Freedom - the great unknown

"An Arab chief tells the story of a spy captured and sentenced to death by a general in the Persian army. This general had the strange customer of giving condemned criminals a choice between the firing squad and 'the big black door.'
The moment for execution drew near, and the guards brought the spy to the Persian general. 'What will it be,' asked the general, 'the firing squad or the 'big black door.''
The spy hesitated for a long time. Finally, he chose the firing squad.
A few minutes later, hearing the shots ring out confirming the spy's execution, the general turned to his aid and said, 'They always prefer the known to the unknown. People fear what they don't know. Yet, we gave him a choice.'
'What lies beyond the big door?' asked the aide.
'Freedom,' replied the general. 'I've known only a few brave enough to take that door.'
The best opportunities in our lives stand behind the forbidding door of the great unknown."

~ Don McCullough

the miracle of understanding

from Anne Sullivan, the educator of Helen Keller:

"My heart is singing for joy this morning. A miracle has happened! The light of understanding has shone upon my little pupil's mind, and behold all things are changed."

How you made them feel

Students may forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel.

~ Anonymous

I am the decisive element

"I've come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element in the classroom. It’s my personal approach that creates the climate. It’s my daily mood that makes the weather. As a teacher, I possess tremendous power to make a student’s life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration. I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis will be escalated or de-escalated and a student humanized or de-humanized."

~ Haim Ginott, 1976

The safest place in the world

On April 15, 2008, Barry and Marybeth Mosier, Seventh-day Adventist missionaries to Tanzania for eight years, planned to visit their 24-year-old son, Keith in Congo. They boarded a plane bound for Kinsangani, Congo, accompanied by their 14-year-old daughter, April, and 3-year-old son, Andrew. The plane crashed during takeoff and the family were separated in the chaos.
"When we saw each other at the hospital, I can tell you it was a grand reunion," Barry said. "We couldn't believe that our family of four could all escape a plane that was crashed and on fire, but by God's mercy we did."
The family were cut and bruised and little Andrew had a broken leg, but they were all alive.
Barry added: "We actually came here with the idea of seeing if we could move to Congo, so it's been kind of a rough introduction. I think we'll keep praying about that. We know that the safest place in the world to work is where the Lord wants you to work."

~ source: Jim Kavanagh, "Crash survivor: God 'still has work for us to do'"
www.cnn.com (4-16-08)

Ask Why

"Millions saw the apple fall, but Newton was the one who asked why."

~ Bernard Baruch

Susannah Wesley's Rules For Raising Children

1. Subdue self-will in a child and thus work together with God to save his soul.
2. Teach him to pray as soon as he can speak.
3. Give him nothing he cries for and only what is good for him if he asks for it politely.
4. To prevent lying, punish no fault which is freely confessed, but never allow a rebellious, sinful act to go unnoticed.
5. Commend and reward good behavior.
6. Strictly observe all promises you have make to your child.

~ Source unknown

Had I Been Joseph's Mother

Had I been Joseph's mother
I'd have prayed protection from his brothers
"God, keep him safe.
He is so young, so different from the others."
Mercifully,
she never knew there would be slavery and prison, too.

Had I been Moses' mother
I'd have wept to keep my little son:
praying she might forget
the babe drawn from the water of the Nile.
Had I not kept him for her nursing him the while,
was he not mine?
"and she but Pharaoh's daughter."

Had I been Daniel's mother
I should have pled "Give victory!
'this Babylonian horde godless and cruel'
Don't let him be a captive-better dead,
Almighty Lord!"

Had I been Mary,
Oh, had I been she,
I would have cried as never mother cried,
"Anything, O God, Anything...
but crucified."

With such prayers importunate
my finite wisdom would assail
Infinite Wisdom.
God, how fortunate
Infinite Wisdom should prevail.

Prodigals and Those Who Love Them,
Ruth Bell Graham, 1991,
Focus on the Family Publishing, p. 69

Grandma's Day

Grandma, on a winter's day,
milked the cows and fed them hay,
hitched the mule, drove kids to school...
did a washing, mopped the floors,
washed the windows and did some chores...

Cooked a dish of home-dried fruit,
pressed her husband's Sunday suit...
swept the parlor, made the bed,
baked a dozen loaves of bread...

split some firewood and lugged it in,
enough to fill the kitchen bin...
Cleaned the lamps and put in oil,
stewed some apples before they spoiled...

churned the butter, baked a cake,
then exclaimed, "For goodness sake!"
when the calves ran from the pen,
and chased them all back in again...

Gathered eggs and locked the stable,
back to the house and set the table...
cooked a supper that was delicious,
then washed and dried all dirty dishes...

fed the cat and sprinkled clothes,
mended a basketful of hose...
then opened the organ and began to play:
"When You Come to the End of a Perfect Day..."

Reminisce, premiere issue, 1991, pp. 46-7.

Quotes on Mothers

A Spanish proverb reads "An ounce of mother is worth a ton of priest."
~ Anonymous

Our minister's wife told of filling out a form in her pediatrician's office. Beside the blank marked "occupation" were these words: "If you devote the greater part of your time to loving, caring and making a home for your family, put a big star in this space."
~ Bonnie Miller

Legally, a husband is the head of the house and a pedestrian has the right of way. Both are perfectly safe and within their rights as long as they do not try to confirm it!
~ George E. Bergman

The mother of three notoriously unruly youngsters was asked whether or not she'd have children if she had it to do over again. "Yes," she replied. "But not the same ones."
~ Reader's Digest, contributed by David Finkelstein

"No man is poor who has had a godly mother."
~ Abraham Lincoln

Sources unknown

The Holy Spirit as Our Tutor

A student named Steve Winger from Lubbock, TX was taking a challenging class in Logic. The course and teacher were known for exacting and demanding exams. The final exam was looming, and the professor mercifully told the class that each student would be permitted to bring in a single 8 x 11 ½ inch sheet with as much information as they could put on that one sheet for help during the test. On exam day, each student came to class clutching their precious pieces of paper with as much information as possible. Some students had crammed lines and lines of font so tiny and so numerous onto that single sheet that you had to wonder how they could read it.
But Steve walked in with a single blank sheet and a friend who was a senior student and who had an ‘A’ in logic. Steve bent down and placed that single, blank sheet of paper on the floor next to his desk. His expert friend stood on the paper.
The professor noticed the extra body in the room and asked what he was doing. Steve piped up, “You said we could bring in what ever we could fit on a single piece of paper for help on this test, well, this is my help and he can fit on the paper!” He had followed the instructions to the letter and was the only student in that class to score an ‘A’ since he had his expert friend standing along side him.
The Holy Spirit is like that friend, standing along side us, supporting us, and guiding us.

~ Author Unknown,

I Wish I Were a Bear

If you're a bear, you get to hibernate. You do nothing but sleep for six months. I could get used to that.
And another thing: before you hibernate, you're supposed to eat yourself stupid. That wouldn't bother me either.
If you're a mama bear, everyone knows you mean business; you swat anyone who bothers you or your cubs. If your cubs get out of line, you swat them, too.
Your husband expects you to growl when you wake up. He expects you to have hairy legs and excess body fat. He likes it!
I wish I were a bear.

~ Source unknown

I See Children As Kites - Erma Bombeck

"You don't love me!" How many times have your kids laid that one on you? Someday when my children are old enough to understand the logic motivation of a mother, I'll tell them:

• I loved you enough to bug you about where you were going and what time you would get home.
• I loved you enough to let you discover your friend was a creep.
• I loved you enough to stand over you for two hours while you cleaned your bedroom, a job that would have taken me 15 minutes.
• I loved you enough to ignore what every other mother did or said.
• I loved you enough to let you stumble, fall, hurt and fail.
• I loved you enough to accept you for what you are, not what I wanted you to be.
• Most of all, I loved you enough to say no when you hated me for it.

Some mothers don't know when their job is finished. They figure the longer the kids hang around, the better parents they are.
I see children as kites. You spend a lifetime trying to get them off the ground. You run with them until you're both breathless...they crash...you add a longer tail. You patch and comfort, adjust and teach-and assure them that someday they will fly.
Finally they are airborne, but they need more string, and you keep letting it out. With each twist of the ball of twine, the kite becomes more distant. You know it won't be long before that beautiful creature will snap the lifeline that bound you together and soar-free and alone. Only then do you know you did your job.

~ Erma Bombeck, from "Forever, Erma" quoted in Reader's Digest, March 1997, p. 148.

C. S. Lewis on The Dangers of Love

To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal.
Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin or your selfishness.
But in that casket--safe, dark, motionless, airless--it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable ...
The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers ... of love is Hell.

~ C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves, Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1960, p.169.

Sharp Tongue

"If you speak with a sharp tongue you might cut your own throat."

~ Traditional Proverb

Mothproofing Recipes

from a feltmaker's blog
http://www.peak.org/~spark/feltmothproofing.html

*Lynne Holtrust, 7 Sept. 2002. Here is a mothproofing recipe from the book...'Herbs For the Home' by Jekka McVicar – quote: "Moth Repellent ...Wormwood or Southernwood can be used for keeping moths and other harmful insects away from clothes. The smell is sharp and refreshing and does not cling to your clothes like camphor mothballs."

Bug Ban Recipe
2 tablespoons dried wormwood or southernwood
(Southernwood....Artemisia abrotanum...also Wormwood....Artemesia absinthium)
2 tablespoons dried lavender
2 tablespoons dried mint
Mix ingredients well and put into small sachets.
*It really does smell nice....I am able to grow most of these plants in my garden (zone 4)...definitely NOT tropical....with the exception of rosemary. Any of the spices are easily found at the grocer.

*Julie Earl, 7 Sept, 2002. You can also add the dried whole cloves to the mix, works wonders.

*Lynne Holtrust, 7 Sept. 2002. Here is another recipe. These are from an article in Country Living Gardener magazine, (1995) by Irene Rawlings.

Cedar Moth Chaser
- -1 cup cedar shavings (it is inexpensive to buy this in a pet supply store)
- -1/4 cup each...southernwood, peppermint, lemon verbena, thyme and rosemary
- -1/8 cup each whole cloves, lemon peel, and black peppercorns

Tangy Moth Repellent
Mix equal parts of camphor, basil, lavender and rosemary
Mint Moth Deterrent
2 cups each dried spearmint, dried peppermint and dried rosemary
1 cup dried thyme
1/2 cup ground cloves
French Moth Repellent
2 parts lavender
2 parts southernwood
1 part rosemary
1 part pennyroyal
1 part wormwood
add 1 tablespoon ground cloves to each 2 cups of dried herbs and mix well

*Anna Salvesen, Feb. 25, 2005.
What I learned on the university entomology research sites is that much of the "pleasant" , non-toxic moth and CBL (carpet beetle larvae) deterrents such as lavender, cedar, etc., are not particularly effective at deterring pests, especially if the fibers are not clean and are already infested or stored in dark, undisturbed areas that are infested. …
The most effective non-toxic measures are good housekeeping details to make your things less appetizing (i.e. clean fibers before storing), make the environment inhospitable (light, bright, airy, & disturbed ... love that one! ), and reduce the opportunity for breeding to reduce the numbers looking for food (get rid of that old bird nest on the porch, use window screens (or fix them), etc.

"Tears in Heaven"

After his four-year-old son fell from a 53rd-story window and died, Eric Clapton took nine months off. When he returned his music had become more reflective.
This is the song he wrote about his son Conor:

Would you know my name if I saw you in heaven?
Would it be the same if I saw you in heaven?
I must be strong and carry on,
'Cause I know I don't belong here in heaven.

Would you hold my hand if I saw you in heaven?
Would you help me stand if I saw you in heaven?
I'll find my way through night and day,
'Cause I know I just can't stay here in heaven.

Time can bring you down, time can bend your knees.
Time can break your heart, have you begging please, begging please.
Beyond the door there's peace I'm sure,
And I know there'll be no more tears in heaven.

~ by Eric Clapton and Will Jennings

Worry

"Worry is the interest we pay on tomorrow's troubles.

~ E. Stanley Jones
___________________________

"Worry is a thin stream of fear trickling through the mind. If encouraged, it cuts a channel into which all other thoughts are drained."

~ Arthur Somers Roche
__________________________

"I could no more worry than I could curse or swear."

~ John Wesley

Has God Revealed Himself in Other Religions?

Karl Barth was lecturing to a group of students at Princeton. One student asked the German theologian "Sir, don't you think that God has revealed himself in other religions and not only in Christianity?"
Barth's answer stunned the crowd. With a modest thunder he answered, "No, God has not revealed himself in any religion, including Christianity. He has revealed himself in his Son."

~ John H. Pavelko, Avoiding a Troubled Heart

Reality and the Imagination

"Reality leaves a lot to the imagination."

~ John Lennon

Epigenetics and the Epigenome

http://www.philly.com/inquirer/currents/
20080413_A_paradigm_shift_in_genetics.html

Posted on Sun, Apr. 13, 2008
A paradigm shift in genetics
Amanda Gefter
is an editor for New Scientist magazine
(underlining added by blogger)

The struggle between determinism and free will is an ancient one, but genetics seems to have settled the score: "You can't be blamed for your faults," it seems (to some people) to say, "but you're also stuck with the cards you were dealt." ...

"Our understanding of genetics is currently undergoing a paradigm shift," says Melanie Ehrlich, a molecular biologist at the Tulane Cancer Center. "It is now commonly acknowledged among scientists that it is not enough to look to DNA as the sole determinant of heredity."

Ehrlich is referring to the emerging field known as epigenetics. The epigenome is the elaborate chemical switchboard that can turn genes on and off like flipping a light switch. Our genes encode instructions for the building of proteins. On its own, DNA is nothing but an inert biological handbook, but chemicals in each cell actively read and transcribe the instructions, then use them to build our bodies cell by cell. Every cell in your body contains an identical genome, and yet a brain cell is quite different from a skin cell.

How do the differences arise? Because different genes are expressed from one cell to the next. How does a cell know which genes to implement and which to ignore? That set of instructions is contained in the cell's epigenome. Whereas the genome is static - its sequence of base pairs unchanging except in the rare and often detrimental case of a mutation - the epigenome is dynamic, busily deciding which genetic instructions should be put into action and which should be chemically strangled into silence.

Scientists are now learning that the epigenome is highly sensitive to its environment. The food you eat, the air you breathe, and the stress or happiness you feel can actually alter your genetic makeup - not by changing the sequence of your DNA, but by deciding which genes are expressed. ...

Epigenetics is opening up a whole new window on the nature of disease. Many cancers, for instance, are not genetic in origin - caused by one or more mutations to our DNA - but epigenetic. "We finally understand that abnormal epigenetic changes are just as important for cancer formation and development as are genetic mutations," Ehrlich says. "Without epigenetic changes, human cancers would probably be rare." The same is believed to be true for autoimmune diseases, diabetes and depression.

Even more surprising has been the discovery that, like genes themselves, epigenetic effects can be passed down from generation to generation. That was first demonstrated in mammals by Randy Jirtle and colleagues in a groundbreaking experiment in 2000. Jirtle took mice that carried a gene called the agouti gene, which made their fur yellow and rendered them susceptible to particular diseases, and fed them a diet containing so-called methyl groups - molecules that can attach to a gene and block it from being used. The methyl molecules, commonly found in foods such as soy and leafy vegetables, attached to the agouti gene and switched it off.

The real surprise came when the mice became parents. Their offspring were born with the agouti gene still in their DNA but silenced. They had brown fur and were no longer susceptible to the same diseases. The parent mice had passed on not only their DNA, but also the epigenetic switches attached to it. ...

What you eat today could affect your children's genes . . . even your grandchildren's. "What you do now won't affect only you," Jirtle says. "That's not trivial." ...

"The human epigenome remains largely uncharted scientific territory," says Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute of Drug Abuse. ... "It is likely that a human epigenome project . . . may be invaluable in enhancing our understanding of the epigenetic basis of human disease." ...

The epigenetics revolution is in its infancy, but it promises big things - cures for disease, a better understanding of stem cells, even antidotes to aging. From a cultural perspective, it promises to shift the way we think about our own role in our health. Suddenly, free will can be heard shouting over the murmur of genetic determinism. Maybe we aren't stuck with the cards we were dealt after all. You can't un-mutate a gene, but you can potentially reverse an epigenetic effect.

"Epigenetic effects are more flexible and less deterministic, but they require taking more responsibility for the health of your epigenome, for you and for your offspring, even for your grandchildren and great-grandchildren," Jirtle says. "Responsibility is the downside of free will."

God the Catcher

Leith Anderson
Advent 2003 #1
“The hope of the world”
Luke 1:26-38

Henri Nouwen wrote a book called Sabbatical Journeys in which he describes the relationship between the “flyer” and the “catcher” in a circus trapeze performance. The flyer lets go of the trapeze and flies high above the audience in moments of frightening danger. He does nothing more to get himself caught than hold his position as still as possible.

One of the Flying Roudellas told Nouwen, “The flyer must never try to catch the catcher.” The flyer just trusts and the catcher will catch.

It is like that with us and God. We let go and fly through danger filled with trust and hope. It is not our job to catch the Spirit of God. The Holy Spirit will catch us.

http://www.wooddalechurch.com/sermons/
notes.asp?Note=notes/advent20031.html

A life of downward mobility

In the Name of Jesus: Reflections on Christian Leadership
Henri J.M. Nouwen

Henri Nouwen's profile of Christian leadership is in stark contrast to worldly values. "His ideal leader is a praying leader, a vulnerable leader, a trusting leader, one who voluntarily chooses a life of downward mobility."

Traits of an Effective Leader

Dwight D. Eisenhower:

"In order to be a leader a man must have followers. And to have followers, a man must have their confidence. Hence the supreme quality of a leader is unquestionably integrity.

Without it, no real success is possible, no matter whether it is on a section gang, on a football field, in an army, or in an office. If a man's associates find him guilty of phoniness, if they find that he lacks forthright integrity, he will fail. His teachings and actions must square with each other.

The first great need, therefore, is integrity and high purpose"

~ Dwight D. Eisenhower, Bits & Pieces, September 15, 1994, p. 4.

Effective Leadership

Once an ecumenical crusade was being held in a large city. Every imaginable denomination was in attendance for this unprecedented event.
One afternoon the gathering was in session when all of a sudden a secretary rushed in shouting, "The building's on fire! The building's on fire!"

Confusion reigned as each church group came together and did what came natural:
The Methodists gathered in the corner to pray.
The Baptists cried, "Where's the water?"
The Quakers quietly praised God for the blessings that fire brings.
The Lutherans posted a notice on the door declaring that the fire was evil.
The Roman Catholics passed a plate to cover the damages.
The Unitarians reasoned that the fire would burn itself out if just given the chance.
The Congregationalists shouted, "Every man for himself."
The Fundamentalists proclaimed, "It's the vengeance of God."
The Episcopalians formed a procession and marched out.
The Christian Scientists concluded that there was no real fire.
The Presbyterians appointed a chairperson to appoint a committee to look into the matter and make a written report.

And the church secretary grabbed a fire extinguisher and put the fire out.

~ Author Unknown

What You Think

"I know you think you understand what I said, but I don't think you understand that what I said is not what I meant."