Martin Luther King and Waffles

Here’s a funny OP-ED article in the New York Times: “Wilting Over Waffles” by Maureen Dowd

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/23/opinion/23dowd.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin

From Dorothy Valcarcel, Author www.TransformationGarden.com

I am blessed to have heard some wonderful speakers in my lifetime. Because I was quite young when Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was so brutally shot, and his life cut short, I never had the benefit of hearing him speak in person. However, I do know individuals who were present when he delivered some of his most famous speeches, including, "I Have A Dream." And what they have told me is that it wasn't just the words Dr. King spoke that moved them so much, it was also the passion of his convictions that made these words have such a powerful affect not only during his lifetime but even to this very day and into the future.

Woven throughout all the words Dr. King delivered, was a constant call to all of us to rise above hatred; to eschew violence in favor of peace; and to become inhibitors of courage instead of victims of fear. Speaking about courage in the face of fear, Dr. King said:

"Courage is an inner resolution to go forward in spite of obstacles and frightening situations; cowardice is a submissive surrender to circumstance. Courage breeds creative self-affirmation; cowardice produces destructive self-abnegation. Courage faces fear and thereby masters it; cowardice represses fear and is thereby mastered by it.

Courageous men (and women) never lose the zest for living even though their life situation is zestless; cowardly men (and women) overwhelmed by the uncertainties of life, lose the will to live. We must constantly build dikes of courage to hold back the flood of fear."

"God grant me the courage not to give up what I think is right, even though I think it is hopeless." ~ Admiral Chester W. Nimitz

Be Thou My Vision

"Be thou my vision, O Lord of my heart,
Naught be all else to me save that thou art;
Be thou my best thoughts in the day and night.
Waking and sleeping thy presence my light.

Be thou my wisdom, be thou my true word.
I ever with thee and thou with me, Lord

Be thou my breast-plate, my sword for the fight,
Be thou my armour, and be thou my might,
Thou my soul's shelter, and thou my high tower,
Raise thou me heavenward, O Power of my power."

~ Gaelic, 8th Century translated by Eleanor Hull