Are We Resilient?

Do you ever wonder how many times you have to pick yourself up, dust yourself off and start all over again? And isn't it wonderful that we can do that and not have only one try at things??

The following message is from a recent "Music and The Spoken Word" broadcast. I enjoyed it and have reproduced it on my blog so that I can return to it when I need to be reminded. Hope you enjoy it as well.


A little bit of living teaches us that we often learn more from our setbacks than we do from our successes. Not long ago, Dr. Benjamin Carson, noted professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, encouraged university students to learn from the past. He pointed out that heart transplants, kidney transplants, and other such surgeries, in the early years, often failed.

“By continuing to accumulate knowledge from those failures,” he explained, “we are able to do those things quite routinely today. And that’s a general principle about life. Learning from mistakes, learning from things that didn’t work, not only on an individual basis but on a national basis, there have been things we’ve done that have been wrong . . . , but we have learned from those things and made progress.”

For a moment, ponder your own life or the lives of those you know. In many cases, you will find that we learn just as much from our trials as we do from our triumphs—perhaps more. We learn how to persevere, how to get up, “dust ourselves off,” and try again. Think of all the growth, achievement, and learning that can come by continuing to “accumulate knowledge,” by sustained effort, by a willingness to stay the course of life.

Sometimes success is right around the corner; we need only stay on the path a little longer, turn the corners that present themselves, and persist. If success doesn’t always come, then learning and growth can. And that in itself is great success.


Strong nations, vibrant communities, and wise individuals very often share one common trait: they are resilient. They learn from the past, grow from their setbacks and mistakes, and move forward with a resolve to make things better.

So.....What's In A Name????

OK, I wrote this blog several days ago and entitled it, "What's In A Name?" The entry got a significant amount of extra hits from many areas of this great country. I am not sure why. What were you people looking for? Some scientific study done on the subject? Or research to say what is the best name to have or even worse, what is the worst name to have? My entry was a simpleton's complaint...I wrote to complain about my own given name --- the one chosen for me. Still am having trouble figuring out why so much interest in the topic.

Not a single soul who read what I wrote made a single comment. Stalking without comment leaves one with lots to wonder about. Someone could have at least commented.....BORING!! or something even more complimentary like..."be glad you have a name and not just a number!"
Just sayin".....

Who is Getting Hitched???

What is with all of the excitement with the engagement of a certain high profile "star" couple this week? A couple who has been living together as if man and wife for some time now and have about seven children some of whom are adopted and some their natural born children. I assume they have been practicing at being married with family. Would that be a correct assumption?
The press is telling that the children pressed them into an engagement and pending marriage "because their little friends have married parents." Children being children did not want to be different and one can only assume wanted what seemed to be a family. Something about the current relationship didn't provide the security they needed?? Am I just assuming too much or inserting my own thoughts here??
There are lots of unanswered questions in this for me.

I remember a few years ago when a certain popular late night host married his "friend" with whom he had a child because the child insisted that it happen. Something about "so-called arrangements" do not provide what these children need and they ask for more when they are old enough to do so.

Am I the only person who finds this interesting?? Do kids have better judgment than their parents on some issues? Wow, that opens a bees nest of angry bees.

I Believe....

He is not there.....for He Is Risen.... That line from a song has reverberated in my head for a few days during this Easter season. That empty tomb... as the ladies found it. Some regard the Garden Tomb as possibly the one referred to in the scripture.

Some question whether the Garden Tomb is the actual spot of Christ's entombment. But none can dispute the power of the message of hope conveyed by the symbol of this empty tomb.

It requires faith to believe that Jesus of Nazareth was resurrected following his brutal and inhumane execution. It requires faith to believe that his resurrection paved the way for humankind's immortality. But once that seed of faith is planted, the message of the empty tomb places significant requirements on us, requirements of hope and charity.
But because of what led to an empty tomb on that first Easter Sunday, all can have genuine hope that what has been lost in this world — even life itself — can be lustrously restored in a better world.

Some have felt that this transcendent message of hope, that the soul will live forever, can somehow justify mistreatment and exploitation in this life. What a strange contortion of the message.

If anything, the message of the empty tomb intensifies one's obligations to behave ethically by universalizing and making eternal the reverberating consequences of behavior here and now.

If existence ended with the natural biological span of the body then the span of ethical obligations would feel similarly truncated. Although it might make sense to improve the immediate material and moral conditions around oneself while the body lives, why think beyond immediate kin and community?

But Jesus Christ, understanding the immortality of the soul, taught that being a neighbor was not about the proximity of our dwellings, but about how we treat and care for one another. He taught that charity was not about community recognition, but instead about quiet genuine acts of love to the least among us, and even to enemies.

If the soul lives forever, then what genuinely matters is how souls relate to one another, not what they possess or command. If the soul lives forever, then not only might we have to account for our indifference to strangers or mistreatment of enemies, but we may actually have to interact with them as distinct beings, then with the recognition that they possess the same worth and dignity as friends and family.

I am left giving serious thought as to how I, as an individual, can move forward and live a life more actively engaged in love, faith, hope and charity.


*Excerpts from Deseret News, April 24, 2011
Message of Empty Tomb

Ramblings About Thangs!!

A "serious observation"....this blog has received so very many hits from odd places ( not friends) since posting the last installment on hating my name that I have concluded that there must be a tremendous interest out there in "blog land" about names or the meaning of names. I titled it "What's in a Name" more because of being teased about being called a "battle maiden" than anything else. Not because I was writing about there being some serious and real meaning and depth to the whole issue of "name meanings." Lots to ponder about that. Still don't like my name any better!!

Further, I finally have my taxes finished and filed -- and it isn't even April 17th yet. I had worried so much about taxes this year due to the capital gains calculations that I had myself in a real southern tizzy!! Maybe my stomach can relax back to its normal whatever! My shoulders are a bit better without the burden of that worry. Don't know why I let taxes worry me so.

And lots of worry tonight about strawberries freezing. With all of the warm weather we have gotten ahead by some weeks on planting and harvesting. I have loved every degree of the mildness of the weather so I can't complain. However, I do hope the strawberry crop can be saved. NC has such delicious strawberries!!

My final thought for tonight is gas prices. We have arrived at that magic threshold when many of us are forced to look at our travel practices. Maybe we should notice how we drive as well, and not speed up only to have to slow down so very much. Four dollars or more a gallon gives the system a startling shock.

Signing off for the night......

What's in a Name?

What is in a name? Probably more than you have ever considered......especially if you have a given name that everyone likes or one that is especially timely and popular in our day. But what if you did not luck out and your parents named you Hilda, or Fanny, or Bertha, or Gwinivere (Guinevere or how ever you want to spell it) or Aloyushius, or Sadie???

Were you or have you ever been teased about your name? I mean really teased until you wanted to escape, hit someone in the face, or cry? I have heard enough about mine during my life. I have been called Hildegard, Hildy, Hulda, Helga, BattleMaid (due to the fact that the name meaning is something about the Germanic maiden leading into battle), and a host of other things. I wonder if my parents even considered how much I would be teased about the first given name they chose or how much I would hate it. And hate it, I do!!! Why couldn't I have been named some common name that everyone respects or likes? Why did it have to be Hilda????

I went to school with a very pretty girl whose first name was Fanny. Believe it or not her name was Fanny Regina. She was called Regina but when the boys in school found out what her first name was she could not escape their harassment. The teasing did not stop even when she was a senior in high school.

It has been particularly interesting to me that folks seem to be going back to some of the old names that were used many years ago. Names such as Cornelia, Phoebe, Gertrude, Clementine, Chloe, Harriet, Juanita, Olive, Olivia, Sophie, Isabella, Nora, among others are being used more often as given names for children. I always wonder why people want to name their children strange names or to spell them in odd ways. It is the child who will carry this "burden" all through their lives. It is the child who will be teased, bullied, and even abused because of the name their parents chose for them. Studies have been done on the influence a name has in how individuals are regarded or treated. I always am interested in what they indicate because of my name. While I was in college and away from the South I noted that many professors preferred to call me Jane my (middle name). I suppose they, too, could not believe anybody would name their child something as disgusting as Hilda.