"A 10 minute vacation for the soul."
“How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving, and tolerant of the weak and strong. Because someday in your life you will have been all of these.”
– George Washington Carver, American Botanist and Inventor
“Whatever we believe about ourselves and our ability comes true for us.”
—Susan L. Taylor, journalist
“We all have dreams. In order to make dreams come into reality, it takes an awful lot of determination, dedication, self-discipline and effort.”
—Jesse Owens, world record-setting Olympic athlete
“In recognizing the humanity of our fellow beings, we pay ourselves the highest tribute.”
—Thurgood Marshall, first African American U.S. Supreme Court member
“One day our descendants will think it incredible that we paid so much attention to things like the amount of melanin in our skin or the shape of our eyes or our gender instead of the unique identities of each of us as complex human beings.”
—Franklin Thomas, activist, philanthropist, and former president of the Ford Foundation
I love history. We all know the stories of major characters in U.S. history and they are often white men. But do we know the stories of the women, people of color, indigenous peoples and immigrants who also contributed to the founding and growth of our nation?
During February in honor of African American History Month we will have quotes from Americans of African descent, some famous and some not so much, who have contributed in their own way to our heritage as Americans.
“Life isn’t always about finding yourself. More often than not, it’s about discovering who God created you to be.” —David A. R. White
Something different happened earlier this month. The lake froze. Not that common around here, but it does happen.
I’ve never thought that much about ice. I try to avoid it as much as possible. We lived across the road from a lake before we moved here. It would freeze and people would cut holes in the ice for ice fishing. Other than falling on ice and putting cubes in my iced tea, that was about all I knew about ice.
But around here there is time. Time to walk and time to really look at things.
One morning while walking along the lake I looked down and noticed the water had frozen in waves as it reached the shore. Cool! Then I noticed that the ice was not all the same. Different patches where I was walking had frozen differently, creating different textures and patterns.
Copyright 2018 by R.A. Robbins
Later in the day I went back to the lake with my camera and took some pictures, focusing on capturing texture. The only thing I worried about in composition was how I included the ice.
At one point I went out on the dock, held my arm straight out over the water with the camera facing down and took a shot. The result was a stepping stone type of pattern in the ice.
Take a minute to really look at something you may take for granted. What you see might surprise you, it might even change you.
“Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.” —Confucius
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/topics/topic_life.html
Today is my birthday. Yay! From time to time I like to put the word “birthday” in my reader and go say “Happy Birthday” to people celebrating (or not celebrating) birthdays on that particular day. It is not unusual for me to find people who are sad, angry or fearful about the day. Some go so far as to say their life is over. What is sad is that these are often people in their twenties and thirties.
Then I remember the years I hated my birthday. For me twenty-nine was worse than thirty, because it came with the realization that meeting the goals I had set for thirty just wasn’t going to happen. As my life went along I also started piling up other bad events and experiences close to or on my birthday.
At twenty-nine I thought my life was over. As I progressed through my thirties I wished it was. It took a real life “near death experience” to turn me around. Not just surviving but fully recovering convinced me that there was still work for me to do.
Every day I thank God for the miracle of life. Every day I try to live my life to the fullest. Yes, even in my sixties I still celebrate my birthday and I don’t plan to stop.
So Happy Birthday to all the birthday boys and girls out there. Remember God danced the day you were born!
espirational.com