Monday, February 28, 2022

MONDAY QUOTES: 10 Quotes From Helen Keller’s Inspiring Life


 



After becoming deaf and blind at age two, Helen Keller faced her challenges with a singular optimism and strength. She became a trailblazing advocate for disability rights, and the first person who was deaf and blind to earn a college degree in the United States. She graduated in 1904, at a time when women were significantly outnumbered by men in higher education, special education was in its infancy, and the disability rights movement was just beginning to pick up steam.

 

Keller’s mastery of multiple forms of communication, and lifelong activism on behalf of people with disabilities, women, Black people, and other socially sidelined groups, brought her international celebrity. She lectured throughout the U.S. and abroad, and authored 14 books, including a famous memoir published in 1905, The Story of My Life, which was translated into 50 languages and remains in print.

 

While Keller embraced the limelight, she did so in order to campaign for fair treatment and equal rights for everyone, regardless of gender, race, or disability. She supported the growth of several major U.S. institutions, including Helen Keller International, the ACLU, and the NAACP. She believed true happiness came from helping and working in partnership with others, aligning oneself with a higher purpose, and from within oneself.

 

“When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us,” she wrote in 1929. Helen Keller was a passionate proponent of hope and courage in the face of adversity, and her words continue to inspire.

Here are 10 of her most well-known and poignant statements.

 

A happy life consists not in the absence, but in the mastery of hardships.

 

Keller was born in 1880 in Alabama. When she was two years old, she became deaf and blind due to a fever. Her early childhood was reportedly filled with tantrums and disruptive behaviors. But when Keller was seven years old, her parents hired Anne Sullivan, a recent graduate from the Perkins Institute for the Blind in Boston, Massachusetts, to work with their daughter. Sullivan’s arrival and her persistent and creative instruction were a turning point in Keller’s life.

 

Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement; nothing can be done without hope.

 

After initial struggles, a breakthrough occurred when Sullivan repeatedly ran water over one of Keller’s palms while finger spelling the word “water” into the other. After many tries, Keller was able to connect the tactile experience of flowing water with the letter signals.

 

After comprehending the sign for water, she was able to learn 30 more signs that same day. Working with Sullivan stoked her ambitions to pursue an education and learn to speak. Keller was eventually able to communicate through finger spelling, typing, Braille, touch-lip reading, and speech.

 

I would rather walk with a friend in the dark, than alone in the light.

 

The friendship that developed between Keller and her mentor, Sullivan, spanned decades, and the pair lived together during different periods of their lives. Like Keller, Sullivan was a member of the disability community — she had vision impairments that increased as she aged.

 

One can never consent to creep when one feels an impulse to soar.

 

During her teenage years and young adulthood, Keller painstakingly learned to speak in a way that could be understood by people who could hear. She went to multiple schools for people who were deaf and a preparatory school for women before setting her sights on a new goal: attending college.

Meanwhile, Keller’s advancements became publicly known and drew the attention of influential people including Mark Twain, Alexander Graham Bell, and Henry H. Rogers, an oil magnate who offered to pay Keller’s tuition for Radcliffe College. In 1899, when she passed her entrance exams, only 36% of college students were women.

 

Sullivan accompanied Keller at Radcliffe, interpreting in classes, until Keller graduated cum laude in 1904 at age 24. She was the first individual who was blind and deaf to earn a higher education degree in the U.S. Her autobiography, The Story of My Life, was published a year later in 1905 and was widely read.

 

Many persons have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.

 

After graduation, Keller set out to share what she had learned and to advocate for people with disabilities. From universities to the halls of Congress, she lectured and testified on her experiences in support of blind and deaf communities. She is considered an early pioneer of the disability rights movement, which began to pick up steam in the early 1900s.

 

Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.

 

Keller participated in numerous social movements of her era, including women's suffrage. In 1915, she cofounded Helen Keller International to address blindness and malnutrition around the world. She also helped found the ACLU and was an active member in the American Federation for the Blind, the Socialist Party, and other organizations. Despite being raised in the post-Reconstruction era South, she supported the recently founded NAACP advocating for civil rights for Black people.

 

Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.

 

Keller was an intrepid world traveler and activist. In 1946, she became the counselor of international relations for the American Foundation for Overseas Blind. During the next 11 years, she spread her message across five continents and 35 countries. For her efforts, Keller was awarded several honorary degrees and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Her autobiography inspired the 1957 television drama The Miracle Worker, as well as a Broadway play and film of the same title.

 

No pessimist ever discovered the secrets of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted island, or opened a new heaven to the human spirit.

Despite facing many challenges, Keller lived a life full of meaning and happiness before her death in 1968 at age 87. Sullivan died in 1936 at the age of 70, after becoming nearly blind. She spent much of her life by Keller’s side. Beginning with a single hand sign, the impact of these two women’s accomplishments rippled throughout the global disability rights community, and beyond. Through the words Keller worked so hard to impart, their story endures today as a beacon of hope and possibility.


Sunday, February 27, 2022

SUNDAY THOUGHTS: Ten Things We Forgot About Jesus


 

Ten Things We Forgot About Jesus



When I was a kid growing up in the church, we sang a hymn that described Jesus as “gentle Jesus — meek and mild.” It left me with the conception of Jesus as a cooperative, compliant, docile, passive, and largely timid figure. Now that I think about it, projecting this image of Jesus was probably part of some strategy to teach ten-year-old me how to behave.

Be well-manned and nice.

Jesus was nothing like that.

In fact, Jesus was — in a cultural, social, and religious sense — a real trouble maker. Do yourself a favor. Open the Bible and discover who the real Jesus actually was. You might just have some misconceptions destroyed.

You see, somewhere along the line, we create a ‘Jesus’ in our own image and began to impart that image to the world. But, unfortunately, the reality is that the Jesus you learned about in Sunday School probably doesn’t exist.

If you grew up in the church, then I can’t speak for your experience. But, here are ten things that they didn’t teach me about Jesus in Sunday School — that have reformed my understanding of who Jesus actually was:


1. Jesus was not white

I want you to do an experiment for me. Go to google and do an image search on “Jesus.” The pictures that appear in your search results represent what people think Jesus might have looked like. What do you notice?

Yes, that’s right!

More often than that, Jesus is imagined as a blond-haired, blue-eyed, white guy who, to be honest, would comfortably fit the physical requirements of Hitler’s Aryan race.

Except he was a Jew.

Awkward.

And because Jesus was a Jew, he almost certainly had Jewish features, such as olive skin, brown eyes, and black hair. Yes, Jesus probably looked more like that Middle-eastern man who lives in your neighborhood — you know the one who you treat as an object of suspicion and scorn — the one you speak of when you complain to your other white Christian friends about how Arabs are overrunning the country. Yeah, that guy — he looks more like Jesus than you do.

 




2. Jesus was a common name


If you walked through the streets of Jerusalem in 30AD looking for Jesus and decided to do that by yelling out his name at the top of your lungs — “Jesus! I’m looking for Jesus! Has anyone seen Jesus!” — chances are you would find a Jesus, but maybe not the one you were looking for.

 

Many people shared the name. Jesus’s given name, commonly Romanized as Yeshua, was quite common in first-century Galilee. In fact, archaeologists have unearthed the tombs of 71 Yeshuas from the period of Jesus’ death. The name also appears 30 times in the Old Testament in reference to four separate characters — including a descendent of Aaron who helped distribute grain offerings (2 Chronicles 31:15) and a man who accompanied former captives of Nebuchadnezzar back to Jerusalem (Ezra 2:2).

What is more, Yeshua is better translated into English as “Joshua.” How many Joshuas do you know? Probably lots!

 

3. Jesus was a refugee

I don’t know how refugees are treated in your country, but in my home country — much to our shame — we tend to lock them up in detention centers for months on end until we establish whether or not they have a good reason for claiming refugee status. If not, we send them back to their own war-torn country.

 

Yet Jesus was a refugee.

Jesus and his parents, Mary and Joseph, had to flee the nation of Israel to the relative safety of Egypt because of state-sanction infanticide. The whole gruesome episode can be found in Matthew 2:13–15:

“An angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. “Get up,” he said, “take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him.” So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt, where he stayed until the death of Herod.”

 

King Herod, who was about as crazy as they come, killed every child under the age of two, just in case one of them might happen to one day threaten his own rule. Jesus — and presumably some other — managed to escape.

 

4. Jesus had a day job


After the death of King Herod, Jesus and his family finally returned to Israel where Jesus did what other young men in first-century Palestine did — he became an apprentice in the same trade as his father — starting at the age of thirteen (the age when Jewish boys were considered to be men).

Since Jesus didn’t start his public ministry until he was thirty, that means that Jesus spent a good 17 years working in an ordinary dawn-til-dusk day job. He became a carpenter. You could imagine he became very good at making things after so long in the trade, and perhaps it would not be uncommon to find some “Joseph and Sons” furniture somewhere in Jerusalem.

Needless to say, by the time he steps into public life, Jesus was well and truly ready for some long-service leave.


5. Jesus had brothers and sisters


Yes, Jesus was part of a family unit. Although he was the first-born child, Mary and Joseph would go on to have other children as well. We do not know exactly how many, but the Bible mentions four brothers named James, Joseph, Judas, and Simon, as well as an undisclosed amount of sisters (Matthew 13:53–56).


If you thought the dynamic in your family was difficult, can you imagine what it must have been like for Mary and Joseph with one of their children claiming to be the Son of God? Needless to say, Jesus was viewed as the black sheep of the family, and on at least one occasion, Jesus’s Mother and Brother rock up to where Jesus is teaching to try to pull him into line. (Mark 3:31–35).


Make no mistake, Jesus’s siblings were a little embarrassed by Jesus’s antics, and, as far as we know, none of them followed or believed in him while he was alive. However, all of them became believers after his death, which argues the case well for a resurrected Jesus. Jesus’s brother, James, was particularly scathing of Jesus in his life, but then went on to become the first bishop of Jerusalem, wrote the Epistle of James, and eventually surrendered his body as a martyr for the faith. That’s quite a transformation!

 

6. Jesus liked to party

 

No doubt, part of the embarrassment that Jesus’s siblings felt towards him was related to the company that he kept and the events that he attended. Jesus was known as a man who enjoyed a drink, especially in the company of those who others thought a bit disreputable.

 

Matthew 11:19 says, “The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and people say, ‘Look at him! He eats too much and drinks too much wine. He’s a friend of tax collectors and other sinners.”

 

Tax collectors, prostitutes, criminals, and the ancient equivalent of religious extremists (known as zealots) — they were all part of Jesus’s inner circle. He was unashamed to be seen with them. He would visit their homes, share food at their tables and love them without pretense.

 

7. Jesus was homeless

 

Jesus said of himself, “Foxes have holes. Birds have nests. But the Son of Man has no place to lay His head.” (Matthew 23:10–12). After Jesus stepped away from his day job as a carpenter and began to teach and ministry, he left behind his home and the creature comforts thereof.

 

After that, Jesus relied largely on the hospitality of others who welcome his message. In his travels, Jesus and His disciples regularly found lodging in the large home of Martha, Mary, and Lazarus at Bethany, near Jerusalem; and it is apparent from reading the Gospels that many people offered Jesus the hospitality of their homes. Some Bible scholars believe Jesus lived in a house at Capernaum with Simon Peter and his family (Matthew. 8:14–1517:24–27).

 

8. Jesus broke social taboos


Jesus did not pay much respect to social, cultural, or religious traditions. He was much more interested in reaching, serving, and helping people, and if that meant dispensing with tradition, then so be it.

There are lots of different taboos I could include here. I have already mentioned the fact that the kinds of people that Jesus associated with were considered improper for a good Jewish Rabbi. However, his treatment of women was particularly striking.

In Luke 10, Jesus allows a woman called Mary (there seemed to be so many different Marys in those days!) to sit at his feet while he taught. On the surface, this might seem degrading to her, but it was actually the elevated position that a disciple would sit in, in relation to a Rabbi. She was being treated as an equal with the men! The fact that many women were part of Jesus’s ‘in-group’ was culturally ground-breaking.

Then, in Luke 7, a woman comes to Jesus and weeps in repentance at his feet, washing his feet with her tears and drying them with her hair — in the company of the Pharisees no less! In those days, women were not even supposed to speak to Rabbis, let alone touch them. This was scandalous! And yet, Jesus lovingly picks her up off the floor and restores her.

There in John 4:1–30, there is a story of the brief interaction between Jesus and a Samaritan woman. Not only is she a woman, but she is also a member of a racial group that Jews typically despised. Yet, Jesus starts a conversation with her and treats her with a kind of grace that she would never have experienced before.

I could go on and on. Jesus never let a cultural expectation get in the way of an opportunity to love.


9. Jesus was a criminal


Let’s be perfectly clear. Jesus was executed as a criminal. He managed to achieve that feat by repeatedly and deliberately breaking the religious laws of the day — at least in the eyes of the religious leaders. What Jesus actually did was violate the interpretations that religious leaders had developed around certain biblical commands. To put it simply, he broke the laws that the Pharisees had invented to make people keep the laws.

The religious leaders in Jesus's day believed in strict observance of what was known as the Sabbath Day. God ordained the Sabbath Day to be a day of rest — a good idea if you ask me.

However, the religious leaders took this good and life-giving concept and burdened people with many absurd regulations to make sure that people were truly resting — from how far you were allowed to walk before it was considered ‘work’ to how much you were allowed to carry to what food you were allowed to prepare. Even boiling water was outlawed on the Sabbath.

So, you can imagine the outrage when Jesus broke the Sabbatical Laws on multiple occasions. In fact, Jesus performed at least 7 of his miracles on the Sabbath Day. Rather than rejoicing at the fact that people were being healed, the religious leaders were incensed that Jesus had dared participate in the ‘work’ of healing people on the sacred day of rest. Jesus challenged them by saying“Which is the right thing to do on the Sabbath day: to do good or to do evil? Is it right to save a life or to destroy one?” They had no answer for him, but inwardly they seethed.

Jesus refused to stop doing good just because it was a particular day of the week — and for that, he was considered a law-breaker.

 

10. Jesus was killed by religious people

 

“Their lives are not good examples for you to follow. They tell you to do things, but they don’t do those things themselves. They make strict rules that are hard for people to obey. They try to force others to obey all their rules. But they themselves will not try to follow any of those rules.” Matthew 23:3

 

This was Jesus’s warning to the people about the religious leaders of his day. It’s a fairly honest and brutal assessment about the kind of spiritual leaders Jesus was dealing with. It cost him his life.

 

Jesus was handed over to be executed by the good, Bible-carrying, church-attending, rule-observing, spiritual leaders of his day — make no mistake.

 

Perfectly human, perfectly God

So, what do we learn about Jesus from these ten things we forgot? When I look over this list, I am struck by his humanity — his familiarity with the common struggles of people.

 

We are talking about a man who, as a child, fled his homeland as a refugee. We are talking about a man who experienced a difficult family dynamic and all kinds of sibling rivalry. We are talking about a man whose hands were calloused by working the tools of his trade for many, many years. We are talking about a man who knew what it was to be misunderstood, despised, and rejected. We are talking about a man who knew pain, suffering, and death. So, ultimately, we are talking about a man who can and does relate to our lives — even today.

 

Not only am I struck by Jesus’s humanity, but I am also amazed at how he managed to navigate all of the challenges of being human in a way that revealed his divine nature.

 

He rejected the man-made religious systems and structures of his day and instead brought a kind of grace and compassion that was truly divine. He demonstrated an other-worldly ability to heal, forgive, restore, love, and accept people as they are. If Jesus's chief goal was to reveal the loving nature of God to humanity, then I dare say he achieved that and more.


WRITTEN BY

Writer, Blogger, Poet: Tackling life, faith, culture, religion, politics, and spirituality. Newsletter:


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Saturday, February 26, 2022

RICK'S RECIPES: CHOCOLATE COBBLER







INGREDIENTS:


3/4 cup sugar
1 cup self rising flour
2 Tablespoons cocoa
1/2 cup milk
6 Tablespoons melted butter
1 teaspoon vanilla
Pinch of salt

Mix
the above ingredients and spread into a greased 11×7 or 9×13 glass baking dish.

Top Mixture – Mix together and sprinkle evenly on the above mixture.
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup cocoa

Pour 1 1/2 cups hot water gently over all. DO NOT MIX- just gently pour over all

Bake
at 350 degrees for 40 minutes. Serve hot, or cold.

FOR ALL THE CHOCOLATE LOVERS
– ONE OF MY FAVORITES – SERVED WITH VANILLA ICE CREAM!

Friday, February 25, 2022

FRIDAY FUNNIES: Some Cows (Some Girls Parody) BY Peterson Farm Bros





Every farmer has some cows they like...and some they don't like.

A parody of "Some Girls" by Jameson Rodgers!








 

Thursday, February 24, 2022

Direction is more important than speed and movement is better than inactivity



Direction is more important than speed and movement is better than inactivity

 

 

Direction is more important than speed.


When you’re heading in the right direction, every step you take is progress. If you’re going in the wrong direction, every step is counterproductive. So whether you’re going slow or fast, direction trumps speed. The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step. Make sure that first step is in the right direction.

When making important decisions that have long-term implications (career move, major financial decision, long-term relationship), slow down and carefully evaluate your options before starting.  

 

Movement is better than inactivity.


If you’re inordinately passive and/or you’re stuck, just start moving. Often, movement is better than inactivity, even if you’re not sure you’re going in the right direction. Several false starts will be better than doing nothing.  And when you start moving but soon realize you’re heading in the wrong direction, you can change course. It’s difficult to steer a stationary bike. 

Do you sense the tension between these two statements? One says “Don’t move until you know you’re going in the right direction.” The other says, “Stop being passive, just do something.”


Of course, correct direction and speed is optimum.

 

There is a scene in Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland where Alice is talking to the Cheshire Cat, who is perched up in a tree. Alice is a bit confused about her direction, so she asks the cat:

“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”

“That depends a great deal on where you want to go,” replies the Cheshire Cat.

“I don’t much care where,” says Alice.

To which the feline replies, “Then it doesn’t matter which way you go.”

 

Some people face the same predicament as Alice. They don’t really know which way they want to go in life, so they just wander aimlessly and soon become stagnant and stale, or, they don’t move at all.

 

Maintain a healthy balance between right direction and movement.




SOURCE:  DON MCMINN

Reflections on Life and Leadership

DON MCMINN

Reflections on Life and Leadership

DON MCMINN

Reflections on Life and Leadership


 

Wednesday, February 23, 2022

When Eternity Holds Its Breath


 

 

When Eternity Holds Its Breath

 

It was a hectic day at the newspaper where I worked as an editor. Several major stories erupted before deadline. Reporters were scurrying around as they frantically tried to finish their articles. With emotions frayed, just about everyone lost their tempers.

 

On many days, the stress of journalism caused me to lose my composure too. But as a fairly new Christian, I asked God for his help as soon as the day looked like it was going to spiral out of control. Thanks to him, I managed to stay uncharacteristically calm amidst the chaos.

 

After the last story was edited, I looked up and was surprised to see one of my bosses standing over my desk. Uh-oh! That wasn’t a good sign. But it turned out that he wasn’t there to upbraid me about some mistake or oversight. Instead, he took me off guard by asking with genuine curiosity, “Strobel, how did you get through the day without blowing your top?”

 

Then, apparently suspecting a link between my behavior and the fact that I went to church on Sundays, he added the words that sent a chill down my spine: “What’s this Christianity thing to you?”

 

Whoa! For a moment I froze. Nobody had ever asked me anything like that before. In fact, I had never shared my faith with anyone. The only way my boss even knew I attended church was because I once told him I couldn’t go on an outing with him on a Sunday morning. And now, out of the blue, I was being put on the spot.

 

I didn’t know what to say or how to say it. I was afraid I would utter the wrong words. I didn’t want to embarrass myself or have him make fun of me. I fretted about what would happen to my career if I gushed about my faith and became known as the newsroom’s “holy roller.” There was a lot at stake.

 

My mind raced. Maybe I could dismiss the whole thing with a joke: Christianity? Hey, what happens in church stays in church. Maybe I could simply pretend I didn’t hear him over the din of the newsroom: Yeah, it was a crazy day. Man, look at the time! I’ve gotta get home or Leslie’s gonna kill me!

 

That’s when the uninvited words of the apostle Paul coursed through my mind: “I am not ashamed of the gospel” (Romans 1:16). Great, I thought. Just what I needed — a biblical guilt trip.

 

Though it seemed as if minutes were ticking by, all of this occurred in a flash. Finally, even as I was opening my mouth to reply, I made a scary split-second decision: I resolved to take a spiritual risk.

 

I looked up at my boss. “You really want to know? Let’s go into your office.”

 

Behind closed doors, we talked for forty-five minutes. Well, to be honest, I did most of the talking. I was really nervous. Never having been trained in how to engage with others about my faith, I fumbled around and wasn’t nearly as clear as I could have been. Still, in my own sincere but admittedly inept way, I tried to de scribe how I met Jesus and the difference he had made in my life.

 

An amazing thing happened. He didn’t laugh. He didn’t make fun of me. He didn’t nervously try to change the topic or make excuses so he could leave the room. Instead, he listened intently. By the end, he was hanging on every word.

 

At the same time, I felt like I was going to burst on the inside. It instantly became clear to me that nothing was as urgent or exciting as what I was doing in this seemingly serendipitous conversation. It felt as if time were standing still, as if eternity were holding its breath.

 

I’m not sure how God used that conversation in my boss’s life, but I do know this: he undeniably used it in mine. When I emerged from that office, I was thoroughly invigorated. It felt like the air was carbonated! There are no words to adequately describe the thrill I felt in having been used by God to communicate his message of hope to someone far from him. It was as if my entire life up to that point had been a movie shot in very grainy black-and-white 16 mm film with scratchy sound — but those forty-five minutes were in vivid Technicolor with rich Dolby stereo.



Copyright Information

Devotional content drawn from the writings of Lee Strobel. 

Used with permission. 

All rights reserved.


Tuesday, February 22, 2022

DON'T ARGUE WITH DONKEYS (Fable)

 




DON'T ARGUE WITH DONKEYS (Fable)


The donkey said to the tiger:

- "The grass is blue".

 

The tiger replied:

- "No, the grass is green."

 

The discussion heated up, and the two decided to submit him to arbitration, and for this they went before the lion, the King of the Jungle.

 

Already before reaching the forest clearing, where the lion was sitting on his throne, the donkey began to shout:

- "His Highness, is it true that the grass is blue?".

 

The lion replied:

- "True, the grass is blue."

 

The donkey hurried and continued:

- "The tiger disagrees with me and contradicts and annoys me, please punish him."

 

The king then declared:

- "The tiger will be punished with 5 years of silence."

 

The donkey jumped cheerfully and went on his way, content and repeating:

- "The Grass Is Blue"...

 

The tiger accepted his punishment, but before he asked the lion:

- "Your Majesty, why have you punished me?, after all, the grass is green."

 

The lion replied:

- "In fact, the grass is green."

 

The tiger asked:

- "So why are you punishing me?".

 

The lion replied:

- "That has nothing to do with the question of whether the grass is blue or green. The punishment is because it is not possible for a brave and intelligent creature like you to waste time arguing with a donkey, and on top of that come and bother me with that question."

 

 

The worst waste of time is arguing with the fool and fanatic who does not care about truth or reality, but only the victory of his beliefs and illusions. Never waste time on arguments that don't make sense... There are people who, no matter how much evidence and evidence we present to them, are not in the capacity to understand, and others are blinded by ego, hatred and resentment, and all they want is to be right even if they are not.

 

When ignorance screams, intelligence is silent. Your peace and quiet are worth more.

 

Monday, February 21, 2022

MONDAY QUOTES: Wisdom From the Kitchen of Julia Child








 

For many of us, one of our first memories of cooking is listening to the jovial voice of a very tall woman on PBS, chuckling as she methodically deboned a chicken or loaded a dish with butter.

 

Julia Child was — and still is — an icon in the cooking world. She was born in California in 1912, and in 1949 moved with her husband to Paris, where she enrolled in the French cooking school Cordon Bleu as the only woman in her class. In 1961, after co-writing Mastering the Art of French Cooking, she returned to the United States, and two years later, officially introduced the country to the art of French cuisine with the debut of her television show The French Chef.

 

Her shows were drenched in joy and butter. Viewers loved her cheerful wobbly voice, her zeal to brandish a large knife, her ability to make fancy cooking accessible, and her bowlful of quips and life lessons in each episode.

 

Child didn’t just have sage wisdom about food, though. She looked at life through the lens of cooking, and many of her insightful comments can apply both in and out of the kitchen. Whether it’s using a dropped piece of meat as a metaphor for moving forward after making a mistake, or reflecting on how flipping something in a pan is a way to break free from fear, the multiple layers of meaning make her words all the more delicious.

 

The 10 quotes below are some of the tastiest. In the words of Child herself, bon appetit!

 

ON LETTING GO

Always remember: If you're alone in the kitchen and you drop the lamb, you can always just pick it up. Who's going to know?

 

ON EXCELLENCE

A cookbook is only as good as its poorest recipe.

 

ON TAKING RISKS

The only real stumbling block is fear of failure. In cooking you've got to have a what-the-hell attitude.

 

ON GOING FOR IT

The only way you learn how to flip things is just to flip them.

 

ON DILIGENCE

The measure of achievement is not winning awards. It's doing something that you appreciate, something you believe is worthwhile. I think of my strawberry souffle. I did that at least 28 times before I finally conquered it.

 

ON CONFIDENCE

Just speak very loudly and quickly, and state your position with utter conviction, as the French do, and you'll have a marvelous time!

 

ON DISCIPLINE

You must have discipline to have fun.

 

ON LIVING TO THE FULLEST

I was 32 when I started cooking; up until then, I just ate.

 

ON INDECISION

People are uncertain because they don't have the self-confidence to make decisions.

 

ON CREATIVITY

The more you know, the more you can create. There’s no end to imagination in the kitchen.




Sunday, February 20, 2022

Sunday Thought: Jesus Our Modern-Day Lifeguard....


 

He sent from above, he took me; he drew me out of many waters;                                                                         - 2 Samuel 22:17

 

When I was a child I had a love, hate relationship with water. Baths, lakes, and the ocean seem to intimidate me and cause me great distress.

Once I finally entered the water I was able to relax and enjoy the experience but many times it would also cause me additional angst as I did not want to exit from it and would freak out.

My mother had to deal with this very difficult and uncomfortable situation. She never gave up on me and helped me overcome this fear. Her promises to protect and guide gave me peace and comfort knowing I was not alone.

I imagine David when he wrote this chapter of scripture felt similarly as he cried out to God for help and protection from his enemies.

He described being rescued from above out of many waters as he felt trapped and completely engulfed and surrounded as if he was drowning without hope of rescue.

In those difficult times, he remembered the promises spoken to him and learned to exercise them. God would faithfully respond according to his great mercy and kindness.

God is my strength and power, And He makes my way perfect.                                                                     - 2 Samuel 22:33

 

Today we have an even greater connection and intimacy with God because of his son Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit made available to us.


As his divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue, by which have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises, that through these you may be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.            - 2 Peter 1:3-4


Our greatest challenge is to learn not to rely on our own wisdom and strength during the difficult situations we all will face.

We must put into practice the art of surrender like David did before God and allow him to respond according to his word for our lives.

Jesus is our modern-day lifeguard and the only one who can rescue us but will we by faith cry out to him and trust in his promises?