Thought for today:
"To share with one's neighbour is the best of all gifts to bestow, and when that includes allowing one's adversary to drink from the same bowl, the milk of human kindness surely runneth over the expectation of all mean-minded.
Being brought up the eldest of seven children in a household where the family food for this week would be paid for from my father's next week's wage, was the normal practice for most poor households on the estate where we lived and the times that we lived in. In many ways, it took the hardship experienced by the war years to grow calluses on the skin of all those who lived through the 30's, 40's and 1950's. It was during these decades that most sensible people knew that the survival of all the community would only be achieved if we all pulled together and shared the little we each had. In the home where I grew up with my six brothers and sisters, cooperation was required to get through every day from dawn until dusk. When seven arrive at the breakfast table on a morning to find there is only food enough to adequately feed no more than four or five, sharing becomes a part of early learning that proves a necessity to one's survival. Our regular attendance at church as a family and our schooling was to teach us that sharing was necessary to the survival of one's soul. In short, we learned that in all application of life, sharing is the most necessary and rewarding of all experiences.
Today, things have changed significantly. Too often, mankind's concern for what little others may or not have tends to stop at the boundaries of one's doorstep. It is as though the fear of austerity has led us to put up a picket fence around our hearts. Imagine the wastefulness and wanton cruelty of being the only person with a lit candle in pitch darkness, and not allowing others to share your light?
What does it matter if a person has more than they could ever earn or spend in ten lifetimes, yet has no one to share it with? We may make a living through what we get, but we get a life through what we give! I recall a lay preacher in Canada telling his audience that we are happiest when we do the most we can for others. He believed that one's wealth and abundance was not measured by what we had, but by what we shared with our fellow man. My own dear mother, who would share her last penny with another of greater need, wholeheartedly lived by the expressed sentiment of the American poet and civil rights activist, Maya Angelou who said, 'When we give cheerfully and accept gratefully, everyone is blessed.'
Between 1989 and 2005, I personally visited and held assemblies in over two thousand Yorkshire schools. Of all the lessons I witnessed being taught to the young primary school pupils by their teachers in a bid to prepare them for future life, the most important wasn't maths or English, or any other academic subject on the educational curriculum; it was how to give to others in the world less fortunate than ourselves and in greater need. Rarely did I visit a primary school during all these years without seeing the children being encouraged to save their pennies or earn money 'to give away to more needy causes.' Through their instruction, the teachers of our young today are doing their best work by enabling the children in their charge to become the good person they were created to be.
Joy multiplies when it is shared with others." William Forde: November 13th, 2017.eek would be paid for from next week's, as yet, unearned wage of my father, was the normal practice for most poor households on the estate where we lived and the times that we lived in. In many ways, it took the hardship experienced by the war years to grow calluses on the skin of all those who lived through the 30's, 40's and 1950's. It was during these decades that most sensible people knew that the survival of all the community would only be achieved if we all pulled together and shared the little we each had. In the home where I grew up with my six brothers and sisters, cooperation was required to get through every day from dawn until dusk. When seven arrive at the breakfast table on a morning to find there is only food enough to adequately feed no more than four or five, sharing becomes a part of early learning that proves a necessity to one's survival. Our regular attendance at church as a family and our schooling was to teach us that sharing was necessary to the survival of one's soul. In short, we learned that in all application of life, sharing is the most necessary and rewarding of all experiences.
Today, things have changed significantly. Too often, mankind's concern for what little others may or not have stops at the boundaries of one's doorstep. It is as though the fear of austerity has led us to put up a picket fence around our hearts. Imagine the wastefulness and wanton cruelty of being the only person with a lit candle in pitch darkness, and not allowing others to share your light?
What does it matter if a person has more than they could ever earn or spend in ten lifetimes, yet has no one to share it with? We may make a living through what we get, but we get a life through what we give! I recall a lay preacher in Canada telling his audience that we are happiest when we do the most we can for others. He was of the belief that one's wealth and abundance was not measured by what we had, but by what we shared with our fellow man. My own dear mother, who would share her last penny with another of greater need, wholeheartedly lived by the expressed sentiment of the American poet and civil rights activist, Maya Angelou who said, 'When we give cheerfully and accept gratefully, everyone is blessed.'
Between 1989 and 2005, I personally visited and held assemblies in over two thousand Yorkshire schools. Of all the lessons I witnessed being taught to the young primary school pupils by their teachers in a bid to prepare them for future life, the most important wasn't maths or English, or any other academic subject on the educational curriculum; it was how to give to others in the world less fortunate than ourselves and in greater need. Rarely did I visit a primary school during all these years without seeing the children being encouraged to save their pennies or earn money 'to give away to more needy causes.' Through their instruction, the teachers of our young today are doing their best work by enabling the children in their charge to become the good person they were created to be.
Joy multiplies when it is shared among others." William Forde: November 13th, 2017.