Logan, the Sky Angel Cowboy!

"...and a little child will lead them."

The Man and the Birds (Paul Harvey)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddai8rkXWRs&sns=eme

The man to whom I'm going to introduce you was not a scrooge, he was a kind decent, mostly good man. Generous to his family, upright in his dealings with other men. But he just didn't believe all that incarnation stuff which the churches proclaim at Christmas Time. It just didn't make sense and he was too honest to pretend otherwise. He just couldn't swallow the Jesus Story, about God coming to Earth as a man. "I'm truly sorry to distress you," he told his wife, "but I'm not going with you to church this Christmas Eve." He said he'd feel like a hypocrite. That he'd much rather just stay at home, but that he would wait up for them. And so he stayed and they went to the midnight service. Shortly after the family drove away in the car, snow began to fall. He went to the window to watch the flurries getting heavier and heavier and then went back to his fireside chair and began to read his newspaper. Minutes later he was startled by a thudding sound...Then another, and then another. Sort of a thump or a thud...At first he thought someone must be throwing snowballs against his living room window. But when he went to the front door to investigate he found a flock of birds huddled miserably in the snow. They'd been caught in the storm and, in a desperate search for shelter, had tried to fly through his large landscape window. Well, he couldn't let the poor creatures lie there and freeze, so he remembered the barn where his children stabled their pony. That would provide a warm shelter, if he could direct the birds to it. Quickly he put on a coat, galoshes, tramped through the deepening snow to the barn. He opened the doors wide and turned on a light, but the birds did not come in. He figured food would entice them in. So he hurried back to the house, fetched bread crumbs, sprinkled them on the snow, making a trail to the yellow-lighted wide open doorway of the stable. But to his dismay, the birds ignored the bread crumbs, and continued to flap around helplessly in the snow. He tried catching them...He tried shooing them into the barn by walking around them waving his arms...Instead, they scattered in every direction, except into the warm, lighted barn. And then, he realized that they were afraid of him. To them, he reasoned, I am a strange and terrifying creature. If only I could think of some way to let them know that they can trust me...That I am not trying to hurt them, but to help them. But how? Because any move he made tended to frighten them, confuse them. They just would not follow. They would not be led or shooed because they feared him. "If only I could be a bird," he thought to himself, "and mingle with them and speak their language. Then I could tell them not to be afraid. Then I could show them the way to safe, warm...to the safe warm barn. But I would have to be one of them so they could see, and hear and understand." At that moment the church bells began to ring. The sound reached his ears above the sounds of the wind. And he stood there listening to the bells - Adeste Fidelis - listening to the bells pealing the glad tidings of Christmas. And he sank to his knees in the snow.

Animal Therapy

There is nothing like the warmth of a kitten and no sound like the contentment of purring.

MODERN VERSION OF THE ANT AND THE GRASSHOPPER

TRADITIONAL VERSION :
The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long,building his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dancesand plays the summer away. Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed. The grasshopper has no food or shelter, so he dies out in the cold.

MORAL OF THE STORY : Be responsible for yourself!

MODERN UPDATED VERSION :
The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dancesand plays the summer away. Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be warm and well fedwhile others are cold and starving. CBS, NBC, PBS, CNN, and ABC show up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to a video of the ant in his comfortablehome with a table filled with food. America is stunned by the sharp contrast. How can this be, that in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so? Kermit the Frog appears on Oprah with the grasshopper, and everybody cries when they sing, "It's Not Easy Being Green." Jesse Jackson stages a demonstration in front of the ant's house where the news stations film the group singing, "We shall overcome." Jesse then has the group kneel down to pray to God for thegrasshopper's sake. Nancy Pelosi , John Kerry & Harry Reid exclaim in an interview with Larry King that the ant has gotten rich off the back of thegrasshopper, and both call for an immediate tax hike on the ant to make him pay his fair share. Finally, the EEOC drafts the Economic Equity andAnti-Grasshopper Act, retroactive to the beginning of the summer! The ant is fined for failing to hire a proportionate number of greenbugs, and having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the government. Hillary gets her old law firm to represent the grasshopper in adefamation suit against the ant, and the case is tried before a panel of federal judges that Bill Clinton appointed from a list of single-parent welfare recipients. The ant loses the case.The story ends as we see the grasshopper finishing up the last bits of the ant's food while the government house he is in, which just happens to be the ant's old house, crumbles around him because he doesn't maintain it. The ant has disappeared in the snow. The grasshopper is found dead in a drug related incident and the house, now abandoned, is taken over by a gang of spiders who terrorize the once peaceful neighborhood.

MORAL OF THE STORY : Be careful how you vote in 2008.

(AUTHOR UNKNOWN)

WHAT DO I KNOW ABOUT FORGIVENESS?

Forgiveness has never been well defined, nor is it still. It is only through betrayal or violation that the word metamorphoses. “Will you forgive me?” you’re asked, and the trite affirmative retort comes effortlessly. But the real meaning of the word cannot be understood until stripped of something that is rightfully yours, something for which you’ve worked long and hard, something vested, something precious, priceless, that meaning is truly assigned.

The Bible admonishes that we should forgive not once, but seventy times seven. Literally, that is 490 times. But after that, what? Forgiveness is not something that can be calculated. Forgiveness can only take place when the heart and the mind meld. For if the mind oversees the procedure, there is far too much evidence to the contrary. When wronged without justification, unparalleled litigation can be compiled.

Empathy, originating from inside the heart, raises its head from behind the moral rock of justice. The heart understands the internal conflict of good versus evil that plagues mankind in every decisive moment. Desperate people do desperate things.  Heart and mind are locked in battle, waging war and vying for supremacy. Yet with each blow there rises an echo from the soul, "Father, forgive them."
From this triad of confliction comes the undeniable question, "Have I ever wronged another? Am I guilty?" Who can rightfully stand in judgment? The only one who claimed to be guiltless was crucified between to convicted thieves. Yet in this unjust scenario it was He who could see beyond egregious faults to desperate needs and plead, “Father, keep in mind, they're blind.” From that perspective, flaunting a noose is calloused.
The illusive concept of forgiveness is better understood when seen in the light of this thought: "Would I rather be the one robbed, or the robber?" Forgiveness is the inner transformation that comes from that flash of insight that proclaims, “I am so blessed to be the accuser and not the accused.” It is the shift in the paradigm that is at the core.
Forgiveness is not overlooking a violation. It is seeing the violation with clarity. True forgiveness comes not because of nobility but because of sight. To forgive is to come to that infinite place of clarity when the consortium of heart, mind and soul announce in unison, “I see”.

--Joan G. Rhoden 

Overcoming the Odds: Oklahoma State Football

Oklahoma State's cornerback Martel VanZant, is deaf. This video tells his story.

The Heart Brain

The Brain: A Roadmap to the Mind

CLICK HERE TO LAUNCH INTERACTIVE SITE

THE AWESOME POWER OF THE MIND

The mind is a strange thing. What we see or hear can be indeterminently altered by a "state of mind". I say to my nine year old grandson, "Hey, baby." I say this with all the love, affection and respect of an adoring grandmother. But what does my grandson hear? His response. "I'M NOT A BABY!" I see a strange man standing at my door, ringing my doorbell. I'm frightened. I don't know this person, nor do I know what business he has being at my front door. When I open the door to this stranger, he announces that he was driving through the neighborhood and noticed that a brush fire is spreading in my backyard and wanted to alert me. My mind told me his intentions before he ever had the opportunity to state his intentions. The mind is a strange and wonderful phenomenon.

The following has passed around on forwarded emails for some time now, but it never ceases to amaze me. Read on.

fi yuo cna raed tihs, yuo hvae a sgtrane mnid. Cna uyo raed tihs? i cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno't mtaetr in waht oerdr the ltteres in a wrod are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whotuit a pboerlm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Azanmig huh? yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt!

Another forwarded post that continues to amuse me has to do with the differences between the stereotypical male and the female mind.

The mind can manipulate the person just as the person can manipulate the mind.

It is important to be aware that the mind can play tricks on us. It pays to take a second look. Stop, look, listen.

My mother used to quote the following, and I find it most helpful:

"Belieive nothing you hear, and only half of what you see."