EVERY HUMAN BEING HAS AN IMPACT ON ANOTHER

That’s a line I heard from the movie ‘Patch Adams’ which I saw on DVD. I won’t be talking about the movie here although I must say that it was an inspiring and a feel-good viewing experience.

What impact do you have on another? Is it one lovely thing or something opposite it? Because Mom would push this thought on me as I struggled with my angst in high school -- that always there are two things to everything -- Like you can’t enjoy coffee without cream (well, that’s me), or a table without a chair, or drive a car without gas, or have honey without a bee, or live a happy life without some share of sorrow or pain, etc. Life comes in two’s – it may be complementing or otherwise but definitely something is there which tells you that ‘one’ is not really alone, that there’s more to just one.

When you go about your daily business thinking that you’re doing fine by yourself minding your own affairs, think again. Because even by the mere fact of your standing there on the corner waiting for your bus you impact another person who may be merely looking at you or simply passing you by at the least. You may be shaping his thoughts. Because you have your life experiences etched on your face and that is what the other is catching.

Oh some of us may use the milder term ‘impression’ as it looks far appropriate to them. But I would stick to the word ‘impact’ because it best expresses what happens when people collide with each other in this high social traffic called life. People crash, collide, contact with another being going from here to there. Lives intertwine directly or indirectly, visibly or not, or meet at some point or another or leave something behind. This could be very brief, fleeting, or even linger for some amount of time until it is asked to move on by some unknown force.

In that process something happens. Something from you transfers to the other and stays there or vice versa. It forms our thoughts, opens up our eyes, and nudges our hearts.

I was in this party last week, a reunion of old colleagues (a tight group of about 20) from the company I worked with for twenty years. As all reunions are there were plenty of smiles, guffaws, laughter, teasing, nostalgia, and memories for everyone’s picking. And of course – food! While everybody was feasting on a spread of mouth-watering delights I, seated close to the end of the long table, ‘feasted’ my eyes on the people there. My file of memories opened and names instantly popped out. Oh yes, each one had indeed made an impact on my life and had managed to form my thoughts on several things seen and observed in life. I was never the same person with every encounter and experience. Something was shed and something was gained.

Every human being has an impact on another. You can count on that because God did not mean us to live solitary lives. We were meant to collide, crash, touch, link, connect, interact, or impact each other’s lives. Because only with another or each other can we grow into the persons God meant us to be.

With this thought, I would like to say this to everyone here in Blogspot, visible and 'invisible'…

Thank you for coming into my life and helping make it better – making me a better human being to myself and to others. May our magnificent God pour out His blessings a hundredfold upon you and yours this Christmas and through the years ahead.

A MERRY AND BLESSED CHRISTMAS TO EVERYONE!

GIVING TO YOURSELF WELL - ALLOWS YOU TO GIVE TO OTHERS BETTER

I was at dinner one night with my two best friends. The place was nice, food was good, and so was the conversation. Until halfway through dinner, Jenny suddenly spoke up with a sigh ‘I feel so old and useless.’ That shook us by surprise. ‘Hey, what’s wrong now? “, May countered at the same time threw a quick glance at me. ‘Oh it’s this feeling I got yesterday. It feels like I’ve done nothing yet for me.’ Well, I won’t tell more about that night or about Jenny except that her words weighed heavily on my mind even long after that evening had past.

When I woke up early this morning I headed straight to my daughters’ bedroom to tidy up. I don’t know why they can’t learn to make up their beds before going to work. I’ve been trying to make them for years now. It’s all rush – rush – rush! Well, I saw this book lying on my daughter’s bed. It was A 2nd Helping of Chicken Soup for the Soul, Canfield and Hansen, authors. With nothing much to do I took it, sat on her bed and leisurely leafed through its pages … and froze on page 181. I remembered Jenny.

It read…

MILLIE’S MOTHER’S RED DRESS

It hung there in the closet
While she was dying, Mother’s red dress,
Like a gash in the row
Of dark, old clothes
She had worn away her life in.

They had called me home
And I knew when I saw her
She wasn’t going to last.

When I saw the dress, I said
“Why, Mother-- how beautiful!
I’ve never seen it on you.”

I sat by her bed
And she sighed a bigger breath
Than I thought she could hold.
“Now that I’ll soon be gone,
I can see some things.
Oh, I taught you good—but I taught you wrong.”

“What do you mean, Mother?”

“Well—I always thought
That a good woman never takes her turn,
That she’s just for doing for somebody else.
Do here, do there, always keep
Everybody else’s wants tended and make sure
Yours are at the bottom of the heap.

“Maybe someday you’ll get to them.
But of course you never do.
My life was like that—doing for your dad,
Doing for the boys, for your sisters, for you.”

“You did—everything a mother could.”

“Oh, Millie, Millie, it was no good—
For you—for him. Don’t you see?
I did you the worst of wrongs.
I asked for nothing—for me!

“Your father in the other room,
All stirred up and staring at the walls—
When the doctor told him, he took
It bad—came to my bed and all but shook
The life right out of me. “You can’t die,
Do you hear? What’ll become of me?’
“What’ll become of me?’
It’ll be hard, all right, when I go.
He can’t even find the frying pan, you know.

“And you children—
I was a free ride for everybody, everywhere.
I was the first one up and the last one down
Seven days out of the week.
I always took the toast that got burned.
And the very smallest piece of pie.

“I look to how some of your brothers
Treat their wives now
And it makes me sick, ’cause it was me
That taught it to them. And they learned.
They learned that a woman doesn’t
Even exist except to give.
Why, every single penny that I could save
Went for our clothes, or your books,
Even when it wasn’t necessary.
Can’t even remember once when I took
Myself downtown to buy something beautiful—
For me.

“Except last year when I got that red dress.
I found I had twenty dollars
That wasn’t especially spoke for.
I was on my way to pay it extra on the washer.
But somehow—I came home with this big box.
Your father really gave it to me then.
‘Where you going to wear a thing like that to—
Some opera or something?’
And he was right, I guess.
I’ve never, except in the store,
Put on that dress.

“Oh Millie—I always thought if you take
Nothing for yourself in this world
You’d have it all in the next somehow
I don’t believe that anymore.
I think the Lord wants us to have something—
Here—and now.

“And I’m telling you, Millie, if some miracle
Could get me off this bed, you could look
For a different mother, ‘cause I would be one.
Oh I passed up my turn so long
I would hardly know how to take it.
But I’d learn, Millie.
I would learn!”

It hung there in the closet
While she was dying, Mother’s red dress,
Like a gash in the row
Of dark, old clothes
She had worn away her life in.

Her last words to me were these:
“Do me the honor, Millie,
Of not following in my footsteps.
Promise me that.”

I promised.
She caught her breath
Then Mother took her turn
In death.

By Carol Lynn Pearson


It’s quite a long piece, isn’t it? But it can’t be written in any other way. This in the way Pearson wrote it is pure gold. Tomorrow I’m going to give Jenny a copy. And I am going to tell her that she would be doing her family a big favor and would love them best if first she learned to “do something – for me”… and to do it here—and now.

YOU CAN ALWAYS, ALWAYS GIVE SOMETHING --EVEN IF IT IS ONLY KINDNESS

If we wait for the perfect moment, the right timing, the worthy persons, or the highest peak of sympathy and compassion we will never get to do anything worthwhile. Big money is available only to a few lucky ones so we all know; popularity or influence sometimes is inherited through family prominence, so not everybody is afforded the opportunity or chance to do something special for a greater number of people on a grand or grander scale. Ordinary people and ordinary lives is what the world is mainly made of. But we all have the same hearts longing to make a contribution changing the world. So we try.. and thus some of us who can afford to try to make things happen by making out huge donations to a favorite charity, sponsor a gala event to highlight a good cause, finance a research project in a specific field such as medicine, education, environment, outer space, science, etc. Fantastic, isn’t it? Wish we could all be that and do all that but it isn’t quite so.

Instead we are this --- the husband and father rushing to work early in the morning, the wife and mother doing the endless chores around the home, and the children doing what children do. Then there’s the mailman delivering the mail, the power guy fixing power lines, the street sweeper, the plumber, the taxi driver, the salesgirl, and lots of others more. Look to our small neighborhoods and watch how life unfolds each day and you will see yourself mirrored in it.

We can give from what we are, who we are, and from what we have where we are. There’s our laughter, our joys, our apple pies, a cup of sugar for the person next door, a helping hand when sought for, or maybe just a friendly smile and some kindness for someone who appears lost. Those don’t cost much…even easier to give. And believe it or not we have them in abundant supply from within ourselves. I remember what mom used to say to me and my kid brother … ‘Anything of and from the heart is far more precious than a checkbook.’ Yup, it’s all right here in the heart. So give!

"How lovely to think that no one need wait a moment, we can start now, start slowly changing the world! How lovely that everyone, great and small, can make their contribution toward introducing justice straightaway... And you can always, always give something, even if it is only kindness!" -- Anne Frank

The BLOG PRAYER BRIGADE of DesertFishing

(This too is my prayer for the country and for the rest of the world. May many heed your call, DesertFishing. God bless you.)



THE LORD'S PRAYER

Our Father, in heaven,
Holy be your name;
your kingdom come;
your will be done on earth
as it is in heaven.

Give us today
our daily bread;
and forgive us our sins
as we forgive those
who sin against us.
Do not bring us to the test,
but deliver us from evil.

Amen.