Your, Mine, and Ours.

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We live in the United States of America.  Home of the Free.  Land of the Brave.

In 1919, it was illegal for you to vote in the United States if you were a woman.

In 1864, it was legal for you to own a slave.  Yes, to own another human being, and make he or she do whatever you commanded.

If you were white in 1966, and you fell in love with a black person, it was illegal for the two of you to wed.  No interracial marriages.

In many states, it was illegal for you to be a homosexual until 2003.

Today, in 2016, I see many people in this country who are fueled by fear.  I hear abhorrent words of discrimination, still.

Many people in the history of our country have stood up, and fought.   Some have done it will violent protests.  Other have done it with leading by example.

It is at times like these, when I ask for peace.  For me. For the world I am in.  For those who I love.

And I then, above all, I must remember the powerful request of St. Francis, asking for the strength to be an instrument of peace.

“Make me an instrument of thy peace.

Where there is hatred, let me sow love;

Where there is injury, pardon;

Where there is doubt, faith;

Where there is despair, hope;

Where there is darkness, light;

Where there is sadness, joy.

Grant that I may not so much seek

To be consoled as to console,

To be understood as to understand,

To be loved as to love;

For it is in giving that we receive;

It is in pardoning that we are pardoned;

It is in dying to self that we are born to eternal life.”


Only when one is connected to one’s own core is one connected
to others, I am beginning to discover.  And, for me, the core,
the inner spring, can best be refound through solitude.
                                                                         – Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Set peace of mind as your highest goal, and organize your life
around it.
                                                                                    – Brian Tracy