My thanks to my friend, Paul, for sending this to me. :-)
POTATOES, EGGS and COFFEE BEANS
Once upon a time a daughter complained to her father that her life was miserable and that she didn't know how she was going to make it. She was tired of fighting and struggling all the time. It seemed just as one problem was solved another one soon followed.
Her father, a chef, took her to the kitchen. He filled three pots with water and placed each on a high fire. Once the three pots began to boil he placed potatoes in one pot, eggs in the second pot and ground coffee beans in the third pot. He then let them sit and boil without saying a word to his daughter.
The daughter moaned and impatiently waited, wondering what he was doing.
After twenty minutes he turned off the burners. He took the potatoes out of the pot and placed them in a bowl. He pulled the eggs and placed them in a bowl. He then ladled the coffee out and placed it in a cup.
Turning to her he said, "Daughter, what do you see?"
"Potatoes, eggs and coffee," she hastily replied.
"Look closer," he said, "and touch the potatoes." She did and noted that they were soft. He then asked her to take an egg and break it. After pulling off the shell she observed the hard-boiled egg. Finally he asked her to sip the coffee. Its rich aroma brought a smile to her face.
"Father, what does this mean?" she asked.
He then explained that the potatoes, the eggs and coffee beans had each faced the same adversity - the boiling water. However, each one reacted differently.
The potato went in strong, hard and unrelenting but in boiling water it became soft and weak.
The egg was fragile, with the thin outer shell protecting its liquid interior until it was put in the boiling water. Then the inside of the egg became hard.
However, the coffee beans were unique. After they were exposed to the boiling water they changed the water and created something new.
"Which are you?" he asked his daughter. "When adversity knocks on your door, how do you respond? Are you a potato, an egg or a coffee bean?"
In life, things happen around us, things happen to us, but the only thing that truly matters is what happens within us.
We are witness to the fact that a coalition of freedom-loving countries does have some potential hope of winning the war against international terrorism. Women in Afghanistan are once again showing their beautiful faces; music is playing and people dance on the streets of this war-torn country. Yes, there is still a long road ahead, but the effort is there and this brings hope to the hearts of all caring and compassionate people throughout our world.
Then can somebody please tell me why we do not wage a war against the insidious terror that is taking place in homes throughout our world every single day; acts of evil terrorism against innocent women and children, not by foreign organized terrorists but by husbands, boyfriends, uncles, fathers...............the enemy within.
In our society we call this enemy, this coward, a "domestic abuser"....not important enough to make world headlines or the six o'clock news. When will we recognize these cowards for who they really are? They are terrorists! They don't need to hide in caves........they know they can get away with their evil acts because the world turns a blind eye. If we are sincere in our war against terrorism then why don't our actions against these terrorists demonstrate our sincerity?
The following article taken from my local paper today speaks for itself.
Won't you add your voice to mine, form a coalition? We can win this war on domestic terrorism......we can at least try.
SOMEBODY
Somebody
Somebody should have been there,
Somebody must have noticed,
Somebody could have helped,
Somebody didn't care.
All my life I have heard about the mythical "somebody". I know you will have heard about "somebody" too.
Think about it, don't you remember being told "somebody will do it" or "we know somebody who can" or "I have somebody in mind" and even "so and so is really somebody".
Since somebody is so well known, where was somebody when I found myself in an abusive marriage, thousands of miles from my family?
How come somebody didn't help when they watched me dragged, one foot in, one foot out of the car as it roared down the road?
Surely the nurse should have told somebody when my husband entered the hospital recovery room in which I was a patient, and threatened me.
Of course, the doctor should have reported to somebody when my husband confessed he beat the children and me 'for our own good', and would continue to do so.
Why did the police not send somebody when I surrendered my husband's guns, telling them 'I feared for the safety of the children and myself?'
The school should have had somebody investigate when the oldest boy attended class repeatedly with head cuts.
Somebody must have been alarmed by the children's accounts of not being allowed friends, or to leave the farm, and having to work 12 hours straight on non-school days.
I know somebody often witnessed the many beatings we all received with axe handles, hose pipes and chains.
I understand why nobody saw the sexual abuse, but I know somebody heard the constant vicious verbal abuse.
Despite all of this, in 17 years, somebody never came to help us.
Eventually in sheer terror, I fled with the children and, overriding threats to our lives, nervously filed for divorce.
Surely somebody in that courtroom must have realized, I didn't dare ask for child support.
I wonder if the somebodies who could and should have been there for us ever feel guilty, or if somebody ever said anything to them. I think not.
Maybe they will never need somebody themselves, but if they do, I sincerely hope somebody will be more forthcoming than they were for us.
..............name withheld
a yellow ribbon, and a prayer for the safe return to freedom of terrorized women and children throughout the world.
Yes, this is a family safe site.
I pray
for a family safe world.
t.
Some thoughts..............
Poverty, violent crime, recession, the towers of Babylon, war, pestilence/germ warfare, the walls of Jericho, human embryo cloning, the anti-christ, the sleeping giant, captivity, the axis shifts, extinction, ascension.........and we will meet the mountain.... arms waving like wheatsheaves in the wind.
There is nothing new under the sun.
The wheel of life, patterns repeating, circle unbroken.
Let he who has ears..............
When will we ever learn?
Forgive them, they know not................
And a new day, a new life, a new earth...........
Will we get it right next time?
I wonder...........just some thoughts..........
Wednesday, November 28, 2001
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LOVE
IS
THE ANSWER
Friday, November 30, 2001
To end this page, this month, on a lighter note I want to include the following sent to me by my cousin, Don. It brought a smile to my face and I hope it will to yours too.
REMEMBER
When the worst thing you could do at school was smoke in the bathroom, flunk a test or chew gum. And the banquets were in the cafeteria and we danced to a juke box later, and all the girls wore fluffy pastel gowns and the boys wore suits for the first time and we were allowed to stay out till 12 p.m.
When a '57 Chevy was everyone's dream car....to cruise, peel out, lay rubber and watch drag races, and people went steady and girls wore a class ring with an inch of wrapped dental floss or yarn coated with pastel frost nail polish so it would fit her finger.
And no one ever asked where the car keys were 'cause they were always in the car, in the ignition, and the doors were never locked. And you got in big trouble if you accidentally locked the doors at home, since no one ever had a key.
Remember lying on your back on the grass with your friends and saying things like, "That cloud looks like a ....."
And playing baseball with no adults to help kids with the rules of the game. Back then, baseball was not a psychological group learning experience - it was a game.
Remember when stuff from the store came without safety caps and hermetic seals 'cause no one had yet tried to poison a perfect stranger.
And....with all our progress...don't you just wish...just once....you could slip back in time and savour the slow pace....and share it with the children of the 80's and 90's.
Remember Nancy Drew, The Hardy Boys, Laurel & Hardy, Howdy Doody and the Peanut Gallery, The Lone Ranger, The Shadow Knows, Nellie Belle, Roy and Dale, Trigger and Buttermilk as well as the sound of a real mower on Saturday morning, and summers filled with bike rides, playing in cowboy land, baseball games, bowling and visits to the pool...and eating Kool-Aid powder with sugar.
When being sent to the principal's office was nothing compared to the fate that awaited a misbehaving student at home.
Basically, we were in fear for our lives, but it wasn't because of drive-by shootings, drugs, gangs..........
Our parents and grandparents were a much bigger theat! But we all survived because their love was greater than the threat!
Didn't that feel good, just to go back and say, Yeah, I remember that!
