Perspective

"To be accepted for who you are is all you truly seek.

Why wait for another to give that gift to you,

when you can give it to yourself, right now?" 

How else but through a broken heart may Lord Christ enter in? - Oscar Wilde

MY BABY JUST CARES FOR ME

MY BABY JUST CARES FOR ME LYRICS - NINA SIMONE

My baby don't care for shows

My baby don't care for clothes

My baby just cares for me

My baby don't care for cars and races

My baby don't care for high-tone places

Liz Taylor is not his style

And even Lana Turner's smile

Is something he can't see

My baby don't care who knows

My baby just cares for me

Baby, my baby don't care for shows

And he don't even care for clothes

He cares for me

My baby don't care for cars and races

My baby don't care for, he don't care for high-tone places

Liz Taylor is not his style

And even Liberace's smile

Is something he can't see

Is something he can't see

I wonder what's wrong with baby

My baby just cares for

My baby just cares for

My baby just cares for me

My baby don't care for shows

My baby don't care for clothes

My baby just cares for me

My baby don't care for furs and laces

My baby don't care for high toned places

My baby don't care for rings

or other expensive things

She's sensible as can be

My baby don't care who knows it

My baby just cares for me...

Struggle for Character

At times, life is hard, as hard as crucible steel. It has its bleak and painful moments. Like the ever flowing water of a river, life has its moments of drought and its moments of flood. Like the ever-changing cycle of the seasons, life has the soothing warmth of the summers and the piercing chill of its winters. But through it all, God walks with us. Never forget that God is able to lift you from the fatigue of despair to the buoyancy of hope, and transform dark and desolate valleys into sunlit paths of inner peace.

We unconsciously use defence mechanisms to shield us from situations we perceive to be scary or painful. A part of you may want to grow and change, but another part may be resisting because change always moves you into new territory in your thinking and emotions. If you play it safe in life you've decided that you don't want to grow any more.

Are we not all members of the same Body and partakers of the same Spirit and heirs of the same blessed hope of eternal life? . . . Why do we not, as becomes brethren, dwell together in unity, but are so apt to quarrel and break out into heats, to crumble into sects and parties, to divide and separate from one another upon every trifling occasion? Give me leave . . . in the name of our dear Lord . . . to recommend to you this new commandment of his, that ye love one another. Which is almost a new commandment still, and hardly the worse for wearing, so seldom is it put on, and so little hath it been practiced among Christians. - John Tillotson

the Art of Touch

Long before sexual attraction exists as anything more than natural curiosity about anatomical differences, most little boys and girls sense that the mysterious feelings drawing them into the adventure of mutual exploration are wrong. They have absorbed from the adult world the idea that touching the human body is somehow indecent.

‘Don’t touch!’ is a childhood litany. Many parents set clear examples. Apart from an occasional perfunctory embrace, they do not so much as hold hands. The father will decide that his little son or daughter is too old to nestle in his lap or be kissed. The mother will stop giving baths to a still young child. Such parents cannot permit the spontaneous physical expression of feelings - the stroking, snuggling and enfolding movements with which almost all living creatures seek the warmth and reassurance that is virtually indistinguishable from life itself. Thus, while still too young to understand why, children learn to restrain the impulse to reach out to someone else. As they grow older, the impulse to touch is expressed by teasing. This leads to scuffling, and wrestling, which, although ostensibly in conflict, give boys and girls a chance to experience close physical contact. By adolescence they realise that parental prohibitions are merely temporary restraining orders. Most begin experimenting with kissing games, which escalate into necking and petting.

Now the girls become the ones who say, ‘Don’t touch,’ echoing the lesson deeply ingrained in childhood: that sex is dirty, and touching means sex - so it’s hands off. Reaching out, which has already been sharply limited as a spontaneous way of expressing affection and solidarity, is usually stripped of all significance except that of sexual provocation. Thus the use of touch as a natural, uncomplicated way to express goodwill or friendship is forfeited.

Later, at the age of sexual experimentation, girls are more inclined to let themselves be touched than to do the touching. This again is partly a result of cultural conditioning - passivity as the proper female role, and the deeply embedded feeling that sexual activity for her may be dishonourable. With the rationalisation that the boy is the initiator, the aggressor, who must bear full responsibility for what takes place between them, she struggles to free herself from feelings of guilt or discomfort, to free herself from the tight, involuntary tensions of her body and to free herself to enjoy her natural, physical response to being touched.

Her reluctance to touch may also be based on a practical consideration. In her early encounters with a boy she is likely to find that he becomes too excited too soon and additional stimulation seems not only unnecessary but inadvisable. Boys think of touch - which, at this stage, is closer to groping or grabbing than to caressing -as a sexual starter, or trigger. The boy expects that once he places his hand on a girl’s body, her sexual motor will automatically move into top gear. Her failure to respond with an ardour to match his own may baffle him. He is likely to try all the harder to overcome the girl’s resistance, believing that she is just afraid of being aroused by his touch and that if he can force his way past her defences, her resistance will melt. When these first, fumbling encounters produce not the anticipated delight but dismay or disappointment, most young people question not their expectations but themselves or each other. He decides she is uptight because she didn't let him touch her in the right place; she decides he is inept because he didn't know how to touch her in the right way. They believe that if they just try again, with a new partner, before too long they will surely master the trick of sex. And the search continues, on a trial-and-error basis.


In time, some young men and women find at least partial answers to their questions. But even for them, success is usually flawed by continuing inability to grasp the true function of touch. Many still think of it exclusively as a means to an end; touching for the purpose of having intercourse, a functional, wordless way to communicate a willingness, a wish or a demand to make love.

Meanwhile, for other couples, who also consider touching to be just a means to the same end, it becomes a means they enjoy almost as much as the end itself. 

They have advanced past the adolescent notion of touch-as-trigger to the more sophisticated notion of touch-as-technique. In essence, they have adopted the philosophy, of the how-to-do-it sex manuals. Sex becomes a skill that can be learnt and then applied wherever desired. Men and women are taught not how to touch another human being but how to manipulate another body. This is a dead-end approach to the sexual relationship. Preoccupation with manipulative technique turns people into objects and touching is turned into the science of stimulation. Instead of a sharing of private emotions, sex then comes perilously close to being an exchange of impersonal services.

For the man and woman who value each other as individuals and who want the satisfaction of a sustained relationship, it is important to avoid the fundamental error of believing that touch serves only as a means to an end. In fact it is a primary form of communication, a silent voice that avoids the pitfalls of words while expressing the feelings of the moment. It bridges the physical separateness from which no one is spared, literally establishing a sense of solidarity between two individuals.

Touch most often carries its own message. It can be asexual, used to represent personal attitudes or emotions, to give comfort to reassure. It can be a sensual thing, exploring the texture of the skin, the suppleness of a muscle, the contours of the body, with no further goal than enjoyment of tactile perceptions. And yet such is the nature of the sense of touch, which can simultaneously give and receive impressions, that the very pleasure one experiences in stroking your partner’s face is relayed back through your finger-tips, giving your partner the pleasure of awareness of your pleasure in them.

Relational harmony: This is the well-spring of emotion from which sexuality flows. In reaching out spontaneously to communicate by touch, partners reaffirm their trust in each other and renew commitment. They draw on this emotional reservoir when one turns to the other with physical desire. Because their touching has continuity, and is part of an intimate dialogue that does not begin and end in bed, they feel secure. Whoever makes an overture knows the other will understand and respond, and the partner is secure in the knowledge that his response will be accepted, no matter how limited the degree of erotic arousal may naturally be at that moment.

Where no such security exists, two individuals in a sexual encounter may touch physically but still remain out of touch emotionally. When touch or submitting to touch takes place solely for the purpose of intercourse, it can express neither warmth nor closeness. It is a signal without subtlety, a demand for service or a yielding to such a demand. And over the years the service deteriorates, until finally one of the partners can no longer, or will no longer, perform. In a sad and ironic echo of their childhood, the partners live out their later lives in married celibacy and ‘do not touch.’

Today’s young couples seem to be freer to express themselves, in words and physically. Perhaps they will succeed in incorporating into their sexual lives a new philosophy of touch. Perhaps they do understand that touching - like seeing, hearing, tasting and smelling - nourishes the pleasure of being alive. That touching another human being satisfies the profound creature-need not to feel alone; that being touched by another human being satisfies the need to be desired as a physical presence; and that in touching and being touched, one can experience not only the pleasure of being alive but also the joy of being a sexual creature. It is a joy that ultimately and inevitably, as a natural extension of life itself, expresses itself, in the sexual embrace.

BKSB

I'd like to leave you with a huge smile and walking a little funny...

Don't speak defeat over your life. Declare God's promises of victory over your life. You may feel weak, but God is strong & on your side!

BRUNO departs...

The one best place to bury a good dog is in the heart of its master. - Ben Hur Lampman

BRUNO

Born a dog

Died a gentleman

To call him a dog hardly seems to do him justice, though inasmuch as he had four legs, a tail, and barked, I admit he was, to all outward appearances. But to those who knew him well, he was a perfect gentleman. - Hermione Gingold

There is sorrow enough in the natural way

From men and women to fill our day;

But when we are certain of sorrow in store

Why do we always arrange for more?

Brothers and sisters I bid you beware

Of giving your heart to a dog to tear. - Rudyard Kipling

I feel the absence of this beloved companion more keenly and painfully than I mourned pets in the past, we shared a unique bond. I am surprised by the ongoing feelings of love for my departed pet dog Bruno. I know the the most vital step in coping with the emotions of loss I feel is acknowledging them. I have read the coping advices: "Let yourself feel - write down your feelings, cry, be angry, call someone. Know that it is all right to be so upset over losing your pet and that it takes time to heal. To deny and/or repress that sense of loss would be to devalue the love and affection that the pet brought into your life."

I may run into people - even close friends - who don't understand my grief, and who may tell me that it is "silly" or "inappropriate" to grieve over the loss of an animal. After all, it was "just a dog." It is easy to condemn such people out of hand for what seems an inexcusable lack of understanding. But before I write off these friends or acquaintances, I must remind myself that few people have much experience in dealing with grief, either their own or that of others. Grief makes people uncomfortable; most people genuinely want to help, but simply don't know how - and they are painfully aware that they lack the right words to console, or make one feel better. The words they do find may seem clumsy or insensitive. Moreover it is also probably a good idea to keep in mind that many, many people have simply never had a close relationship with an animal of any kind.

Acknowledging emotions may hurt - these emotions are painful, after all - but it provides the opportunity to control their outlet. Far from being childish, this action lets one get your feelings into the open. There you can look at them and begin to understand them, which is a healthy start on releasing them once and for all. Only by looking at my reactions honestly can I begin the process of working through them and coming out whole and happy on the other side.

Coping with sorrow is easier said than done - but it has been done, I have done it before and probably will again... ~ SB

That one true heart was left behind!

What feeling do we ever find

To equal among human kind

A dog's fidelity!

- Thomas Hardy

I think God will have prepared everything for our perfect happiness. If it takes my dog being there [in Heaven], I believe he'll be there. - Rev. Billy Graham

I held his head and stroked his brow as the vet administered 'the dose' and he drifted off on another journey... The cancer had gotten beyond treatment and his pain must have been immense; but not once did that noble beast ever show me his distress - faithful friend to the end, he nuzzled me as we parted. I took him home and buried him in the ground he so loved digging holes in - happy trails Bruno, Godspeed. - Stafford

Death of a Teenager - Death of Potential...

Recently I went to a funeral which nobody present is ever likely to forget. It had been a dramatic, tragic death. But it did not hit the headlines. It was much too common. The wooden box contained a boy, just 17, son of a work colleague. He was a healthy, happy, active youth, member of a local motorbike club - a leader of the pack. A very safe, careful rider, everyone said.

One Sunday he set out on an errand in his quiet suburban neighbourhood and never came back.  A week later, the police were still trying to work out what happened. Two cars and a concrete lamppost were involved. An ambulance came in record time. The doctors who spent several hours trying to put together the bits were weeping at the finish.

So were mourners at the cemetery. He must have been a popular boy. There were as many people standing as sitting in the crematorium, with every age, class, race and hairstyle represented. The occasion was secular and not too sombre. After the orations, his girlfriend played a few of his favourite rap songs. It seemed fitting. We were celebrating a good life: light-hearted, sensible, funny, generous, full of hope and love and promise.

There were many emotions as the blue curtains closed - shock, sympathy, anger at the pointless pity of it, even perhaps a frightful feeling that the fates had been propitiated: at least it wasn’t my child. For the funeral-parlour staff it was however just all part of the day’s work; there’s nothing unusual, after all, about the death of a teenager on two wheels.

Perhaps it is because road killings are so ordinary, when they happen to strangers that we take them for granted. Big, comfortably remote mega-death disasters get the attention. But it is the mundane, domestic motor smash that takes the most lives, causing violent death on a scale only exceeded by the slaughter of war. Drink is the biggest killer. Excessive speed, faulty brakes or steering, a split second’s inattention, a signal not given, can also be deadly. And the victim’s only offence is usually to have been, by bad luck, in the wrong place at the wrong time.

“He will be remembered,” it was said at the funeral. Yet what will never be known, or remembered, are the things which those that are lost might have said, or done, or been. “If only” gives birth to a thousand regrets. Unpredictable and unmotivated, accidents shatter faith in an ordered world and destroy belief in reason and endeavour. Sickness has a cause. An accident is often sheer stupidity.

Yet which of us can say that we have never - behind a wheel - gambled with the lives of others? Accidents provide no explanation, no comfort for the bereaved. If, however, a moment’s reflection on their absurdity may lead a driver to drink one glass less, or check the mirror before turning, a mother or brother or lover maybe luckier than they will ever know - and a commonplace statistic will not have been in vain.

Everything happens for a reason – this happening may be the wake up call for some wayward motorist; or maybe the wake up call for another to the fleetness of life and how unprepared we may be for the hereafter… - God bless ~ SB

THERE IS NO UNANSWERED PRAYER

I have yet to meet the person, no matter how deeply hurt, who does not find comfort (in the true meaning - for “comfort” means “with strength”) once he grasps this fact: There is no unanswered prayer. True, God cannot always answer yes. But He does answer.

Many people no longer pray because of what they call disillusionment. At some time in life we may have prayed for the health of a loved one, for strength to fight some weakness in you, or for success in landing a job. We have watched the dear one die; we may have wakened with another hangover, or failed to get the job. “What’s the use of praying?” we say. “God did not answer.”

We seldom realize that disillusionment, the freedom from false belief, is the healthiest experience possible - particularly for those who have considered God a kind of Santa Claus who by prayer can be plagued into giving us what we want. What then is prayer? One of the most helpful definitions: “Prayer is conversation with God.” Yet so few of us understand prayer because we don’t make it conversation with God; we deliver an ultimatum.

“Black despair will scarcely clutch and hold for long if we can talk it out with a friend who understands,” a philosopher once said. This is the secret of the kind of therapy which comes to the troubled mind that finds a counsellor to whom all things can be poured out freely. And this is the key to the healing that the broken heart finds on turning to the Counsellor unto whom “all hearts be open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid.”An old hymn says: ‘Prayer is the soul’s sincere desire, uttered or unexpressed.’ Many who would not think of kneeling in supplication do not hesitate to recline in a psychiatrist’s office - though increasingly counsellors agree that when we set ourselves to the work of collecting or re-collecting the scattered pieces of ourselves, we begin a task which, if carried to its natural conclusion, ultimately becomes prayer.

There was a scientist once who thought prayer was humbug - especially the kind of praying that involved making a pilgrimage. Then he fell ill, came close to bankruptcy. Many of his experiments failed. But, one day, he made the pilgrimage - mainly to get away from home. At the shrine he said to himself: “if I were not an agnostic, I might experiment with this superstition.” Convincing himself that he was going through the motions out of idle curiosity, he started the ritual. Halfway through, he thought, “Now, if this were not folly, what would I pray for? For health? For money?” He continued the ritual, and then suddenly he cried, “Oh God, I beg you. Enlighten my mind so that I may invent something very great to further human knowledge!” Amazed, the scientist stood in the silence. So this was his desire of desires. Knowing it at last, Galileo began experiments which led to the invention of the telescope.

Prayer is indeed the soul’s sincere desire - and few of us find our miracles, because we cannot discover what we want most. And sometimes we never start to find out until our whole world crashes and we are forced to look at life from a new angle, one which we perhaps see for the first time only when God says “No!”

When disappointments come, there are two things we must question before we question God or His purposes. No matter how great our longing or how fervently we pray, when God says no, we must question our desires and ourselves. Many times, we should ask not what is wrong with our prayers but what is wrong with us.
We would not be realistic, however, unless we faced the fact that while our desires may be right and we ourselves fully worthy of receiving that for which we pray, still God may say no. Why?

Sadly enough, very often only time alone can give us the reason. Instead of lamenting “Why, God, why?” we should rather console ourselves with the thought: “There is some reason, and one day I shall find it,” only then can we save ourselves untold heartbreak. Besides no or yes, there is a third answer God often gives us when we pray. Time and again God answers, “We’ll see, just be patient and do all you can do about it, and then we’ll see.”

Most of the time what happens depends, ultimately, on how much we work with God - with any or the entire manifold of powers through which He works. We really don’t know the millionth part of one per cent about prayer. But what we do know is enough to enable us to use it, and through it, to let God use us. 

Married myth

Most people get married believing a myth - that marriage is a beautiful box full of all the things they have longed for: companionship, sexual fulfilment, intimacy, friendship.

The truth is that marriage, at the start, is an empty box. You must put something in before you can take anything out.

There is no love in marriage; love is in people, and people put love into marriage. There is no romance in marriage; people have to infuse romance into their marriages.

A couple must learn the art and form the habit of giving, loving, serving, praising - keeping the box full.

If you take out more than you put in, the box will remain empty, never filling up to its potential.

God bless ~ SB

Wisdom of the Body

Doctors know that if given rest, proper food and ease of mind 90 per cent or more of their patients get well. The organs of the body have an amazing reserve. When a man suffers from tuberculosis of the lungs, part of the lung tissue is destroyed, but he has a great deal more than he needs.

More than four-fifths of the liver can be removed, and still the remaining part will carry on. A surgeon can cut and tie 30 or 40 blood vessels in the course of an operation: we have many more blood vessels than we need. Each of us has about eight metres of intestine. Up to a metre can be removed safely.

How does a surgeon dare to remove a diseased kidney? Because, when one kidney is removed, the other gradually increases its size and does the work of two. Similarly, after a heart attack the heart, usually the size of a fist, may become as big as two or even four fists. This ingenious ability has been called “the wisdom of the body.”

Another natural defence of the body is rest. If you sprain your wrist, nature “splints” it by making it so sore and stiff that you hesitate to move it. If a person is strained beyond a certain point of endurance or terror, nature says, “Take a rest,” and he faints.

If you wound your finger and festering occurs, the white corpuscles come to fight the bacteria and die in the attack. Their dead bodies make a wall of defence (pus) between the attacking bacteria on one side and the free circulation on the other. Almost every case of appendicitis would be fatal if such a wall were not built to shut in the inflammation until the surgeon operates.

God’s plan provides a great healing power in ourselves, a never-slumbering intelligence that we always have at work on our side in our fight against disease.

Free choice

Intercession, love and goodwill means nothing; if the spire of your cause cares not for their immortal soul...