Inspiration
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"It is not in attaining success that we become great,
it is on the journey that we attain greatness
through the people we help to achieve
their successes and their dreams.
This greatness is not proud or vain,
it is a greatness of spirit.
It is in lending a hand to our fellow human beings
that we learn many of life's lessons.
Each person that we meet is worthy
of our consideration and respect.
Remember, we are all born with gifts and talents.
How we develop and use them is up to us."
C. Convery, 28 /1/2008
The Dance
Arms, embracing all in a circular motion as I dance slowly, gracefully in the fields.
In the celebration of life we move
and have our being.
To be God-centred is a blissful state
in which we are truly privileged.
Here we are shown glimpses
of the Other World
to which we really belong.
This transient, earthly existence
is but a poor mirror image
of who we really are!
The Other World of Spirit pierces through
to the heart of our soul,
laying it bare with such acuteness.
It cannot survive without the Creator,
its source of Love and Peace.
Chris. Convery, 8/5/1999
Copyright © Chrisitne Convery 2008
~
Inside myself is a place where I live alone and
that's where you RENEW
your SPRING that
NEVER dries up.
by Pearl Buck.
~
Water crystal of Fujiwara Dam before
offering a prayer.
Water crystal of Fujiwara Dam after
an hour prayer practice, by the Reverend
Kato Hoki, chief priest of Jyuhouin Temple,
beside the dam. As you can see the results are
staggering!
These photos were taken by Mr. Masaru Emoto.
You can see these photos and more in his book,
The Message From Water.
Mr. Emoto's research has been conducted all over the world.
~
Happiness keeps You Sweet
Trials keep You Strong
Sorrows keep You Human
Failures keep You Humble
Success keeps You Glowing
But only God keeps You Going
~
The Daffodil Principle
Several times my daughter had telephoned to say,
'Mum, you must come see the daffodils before they
are over." I wanted to go, but it was a two hour
drive away. "I will come next Tuesday", I promised,
reluctantly, on her third call.
Next Tuesday dawned cold and rainy. Still, I had
promised, and so I drove there. When I finally walked
into Catherine's house and hugged and greeted my
grandchildren, I said, "Forget the daffodils, Catherine!
The road is invisible in the clouds and fog, and there
is nothing in the world except you and these children
that I want to see bad enough to drive another inch!"
My daughter smiled calmly and said, "We drive in this all the time, Mother."
"Well, you won't get me back on the road until it clears, and then I'm heading
for home!" I assured her.
"I was hoping you'd take me over to the garage to pick up my car." "How far
will we have to drive?" "Just a few K's," Catherine said. "I'll drive. I'm used to
this." After ten minutes, I had to ask, "Where are we going? This isn't the way
to the garage!"
"We're going to the garage the long way," Catherine said, "by way of the
daffodils." "Catherine," I said sternly, "please turn around." "It's all right,
Mum, I promise. You will never forgive yourself if you miss this experience."
After, about half an hour, we turned onto a gravel road and I saw a small
church. On the far side of the church, I saw a hand painted sign that read,
"Daffodil Garden."
We got out of the car and each took a child's hand, and I followed Catherine
down the path. Then, we turned a corner of the path, and I looked up and
gasped. Before me lay the most glorious sight. It looked as though someone
had taken a shimmering vat of gold and poured it down over the mountain
peak and slopes.
The flowers were planted in majestic, swirling patterns - great ribbons and
swaths of deep orange, white, lemon yellow, salmon pink, saffron, and butter
yellow. Each different-coloured variety was planted as a group so it swirled
and flowed like its own river with its own unique hue.
There were five acres of flowers. "But who did this?" I asked Catherine. "It's
just one woman," Catherine answered. "She lives on the property. That's her
home." Catherine pointed to a well kept country house that looked small and
modest in the midst of all that glory. We walked up to the house. On the
verandah, we saw a poster. "Answers to the Questions I Know You Are Asking"
was the headline.
The first answer was a simple one. "50,000 bulbs," it read. The second answer
was, "One at a time, by one woman. Two hands, two feet, and very little brain."
The third answer was, "Began in 1958."
There it was, The Daffodil Principle. For me, that moment was a life-changing
experience. I thought of this woman whom I had never met, who, more than
fifty years before, had begun - one bulb at a time - to bring her vision of
beauty and joy to an obscure mountain top. Still, just planting one bulb at a
time, year after year, had changed the world. This unknown woman had forever
changed the world in which she lived. She had created something of
magnificence, beauty, and inspiration.
The principle her daffodil garden taught is one of the greatest principles of
celebration. That is, learning to move toward our goals and desires one step at
a time - often just one baby-step at a time - and learning to love the doing,
learning to use the accumulation of time. When we multiply tiny pieces of time
with small increments of daily effort, we too will find we can accomplish
magnificient things. We can change the world.
"It makes me sad in a way." I admitted to Catherine. "What might I have
accomplished if I had thought of a wonderful goal thirty five of forty years ago
and had worked away at it 'one bulb at a time' through all those years. Just
think what I might have been able to achieve!"
My daughter summed up the message of the day in her usual direct way.
"Start tomorrow," she said.
It's so pointless to think of the lost hours of yesterdays. The way to make
learning a lesson of celebration instead of a cause for regret is to only ask,
"How can I put this to use today?"
adapted from a story by,
Jaroldeen Edwards.
________________________________________
Starfish
As a man walked a desolate beach on cold, gray morning
he began to see another figure, far in the distance. Slowly the two
approached each other, and he could make out a local native
who kept leaning down, picking something up and throwing it out into
the water. Time and again he hurled things into the ocean.
As the distance between them continued to narrow, the man could see that the native was picking up starfish that had been washed upon
the beach and, one at a time, was throwing them back into the water.
Puzzled, the man approached the native and asked what he was doing.
"I'm throwing these starfish back into the ocean. You see, it's low tide
right now and all these starfish have been washed up onto the shore.
If I don't throw them back into the sea, they'll die up here from lack of
oxygen."
"But there must be thousands of starfish on this beach,"
the man replied. "You can't possibly get to all of them.
There are just too many. And this same thing is probably
happening on hundreds of breaches all up and down this
coast.
Can't you see that you can't possibly make a difference?"
The local native smiled, bent down and picked up another starfish, and
as he threw it back into the sea he replied, "Made a difference to that
one!"
Each of us is but one person: limited, burdened with our own cares and responsibilities. We may feel there is so much to be done, and we
have so little to give. We're usually short of everything, especially
time and money. When we leave this shore, there will still be millions
of starfish stranded on the beach. Maybe we can't change the whole
world, but there isn't one of us who can't help change one person's
whole world. One at a time. We DO make a difference.
~based on the story by Loren Eisley
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