Finding The Miracles In Life's Struggles
Uncategorized
Don’t Take Hasty Actions
01 week
The image is from 茶悦网.
Once there was a man received a precious purple clay teapot. He placed it at the head of his bed every night so no one could steal it away from him.
However one night he accidentally knocked the lid off the teapot in his sleep. After waking up to the noise, he decided to get rid of the teapot: after all, what’s the point keeping a teapot with a broken lid?
So, he grabbed the teapot and threw it out of the window.
The following morning, he found, on the contrary to what he had expected: the teapot lid stayed intact as it landed on his cotton shoes.
Exasperated and frustrated, the man stepped on the lid, crushing it to pieces.
As he stepped outdoors, he encountered another surprise: the teapot he had thrown out of the window the day before hung perfectly intact in a tree outside his window.
The image is from Brainy Quote.
Have you ever had the moment when you wish you could take back the hurtful things said to a loved one? Unlike the teapot that stayed intact, a lot of hurts cannot be undone: it is perfectly human to feel exasperated or disappointed. However it is the actions upon those emotions that make all the difference: had the man decided not to throw out the teapot when exasperated, things would have been a lot different. Therefore, patience is no longer just a virtue, but also a state of mindfulness of the potential consequences of one’s actions.
It did feel like a practical joke however, when our protagonist found that he had thrown out the teapot when the lid was found intact, that there was no going back: he had crushed his own chances: In fact, luck had always been on his side: fate did not ruin his lid, he was the one who did.
Isn’t it ironic that it has never crossed our minds that it is ourselves who created our “bad luck” when hope and light have always proven to be on our side?
Note:
Archaeological excavations reveal that as early as the Song dynasty (10th century) potters near Yixing were using local “zisha” (紫砂 or 紫泥 ; literally, “purple sand/clay”) to make utensils that may have functioned as teapots. According to the Ming dynasty author Zhou Gaoqi, during the reign of the Zhengde Emperor, a monk from Jinsha Temple (Golden Sand Temple) in Yixing handcrafted a fine quality teapot from local clay. Such teapots soon became popular with the scholarly class, and the fame of Yixing teapots began to spread.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yixing_clay_teapot
How Did Father’s Day Begin?
05 months
by Alice Lin
in Uncategorized
Happy Father’s Day to all the fathers in the world.
I like to share with you this article ” How Did Father’s Day Begin? ” here on the Father’s Day today. Hope you enjoy reading it as much as I do.
In May of 1909, Sonora Smart Dodd of Spokane, Wash., sat in church listening to a Mother’s Day sermon. She decided she wanted to designate a day for her dad, William Jackson Smart. Dodd’s mother had died in childbirth, and Dodd’s father, a Civil War veteran, had taken the responsibility of singlehandedly raising the newborn and his other five children.
The following year, Dodd wanted to celebrate Father’s Day on June 5th, her father’s birthday and petitioned for the holiday to be recognized in her city. Needing more time to arrange the festivities, Spokane’s mayor pushed the date back by two weeks, and the First Father’s Day was celebrated on June 19, 1910, according to the Spokane Regional Convention and Visitor Bureau.
At the first Father’s Day celebration, young women handed out red roses to their fathers during a church service, and large baskets full of roses were written around, with attendees inducing to pin on a rose in honor of their fathers – red for the living and White in memory of the deceased. Dodd then brought her infant son along on a horse-drawn carriage ride through the city, bringing roses and gifts to home-bound fathers.
While Congress was quick to fully declare the second Sunday in May as Mother’s Day in 1914, after it was first celebrated on May 10, 1908, it took much longer for Father’s Day to be legally recognized. But thanks to Dodd’s celebration, Father’s Day steadily Gained popularity.
In 1924, President Calvin Coolidge said that he supported it, in order to establish closer relationships between fathers and their children and to impress upon fathers the full measure of their obligations, according to the Library of Congress.
And the holiday gain more traction in 1938 when a trade organization, the National Council for the Promotion of Father’s Day, which was formed by men’s clothing retailers in New York City, decided to take up the cause, according to Consumer Rites: The Buying and Selling of American Holidays (Princeton University Press, 1995).
President Lyndon Johnson issued the first presidential proclamation honoring fathers in 1966, but it wasn’t until 1972 that President Richard Nixon signed the public law that made it a permanent holiday. Since then, Father’s Day has become a time to recognize the many Figures in our lives.
This article was provided by Life’s Little Mysteries, a sister site to LiveScience.
This article is posted on https://www.livescience.com/10697-father-day-turns-100.html.
Happy Mother’s Day
06 months
by Alice Lin
in Uncategorized
Mother’s love is like an idyllic poem, pure and elegant.
Mother’s love is like a landscape painting. It is washed away from lead and carved ornaments, leaving fresh and natural.
Mother’s love is like an affectionate song, euphemistic, softly sing.
Mother’s love is a warm wind, blowing the snow to fly, bringing out the unlimited spring light.
The friendship may fade, the vow may be forgotten, but the love of the mother will live forever.
Dawn comes after dusk; autumn comes after spring.
Every bit of our progress, which one is not the crystallization of the mother’s painstaking efforts?
Mother’s love is so deep and pure, like the wine the longer it brews, the purer it is.
It lets us indulge it, and we do not know it is a millennium wine.
Mother’s love is sacrificial and unconditional.
We are unable to make any repayment.
But we can pay back by our love.
On this mother’s day, we want to say to our mother :
“Oh mom, we love you!”
Is There a Heaven?
07 months
by Alice Lin
in Uncategorized
One day, I met one of my friends that I hadn’t seen for a long time. He does not believe in God, but when he saw me, the first question he asked me was “Do you know whether there is a heaven or not?” I was surprised about this question, knowing his view on religion. He looked at my facial expression and knew that I was confused. He told me the story of his father.
When his father was 38 years old, he passed away. He was put into a morgue drawer, and two doctors had already signed off on his death certificate. A third one had not signed off yet, so he could not be cremated or buried. His father remembers feeling like he was rising, and he looked down and saw himself lying there. As he kept going up, he went through the building and went through the clouds. He rose higher until he could see massive double doors that looked very solemn, but serene. He tried his best to open them, but he couldn’t because they were too heavy. He didn’t know where he was and he wanted to go through the doors to find out. All of a sudden, those doors opened, and when he looked inside, he saw people in there – his father and relatives. They all seemed very happy and joyous. Because they were there, he wanted to go in. But somehow, it was like his feet were nailed to the ground, and he couldn’t move them to take a step.
The image is from Crosswalk.com..
After he struggled, he finally gave up because he couldn’t move at all. All of a sudden, he heard a booming and stern voice and recognized it like his grandma’s voice. But the sound was full of power, and she said to him, “You are too young to come here. Go back.”
At that moment, he felt like he was falling back to where he was in that freezer. He started to push at the drawer, trying to get out of it. Suddenly, he felt the drawer begin to slide out, and he stepped out of the drawer. It was dark, so he was using his hands to figure out where he was. Suddenly, the lights turned on, and it was so bright that he could hardly see. Later on, he realized it was the third doctor coming into the morgue to sign his death papers.
So my friend asked me again and said, “I think I believe in God now. I think there’s a heaven.”
One day, I met one of my friends that I hadn’t seen for a long time. He does not believe in God, but when he saw me, the first question he asked me was “Do you know whether there is a heaven or not?” I was surprised about this question, knowing his view on religion. He looked at my facial expression and knew that I was confused. He told me the story of his father.
When his father was 38 years old, he passed away. He was put into a morgue drawer, and two doctors had already signed off on his death certificate. A third one had not signed off yet, so he could not be cremated or buried. His father remembers feeling like he was rising, and he looked down and saw himself lying there. As he kept going up, he went through the building and went through the clouds. He rose higher until he could see massive double doors that looked very solemn, but serene. He tried his best to open them, but he couldn’t because they were too heavy. He didn’t know where he was and he wanted to go through the doors to find out. All of a sudden, those doors opened, and when he looked inside, he saw people in there – his father and relatives. They all seemed very happy and joyous. Because they were there, he wanted to go in. But somehow, it was like his feet were nailed to the ground, and he couldn’t move them to take a step.
After he struggled, he finally gave up because he couldn’t move at all. All of a sudden, he heard a booming and stern voice and recognized it like his grandma’s voice. But the sound was full of power, and she said to him, “You are too young to come here. Go back.”
At that moment, he felt like he was falling back to where he was in that freezer. He started to push at the drawer, trying to get out of it. Suddenly, he felt the drawer begin to slide out, and he stepped out of the drawer. It was dark, so he was using his hands to figure out where he was. Suddenly, the lights turned on, and it was so bright that he could hardly see. Later on, he realized it was the third doctor coming into the morgue to sign his death papers.
So my friend asked me again and said, “I think I believe in God now. I think there’s a heaven.”
Healing from Music
07 months
by Alice Lin
in Uncategorized
May this beautiful music bring you the calming, happy and peaceful weekend!!!
