You are absolutely unique

"Always remember that you are absolutely unique. Just like everyone else."

~ Margaret Mead

Myth: Family Gatherings are Torture

Debunking 5 Holiday Myths
http://www.oprah.com/slideshow/spirit/emotionalhealth/
slideshow1_ss_omag_200511_hol
(underlining added)

MYTH 1: FAMILY GATHERINGS ARE TORTURE.
Home for the holidays. The very image can cause us to develop excruciating holiday back spasms, sometimes as early as September—because the cliché of familial holiday bliss has an evil twin: that of the dysfunctional family at its worst. For the legion of CDFs (Children of Dysfunctional Families), don't assume that you can't enjoy family gatherings. With the right mental set, you can have a good, relaxing time at whatever festivities you attend, no matter how wacko your kinfolk may be.

The single best way to cope with familial turmoil is to give up the hope that your relatives will suddenly become cornucopias of emotional health. Instead of yearning for a perfect family, listen to teacher Byron Katie, author of the book I Need Your Love—Is That True? "If I had a prayer," she writes, "it would be this: 'God spare me from the desire for love, approval, and appreciation. Amen.'" This sounds harsh if you've never experienced freedom from these desires, which comes when you accept yourself.

Try one of Katie's exercises: Imagine drinking a cup of tea with a family member, without attempting in any way to get love, approval, or appreciation. You'll suddenly feel safer, more resilient, more at peace. Paradoxically, you get this blessed feeling by not grasping for it. Make Katie's exercise a reality by considering your family holiday a BYOLAA event—bring your own love, approval, and appreciation. The philosopher Lao-tzu said that when you do this, "you naturally become tolerant, disinterested, amused, kindhearted as a grandmother."

It's far easier to let go of judgment or competitiveness and reach this contented place when you aren't intent on forcing people to be what they're not. And you invite inner peace when you stop trying to force yourself either to change your relatives or to think of them as sane. By acknowledging your own infinite value, you'll see more value in others—just as they are. You may even stumble across a surprising holiday gift: the understanding that truly "going home" happens within you, the moment you give yourself the unconditional acceptance you thought you needed from your kin.

— Martha Beck

Voices from God

In George Bernard Shaw’s play "St. Joan," Joan hears voices from God. The Dauphin is annoyed.
"Oh, your voices, your voices," he says, "Why don't your voices come to me? I am the king not you."
"They do come," Joan replies, "but you do not hear them. You have not sat in the field in the evening listening for them. When the angelus rings you cross yourself and have done with it, but if you prayed from your heart and listened to the thrilling of the bells in the air after they stopped ringing, you would hear the voices as well as I do."

"Like having your dog die every day"

"There's a feeling in your stomach when you're laying off people that have worked for you for 30 years," said [Bruce] Weed, during a two-hour interview earlier this week that brought the 51-year-old Washington Crossing resident to tears. "It's awful."

Said Scott Weed, another of the owners: "It's like having your dog die every day."

"Bucks car dealer closes in on painful choice"
(article about Weed Chevrolet's financial problems)
By Diane Mastrull
Inquirer Staff Writer
Philadelphia Inquirer, philly.com
Posted on Wed, Dec. 10, 2008
http://www.philly.com/inquirer/local/20081210_Agonies_trickle_down.html

Jesus, please help

When Satan is knocking at your door, simply say, "Jesus, could You please get that for me?"

~ author unknown

I might be wrong ...

"I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong."

~ Bertrand Russell

You will not be alone

Krishnamurti was once asked what was the most appropriate way to say goodbye to a man who was about to die. He answered: "Tell your friend that in his death, a part of you dies and goes with him. Wherever he goes, you also go. He will not be alone."

~ Krishnamurti, a spiritual leader in India who died in 1986

God and Crap

"Don’t bail. The best of the gold’s at the bottom of barrels of crap."

~ Randy Pausch, The Last Lecture

God’s Covenant with David

2 Samuel 7:1-22 NRSV

1 Now when the king was settled in his house, and the LORD had given him rest from all his enemies around him, 2 the king said to the prophet Nathan, "See now, I am living in a house of cedar, but the ark of God stays in a tent."

3 Nathan said to the king, "Go, do all that you have in mind; for the LORD is with you."

4 But that same night the word of the LORD came to Nathan: 5 Go and tell my servant David: Thus says the LORD: Are you the one to build me a house to live in? 6 I have not lived in a house since the day I brought up the people of Israel from Egypt to this day, but I have been moving about in a tent and a tabernacle. 7 Wherever I have moved about among all the people of Israel, did I ever speak a word with any of the tribal leaders of Israel, whom I commanded to shepherd my people Israel, saying, "Why have you not built me a house of cedar?"

8 Now therefore thus you shall say to my servant David: Thus says the LORD of hosts: I took you from the pasture, from following the sheep to be prince over my people Israel; 9 and I have been with you wherever you went, and have cut off all your enemies from before you; and I will make for you a great name, like the name of the great ones of the earth. 10 And I will appoint a place for my people Israel and will plant them, so that they may live in their own place, and be disturbed no more; and evildoers shall afflict them no more, as formerly, 11 from the time that I appointed judges over my people Israel; and I will give you rest from all your enemies.

Moreover the LORD declares to you that the LORD will make you a house. 12 When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your ancestors, I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come forth from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. 13 He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. 14 I will be a father to him, and he shall be a son to me. When he commits iniquity, I will punish him with a rod such as mortals use, with blows inflicted by human beings. 15 But I will not take my steadfast love from him, as I took it from Saul, whom I put away from before you. 16 Your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me; your throne shall be established forever. 17 In accordance with all these words and with all this vision, Nathan spoke to David.

18 Then King David went in and sat before the LORD, and said, "Who am I, O Lord GOD, and what is my house, that you have brought me thus far? 19 And yet this was a small thing in your eyes, O Lord GOD; you have spoken also of your servant's house for a great while to come. May this be instruction for the people, O Lord GOD! 20 And what more can David say to you? For you know your servant, O Lord GOD! 21 Because of your promise, and according to your own heart, you have wrought all this greatness, so that your servant may know it. 22 Therefore you are great, O LORD God; for there is no one like you, and there is no God besides you, according to all that we have heard with our ears.

Thank You

If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough.

~ Meister Eckhart

We're in the same boat now

"We may have come over on different ships, but we're in the same boat now."

~ Vernon Jordon

Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Thankfulness

Dietrich Bonhoeffer is a good example of thankfulness allowing us to become better nor bitter. Bonhoeffer was a Lutheran pastor imprisoned by the Nazi’s during World War II and eventually executed for refusing to be quiet about what was happening in Germany. He had every reason to be bitter about what life had handed him.

Yet an English officer who was imprisoned with Bonhoeffer and survived had this to say,”Bonhoefer always seemed to me to spread an atmosphere of happiness and joy over the least incident, and profound gratitude for the mere fact that he was alive... He was one of the very few persons I have ever met for whom God was real and always near...”

The day before Bonhoeffer was executed, he conducted a service of worship and was just ending his prayers when the guards came for him. Bonhoeffer’s last reported words to his congregation were “This is the end; but for me it is the beginning of life.”

Bonhoeffer knew what today’s Psalmist proclaims “ The LORD of hosts is with us, the God of Jacob is our stronghold.”

~ author unknown

The Second Coming - Yeats

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

~ William Butler Yeats

"Listen to the Wind"

"What should I do, a long time from now, when that day comes?" he asked.
Haji Ali looked up toward the summit of Korphe K2, weighing his words. "Listen to the wind," he said.

~ Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin, Three Cups of Tea, p. 260

Amazon.com:
"Greg Mortenson is the co-founder of nonprofit Central Asia Institute, Pennies For Peace, and co-author of New York Times bestseller Three Cups of Tea which was Time Magazine Asia Book of the Year. Mortenson has established over 61 schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan, which provide education to over 25,000 children. He survived an eightday armed kidnapping, escaped a firefight with feuding Afghan warlords, has overcome two fatwehs, endured CIA investigations, and also received hate mail and death threats from fellow Americans for helping Muslim children with education. While not overseas half the year, Mortenson lives in Bozeman, Montana, with his wife, Dr. Tara Bishop, a clinical psychologist, and two children."

Sun-Tzu quotes

All warfare is based on deception. There is no place where espionage is not used. Offer the enemy bait to lure him.
Sun-Tzu

Appraise war in terms of the fundamental factors. The first of these factors is moral influence.
Sun-Tzu

Nothing is more difficult than the art of maneuvering for advantageous positions.
Sun-Tzu

Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.
Sun-tzu, (attributed)

Be extremely subtle, even to the point of formlessness. Be extremely mysterious, even to the point of soundlessness. Thereby you can be the director of the opponent's fate.
Sun-tzu, The Art of War. Emptiness and Fullness

The best victory is when the opponent surrenders of its own accord before there are any actual hostilities...It is best to win without fighting.
Sun-tzu, The Art of War. Planning a Siege

A military operation involves deception. Even though you are competent, appear to be incompetent. Though effective, appear to be ineffective.
Sun-tzu, The Art of War. Strategic Assessments

Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win.
Sun-tzu, The Art of War. Strategic Assessments

Keep your enemies closer

Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.

~ Sun-tzu
Chinese general & military strategist (~400 BC)

Alton leaders pay tribute to abolitionist Elijah P. Lovejoy

By CYNTHIA M. ELLIS
November 9, 2008 - 4:22PM
ALTON - The city honored one of freedom's martyrs on Sunday.

Mayor Donald Sandidge proclaimed the day Elijah P. Lovejoy Day in the city - 206 years to the day of the newspaper publisher's birth.

"Elijah P. Lovejoy came to Alton to escape the pro-slavery of Missouri," Sandidge said. "He experienced similar difficulties in Alton; he gave his life Nov. 7, 1837, in defense of our freedoms."

About 30 people attended the event and wreath-laying ceremony beneath the historic Lovejoy Monument at Alton Cemetery.

Lovejoy is buried a distance behind the towering, 93-foot-tall center granite column monument, which has a 17-foot-tall winged statue called "Victory" on top.

It is flanked by two 30-foot-tall "sentry" columns, each topped with an eagle statue.

The monument was dedicated Nov. 8, 1897.

Elijah P. Lovejoy Memorial board members hold the ceremony every Nov. 9, the anniversaries of Lovejoy's birthday and burial. It was one of several events held during Lovejoy Week in Alton.

The Allen Bevenue American Legion Post 354 presented colors at the beginning of the ceremony. The Rev. Charles K. Burton Jr. of Unity Fellowship in Godfrey gave the invocation and benediction and Alton High School seniors Adrianna Jones and Josh Kuehn gave vocal presentations.

A red, white and blue carnation wreath was placed at the foot of the monument's tallest column by Lovejoy Memorial Board president Rance Thomas and trustee Ed Gray.

Alton High School social studies teacher Carla Hilgert gave the keynote speech.

"Elijah P. Lovejoy was the first white man to die in the fight against freedom," Hilgert said. "He is a moral beacon."

Hilgert said Lovejoy furthered the anti-slavery movement more than any other man and should be remembered for his sacrifices.

Lovejoy, a native of Albion, Maine, joined the U.S. Army at the age of 19 and met Abraham Lincoln while in the service. He graduated from Waterville College, now Colby College, in Waterville, Maine. He attended Princeton Theological Seminary and was ordained as a Presbyterian minister in 1834.

He worked at a religious newspaper, the St. Louis Observer, and opened a school but left St. Louis during controversy over states' rights, slavery and freedom of speech and of the press. He then became editor of the abolitionist Alton Observer.

During Lovejoy's time in Alton, pro-slavery mobs threw his printing presses into the Mississippi River three times in response to his abolitionist editorials. One time, in July 1836, was after Lovejoy wrote a critical account of a trial that acquitted leaders of a mob that lynched a black man.

On Nov. 7, 1837, a pro-slavery mob fatally shot him five times outside the former Godfrey and Gilman's warehouse, in which he hid his printing press. Lovejoy and a supporter, Royal Weller, were shot as they tried to keep a boy from climbing a ladder and setting the building on fire.

The crowd threw the printing press out the window, smashing it on the riverbank, then scattered the pieces into the river.

Hilgert said society should continue to teach children about the wrongdoings of others.

"We need to continue to teach them to stand up for what is unjust and unfair," she said.

cynthia_ellis@thetelegraph.com
The Telegraph, founded on Jan. 17, 1836, is a daily newspaper that covers an area spanning five counties in Illinois – Madison, Jersey, Calhoun, Macoupin and Greene.

Reactions to Obama's Election

Op-Ed Contributors
Arab Bloggers Size Up Obama
New York Times, Nov. 8, 2008

The Skeptic, Egypt (elijahzarwan.net/blog)

A new day dawned in Cairo today. As it does every day.
And it started as it always does: with birds, schoolchildren and car horns. No national holiday here.
I’m looking forward to going out in the streets to hear the reaction. The best reaction I’ve heard so far: “Black Man Given Nation’s Worst Job.”
Bah humbug. I confess I’m moved.

•

Mashrabeya, Egypt (mashrabeya.blogspot.com)

Only time would tell if Obama is real, or just too good to be true!
Sometimes, it is not enough to have a Big Dream. What matters is to have enough strength to resist the pressures to give up a Big Dream!

•

Land and People, Lebanon (landandpeople.blogspot.com)

... the question that really interests me is about the relationship between Obama and the true center of world power, Kapital. There was an awful lot of money in Obama’s campaign ... A great chunk must have come from carefully planned investments by C.E.O.’s and multinationals. Will Obama be able to confront the mega-corporations? Does he want to? The poor and the colored population of the world, including that of the U.S., is the one that suffers most from malnutrition and hunger and food insecurity. We know now that mega-corporations, pushing for more profit at any cost, are responsible for most of the damage. Will Obama do something about that? Does he want to? Can he?

•

An Arab Woman Blues, Iraq (arabwomanblues.blogspot.com)

So Obama, the booma, won the elections. I had already predicted that in my post “A long American-Iranian Film.”
I said the following, “My hunch is — and my hunches are rarely wrong — if Obama the booma wins, and he will, by a small margin, Iraq will be handed over to Iran ...”
I also said that Obama will strike a deal with Ahmadinejad on Iraq and in particular southern Iraq.
And lo and behold, the vice president for the booma Obama is none other than J. Biden. J. Biden, the Zionist, is an ardent supporter of the partition of Iraq into three statelets. No wonder Maliki & Co. were also backing the booma along with Iran. I also know that Iran had generously contributed to the Obama campaign.
... I shall not congratulate you on your 44th president. He will simply finish off what the other Zionists had started — the final partition of my country.
To hell with all of you and all of your presidents.

•

"It is not fair and not right."

The New York Times on the Web
Saturday, November 8, 2008
- QUOTATION OF THE DAY -

"That's cruel and it's mean-spirited, it's immature, it's unprofessional and those guys are jerks, if they came away with it taking things out of context and then tried to spread something on national news. It is not fair and not right."

- GOV. SARAH PALIN OF ALASKA, responding to unnamed McCain campaign aides who have been criticizing her in recent days.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/08/us/politics/08palin.html?th&emc=th

Andrew Jackson, 1833 Inaugural Address

"Finally, it is my most fervent prayer to that Almighty Being before whom I now stand, and who has kept us in His hands from the infancy of our Republic to the present day, that He will so overrule all my intentions and actions and inspire the hearts of my fellow citizens that we may be preserved from dangers of all kinds and continue forever a united and happy people."