Two Angels

Two traveling angels stopped to spend the night in the home of a
wealthy family.

The family was rude and refused to let the angels stay in the
mansion's guest room.

Instead the angels were given a small space in the cold basement.

As they made their bed on the hard floor, the older angel saw a hole
in the wall and repaired it.

When the younger angel asked why, the older angel replied,

"Things aren't always what they seem"

The next night the pair came to rest at the house of a very poor, but
very hospitable farmer and his wife.

After sharing what little food they had the couple let the angels
sleep in their bed where they could have a good night's rest.

When the sun came up the next morning the angels found the farmer and
his wife in tears.

Their only cow, whose milk had been their sole income, lay dead in
the field.

The younger angel was infuriated and asked the older angel how could
you have let this happen?
The first man had everything, yet you helped him, she accused.

The second family had little but was willing to share everything, and
you let the cow die..

"Things aren't always what they seem," the older angel replied.

"When we stayed in the basement of the mansion, I noticed there was
gold stored in that hole in the wall.

Since the owner was so obsessed with greed and unwilling to share his
good fortune, I sealed the wall so he wouldn't find it."

"Then last night as we slept in the farmers bed, the angel of death
came for his wife I gave him the cow instead.

Things aren't always what they seem."

Sometimes that is exactly what happens when things don't turn out
the way they should. If you have faith, you just need to trust that
every outcome is always to your advantage. You just might not know it
until some time later...

Some people come into our lives and quickly go..
Some peoplebecome friends and stay awhile...


leaving beautiful footprints on our hearts...
and we are never quite the same because we have made a good friend!!

Yesterday is history.
Tomorrow a mystery.
Today is a gift.
That's why it's called the present!

Playing A Violin With Three Strings

On Nov. 18, 1995, Itzhak Perlman, the violinist, came on stage to give a concert at Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center in New York City.

If you have ever been to a Perlman concert, you know that getting on stage is no small achievement for him. He was stricken with polio as a child, and so he has braces on both legs and walks with the aid of two crutches. To see him walk across the stage one step at a time, painfully and slowly, is an awesome sight.

He walks painfully, yet majestically, until he reaches his chair. Then he sits down, slowly, puts his crutches on the floor, undoes the clasps on his legs, tucks one foot back and extends the other foot forward. Then he bends down and picks up the violin, puts it under his chin, nods to the conductor and proceeds to play.

By now, the audience is used to this ritual. They sit quietly while he makes his way across the stage to his chair. They
remain reverently silent while he undoes the clasps on his legs. They wait until he is ready to play.

But this time, something went wrong. Just as he finished the first few bars, one of the strings on his violin broke. You
could hear it snap - it went off like gunfire across the room. There was no mistaking what that sound meant. There was no mistaking what he had to do.

We figured that he would have to get up, put on the clasps again, pick up the crutches and limp his way off stage - to either find another violin or else find another string for this one. But he didn't. Instead, he waited a moment, closed his eyes and then signaled the conductor to begin again.

The orchestra began, and he played from where he had left off. And he played with such passion and such power and such purity as they had never heard before.

Of course, anyone knows that it is impossible to play a symphonic work with just three strings. I know that, and you know that, but that night Itzhak Perlman refused to
know that.

You could see him modulating, changing, re-composing the piece in his head. At one point, it sounded like he was de-tuning the strings to get new sounds from them that they had never made before.

When he finished, there was an awesome silence in the room. And then people rose and cheered. There was an extraordinary outburst of applause from every corner of the auditorium. We were all on our feet, screaming and cheering, doing everything we could to show how much we appreciated what he had done.

He smiled, wiped the sweat from this brow, raised his bow to quiet us, and then he said - not boastfully, but in a quiet, pensive, reverent tone - "You know, sometimes it is the artist's task to find out how much music you can still make with what you have left."

What a powerful line that is. It has stayed in my mind ever since I heard it. And who knows? Perhaps that is the definition of life - not just for artists but for all of us.

Here is a man who has prepared all his life to make music on a violin of four strings, who, all of a sudden, in the middle of a concert, finds himself with only three strings; so he makes music with three strings, and the music he made that night with just three strings was more beautiful, more sacred, more memorable, than any that he had ever made before, when he had four strings.

So, perhaps our task in this shaky, fast-changing, bewildering world in which we live is to make music, at first with all that we have, and then, when that is no longer possible, to make music with what we have left.

article by Jack Riemer (received via email)

Unless You Let It In

All the water in the world
However hard it tried,
Could never, never sink a ship
Unless it got inside.
All the evil in the world,
The wickedness and sin,
Can never sink your soul's fair craft
Unless you let it in.
All the hardships of this world,
Might wear you pretty thin,
But they won't hurt you, one least bit…
Unless you let them in.

- Barbara Johnson