Women of God

“Women of God can never be like women of the world. The world has enough women who are tough; we need women who are tender. There are enough women who are coarse; we need women who are kind. There are enough women who are rude; we need women who are refined. We have enough women of fame and fortune; we need more women of faith. We have enough greed; we need more goodness. We have enough vanity; we need more virtue. We have enough popularity; we need more purity.” --Margaret Nadauld.

How I love this quote! Truly, I love the entire talk it was given in, but this quote really sums it up. This is what I aspire to be in my lifetime. I still have so far to go, but that's ok. I'm trying and I hope I am improving. I also hope that by my self-improvement I can also improve my loved-ones' lives and thoughts and attitudes. There are many things I want to do and be in life, but above all else I hope I am remembered like this.

Renn Zaphiropoulos

In my entrepreneurship class today we had the pleasure of being taught by Mr. Renn Zaphiropoulos. Today was the second of five classes we will have with him. Today he was talking mostly about priorities and expectations, but there were two things in particular that he said that really struck me.

The first relates some to my first blog post. It is about judging. He said “Never judge a person by the group they come from; you may be criminal, you may be hurtful. You can set a profile for a person according to the group they come from, but chances are you will be wrong. Open your heart.” I love messages like this. They illustrate that two very different people, Mr. Zaphiropoulos and myself, can have coinciding views. We don't have to be contrary to one another because of our differences, we can be comfortable with each other because of our compassion.

Next, he was talking about apologies. At first I was incredibly turned off by what his view seemed to be about apologizing. To me, I thought he was saying that apologies are useless and worthless and not worth saying. He said that apologies do nothing to help the situation of the victim. For reference he pointed out a situation where a politician has been cheating, so he gets on tv to apologize. Mr. Zaphiropoulos asked how this helps the position of that politician's wife at all. Naturally, I thought this was a little off. I felt that apologies are a very big and necessary part of life. So I questioned him about it. I asked him that shouldn't those sentiments be expressed anyway? He went on to explain more and I came to understand what he meant. He didn't mean that apologies are terrible. He meant that the way people use apologies and the rewards they expect to get from them are terrible. People think that if they just apologize then the sin should be completely absolved and they can be fully forgiven and entrusted again.

This is wrong, I think. Apologies definitely need to be expressed, but they must also be accompanied by actions of reparation and remedy. Most wrongs are impossible to completely undo, but we must try our best to mitigate the damages we have caused and make things as right as they can be after our mistakes. To simply say some words and then forget about and stop caring for our “victims” (using that word sounds really creepy to me for some reason) is not real apologizing and likely will not engender forgiveness from the Lord. I suppose I cannot speak for Him, but that just seems natural to me.

Mr. Zaphiropoulos' lecture today inspired me to be better in my apologies. I know I will make mistakes and cause hurt, even though I try my hardest not to. So when I do, I want to be better at fully apologizing AND making reparations as best I can. I want to show those I love and those around me that I care.

Les Miserables

I am currently reading Les Miserables by Victor Hugo, the unabridged version. It is not for the faint of heart! 1463 pages long, whew! It is incredibly long and I am loving it. I grew up loving the play that is based on this book, I loved the music before I even understood what it was really about. I loved the love story when I was young, but as I have grown older I have found myself pondering the other characters in the book that I didn't have much of a care about before. Jean Valjean, the former convict turned honest and charitable. Why would he do that, then take on some woman's kid and raise it as his own? Fantine, a poor woman with a baby girl. Until I had my baby I could not comprehend the love this woman had for her child. How did she come to leave her child in the care of terrible people? The play tells you of these stories a little, but it doesn't show you the why's and the how's. I started pondering this fictional story a lot, so I decided to read it. What an adventure it has been! I have loved finding out the whole story behind the story, even if the characters are completely fictional. The emotions portrayed speak right to my heart. I happily anticipate my reading time every day.

One of the other things I love about this book is that Victor Hugo wrote what he wanted. He was not afraid to openly express and publish his views on politics and religion, and he winds them into his characters and his scenes. He was a very faithful man who included religion in his book. Indeed, the first 70 or so pages are all about a bishop in the catholic church. These days it seems like there is always somebody willing to scream at you for expressing any kind of religious view at all, so I have rarely ever ventured such views aloud, even to close friends who are of the same religion as me. I felt like it would be rude to talk about our faith and beliefs, since there was a chance that maybe we would not completely agree on every little point in life. Victor Hugo has inspired me to be different. I don't feel like I need to proselytize and preach to everyone about my faith, but I am not afraid to be open about it in my conversations and life. I will quite happily talk about it and give my views based on it, and I will stand up for what I know is correct.

To Start:

There are so many places to get information in today's world. With the instantaneous dissemination of everything that is happening in the world, judgments of those happenings have become ever faster and more vociferous, making many of the information sites that are available very hard and negative. It seems like every person has some kind of criticism about every event, and if you, the reader or listener or watcher, don't agree then you are worthless and utterly wrong. Many of these voices are quite liberal; I am quite conservative. So I am here to make a place for conservative thought. I do not mean the kind of conservative thought that comes from the likes of Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly. To me those people are not conservative, they are hateful. I am talking about the kind of conservative thought that is centered around faith, charity, and kindness. I don't think it matters what religion a person is or what political thoughts they espouse. I think what matters is that people act faithfully according to their beliefs and that they uphold and keep values that matter.

Inevitably, we all make judgments of others and I'm sure I will make a fair amount of judgments in my writings.

Judging on some level is just plain necessary to get through life. We have to learn how to judge what is right from wrong, and we have to learn how to judge safety from danger. So judging is not bad; usually the ideas on which people base their judgments are wrong. The biggest criteria for making a judgment is “that person thinks differently than me; they are wrong and stupid”. Conservatives and liberals alike do this. This is what our society trains us to do from a very young age. We are taught to scorn anything that is different, or even dissimilar. I think we really need to start doing less judging and having more compassion; when we do judge ideas it should be based on their actual merit instead of just following what some article on the internet told us to believe. This is a change I have been trying very hard to make in my life. I am definitely not perfect about it, but I am trying. I have found that I just have no room in my life for the negativity that comes from such blind judging. I also don't want to inadvertently pass such attitudes along to my children. I want to teach them to do what is right, to have faith, to be compassionate and charitable. I do not want to teach them to be judgmental. So this blog is devoted to positive thought. Since it is my blog, it will invariably be full of my thoughts on subjects of my choosing, and it will be full of my judgments. I hope they are fair, and I hope this can be inspiring to other people besides myself.