

MacDonald doesn't expect to live in Kipling forever. But he says he'll make it home at least while he settles down to write a book.

Of course, even if the house came free, he'll have the usual homeowner headaches: taxes, utilities, upkeep. It should come as no surprise that MacDonald isn't worried.

"I'll figure something out," he said. "I can get a job. There's three grocery stores in town."

Charity Focus

Decisions

2006-07-15T04:04:00.000-07:00

http://www.consciousone.com/friend/index.cfm?PID=330

Don't miss this one either, Dr. Joe

Healing With Angels

2006-07-15T03:45:00.000-07:00

http://www.consciousone.com/friend/index.cfm?PID=151

I hope you don't miss this one, Dr. Joe

When Travel Is the Best Medicine

2006-07-07T03:08:00.000-07:00

By MICHAEL MCCOLLY
WHEN I was a boy, on rainy days at school when we couldn't go outside for recess, we played a game in which we took turns twirling the globe. We would close our eyes and stab our fingers onto our miniature fifth grade earth, halting the revolutions to find where fate had landed us. We mostly found ourselves in the sea or behind enemy lines in the vastness of the Soviet Union or in the nowhere worlds our Midwestern mouths couldn't pronounce. The winner was the one closest to some place we all knew -- the paradises of our farm town America, California and Hawaii.

Secretly, however, some of us longed for the other worlds made magical in National Geographic, the smooth savannas of Africa, the solitary dots of the Indonesian Archipelago, the bumpy surfaces of Tibet and Peru. We wanted to be the ones at the end of the earth as far away from the cold February Indiana rain as our 12-year-old imaginations would allow.

Now again I am looking at maps and mentally twirling the globe as I set out for distant lands. I live out of the proverbial suitcase. I have no furniture, no bed. Boxes of books clutter my parents' garage, and stuff that only months ago had a purpose has been jettisoned to the Salvation Army. The journey that I have embarked on isn't so much one of distance, though it will ultimately cover four continents. This journey also has to do with the body and what is in it, namely a virus that has crossed every border and floated onto every shore -- the infamous and pernicious virus that causes AIDS.

Contracting H.I.V. in 1995 has not kept me at home. In fact it has inspired just the opposite: a desire for the remote, the otherworldly, and above all the meditative solitude of nature.

Travel has become my antidote: the farther I go the more aware I become of what has kept me alive -- my desire to be in and of the world. Since my infection, I've traveled to Mexico twice, Europe, India, Asia and Africa, not to mention countless trips around the United States to commune with friends, family and nature. Travel brings us back into the world, back into our bodies, and -- quite literally for me -- back to life.

Traveling with H.I.V. or other chronic conditions need not be more complicated than any other limitation traveling presents. You learn, as travelers do, to take calculated risks, prepare yourself and know your body and your limits. But most of all, you can never let fear have the final say in where and how you travel. I think more than anything else I travel to sharpen my wits against fear; like a martial artist I need to keep my form. With H.I.V. it is easy to find reasons you can't do this or that. Besides this virus, we carry with us a built-in fear. In fact, if we aren't vigilant we become the fear itself, embodying unconsciously the worst nightmares of those around us. If I had listened to the fears of people I know or read about, I'm certain I wouldn't be alive today -- maybe breathing, but not alive. There's a difference.

As I prepare for the second leg of my yearlong series of trips to write about how others around the world are learning to survive this disease, I still have moments of panic. But in my experience no trip is worth taking if it doesn't provoke some anxiety and a few bad dreams. Friends wondered why, after all I'd been through, I wanted to travel alone for three months in Asia last spring and then to parts of rural Africa. ''Your health is good, don't jeopardize it.''

I recalled the same reactions when I'd decided to go to India the year after I learned of my diagnosis. Pumped up with the first generation of cocktail drugs, I felt a certain invincibility, and when friends I practiced yoga with mentioned they were going to India to study with the Ashtanga guru Pattabhi Jois in Mysore, I believed I was healthy enough to follow. Then came the doubts and the worry, the confused faces from doctors and friends, ''India? Are you serious?''

THE day came when I had to buy my ticket, the moment when a trip moves out of the mind and onto the calendar. I recall pulling up outside the travel agency along Devon Avenue in Chicago's Indian neighborhood; for half an hour I went through the mental debate one more time. That night I couldn't sleep. I was haunted by images of crowded Indian hospitals, empty hotel rooms with creaking, mesmerizing ceiling fans churning the dead air over my supine body, airline attendants rolling me to the back of a plane in a wheelchair with an IV bag dangling over my head. But not going would have been worse -- giving in to the fear that inevitably comes with confronting the limitations of this life. Yet I would have to experience those limits in order to know that freedom has nothing to do with the physical world.

That night I could feel the claustrophobia of fear, the collapsing of the body in on itself. My bedroom became smaller and smaller as I imagined what my life would be like if I took away the possibility of traveling. And so before I left, I kept away from the naysayers. And a few weeks later I found myself clutching my bag with my six bottles of pills, standing on a train platform in Bangalore completely exhausted and confused as to what track led where. A student saw the panic in my eyes and took me by the hand into the train and found us a seat. ''I'm going to Mysore. This train is going to Mysore, right?'' He rolled his head from side to side as south Indians do, meaning yes, instead of what I was sure meant no. But then he smiled and offered his reassurance, ''Going to Mysore, I will take you.''

And so one by one, people led me along my travels as if all those I met, Indians and Westerners alike, had been sent by Vishnu himself to protect and guide me.

Sure, I got sick. Who travels in India for over a month and doesn't? I survived. I returned reanimated, not much better at my yoga practice but transformed. Strangely, I came out believing that this virus could liberate me.

When you travel, you get sick, you get lost, depressed and ripped off, and your schedule is routinely upended. There are days when you awake and you have no idea where you are or where you might end up that day, and then after a cup of something that is said to be coffee, you remember that you are exactly where you want to be -- traveling.

MICHAEL McCOLLY is writing a memoir of his travels to six countries affected by H.I.V. and AIDS.

A Pact which Came True

2006-07-06T04:13:00.000-07:00

Thirteen years ago three African-American teenagers made a pact to raise themselves out of their tough inner-city neighborhood in New Jersey and become doctors -- together. Like their peers, they came from poor, single-parent homes in urban neighborhoods where survival, not scholastic success, was the priority. Today Samson, George and Remeck have each overcome wide-ranging obstacles to fulfill their shared dream -- and the effect on their communities has been tremendous. “The Pact” is the best-selling book authored by these three men, telling their stories of courage, temptation, and, ultimately, triumph. Today these young men continue to speak out on life's challenges and how to face them, inspiring thousands of teachers, parents and students from difficult backgrounds to look at their own potential with new eyes.

Charity Focus

"A lost key in a swarm of mosquitoes"

2006-07-06T04:08:00.000-07:00

I've got to tell you about my recent short vacation to South Padre Island over last 4th of July weekend. I lost the key to our Suburban at a water park riding the rapids in an inner tube with my family. All money and family belongings were in the car and I had no spare key.

I sent my wife and kids back to the hotel while I sat barefooted in a swim suit on the hood of my truck swatting mosquitoes and waiting for AAA. A small truck drove up from the water park and asked if I needed help. I shut him down by saying, "No. I'm fine. Waiting for AAA."

Basically, I was saying go away, God will save me!

God sent me help and I turned it away.So I sat alone and waited 400 miles from home in a deserted parking lot swarming with mosquitoes. I called AAA again and they said the guy came back because someone had called saying they found the key. I was livid. I can't even repeat the language I used. How dare they interfere with my orders! I was in control, didn't they know that?

I was beyond frustration. First I never lose things. I had secured the key in my trunks. Nobody had told AAA to turn around and go home. Why was this happening? And did I mention all the mosquitoes? Alone in that deserted parking I finally realized that I had no control over this situation. Finally, I prayed out loud for God's help. I gave over my control to Him and I went through some verbal Now or Never and forgiveness matters and I really detached.

That detachment was like nothing I've known before.

Just then that same small truck came back. I shouted for the truck, realizing it had to be assistance from God. The driver roared over and this time I asked if they'd found a Chevy truck key. He gave me insect repellant and went back to see about the key. He returned in a matter of minutes with the key. At almost exactly the same time the AAA guy drove up. As well as a cab delivering my wife and kids.
You talk about letting go! I felt I turned everything over to God and the single key which I had "secured" in my swimsuit pocket came back to me! Miraculously, the key found me. People were sent to my assistance and the key came back to me.

That experience changed my life. It was a big spiritual convergence and confirmation of the Universe coming to my assistance.

I'm so thankful it happened.

Dan ....

Seven Lives

2006-07-04T03:45:00.000-07:00

It made headlines, and broke hearts worldwide. Highway robbers shot Nicholas Green, a freckle-faced, 7 year-old from California holidaying in Italy. He died two days later. The story might have ended with that tragedy, but his parents Reg and Maggie Green made a very different decision, and one that had a dramatic impact. They donated their son's organs to seven Italians -- among them a mother who had never seen her baby's face; a diabetic who had been repeatedly in comas; and a boy of 15, wasting away with a heart disease. Today all seven are alive, healthy and leading full lives. The Greens' act of compassion in the midst of devastating circumstances led to an unexpected outpouring of love and support from around the world, and something now called "The Nicholas Effect" -- thanks to which organ donations in Italy alone have nearly tripled.

Charity Focus

Can You Restore?

2006-07-03T03:24:00.000-07:00

Once there was a very violent man where Buddha lived. This man, Angulimala, had vowed to kill one thousand people. As a momento, and as a count of his victims, he severed an index finger from each victim and made a garland of fingers to wear around his neck. After his 999th kill, he fell pray to a slump . Nobody approached near enough for him to claim his thousandth victim. Ignoring all warnings and pleadings, Buddha approached Angulimala, which surprised Angulimala that Buddha came voluntarily. What kind of a man was this?

“Well, I’ll grant you one wish for your bravery,” Angulimala offered magnanimously.

Buddha requested that he chop off a branch from a nearby tree. Whack, it was done!

Why did you waste your wish?” asked Angulimala

“Will you grant me a second request, a dying man’s request?” Buddha asked humbly.

“All right, what is it?”

“Would you restore that fallen branch to the tree?” asked Buddha with perfect equanimity.

“I can’t do that!” exclaimed Angulimala startled.

“How can you destroy something without knowing how to create? how to restore? how to rejoin? It is said that the encounter so moved Angulimala that he became enlightened.

But the question that Buddha asked two-and-a-half-thousand years ago remains relevant today. Suppose we ask our scientists who use their creativity to invent weapons of destruction, the same question. How do you suppose they will answer?

And how do we answer? Do we use our creativity for ego gratification or for enlightenment? For criticism or for upliftment?

Amit Gaswami

Tame Your Tiger

2006-07-02T03:10:00.001-07:00

Thirty years ago he was diagnosed with leukemia. Convinced that he had just a short time to live he made the decision to become a Buddhist monk. Today Abbot Archan Poosit is not just alive -- he is saving lives -- the lives of over a dozen tigers in the jungles of Thailand. He and his monastery are the caretakers of 18 tigers that were brought to him after being abused by poachers. They took them in with no formal training in wildlife care -- except that of a way of being that teaches love and kindness to all beings. Today they have established a unique relationship of mutual trust with the tigers that continues to amaze and delight the rest of the world!

A Lost Key in a Swarm of Mosquitos

2006-07-01T04:07:00.000-07:00

I've got to tell you about my recent short vacation to South Padre Island over 4th of July weekend.I lost the key to our Suburban at a water park riding the rapids in an inner tube with my family. All money and family belongings in the car. No spare key.

I sent my wife and kids back to the hotel while I sat barefooted in a swim suit on the hood of my truck swatting mosquitoes and waiting for AAA. A small truck drove up from the water park and asked if I needed help. I shut him down by saying, "No. I'm fine. Waiting for AAA."

Basically, I was saying go away, God will save me!

God sent me help and I turned it away. So I sat alone and waited 400 miles from home in a deserted parking lot swarming with mosquitoes. I called AAA again and they said the guy came back because someone had called saying they found the key. I was livid. I can't even repeat the language I used. How dare they interfere with my orders! I was in control, didn't they know that?

I was beyond frustration. First I never lose things. I had secured the key in my trunks. Nobody had called AAA to turn around and go home. Why was this happening? And did I mention all the mosquitoes?

Alone in that deserted parking I finally realized that I had no control over this situation. Finally, I prayed out loud for God's help. I gave over my control to Him and I went through some verbal Now or Never and forgiveness matters and I really detached.

That detachment was like nothing I've known before.

Just then that same small truck came back. I shouted at the truck, realizing it had to be assistance from God -like the man in the flood. The driver roared over and this time I asked if they'd found a Chevy truck key. He gave me insect repellant and went back to see about the key. He returned in a matter of minutes with the key. At almost exactly the same time the AAA guy drove up. As well as a cab delivering my wife and kids.

You talk about letting go! I felt I turned everything over to God and the single key which I had "secured" in my swimsuit pocket came back to me! Miraculously, the key found me. People were sent to my assistance and the key came back to me.

That experience changed my life. It was a big spiritual convergence and confirmation of the Universe coming to my assistance.

I'm so thankful it happened.

Dan ....

A Child Shall Teach You

2006-06-30T04:02:00.000-07:00

One day, my four-year-old son, Sam, told me that he had seen his baby-sitter crying because she had broken up with her boyfriend.

"She was sad," Sam explained to me.

Then he sat back in his car seat and sighed. "I've never been sad," he said, dreamily, "Not ever." It was true. Sam's life was happy in no small part because of his special relationship with my father.

Last spring my father died, and everything changed for us. Pa Hood was more than just a grandfather to Sam. As Sam eagerly told everyone, they were best buddies. Long before my father became ill, Sam and I watched the movie Anne of Green Gables. In the scene when Anne wished aloud for a bosom friend, Sam sat straight up. "That's me and Pa," he declared. "Bosom friends forever and ever." My father described their relationship the same way.

When I went out of town to teach one night a week, it was Pa in his red picku p truck who met Sam at school and brought him back to his house, where they played pirates and knights and Robin Hood. They even dressed alike: pocket T-shirts, baseball caps, and jeans. Sam had over nights with Pa, where they'd cuddle until late at night and giggle when my mother ordered them to be quiet and go to sleep. The next morning they'd indulge in sugary cereals and cartoons, treats forbidden at home. They had special restaurants they frequented, playgrounds where they were regulars, and toy stores where Pa allowed Sam to race up and down the aisles on motorized cars.

When I'd arrive to take Sam home, he always cried. "Pa, I love you. I miss you already!" He memorized my father's phone number when he was 2 and called him every morning and every night. "Pa," Sam would ask, clutching the phone, "can I call you ten hundred more times?" Pa always said yes, and then answered the phone each time with equal delight.

In the months that my father was in the hospital with lung cancer, I worried about how Sam would react to Pa's condition the bruises, from needles, the oxygen tubes, his weakened body. When I explained to Sam that seeing Pa so sick might scare him, Sam was surprised. "He's my Pa," he said. "He could never scare me." And he never did. Sam would walk into the hospital room and climb right into bed with my father, undaunted by the changes in Pa's appearance or in the increasing amount of medical apparatus he acquired every day. I watched adults approach the bedside with great trepidation, unsure of what to say or do. But Sam seemed to know exactly what was right: hugs and jokes, just as always. "Are you coming home soon?" he'd ask. "I'm trying," Pa would tell him.

Since my father's death, I have kept my overwhelming sadness at bay. When well-meaning people approach me to ask how I'm doing, their brows furrowed in sympathy, I give them a short answer and swiftly change the subject. I'd rather not confront the questions and the feelings that my dad's death has raised. But Sam is different. He thinks that wondering aloud and sorting out together is the best way to understand.

"So," he says, settling into his car seat, "Pa's in space, right?" Or loudly in church, where he points upward to the stained-glass window: Is one of those angels Pa?" Right after my father died, I told Sam he was in heaven. "Where's heaven?" Sam asked. "No one knows exactly," I said, "but lots of people think it's in the sky." Sam thought about that and then shook his head. "No," he said, "it's very far away. Near Cambodia." "When you die," he said on another afternoon, "you disappear, right? And when you faint, you only disappear a little. Right?"

Each time he offers one of these possibilities he waits for me to confirm i t as true. He is sorting out the things he's certain of and the things he's trying to understand. I think his questions are good. The part I have trouble dealing with is what he always does after he asks: He looks me right in the eye with more hope than I can stand and waits for my approval or correction or wisdom. But in this matter, my own fear and ignorance are so large that I grow dumb in the face of his innocence. The truth is, I have no answer to the question we struggle hardest with: How can we find a way to be with my father when we don't know where or even if he is?

Remembering Sam's approach to my father's illness, I began to watch his approach to grief. At night, he would press his face against his bedroom window and cry, calling out into the darkness, "Pa, Pa, I love you! Sweet dreams!" Then, after his crying stopped, he would climb into bed, drained but satisfied somehow, and sleep. I, on the other hand, would wander the house all night, not knowing how to mourn. One day, in the supermarket parking lot, I caught sight of a red truck like my father's; for an instant I forgot he had died. My heart leaped as I thought, Dad's here shopping too! Then I remembered, and I succumbed to an onslaught of tears. Sam climbed into the front seat, jamming himself onto my lap between me and the steering wheel. "I know," he soothed, wiping my wet cheeks. "You miss Pa, don't you?" I managed to nod. "Me too," he said. "But you have to believe he's with us, Mommy. Watching and loving us. You have to believe that, or what will we ever do?" Too young to attach to a particular ideology, Sam had simply decided that the only way to deal with grief and loss was to believe that death does not really separate us from those we love. I couldn't show him heaven on a map or explain the course a soul might travel. But he found his own way to cope. I can't honestly say that I've fully accepted my father's death, even all these months later. But my son has taught me a lot about how to grieve.

Recently, while I was cooking dinner, Sam sat by himself at the kitchen table and quietly colored in his Spiderman coloring book.

"I love you too," he said.

I laughed and turned to face him.

"No," I told him. "You say, 'I love you too only after someone says, 'I love you first."

"I know that," Sam said. "Pa just said 'I love you, Sam' and I said 'I love you too. "

As he spoke, he kept coloring and smiling. "Pa just talked to you?" I asked.

"Oh, Mommy," Sam said, "he tells me he loves me every day. He tells you too. You're just not listening." Again, I have begun to take Sam's lead. I have begun to listen.

Unknown author

Moving Rocks

2006-06-29T04:26:00.000-07:00

A little boy was spending his Saturday morning playing in his sandbox. He had with him his box of cars and trucks, his plastic pail, and a shiny, red plastic shovel. In the process of creating roads and tunnels in the soft sand, he discovered a large rock in the middle of the sandbox.

The boy dug around the rock, managing to dislodge it from the dirt. With a little bit of struggle, he pushed and nudged the rock across the sandbox by using his feet. (He was a very small boy, and the rock was very large.) When the boy got the rock to the edge of the sandbox however, he found that he couldn't roll it up and over the little wall.

Determined, the little boy shoved, pushed, and pried, but every time he thought he had made some progress, the rock tipped and then fell back into the sandbox. The little boy grunted, struggled, pushed, & shoved; but his only reward was to have the rock roll back, smashing his chubby fingers.

Finally he burst into tears of frustration. All this time the boy's father watched from his living room window as the drama unfolded. At the moment the tears fell, a large shadow fell across the boy and the sandbox. It was the boy's father. Gently but firmly he said,

"Son, why didn't you use all the strength that you had available?"

Defeated, the boy sobbed back,

"But I did, Daddy, I did! I used all the strength that I had!"

"No, son," corrected the father kindly.

"You didn't use all the strength you had. You didn't ask me."

With that the father reached down, picked up the rock and removed it from the sandbox.

Do you have "rocks" in your life that need to be removed? Are you discovering that you don't have what it takes to lift them? There is One who is always available to us and willing to give us the strength we need. Isn't it funny how we try so hard to do things oursel ves.

Unknown author †

Making a Difference

2006-06-28T07:25:00.000-07:00

In his youth, Sandy Greenburg was a very good student, but he came from a poor family. And so he went to Columbia University on a scholarship, and there he met his roommate, who also was receiving financial aid.

Now while he was a sophomore at Columbia University, he contracted an eye disease that eventually proved to be glaucoma. But the trouble was, it wasn't detected early enough, and as a result he became legally blind, while still a student at Columbia. I ask you all to imagine for a moment having been sighted all your life, and then all of a sudden being faced, in a very competitive school, with losing so much sight you could no longer read. This is what happened to our trustee, Sandy Greenberg.

But something else happened to Sandy that may surprise you. Sandy said that when he lost his sight, his roommate began to read his textbooks to him, every night.

So I'm going to put you in that position, in a competitive school like Columbia, or Johns Hopkins. If your roommate had a serious disability, would you take the time to read textbooks to him every night, knowing the more you spend time reading textbooks to your roommate, perhaps the less well you might do with your other activities? That's not as easy a question as it first appears.

But luckily for Sandy, our trustee, his roommate did. And as a result, Sandy went on to graduate with honors. He got a Fulbright Scholarship, and he went off to study at Oxford. He was still quite poor, but he said he had managed to save about five hundred dollars as he went along.

His roommate, meanwhile, also went on to graduate school. One day, Sandy got a call from him at Oxford. And his former roommate said, "Sandy I'm really unhappy. I really don't like being in graduate school, and I don't want to do this."

So Sandy asked, "Well what do you want to do?"

And his roommate told him, "Sandy, I really love to sing. I have a high school friend who plays the guitar. And we would really like to try our hand in the music business. But we need to make a promo record, and in order to do that I need $500."

So Sandy Greenberg told me he took all his life savings and sent it to his roommate. He told me, "You know, what else could I do? He made my life; I needed to help make his life." So, I hope you'll remember the power of doing well by doing good. Each of you, in your own lives, will be faced with challenges, with roadblocks, with problems that you didn't anticipate or expect. How you are able to deal with adversity will be influenced, to no small extent, by how you deal with others along the way. What you get will depend a lot on what you give. And that's the end of the story of doing well, by doing good.

Ah! I almost forgot. You probably are wanting to know who Sandy's roommate was. I think you've heard of him. Sandy's roommate was a fellow by the name of Art Garfunkel, and he teamed up with another musician by the name of Paul Simon. That $500 helped them cut a record that eventually became "The Sounds of Silence." Recently, we had the pleasure of going to Sandy's daughter's wedding, and it was Art Garfunkel who sang as Sandy walked his daughter down the aisle.

William R. Brody

Gratefulness Against All Odds

2006-06-27T03:39:00.000-07:00

Little is known of the external life of Etty Hillesum, a young Jewish woman who lived in Amsterdam during the Nazi occupation, one of the millions who suffered during the Holocaust. This obscurity is in contrast with her well-documented internal life. Etty Hillesum wrote in her diary: "Sometimes when I stand in some corner of the camp, my feet planted on earth, my eyes raised towards heaven, tears run down my face, tears of deep emotion and gratitude." Does this sound like a passage from a young girl's summer camp diary? Well, the camp she speaks of is a Nazi death camp. What Etty Hillesum stands for is gratefulness against all the odds. This makes her shine as an example for all of us, a witness to sheer enthusiasm for life

Charity Focus

Don't Miss this One!

2006-06-26T04:10:00.000-07:00

Consider This

After Fred Astaire’s first screen test, the memo from the testing director of MGM, dated 1933, said, “can’t act! Slightly Bald! Can dance a little!” Astaire kept that memo over the fireplace in his Beverly Hills home.

An expert said of Vince Lombardi: “He possesses minimal football knowledge. Lacks Motivation.”

Socrates was called, “An immoral corrupter of youth.”

When Peter J. Daniel was in the fourth grade, his teacher, Mrs. Phillips, constantly said, “Peter J. Daniel, you’re no good, you’re a bad apple and you’re never going to amount to anything.” Peter was totally illiterate until he was 26. A friend stayed up with him all night and read him a copy of Think and Grow Rich. Now he owns the street corners he used to fight on and just published his latest book: Mrs. Phillips, You Were Wrong.

Louisa May Alcott, the author of Little Women, was encouraged to find work as a servant or seamstress by her family.

Beethoven handled the violin awkwardly and preferred playing his own compositions instead of improving his technique. His teacher called him hopeless as a composer.

The parents of the famous opera singer Enrico Caruso wanted him to be an engineer. His teachers said he had no voice at all and could not sing.

Charles Darwin, father of the Theory of Evolution, gave up a medical career and was told by his father, “You care for nothing but shooting, dogs, and rat catching.” In his autobiography, Darwin wrote, “I was considered by my father, a very ordinary boy, rather below the common standard in intellect."

Walt Disney was fired by a newspaper editor for lack of ideas. Walt Disney also went bankrupt several times before he built Disneyland.

Thomas Edison’s teachers said he was too stupid to learn anything.

Albert Einstein did not speak until he was four years old and didn’t read until he was seven. His teacher described him as “mentally slow, unsociable and adrift forever in his foolish dreams.” He was expelled and refused admittance to Zurich Polytechnic School.

Louis Pasteur was only a mediocre pupil in undergraduate studies and ranked 15 out of 22 in chemistry.

Isaac Newton did very poorly in grade school.

The sculptor Rodin’s father said, “I have an idiot for a son.” Described as the worst pupil in the school, Rodin failed three times to secure admittance to the school of art. His uncle called him uneducable.

Leo Tolstoy, author of War and Peace, flunked out of college. He was described as “both unable and unwilling to learn.”

Playwright Tennessee Williams was enraged when his play, "Me, Vasha" was not chosen in a class competition at Washington University where he was enrolled in English XVI. The teacher recalled that Williams denounced the judges’ choices and their intelligence.

F. W. Woolworth’s employers at the dry goods store said he had not enough sense to wait upon customers.

Henry Ford failed and went broke five times before he finally succeeded.

Babe Ruth, considered by sports historians to be the greatest athlete of all time and famous for setting the home run record, also holds the record for strikeouts.

Winston Churchill failed sixth grade. He did not become Prime Minister of England until he was 62, and then only after a lifetime of defeats and setbacks. His greatest contributions came when he was a “senior citizen.”

Eighteen publishers turned down Richard Bach’s Jonathan Livingston Seagull, before Macmillan finally published it in 1970. By 1975 it had sold more than seven million copies in the U.S. alone.

Richard Hooker worked for seven years on his humorous war novel, M*A*S*H, only to have it rejected by 21 publishers before Morrow decided to publish it. It became a runaway bestseller, spawning a blockbusting movie and highly successful television series.

By Jack Canfield and Mark V. Hansen
A Cup of Chicken Soup for the Soul

World's Youngest Surgeon

2006-06-25T03:53:00.000-07:00

One must know not just how to accept a gift, but with what grace to share it. --Maya Angelou

Deemed by some to be "the cleverest boy in the world" a boy from a small village in India performed his first successful surgery at the age of seven! Akrit Jaspal speaks four languages, he is trying to find a cure for cancer and is studying for a bachelors in science. His hero is Spiderman, and Akrit is now twelve years old. Well aware of his special gifts, this ambitious young humanitarian says, "I feel I've a duty to stop all the suffering in the world. It would be a waste of my natural talent not to use it wisely." [ more ]

Compassionate Communication

2006-06-24T06:13:00.000-07:00

"We are convinced that non-violence is more powerful than violence. If you use violence, you have to sell part of yourself for that violence. Then you are no longer a master of your own struggle."

Cesar Chavez

Around the summer of 1943 our family moved to Detroit, Michigan. The second week after we arrived, a race war erupted over an incident at a public park. More than forty people were killed in the next few days. Our neighborhood was situated in the center of the violence, and we spent three days locked in the house.

When the race riot ended and school began, I discovered that a name could be as dangerous as any skin color. When the teacher called my name during attendance, two boys glared at me and hissed, “Are you a kike?” I had never heard the word before and didn’t know it was used by some people in a derogatory way to refer to Jews. After school, the two were waiting for me: they threw me to the ground, kicked and beat me.

Since that summer in 1943, I have been examining the two questions I mentioned. What empowers us, for example, to stay connected to our compassionate nature even under the worst circumstances? I am thinking of people like Etty Hillesum, who remained compassionate even while subjected to the grotesque conditions of a German concentration camp. As she wrote in her journal at the time:

“I am not easily frightened. Not because I am brave but because I know that I am dealing with human beings, and that I must try as hard as I can to understand everything that anyone ever does. And that was the real import of this morning: not that a disgruntled young Gestapo officer yelled at me, but that I felt no indignation, rather a real compassion, and would have liked to ask, ‘Did you have a very unhappy childhood, has your girlfriend let you down?’ Yes, he looked harassed and driven, sullen and weak. I should have liked to start treating him there and then, for I know that pitiful young men like that are dangerous as soon as they are let loose on mankind.”
—Etty Hillesum: A Memoir

While studying the factors that affect our ability to stay compassionate, I was struck by the crucial role of language and our use of words. I have since identified a specific approach to communicating—speaking and listening—that leads us to give from the heart, connecting us with ourselves and with each other in a way that allows our natural compassion to flourish. I call this approach Nonviolent Communication, using the term “nonviolence” as Gandhi used it—to refer to our natural state of compassion when violence has subsided from the heart. While we may not consider the way we talk to be “violent,” our words often lead to hurt and
NVC: a way of communicating that leads us to give from the heart.
pain, whether for ourselves or others, a process called Compassionate Communication

Marshall Rosenburg

Volunteers

2006-06-23T03:45:00.000-07:00

Researcher David Baker believes the key to an AIDS vaccine or a cure for cancer may be that old PC sitting in your closet or the one idling on your desk. Baker, 43, a professor of biochemistry at the University of Washington, realized that he didn't have access to the computing horsepower needed for his research — nor the money to buy time on supercomputers elsewhere. So he turned to the kindness — and the computers — of strangers. Using software made popular in a massive search for intelligent life beyond Earth, Baker's Rosetta@home project taps the computing power of tens of thousands of PCs whose owners are donating spare computer time to chop away at scientific problems over the internet. "We're getting these volunteer virtual communities popping up that are doing wonderful things," Baker said. "People like to get together for good causes."

Charity Focus

Unlocking Talent

2006-06-22T02:56:00.000-07:00

Daniel Tammet lives with extraordinary ability and disability. He can't drive a car or tell right from left. But he can figure out cube roots quicker than a calculator and holds the European record for recalling pi to the furthest decimal point. Daniel is an "Autistic savant" -- a term that refers to individuals with autism who have extraordinary mental skills. But while most savants can't tell us how they do what they do -- Daniel can. He describes in detail what he sees in his head and some researchers believe he can help unlock some of the mysteries of autism. Tammet’s message to the world? "I memorized pi to 22,514 decimal places, and I am technically disabled. I just wanted to show people that disability needn't get in the way." Be sure to read this whole article through this link:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/weekend/story/0,,1409903,00.html#article_continue

Each of us has our own special talent. Maybe it’s baking cakes or fixing broken radios. Maybe it’s making people laugh. Take time today to reflect on ways in which you can better use your extra-ordinary abilities positively.

Charity Focus

A guy Named Bill

2006-06-21T03:02:00.000-07:00

His name was Bill. He had wild hair, wore a T-shirt with holes in it, blue jeans and no shoes. In the entire time I knew him I never once saw Bill wear a pair of shoes. Rain, sleet or snow, Bill was barefoot. This was literally his wardrobe for his whole four years of college.

He was brilliant and looked like he was always pondering the esoteric. He became a Christian while attending college. Across the street from the campus was a church full of well-dressed, middle-class people. They wanted to develop a ministry to the college students, but they were not sure how to go about it.

One day, Bill decided to worship there. He walked into the church, complete with his wild hair, T-shirt, blue jeans and bare feet. The church was completely packed, and the service had already begun. Bill started down the aisle to find a place to sit. By now the people were looking a bit uncomfortable, but no one said anything.

As Bill moved closer and closer to the pulpit, he realized there were no empty seats. So he squatted and sat down on the carpet right up front. (Although such behavior would have been perfectly acceptable at the college fellowship, this was a scenario this particular congregation had never witnessed before!) By now, the people seemed uptight, and the tension in the air was thickening.

Right about the time Bill took his “seat,” a deacon began slowly making his way down the aisle from the back of the sanctuary. The deacon was in his eighties, had silver gray hair, a three-piece suit and a pocket watch. He was a godly man -- very elegant, dignified and courtly. He walked with a cane and, as he neared the boy, church members thought, “You can’t blame him for what he’s going to do. How can you expect a man of his age and background to understand some college kid on the floor?”

It took a long time for the man to reach the boy. The church was utterly silent except for the clicking of his cane. You couldn’t even hear anyone breathing. All eyes were on the deacon.

But then they saw the elderly man drop his cane on the floor. With great difficulty, he sat down on the floor next to Bill and worshipped with him. Everyone in the congregation choked up with emotion. When the minister gained control, he told the people, “What I am about to preach, you will never remember. What you’ve just seen, you will never forget.”

Rebecca Manley Pippert
Chicken Soup for the Christian Family Soul

Love Notes

2006-06-20T03:10:00.000-07:00

From the time each of my children started school, I packed their lunches. And in each lunch I packed, I included a note. Often written on a napkin, the note might be a thank you for a special moment, a reminder of something we were happily anticipating, or a bit of encouragement for an upcoming test or sporting event.

In early grade school they loved their notes-they commented on them after school, and when I went back to teaching, they even put notes in my lunches. But as kids grow older they become self?conscious, and by the time he reached high school, my older son, Marc, informed me he no longer needed my daily missives. Informing him that they had been written as much for me as for him, and that he no longer needed to read them but I still needed to write them, I continued the tradition until the day he graduated.

Six years after high school graduation, Marc called and asked if he could move home for a couple of months. He had spent those years well, graduating Phi Beta Kappa magna cum laude from college, completing two congressional internships in Washington, D.C., winning the Jesse Marvin Unruh Fellowship to the California State Legislature, and finally, becoming a legislative assistant in Sacramento. Other than short vacation visits, however, he had lived away from home. With his younger sister leaving for college, I was especially thrilled to have Marc coming home.

A couple weeks after Marc arrived home to rest, regroup and write for a while, he was back at work-he had been recruited to do campaign work. Since I was still making lunch every day for his younger brother, I packed one for Marc, too. Imagine my surprise when I got a call from my 24?year?old son, complaining about his lunch.

"Did I do something wrong? Aren't I still your kid? Don't you love me any more, Mom?" were just a few of the queries he threw at me as I laughingly asked him what was wrong.

"My note, Mom," he answered. "Where's my note?"

This year my youngest son will be a senior in high school. He, too, has now announced that he is too old for notes. But like his older brother and sister before him, he will receive those notes till the day he graduates-and in whatever lunches I pack for him afterwards.

Antoinette Kuritz
As appeared in Chicken Soup for the Mother's Soul

God's Plan

2006-06-19T03:12:00.000-07:00

A psychologist applied to work in my spiritual psychotherapy center. I asked him why he would want to do that. He is already a licensed psychologist and could work anywhere he chooses. He told me of a dream he had had. In this dream he was walking down the street with a book under his arm. He met a holy man. The holy man said "I have a plan for your life." My friend pulled his book out from under his arm and said "I have plans for my own life." The holy man pulled a much larger book out from under his arm and said, "I understand, but God’s plan includes your plan!” My
friend awoke. His life changed. Sight had given way to Vision.
Powerlessness to Power. The ego will to the Greater Will.

Carroll J. Wright

I Choose

2006-06-17T02:45:00.000-07:00

Each morning I wake up and say to myself, you have two choices today. You can choose to be in a good mood or ... you can choose to be in a bad mood. I choose to be in a good mood."

Each time something bad happens, I can choose to be a victim or...I can choose to learn from it. I choose to learn from it.

Every time someone comes to me complaining, I can choose to accept their complaining or... I can point out the positive side of life. I choose the positive side of life.

"Yeah, right, it's not that easy," a friend protested.

"Yes, it is," I said. "Life is all about choices. When you cut away all the junk, every situation is a choice. You choose how you react to situations. You choose how people affect your mood. You choose to be in a good mood or bad mood. The bottom line: It's your choice how you live your life."

Soon hereafter, we lost touch, but I often thought about him when I made a choice about life instead of reacting to it. Several years later, I heard that he was involved in a serious accident, falling some 60 feet from a communications tower. After 18 hours of surgery and weeks of intensive care, he was released from the hospital with rods placed in his back. I saw him about six months after the accident and asked him what had gone through his mind as the accident took place.

"The first thing that went through my mind was the well-being of my soon-to-be born daughter," he replied. "Then, as I lay on the ground, I remembered that I had two choices: I could choose to live or...I could choose to die. I chose to live."

"Weren't you scared? Did you lose consciousness?" I asked. He continued, "...the paramedics were great. They kept telling me I was going to be fine. But when they wheeled me into the ER and I saw the expressions on the faces of the doctors and nurses, I got really scared. In their eyes, I read 'he's a dead man'. I knew I needed to take action."

"What did you do?" I asked.

"Well, there was a big burly nurse shouting questions at me," said John. "She asked if I was allergic to anything. 'Yes, I replied.' The doctors and nurses stopped working as they waited for my reply. I took a deep breath and yelled, 'Gravity'."
Over their laughter, I told them, "I am choosing to live. Operate on me as if I am alive, not dead."

He lived, thanks to the skill of his doctors, but also because of his amazing attitude... I learned from him that every day we have the choice to live fully.
Attitude, after all, is everything.

Author Unknown

The Power of Giving

2006-06-16T03:45:00.000-07:00

The 22 men in spangled baseballs caps don't much look like a choir. They don't stand up straight, they tend to wobble back and forth as they perform, and they're homeless! With a hastily prepared repertoire of four Christmas carols, this ragtag collection of 19-to-68 year old homeless choristers took their voices to the streets -- or under them: their debut was December 17, 1996, at the Berri-UQAM subway station in downtown Montreal, now the choir's unofficial home concert hall. Today, the 'Montreal Homeless Choir' has captivated audiences worldwide and turned their lives around. And what do they feel is the greatest benefit of belonging to the group? The opportunity to give.
Charity Focus

Lady, Are You Rich?

2006-06-14T04:05:00.000-07:00

They huddled inside the storm door—two children in ragged outgrown coats.

"Any old papers, lady?”

I was busy. I wanted to say no—until I looked down at their feet. Thin little sandals, sopped with sleet.

"Come in and I'll make you a cup of hot cocoa.”

There was no conversation. Their soggy sandals left marks upon the hearthstone. I served them cocoa and toast with jam to fortify against the chill outside. Then I went back to the kitchen and started again on my household budget.

The silence in the front room struck through to me. I looked in. The girl held the empty cup in her hands, looking at it. The boy asked in a flat voice, "Lady . . . are you rich?"

“Am I rich? Mercy, no!"

I looked at my shabby slipcovers. The girl put her cup back in its saucer—carefully.

“Your cups match your saucers."

Her voice was old, with a hunger that was not of the stomach. They left then, holding their bundles of papers against the wind. They hadn't said thank you. They didn't need to. They had done more than that. Plain blue pottery cups and saucers. But they matched.

I tested the potatoes and stirred the gravy. Potatoes and brown gravy, a roof over our heads, my man with a good steady job—these things matched, too.

I moved the chairs back from the fire and tidied the living room. The muddy prints of small sandals were still wet upon my hearth. I let them be. I want them there in case I ever forget again how very rich I am

Marion Doolan
Chick Soup for the Soul 4

Scarecrow

2006-06-13T03:51:00.000-07:00

“Hey, ‘Bones,’ ” my brother, Parker, asked me, "what are you going to be for Halloween?" The elementary school party started at 7:00 PM. The winner of the prize for the most original costume got two free tickets for the Sunday matinee. Parker was dressed and ready to go. I watched him parade in front of the mirror in his pirate costume. He's so handsome, I thought. All the girls in the fifth and sixth grades were madly in love with him. I'd spent the afternoon defending myself from his rubber dagger.

" I'm not going!" I replied.

" Why not?"

" No costume."

"That's dumb," he said. "You hardly need a costume. You're already a perfect scarecrow!" I was used to these observations. Furthermore, he spoke the truth. At twelve, I was already six feet tall and weighed eighty-nine pounds. Tack on red hair and freckles and it added up to one thing: I was a scarecrow.

School days were charged with searing taunts. "Down in front." "How's the weather up there?" "Are those skis or shoes?" It was hard to smile back, and even harder to make friends.

I tried plastering my hair down flat on the top of my head and prying the heels off my shoes. I took scalding hot baths, hoping I'd shrink. In bed at night, I put my feet against the footboard, hands against the headboard and pushed, hoping to press myself back together. Nothing worked. So I saved nickels and dimes in a cider jug to pay the future surgeon who would find fame in Ripley's Believe It or Not by cutting six inches of bone from the legs of the tallest girl in the world and making her the same height as everybody else.

"When I grow up," I told Parker, as he brandished his cutlass in front of the mirror, "I'm going to live on an island where there's no one to stare." My brother raised his eye patch and looked at me hard.

"Sounds awful," he said, and left for the party.

Alone, I listened to the cheerless night and pictured the costumes my classmates had bought. I had tried on a few, too, but nothing fit. I could picture my classmates in their costumes, having a wonderful time. As I wandered about the house, I remembered happier days-before Mommy and Daddy were separated. When Daddy lived with us, he always made me feel loved and wanted. Seeing him now for short visits wasn't the same. The more I brooded, the more my self-pity grew.

Then I spotted a broomstick standing in the kitchen corner. Maybe I could make a costume, I thought. Outside, a sheet and pillowcase billowed on the clothesline. I could be a witch or a ghost. Then my gaze fell on the back of the cellar door. My father's old plaid work shirt, faded overalls, jacket and cap were hanging right where he had left them.

"I could be a hobo," I murmured as I buried my face in the dusty clothes. But Parker's taunt kept coming back at me. "You're a scarecrow." As much as I hated to admit it, he was right. Well then, a scarecrow was what I'd be. The closer I got to the school, the louder the cheers and clapping became, and the more my fears grew. What if they laughed at me? Worse still, what if they didn't do anything? Hiding behind the tool shed next to the gym, I pulled everything out of the pillowcase and started to dress. Because I was so tall, I could peek through the high window and see everybody taking turns on the stage in quest of the coveted prize. Ghosts, princesses, monsters, cowboys, soldiers and brides-they were all there, clad in store-bought costumes, fragile dreams for one night. My teeth were chattering. Would they clap for me? Would they whistle and cheer? My stomach ached from anticipation.

I'll run home! I decided. No one would know I had been there. But Parker came on stage and glanced at the window. It was too late. He had seen me. If I left now, he'd call me chicken. I watched him bow to the audience and listened to the squeals from the girls as he leaped on chairs and tables and parried with his sword. Next, a small gorilla climbed on top of a ladder and ate a banana. Lincoln gave a brief address. Cleopatra danced with a rubber snake in her hands, and a soldier marched and twirled his gun. Only Tarzan remained.

Maneuvering carefully through the entrance, I went in, held my breath and prayed, Please, God, don't let me make a fool of myself. The applause was so loud for the King of the jungle when he gave his call and swung on a curtain rope that no one seemed to notice me walk slowly to the center of the stage. A pillowcase covered my head. With arms outstretched and hands clutching the broomstick inserted through the sleeves of an old plaid shirt, I wore a felt hat and faded overalls stuffed with straw. The room was suddenly still.
Nobody clapped. Nobody cheered. The only sound I heard was the hammering of my own heart. I'm going to die, I thought, right here in front of everybody. The world was tilting, and my ears were ringing when the hood slid down my nose, just enough so I could peer through the eyeholes. And that's when I saw my classmates for the first time, as they really were. Petite blonde fairies with golden wands-and steel braces on their teeth. A baseball hero with a bat and mitt-and bottle-thick eyeglasses. A boxer with fighting gloves-sitting in a wheelchair. Someone asked, "Hey, who is that?" "Parker's sister!" They looked at one another, surprise brightening their faces. Clapping and cheering filled the room.

The principal came up on stage. "The first prize for the most original costume goes to..." I never heard my name, only Parker, fear in his voice, saying, "I'll hold those tickets for her. She can't let go of that broomstick or her shirt will fall off." Later, classmates came over to talk with me. "How'd you ever get such a good idea?" "Parker," I said. "Where did you get the costume?" "My daddy." And in that single moment, I recaptured a memory that had almost slipped away. I was sitting on Daddy's lap and I heard him say, "I love you, sweetheart, just the way God made you." I felt his fingers riffling my hair, and I smiled inside, glad that God had made me a scarecrow.

I left the party early, but not before Nancy had said, "You'll come over to my house sometime, won't you?" and Elaine had confided, "I get goosebumps every time Mr. Allen is our substitute teacher. Don't you?" I didn't want to stay and dance-the boys' heads came only to the middle of my chest. But on my way home, I decided that Parker was right. A deserted island would be pretty awful. I waited up for Parker that night. I wanted to hear about the fun I'd missed. "Did you dance a lot?" I asked. "Sort of," he said. "If you think it's any fun for a fifthgrade guy to dance with a bunch of puny third- and fourth-graders!" He kicked at the fringe on the rug and started up the stairs.
"Oh, I almost forgot," he said. "Here's your two tickets." "Thanks." "It's going to be a double feature. One's The Wizard o f Oz. Ray Bolger plays a scarecrow." He had reached the fourth step. We stood eye to eye.

"And the other's The Sea Hawk," I said. "Can you believe it? Errol Flynn plays a pirate!"

"Are you taking anyone special?" Parker asked. "Yes," I said. "Wanna go?"

Penny Porter

Teasing Others Hurts You

2006-06-12T03:56:00.000-07:00

Mary Lou

It was my first day as newcomer to Miss Hargrove’s seventh grade. Past “newcomer” experiences had been difficult, so I was very anxious to fit in. After being introduced to the class, I bravely put on a smile and took my seat, expecting to be shunned.

Lunchtime was a pleasant surprise when the girls all crowded around my table. Their chatter was friendly, so I began to relax. My new classmates filled me in on the school, the teachers and the other kids. It wasn’t long before the class nerd was pointed out to me: Mary Lou English. Actually she called herself Mary Louise. A prim, prissy young girl with a stern visage and old-fashioned clothes, she wasn’t ugly -- not even funny looking. I thought she was quite pretty, but I had sense enough not to say so. Dark-eyed and olive-skinned, she had long, silky black hair, but -- she had pipe curls! Practical shoes, long wool skirt and a starched, frilly blouse completed the image of a complete dork. The girls’ whispers and giggles got louder and louder. Mary Lou made eye contact with no one as she strode past our table, chin held high with iron determination. She ate alone.

After school, the girls invited me to join them in front of the school. I was thrilled to be a member of the club, however tentative. We waited. For what, I didn’t yet know. Oh, how I wish I had gone home, but I had a lesson to learn.

Arms wrapped around her backpack, Mary Lou came down the school steps. The taunting began - rude, biting comments and jeering from the girls. I paused, then joined right in. My momentum began to pick up as I approached her. Nasty, mean remarks fell unabated from my lips. No one could tell I’d never done this before. The other girls stepped back and became my cheerleaders. Emboldened, I yanked the strap of her backpack and then pushed her. The strap broke, Mary Lou fell and I backed off. Everyone was laughing and patting me. I fit in. I was a leader.

I was not proud. Something inside me hurt. If you’ve ever picked a wing off a butterfly, you know how I felt.

Mary Lou got up, gathered her books and -- without a tear shed or retort given -- off she went. She held her head high as a small trickle of blood ran down from her bruised knee. I watched her limp away down the street.

I turned to leave with my laughing friends and noticed a man standing beside his car. His olive skin, dark hair and handsome features told me this was her father. Respectful of Mary Lou’s proud spirit, he remained still and watched the lonely girl walk toward him. Only his eyes -- shining with both grief and pride -- followed. As I passed, he looked at me in silence with burning tears that spoke to my shame and scalded my heart. He didn’t speak a word.

No scolding from a teacher or preaching from a parent could linger as much as that hurt in my heart from the day a father’s eyes taught me kindness and strength and dignity. I never again joined the cruel herds. I never again hurt someone for my own gain.

By Lynne Zielinski
from Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul III

The Giving Trees

2006-06-11T04:51:00.000-07:00

I was a single parent of four small children, working at a minimum-wage job. Money was always tight, but we had a roof over our heads, food on the table, clothes on our backs, and if not a lot, always enough. My kids told me that in those days they didn't know we were poor. They just thought Mom was cheap. I've always been glad about that.

It was Christmas time, and although there wasn't' money for a lot of gifts, we planned to celebrate with church and family, parties and friends, drives downtown to see the Christmas lights, special dinners, and by decorating our home.

But the big excitement for the kids was the fun of Christmas shopping at the mall. They talked and planned for weeks ahead of time, asking each other and their grandparents what they wanted for Christmas. I dreaded it. I had saved $120 for presents to be shared by all five of us.

The big day arrived and we started out early. I gave each of the four kids a twenty dollar bill and reminded them to look for gifts about four dollars each. Then everyone scattered. We had two hours to shop; then we would meet back at the "Santa's workshop" display.

Back in the car driving home, everyone was in high Christmas spirits, laughing and teasing each other with hints and clues about what they had bought. My younger daughter, Ginger, who was about eight years old, was unusually quiet. I noted she had only one small, flat bag with her after her shopping spree. I could see enough through the plastic bag to tell that she had bought candy bars - fifty-cent candy bars! I was so angry. What did you do with that twenty dollar bill I gave you? I wanted to yell at her, but I didn't say anything until we got home. I called her into my bedroom and closed the door, ready to be angry again when I asked her what she had done with the money. This is what she told me:

"I was looking around, thinking of what to buy, and I stopped to read the little cards on one of the Salvation Army's 'Giving Trees.' One of the cards was for a little girl, four years old, and all she wanted for Christmas was a doll with clothes and a hairbrush. So I took the card off the tree and bought the doll and hairbrush for her and took it to the Salvation Army booth.

"I only had enough money left to buy candy bars for us," Ginger continued. "But we have so much and she doesn't have anything."

I never felt so rich as I did that day.

By Kathleen Dixon,
Chicken Soup for the Soul

The Little Girl Who Dared to Wish

2006-06-10T04:13:00.000-07:00

As Amy Hagadorn rounded the corner across the hall from her classroom, she collided with a tall boy from the fifth grade running in the opposite direction.

"Watch it , squirt." The boy yelled as he dodged around the little third-grader. Then, with a smirk on his face, the boy took hold of his right leg and mimicked the way Amy limped when she walked.

Amy closed her eyes. Ignore him, she told herself as she headed for her classroom.

But at the end of the day, Amy was still thinking about the tall boy's mean teasing. It wasn't as if her were the only one. It seemed that ever since Amy started the third grade, someone teased her every single day. Kids teased her about her speech or her limping. Amy was tired of it. Sometimes, even in a classroom full of other students, the teasing made her feel all alone.

Back home at the dinner table that evening, Amy was quiet. Her mother knew that things were not going well at school. That's why Patti Hagadorn was happy to have some exciting news to share with her daughter.

"There's a Christmas wish contest on the radio station," Amy's mom announced. "Write a letter to Santa, and you might win a prize. I think someone at this table with blonde curly hair should enter."

Amy giggled. The contest sounded like fun. She started thinking about what she wanted most for Christmas.

A smile took hold of Amy when the idea first came to her. Out came pencil and paper, and Amy went to work on her letter. "Dear Santa Claus," she began.

While Amy worked away at her best printing, the rest of the family tried to guess what she might ask from Santa. Amy's sister, Jamie, and Amy's mom both thought a three-foot Barbie doll would top Amy's wish list. Amy's dad guessed a picture book. But Amy wasn't ready to reveal her secret Christmas wish just then. Here is Amy's letter to Santa, just as she wrote it that night:

Dear Santa Claus,

My name is Amy. I am nine years old. I have a problem at school. Can you help me Santa? Kids laugh at me because of the way I walk and run and talk. I have cerebral palsy. I just want one day where no one laughs at me or makes fun of me.

Love, Amy

At radio station WJLT in Fort Wayne, Indiana, letter poured in for the Christmas wish contest. The workers had fun reading about all the different presents that boys and girls from across the city wanted for Christmas.

When Amy's letter arrived at the radio station, manager Lee Tobin read it carefully. He knew cerebral palsy was a muscle disorder that might confuse the schoolmates of Amy's who didn't understand her disability. He thought it would be good for the people in Fort Wayne to hear about this special third-grader and her unusual wish. Mr. Tobin called up the local newspaper.

The next day, a picture of Amy and her letter to Santa made the front page of the News Sentinel. The story spread quickly. All across the country, newspapers and radio and television stations reported the story of the little girl in Fort Wayne, Indiana, who asked for such a simple yet remarkable Christmas gift -- just one day without teasing.

Suddenly the postman was a regular at the Hagadorn house. Envelopes of all sizes addressed to Amy arrived daily from children and adults all across the nation. They came filled with holiday greetings and words of encouragement.

During that unforgettable Christmas season, over two thousand people from all over the world sent Amy letters of friendship and support. Amy and her family read every single one. Some of the writers had disabilities; some had been teased as children. Each writer had a special message for Amy. Through the cards and letters from strangers, Amy glimpsed a world full of people who truly cared about each other. She realized that no amount or form of teasing could ever make her feel lonely again.

Many people thanked Amy for being brave enough to speak up. Others encouraged her to ignore teasing and to carry her head high. Lynn, a sixth-grader from Texas, sent this message:

"I would like to be your friend," she wrote, "and if you want to visit me, we could have fun. No one would make fun of us, 'cause if they do, we will not even hear them."

Amy did get her wish of a special day without teasing at South Wayne Elementary School. Additionally, everyone at school got another bonus. Teachers and students talked together about how bad teasing can make others feel.

That year the Fort Wayne mayor officially proclaimed December 21 as Amy Jo Hagadorn Day throughout the city. The mayor explained that by daring to make such a simple wish, Amy taught a universal lesson.

"Everyone," said the mayor, "wants and deserves to be treated with respect, dignity and warmth."

By Alan D. Shultz,
Chicken Soup for the Kid's Soul

The Magic Bat

2006-06-09T03:51:00.000-07:00

You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don't try. — Beverly Sills

Harry is every coach's dream kid: He shows up for every practice early, stays late and is enthusiastic. Harry is also every coach's nightmare: He has neither the instinct nor the physical talent for the game.

I stepped in as a stand-in coach for my son's Little League team when the regular coach got married. Somehow he thought a honeymoon took precedence over next Tuesday's game. How can you blame him? Our team hadn't won in more than two years.

As I accepted the fill-in spot, I promised myself that I would show no disappointment if we lost. That was the least I could do. The best I could do was give a good heart to the effort.

I met Harry at the first practice. A small, thin, awkward kid his best throw was about five feet, which made the choice of fielding position difficult. And he was scared. Every time he came to bat, he would glance at the pitcher, lean the bat on his shoulder, close his eyes and wait until the misery of three pitches was over. Then he'd trudge back to the dugout. It was painful to watch.

I met Harry before Tuesday's game, took him aside and worked with him on keeping his eyes open. He tried, but it's tough to overcome the habit of fear. We were about to play a team that had beat us 22-1 the last time. It didn't seem a fortunate moment for a breakthrough. Then I thought, Why not?

I went to the dugout, got a different bat and returned to our practice area. "Harry," I said, "I want you to use this bat. It's the one for you. It's a magic bat. All you have to do is swing and it will hit the ball."

Harry seemed skeptical, but he said he would try. I hoped I wasn't complicating an already tough problem for Harry, but I wanted to try to help.

Our team was trailing from the first inning. No surprise in that, but we had some loyal parents in the stands to give constant encouragement to the kids.

On Harry's first at bat, I noticed he wasn't using his special bat, but I didn't step in. He struck out, as usual, and I decided to let it ride.

We were able to score from time to time. In the last inning, we were behind by only three runs. I was thinking about a "respectable outcome" speech to give the kids while packing up the gear. As the home team, we were last up. We alternated for five batters between singles with players safely on base and strikeouts. We had bases loaded and two outs. Only then did I notice that Harry was our last chance.

Surveying the field from my spot by first base, I saw the left fielder sprawl on the grass as Harry came from the dugout. He obviously expected no action. The right fielder was bothering some butterfly that was flitting about. The shortstop had moved well in, I suppose anticipating the possibility of a miraculous bunt. Clearly, the opposing players were already tasting the double-scoop ice cream cones they would go for after the victory.

Harry limped up to the batter's box. I noticed he had his usual bat. I called a time out, ran up to him and whispered, "Harry, this is the time for the magic bat. Give it a try. Just keep your eyes open and swing."

He looked at me in disbelief, but he said he'd try. He walked off for the special bat as I trotted back to first base.

First pitch, strike one. Harry didn't swing, but he kept his eyes open. I pumped my fist and gave it a little swing, encouraging him to swing. He smiled, got into his awkward stance and waited. He swung, eyes open, but missed. Strike two. That was the first real swing Harry had ever taken. Who cared if we won the game? I considered Harry a winner already.

The other coach yelled to his pitcher, "Fire one past him and end this thing!" I grimaced.

The pitcher threw a straight fastball and Harry swung. The magic bat did its trick. It found the ball, which flew over the shortstop's head.

Pandemonium erupted in the stands, in the dugouts, on the bases. I was cheering Harry to run to first as fast as he could. It seemed like an eternity. The left fielder called to the center fielder to get it. "You're closer!

I kept cheering the runners. We had one in at home and three guys pouring it on from first to second, second to third, third to home. The second baseman yelled for the center fielder to get the ball to him. Excitedly, he obeyed, but the ball skipped across the grass and passed by the second baseman toward the right-field line. My job as coach was simple at this point. "Run, guys, run," I yelled.

Another guy scored. By this time, the entire team had joined the cheering, "Go, Harry, go Harry!" This was surely the longest distance Harry had ever run. He was panting as he headed for third and another guy crossed home. The right fielder's throw was critical, and it was pretty good, but the third baseman muffed it. The ball scooted past him out of play. The rule: one base on an overthrow that goes out of play. Harry, exhausted, kept the push on as best he could.

About then, the first cry of a Grand Slam!" hit the air. Everyone joined in. When Harry reached home plate, about to collapse, his teammates lifted him as high as they could and chanted, "Harry, Harry, Harry!"

I ran over to the team to hug the proudest kid in America. Tears streaming, Harry looked up at me and said, "The bat, Coach, the bat."

I smiled and said, "No, Harry. It was you who hit the ball, not the bat."

David Meanor, Submitted by Don "Ollie" Olivett
As appeared in Chicken Soup for the Sports Fan's Soul

Make a Small Change Today

2006-06-08T02:41:00.000-07:00

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that has. --Margaret Mead

Inspiration of the Day:
We Are What We Do -- it's not just a catchy phrase: it's a web movement that inspires people to use their everyday actions to change the world, whoever they are, and wherever they are. They’ve created 50 simple, everyday actions that can improve our environment, our health, and our communities, making our planet and the people on it happier. To date, over 330,000 small actions (and counting!) have been completed by everyday people. And the origins of this ripple effect?

Eugenie Harvey had been working in financial PR for nearly two years when she decided she wanted more from her job. "I became frustrated and unfulfilled in my work. I wasn't miserable, but it wasn't enough," she says. "Don't get me wrong, I had no problem with the Brunswick Group [for which the 35-year-old Australian was working in London] but I was in my early 30s, and I didn't have any ties, no partner, no financial commitments. My sister was married and had just had her third baby, and the difference between us just struck me. And I also realised that I wanted to make a difference to my community. I just didn't know how."
Then, 18 months ago, her boss held a staff meeting at which a man called David Robinson gave a talk. Robinson turned out to be the head of an east London charity called Community Links: "He was talking about the causes and consequences of community exclusion and it really struck a chord with me." He pointed out that our parents were eight times more likely to join a community association than we are today. Voter turnout has dropped by 20%, membership of political parties is down by two-thirds. Satisfaction with life was higher during postwar rationing than it is now. Our soaring personal consumption has not made us happier. We have more communications devices than ever before, yet communities are crumbling and more people live alone.

"It was very timely," says Harvey. "I knew he was right and I was desperately looking for a more meaningful way of contributing, but I couldn't quite see how my skills would be any use. I've never done any volunteering before."

Then Robinson launched into a polemic about the power of the brand in advertising and capitalism and he imagined just how that power could be harnessed to reverse the decline in community involvement - especially among the young and upwardly mobile. "What he was saying was that if strong branding can create a market for things that we didn't know we needed and then exploit it, then we could - maybe - apply the same approach to the need for strong communities and neighbourliness," says Harvey. "Think of how Nike was just a manufacturer of sports shoes and now it's so much more than that."

So the idea was to be a charity version of Nike or Coca-Cola? "Kind of. Except we wanted to be consciousness-raising and not fund-raising. The questions were, could we apply that sort of thinking to something we need - to social change and social involvement? Could we create a brand rooted in the belief that we can make the world a better place simply and practically? These were the questions that really inspired me. I suddenly saw I could make a difference - I could use my PR skills for something I could be really proud of."

Harvey quit her job and spent four months volunteering for Community Links. "I was sharing a desk in Canning Town, trying to devise this brand, and come up with a plan to make sure it wouldn't just be a flash in the plan, but a sustainable movement." The brand that she, along with branding consultants Innocence and ArthurSteenAdamson and Robinson devised was called We Are What We Do, and the idea behind it was to help people incarnate Mahatma Gandhi's remark: "We must be the change we want to see in the world."

The idea was to use the different media - internet,television, books, exhibition spaces - to launch and sustain this brand, in order to encourage alienated people to come together to do good things. Harvey and what is now a four-strong team working in a basement provided by her former employer in central London spent much of the past year wooing potential business partners to help support the brand gratis. "I work 70 hours a week on this. It's very fulfilling."

What is the point of the brand, or movement, or "new kind of community", as Harvey calls it? "We are not trying to raise money. We are trying to show the power of a simple shift in attitudes and day-to-day behaviour. We invite you to be part of a new kind of community; not of joiners but of independent doers following the same banner and answering the questions that we all want answered."

These quotes come from the preface to a book just published for We Are What We Do. Called Change the World for a Fiver - 50 Simple Actions to Change the World and Make You Feel Good, it is the linchpin of the "movement". It's a giddily utopian, if sometimes mawkish volume, to which some of the leading brains in British advertising applied their creative skills free of charge. It consists of illustrations and short captions for 50 actions that each of us might do to make society better, such as giving blood, sharing a bath with someone you love, throwing chewing gum away properly, writing a note to someone who inspired you.

The book is filled with cute devices. On one page, for example, there is a packet of five Scots Pine seeds alongside the injunction to plant them in order to create your very own Christmas trees for 2012. "Each tree will provide oxygen for two people for the rest of their lives," says the caption. Nice.

Here are some more actions suggested in the book:

·Decline plastic bags wherever possible.

· Learn basic first aid.

·Smile and smile back. ("It takes half as many muscles to smile as to frown.")

·Spend some time with someone from a different generation.

·Find out how your money is invested.

·Do something you think you can't.

· Join something.

· Hug someone.

·Give your phone number to five people in your street, along with the message, "Please call me if I can help".

· Do something for nothing.

The book has already captured the imagination of many of Britain's corporate movers and shakers only three weeks after publication, and is set to be be one of the publishing triumphs of the autumn, leaping up the amazon.co.uk rankings with a velocity unseen since Schott's Miscellany hove into view last year. The initial print run of 10,000 has been expanded to 50,000, following Richard and Judy's all-important imprimatur, and corporate interest from other companies: Hutchinson 3G, Channel 4 and Coca-Cola are among companies buying copies of the book for their staff.

A lot of the business support was attracted at a breakfast hosted by Gordon Brown at 11 Downing Street earlier this month. It was there that Justin King, Sainsbury's chief executive, placed an order for 28,000 copies, and other assembled entrepreneurs hailed the book as "a work of genius". For the record, it bears no important similarities to, say, War and Peace, but it is an ingeniously executed book aimed at galvanising alienated Britons to do something for a society devoid of fellow feeling and good neighbourliness.

Spinning off from the book is a website (www.wearewhatwedo.org) where people can register which actions from the book they have completed, promotional partnerships with magazines such as Time Out, and a forthcoming season of short films on Channel 4 on the theme of the actions in the book (one of these films, intriguingly, will be about action 17: try watching less TV). Today has been designated We Are What We Do day and to mark it several companies have organised buckets to collect loose change for charity (action 16), while other have adopted action 11 (get fitter, feel better) by organising at-desk exercises and gym sessions.

Throughout, Harvey has been helped by businesses which have carried out action 50 (do something for nothing) on behalf of the project, supplying goods, services and expertise free of charge. Other long-term projects are in development, says Harvey: a young people's programme, international editions of the book, and another day of action next year. "We are building a movement which will reinvent itself, evolve and grow with the aim of building a network, not an empire," says We Are What We Do's statement, bafflingly.

Do one of the 50 simple everyday actions suggested by We Are What We Do, and take fifteen seconds to check it off and update it on their website here:

http://www.wearewhatwedo.org/do_something/actionlisting.php?PHPSESSID=227b8036e797d29da2b3da82d843bb8e

Charity Focus
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006

Special?

2006-06-07T04:28:00.000-07:00

The All-Leather, NFL Regulation, 1963 Chicago Bears-Inscribed Football

The year was 1964. The place was Chicago. A man I worked with had acquired a couple of all-leather, NFL regulation, 1963 Chicago Bears-inscribed footballs and was selling them at a real good price. My first son was on the way. I bought the football. I had my son's "coming home from the hospital" gift, and it was something truly special.

Several years later, young Tom was rummaging around in the garage as only a five- or six-year-old can rummage when he came across the all-leather, NFL regulation, 1963 Chicago Bears-inscribed football. He asked if he could play with it. With as much logic as I felt he could understand, I explained to him that he was still a bit too young to play carefully with such a special ball. We had the same conversation several more times in the next few months, and soon the requests faded away.

The next fall, after watching a football game on television, Tom asked, "Dad, remember that football you have in the garage? Can I use it to play with the guys now?"

Eyes rolling up in my head, I replied, "Tom, you don't understand. You don't just go out and casually throw around an all-leather, NFL regulation, 1963 Chicago bears-inscribed football. I told you before; it's special."

Eventually Tom stopped asking altogether. But he did remember, and a few years later he told his younger brother, Dave, about the all-leather, NFL regulation, 1963 Chicago Bears-inscribed football that was special and kept somewhere in the garage. Dave came to me one day and asked if he could take that special football and throw it around for awhile. It seemed like I'd been through this before, but I patiently explained, once again, that you don't just go out and throw around an all-leather, NFL regulation, 1963 Chicago Bears-inscribed football.

But it wasn't special anymore.

I stood alone in the garage. The boys had long since moved away from home, and suddenly I realized that the football had never been so special at all. Children playing with it when it was their time to play is what would have made it special. I had blown those precious, present moments that can never be reclaimed, and I had saved a football. For what?

I took the football across the street and gave it to a family with young kids. A couple of hours later I looked out the window. They were throwing, catching, kicking and letting skid across the cement my all-leather, NFL regulation, 1963 Chicago Bears-inscribed football.

Now it was special!

By Tom Payne,
from Chicken Soup for the Sports Fan's Soul © 1998

Cyber Step-Mother

2006-06-06T03:07:00.000-07:00

I've often felt that "step-parent" is a label we attach to men and women who marry into families where children already exist, for the simple reason that we need to call them something. It is most certainly an enormous "step", but one doesn't often feel as if the term "parent" truly applies. At least that's how I used to feel about being a step-mother to my husband's four children.

My husband and I had been together for six years, and with him I had watched as his young children became young teenagers. Although they lived primarily with their mother, they spent a lot of time with us as well. Over the years, we all learned to adjust, to become more comfortable with each other, and to adapt to our new family arrangement. We enjoyed vacations together, ate family meals, worked on homework, played baseball, rented videos. However, I continued to feel somewhat like an outsider, infringing upon foreign territory. There was a definite boundary line that could not be crossed, an inner family circle which excluded me. Since I had no children of my own, my experience of parenting was limited to my husband's four, and often I lamented that I would never know the special bond that exists between a parent and a child.

When the children moved to a town five hours away, my husband was understandably devastated. In order to maintain regular communication with the kids, we contacted Cyberspace and promptly set up an e-mail and chat-line service. This technology, combined with the telephone, would enable us to reach them on a daily basis by sending frequent notes and messages, and even chatting together when we were all on-line.

Ironically, these modern tools of communication can also be tools of alienation, making us feel so out of touch, so much more in need of real human contact. If a computer message came addressed to "Dad", I'd feel forgotten and neglected. If my name appeared along with his, it would brighten my day and make me feel like I was part of their family unit after all. Yet always there was some distance to be crossed, not just over the telephone wires.

Late one evening, as my husband snoozed in front of the television and I was catching up on my e-mail, an "instant message" appeared on the screen. It was Margo, my oldest step-daughter, also up late and sitting in front of her computer five hours away. As we had done in the past, we sent several messages back and forth, exchanging the latest news. When we would "chat" like that, she wouldn't necessarily know if it was me or her dad on the other end of the keyboard--that is unless she asked. That night she didn't ask and I didn't identify myself either. After hearing the latest volleyball scores, the details about an upcoming dance at her school, and a history project that was in the works, I commented that it was late and I should get to sleep. Her return message read, "Okay, talk to you later! Love you!"

As I read this message, a wave of sadness ran through me and I realized that she must have thought she was writing to her father the whole time. She and I would never have openly exchanged such words of affection. Feeling guilty for not clarifying, yet not wanting to embarrass her, I simply responded, "Love you too! Have a good sleep!"

I thought again of their family circle, that self-contained, private space where I was an intruder. I felt again the sharp ache of emptiness and otherness. Then, just as my fingers reached for the keys, just as I was about to return the screen to black, Margo's final message appeared. It read, "Tell Dad good night for me too." With tear-filled, blurry eyes, I turned the machine off.

By Judy E. Carter,
from Chicken Soup for the Parent's Soul

The Fortune Cookie Prophecy

2006-06-05T03:26:00.000-07:00

There is no surprise more magical than the surprise of being loved; it is God's finger on man's shoulder.

--Charles Morgan

I was married three times before I was seven years old.

My older brother Gary performed the ceremonies in our basement. Gary was good at entertaining the family and neighborhood kids with his creative ideas. Since I was the youngest boy in our group, I was often on the receiving end of his creativity.

What I remember most about those weddings is that all the girls were at least five years older than I was, and they all had beautiful eyes that sparkled when they laughed. Those weddings taught me to imagine what it would be like to find my soul mate one day and to be sure that I would know her by her beautiful eyes.

Puberty hit me late. I was still afraid of the opposite sex when I was fifteen, and yet I prayed every night for the girl I would marry. I asked God to help her do well in school and to be happy and full of energy-wherever and whoever she was.

I first kissed a girl when I was twenty-one. From that time forward, I dated many beautiful and talented young ladies, searching for the girl I had prayed for in my youth and still certain that I would know her by her eyes.

One day, my phone rang. "Don," it was my mother. "You know I told you about the Addisons, who moved in next door to us. Well, Clara Addison keeps asking me to invite you over for cards some night."

"Sorry, Mom, I've got a date that night."

"How could you? I haven't even told you what night it is?" my mother responded with exasperation.

"It doesn't matter when. I'm sure the Addisons are nice people, but I'm not going to waste an evening socializing with people who don't have any eligible daughters."

That's how stubborn I was-I was positive that there was no reason for me to go to visit the Addisons.

Years passed. I was twenty-six, and my friends were getting nervous about my prospects. They kept lining up blind dates for me. Many of these dates were fiascoes, and they were interfering with my social life. So I made up a few rules about blind dates:

1. No dates recommended by my mother (moms don't understand the sex-appeal factor).

2. No dates recommended by a female (they're too easy on each other).

3. No dates recommended by a single guy friend (if she's so awesome, how come he hasn't asked her out?).

In three simple steps, I eliminated 90 percent of all my blind dates, including one recommended by my old friend Karen. She called one evening to tell me that she had become good friends with a beautiful girl who reminded her of me. She said she knew we would hit it off. "Sorry," I said, "you're ruled out by rule number two."

"Don," she said, "You're crazy, and your silly rules are eliminating the girl you've been waiting for. But have it your way. Just take her name and phone number, and when you change your mind, call her."

To get Karen to stop bothering me about it, I said I would. The girl's name was Susan Maready. I never called her.

Just a couple of weeks later, I ran into my old buddy Ted in the university cafeteria. "Ted," I said. "You look like you're walking on air."

"Can you see stars under my feet?" he said, laughing. "The fact is, I just got engaged last night."

"Hey, congratulations!"

"Yeah," he said, "at thirty-two, I was beginning to wonder if any woman was going to have me." He pulled his wallet out of his pocket. "Here," he said, suddenly serious, "look at this.

It was a thin strip of paper from a fortune cookie. "You will be married within a year," it said.

"That's wild," I said. "They usually say something that would fit anyone, like 'You have a magnetic personality. They were really taking a chance with that one."

"No kidding," he said. "And look at me now."

A few weeks later, my roommate Charlie and I were eating dinner at a Chinese restaurant. I shared this story about Ted's fortune cookie prediction, and his subsequent engagement. Just then, the waiter brought over our postmeal fortune cookies. Charlie laughed at the coincidence as we opened our cookies. Mine said, "You have a magnetic personality." His said, "You or a close friend will be married within a year." A chill ran up my spine. This was really strange. Something told me to ask Charlie if I could keep his fortune, and he handed it to me with a smile.

Not long afterward, my classmate Brian said he wanted to introduce me to a young woman named Susan Maready. I was sure I'd heard that name before, but couldn't remember how or where. Since Brian was married, and therefore I wouldn't be breaking my "rules" about being fixed up by single guys, I accepted his offer to meet Susan.

Susan and I spoke on the phone, and planned a bike ride and a cookout. Then, the meeting-and as soon as I saw her, my heart started beating hard and wouldn't stop. Her large green eyes did something to me I couldn't explain. But somewhere in me, I knew that it was love at first sight.

After that wonderful evening, I remembered that this hadn't been the first time someone tried to fix me up with Susan. It all came back to me. Her name had been popping up all over the place for a long time. So the next time I had a chance to talk to Brian alone, I asked him about it.

He squirmed and tried to change the subject.

"What is it, Brian?" I asked.

"You'll have to ask Susan," was all he'd say.

So I did.

"I was going to tell you," she said. "I was going to tell you.

"Come on, Susan," I said. "Tell me what? I can't stand the suspense."

"I've been in love with you for years," she said, "since the first time I saw you from the Addisons' living room window. Yes-it was me they wanted you to meet. But you wouldn't let anyone introduce us. You wouldn't let the Addisons set us up; you wouldn't take Karen's word for it that we would like each other. I thought I was never going to meet you."

My heart swelled with love, and I laughed at myself. "Karen was right," I said. "My rules were crazy."

"You're not mad?" she asked.

"Are you kidding?" I said. "I'm impressed. I've got only one rule for blind dating now."

She gave me a strange look. "What's that?"

"Never again," I said and kissed her.

We were married seven months later.

Susan and I are convinced that we are true soul mates. When I was fifteen and praying for my future wife, she was fourteen and praying for her future husband.

After we had been married a couple of months, Susan said to me, "Do you want to hear something really strange?"

"Sure," I said. "I love to hear strange things."

"Well, about ten months ago, before I'd met you, my friends and I were at this Chinese restaurant, and…" She pulled a slip of paper from a fortune cookie out of her wallet:

"You will be married within a year…."

Don Buehner

Angels Among Us

2006-06-04T02:30:00.000-07:00

Bare foot and dirty, the girl just sat and watched the people go by.

She never tried to speak, she never said a word. Many people passed, but never did one person stop.

It just so happens the next day I decided to go back to the park, curious if the little girl would still be there.

Right in the very spot as she was yesterday she sat perched on high, with the saddest look in her eyes.

Today I was to make my own move and walk over to the little girl. As we all know a park full of strange people is not a place for young children to play alone.

As I began walking towards her I could see the back of the little girl's dress indicated a deformity. I figured that was the reason the people just passed by and made no effort to help.

As I got closer, the little girl slightly lowered her eyes to avoid my intent stare. I could see the shape of her back more clearly. It was grotesquely shaped in a humped over form. I smiled to let her know it was ok, I was there to help, to talk.

I sat down beside her and opened with a simple Hello. The little girl acted shocked and stammered a hi after a long stare into my eyes. I smiled and she shyly smiled back. We talked 'til darkness fell and the park was completely empty. Everyone was gone and we at once were alone.

I asked the girl why she was so sad. The little girl looked at me and with a sad face and said "Because I'm different." I immediately said "that you are!" and smiled.

The little girl acted even sadder, she said, "I know."

"Little girl," I said, "you remind me of an angel, sweet and innocent." She looked at me and smiled, slowly she stood to her feet, and said, "Really?" "Yes, ma'am, you're like a little guardian angel sent to watch over all those people walking by."

She nodded her head yes and smiled, and with that she spread her wings and said, "I am. I'm your guardian angel," with a twinkle in her eye.

I was speechless, sure I was seeing things.

She said, "For once you thought of someone other than yourself, my job here is done."

Immediately I stood to my feet and said, "Wait, so why did no one stop to help an angel?" She looked at me and smiled, "You're the only one who could see me, and you believe it in your heart." And She was gone.

And with that my life was changed dramatically. So, when you think you're all you have, remember, your angel is always watching over you.

Unknown author

A Perfect Mistake

2006-06-03T03:44:00.001-07:00

Grandpa Nybakken loved life -- especially when he could play a trick on somebody. At those times, his large Norwegian frame shook with laughter while he feigned innocent surprise, exclaiming, “Oh, forevermore!” But on a cold Saturday in downtown Chicago, Grandpa felt that God played a trick on him, and Grandpa wasn’t laughing.

Mother’s father worked as a carpenter. On this particular day, he was building some crates for the clothes his church was sending to an orphanage in China. On his way home, he reached into his shirt pocket to find his glasses, but they were gone. He remembered putting them there that morning, so he drove back to the church. His search proved fruitless.

When he mentally replayed his earlier actions, he realized what happened. The glasses had slipped out of his pocket unnoticed and fallen into one of the crates, which he had nailed shut. His brand new glasses were heading for China!

The Great Depression was at its height, and Grandpa had six children. He had spent twenty dollars for those glasses that very morning.

“It’s not fair,” he told God as he drove home in frustration. “I’ve been very faithful in giving of my time and money to your work, and now this.”

Several months later, the director of the orphanage was on furlough in the United States. He wanted to visit all the churches that supported him in China, so he came to speak on Sunday night at my grandfather’s small church in Chicago. Grandpa and his family sat in their customary seats among the sparse congregation.

“But most of all,” he said, “I must thank you for the glasses you sent last year. You see, the Communists had just swept through the orphanage, destroying everything, including my glasses. I was desperate.”

“Even if I had the money, there was simply no way of replacing those glasses. Along with not being able to see well, I experienced headaches every day, so my coworkers and I were much in prayer about this. Then your crates arrived. When my staffed removed the covers, they found a pair of glasses lying on top.”

The missionary paused long enough to let his words sink in. Then, still gripped with the wonder of it all, he continued: “Folks, when I tried on the glasses, it was as thought they had been custom-made just for me! I want to thank you for being a part of that!”

The people listened, happy for the miraculous glasses. But the missionary surely must have confused their church with another, they thought. There were no glasses on their list of items to be sent overseas.

But sitting quietly in the back, with tears streaming down his face, an ordinary carpenter realized the Master Carpenter had used him in an extraordinary way.

By Cheryl Walterman Stewart

Thelma

2006-06-01T03:34:00.000-07:00

Even at the age of 75, Thelma was very vivacious and full of life. When her husband passed away, her children suggested that she move to a "senior living community." A gregarious and life-loving person, Thelma decided to do so.

Shortly after moving in, Thelma became a self-appointed activities director, coordinating all sorts of things for the people in the community to do and quickly became very popular and made many friends.

When Thelma turned 80, her newfound friends showed their appreciation by throwing a surprise birthday party for her. When Thelma entered the dining room for dinner that night, she was greeted by a standing ovation and one of the coordinators led her to the head table. The night was filled with laughter and entertainment, but throughout the evening, Thelma could not take her eyes off a gentleman sitting at the other end of the table.

When the festivities ended, Thelma quickly rose from her seat and rushed over to the man. "Pardon me," Thelma said. "Please forgive me if I made you feel uncomfortable by staring at you all night. I just couldn't help myself from looking your way. You see, you look just like my fifth husband."

"Your fifth husband!" replied the gentleman. "Forgive me for asking, but how many times have you been married?"

With that, a smile came across Thelma's face as she responded, "Four."

They were married shortly after.

Thelma
by Shari Smith

Don't Miss This One!

2006-05-31T02:39:00.000-07:00

Writer's in Prison

I was doing a guest writing workshop at Susanville State Prison near the Sierra Nevada foothills in northern California. Most of the men doing time there are sentenced to prison because of drugs. They are housed in huge dormitories in bunk beds. They have no privacy, no place to be alone, no place to think quietly. I had great apprehensions when I walked onto the prison grounds. I had taught writing workshops at many California prisons, but those prisons had cells. In Cells, even if they are shared with another inmate, one can find a least a little writing time. Surely the men here at Susanville were not going to be interested in what I had to offer.

I had decided to spend my two days giving a monologue workshop. I wanted the men to have a chance to write and then perform before a camera. I wanted them to see themselves on video before I left the prison at the end of the second day. I felt that life in this prison had probably stripped them of most of their identity and that writing and performance art might restore some sense of who they were or who they could be.

I was pleased that twenty men had signed up for the class. This was the maximum number I had said I could take. I spend the first hour with them, talking about what it was like to be a writer. Telling them that there is a joy and a freedom in the words. That no matter how much they were all forced to be alike, dress alike, eat the same food, keep the same hours, that in their writing they could finally be different. As different as they wanted to be. Writing, I told them, can be the most liberating of all the arts. You can be free with the word. There are no limits. told them that every time I picked up a pencil or sat down at a computer or a typewriter that it was as if I was coming home, coming home to my art, my words, that this was a world that no one else could take away. This art would sustain me throughout all my days.

The men listened well and when I finally had them start their writing projects, they worked hard. There was only one, a young, very handsome blond man, who I worried about. He was reluctant to share during that first day when I had them writing their monologues. Every other student read and rewrote and read again, but this man sat quietly, erasing, writing, tearing up drafts, starting again. Whenever I would approach his desk, he quietly covered his paper with his arms.

“Can I see?” I ask. “It would be easier for me if you didn’t,” he would answer then a shy smile would appear.

I figured, what the heck. Even if he doesn’t share his writing with the class, he’s writing. He is choosing to spend his whole day in this hot stuffy classroom working on something called monologue. That morning he probably didn’t even know the meaning of the word. This should make me happy. But it didn’t. I was concerned about his need for privacy, about his inability to share, knowing that he didn’t think his writing was good enough.

I had worked in prisons for too many years to be fooled by his shyness. I knew that many of the inmates had learned at a very young age that they could do nothing right. They had been abused and tormented as children and lacked any self-confidence. But no matter how much I praised the other prisoners he wouldn’t relent. He went back to his dormitory that evening with his writing tucked into his jeans pocket. Many of the other men just left their work on the desks. Not him. He was taking no chance that I would read it after he was locked away behind the bars. He was right, of course. 1 would have made a beeline right for his desk the minute he got out the door. He had judged me right.

The second day all the men returned to the classroom. This was particularly pleasing to me. Even the young blond man. This was the day for reading and taping. I wondered how the silent, shy student would handle this. I was actually surprised to see him there. He had combed his long, blond hair and his shirt was neatly pressed. He had obviously thought about the fact that he was going to be filmed and wanted to look his best. At last I was going to hear what he wrote.

He didn’t say much during the performances. I had given the men fairly loose instructions about who should be speaking in their monologues. I had, though, told them that I wanted to hear their characters tell me what it is they really wanted, what it was that no one understood about them, and why they needed to talk. He sat there quietly, watching the work of his fellow inmates. One of the men had written a monologue for God, and another had been Abraham Lincoln, another Martin Luther King, Jr. Some of the monologues were funny, others serious. Even though they hadn’t had time to memorize their lines, once they began reading, the scripts in their hands were hardly noticeable, and I was extremely moved by their work.

Finally, he was the only one who hadn’t read his monologue. When all the others were finished I asked him, “Are you ready now?” “I don’t think so,” he answered in such a gentle voice. Then the men were on him.

“Man, if I can do it, you can do it. Try it. You’ll like it. Come on man, don’t be shy. Nobody’s going to judge you here.”

So he got up, took his script to the performance area and stood before the camera. He looked so young. The papers in his hands were shaking like frightened birds, but he looked with determination into the eye of the camera and opened up his monologue.

“My name is Bruce. I am twenty-one years old and I am dead. I am dead because I spent time in prison for drugs and I didn’t care. I didn’t care about me. I went to bed every night just counting the days ‘till I could get out and get that next fix. I would kill for my next fix. I would kill for my next fix.”

He went on about his life, how he was raised in poverty by alcoholic parents, beaten, hungry, no life at all, shuffled back and forth through foster homes. While he read, he showed scars on his body, the burn marks on his arms where a drunken father had extinguished cigarettes, the cuts on his wrists where he had tried to take his own life. I couldn’t help it. The tears began forming in my eyes, hot and painful. My God, why had I asked him to share this horrible pain? Then he got to the end of his story.

“Even though I died right there in prison, I want to tell you something. The reason I need to talk to you today. I have risen again, just like in the Bible. I am reborn. One day a woman came in and told me to write. And I had never written before, but I did it anyway. I sat for eight hours in a chair and focused the way I have never focused before. I could never even sit still before! I wrote out my ugly life, and then I was able to finally feel something. To feel pity. For myself. When no one else was ever able to feel it. And I felt something else. I felt joy. I was writing, and what I was writing was good. I was a writer! And I was going to get up in front of all those men in that class, and I would say that this . . .” At these words he held up his little manuscript. This is more important to me than any drug. What I wanted to tell you was that I died a drug addict, and I was reborn as a writer.”

We all sat there stunned. The camera kept running. He took a self-conscious little bow. Then he said, “Thank you,” once again in his quiet voice. And then the men broke out in spontaneous applause. He walked over to me and took my hands. Inmates are not allowed to touch their teachers, but I let him anyway. “You have given me something,” he said, “that no drug has ever given me. My self-respect.”

I think of him often. I pray that he has continued to find respect for himself through the written word. I know, though, that that day in that room with those men, a writer was born. After a long and terrible journey, a lost soul had come home, home to the words.

By Claire Braz-Valentine
from Chicken Soup for the Writer’s Soul

Someone Who Understands

2006-05-30T04:15:00.000-07:00

A store owner was tacking a sign above his door that read “Puppies For Sale.” Signs like that have a way of attracting small children, and sure enough, a little boy appeared under the store owner’s sign. “How much are you going to sell the puppies for?” he asked.

The store owner replied, “Anywhere from $30 to $50.”

The little boy reached in his pocket and pulled out some change. “I have $2.37,” he said. “Can I please look at them?”

The store owner smiled and whistled and out of the kennel came Lady, who ran down the aisle of his store followed by five teeny tiny balls of fur. One puppy was lagging considerable behind. Immediately the little boy singled out the lagging limping puppy and said, “What’s wrong with that little dog?”

The store owner explained that the veterinarian had examined the little puppy and had discovered it didn’t have a hip socket. It would always limp. It would always be lame. The little boy became excited. “That’s the little puppy that I want to buy.”

The store owner said, “No, you don’t want to buy that little dog. If you really want him, I’ll just give him to you.”

The little boy got quite upset. He looked straight into the store owner’s eyes, pointing his finger and said, “I don’t want you to give him to me. That little dog is worth every bit as much as all the other dogs and I’ll pay full price. In fact I’ll give you $2.37 now, and 50 cents a month until I have him paid for.

The store owner countered, “You really don’t want to buy this little dog. He is never going to be able to jump and play with you like the other puppies.”

To this, the little boy reached down and rolled up his pant leg to reveal a badly twisted, crippled left leg supported by a big metal brace. He looked up at the store owner and softly replied, “Well, I don’t run so well myself, and the little puppy will need someone who understands!”

By Dan Clark
from Chicken Soup for the Soul

Grandpa's Valentine

2006-05-29T03:21:00.000-07:00

I was the only family member living close by, so I received the initial call from the nursing home. Grandpa was failing rapidly. I should come. There was nothing to do but hold his hand. “I love you, Grandpa. Thank you for always being there for me.” And silently, I released him.

Memories...memories...six days a week, the farmer in the old blue shirt and bib overalls caring for those Hereford cattle he loved so much...on hot summer days lifting bales of hay from the wagon, plowing the soil, planting the corn and beans and harvesting them in the fall...always working from dawn to dusk. Survival demanded the work, work, work.

But on Sundays, after the morning chores were done, he put on his gray suit and hat. Grandma wore her wine-colored dress and the ivory beads, and they went to church. There was little other social life. Grandpa and Grandma were quiet, peaceful, unemotional people who every day did what they had to do. He was my grandpa -- he had been for 35 years. It was hard to picture him in any other role.

The nurse apologized for having to ask me so soon to please remove Grandpa’s things from the room. It would not take long. There wasn’t much. Then I found it in the top drawer of his nightstand. It looked like a very old handmade valentine. What must have been red paper at one time was a streaked faded pink. A piece of white paper had been glued to the center of the heart. On it, penned in Grandma’s handwriting, were these words:

TO LEE FROM HARRIET

With All My Love,

February 14, 1895

Are you alive? Real? Or are you the most beautiful dream that I have had in years? Are you an angel -- or a figment of my imagination? Someone I fabricated to fill the void? To soothe the pain? Where did you find the time to listen? How could you understand?

You made me laugh when my heart was crying. You took me dancing when I couldn’t take a step. You helped me set new goals when I was dying. You showed me dew drops and I had diamonds. You brought me wildflowers and I had orchids. You sang to me and angelic choirs burst forth in song. You held my hand and my whole being loved you. You gave me a ring and I belonged to you. I belonged to you and I have experienced all.

Tears streamed down my cheeks as I read the words. I pictured the old couple I had always known. It’s difficult to imagine your grandparents in any other role than that. What I read was so very beautiful and sacred. Grandpa had kept it all those years. Now it is framed on my dresser, a treasured part of family history.

By Elaine Reese
from Chicken Soup for the Woman’s Soul

What Mountain Are you Climbing?

2006-05-28T04:40:00.000-07:00

New Zealander becomes the first double amputee to haul himself up to the summit

This week, a middle-aged man from New Zealand called Mark Inglis painfully hauled himself up the last few feet to the summit of Mount Everest.

Nothing so unusual in that -- after all, climbing Everest has become so popular its slopes are often crowded, and more than 100 people have scaled the mountain already this year. Except Inglis is different: he has no legs.

Inglis, who lost both his legs to frostbite more than 20 years ago, is the first double amputee to reach the top of Everest. On Monday night he telephoned his wife, Anne, in their New Zealand home from the 29,035-foot summit to let her know he had made it safely.

During his climb, Inglis has been raising funds to provide artificial legs for disabled Tibetans, who live under the shadow of Everest. He made his own ascent on carbon fibre artificial legs specially adapted for climbing.

At one point, one of them snapped in a fall at 21,000 feet, and Inglis had to make running repairs on the mountainside before he could struggle back to his fellow climbers and rebuild it with spare parts.

He joins a small list of climbers who have overcome disabilities to conquer Everest, including a blind American and a Sherpa whose hands had been amputated and who used hooks to climb.

But Inglis insisted that was not what was important to him. "I'm not doing this to be the first double amputee," he told reporters before setting off. "If I am then it's the icing on the cake -- but it's more about I've been climbing most of my life and Everest is the achievement really."

Late on Monday night Inglis's wife answered the phone to hear his voice from Everest.

"I'm at Camp 4. I made it. I did it," he said before the line went dead.

"He's incredible," she said yesterday. "He's dreamt of this all his life, probably. He's over the moon. They didn't expect to be this early, they thought maybe mid to late May, so Mark will be stoked. I imagine they'll be having a few whiskies."

New Zealand has always had a special relationship with Everest, and Sir Edmund Hillary-- together with Sherpa Tenzing Norgay the first to scale Everest-- hailed his countryman's achievement.

"Quite obviously a remarkable effort to actually climb Mt. Everest with a couple of artificial legs. And I have to admit that I admire his considerable effort ... he's done a pretty good job," he told the Sydney Morning Herald.

Inglis lost his legs in his 20s, when he was working as a mountain rescue guide. He and a fellow climber, Phil Doole, were climbing New Zealand's Mount Cook and got caught in a blizzard. They were trapped in an ice cave for 14 days, and the effort to rescue them became a major news story.

When the rescuers finally got through, Inglis and Doole were barely alive, and both men's legs were so badly affected by frostbite they had to be amputated below the knee.

But he refused to let it stop him climbing -- on his website, he describes the loss of his legs as a "very public hiccup to my climbing profession."

He is also a winemaker, a professional ski guide, and a competitive cyclist -- he won a silver medal in the 2000 Paralympic Games in Sydney.

During his Everest ascent, he has been trying to raise funds and awareness to provide artificial limbs for the disabled in Tibet.

"Disabled people are a rare sight in Tibet, the environment so harsh that few survive," he says on his website. "By creating an opportunity for them to effectively work by sourcing limbs we can give back to them their lives."

The expedition is also hoping to raise money for a centre for landmine and polio victims who have lost their legs in Cambodia.

Inglis' ascent comes amid the annual rush to conquer Everest while the spring sun lasts -- before the onset of the monsoon makes climbing perilous.

Even as news of Inglis' ascent came in, another expedition announced that a Swede and a Norwegian had reached the summit of Everest, and were planning to ski back down.

Justin Huggler
The Independent(May 17, 2006)

Not to be Teased

2006-05-27T03:55:00.000-07:00

The Little Girl Who Dared To Wish

As Amy Hagadorn rounded the corner across the hall from her classroom, she collided with a tall boy from the fifth grade running in the opposite direction.

"Watch it , squirt." The boy yelled as he dodged around the little third-grader. Then, with a smirk on his face, the boy took hold of his right leg and mimicked the way Amy limped when she walked.

Amy closed her eyes. Ignore him, she told herself as she headed for her classroom.

But at the end of the day, Amy was still thinking about the tall boy's mean teasing. It wasn't as if her were the only one. It seemed that ever since Amy started the third grade, someone teased her every single day. Kids teased her about her speech or her limping. Amy was tired of it. Sometimes, even in a classroom full of other students, the teasing made her feel all alone.

Back home at the dinner table that evening, Amy was quiet. Her mother knew that things were not going well at school. That's why Patti Hagadorn was happy to have some exciting news to share with her daughter.

"There's a Christmas wish contest on the radio station," Amy's mom announced. "Write a letter to Santa, and you might win a prize. I think someone at this table with blonde curly hair should enter."

Amy giggled. The contest sounded like fun. She started thinking about what she wanted most for Christmas.

A smile took hold of Amy when the idea first came to her. Out came pencil and paper, and Amy went to work on her letter. "Dear Santa Claus," she began.

While Amy worked away at her best printing, the rest of the family tried to guess what she might ask from Santa. Amy's sister, Jamie, and Amy's mom both thought a three-foot Barbie doll would top Amy's wish list. Amy's dad guessed a picture book. But Amy wasn't ready to reveal her secret Christmas wish just then. Here is Amy's letter to Santa, just as she wrote it that night:

Dear Santa Claus,

My name is Amy. I am nine years old. I have a problem at school. Can you help me Santa? Kids laugh at me because of the way I walk and run and talk. I have cerebral palsy. I just want one day where no one laughs at me or makes fun of me.

Love, Amy

At radio station WJLT in Fort Wayne, Indiana, letter poured in for the Christmas wish contest. The workers had fun reading about all the different presents that boys and girls from across the city wanted for Christmas.

When Amy's letter arrived at the radio station, manager Lee Tobin read it carefully. He knew cerebral palsy was a muscle disorder that might confuse the schoolmates of Amy's who didn't understand her disability. He thought it would be good for the people in Fort Wayne to hear about this special third-grader and her unusual wish. Mr. Tobin called up the local newspaper.

The next day, a picture of Amy and her letter to Santa made the front page of the News Sentinel. The story spread quickly. All across the country, newspapers and radio and television stations reported the story of the little girl in Fort Wayne, Indiana, who asked for such a simple yet remarkable Christmas gift -- just one day without teasing.

Suddenly the postman was a regular at the Hagadorn house. Envelopes of all sizes addressed to Amy arrived daily from children and adults all across the nation. They came filled with holiday greetings and words of encouragement.

During that unforgettable Christmas season, over two thousand people from all over the world sent Amy letters of friendship and support. Amy and her family read every single one. Some of the writers had disabilities; some had been teased as children. Each writer had a special message for Amy. Through the cards and letters from strangers, Amy glimpsed a world full of people who truly cared about each other. She realized that no amount or form of teasing could ever make her feel lonely again.

Many people thanked Amy for being brave enough to speak up. Others encouraged her to ignore teasing and to carry her head high. Lynn, a sixth-grader from Texas, sent this message:

"I would like to be your friend," she wrote, "and if you want to visit me, we could have fun. No one would make fun of us, 'cause if they do, we will not even hear them."

Amy did get her wish of a special day without teasing at South Wayne Elementary School. Additionally, everyone at school got another bonus. Teachers and students talked together about how bad teasing can make others feel.

That year the Fort Wayne mayor officially proclaimed December 21 as Amy Jo Hagadorn Day throughout the city. The mayor explained that by daring to make such a simple wish, Amy taught a universal lesson.

"Everyone," said the mayor, "wants and deserves to be treated with respect, dignity and warmth."

By Alan D. Shultz,
from Chicken Soup for the Kid's Soul

Staying Open

2006-05-26T02:08:00.000-07:00

I'm sure you remember that old story about the monkey who came across some ripe berries in a glass jar. Not surprisingly, the monkey was elated about his find, and immediately plunged his hand inside the jar to grasp a fistful of berries. But when he tried to withdraw his hand, he found he was stuck: the neck of the jar was too small an opening for the monkey's clenched fist to negotiate. He had two choices: hold onto the treasure in his fist and remain imprisoned, or release the treasure and regain his hand. The monkey was in agony, because he did not want to let go of the food.

The moral of that story, of course, is that letting go can be vital to your health. That concept is easy enough to read on paper; in real life, though, it is tougher to grasp. We've all been in the monkey's shoes, after all -- who hasn't tried to hold fast to something at some point, even when it was obviously a poor choice? Come on: we've all done it. Several times.

I once met someone who was holding on for dear life to a job he detested. He had been working hard at it for years, typically he would spend 10 to 14 hours a day slaving over his desk. If you asked him why he didn't look for something else, he would give a totally reasonable answer: "It's all I know."

Then one day, out of the blue, he discovered he had terminal cancer. He was shocked: he was still young, his body was in good shape, and it didn't seem remotely fair to him to be felled by cancer before he had gotten any fun out of life. The doctors told him he had a year left to live.

Stunned into unreasonableness, this fellow quit his job and decided to spend the year enjoying himself -- something he had never done before in his whole life. He had, you remember, held passionately tight to his profession, even though he hated it. But in the face of death, he lost all fear of leaving his job. He packed up a few clothes, cleaned out his bank account and took off for a trip around the world.
We didn't hear from him for several months; as the days slipped by, many of us became increasingly concerned about his wellbeing. Was he all alone in some obscure hotel in South America, getting weak and frail? There was no way to track him down; and we kept worrying about him at a distance.

Ten months later, one of our team got a phone call from the fellow. He was back in the U.S, hale and hearty, and bursting with ideas about starting a new business. The cancer? It had disappeared off the map -- the doctors could no longer see any remnant of it in the X-rays. The man was healed.We couldn't believe our ears.
He stopped by to visit us a few days later, and indeed he looked happy, tanned, vigorous and full of excitement about his new career, which was in a vastly different direction from his previous one. We gathered around him in awe. "But how on earth did you get healed?" we all wanted to know. He said, "Well, my doctor thinks it was because I let go of the job I hated -- and then just dashed out and did all of the things I never let myself do before."

He's still healthy today, many years later. And he loves his work. We say he healed himself of cancer. He says cancer saved his life.

That same story about the monkey was told in a different way by the beloved American comedian Jack Benny. One of Benny's most famous comedy bits is the one in which a robber comes up to him on the street and demands, "Your money -- or your life!"
Benny stares at the robber and then falls into one of his relentlessly long, silent pauses.

Exasperated, the robber repeats his ultimatum: "Your money -- or your life!"
And Benny says, "Don't rush me.......I'm thinking."

Elsa Joy

All Day Long

2006-05-25T03:27:00.000-07:00

When I was a kid, I got into a lot of trouble. I got out of school when I was in grade 11, so I didn’t have a huge education to fall back on, so I didn’t say, “I’m going to be a doctor, a lawyer or a surgeon.” I really had to delve inside myself and ask: What are my strengths? What do I love to do? I’ll share a little story with you that really helped me.

My brother, who’s 10 years older than I am, his name is Mark, was a tennis pro and he loved to play tennis. There’s nothing he would love to do more than play tennis. My parents would tell him, “No, you’re never going to make a lot of money just following tennis.” He said, “There are two types of income that I need. One is mental, or psychic income, the other is monetary income. If I have a balance of both, I’m really happy.”

I heard him say that, so I determined when I was younger, “I’m never going to not do what I love to do.” What I recommend to people when I consult or coach them is: What would make you happy if you could do it all day long? Remember when you were a kid and you got to play at something all day long? Not everybody liked the same thing, but when you found the thing you liked to do… I’ve got two little boys. They could do it from morning until night.

The first key is to ask yourself: What is it that if you wouldn’t get paid, you’d do anyway? One of the things I’ve learned is that in every single business - I don’t care what business you give me around the world - somebody is making money doing it. When we match up what we love and become excellent at it, and mix it with proper business practices, we can make money doing what we love.

I don’t care if it’s widgets, babysitting or being a doctor, you have to understand what is it that you’d love to do - if you weren’t getting paid - you’d do it anyway. Then the questions come: What needs to happen in order for me to become outstanding at that? What business practices do I need to learn to convert my love into making money? That’s really what I’ve done.

John Assaraf

We Are Never Alone

2006-05-24T03:54:00.000-07:00

After my husband died suddenly from a heart attack on the tennis court, my world crashed around me. My six children were 10, nine, eight, six, three and 18 months, and I was overwhelmed with the responsibilities of earning a living, caring for the children and just plain keeping my head above water.

I was fortunate to find a wonderful housekeeper to care for the children during the week, but from Friday nights to Monday mornings, the children and I were alone, and frankly I was uneasy. Every creak of the house, every unusual noise, any late-night phone call-all filled me with dread. I felt incredibly alone.

One Friday evening I came home from work to find a big beautiful German shepherd on our doorstep. This wonderful strong animal gave every indication that he intended to enter the house and make it his home. I, however, was wary. Where did this obviously well-cared-for dog come from? Was it safe to let the children play with a strange dog? Even though he seemed gentle, he still was powerful and commanded respect. The children took an instant liking to "German" and begged me to let him in. I agreed to let him sleep in the basement until the next day, when we could inquire around the neighborhood for his owner. That night I slept peacefully for the first time in many weeks.

The following morning we made phone calls and checked lost-and-found ads for German's owner, but with no results. German, meanwhile, made himself part of the family and good-naturedly put up with hugs, wrestling and playing in the yard. Saturday night he was still with us, so again he was allowed to sleep in the basement.

On Sunday I had planned to take the children on a picnic. Since I thought it best to leave German behind in case his owner came by, we drove off without him. When we stopped to get gas at a local station, we were amazed to see German racing to the gas station after us. He not only raced to the car, he leaped onto the hood and put his nose on the windshield, looking directly into my eyes. No way was he going to be left behind. So into the station wagon he jumped and settled down in the back for the ride to the picnic. He stayed again Sunday.

Monday morning I let him out for a run while the children got ready for school. He didn't come back. As evening came and German didn't appear, we were all disappointed. We were convinced that he had gone home or been found by his owners, and that we would never see him again. We were wrong. The next Friday evening, German was back on our doorstep. Again we took him in, and again he stayed until Monday morning, when our housekeeper arrived.

This pattern repeated itself every weekend for almost 10 months. We grew more and more fond of German and we looked forward to his coming. We stopped thinking about where he belonged-he belonged to us. We took comfort in his strong, warm presence, and we felt safe with him near us. When we saw German come to attention and perk up his ears, and heard that low growl begin deep in his throat, we knew we were protected.

As German became part of the family he considered it his duty to check every bedroom to be sure each child was snug in bed. When he was satisfied that the last person was tucked in, he took up his position by the front door and remained there until the morning.

Each week, between German's visits, I grew a little stronger, a little braver and more able to cope; every weekend I enjoyed his company. Then one Monday morning we patted his head and let him out for what turned out to be the last time. He never came back. We never saw or heard from German again.

I think of him often. He came when I needed him the most and stayed until I was strong enough to go on alone. Maybe there is a perfectly natural explanation for German's visits to our house-maybe his owner went away on weekends-maybe. I believe German was sent because he was needed, and because no matter how abandoned and alone we feel, somehow, somewhere, someone knows and cares. We are never really alone.

Mary Miller
Chicken Soup for the Mother's Soul

The Fortune Cookie Prophecy

2006-05-23T03:22:00.000-07:00

372 pages
(January 1999)
ISBN: 1558746455

Save 20%
There is no surprise more magical than the surprise of being loved; it is God's finger on man's shoulder.

--Charles Morgan

I was married three times before I was seven years old.

My older brother Gary performed the ceremonies in our basement. Gary was good at entertaining the family and neighborhood kids with his creative ideas. Since I was the youngest boy in our group, I was often on the receiving end of his creativity.

What I remember most about those weddings is that all the girls were at least five years older than I was, and they all had beautiful eyes that sparkled when they laughed. Those weddings taught me to imagine what it would be like to find my soul mate one day and to be sure that I would know her by her beautiful eyes.

Puberty hit me late. I was still afraid of the opposite sex when I was fifteen, and yet I prayed every night for the girl I would marry. I asked God to help her do well in school and to be happy and full of energy-wherever and whoever she was.

I first kissed a girl when I was twenty-one. From that time forward, I dated many beautiful and talented young ladies, searching for the girl I had prayed for in my youth and still certain that I would know her by her eyes.

One day, my phone rang. "Don," it was my mother. "You know I told you about the Addisons, who moved in next door to us. Well, Clara Addison keeps asking me to invite you over for cards some night."

"Sorry, Mom, I've got a date that night."

"How could you? I haven't even told you what night it is?" my mother responded with exasperation.

"It doesn't matter when. I'm sure the Addisons are nice people, but I'm not going to waste an evening socializing with people who don't have any eligible daughters."

That's how stubborn I was-I was positive that there was no reason for me to go to visit the Addisons.

Years passed. I was twenty-six, and my friends were getting nervous about my prospects. They kept lining up blind dates for me. Many of these dates were fiascoes, and they were interfering with my social life. So I made up a few rules about blind dates:

1. No dates recommended by my mother (moms don't understand the sex-appeal factor).

2. No dates recommended by a female (they're too easy on each other).

3. No dates recommended by a single guy friend (if she's so awesome, how come he hasn't asked her out?).

In three simple steps, I eliminated 90 percent of all my blind dates, including one recommended by my old friend Karen. She called one evening to tell me that she had become good friends with a beautiful girl who reminded her of me. She said she knew we would hit it off. "Sorry," I said, "you're ruled out by rule number two."

"Don," she said, "You're crazy, and your silly rules are eliminating the girl you've been waiting for. But have it your way. Just take her name and phone number, and when you change your mind, call her."

To get Karen to stop bothering me about it, I said I would. The girl's name was Susan Maready. I never called her.

Just a couple of weeks later, I ran into my old buddy Ted in the university cafeteria. "Ted," I said. "You look like you're walking on air."

"Can you see stars under my feet?" he said, laughing. "The fact is, I just got engaged last night."

"Hey, congratulations!"

"Yeah," he said, "at thirty-two, I was beginning to wonder if any woman was going to have me." He pulled his wallet out of his pocket. "Here," he said, suddenly serious, "look at this.

It was a thin strip of paper from a fortune cookie. "You will be married within a year," it said.

"That's wild," I said. "They usually say something that would fit anyone, like 'You have a magnetic personality. They were really taking a chance with that one."

"No kidding," he said. "And look at me now."

A few weeks later, my roommate Charlie and I were eating dinner at a Chinese restaurant. I shared this story about Ted's fortune cookie prediction, and his subsequent engagement. Just then, the waiter brought over our postmeal fortune cookies. Charlie laughed at the coincidence as we opened our cookies. Mine said, "You have a magnetic personality." His said, "You or a close friend will be married within a year." A chill ran up my spine. This was really strange. Something told me to ask Charlie if I could keep his fortune, and he handed it to me with a smile.

Not long afterward, my classmate Brian said he wanted to introduce me to a young woman named Susan Maready. I was sure I'd heard that name before, but couldn't remember how or where. Since Brian was married, and therefore I wouldn't be breaking my "rules" about being fixed up by single guys, I accepted his offer to meet Susan.

Susan and I spoke on the phone, and planned a bike ride and a cookout. Then, the meeting-and as soon as I saw her, my heart started beating hard and wouldn't stop. Her large green eyes did something to me I couldn't explain. But somewhere in me, I knew that it was love at first sight.

After that wonderful evening, I remembered that this hadn't been the first time someone tried to fix me up with Susan. It all came back to me. Her name had been popping up all over the place for a long time. So the next time I had a chance to talk to Brian alone, I asked him about it.

He squirmed and tried to change the subject.

"What is it, Brian?" I asked.

"You'll have to ask Susan," was all he'd say.

So I did.

"I was going to tell you," she said. "I was going to tell you.

"Come on, Susan," I said. "Tell me what? I can't stand the suspense."

"I've been in love with you for years," she said, "since the first time I saw you from the Addisons' living room window. Yes-it was me they wanted you to meet. But you wouldn't let anyone introduce us. You wouldn't let the Addisons set us up; you wouldn't take Karen's word for it that we would like each other. I thought I was never going to meet you."

My heart swelled with love, and I laughed at myself. "Karen was right," I said. "My rules were crazy."

"You're not mad?" she asked.

"Are you kidding?" I said. "I'm impressed. I've got only one rule for blind dating now."

She gave me a strange look. "What's that?"

"Never again," I said and kissed her.

We were married seven months later.

Susan and I are convinced that we are true soul mates. When I was fifteen and praying for my future wife, she was fourteen and praying for her future husband.

After we had been married a couple of months, Susan said to me, "Do you want to hear something really strange?"

"Sure," I said. "I love to hear strange things."

"Well, about ten months ago, before I'd met you, my friends and I were at this Chinese restaurant, and…" She pulled a slip of paper from a fortune cookie out of her wallet:

"You will be married within a year…."

Don Buehner

Twins A Parable

2006-05-22T03:15:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time, twin boys were conceived.

Weeks passed and the twins developed. As their awareness grew, they laughed for joy: "Isn't it great that we were conceived? Isn't it great to be alive? "

Together the twins explored their worlds. When they found their mother's cord that gave them life, they sang for joy! "How great our mother's love is, that she shares her own life with us!"

As weeks stretched into months, the twins noticed how much each was changing.

"What does it mean?" one asked.

"It means our stay in this world is drawing to an end." said the other.

"But I don't want to go," said one. "I want to stay here always."

"We have no choice," said the other. "But maybe there is life after birth."

"But how can there be?" responded one. "We will shed our life cord and how can life be possible without it? Besides, we have seen evidence that others were here before us, and none of them has returned to tell us there is life after birth. No, this is the end. Maybe there is no mother after all."

"But there has to be," protested the other. "How else did we get here? How do we remain alive?"

"Have you ever seen our mother?" said one.

"Maybe she only lives in our minds. Maybe we made her up because the idea made us feel good."

So the last days in the womb were filled with deep questioning and fear.

Finally, the moment of birth arrived. When the twins had passed from their world, they opened their eyes and cried for joy - for what they saw exceeded their fondest dreams.

That is birth ... and that is death.

Everything is Best

2006-05-21T03:21:00.000-07:00

One day Banzan was walking through a market. He overheard a customer say to the butcher, "Give me the best piece of meat you have." "Everything in my shop is the best," replied the butcher. "You can not find any piece of meat that is not the best." At these words, Banzan was enlightened.

FAMILY QUEST FOR TODAY'S HEROES

2006-05-20T02:59:00.001-07:00

Worried about the world your children will inherit? So were Laurent and Marie-Hélène de Cherisey.

THE WORLD DOES NOT always run as it should. And that can be frightening. What kind of world will we leave to our children?

In July 2004, we set off with our five children, aged between five and 11, to meet men and women in 14 countries who are working for a fairer world. We wanted to discover the secret of those who, faced with the world's problems, have overcome their sense of powerlessness and started to bring about profound changes. We spent a few days sharing each of their lives and filming them for French television. We produced seven hours of film and two books under the title of Passeurs d'Espoir (hope traffickers), which have become best-sellers (Presse de la Renaissance, 2005).

Our journey started from a dream, one we shared when we first met. Fifteen years and five children later, the dream became reality. Marie-Hélène, a television journalist, took a course in digital camera work in order to film all these 'anonymous heroes'. Laurent sold his marketing business and, with friends, created the Reporters of Hope Association. The idea is a simple one: for everyone to have a part in creating 'a world for our children', we urgently need to develop a 'global information network' to report both on world problems and on initiatives to resolve them.

At the heart of this approach is the idea of people standing up: this can be any of us, when we are ready to change. Change in ourselves helps us to be on the look-out and ready to be involved whenever people's dignity is flouted. We then find the courage to act and take initiatives.

We finalised our project at an Initiatives of Change conference in Caux, Switzerland, in August 2004. There we met the first two of our 18 'pioneers of the 21st Century': Dick Ruffin, an initiator of the Hope in the Cities reconciliation programme, which deals with racial tension and violence in the USA and elsewhere, and Joseph Karanja, a slum kid turned builder of democracy in Kenya. We also had a chance that summer to spend time with Cornelio Sommaruga, the President of the International Association for IofC, who provided us with the preface for our first book.

Our aim was to gather evidence from those who testify, through the initiatives they have taken, that the great social problems of the 21st century have nothing inevitable about them. For this purpose we chose 18 major contemporary issues which make up the TV news headlines: education, health, water, corruption, child abuse, environment, waste disposal, poverty, economic development, energy supplies. All worrying questions: everyday, global ?bad news' which makes us feel there is nothing the individual can do. Through the eyes of our children, we wanted to discover the reality of theseproblems and find out about the solutions being worked out.

The 18 people we met have one thing in common: in the face of these problems, they refused to remain passive and to accept the inevitable. They were not afraid to be the first to take action. Their example is a testimony to man's greatness and to our universal capacity, in the midst of adversity, to find a way to overcome, for the benefit of all.

Take Suzana Padua, for instance. In the 1980s, she discovered the threat to the forests in Southern Brazil, 97 per cent of which had disappeared. Trees and animals were at risk and desertification was accelerating. The government had decided to create huge parks for their protection. The only problem was how to keep out the local people, who were often very poor, and survived on poaching and felling trees.

It dawned on Suzana that the forest could not be saved by keeping people out. She worked out a model of agroforestry which she patiently taught to the most deprived members of the community. This involved alternating the cultivation of such crops as coffee and fruit with tree planting, in order to regenerate the soil. In a few years there was a miracle. All those abandoned families were earning a living replanting the forest. An agreement was concluded with the government to replant 30 per cent of southern Brazil this way. UNESCO voted Suzana Padua's model one of the eight most promising for the planet.

In Thailand, a young academic calleed Pisit made friends with th local fishermen, who were under threat from illegal industrialisation. They were resorting to such desperate measures as fishing with dynamite or cyanide and were eventually being forced to move to the cities. It was a tragedy both for the individuals concerned and for the community.

Pisit did not try to impose his academic expertise. Month by month, as discussions went on, he discovered that these fishermen possessed remarkable know-how handed down through the generations. He urged them to unite in an effort to protect 'their' coast and to defend their rights against illegal industrial fishing, as well as to replant the mangrove forests where the fish laid their eggs. The benefits spiralled. The sea beds were quickly replenished and the nets filled once more. Families came back to the village.

Pisit emerges from all this as an enlightened prophet with a vision of the only type of development which will work for the 21st century-the 'down top' model. He rejected the domination and hand-outs of those who use money to impose 'top down' models, which are unsuited to local realities. Instead, he approached local people, in a spirit of support and cooperation. Their initiatives will prove their own point.

In India, we met a 94-year-old ophthamologist who has inspired a revolutionary approach to the world economy which is both realistic and people-centred. Govindappa Venkataswamy, known by all as Dr V, has developed an effective form of capitalism to serve the millions who, because they have no spending power, are left out of the market studies of the average capitalist. In a country where ten million people have been blinded by cataracts, he applied lessons learnt from the fast food chains to his own specialty of eye surgery.

Dr V has now built five large hospitals in India, without subsidy,and directs a team of 400 surgeons who operate every day, and do so ten times more rapidly than a regular surgeon. This highproductivity means that he can offer free operations to 70 per cent of his patients, who could not otherwise afford them, and still remain cost-effective. In the time that most ophthamologists would take to operate on one person, Dr V's surgeons can operate on ten, of whom three pay. His teams have already operated on two million blind people and expect to operate on the remaining eight million in the coming years.

The operation concerned involves implanting intraocular lenses, which cost $250 in the West. In his situation such costs are out of the question, so he has formed a subsidiary company, Aurolab, which produces lenses of equivalent quality for $5 each, using a similar approach to efficiency and productivity. In a few years Aurolab has become a world leader and a viable company.

These 'best practices' are a tremendous inspiration. The conclusion is simple: models like Dr V's can be developed for all essential products and services required by mankind. If one starts with the price the poorest can pay (most have some purchasing power, even if it is tiny), then, as productivity rises, there is a realistic prospect of access to a non-competitive but profitable world market made up of the billions abandoned by the capitalist system. In such a huge market, production costs can fall drastically. In many spheres of activity where marketing costs reach 50 or 80 per cent of the selling price, there are new and enticing prospects.

Moreover, the motivation of working for profit, while serving the fundamental needs of billions of people at the edge of progress, can generate a fount of energy and knowledge in a company. Finally, allowing a poor person to satisfy his basic needs (for water, food, health, housing, education, work, energy) will turn him and billions like him into economic players with undreamt-of potential for productivity and consumption. A rich vein of durable, global growth!

Other significant examples prove this approach to be neither utopian nor out of the ordinary. They show that international companies need to take these new markets seriously.

In Brazil, we met Fabio, who developed a model of credit-selling to supply the poorest farmers with solar energy at $11 a month- the amount they normally spend on candles and kerosene. As a result, their productivity and income increased four-fold, and the spectre of drift from the land, so damaging to people's dignity, receded. This type of solution could apply to some billion people without electricity in their homes.

In the past, the economic and social sectors have often been unaware of each other or, when they have come together, have not known how to work together. In the context of Dr V's work, our century of globalisation and information offers fantastic new prospects.

Suzana, Pisit, Dick, Joseph, Fabio, Dr V and the rest of our 18 pioneers are happy. They have found joy through discovering ways to enable our generation to offer ?a fairer and more tolerable' world to the eight billion humans soon to inhabit the planet. Meeting them convinced us that, however great the challenges, the solutions exist-and that they will not come from great political or economic organisations, although they have a role in encouraging them.

Change can only come about through the choices and determination of individuals-of every person, each one unique and irreplaceable in the building of 'a world for our children'.

Albina Riez, centre, grew up as one of 11 brothers and sisters in the Amazonian forest of Peru. In spite of his friends' ridicule, her father allowed her to study. When she arrived in Lima, at the age of 18, to start university she was horrified to discover that two thirds of the city's rubbish was left to rot on the streets, riverbanks and sea shore, endangering health and the environment. The poorest areas were most affected, and many people made a dangerous living scavenging.

Albina refused to accept the unacceptable. As a student, she organised a series of voluntary clean-up campaigns. She wrote her thesis on the issue of rubbish disposal-and came up with a scheme for micro-enterprises based on rubbish-clearing and recycling. A revolving loan fund helps local people to set up as rubbish collectors, using specially designed tricycles which enable them to separate the waste as they collect it. In so doing she has transformed a degrading and precarious activity into a valued, profitable and professional occupation. The incomes and social status of those involved have soared, Lima's poorest areas are being transformed, and the idea is spreading to other cities.

2006-05-20T02:59:00.000-07:00

FAMILY QUEST FOR TODAY'S HEROES

Worried about the world your children will inherit? So were Laurent and Marie-Hélène de Cherisey.

THE WORLD DOES NOT always run as it should. And that can be frightening. What kind of world will we leave to our children?

In July 2004, we set off with our five children, aged between five and 11, to meet men and women in 14 countries who are working for a fairer world. We wanted to discover the secret of those who, faced with the world's problems, have overcome their sense of powerlessness and started to bring about profound changes. We spent a few days sharing each of their lives and filming them for French television. We produced seven hours of film and two books under the title of Passeurs d'Espoir (hope traffickers), which have become best-sellers (Presse de la Renaissance, 2005).

Our journey started from a dream, one we shared when we first met. Fifteen years and five children later, the dream became reality. Marie-Hélène, a television journalist, took a course in digital camera work in order to film all these 'anonymous heroes'. Laurent sold his marketing business and, with friends, created the Reporters of Hope Association. The idea is a simple one: for everyone to have a part in creating 'a world for our children', we urgently need to develop a 'global information network' to report both on world problems and on initiatives to resolve them.

At the heart of this approach is the idea of people standing up: this can be any of us, when we are ready to change. Change in ourselves helps us to be on the look-out and ready to be involved whenever people's dignity is flouted. We then find the courage to act and take initiatives.

We finalised our project at an Initiatives of Change conference in Caux, Switzerland, in August 2004. There we met the first two of our 18 'pioneers of the 21st Century': Dick Ruffin, an initiator of the Hope in the Cities reconciliation programme, which deals with racial tension and violence in the USA and elsewhere, and Joseph Karanja, a slum kid turned builder of democracy in Kenya. We also had a chance that summer to spend time with Cornelio Sommaruga, the President of the International Association for IofC, who provided us with the preface for our first book.

Our aim was to gather evidence from those who testify, through the initiatives they have taken, that the great social problems of the 21st century have nothing inevitable about them. For this purpose we chose 18 major contemporary issues which make up the TV news headlines: education, health, water, corruption, child abuse, environment, waste disposal, poverty, economic development, energy supplies. All worrying questions: everyday, global ?bad news' which makes us feel there is nothing the individual can do. Through the eyes of our children, we wanted to discover the reality of theseproblems and find out about the solutions being worked out.

The 18 people we met have one thing in common: in the face of these problems, they refused to remain passive and to accept the inevitable. They were not afraid to be the first to take action. Their example is a testimony to man's greatness and to our universal capacity, in the midst of adversity, to find a way to overcome, for the benefit of all.

Take Suzana Padua, for instance. In the 1980s, she discovered the threat to the forests in Southern Brazil, 97 per cent of which had disappeared. Trees and animals were at risk and desertification was accelerating. The government had decided to create huge parks for their protection. The only problem was how to keep out the local people, who were often very poor, and survived on poaching and felling trees.

It dawned on Suzana that the forest could not be saved by keeping people out. She worked out a model of agroforestry which she patiently taught to the most deprived members of the community. This involved alternating the cultivation of such crops as coffee and fruit with tree planting, in order to regenerate the soil. In a few years there was a miracle. All those abandoned families were earning a living replanting the forest. An agreement was concluded with the government to replant 30 per cent of southern Brazil this way. UNESCO voted Suzana Padua's model one of the eight most promising for the planet.

In Thailand, a young academic calleed Pisit made friends with th local fishermen, who were under threat from illegal industrialisation. They were resorting to such desperate measures as fishing with dynamite or cyanide and were eventually being forced to move to the cities. It was a tragedy both for the individuals concerned and for the community.

Pisit did not try to impose his academic expertise. Month by month, as discussions went on, he discovered that these fishermen possessed remarkable know-how handed down through the generations. He urged them to unite in an effort to protect 'their' coast and to defend their rights against illegal industrial fishing, as well as to replant the mangrove forests where the fish laid their eggs. The benefits spiralled. The sea beds were quickly replenished and the nets filled once more. Families came back to the village.

Pisit emerges from all this as an enlightened prophet with a vision of the only type of development which will work for the 21st century-the 'down top' model. He rejected the domination and hand-outs of those who use money to impose 'top down' models, which are unsuited to local realities. Instead, he approached local people, in a spirit of support and cooperation. Their initiatives will prove their own point.

In India, we met a 94-year-old ophthamologist who has inspired a revolutionary approach to the world economy which is both realistic and people-centred. Govindappa Venkataswamy, known by all as Dr V, has developed an effective form of capitalism to serve the millions who, because they have no spending power, are left out of the market studies of the average capitalist. In a country where ten million people have been blinded by cataracts, he applied lessons learnt from the fast food chains to his own specialty of eye surgery.

Dr V has now built five large hospitals in India, without subsidy,and directs a team of 400 surgeons who operate every day, and do so ten times more rapidly than a regular surgeon. This highproductivity means that he can offer free operations to 70 per cent of his patients, who could not otherwise afford them, and still remain cost-effective. In the time that most ophthamologists would take to operate on one person, Dr V's surgeons can operate on ten, of whom three pay. His teams have already operated on two million blind people and expect to operate on the remaining eight million in the coming years.

The operation concerned involves implanting intraocular lenses, which cost $250 in the West. In his situation such costs are out of the question, so he has formed a subsidiary company, Aurolab, which produces lenses of equivalent quality for $5 each, using a similar approach to efficiency and productivity. In a few years Aurolab has become a world leader and a viable company.

These 'best practices' are a tremendous inspiration. The conclusion is simple: models like Dr V's can be developed for all essential products and services required by mankind. If one starts with the price the poorest can pay (most have some purchasing power, even if it is tiny), then, as productivity rises, there is a realistic prospect of access to a non-competitive but profitable world market made up of the billions abandoned by the capitalist system. In such a huge market, production costs can fall drastically. In many spheres of activity where marketing costs reach 50 or 80 per cent of the selling price, there are new and enticing prospects.

Moreover, the motivation of working for profit, while serving the fundamental needs of billions of people at the edge of progress, can generate a fount of energy and knowledge in a company. Finally, allowing a poor person to satisfy his basic needs (for water, food, health, housing, education, work, energy) will turn him and billions like him into economic players with undreamt-of potential for productivity and consumption. A rich vein of durable, global growth!

Other significant examples prove this approach to be neither utopian nor out of the ordinary. They show that international companies need to take these new markets seriously.

In Brazil, we met Fabio, who developed a model of credit-selling to supply the poorest farmers with solar energy at $11 a month- the amount they normally spend on candles and kerosene. As a result, their productivity and income increased four-fold, and the spectre of drift from the land, so damaging to people's dignity, receded. This type of solution could apply to some billion people without electricity in their homes.

In the past, the economic and social sectors have often been unaware of each other or, when they have come together, have not known how to work together. In the context of Dr V's work, our century of globalisation and information offers fantastic new prospects.

Suzana, Pisit, Dick, Joseph, Fabio, Dr V and the rest of our 18 pioneers are happy. They have found joy through discovering ways to enable our generation to offer ?a fairer and more tolerable' world to the eight billion humans soon to inhabit the planet. Meeting them convinced us that, however great the challenges, the solutions exist-and that they will not come from great political or economic organisations, although they have a role in encouraging them.

Change can only come about through the choices and determination of individuals-of every person, each one unique and irreplaceable in the building of 'a world for our children'.

Albina Riez, centre, grew up as one of 11 brothers and sisters in the Amazonian forest of Peru. In spite of his friends' ridicule, her father allowed her to study. When she arrived in Lima, at the age of 18, to start university she was horrified to discover that two thirds of the city's rubbish was left to rot on the streets, riverbanks and sea shore, endangering health and the environment. The poorest areas were most affected, and many people made a dangerous living scavenging.

Albina refused to accept the unacceptable. As a student, she organised a series of voluntary clean-up campaigns. She wrote her thesis on the issue of rubbish disposal-and came up with a scheme for micro-enterprises based on rubbish-clearing and recycling. A revolving loan fund helps local people to set up as rubbish collectors, using specially designed tricycles which enable them to separate the waste as they collect it. In so doing she has transformed a degrading and precarious activity into a valued, profitable and professional occupation. The incomes and social status of those involved have soared, Lima's poorest areas are being transformed, and the idea is spreading to other cities.

Dear God, This is Charles

2006-05-19T03:23:00.000-07:00

Dear God,

This is Charles. I turned twelve the other day. If you noticed, I'm typing this letter. Sometimes it's hard for me to write, you know. It's this thing called dysgraphia. I also have Attention Deficit Disorder-oftentimes learning disabilities accompany A.D.D. My IQ was tested at 140, but if you graded my cursive, you'd think I was dumb.

I never could hold a pencil the right way. I never could color in the lines. Every ime I would try, my hand would cramp up and the letters would come out sloppy, the lines too dark, and the marker would get all over my hands. Nobody wanted to switch papers with me to grade them because they couldn't read them. Keith could, but he moved away.

My brain doesn't sense what my hand is doing. I can feel the pencil, but the message doesn't get through right. I have to grip the pencil tighter so my brain knows that I have it in my hand.

It's much easier for me to explain things by talking than it is to write. I'm really good at dictating, but my teachers don't always let me. If I am asked to write an essay on my trip to Washington and Philadelphia, it's like a punishment. But if I can dictate it, or just get up and talk about it, I can tell everyone about the awesomeness of seeing the Declaration of Independence in the National Archives or the feeling of true patriotism that rushed through me when I stood in the room where our founding fathers debated the issues of freedom.

If I got graded on art, I'd fail for sure. There are so many things I can picture in my mind, but my hands just don't draw it the way I see it.
It's okay. I'm not complaining. I'm really doing fine. You see, you gave me a wonderful mind and a great sense of humor. I'm great at figuring things out, and I love to debate. We have some great Bible discussions in class, and that's where I really shine.

I want to be a lawyer when I group up, a trial lawyer in fact. I know I'd be good at that. I would be responsible for researching the crime, examining the evidence and truthfully presenting the case.

You have told me that you made me special when you said that I am fearfully and wonderfully made. You have assured me that you will see me through, and that you have plans for me to give me a future and hope.

My parents want to help me, so they bought me a laptop to take to school. My teacher is the best this year! I am allowed to do a lot of my work on the computer. We have a character trait book due every Friday, and guess what? She lets me use Print Shop Deluxe for the artwork. For the first time, I'll be able to show everyone some of the things I have in my mind.

Lord, this is a thank-you letter, just to let you know I'm doing fine. Life's hard sometimes, but you know what? I accept the challenge. I have the faith to see myself through anything. Thanks for making me me. Thanks for loving me unconditionally. Thanks for everything.

In your service,
Charles

Charles Inglehart, age 12
From Chicken Soup for the Kid's Soul

Getting Out

2006-05-18T04:01:00.000-07:00

The Point of No Return
In an action movie “The Point of No Return” the heroine finds herself in a mafia type gang. She has a love experience while in the gang and wants out. But she is told by the other members that there is no such thing as “out”. She talks with one of the senior women in the group and is told “Such a thing never entered my mind.”
She determines to leave the gang, but it is too dangerous. Finally she is promised that if she does one more big job, she will be helped to leave without the big boss’ knowledge She goes to do the job, and does not kill the intended victim, but gets the information she was sent to get. Several gang members are killed in connection with this job and the man who promised to help her, lets her go, and tells the boss she was killed also. The film ends with the heroine a free woman.

The symbolism of this film is that we are all involved in a gang called the human race, and there is apparently no escape from its suffering short of death. But once the decision is made to break out, the universe comes to our aid and we are set free to be our true selves

The Greater Whole

2006-05-17T03:13:00.000-07:00

The sound of children playing is a universal sound of peace. --Rev. Heng Sure

He'd won 4 Olympic Golds, broken 11 world records, and was 25. So he retires?! Speed skater Johann Olav Koss had a much deeper outlook. “You’re very focused on yourself, you’re very narrow-minded and your world is limited. At a certain point you want to see the greater meaning—the greater whole.”

And so Johann went to Eritrea with a plane full of soccer balls, a week after President Afewerki had made an international appeal for food aid. Koss asked him what he thought about his unexpected and unusual contribution to Eritrea's children, and the President said, 'This is the most beautiful gift we have ever received. Finally we are being seen as human beings. We are more than mouths to feed, more than people dying who must be kept alive. We are people. We, too, have dreams and we hope for a better future.'

Be The Change:
Give a child you know, or perhaps don't know, some sports equipment, a toy, a game, or any other tool of play.

Charity Focus

Divine Intervention

2006-05-16T03:19:00.000-07:00

I caught a brief segment on MTV where a rock singer and song writer was telling his life story and had entitled it “Divine Intervention” That seemed a bit strange, so I listened. It seems that this singer/songwriter had just gotten out of the military and headed south to find warmer weather.

He only had $40, a duffel bag and his cassette player and so he had to hitchhike. On the way to Memphis he got caught in an ice storm and while trying to hitch a ride, he got deathly cold. He sat down on the ground and almost frozen and began to slip in and out of consciousness. He remembered turning on his cassette player for some comfort and listening to Pink Floyd sing “I Wish You Were Here” He also remembers that he sang those words to God as a prayer just before he lost consciousness completely.

The next thing he remembered was that someone was taking his duffel bag and he thought “Let them steal it, I’m out of here anyway!” But this same good samaritan also picked him up and took him to a hospital. When he was laid in the car to go to the hospital, what was playing on the radio of the driver but “I Wish You Were Here.”

When he got to Memphis, “I Wish You Were Here” became his theme song and he met his future wife while singing that same song. Incredible or not?

Broken Wing

2006-05-15T02:58:00.000-07:00

Some people are just doomed to be failures. That's the way some adults look at troubled kids. Maybe you've heard the saying, "A bird with a broken wing will never fly as high." I'm sure that T. J. Ware was made to feel this way almost every day in school.

By high school, T. J. was the most celebrated troublemaker in his town. Teachers literally cringed when they saw his name posted on their classroom lists for the next semester. He wasn't very talkative, didn't answer questions and got into lots of fights. He had flunked almost every class by the time he entered his senior year, yet was being passed on each year to a higher grade level. Teachers didn't want to have him again the following year. T. J. was moving on, but definitely not moving up. I met T. J. for the first time at a weekend leadership retreat. All the students at school had been invited to sign up for ACE training, a program designed to have students become more involved in their communities. T. J. was one of 405 students who signed up. When I showed up to lead their first retreat, the community leaders gave me this overview of the attending students: "We have a total spectrum represented today, from the student body president to T. J. Ware, the boy with the longest arrest record in the history of town." Somehow, I knew that I wasn't the first to hear about T. J.'s darker side as the first words of introduction.

At the start of the retreat, T. J. was literally standing outside the circle of students, against the back wall, with that "go ahead, impress me" look on his face. He didn't readily join the discussion groups, didn't seem to have much to say. But slowly, the interactive games drew him in. The ice really melted when the groups started building a list of positive and negative things that had occurred at school that year. T. J. had some definite thoughts on those situations. The other students in T. J.'s group welcomed his comments. All of a sudden T. J. felt like a part of the group, and before long he was being treated like a leader. He was saying things that made a lot of sense, and everyone was listening. T. J. was a smart guy and he had some great ideas.

The next day, T. J. was very active in all the sessions. By the end of the retreat, he had joined the Homeless Project team. He knew something about poverty, hunger and hopelessness. The other students on the team were impressed with his passionate concern and ideas. They elected T. J. co-chairman of the team. The student council president would be taking his instruction from T. J. Ware.

When T. J. showed up at school on Monday morning, he arrived to a firestorm. A group of teachers were protesting to the school principal about his being elected co-chairman. The very first communitywide service project was to be a giant food drive, organized by the Homeless Project team. These teachers couldn't believe that the principal would allow this crucial beginning to a prestigious, three-year action plan to stay in the incapable hands of T. J. Ware.

They reminded the principal, "He has an arrest record as long as your arm. He'll probably steal half the food." Mr. Coggshall reminded them that the purpose of the ACE program was to uncover any positive passion that a student had and reinforce its practice until true change can take place. The teachers left the meeting shaking their heads in disgust, firmly convinced that failure was imminent.

Two weeks later, T. J. and his friends led a group of 70 students in a drive to collect food. They collected a school record: 2,854 cans of food in just two hours. It was enough to fill the empty shelves in two neighborhood centers, and the food took care of needy families in the area for 75 days. The local newspaper covered the event with a full-page article the next day. That newspaper story was posted on the main bulletin board at school, where everyone could see it. T. J.'s picture was up there for doing something great, for leading a record-setting food drive. Every day he was reminded about what he did. He was being acknowledged as leadership material. T. J. started showing up at school every day and answered questions from teachers for the first time. He led a second project, collecting 300 blankets and 1,000 pairs of shoes for the homeless shelter. The event he started now yields 9,000 cans of food in one day, taking care of 70 percent of the need for food for one year. T. J. reminds us that a bird with a broken wing only needs mending. But once it has healed, it can fly higher than the rest. T. J. got a job. He became productive. He is flying quite nicely these days.

Jim Hullihan
Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul

Unconditional Love

2006-05-14T04:12:00.000-07:00

I am a mother of three (ages 14, 12, 3) and have recently completed my college degree. The last class I had to take was Sociology. The teacher was absolutely inspiring with the qualities that I wish every human being had been graced with. Her last project of the term was called "Smile". The class was asked to go out and smile at three people and document their reaction.

I am a very friendly person and always smile at everyone and say hello anyway.....so, I thought, this would be a piece of cake (literally).

Soon after we were assigned the project, my husband, youngest son, and I went out to McDonalds, one crisp March morning. It was just our way of sharing special play time with our son.

We were standing in line, waiting to be served, when all of a sudden everyone around us began to back away, and then even my husband did. I did not move an inch...an overwhelming feeling of panic welled up inside of me as I turned to see why they had moved.

As I turned around I smelled a horrible "dirty body" smell...and there standing behind me were two poor homeless men. As I looked down at the short gentleman, close to me, he was "smiling"...his beautiful sky blue eyes were full of God's Light as he searched for acceptance.

He said, "Good day" as he counted the few coins he had been clutching. The second man fumbled with his hands as he stood behind his friend. I realized the second man was mentally deficient and the blue eyed gentle man was his salvation. I held my tears......as I stood there with them.

The young lady at the counter asked him what they wanted. He said, "Coffee is all Miss" because that was all they could afford (to sit in the restaurant and warm up they had to buy something...they just wanted to be warm).

Then I really felt it...the compulsion was so great I almost reached out and embraced the little man with the blue eyes. That is when I noticed all eyes in the restaurant were set on me...judging my every action. I smiled and asked the young lady behind the counter to give me two more breakfast meals on a separate tray. I then walked around the corner to the table that the men had chosen as a resting spot.

I put the tray on the table and laid my hand on the blue eyed gentleman's cold hand. He looked up at me, with tears in his eyes, and said, "Thank you". I leaned over, began to pat his hand and said, "I did not do this for you...God is here working through me to give you hope". I started to cry as I walked away to join my husband and son. When I sat down my husband smiled at me and said, "That is why God gave you to me honey....to give me hope". We held hands for a moment and at that time we knew that only because of the Grace were we able to give .....

We are not church goers but we are believers. That day showed me the pure Light of God's sweet love.

I returned to college, on the last evening of class,with this story in hand. I turned in "my project" and the instructor read it....then she looked up at me and said, "Can I share this?" I slowly nodded as she got the attention of the class. She began to read and that is when I knew that we as human beings (part of God) share this need to heal.

In my own way I had touched the people at McDonalds, my husband, son, instructor, and every soul that shared the classroom on the last night I spent as a college student. I Graduated with one of the biggest lessons I would ever learn....unconditional acceptance......after all....we are here to learn!

Brenda
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web@spiritual-endeavors.org

Our Indestructible Core of Light

2006-05-13T02:48:00.000-07:00

A client told me the following archetypal dream:

The devil was attacking me physically, mentally and spiritually. He was attacking me all over my body, and as he attacked, a gauze that was wrapped around me began to come loose. A voice told him to stop but he kept on. His attacks hurt my shoulders stomach and limbs. After his final attack, all of the gauze fell off and nothing was left except an indestructible core. Then he said to the voice “Now you can kill her” but I wasn’t concerned, I was full of joy. I knew I was indestructible at my core. The gauze had hidden this indestructible light and sealed it in.

Afterward she said to me: “The dream said that I am indestructible light but I don’t know it totally yet. Some of my story still keeps re-creating my suffering, and I guess I need to find out more about the specific themes of my false story so that I don’t buy into them again.

When the Waters were Changed

2006-05-12T02:41:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time Khidr, the teacher of Moses, gave mankind a warning. At a certain date, he said, all the water in the world which had not been specially hoarded, would disappear. It would then be renewed, with different water, which would drive men mad.

Only one man listened to the meaning of this advice. He collected water and went to a secure place where he stored it, and waited for the waters of the world to change their character. On the appointed date the streams stopped running, the wells went dry, and the man who had listened, seeing this happening, went to his retreat and drank his preserved water.

When he saw, from his security, the waterfalls again beginning to flow, this man descended among the other sons of men. He found that they were thinking and talking in an entirely different way from before; yet they had no memory of what had happened, nor of having been warned. When he tried to talk to them, he realized that they thought that he was mad, and they showed hostility or pity but not understanding.

At first, he drank none of the new water, but went back to his concealment, to draw on his supplies, every day. Finally, however, he made the decision to drink the new water because he could not bear the loneliness of living, behaving and thinking in a different way from everyone else. He drank the new water, and became like the rest. Then he forgot all about his own store of special water, and his fellows began to look upon him as a madman who had miraculously been restored to sanity.

"Free"

2006-05-11T03:09:00.000-07:00

A client of mine was driving along a country road pondering her recent family crisis and counseling process. She noticed on the left side of the road that there was a dresser sitting on the ground with a sign that said “FREE” next to it. The next day she drove by the same spot again and was shocked to see that the dresser was still there but the “Free” sign was gone. She roared in laughter all the way home.

I wondered who else “got it” but it really didn’t matter. It was for Catherine. Her paradoxical sense of humor had created her experience. She referred back to this experience several times during her counseling. To her it meant that you can mistake the symbol for the reality. She had seen that her marriage problems were like the stolen sign, but that the dresser was still there.

Carroll J. Wright, Ph.D.

Is That So?

2006-05-10T03:08:00.000-07:00

The Zen Master Kakuin lived in a town in Japan. He was held in high regard and many people came to him for spiritual teaching. Then it happened that the teenage daughter of his next-door neighbor became pregnant. When being questioned by her angry and scolding parents as to the identity of the father, she finally told them that he was Hakuin, the Zen Master. In great fury the parents rushed over to Hakuin and told him with much shouting that their daughter had confessed that he was the father. All he replied was “Is that so?”

News of the scandal spread through the town and beyond. The Master lost his reputation. This did not trouble him. Nobody came to see him any more. He remained unmoved. When the child was born, the parents brought the baby to Hakuin. “You are the father, you look after him.” The Master raised the boy as his own son. About five years later the mother remorsefully confessed to her parents that he real father of the child was the young man who worked at the butcher shop. In great distress they went to Hakuin to apologize and ask for forgiveness. “We are really sorry.” We have come to take the child back. Our daughter confessed that you are not the father. “Is that so?” is all that he he would say as he handed the child over to them.

A master lives moment by moment, without taking things personally, without becoming anyone’s victim. He does not resist what is happening. He accepted the child and he let go of the child. The ego cannot do this. It reacts.

Transforming Loss

2006-05-09T02:31:00.000-07:00

The heart that breaks open can contain the whole universe. --Joanna Macy

Acclaimed poet and novelist Maxine Hong Kingston returned from her father's funeral to find her home in flames. The fire destroyed the manuscript and all backup copies of a newly written book, "The Fourth Book of Peace". Though initially devastated, Kingston moved past her personal loss and began a workshop for those who had lost much more: Vietnam War veterans. In the process of helping them move towards personal healing and global harmony through their writing, Kingston unexpectedly arrived at her own peace. She wrote the experience into her next book, called "The Fifth Book of Peace".

The next time you experience a loss, see if you can transform it while helping others in similar situations do the same.

http://qad.charityfocus.org

Seeds of Light

2006-05-08T03:03:00.000-07:00

This morning I awakened from a dream in which I saw seeds of light raining down from heaven. These seeds of light were understood to be blessings, seeds of love and wisdom, being given freely to all who are receptive, no matter who it is.

It has been said that Jesus was the only completely unhypnotized man in the history of the world. In

2006-05-08T02:43:00.000-07:00

Forty days alone in the desert enabled Jesus to travel to the core of existence itself. Layer upon layer of the collective unconscious mind had to be traversed and cut through. Thousands of stories and images of good news/bad news scenarios didn’t cut it. Finally he reached the Very Good that had been lost since Genesis 1:31, the bedrock of reality. Once he reached that level of consciousness, he could not be tempted by anything the world had to offer. He knew that mankind was enslaved by the external symbols of pleasure, fame and power, which shortly fail to satisfy.

He emerged from the desert full of light. He went to the temple in his home town and announced his mission to bring the good news he had found to the world (Luke 4). They handed him the scrolls of scripture and he read from Isaiah 62: “The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he has sent me to proclaim release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, to see free those who are downtrodden, and to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.” He was electrifying! He announced what he had found at the very center of existence: the infinite and unequivocal good news. He didn’t get that from society, from the learned, from the libraries, from the politicians and priests, because they didn’t know it.

This announcement angered his listeners when he told them that to qualify for the good news you have to be aware that you are poor, imprisoned, broken-hearted, downtrodden, blind, or grief-stricken. Our whole ego belief system in the story of good and evil has to be falling apart before we are open to the infinite good news. He had come to the chief problem of man: that we have been deceived, mis-educated, brain-washed, misled, falsely indoctrinated, conditioned, and hypnotized. We are ignorant of the truth. We look but we don’t see. We are in a state of amnesia. A complete turn-about is required. Outward behavior won’t cut it. We have to become like a little child, innocent open and without knowledge or we cannot find the Kingdom of Heaven. Is that good news? Not to the ego. Everyone wants to think he or she is right, that we know the score, that we are educated, modern, up-to-date, well-read, computer-literate, good people. The problem is god and other people. The good news is that we are mistaken, asleep in our common sense view of reality, and for the most part we don’t want to be disturbed. Jesus was the Great Disturber. The Grand Inquisitor asked “Jesus, why do you disturb us!” The very crises that come in our lives make us open to the possibility of seeing the false story of good versus evil that makes us poor, imprisoned, blind, starving, broken-hearted and asleep. Infinite Good News now becomes possible.

We're Not Victims Here

2006-05-07T04:39:00.000-07:00

By Jonathan Saltzman, Globe Staff | April 14, 2006

The little girl said the word "porch" and then began sobbing loudly. After her mother comforted her, 5-year-old Kai Leigh Harriott looked up from her blue wheelchair in the hushed courtroom yesterday and faced the man who fired the stray gunshot that paralyzed her nearly three years ago.

''What you done to me was wrong," the dimpled girl with purple and yellow plastic ties in her braids said softly. ''But I still forgive you."

On a summer night in 2003, Anthony Warren of Hyde Park fired three gunshots into the air outside a three-decker in Dorchester to scare two women who lived on the first floor after an argument. One bullet severed the spine of Kai, then 3, who was sitting outside on her family's third-story porch with a sister.

Yesterday, in emotionally wrenching victim-impact statements that left many spectators in tears, Kai and four members of her family told a Suffolk Superior Court judge that the shooting had changed their lives forever, but had also shown them the value of forgiveness.

''We're not victims here; we're victors," said Kai's mother, Tonya David, addressing the court.

Moments later, Warren, 29, a convicted felon who pleaded guilty yesterday to avoid a trial, approached Kai and her family and, in barely audible tones, apologized.

Kai's mother, Tonya, recalled his words later. ''I'm sorry for what I've done to you and your family," she said Warren told her. ''I was known in the street for all the wrong reasons, and now I want to be known for the right reasons."

Tonya shook his handcuffed right hand and embraced him.

Superior Court Judge Margot Botsford called the statements the most moving she had heard in 17 years on the bench. She sentenced Warren to 13 to 15 years in state prison, plus five years on probation, for multiple charges stemming from the shooting, including assault and battery with a dangerous weapon causing serious injury.

Botsford said Warren, who had been convicted twice previously of assault and battery, had acted deliberately and recklessly when he pulled the revolver from his waistband and began firing shots. But he never intended to shoot the little girl, who is paralyzed from the waist down, she said. And Botsford was impressed by the ''profound" generosity and forgiveness of Kai's family and by Warren's apology, she said.

Warren, his brother, Cedric Warren, and two friends got into an argument with two sisters who lived on the first floor of a Bowdoin Street building around 11 p.m., said Assistant District Attorney David Fredette.

Cedric Warren had been seething since the night before when a friend of the sisters had stared at him, and he decided to pay the sisters a visit. The four approached the house, where the sisters were on their front porch. When one of the sisters called police during the ensuing argument, Anthony Warren pulled out a revolver and fired three shots into the air that can be heard on the 911 tape.

Kai, an exuberant girl with an electric smile, was sitting on the porch with her sister, Aja David, and was struck in the back. Aja, now 17, grabbed Kai and rushed inside the house, where she realized that Kai had been hit.

Fighting back tears as she stood next to Kai's wheelchair, another sister, a brother, and their mother, Aja told the court that the shooting shattered her family.

''I realize that in life anything can happen to you," she said. ''Kai has been paralyzed. . . . But she is happy. She is happy. . . . She's stronger than me."

Their mother said Kai, who is in kindergarten at the Josiah Quincy School in Chinatown, has never complained about being in a wheelchair. She likes to go down a slide with her 12-year-old brother, Kani David, at a playground near their new home in Roxbury. She paints and plays video games.

But Tonya David cannot forget what her daughter has lost.

''Kai was not born unhealthy or in a wheelchair," she told the court. ''I can still remember the pitter-patter of her little feet."

Tonya, who has since moved, knew that her old neighborhood had crime, she said, but she never dreamed that her children could have been in danger on the third floor of the three-decker. It was a ''serene" oasis, David said, from which she could see Quincy Bay and downtown Boston.

After Kai and her family rejoined the spectators in the courtroom, Warren walked over and apologized, saying that he, too, has a young daughter and she is precious, like Kai.

Then Tonya David asked court officers if she could shake his hand. They said she could. She did. And then she hugged him.

"Free"

2006-05-07T03:39:00.000-07:00

Everything Happens For a Reason?

2006-05-06T02:30:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time, when Adam had decided that everything happens for a reason, an incredible series of events challenged his belief. As he was leaving for home after work one day, he had the thought that he would share with his co-worker therapist, Ron, about his new website. But upon second thought he imagined that Ron would just laugh at the radical approach of his new book described there. So he got in his new truck and left for home. Driving along the interstate just after dark, suddenly a deer bolted from the woods on the right and crashed into his right front fender. Unable to stop due to the heavy flow of traffic, the truck continued to function in spite of the damage.

As Adam sped on down the interstate, thoughts were racing through his mind: “So you think everything happens for a reason. Well, what about this! Your new truck is ruined. A beautiful deer is dead. It will cost you a couple of thousand dollars, and two weeks in the shop, to get it fixed. What sense does all of this make? What purpose could such a useless accident have?” Suddenly, there was a great quiet, an inner peace. Not a thought occurred. Then it came: “Your lack of courage. If you had talked to Ron for a few minutes, this accident would not have happened.” Adam was humiliated but elated. It was all for courage? Yes! That was precisely the truth. Adam saw that it was worth it. The deer gave up his life for Adam’s realization of courage. His truck and his pocketbook took the blow for the awareness of courage. And how much he has needed and found that courage present since that day!

In the Hearts of Men

2006-05-05T02:55:00.000-07:00

On the tomb of Rumi:

"When we are dead, seek not our tomb in the earth, but find it in the hearts of men."

Is This heaven or What?

2006-05-04T02:47:00.000-07:00

A man and his dog were walking along a road. The man was enjoying the scenery, when it suddenly occurred to him that he was dead. He remembered dying, and that the dog walking beside him had been dead for years. He wondered where the road was leading them.

After a while, they came to a high, white stone wall along one side of the road. It looked like fine marble. At the top of a long hill, it was broken by a tall arch that glowed in the sunlight. When he was standing before it he saw a magnificent gate in the arch that looked like Mother of Pearl, and the street that led to the gate looked like pure gold.

He and the dog walked toward the gate, and as he got closer, he saw a man at a desk to one side. When he was close enough, he called out, "Excuse me, where are we?" "This is Heaven, sir," the man answered.

"Wow! Would you happen to have some water?" the man asked. "Of course, sir. Come right in, and I'll have some ice water brought right up." The man gestured, and the gate began to open.

"Can my friend," gesturing toward his dog, "come in, too?" the traveler asked. "I'm sorry, sir, but we don't accept pets."

The man thought a moment and then turned back toward the road and continued the way he had been going with his dog.

After another long walk, and at the top of another long hill, he came to a dirt road which led through a farm gate that looked as if it had never been closed. There was no fence. As he approached the gate, he saw a man inside, leaning against a tree and reading a book.

"Excuse me!" he called to the reader. "Do you have any water?" "Yeah, sure, there's a pump over there." The man pointed to a place that couldn't be seen from outside the gate. "Come on in." "How about my friend here?" the traveler gestured to the dog. "There should be a bowl by the pump." They went through the gate, and sure enough, there was an old fashioned hand pump with a bowl beside it.

The traveler filled the bowl and took a long drink himself, then he gave some to the dog. When they were full, he and the dog walked back toward the man who was standing by the tree waiting for them.

"What do you call this place?" the traveler asked.

"This is Heaven," he answered. "Well, that's confusing," the traveler said. "The man down the road said that was Heaven, too."

"Oh, you mean the place with the gold street and pearly gates? Nope. That's Hell."

"Doesn't it make you mad for them to use your name like that?" "No. I can see how you might think so, but we're just happy that they screen out the folks who'll leave their best friends behind."

Heroes Come in All Sizes

2006-05-03T02:34:00.000-07:00

SPRINGFIELD - When his mom rolled off the bed and hit the floor, 8-year-old Jacob Clini knew three things: she was not moving, she needed help and he had to find a telephone.

Remembering what his teachers and his cousin had told him about 911, Jacob picked up the phone, punched in the three numbers and saved his mother's life.

His mother, Denise Leclair, one week removed from delivering twins by cesarean section, was rushed to the hospital following the Dec. 22 incident.

She was found to have a ruptured spleen and would spend the next 30 days hospitalized, including three days in intensive care. The reason for the rupture is unclear.

"It is no doubt he saved his mother's life," said acting Police Commissioner William J. Fitchet.

"This young man was remarkable with staying calm and controlled in a frightening situation," he said.

The second-grade pupil at Glenwood Elementary School was honored in a ceremony at police headquarters yesterday with the department's 911 Citizen Hero Award.

With his arm around Jacob, who measured up to his waist, Fitchet said, "Heroes come in all shapes and sizes."

All human beings are part of the tapestry of the universe, part of a pattern which connects. Nothing exists in isolation, in separateness. When I realize this network of grand relationships, I lose the illusion of my separate self. -- Satish Kumar

God Provides

2006-05-02T03:13:00.000-07:00

Aaron was shipwrecked on an island. All of his shipmates were drowned. He took the wreckage that washed ashore and built some living quarters--his only hedge against the primitive living conditions on the island. He had a little food, some oil for a lamp, and a few tools and clothes. He built himself a camp and living quarters. One evening when he had gone to get some water, a storm came up and blew over his lamp, starting a fire in which his entire camp and supplies were burned up. Aaron sank into despair, visualizing himself unable to survive without his meager supplies.

Three hours later, a ship docked in the bay, and he was rescued. The captain explained that he had see smoke and decided to investigate.

The Art of Gardening

2006-05-01T03:29:00.000-07:00

There were 4 towns. In each town, people were starving to death. Each town had a bag of seeds.

In the first town, no one knew what seeds could do. No one knew how to plant them. Everyone starved.

In the second town, one person knew what seeds were and how
to plant them, but did nothing about it for one reason or another.
Everyone starved.

In the third town, one person knew what seeds were and how to plant them. He proposed to plant them in exchange for being declared the king or ruler. All ate, but were ruled.

In the fourth town, one person knew what seeds were and how to plant them. He not only planted the seeds, but taught everyone the art of gardening. All were fed and free.

100%

2006-04-30T03:39:00.000-07:00

A monk asked Tozan, "How can we escape the cold and heat?" Tozan replied, "Why not go where there is no cold and heat?" "Is there such a place?" the monk asked. Tozan commented, "When cold, be thoroughly cold; when hot, be hot through and through.

Challenged by the Impossible

2006-04-29T03:44:00.000-07:00

Somewhere along the way on my journey through life, I came to understand the concept of believing God to meet our material needs. I've seen Him provide for my family of 9 several times and often in very big ways. But I have to admit that it's often hard to justify asking for really big things, especially those with deadlines, and especially those that are more like "wants" than "needs."

So although I knew that God could provide us with $5,000 for a recent project, I just didn't have the faith to ask. Then I heard some stories of other people asking openly and that increased my faith. So I asked God for what I thought was an impossible amount with an impossible deadline. But you know what God can do! And He loves to be challenged by the impossible!

So I asked myself how I could come up with the amount I needed. The idea came to me to ask a few people who owed me money to consider paying. They were surprised that I hadn't billed them.

So just days before I needed the money, it was all there in my checking account.

Rhea Perry

Eternity

2006-04-28T03:57:00.000-07:00

Talk about a man with an eternal message. At least 50 times a day for more than 30 years he wrote the word 'Eternity' in chalk all across the public streets and sidewalks of Sydney. For years no one knew who this mysterious one-word sermon was authored by. Arthur Stace's story is fascinating. Born into a deeply troubled family, he grew into a homeless, recovering alcoholic who could barely write his own name. It was the promise of a free meal that led to an encounter that would dramatically change his life. Read the story in Stace's own words -- and see the elegantly written sermon he delivered over half a million times in the last three decades of his life, as featured on the Sydney bridge during the Olympics in 2000!

http://charityfocus.org

Where is God?

2006-04-27T02:48:00.000-07:00

A couple had two little boys ages 8 and 10, who were excessively mischievous. They were always getting into trouble and their parents knew that if any mischief occurred in their town, their sons would get the blame. The boys' mother heard that a clergyman in town had been successful in disciplining children, so she asked if he would speak with her boys. The clergyman agreed, and asked to see them individually. So, the mother sent her 8-year-old first, in the morning, with the older boy to see the clergyman in the afternoon.

The clergyman, a huge man with a booming voice, sat the younger boy down and asked him sternly, "Where is God?" They boy's mouth dropped open, but he made no response, sitting there with his mouth hanging open. The clergyman repeated the question. "Where is God?" Again, the boy made no attempt to answer. So the clergyman raised his voice some more and shook his finger in the boy's face and bellowed, "Where is God!?"

The boy screamed and bolted from the room. He ran directly home and dove into his closet, slamming the door behind him. When his older brother found him in the closet, he asked, "What happened?" The younger brother, gasping for breath, replied, "We are in big trouble this time! God is missing and they think we did it!"

The Story of Byron Katie's Enlightenment

2006-04-26T02:54:00.000-07:00

One morning I woke up. I had been sleeping on the floor as usual. Nothing special had happened the night before; I just opened my eyes. But I was seeing without concepts, without thoughts or an internal story. There was no me. It was as if something else had woken up. It opened its eyes. It was looking through Katie's eyes. And it was crisp, it was clear, it was new, it had never been here before. Everything was unrecognizable. And it was so delighted! Laughter welled up from the depths and just poured out. It breathed and was ecstasy. It was intoxicated with joy: totally greedy for everything. There was nothing separate, nothing unacceptable to it. Everything was its very own self. For the first time I — it — experienced the love of its own life. I — it —was amazed!

In trying to be as accurate as possible, I am using the word “it” for this delighted, loving awareness, in which there was no me or world, and in which everything was included. There just isn't another way to say how completely new and fresh the awareness was. There was no I observing the “it.” There was nothing but the “it.” And even the realization of an “it” came later.
Let me say this in a different way. A foot appeared; there was a cockroach crawling over it. It opened its eyes, and there was something on the foot; or there was something on the foot, and then it opened its eyes — I don't know the sequence, because there was no time in any of this. So, to put it in slow motion: it opened its eyes, looked down at the foot, a cockroach was crawling across the ankle, and … it was awake! It was born. And from then on, it's been observing. But there wasn't a subject or an object. It was — is — everything it saw. There's no separation in it, anywhere.

All my rage, all the thoughts that had been troubling me, my whole world, the whole world, was gone. The only thing that existed was awareness. The foot and the cockroach weren't outside me; there was no outside or inside. It was all me. And I felt delight — absolute delight! There was nothing, and there was a whole world: walls and floor and ceiling and light and body, everything, in such fullness. But only what it could see: no more, no less.

Then it stood up, and that was amazing. There was no thinking, no plan. It just stood up and walked to the bathroom. It walked straight to a mirror, and it locked onto the eyes of its own reflection, and it understood. And that was even deeper than the delight it had known before. It fell in love with that being in the mirror. It was as if the woman and the awareness of the woman had permanently merged. There were only the eyes, and a sense of absolute vastness, with no knowledge in it. It was as if I — she — had been shot through with electricity. It was like God giving itself life through the body of the woman — God so loving and bright, so vast — and yet she knew that it was herself. It made such a deep connection with her eyes. There was no meaning to it, just a nameless recognition that consumed her.

Love is the best word I can find for it. It had been split apart, and now it was joined. There was it moving, and then it in the mirror, and then it joined as quickly as it had separated — it was all eyes. The eyes in the mirror were the eyes of it. And it gave itself back again , as it met again. And that gave it its identity, which I call love. As it looked in the mirror, the eyes — the depth of them— were all that was real, all that existed — prior to that, nothing. No eyes, no anything; even standing there, there was nothing. And then the eyes come out to give it what it is. People name things a wall, a ceiling, a foot, a hand. But it had no name for these things, because it's indivisible. And it's invisible. Until the eyes. Until the eyes. I remember tears of gratitude pouring down the cheeks as it looked at its own reflection. It stood there staring for I don't know how long.

These were the first moments after I was born as it, or it as me. There was nothing left of Katie. There was literally not even a shred of memory of her — no past, no future, not even a present. And in that openness, such joy. “There's nothing sweeter than this,” I felt; “there is nothing but this. If you loved yourself more than anything you could imagine, you would give yourself this. A face. A hand. Breath. But that's not enough. A wall. A ceiling. A window. A bed. Light bulbs. Ooh! And this too! And this too! And this too!”

An Intelligent Choice

2006-04-25T03:45:00.000-07:00

Nasrudin's oldest son was looking for a wife.

'Which qualities are you seeking?' Nasrudin asked the youth.

'Intelligence rather than beauty,' replied the young man.

'If that is the case,' said the Mulla, 'I have an excellent way of finding you the perfect bride.'

He told the youth to follow and went into town. When they reached the main square, Nasrudin started to cuff his son and shout: 'How dare you do exactly as I say? This is the punishment fit for one who obeys!'

'Leave him alone!' hissed one young woman. 'How can you beat him for being a model son?'

'This is surely the woman for me, father,' said Nasrudin's son.

'Best to have a choice,' replied the Mulla and led the way to the neighbouring town. Here, he acted out exactly the same scene. But this time, a young girl began to cheer him on:

'That's right! Hit him! Only a fool obeys blindly!'

'Son,' said Nasrudin, with a smile, 'I think we have found you an intelligent bride.'

The Ant and the Chrysalis

2006-04-23T03:10:00.000-07:00

An Ant nimbly running about in the sunshine in search of food came
across a Chrysalis that was very near its time of change. The
Chrysalis moved its tail, and thus attracted the attention of the Ant,
who then saw for the first time that it was alive. "Poor, pitiable
animal!" cried the Ant disdainfully. "What a sad fate is yours!
While I can run hither and thither, at my pleasure, and, if I wish,
ascend the tallest tree, you lie imprisoned here in your shell, with
power only to move a joint or two of your scaly tail." The Chrysalis
heard all this, but did not try to make any reply. A few days after,
when the Ant passed that way again, nothing but the shell remained.
Wondering what had become of its contents, he felt himself suddenly
shaded and fanned by the gorgeous wings of a beautiful Butterfly.
"Behold in me," said the Butterfly, "your much-pitied friend! Boast
now of your powers to run and climb as long as you can get me to
listen." So saying, the Butterfly rose in the air, and, borne along
and aloft on the summer breeze, was soon lost to the sight of the
Ant forever.

"Appearances are deceptive."

Infinite Patience

2006-04-22T13:37:00.000-07:00

Are you the kind of person who has a hard time waiting for anything? Here's some inspiration for you: Hachiko, Japan's most celebrated canine. A dog who walked his owner to the train station every day and came back to receive him in the evening after work. When his owner died one day while at office, this faithful dog refused to go home and waited patiently at the station -- for ten years(!) -- until his own passing. Notice the bronze statue erected at the station that thousands of dog-lovers and travelers from around the world visit each year:

Be The Change:

Who are the Hachikos (patient supporters) in your life? Take a moment to remember the love and support of a friend whose steadfast presence in your life has made a difference. Drop them a note of appreciation

"Are You God?"

2006-04-22T02:48:00.000-07:00

One cold evening during the holiday season, a little boy about six or seven was standing out in front of a store window. The little child had no shoes on and his clothes were mere rags. A young woman passing by saw the little boy and could read the longing in his pale blue eyes. She took the child by the hand and led him into the store. There she bought him new shoes and a complete suit of warm clothing.
They came back outside into the street and the woman said to the child, “Now you can go home and have a very happy holiday.”

The little boy looked up at her and asked, “Are you God, Ma’am?”
She smiled down at him and replied, “No son, I’m just one of His children.”
The little boy then said, “I knew you had to be some relation.”

By Dan Clark
from Chicken Soup for the Woman’s Soul

THE MAN AND THE TIGER

2006-04-21T06:22:00.000-07:00

A man being followed by a hungry tiger, turned in desperation to face it, and cried: "Why don't you leave me alone?"
The tiger answered: "Why don't you stop being so appetizing?"