DAILY CHOICE: Friday, February 19, 2010

Receive vs. Reject

REFLECTION:

We are a wounded people, wounded from the start, wounded at the last. Not bad, not deserving of ill fortune, but imperfect, each and every one. The wounds are unique, as different one from another as the differences of one individual from the next. But wounded still. The wise society is prepared to respond, the enlightened society is positioned to invite and receive. That the wounded will always need embraces and will reach upward in response to greet their finer selves provides a purpose for government and her people. Inquire about those with the most pressing needs, seek them out. Out of their failures addressed come all of our successes. Out of the small battles come large victories. It is a world of helpers or hurters. To be the former, be prepared to criticize and to accept criticism often undeserved. Helping and happiness don’t always coexist. You can catch hell for helping. What helping will do is always fill a space, a void in your life or in another’s or both, and draw the dawn nearer for all.

MUSES:

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nations wounds.
Abraham Lincoln

Send these, the homeless, tempest toss’d, to me. I lift my lamp beside the golden door
Emma Lazarus

Pick battles big enough to matter, small enough to win.
Jonathan Kozol

The difference between good and bad, better and worse, is simply helping or hurting.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

He has a right to criticize who has a heart to help.
Abraham Lincoln

Everything I did in my life that was worthwhile I caught Hell for.
Earl Warren

There remain times when one can only endure. One lives on, one doesn’t die, and the only thing that one can do, is to fill one’s mind and time as far as possible with the concerns of other people. It doesn’t bring immediate peace, but it brings the dawn nearer.
Arthur Christopher Benson