My Writings (New 7)
SadnessPeople pass by us throughout our life, but do we ever stop to consider that they have heartaches? Yes, life can be hard for people. That one you see with downcast eyes and forlorn look, who knows what mournful story might be his part? Perhaps if the book from each mortal heart could be opened and read, it would be filled with sorrow too great for mortal eyes.
Life is an endless succession of heartaches, of sadness and sorrow. There is the sadness at the loss of loved ones. There is the sadness of illness and disease, of disability and weakness. There is the sorrow of missed opportunities and failures. There is the sadness of lost friendships and misunderstandings. There are the sad memories of being hurt by the cruelty and insults of thoughtless and uncaring people.
Each person is subjected at some time in their life to the horrible and dreadful. There is sadness enough in just one human heart to fill the urn of sorrow for us all. That person you see smiling and laughing cheerfully and happily may be the most sad of all. Many people hide behind a cheerful contenance heartbreaking sadness. Sorrow fills the heart of many whom we pass in life and often we are not aware of it.
Friends and Friendship
The heart quite naturally reaches out to other people. Try as one will to suppress this need, this instinctive groping for companionship, the longing to be a friend and to have friends cannot be suppressed. An emptiness, a feeling of not fulfilling a fundamental purpose of life comes over the person who fails to find a certain affinity with other people.
Happiness never seems complete unless there is someone to share it. Accomplishment, honor, victory become meaningless without someone to praise and share in one's triumph. Indeed life itself would become a toil, a burden, if there were no one to share its joys as well as its heartaches.
It is friendship which so thrills a human being, and gives meaning to life and purpose to our labor. A friend makes glorious the inglorious, and makes enchanting the dull and commonplace. A friend makes joy more joyful and lasting, and makes sorrow bearable. A friend turns darkness into sunshine, and gives even the eyes of the aged a glow. Just by being present a friend brings warmth, a newness of life, the freshness of spring.
Who could sweat and toil under a weary life without someone dear to spur him on? To find friendship is to climb the pinnacle of human existence, to reach the ultimate in understanding and fulfillment, and to discover that wonderland in which all agree that friendship is the one of the greatest blessings of life.
Forgiveness Is Divine
Our salvation lies in our ability to forgive. The pain of having hatred and animosity toward someone is much like a physical pain. It lasts and lasts, and will not let us sleep at night or think of anything else. Forgiveness lifts that weight from us. Forgiveness lifts that great burden from our heart.
Forgiveness is indeed divine. Forgiveness is a step forward, and no one makes that step without growing spiritually and gaining some stature as a human being. There are few things on this earth more wonderful than forgiveness. There are few acts a person may do which are more benevolent and unselfish, which are more divine and more Christlike than the act of forgiveness.
Jesus says in the Bible in Matthew 6: 14-15-"For if ye forgive men their trespasses your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses."
We Are Thought
A human being is more than their physical body. We are the existence of thought which ascribes to our body living functions, thought which moves our limbs and speaks, thought which sees and hears and relates to our world, thought which understands ourself to be.
The thought is divine. The thought comes from God the source of our being. The thought is eternal. The thought is the original idea of being of which we all share. It is the thought that we are that moves us. This thought cannot be chemically instilled, but must be spiritually instilled.
This network of bones, veins, and nerves is no more who we are than the dust at our feet. We are thought and as such we cannot totally know ourself, cannot perceive our beginning or end. This flesh and blood is not the true us, for we cannot be seen or felt.
The real us cannot be understood, cannot be limited, cannot be enclosed in a body. We are thought, and thought knows no bounds. These hands and these feet are not really us, because in thought we live and move. We touch the stars and walk in dreams without the aid of hands and feet.
These eyes and these ears are not who we are. We are as formless as the ether, as expansive as the universe.
The Cheerful Wren
The cheerful song of the wren
Cheered my sorrowful heart,
As I walked in the yard,
And my sadness did depart.The sun seemed more bright,
As I listened to the wren,
And the sky a deeper blue,
Than it had ever been.How could such a tiny bird,
Change my outlook so,
And make more bright my day,
And give me more hope as I go?
Giving Up
I wrote the book on giving up. Take the easy way out. Give up! Only let me tell you it's not an easy way. Back down, pull away, and end up in oblivion. "I can't win", that's all you have to say, and I guarantee you that you won't win. You won't even be in the game.
If you make up your mind that you are going to lose, then you are well on your way to losing. No goal is ever reached by giving up. There is something about life that must constantly be affirmed. It will not stand for giving up. You have got a fight on your hands if you decide to give up, because that substance called life within you is going to battle for that life every inch of the way.
When you give up your not fighting anybody else, you are fighting yourself. If that giving up power wins the battle within you, then you destroy yourself. It begins slowly, almost unnoticed, you give up doing some little thing, then something else, and gradually you have no will power to stand firm on anything. We are given life, and this life imposes few obligations upon us beyond this one, which is not to give up.
