I see children as kites. You spend a lifetime trying to get them off the ground. You run with them until you’re both breathless…they crash…you add a longer tail…they hit the rooftop…you pluck them out of the spout. You patch and comfort, adjust and teach. You watch them lifted by the wind and assure them that someday they’ll fly.
Finally they are airborne, but they need more string and you keep letting it out. With each twist of the ball of twine, there is a sadness that goes with the joy because the kite becomes more distant, and somehow you know that it won’t be long before that beautiful creature will snap the lifeline that bound you together and will soar as it was meant to soar…free and alone.

Only then do you know that you did your job.

Source: Erma Bombeck, www.appleseeds.org

A touching story behind this song
Horatio Spafford who wrote this song had lost everything. Yet, he could still give praise to God Almighty! A Job in modern times.
Find out about the man who wrote the lyrics for this song: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horatio_Spafford

Some twelve years ago, I stood watching my university students’ file into the classroom for our first session in the Theology of Faith. That was the day I first saw Tommy.

My eyes and my mind both blinked. He was combing his long flaxen hair, which hung six inches below his shoulders. It was the first time I had ever seen a boy with hair that long. I guess it was just coming into fashion then. I know in my mind that it isn’t what’s on your head but what’s in it that counts; but on that day I was unprepared and my emotions flipped. I immediately filed Tommy under “S” for strange… Very strange.

Tommy turned out to be the “atheist in residence” in my Theology of Faith course. He constantly objected to, smirked at, or whined about the possibility of an unconditionally loving Father/God. We lived with each other in relative peace for one semester, although I admit he was for me at times a serious pain in the back pew. When he came up at the end of the course to turn in his final exam, he asked in a cynical tone, “Do you think I’ll ever find God?” I decided instantly on a little shock therapy.

“No!” I said very emphatically.

“Why not,” he responded.

“I thought that was the product you were pushing.” I let him get five steps from the classroom door and then called out, “Tommy! I don’t think you’ll ever find Him, but I am absolutely certain that He will find you!” He shrugged a little and left my class. I felt slightly disappointed at the thought that he had missed my clever line — He will find you! At least I thought it was clever.

Later, I heard that Tommy had graduated, and I was duly grateful. Then a sad report came. I heard that Tommy had terminal cancer. Before I could search him out, he came to see me. When he walked into my office, his body was very badly wasted and the long hair had all fallen out as a result of chemotherapy. But his eyes were bright and his voice was firm, for the first time, I believe.

“Tommy, I’ve thought about you so often; I hear you are sick,” I blurted out.

“Oh, yes, very sick. I have cancer in both lungs. It’s a matter of weeks.” Tommy replied.

“Can you talk about it, Tom?” I asked.

“Sure, what would you like to know?” he replied.

“What’s it like to be only twenty-four and dying?”

“Well, it could be worse.”

“Like what?”

“Well, like being fifty and having no values or ideals, like being fifty and thinking that booze, seducing women, and making money are the real biggies in life..”

I began to look through my metal file cabinet under “S” where I had filed Tommy as strange. (It seems as though everybody I try to reject by classification, God sends back into my life to educate me.)

“But what I really came to see you about,” Tom said, “is something you said to me on the last day of class.” (He remembered!)

He continued, “I asked you if you thought I would ever find God and you said, ‘No!’ which surprised me. Then you said, ‘But He will find you.’ I thought about that a lot,
even though my search for God was hardly intense at that time. (My clever line. He thought about that a lot!).

“But when the doctors removed a lump from my groin and told me that it was malignant, that’s when I got serious about locating God. And when the malignancy spread into my vital organs, I really began banging bloody fists against the bronze doors of heaven. But God did not come out. In fact, nothing happened. Did you ever try anything for a long time with great effort and with no success? You get psychologically glutted, fed up with trying. And then you quit….. Well, one day I woke up, and instead of throwing a few more futile appeals over that high brick wall to a God who may be or may not be there, I just quit.

I decided that I didn’t really care about God, about an after life, or anything like that. I decided to spend what time I had left doing something more profitable.

I thought about you and your class and I remembered something else you had said: “The essential sadness is to go through life without loving. But it would be almost equally sad to go through life and leave this world without ever telling those you loved that you had loved them.’” So, I began with the hardest one, my Dad. He was reading the newspaper when I approached him. “Dad.”

“Yes, what?” he asked without lowering the newspaper.

“Dad, I would like to talk with you.”

“Well, talk.”

“I mean. It’s really important.”

The newspaper came down three slow inches. “What is it?”

“Dad, I love you, I just wanted you to know that.” Tom smiled at me and said it with obvious satisfaction, as though he felt a warm and secret joy flowing inside of him.

“The newspaper fluttered to the floor. Then my father did two things I could never remember him ever doing before. He cried and he hugged me. We talked all night, even though he had to go to work the next morning. It felt so good to be close to my father, to see his tears, to feel his hug, to hear him say that he loved me.”

“It was easier with my mother and little brother. They cried with me, too, and we hugged each other, and started saying real nice things to each other. We shared the things we had been keeping secret for so many years.” I was only sorry about one thing — that I had waited so long. Here I was, just beginning to open up to all the people I had actually been close to. “Then, one day I turned around and God was there. He didn’t come to me when I pleaded with Him. I guess I was like an animal trainer holding out a hoop, ‘C’mon, jump through C’mon, I’ll give you three days, three weeks.’”

“Apparently God does things in His own way and at His own hour…. But the important thing is that He was there. He found me…! You were right…..He found me even after I stopped looking for Him.”

“Tommy,” I practically gasped, “I think you are saying something very important and much more universal than you realize.”

To me, at least, you are saying that the surest way to find God is not to make Him a private possession, a problem solver, or an instant consolation in time of need, but rather by opening to love. You know, the Apostle John said that… He said: “God is love, and anyone who lives in love is living with God and God is living in him.”

“Tom, could I ask you a favor? You know, when I had you in class you were a real pain. But (laughingly) you can make it all up to me now. Would you come into my present Theology of Faith course and tell them what you have just told me? If I told them the same thing it wouldn’t be half as effective as if you were to tell it.”

“Oooh.. I was ready for you, but I don’t know if I’m ready for your class.”

“Tom, think about it. If and when you are ready, give me a call.”

In a few days Tom called, said he was ready for the class, that he wanted to do that for God and for me. So we scheduled a date. However, he never made it.

He had another appointment, far more important than the one with me and my class. Of course, his life was not really ended by his death, only changed. He made the great step from faith into vision. He found a life far more beautiful than the eye of man has ever seen or the ear of man has ever heard or the mind of man has ever imagined. Before he died, we talked one last time.

“I’m not going to make it to your class,” he said.

“I know, Tom.”

“Will you tell them for me? Will you …tell the whole world for me?”

“I will, Tom. I’ll tell them. I’ll do my best.”

So, to all of you who have been kind enough to read this simple story about God’s love, thank you for listening. And to you, Tommy, somewhere in the sunlit, verdant hills of heaven — I told them, Tommy, as best I could.
____

After reading it, the phrase came to mind: “If today you hear HIS voice, harden not your heart.” Blessings, all.

http://wreg.vid.trb.com/player/PaperVideoTest.swf

Lovely! Enjoy!

Rating for this HK serial, “Moonlight Resonance” 溏心風暴之家好月圓: 4 stars.

Rating for this serial: 4 stars. Storyline is good.

Two monks, as part of their vows, have promised never again to touch a woman. One day, while walking, they come to the edge of a river, where an astonishingly beautiful woman stands. Unable to cross unaided, she asks the monks for help. The first monk refuses, explaining that to help her would require that he break a solemn oath. the second montk reflects a moment and then picks the woman up and carries her across the stream. Once safely across, he sets her down. The two monks continue on their way.

As the hours pass, the first monk grows more and more agitated. Finally, unable to remain silence, he turns to the other monk and says, “I can’t go on without speaking to you of something.”

“What is it?”

“You and I both took an oath never to touch a woman as long as we lived.”

“It is true. We did.”

“But back there at the river, you carried the woman across.”

“Yes,” the second monk replies.

“So you broke your sacred vow.”

“Well, it is true, I did carry the woman across the river, but then I put her down,” the monk says. “You have been carrying her ever since.”

- taken from Anne D. LeClaire’s “Listening Below The Noise: A Meditation on the Practice of Silence“.

You might have heard this story from another source. I have, but I am reminded of this story as I read LeClaire’s book at this time.

The parable above could be used to reflect in circumstances when one finds unforgiveness and the shedding of hurts and pains difficult. Why do we carry such burdens that can only ail us further? If only we learn to let go and not carry those burdens.

The parable could also be used to reflect in circumstances when one is facing fears, worries and anxieties. Again, what good does it do for us to carry those negative feelings that can only stop us from moving forward? Fear makes us stand still; we are afraid to go on for fear of the unknown, for fear of being rejected, for fear of being laughed at, for fear of being scolded or ridiculed. Worries and anxieties make parts of our body tense and this un-ease could lead to physical pains and aches that aggravate our mind and soul.

So shall we now take the stand of the second man to put the “woman” down and go on our way?

Blessings, all.