Ray's Daily

Education is not the filling of a bucket, but the lighting of a fire.

W. B. Yeats

I, like every other grandparent, know that our grandchildren are the brightest, most attractive and highly proficient kids ever. We just sometimes wish that their parents could walk on water like they do. So OK, we might be a little prejudiced and possibly only see them at their best. But in spite of my bias I was objectively proud of two of my seven grandchildren last night. I had a grandson graduating from his parochial middle school at the same time my gymnast granddaughter was graduating from a different parochial middle school. Since my wife and I could not be at both schools at the same time she attended my grandsons graduation at his school and I attended my granddaughters at her school.

I wish I could have been at both for both kids were recognized for their achievements. In fact my grandson was also presented with a ten thousand dollar academic scholarship from Cathedral High School, one of our leading college prep institutions. I truly enjoy both his analytical skills and his sense of humor. He is special also by his ability to balance his intense participation in both soccer and basketball and now I can also brag about his academic skill.

My granddaughter did well also, in fact she had to make a multiple trips to the podium on crutches (she is recovering from knee surgery and has to wear a full leg brace) to get her awards. She also received special recognition for being one of only four kids that had straight A’s every year they attended middle school. In addition she and one other graduate received the schools top award for a combination of academic, service and just being well liked good kids. Her school success is especially noteworthy since she was able to do so well even though she is a nationally ranked gymnast who practices for four hours a day 6 days a week and sometimes even more and has had miss school days on occasion in order to compete in National meets all over the US and on occasion attend the National Training Camp. As I have mentioned before I have never met a better time manager or anyone who handles challenges like those she does with so many smiles and so much grace.

I am proud of all of my grandchildren and am thankful that I have been blessed by having them in our life. I am also grateful to my children for staying here in our city which so we can regularly bask in the glow of their children as they thrive and grow.

Our immortality exists in what we leave behind, in our case I think our greatest legacy will be our grandchildren and what they will do to help make our world a better place.

~~~

In a completely rational society, the best of us would aspire to be teachers and the rest of us would have to settle for something less, because passing civilization along from one generation to the next ought to be the highest honor and the highest responsibility anyone could have.

Lee Iacocca

~~~

HELPFUL HINTS FOR LIFE

1. If you’re bidding on a job for UPS, don’t send your bid by FedEx.

2. If your computer says, Printer out of Paper," this problem cannot be resolved by continuously clicking the "OK" button.

3. If you want your refrigerator’s ice maker to work, you need to hook it to a water source.  Air doesn’t make good ice unless it is mixed with water.

4. No matter how much data you add to your laptop, it will not get heavier.

5. A bad place to store your emergency backup diskette is on the underside of your desk drawer, secured by a large magnet.

6. When the PC says, "Insert diskette #2," don’t do it immediately. Remove disk #1 first, even if you’re sure you can make them both fit in there.

7. When your PC says "You have mail," don’t go to the company mail room and look for a package.

8. The French version of Internet Explorer doesn’t translate English language web pages into French.

9. If you’re in the armed services, and it’s April 1st, and you get an e-mail message to call Colonel Sanders for new orders, don’t.

10. If you go to the computer store to buy a mousepad, you don’t have to specify whether it’s for a Windows or a Macintosh.

~~~

Hard work spotlights the character of people: some turn up their sleeves, some turn up their noses, and some don’t turn up at all.

Sam Ewing

~~~

A little girl was asked what she wanted most for her birthday and she declared: "A baby brother."

"Daddy and I would like to give you a baby brother," said her mom, "but there isn’t time before your birthday."

"Why don’t you do like they do down at Daddy’s factory when they want something in a hurry?  Put more men on the job."

~~~

Your secrets are safe with me and all my friends.

~~~

A big executive boarded a New York to Chicago train. He explained to the porter, "I’m a heavy sleeper, but I want you to be sure and wake me up at 3:00 am for the stop in Buffalo. I don’t care what I say, you just make sure I get off in Buffalo."

The next morning the executive woke up in Chicago. He was furious. He found the porter and really gave him an earful before hustling off to purchase a return ticket.

After he left, a co-worker said to the porter, "How can you stand there and let that passenger abuse you like that?"

"That’s nothing," said the porter. "You should have heard the guy who I put off in Buffalo!"

~~~

When you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

~~~

Whenever I travel by plane someone always says, "Have a safe trip."

Since when does a safe plane flight become my responsibility?  I’m not even sure what I’m supposed to do! Go kick the tires, drug test the pilot, what?

I feel I’m doing my part by not going up to the cockpit every five minutes and asking, "Are we there yet?"

~~~

A frustrated wife told me the other day her definition of retirement: "Twice as much husband on half as much pay."

~~~

Four little aging Jewish ladies were sitting by the pool in Miami Beach. One of them looked at the others and said: "Do you girls still like sex?"

After a few seconds of silence, one looked over and replied: "Honey, I still love Saks, Macy’s, Bloomingdales…all of those nice stores."

~~~

Confusion not only reigns, it pours.

~~~

The other night, my wife and I were going out for dinner.

She put on eyebrow pencil, eye shadow, eyeliner, eyelashes, mascara, toner, blush and lipstick, then turned to me and said, "Does this look natural?"

~~~

Our background and circumstances may influence who we are, but we are responsible for who we become.

~~~

A man entered a stationery store and asked the clerk for a birthday/anniversary card.

The clerk replied, "We have birthday cards and we have anniversary cards. Why not take one of each?"

The man said, "You don’t understand. I need a card that covers BOTH events! You see, we’re celebrating the fifth anniversary of my wife’s thirty-fourth birthday…"

~~~

Every individual makes a difference. We cannot live through a single day without making an impact on the world around us. And we all have free choice–what sort of difference do we want to make? Do we want to make the world around us a better place? Or not?

Jane Goodall

~~~

Stay well, do good work, and have fun.

“It takes great wit and interest and energy to be happy. The pursuit of happiness is a great activity. One must be open and alive. It is the greatest feat man has to accomplish.”

Robert Herrick

It seems like more and more my conversations with friends revolve around life after the big recession. As you know my hope is that we will have learned that we have more that can make us happy than we realize and that in fact many of those who spent all their time chasing more title, money and material goods have learned that those pursuits often left little time for true happiness. When I read the following article in the most recent issue of the Foreign Policy magazine I felt that what it said was important enough that we all should think about what it says.

The Next Big Thing: Happiness

By Barry Schwartz

McMansions and SUVs didn’t make our lives better. Losing them just might.

Psychologists and other social scientists (most economists excepted) have learned a lot in the last few decades about what makes us happy. They have taught us that, in affluent societies, money doesn’t buy as much happiness as people think. Indeed, for people living above subsistence, it may buy very little.

They have also taught us what affects well-being more than money: close relations with family, friends, and community; meaningful work; security (financial, job, and health); and democracy.

Before the financial crisis, nothing was stopping us from pursuing these things that make life worth living. But, consistent with a substantial body of research showing that we generally don’t know what’s good for us, when the money was flowing we substituted risk for security. We sacrificed time with friends and family to spend more time at work accumulating wealth and more time after work figuring out how to spend it. The short-term temptations were just too hard to resist.

But now, everyone’s belt has tightened. Financial necessity may give us the opportunity to discover that time spent with loved ones is much more satisfying than time spent with your 76-inch HDTV. Once the crisis lifts, we may not be tempted to go back to living the way we did before, if that’s even an option for those millions who are now losing their jobs, homes, and retirement accounts.

If this silver lining does appear, it may bring another benefit in its wake. It might change the way society and policymakers assess well-being. It may become apparent that equating social welfare with GDP is not just inadequate, but more importantly, misleading. It might lead us to develop a gross national well-being measure that will supplement, or even replace, GDP as our principal yardstick of social welfare and social progress. Then, maybe we’ll discover that we were never so well off in the first place.

Barry Schwartz is professor of psychology at Swarthmore College

~~~

Often people attempt to live their lives backwards; they try to have more things, or more money, in order to do more of what they want, so they will be happier.  The way it actually works is the reverse.  You must first be who you really are, then do what you need to do, in order to have what you want.

Margaret Young

~~~

The scene is sometime in the old era when cockpits had round dials plus flight engineers and navigators. The crusty old-timer captain is breaking in a brand new navigator. The captain opens his briefcase, pulls out a .38 and rests it on the glare panel. He asks the navigator, "Know what this is for?"

"No, sir," replies the newbie.

"I use it on navigators that get us lost," explains the captain, winking at his first officer.

The navigator then opens his briefcase, pulls out a .45 and sets it on his chart table.

"What’s THAT for?" queries the surprised captain.

"Well, sir," replies the navigator, "I’ll know we’re lost before you will."

~~~

What we see depends mainly on what we look for.

Sir John Lubbock

~~~

He said: I walked into my sister’s kitchen and found my nephew, Mitch, having a snack. "Where’s your mother?" I asked.

"She said she was going to take a shower. Just a second and I’ll see." Mitch went to the kitchen tap and turned the hot water on full blast. An indignant yell came from above.

Mitch calmly turned off the tap and said, "Yep, she’s in the shower."

~~~

Life is a riddle; unfortunately the answer’s not written on the back of anything.

~~~

A friend went to her doctor the other day and the man was not very sympathetic with her aches and pains. "You’ll just have to learn to live it," he said.

When she got her bill for $90, she sent it back, with the notation, "You’ll just have to learn to live without it!"

~~~

One of life’s greatest mysteries is how the boy who wasn’t good enough to marry your daughter can be the father of the smartest grandchild in the world.

Yiddish Proverb

~~~

On a recent flight, an elderly passenger kept peering out the window. Since it was totally dark, all she could see was the blinking wing-tip light. Finally, she rang for the flight attendant.

"I’m sorry to bother you," she said, "but I think you should inform the pilot that his left turn indicator is on and has been for some time."

~~~

On a scale of 1 to 10, 4 is about 7.

~~~

She said: For many years, I worked as a receptionist and switchboard operator for a busy company. After a good annual review, my supervisor told me I was up for a raise, pending approval of the vice president.

A month later, my supervisor called me into his office and told me the VP had refused to approve my raise.

His reason? I clearly wasn’t doing my job. Every time he saw me, I was either chatting with someone in the lobby or talking on the phone.

~~~

Envy is the art of counting the other fellow’s blessings instead of your own.

Harold Coffin

~~~

Doug asks, "I know you’re crazy about that little daughter of yours, Bill. What are you going to do when she starts to date?"

Bill says, "I figure I’ll take the first young man aside, put my arm around his shoulder and pull him close to me so that only he can hear." "Then I’ll say, ‘Do you see that sweet, little young lady? She’s my only daughter and I love her very much. If you were thinking about touching, kissing or being physically affectionate to her in any way, just remember, I don’t mind going back to prison.’"

~~~

A heart is not judged by how much you love, but by how much you are loved by others.

The Wizard of Oz to the Tin Man

~~~

I was sitting in the foyer of a bank when a young man walked by and then stopped for a moment on his way out. I noticed that one of the latches on his overstuffed briefcase was unfastened, putting strain on the remaining latch. "You’re going to lose the contents of your briefcase," I warned him.

Just then, the case burst open. He stared at me with something akin to fear in his eyes as he gasped, "How on earth did you do that?"

~~~

He is rich or poor according to what he is, not according to what he has.

Henry Ward Beecher

~~~

Stay well, do good work, and have fun.

The unthankful heart… discovers no mercies; but let the thankful heart sweep through the day and, as the magnet finds the iron, so it will find, in every hour, some heavenly blessings!

Henry Ward Beecher

Those of us in the United States are about to embark on our annual Memorial Day long weekend. Since it will be a national holiday on Monday there will not be another Daily until Tuesday.

While our country utilizes the holiday to remember those heroes of our past that helped build the society we live in today, I will remember those in my life that have helped me to be as fortunate as I am. There are far too many to mention here and sadly far too many that are no longer with us. As I look back I wish I would have appreciated them more and that I had told them at the time what they meant to me. While I can’t change my past I can and do make sure I let others know how glad I am to know them and how much I benefit from our interaction.

This is also my city’s biggest weekend as about 300,000 race fans will be at the 100 year old Indianapolis Speedway on Sunday watching the annual Indianapolis 500 mile auto race. Cars will travel around the two and half mile oval at more than 200 miles an hour while millions worldwide will be watching on television.

Our weekend will consist of parades, memorial services, parties and more. It is a time when it would be easy to forget the meaning of the weekend, I will not and hopefully each of you wherever you may be will join me for a few minutes to remember with gratitude those who contributed to who we are today. And I promise you, if you express gratitude everyday you life will never be brighter. Listen to what Ralph Marston offers on the subject:

Lead with gratitude

Make gratitude your first response and it will soon become an empowering perspective from which you can achieve great things. Rather than looking for something to criticize, look for things to genuinely praise. Make the most positive qualities the first things you notice in people, in your surroundings, and in the situations which come along.

There are positive sides and negative sides to everything. The negative aspects will have little trouble asserting themselves. They need no help from you. Don’t overlook them, but don’t give your energy to them either.

Put your focus on finding a reason for gratitude. It’s there, no matter what. From that you can build and grow, move ahead and prosper. Make it a habit on a moment by moment basis. Ingrain it in your very being. Let it become second nature to you to seek the positive and you will indeed find it. It’s an approach which will bring delightful substance to your relationships and powerful effectiveness to your pursuits.

Lead with gratitude and you’ll truly be even more grateful for the richness of living which most certainly will follow.

~~~

Silent gratitude isn’t much use to anyone.

G.B. Stern

~~~

Have you noticed that we talk about certain things only when they are absent?

Have you ever seen a horseful carriage or a strapful gown?

Met a sung hero or experienced requited love?

Have you ever run into someone who was gruntled, ruly or peccable? 

And where are all those people who ARE spring chickens or who would ACTUALLY hurt a fly?

You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language in which your house can burn up as it burns down, in which you fill in a form by filling it out and in which an alarm clock goes off by going on. English was invented by people, not computers, and it reflects the creativity of the human race (which, of course, isn’t a race at all).  That is why, when the stars are out, they are visible, but when the lights are out, they are invisible. And why, when I wind up my watch, I start it, but when I wind up this essay, I end it.

~~~

If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.

Antoine de Saint-Exupery

~~~

She said: After shopping at a busy store, another woman and I happened to leave at the same time, only to be faced with the daunting task of finding our cars in the crowded parking lot.  Just then my car horn beeped, and I was able to locate my vehicle easily.

Wow," the woman said.  "I sure could use a gadget like that to help me find my car."

"Actually," I replied, "that’s my husband."

~~~

I planted some birdseed. A bird came up. Now I don’t know what to feed it.

~~~

Your in trouble if:

Your accountants letter of resignation is postmarked Zurich.

You have to hitch hike to the bank to make your car payment.

The little league puts you on waivers.

Your suggestion box starts ticking.

Your secretary tells you the FBI is on line 1, the DA is on line 2, and CBS is on line 3.

You see your stockbroker hitchhiking out of town.

You see the captain running toward the railing wearing a life jacket.

They pay your wages out of petty cash.

~~~

Without question, the greatest invention in the history of mankind is beer. Oh, I grant you that the wheel was also a fine invention, but the wheel does not go nearly as well with pizza …

Dave Barry

~~~

Margaret was royally peeved! She was arguing with the druggist because her favorite cure-all could not be bought without a prescription. "Look, lady. You can’t have this without a prescription because it’s a habit-forming drug."

"IT IS NOT!!!!" Screamed Margaret! "I ought to know: I’ve been taking it regularly for seventeen years!"

~~~

To get something done, a committee should consist of no more than three men, two of whom are absent.

Robert Copeland

~~~

A customer called the airline’s reservation office to pay for his ticket with a credit card.  The reservation specialist asked him, "Would you please spell the name as it appears on the card, sir?" The customer carefully replied, "V-I-S-A."

~~~

Mom, I’ll always love you, but I’ll never forgive you for cleaning my face with spit on a hanky.

~~~

At a pre-birth class for couples who had already had at least one child, the instructor raised the issue of breaking the news to the older child.

"Some parents tell the older child, ‘We love you so much that we decided to bring another child into this family.’ But think about that. Ladies, what would you say if your husband came home one day and said, ‘Honey, I love you so much, I decided to bring home another wife?’"

One of the women immediately responded, "Does she cook?"

~~~

When eating bamboo sprouts, remember the man who planted them.

Chinese Proverb

~~~

Stay well, do good work, and have fun.

"We have a choice every day regarding the attitude we will embrace for the day. Life is 10% what happens to us and 90% how we react to it. Our attitude is everything."

Charles Swindoll

We’ve talked a lot lately about making the choices that will allow us to find happiness even during these trying times. Rather than me going on and on again on the subject I’ll just share with you the advice I recently picked up from someone else.

Look Within To Find Happiness

A close friend said’ "If I could only figure this out, I think I could find happiness." I have heard this before and will hear it again I am sure. Many people want to believe that finding happiness is all about finding something else they want. Not many have ever found long term happiness by achieving another goal. The answer to finding happiness is to look within.

In other words, happiness is completely an inside job. The most important piece to finding happiness is to comprehend happiness is a choice and not the result of an experience. If all happiness could be found as the result of an acquisition, meeting a goal, or having anything, then a person’s happiness would always be subject to something else.

Remember this: one definition of happiness is simply the absence of an opposite emotion whether it is pain, sadness or something else. If the opposite emotions are never experienced then happiness can never be experienced either. Think about it like this: bad times allow you to appreciate good times; hunger allows you to appreciate food; and sadness allows you to appreciate and experience happiness.

The dictionary defines happiness as enjoying, showing, or marked by pleasure, satisfaction or joy. How often do you hear… "I’ll be happy when"? When I get that job, I’ll be happy. I’ll be happy when I find a life partner. I’d be happy if I had more money. These, and all the other "if I had", scenarios are following the same reasoning; that happiness is based on external circumstances.

If you base your happiness on external circumstances, you will continuously fail to find happiness. There will always, always be another external circumstance. There will always be another dollar, another job, another house, or another partner. Better, more, else. To break this vicious cycle, we must find our happiness somewhere else. That somewhere else is within. We have been given everything we need to be happy.

Allow yourself to choose happiness. If life was perfect would you be happy? Life is perfect because we create it with our choices. Since we can create life, we can create happiness – and how much better can it get? When we can accept that life is perfect as it is and that our lives are the sum total of everything that has happened to this instant, only then can we accept the joy and happiness we deserve.

I realize that this concept is very difficult for some to accept. However, the alternative to being happy now is to spend the rest of our lives seeking happiness as if happiness was an item to be bought or found. It’s not. Just remember the saying – Don’t worry – be happy!

Miami Phillips

~~~

"Keep your face to the sunshine, and you cannot see the shadow."

Helen Keller

~~~

Did you know that Moses had to make a third trip up to the top of Mount Sinai?

Well, on this third trip, Moses arrived at the burning bush after much climbing, removed his sandals, kneeled and prayed to God.

"Oh mighty God, King of the Universe, your people have sent me back here to ask you a question about the Ten Commandments." "What question do they have for me?" roared the voice of God. "They want to know whether the commandments are listed according to priority."

~~~

"It is by the goodness of God that we have in our country three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either."    

Mark Twain

~~~

A man was seen fleeing down the hall of the hospital just before his operation. "What’s the matter?" he was asked.

He said, "I heard the nurse say, ‘It’s a very simple operation, don’t worry, I’m sure it will be all right.’" "She was just trying to comfort you, what’s so frightening about that?"

"She wasn’t talking to me. She was talking to the doctor!"

~~~

Most people walk in and out of your life, but only friends leave footprints in your heart.

~~~

The choir director selected the 6-year-old little boy with the sweetest face for the opening scene of the play. "Now, all you have to do is, when I direct the choir to sing ‘…and the angel lit the candle’, you come on stage and light all the candles."

"I can do it – I can do it!" the little boy said, excited to be the one picked.

Rehearsals came and went, and finally the big night arrived. The choir was in grand voice, the stage was beautifully decorated with dozens of unlit candles all around, awaiting the moment when the cute littlest angel made his entrance.

The director gave the downbeat, the orchestra began to play, and the choir swept into the introductory lines, ending with an expectant "…and the angel lit the candle," and everyone looked stage right for the entrance.

No little boy.

The director gave the downbeat again, and gestured for a louder line, which the choir gave him – "…and the angel lit the candle," and again, all eyes looked stage right.

No little boy.

The director, beginning to sweat, motioned with great, sweeping gestures. The choir thundered into the line.  The curtains belled slightly from the sound –  "…AND THE ANGEL LIT THE CANDLE!"

And into the silence which followed came a clear, boy-soprano voice floating piercingly from stage right,

"…and the cat peed on the matches!"

~~~

Sadie and Esther are sitting on the porch of their Miami Beach hotel.

"Oh my God," cries Sadie. "Look at that poor boy! Such a weak chin. His mouth is crooked. And look, his eyes are crossed."

"That boy," says Esther, "happens to be my son."

"Oh," replies Sadie. "On him it’s very becoming."

~~~

A fine is a tax for doing wrong. A tax is a fine for doing well.

~~~

We were celebrating the 100th anniversary of our church, and several former pastors and the bishop were in attendance.  At one point, our minister had the children gather at the altar for a talk about the importance of the day.

He began by asking, "Does anyone know what the bishop does?"

There was silence.  Finally, one little boy answered gravely, "He’s the one you can move diagonally."

~~~

Protons have mass?

I didn’t even know they were Catholic.

~~~

"Rabbi," she says. "Both Abe and Sol are in love with me. Both want to marry me, and I have to pick…

Who will the lucky one be?"

The rabbi looked at her and replied, "Abe will marry you and Sol will be the lucky one."

~~~

"So much sadness exists in the world that we are all under obligation to contribute as much joy as lies within our powers."

John Sutherland Bonnell

~~~

Stay well, do good work, and have fun.

The life I touch for good or ill will touch another life, and that in turn another, until who knows where the trembling stops or in what far place my touch will be felt.

Frederick Buechner:

It seems like I have been making a lot of trips back into the past lately, sharing the good feelings that I had for simpler days, a time when even just a neighborhood was a community. Many of the periods in the past were filled with trauma and difficult times. My generation has experienced wars, a depression, countless recessions, epidemics, disease and even conflict. I am not proud of our past prejudices and occasional inhumanity, but fortunately most of the folks I knew never where part of those problems. In some ways I think we were tested and as a result strengthened. And to a large extent we were strengthened because we had each other. I don’t mean by just family and loved ones but by those around us neighbors, friends, fellow citizens and yes even strangers. It was the people that made us a community.

It seems like these days too many of us just don’t have the time or to be honest don’t take the time to build the community environment that sustained us in days gone by. Maybe the problems we face these days will motivate some to step back and find what we had. What got me thinking about this today was a list that I got from a good friend. He sent me something he got off a bookmark that his daughter received when she was at Syracuse University. It was published by the Syracuse Cultural Workers. Here is what it said in part:

How to Build a Community

Turn off your TV

Leave your house

Know your neighbors

Greet people

Sit on your stoop

Plant Flowers

Play together

Share what you have

Take children to the park

Garden Together

Support Neighborhood Schools

Fix it even if you didn’t break it

Honor Elders

Pick Up Litter

Dance in the Street

Talk to the Mail Carrier

Listen to the Birds

Help Carry Something Heavy

Start A Tradition

Hire Young People for Odd Jobs

Bake Extra and Share

Ask For Help When You Need It

Open Your Shades

Sing Together

Share Your Skills

Listen Before You react To Anger

Seek To Understand

Learn From New And Uncomfortable Angles

Know That No One is Silent Though Many Are Not Heard Work to Change This

Thanks Jim for reminding us that Those Were the Days can again be the days if we only reach out to one another.

Ray

~~~

How Many Christians Does It Take to Change a Light Bulb?

Charismatic: Only 1 – Hands are already in the air.

Pentecostal: 10 – One to change the bulb, and nine to pray against the spirit of darkness.

Presbyterians: None – Lights will go on and off at predestined times.

Roman Catholic: None – Candles only. (Of guaranteed origin of course.)

Baptists: At least 15 – One to change the light bulb, and three committees to approve the change and decide who brings the potato salad and fried chicken.

Episcopalians: 3 – One to call the electrician, one to mix the drinks, and one to talk about how much better the old one was.

Mormons: 5 – One man to change the bulb, and four wives to tell him how to do it.

Unitarians: We choose not to make a statement either in favor of or against the need for a light bulb. However, if in your own journey you have found that light bulbs work for you, you are invited to write a poem or compose a modern dance about your light bulb for the next Sunday service, in which we will explore a number of light bulb traditions, including incandescent, fluorescent, 3-way, long-life and tinted, all of which are equally valid paths to luminescence.

Methodists: Undetermined – Whether your light is bright, dull, or completely out, you are loved. You can be a light bulb, turnip bulb, or tulip bulb. Bring a bulb of your choice to the Sunday lighting service and a covered dish to pass.

Nazarene: 6 – One woman to replace the bulb while five men review church lighting policy.

Lutherans: None – Lutherans don’t believe in change.

Amish: What’s a light bulb?

~~~

There is no greater joy nor greater reward than to make a fundamental difference in someone’s life.

Sister Mary Rose McGeady

~~~

A housewife with three small children was getting dinner ready, when the telephone rang. The six-year-old picked it up, and said, "Hi, Daddy!", and began telling him about her day. She then passed the phone to her brother and sister, as was the custom whenever Daddy called from work.

When it was finally the wife’s turn to talk, she took the receiver, and said, "Hi, Hon."

"Thank goodness, Lady," the voice on the other end replied. "I just called to tell you that the wallpaper you ordered has arrived!"

~~~

He who wants a rose must respect the thorn.

Persian proverb

~~~

Jill went to a "Dude Ranch". The cowboy preparing the horses asked if Jill wanted a Western or English saddle, and she asked what the difference was.

When he told her one had a horn and one didn’t, Jill replied, "The one without the horn is fine.  I don’t expect we’ll run into too much traffic."

~~~

We need to learn to set our course by the stars, not by the lights of every passing ship.

Omar N. Bradley

~~~

A Polish gentleman went to the ophthalmologist who showed him a card, with the letters C Z W X N Q S T A C Z printed on it.

"Can you read this?" he asked

"Read it?" The gentleman replied, "I know the guy!"

~~~

Responsibility does not only lie with the leaders of our countries or with those who have been appointed or elected to do a particular job. It lies with each of us individually. Peace, for example, starts within each one of us. When we have inner peace, we can be at peace with those around us.

Dalai Lama:

~~~

Stay well, do good work, and have fun.