Andy Dufresne: Get busy living or get busy dying. Andy Dufresne: Remember, Red, hope is a good thing. Maybe the best of things and no good thing ever dies. WISDOM JOKES WISDOM JOKES AT MY QUALITY TIME BLOG WISDOM JOKES
“The dream is like a river, ever changing as it flows and the dreamer just a vessel that must follow where it goes. We must lean from what's behind us never knowing what's in store keeps each day a constant battle just to stay between the shore.”
“Life is like therapy - real expensive and no guarantees.”
“Some of God's greatest gifts are unanswered prayers.”
“You aren't wealthy until you have something money can't buy.”
“Choose to chance the rapids; dare to dance the tide.”
“The greatest conflicts are not between two people but between one person and himself.”
This is a wonderful story, and it is true. You will be pleased that you read it, and I believe you will pass it on. It is an important piece of American history.
It happened every Friday evening, almost without fail, when the sun resembled a giant orange and was starting to dip into the blue ocean.
Old Ed came strolling along the beach to his favorite pier. Clutched in his bony hand was a bucket of shrimp. Ed walks out to the end of the pier, where it seems he almost has the world to himself. The glow of the sun is a golden bronze now.
Everybody's gone, except for a few joggers on the beach. Standing out on the end of the pier, Ed is alone with his thoughts...and his bucket of shrimp.
Before long, however, he is no longer alone. Up in the sky a thousand white dots come screeching and squawking, winging their way toward that lanky frame standing there on the end of the pier.
Before long, dozens of seagulls have enveloped him, their wings fluttering and flapping wildly. Ed stands there tossing shrimp to the hungry birds.
As he does, if you listen closely, you can hear him say with a smile, 'Thank you. Thank you.'
In a few short minutes the bucket is empty. But Ed doesn't leave.
He stands there lost in thought, as though transported to another time and place.
When he finally turns around and begins to walk back toward the beach, a few of the birds hop along the pier with him until he gets to the stairs, and then they, too, fly away. And old Ed quietly makes his way down to the end of the beach and on home.
If you were sitting there on the pier with your fishing line in the water, Ed might seem like 'a funny old duck,' as my dad used to say. Or, to onlookers, he's just another old codger, lost in his own weird world, feeding the seagulls with a bucket full of shrimp.
To the onlooker, rituals can look either very strange or very empty.
They can seem altogether unimportant ... maybe even a lot of nonsense.
Old folks often do strange things, at least in the eyes of Boomers and Busters.
Most of them would probably write Old Ed off, down there in Florida.
That's too bad. They'd do well to know him better.
His full name: Eddie Rickenbacker. He was a famous hero in World War I, and then he was in WWII. On one of his flying missions across the Pacific, he and his seven-member crew went down. Miraculously, all of the men survived, crawled out of their plane, and climbed into a life raft.
Captain Rickenbacker and his crew floated for days on the rough waters of the Pacific. They fought the sun. They fought sharks. Most of all, they fought hunger and thirst. By the eighth day their rations ran out.
No food. No water. They were hundreds of miles from land and no one knew where they were or even if they were alive. Every day across America millions wondered and prayed that Eddie Rickenbacker might somehow be found alive.
The men adrift needed a miracle. That afternoon they had a simple devotional service and prayed for a miracle. They tried to nap. Eddie leaned back and pulled his military cap over his nose. Time dragged on.
All he could hear was the slap of the waves against the raft...
Suddenly, Eddie felt something land on the top of his cap.
It was a seagull!
Old Ed would later describe how he sat perfectly still, planning his next move. With a flash of his hand and a squawk from the gull, he managed to grab it and wring its neck. He tore the feathers off, and he and his starving crew made a meal of it - a very slight meal for eight men. Then they used the intestines for bait. With it, they caught fish, which gave them food and more bait . . . and the cycle continued. With that simple survival technique, they were able to endure the rigors of the sea until they were found and
rescued after 24 days at sea.
Eddie Rickenbacker lived many years beyond that ordeal, but he never forgot the sacrifice of that first life-saving seagull... And he never stopped saying, 'Thank you.' That's why almost every Friday night he would walk to the end of the pier with a bucket full of shrimp and a heart full of gratitude.
Reference:
(Max Lucado, "In The Eye of the Storm", pp..221, 225-226)
PS: Eddie Rickenbacker was born and raised in Columbus, Ohio and the founder of Eastern Airlines.
Before WWI he was race car driver. In WWI he was a pilot and became America's first ace.
In WWII he was an instructor and military adviser, and he flew missions with the combat pilots.
Eddie Rickenbacker is a true American hero. And now you know another story about the trials and sacrifices that brave men have endured for your freedom.
You've got to be careful with old guys…
You just never know what they have done during their lifetime.
“A man who works with his hands is a laborer; a man who works with his hands and his brain is a craftsman; but a man who works with his hands and his brain and his heart is an artist.”
"Education is not the accumulation of knowledge, but the ability to find it."
“True religion is the life we lead, not the creed we profess.”
“Words of comfort, skillfully administered, are the oldest therapy known to man.”
"When a man points a finger at someone else, he should remember that four of his fingers are pointing at himself."
"In cross examination, as in fishing, nothing is more ungainly than a fisherman pulled into the water by his catch."
Mike was going to be married to Jane,
so his father sat him down for a little chat.
He said, ‘Mike, let me tell you
something. On my wedding night in our honeymoon suite, I took off my pants,
handed them to your mother, and said, 'Here, try these on!
She did and said, 'These are too big,
I can’t wear them.’
I replied, 'Exactly, I wear the pants
in this family and I always will.’ Ever since that night we have never had any
problems.
“Hmmm,’ said Mike. He thought that
might be good thing to try. On his honeymoon, Mike took off his pants and said
to Jane,
'Here try these on.’
She tried them on and said, 'These
are too large, they don’t fit me.
'Mike said, 'Exactly, I wear the
pants in this family, and I always will. I don’t want you to ever forget that.
Then Jane took off her pants, and
handed them to Mike. She said, 'Here, you try on mine.’
He did and said, 'I can’t get into
your pants.’
Jane said, 'Exactly. And if you don’t
change your smart ass attitude, you never will.”
The chaos now enveloping what’s left of the Grand Old party after four years of catering to an unstable president
is theirs to own. Where conservatism once served as a moderating force — gently
braking liberalism’s boundless enthusiasm — the former home of ordered liberty
has become a halfway house for ruffians, insurrectionists and renegade warriors.”
Have A Great Day.. J.T.
THE OPINIONS EXPRESSED IN THIS BLOG MAY OR MAYNOT BE MINE...
“We must not wish for the disappearance of our troubles but for the grace to transform them.”
“Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.”
“If we look down into ourselves, we find that we possess exactly what we desire.”
“Human beings are so made that the ones who do the crushing feel nothing; it is the person crushed who feels what is happening. Unless one has placed oneself on the side of the oppressed, to feel with them, one cannot understand.”
“Compassion directed toward oneself is true humility.”
“Imagination and fiction make up more than three quarters of our real life.”
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