Awesome Story
Author: Ken Gaub
At the time I was driving on 1-75 near Dayton, Ohio, with my wife and children. We turned off the highway for a rest and refreshment stop. My wife, Barbara, and children went into the restaurant. I suddenly felt the need to stretch my legs, so waved them off ahead saying I’d join them later.
I bought a soft drink, and as I walked toward a Dairy Queen, feelings of self pity enshrouded my mind. I loved the Lord and my ministry, but I felt drained, burdened. My cup was empty.
Suddenly, the impatient ringing of a telephone nearby jarred me out of my doldrums. It was coming from a phone booth at a service station on the corner. Wasn’t anyone going to answer the phone? Noise from the traffic flowing through the busy intersection must have drowned out the sound because the service station attendant continued looking after his customers, oblivious to the incessant ringing.
“Why doesn’t somebody answer that phone?” I muttered. I began reasoning. It may be important. What if it’s an emergency? Curiosity overcame my indifference. I stepped inside the booth and picked up the phone.
“Hello,” I said casually and took a big sip of my drink. The operator said: “Long distance call for Ken Gaub.” My eyes widened, and I almost choked on a chunk of ice.
Swallowing hard, I said, “You’re crazy!” Then, realizing I shouldn’t speak to an operator like that, I added, “This can’t be! I was walking down the road, not bothering anyone, and the phone was ringing....”
“Is Ken Gaub there?” the operator interrupted, “I have a long distance call for him.”
It took a moment to gain control of my babbling, but I finally replied, “Yes, he is here.” Searching for a possible explanation, wondered if I could possibly be on Candid Camera!
Still shaken, perplexed, I asked, “How in the world did you reach me here? I was walking down the road, the pay phone started ringing, and I just answered it by chance. You can’t mean me.”
“Well,” the operator asked, “is Mr. Gaub there or isn’t he?”
“Yes, I am Ken Gaub,” I said, finally convinced by the tone of her voice that the call was real.
Then, I heard another voice say, “Yes, that’s him, operator. That’s Ken Gaub.”
I listened dumbfounded to a strange voice identify herself. “I’m Millie from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. You don’t know me, Mr. Gaub, but I’m desperate. Please help me.”
“What can I do for you?”
She began weeping. Finally, she regained control and continued, “I was about to commit suicide, had just finished writing a note, when I began to pray and tell God I really didn’t want to do this. Then, I suddenly remembered seeing you on television and thought if I could just talk to you, you could help me. I knew that was impossible because I didn’t know how to reach you: I didn’t know anyone who could help me find you. Then, some numbers came to my mind, and I scribbled them down.”
At this point she began weeping again, and I prayed silently for wisdom to help her. She continued, “I looked at the numbers and thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be wonderful if I had a miracle from God, and He has given me Ken’s phone number?’ I decided to try calling it. I can’t believe I’m talking to you.
Are you in your office in California?”
I replied, “Lady, I don’t have an office in California. My office is in
Yakima, Washington.”
A little surprised, she asked, “Oh, really, then where are you?”
“Don’t you know?” I responded. “You made the call.”
She explained, “...but I don’t even know what area I’m calling. I just dialed the number that I had on this paper.”
“Ma’am, you won’t believe this, but I’m in a phone booth in Dayton, Ohio!”
“Really?” she exclaimed. “Well, what are you doing there?”
I kidded her gently, “Well, I’m answering the phone. It was ringing as I walked by; so, I answered it.”
Knowing this encounter could only have been arranged by God, I began to counsel the woman. As she told me of her despair and frustration, the presence of the Holy Spirit flooded the phone booth giving me words of wisdom beyond my ability. In a matter of moments, she prayed the sinner’s prayer and met the One who would lead her out of her situation into a new life.
I walked away from that telephone booth with an electrifying sense of our heavenly Father’s concern for each of His children. What were the astronomical odds of this happening? With all the millions of phones and innumerable combinations of numbers, only an all-knowing God could have caused that woman to call that number in that phone booth at that moment in time.
Forgetting my drink and nearly bursting with exhilaration, I headed back to my family, wondering if they would believe my story. “Maybe I had better not tell this,” I thought, but I couldn’t contain it. “Barb, you won’t believe this: God knows where I am!”
“Call unto me, and I will answer thee, and shew thee great and mighty things, which thou knowest not.” –Jeremiah 33:3
“Roep My aan, en Ek sal jou antwoord en jou bekend maak groot en ondeurgrondelike dinge wat jy nie weet nie.” –Jeremiah 33:3
Monday, 18 October 2010
Prevention and cure for colds etc....
Onion Health
Onions are very effective against cold symptoms, coughs and asthma, as well as helping with insomnia, and repelling insects.
An open jar containing an onion, left beside the bed, will help with breathing, relaxation, and restful sleep as well as reducing snoring, wheezing and coughing. With the added benefit of keeping insects at bay!
The stronger tasting onions have a higher nutrient content than the sweeter, smoother tasting type. Shallots have proved to be the most health giving type of onion, having up to 6 times more of the health giving components than other onions.
The oligomers in onions help the growth of healthy bifidobacteria and fight harmful bacteria, especially in the colon, and help reduce the risk of tumours, and colon and stomach cancer.
Onions are rich in flavonoids, which protect against cardiovascular disease, and their sulphur content also helps prevent clumping of platelets.
Onions are helpful in lowering the risk of blood clots, which makes them useful in fighting cardiovascular disease.
These pungent vegetables are rich in vitamin C, making them helpful with fighting colds, and also in chromium, helping cells respond to insulin, and lowering blood sugars.
Onions are also active in keeping levels of cholesterol and triglycerides balanced, increasing the good HDL, and decreasing LDL levels, thus preventing arteriosclerosis, heart attack and stroke.
Regular consumption of onion, like its cousin the garlic, will greatly reduce the risk of cancer in various forms, including: larynx, pharynx, oesophagus, oral cavity, breast, ovaries, prostate, renal, colon and stomach.
Onions rival milk for maintaining bone health, making them especially beneficial for women, particularly at menopausal age, to prevent osteoporosis.
Apart from their vitamin C content, onions have chromium, dietary fibre, manganese, vitamins A and B6, folate, potassium, molybdenum, copper, phosphorus, calcium and iron.
Onion is known to be a powerful antiseptic, and an onion paste was widely used in World War II to help close wounds and ease pain.
The many functions of the onion include:
Anaemia
Because of its high content of iron, the onion is extremely helpful in the treatment of anaemia
Anticoagulant
Just one small onion a day, makes a big difference to cholesterol levels, so helping to prevent heart disease.
Anti-inflammatory
The natural anti-inflammatory in onions help to relieve symptoms in arthritis and gout, among other inflammatory diseases.
Antiseptic
A natural antiseptic, onion fights bacteria in the digestive system, including E. coli and salmonella, as well as bacteria in the respiratory system, making it effective against tuberculosis bronchitis etc. Onion is also effective against infections of the urinary tract (UTIs) including cystitis.
For treating UTIs, boil some onion in water, let the water reduce by about half, strain and leave to cool. Drunk cold, this will help relieve irritation and burning.
Blood Pressure and Cholesterol
Both raw and cooked onions help in lowering BP, as well as thinning blood, dissolving clots, and clearing fats, cholesterol and triglycerides from the bloodstream.
Cancer
Apart from helping prevent cancer in the stomach and colon, will also relieve constipation and flatulence. Helpful in most stomach problems, in fact.
Hearing
Some cultures use onion juice on cotton wool to help against tinnitis, or 'ringing' in the ear.
Onion juice has also been claimed to promote hair growth, when applied to the scalp, although this has not been proven.
Osteoporosis
Onions have proved helpful in strengthening of bones, and the prevention of bone breakdown.
Respiration
Onion juice mixed with honey helps to break down mucus, thus helping against coughs and colds, and respiratory problems. Also useful in fighting infection, reduce fever, and other flu symptoms. This mixture is particularly helpful with asthma, taken three or four times a day will help to stave off attacks.
Many people who find onions irritate their eyes, will run them under cold water to cut them, but this can wash away a lot of the benefits. Better to chill onions in the fridge, or a couple of minutes in the freezer, before cutting, and use a very sharp knife which will cut through with less 'squirting'.
So in answer to the question "how healthy are onions?" The response is "Extremely! Very! Amazingly!"
Like anything else, they are much more beneficial in their raw state, but still retain their goodness when cooked, provided you don't overcook. Many people cannot take raw onions to their system, for whatever reason, but lightly cooking is okay. Cooking them until they are soft and opaque, they are still beneficial. Fried until brown and starting to crisp, they've lost a lot. Adding them to stews and soups is fine as the nutrients remain in the dish.
Add onions to your diet as often as you can, and reap the benefits. You will find the way that you like best to eat them, and you are only doing your body good.
Onions are very effective against cold symptoms, coughs and asthma, as well as helping with insomnia, and repelling insects.
An open jar containing an onion, left beside the bed, will help with breathing, relaxation, and restful sleep as well as reducing snoring, wheezing and coughing. With the added benefit of keeping insects at bay!
The stronger tasting onions have a higher nutrient content than the sweeter, smoother tasting type. Shallots have proved to be the most health giving type of onion, having up to 6 times more of the health giving components than other onions.
The oligomers in onions help the growth of healthy bifidobacteria and fight harmful bacteria, especially in the colon, and help reduce the risk of tumours, and colon and stomach cancer.
Onions are rich in flavonoids, which protect against cardiovascular disease, and their sulphur content also helps prevent clumping of platelets.
Onions are helpful in lowering the risk of blood clots, which makes them useful in fighting cardiovascular disease.
These pungent vegetables are rich in vitamin C, making them helpful with fighting colds, and also in chromium, helping cells respond to insulin, and lowering blood sugars.
Onions are also active in keeping levels of cholesterol and triglycerides balanced, increasing the good HDL, and decreasing LDL levels, thus preventing arteriosclerosis, heart attack and stroke.
Regular consumption of onion, like its cousin the garlic, will greatly reduce the risk of cancer in various forms, including: larynx, pharynx, oesophagus, oral cavity, breast, ovaries, prostate, renal, colon and stomach.
Onions rival milk for maintaining bone health, making them especially beneficial for women, particularly at menopausal age, to prevent osteoporosis.
Apart from their vitamin C content, onions have chromium, dietary fibre, manganese, vitamins A and B6, folate, potassium, molybdenum, copper, phosphorus, calcium and iron.
Onion is known to be a powerful antiseptic, and an onion paste was widely used in World War II to help close wounds and ease pain.
The many functions of the onion include:
Anaemia
Because of its high content of iron, the onion is extremely helpful in the treatment of anaemia
Anticoagulant
Just one small onion a day, makes a big difference to cholesterol levels, so helping to prevent heart disease.
Anti-inflammatory
The natural anti-inflammatory in onions help to relieve symptoms in arthritis and gout, among other inflammatory diseases.
Antiseptic
A natural antiseptic, onion fights bacteria in the digestive system, including E. coli and salmonella, as well as bacteria in the respiratory system, making it effective against tuberculosis bronchitis etc. Onion is also effective against infections of the urinary tract (UTIs) including cystitis.
For treating UTIs, boil some onion in water, let the water reduce by about half, strain and leave to cool. Drunk cold, this will help relieve irritation and burning.
Blood Pressure and Cholesterol
Both raw and cooked onions help in lowering BP, as well as thinning blood, dissolving clots, and clearing fats, cholesterol and triglycerides from the bloodstream.
Cancer
Apart from helping prevent cancer in the stomach and colon, will also relieve constipation and flatulence. Helpful in most stomach problems, in fact.
Hearing
Some cultures use onion juice on cotton wool to help against tinnitis, or 'ringing' in the ear.
Onion juice has also been claimed to promote hair growth, when applied to the scalp, although this has not been proven.
Osteoporosis
Onions have proved helpful in strengthening of bones, and the prevention of bone breakdown.
Respiration
Onion juice mixed with honey helps to break down mucus, thus helping against coughs and colds, and respiratory problems. Also useful in fighting infection, reduce fever, and other flu symptoms. This mixture is particularly helpful with asthma, taken three or four times a day will help to stave off attacks.
Many people who find onions irritate their eyes, will run them under cold water to cut them, but this can wash away a lot of the benefits. Better to chill onions in the fridge, or a couple of minutes in the freezer, before cutting, and use a very sharp knife which will cut through with less 'squirting'.
So in answer to the question "how healthy are onions?" The response is "Extremely! Very! Amazingly!"
Like anything else, they are much more beneficial in their raw state, but still retain their goodness when cooked, provided you don't overcook. Many people cannot take raw onions to their system, for whatever reason, but lightly cooking is okay. Cooking them until they are soft and opaque, they are still beneficial. Fried until brown and starting to crisp, they've lost a lot. Adding them to stews and soups is fine as the nutrients remain in the dish.
Add onions to your diet as often as you can, and reap the benefits. You will find the way that you like best to eat them, and you are only doing your body good.
Tuesday, 17 August 2010
Agent of Kindness
Spy specializes in acts of kindness
By Daveen Rae Kurutz, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, August 16, 2010
Most Pittsburghers have never met Laura Miller, but her alter ego, “Secret Agent L,” has touched thousands of people by making their days a little brighter.
An administrative assistant by day, Miller, 32, of Shadyside has masqueraded online as a secret agent of kindness since July 2009, documenting the random gifts she and fellow “agents” have left across the region for strangers to find. Gifts have included fresh picked flowers, $10 gift cards to various shops and inexpensive toiletries.
“It’s another good way to let people know that they aren’t alone,” Miller said. “We’re letting people know there’s someone out there who isn’t buying into the anger and the hate and the yuck that is out in the world. We’re making deliberate choices to do what’s good.”
During the past year, what started with a single purple hydrangea on a windshield, turned into a top secret mission that leaves strangers pleasantly surprised across the globe. Through her blog, Miller’s affiliated agents have gone on hundreds of missions of kindness. They return with the tale and photos of what they did to brighten a stranger’s day.
Miller’s first mission last year was completed as a birthday present for a fellow blogger who asked Miller to perform a random act of kindness in lieu of a gift. Once the creative wheels started turning, Miller paired up with coworker and friend Vivian Lee Croft to execute her plan.
Now, Croft is “Agent 99” to Miller’s “Maxwell Smart” and helps her friend devise and carry out new missions. The pair’s favorite was when they visited Allegheny General Hospital during a breast cancer event, leaving dozens of tiny gifts throughout the hospital.
“People don’t see out of their daily box because they’re so bogged down in life,” said Croft, 33, of the North Side. “(The hospital visit) made the importance of doing good things so real to me.”
Since a story on CNN.com shared her secret identity with the world, Miller’s e-mail inbox has been bulging with messages from people who want to help. Her group of agents has increased from 80 to more than 700 and grows every day. Visitors to her website, www.SecretAgentL.com, can sign up to become affiliated agents and be charged with a gift anonymously for someone.
“The thing that makes me the happiest is all the new affiliated agents that want to come on board,” Croft said. “These people now have worth. They feel like they can make a difference, like they matter.”
Miller is amazed at the amount of people who want to carry on her mission.
Each day, she e-mails dozens of “Secret Agent L” business cards for agents to attach to their gifts. Even a year later, she gets a thrill from leaving a $5 gift card or a blooming flower with a note for a stranger to find.
“You don’t need large sums of money to make a difference in someone’s life, you don’t need to be rich, you don’t need to be famous—you just have to care.”
By Daveen Rae Kurutz, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, August 16, 2010
Most Pittsburghers have never met Laura Miller, but her alter ego, “Secret Agent L,” has touched thousands of people by making their days a little brighter.
An administrative assistant by day, Miller, 32, of Shadyside has masqueraded online as a secret agent of kindness since July 2009, documenting the random gifts she and fellow “agents” have left across the region for strangers to find. Gifts have included fresh picked flowers, $10 gift cards to various shops and inexpensive toiletries.
“It’s another good way to let people know that they aren’t alone,” Miller said. “We’re letting people know there’s someone out there who isn’t buying into the anger and the hate and the yuck that is out in the world. We’re making deliberate choices to do what’s good.”
During the past year, what started with a single purple hydrangea on a windshield, turned into a top secret mission that leaves strangers pleasantly surprised across the globe. Through her blog, Miller’s affiliated agents have gone on hundreds of missions of kindness. They return with the tale and photos of what they did to brighten a stranger’s day.
Miller’s first mission last year was completed as a birthday present for a fellow blogger who asked Miller to perform a random act of kindness in lieu of a gift. Once the creative wheels started turning, Miller paired up with coworker and friend Vivian Lee Croft to execute her plan.
Now, Croft is “Agent 99” to Miller’s “Maxwell Smart” and helps her friend devise and carry out new missions. The pair’s favorite was when they visited Allegheny General Hospital during a breast cancer event, leaving dozens of tiny gifts throughout the hospital.
“People don’t see out of their daily box because they’re so bogged down in life,” said Croft, 33, of the North Side. “(The hospital visit) made the importance of doing good things so real to me.”
Since a story on CNN.com shared her secret identity with the world, Miller’s e-mail inbox has been bulging with messages from people who want to help. Her group of agents has increased from 80 to more than 700 and grows every day. Visitors to her website, www.SecretAgentL.com, can sign up to become affiliated agents and be charged with a gift anonymously for someone.
“The thing that makes me the happiest is all the new affiliated agents that want to come on board,” Croft said. “These people now have worth. They feel like they can make a difference, like they matter.”
Miller is amazed at the amount of people who want to carry on her mission.
Each day, she e-mails dozens of “Secret Agent L” business cards for agents to attach to their gifts. Even a year later, she gets a thrill from leaving a $5 gift card or a blooming flower with a note for a stranger to find.
“You don’t need large sums of money to make a difference in someone’s life, you don’t need to be rich, you don’t need to be famous—you just have to care.”
Sunday, 1 August 2010
Sciatic nerve and other problems... naturally cured, without operation
Please take a look here:
http://www.dorn-method.com/index_files/BreussMassageDornMethod.htm
The Breuss Massage
The Breuss Massage is a very gentle Spinal Massage that safely stretches, nourishes, aligns, energizes and heals our back!
It was developed by the late Austrian Healer Rudolf Breuss and it is a perfect combination with the Dorn Method.
Most Dorn Method Courses also teach the Breuss Massage today.
Rudolf Breuss said that there is no such thing as ‘wear’ if the intervertebral disc but the discs are somewhat ‘degenerated’, and he was convinced that regeneration is possible. Certainly the results achieved with the Breuss Massage suggest that this is quite possible!
For basic understanding: Our Spine is like any other living organism, it is in a constant state of ‘stress and relief’, needs nourishment, rest but also the right amount of ‘stress’ in a sense in form of active movements to maintain its strength and function. During the day our Spine and especially our ‘discs’ are stressed and they need to fulfill their duty as shock-absorbers whenever we stand , walk or sit. Because of that the discs are squeezed, some of the liquid within gets out and the discs gets thinner. We are actually a little shorter in the evening compared to the morning after standing up! During sleep the Spine relaxes and stretches out and the discs somewhat can regenerate by ‘sucking’ the liquid they lost during the day back in, almost like a dry sponge placed in water. This mechanism is altered in a negative way when our metabolism is not in a balance or impaired for many different reasons.
The Breuss Massage is actively replacing in a sense a whole and healthy full night sleep by stretching the Spine and Using natural Oil in the Process the discs are nourished like the sponge given water. In this relaxed state the Spine also can be safely and painless re-aligned.
Healing Techniques further help in the regeneration process and balance the Spinal Energies so Blockages in the Physical as well as in the Psychical and Spiritual Levels are resolved!
I use the Breuss Massage in combination with the Dorn Therapy or as its own standing form of therapy. When the patient has strong sciatic pains or is very tense then I usually do the Breuss Massage before the Dorn Therapy to take away some of the pain and tension which can make the following alignment more effective.
Time required is only about 25 minutes but can easily be longer if you want.
Everybody who learns and experiences the Breuss Massage is convinced that this Massage technique is unique, highly effective, safe and totally relaxing. It has a definite potential to become a often asked for Massage Therapy in Wellness centers, Rehabilitation Facilities, Therapy Centers and other Health Clinics.
Because the Breuss Massage contains some Non Manipulative Healing Techniques it can be a link between Physical and Non Physical Therapies like Healing and bring both Sides closer together, which in turn allows a more ‘wholistic’ approach towards health and well-being.
Procedure:
The patient lies outstretched on the belly with the neck straight, head not tilted to the side if possible. Patient must be reached from both sides. The Spine must be reachable (adjust clothing accordingly). Feet best on a cushion. Maybe a little background music and some decent smell from an aromatherapy lamp.
Try to establish a relaxed atmosphere.
The Masseur stays on the right side of the patient if he/she is right handed and vise versa. With the right hand flat on the Spine and the left hand on top of the right hand strokes are made gentle but firm - NEVER CAUSE PAIN!- from the neck down to the coccyx that finish without any whiplash effect! The Therapist exhales while stroking down the back. This is repeated minimum 10 times. Use very little or no oil first to achieve more friction and therefore more stretching effect.
The second stroke also called pincer grip stretches the Spine even further. The strokes are started in the middle of the spine then the hands move up and downwards. This is also repeated minimum 10 times.
Now these first two strokes are done once more but with lots of Oil applied to the back of the patient. The oil now penetrates and nourishes the Spine effectively after the stretching.
When finished with this the two alignment strokes are applied: First pass down the Spine with the index and middle finger directly next to the Spinous processes using firm but gentle pressure. The left hand adds pressure onto the fingers while stroking downwards. That is repeated 10 times min.
Second stroke: Starting with the hand on the upper hip area they are moved in a heart-shape upwards to meet at the neck but only with light touch, then moving back down, the fingers close together, firm pressure is applied with both middle fingers on the side of the spinous processes. This is done again minimum 10 times.
Now comes the energizing and healing part: Oil is added to the Spine again then a sheet of Silk-paper (Japanese paper) is place onto the Spine with the shiny side towards the body. The therapist passes with a very light touch downwards along the back and when one hand reaches the sacrum the other starts on the neck. This motion almost looks like a harmonious swimming stroke. The paper acts as a capacitor and insulator for the now stirred up energy. This is done for bout a minute or less. Part two of the healing: (Magnetizing) Right handed therapist stand now on the left side of the patient and vise versa, because of the polarity of hand and body.
The Hands are placed on the lower back at the sacrum and lumbar area with very light touch and the hand must not touch each other to avoid a short circuit. The Therapist now channels Live Force (Divine Energy, Love, Light etc.) into the patient for about one minute and then changes hand position upwards to cover the rest of the Back while repeating the procedure. Last position is then with the hand close to neck and the other at the sacrum the fingers pointing downwards.
When the healing is done the therapist wipes the aura (energy field) 3 times by slightly touching the body and another 3 times stroking downwards without touching the body. To finish the therapist imagines a zipper he then closes from the coccyx upwards over the head towards the forehead (third eye). The gratitude is expressed to the Universe (Divine) and the patient.
This ends the Breuss Massage.
The patients still rests while the therapist washes the hands. The paper now is removed and disposed, the remaining oil wiped of and the patient slowly brought back to reality with a last stroke over the sacrum.
Therapist use mostly St. John’s wort oil (in Europe) and her in the tropics I prefer extra virgin coconut oil for this Massage.
In my opinion the Breuss Massage is one of the nicest Massage techniques ever developed and the results are remarkable as well.
For proper conduct please attend a workshop with an authorized Dorn Method Teacher first
http://www.dorn-method.com/index_files/BreussMassageDornMethod.htm
The Breuss Massage
The Breuss Massage is a very gentle Spinal Massage that safely stretches, nourishes, aligns, energizes and heals our back!
It was developed by the late Austrian Healer Rudolf Breuss and it is a perfect combination with the Dorn Method.
Most Dorn Method Courses also teach the Breuss Massage today.
Rudolf Breuss said that there is no such thing as ‘wear’ if the intervertebral disc but the discs are somewhat ‘degenerated’, and he was convinced that regeneration is possible. Certainly the results achieved with the Breuss Massage suggest that this is quite possible!
For basic understanding: Our Spine is like any other living organism, it is in a constant state of ‘stress and relief’, needs nourishment, rest but also the right amount of ‘stress’ in a sense in form of active movements to maintain its strength and function. During the day our Spine and especially our ‘discs’ are stressed and they need to fulfill their duty as shock-absorbers whenever we stand , walk or sit. Because of that the discs are squeezed, some of the liquid within gets out and the discs gets thinner. We are actually a little shorter in the evening compared to the morning after standing up! During sleep the Spine relaxes and stretches out and the discs somewhat can regenerate by ‘sucking’ the liquid they lost during the day back in, almost like a dry sponge placed in water. This mechanism is altered in a negative way when our metabolism is not in a balance or impaired for many different reasons.
The Breuss Massage is actively replacing in a sense a whole and healthy full night sleep by stretching the Spine and Using natural Oil in the Process the discs are nourished like the sponge given water. In this relaxed state the Spine also can be safely and painless re-aligned.
Healing Techniques further help in the regeneration process and balance the Spinal Energies so Blockages in the Physical as well as in the Psychical and Spiritual Levels are resolved!
I use the Breuss Massage in combination with the Dorn Therapy or as its own standing form of therapy. When the patient has strong sciatic pains or is very tense then I usually do the Breuss Massage before the Dorn Therapy to take away some of the pain and tension which can make the following alignment more effective.
Time required is only about 25 minutes but can easily be longer if you want.
Everybody who learns and experiences the Breuss Massage is convinced that this Massage technique is unique, highly effective, safe and totally relaxing. It has a definite potential to become a often asked for Massage Therapy in Wellness centers, Rehabilitation Facilities, Therapy Centers and other Health Clinics.
Because the Breuss Massage contains some Non Manipulative Healing Techniques it can be a link between Physical and Non Physical Therapies like Healing and bring both Sides closer together, which in turn allows a more ‘wholistic’ approach towards health and well-being.
Procedure:
The patient lies outstretched on the belly with the neck straight, head not tilted to the side if possible. Patient must be reached from both sides. The Spine must be reachable (adjust clothing accordingly). Feet best on a cushion. Maybe a little background music and some decent smell from an aromatherapy lamp.
Try to establish a relaxed atmosphere.
The Masseur stays on the right side of the patient if he/she is right handed and vise versa. With the right hand flat on the Spine and the left hand on top of the right hand strokes are made gentle but firm - NEVER CAUSE PAIN!- from the neck down to the coccyx that finish without any whiplash effect! The Therapist exhales while stroking down the back. This is repeated minimum 10 times. Use very little or no oil first to achieve more friction and therefore more stretching effect.
The second stroke also called pincer grip stretches the Spine even further. The strokes are started in the middle of the spine then the hands move up and downwards. This is also repeated minimum 10 times.
Now these first two strokes are done once more but with lots of Oil applied to the back of the patient. The oil now penetrates and nourishes the Spine effectively after the stretching.
When finished with this the two alignment strokes are applied: First pass down the Spine with the index and middle finger directly next to the Spinous processes using firm but gentle pressure. The left hand adds pressure onto the fingers while stroking downwards. That is repeated 10 times min.
Second stroke: Starting with the hand on the upper hip area they are moved in a heart-shape upwards to meet at the neck but only with light touch, then moving back down, the fingers close together, firm pressure is applied with both middle fingers on the side of the spinous processes. This is done again minimum 10 times.
Now comes the energizing and healing part: Oil is added to the Spine again then a sheet of Silk-paper (Japanese paper) is place onto the Spine with the shiny side towards the body. The therapist passes with a very light touch downwards along the back and when one hand reaches the sacrum the other starts on the neck. This motion almost looks like a harmonious swimming stroke. The paper acts as a capacitor and insulator for the now stirred up energy. This is done for bout a minute or less. Part two of the healing: (Magnetizing) Right handed therapist stand now on the left side of the patient and vise versa, because of the polarity of hand and body.
The Hands are placed on the lower back at the sacrum and lumbar area with very light touch and the hand must not touch each other to avoid a short circuit. The Therapist now channels Live Force (Divine Energy, Love, Light etc.) into the patient for about one minute and then changes hand position upwards to cover the rest of the Back while repeating the procedure. Last position is then with the hand close to neck and the other at the sacrum the fingers pointing downwards.
When the healing is done the therapist wipes the aura (energy field) 3 times by slightly touching the body and another 3 times stroking downwards without touching the body. To finish the therapist imagines a zipper he then closes from the coccyx upwards over the head towards the forehead (third eye). The gratitude is expressed to the Universe (Divine) and the patient.
This ends the Breuss Massage.
The patients still rests while the therapist washes the hands. The paper now is removed and disposed, the remaining oil wiped of and the patient slowly brought back to reality with a last stroke over the sacrum.
Therapist use mostly St. John’s wort oil (in Europe) and her in the tropics I prefer extra virgin coconut oil for this Massage.
In my opinion the Breuss Massage is one of the nicest Massage techniques ever developed and the results are remarkable as well.
For proper conduct please attend a workshop with an authorized Dorn Method Teacher first
Wednesday, 16 June 2010
A true story....
Suicide watchman saves scores at death spot
AP, 13 June 2010
A former life insurance salesman has "sold life" to scores of people trying to end it all at Australia's most notorious suicide spot.
In nearly 50 years Don Ritchie, 84, has saved at least 160 people at The Gap, a rocky cliff at the entrance to Sydney Harbour--and he is still on suicide watch.
Lost souls who stood atop the cliff, wondering whether to jump, say their salvation was a soft voice breaking the sound of the wind and the waves, asking: "Why don't you come and have a cup of tea?"
And when they turned to the stranger, they say his smile made them want to live.
Mr Ritchie, who lives across the street from The Gap, is widely regarded as a guardian angel who has shepherded countless people away from the edge.
What some consider grim, Mr Ritchie considers a gift.
"You can't just sit there and watch them," he said, perched on his beloved green leather chair, from which he keeps a watchful eye on the cliff outside.
"You gotta try and save them. It's pretty simple."
Since the 1800s, Australians have flocked to The Gap to end their lives, with little more than a 3ft fence separating them from the edge. Local officials say around one person a week commits suicide there and in January, Woollahra Council applied for nearly £1.2 million government funding to build a higher fence and tighten security.
In the meantime, Mr Ritchie keeps up his voluntary watch. The council recently named him and his wife of 58 years, Moya, 2010's Citizens of the Year.
He has saved 160 people, according to the official tally, but that is only an estimate. Mr Ritchie does not keep count but says he has watched far more walk away from the edge than go over it.
Dianne Gaddin likes to believe Mr Ritchie was at her daughter's side before she jumped in 2005. Though he cannot remember now, she is comforted by the idea that Tracy felt his warmth in her final moments.
"He's an angel," she says. "Most people would be too afraid to do anything and would probably sooner turn away and run away. But he had the courage and the charisma and the care and the magnetism to reach people who were coming to the end of their tether."
Each morning, Mr Ritchie climbs out of bed, pads over to the bedroom window of his modest, two-storey home, and scans the cliff. If he spots anyone standing alone too close to the precipice, he hurries to their side.
Some he speaks to are fighting medical problems, others suffering mental illness.
Sometimes, the ones who jump leave behind reminders of themselves on the edge--notes, wallets, shoes. Mr Ritchie once rushed over to help a man on crutches, but by the time he arrived, the crutches were all that remained.
In his younger years, he would occasionally climb the fence to hold people back while his wife called the police. He would help rescue crews haul up the bodies of those who could not be saved and would invite the rescuers back to his house afterwards for a comforting drink.
It nearly cost him his life once. A chilling picture captured decades ago by a local news photographer shows Mr Ritchie struggling with a woman, inches from the edge. The woman is seen trying to launch herself over the side--with Mr Ritchie the only thing between her and the abyss. Had she been successful, he would have gone over too.
These days, he keeps a safer distance. The council installed security cameras this year and the invention of mobile phones means someone often calls for help before he crosses the street.
But he remains available to lend an ear, though he says he never tries to counsel, advise or pry. He just gives them a warm smile, asks if they would like to talk and invites them back to his house for tea. Sometimes, they join him.
By offering compassion, Mr Ritchie helps those who are suicidal think beyond the terrible present moment, says psychiatrist Gordon Parker, executive director of the Black Dog Institute, a mood disorder research centre that has supported the council's efforts to improve safety at The Gap.
"They often don't want to die, it's more that they want the pain to go away," Mr Parker said. "So anyone that offers kindness or hope has the capacity to help a number of people."
AP, 13 June 2010
A former life insurance salesman has "sold life" to scores of people trying to end it all at Australia's most notorious suicide spot.
In nearly 50 years Don Ritchie, 84, has saved at least 160 people at The Gap, a rocky cliff at the entrance to Sydney Harbour--and he is still on suicide watch.
Lost souls who stood atop the cliff, wondering whether to jump, say their salvation was a soft voice breaking the sound of the wind and the waves, asking: "Why don't you come and have a cup of tea?"
And when they turned to the stranger, they say his smile made them want to live.
Mr Ritchie, who lives across the street from The Gap, is widely regarded as a guardian angel who has shepherded countless people away from the edge.
What some consider grim, Mr Ritchie considers a gift.
"You can't just sit there and watch them," he said, perched on his beloved green leather chair, from which he keeps a watchful eye on the cliff outside.
"You gotta try and save them. It's pretty simple."
Since the 1800s, Australians have flocked to The Gap to end their lives, with little more than a 3ft fence separating them from the edge. Local officials say around one person a week commits suicide there and in January, Woollahra Council applied for nearly £1.2 million government funding to build a higher fence and tighten security.
In the meantime, Mr Ritchie keeps up his voluntary watch. The council recently named him and his wife of 58 years, Moya, 2010's Citizens of the Year.
He has saved 160 people, according to the official tally, but that is only an estimate. Mr Ritchie does not keep count but says he has watched far more walk away from the edge than go over it.
Dianne Gaddin likes to believe Mr Ritchie was at her daughter's side before she jumped in 2005. Though he cannot remember now, she is comforted by the idea that Tracy felt his warmth in her final moments.
"He's an angel," she says. "Most people would be too afraid to do anything and would probably sooner turn away and run away. But he had the courage and the charisma and the care and the magnetism to reach people who were coming to the end of their tether."
Each morning, Mr Ritchie climbs out of bed, pads over to the bedroom window of his modest, two-storey home, and scans the cliff. If he spots anyone standing alone too close to the precipice, he hurries to their side.
Some he speaks to are fighting medical problems, others suffering mental illness.
Sometimes, the ones who jump leave behind reminders of themselves on the edge--notes, wallets, shoes. Mr Ritchie once rushed over to help a man on crutches, but by the time he arrived, the crutches were all that remained.
In his younger years, he would occasionally climb the fence to hold people back while his wife called the police. He would help rescue crews haul up the bodies of those who could not be saved and would invite the rescuers back to his house afterwards for a comforting drink.
It nearly cost him his life once. A chilling picture captured decades ago by a local news photographer shows Mr Ritchie struggling with a woman, inches from the edge. The woman is seen trying to launch herself over the side--with Mr Ritchie the only thing between her and the abyss. Had she been successful, he would have gone over too.
These days, he keeps a safer distance. The council installed security cameras this year and the invention of mobile phones means someone often calls for help before he crosses the street.
But he remains available to lend an ear, though he says he never tries to counsel, advise or pry. He just gives them a warm smile, asks if they would like to talk and invites them back to his house for tea. Sometimes, they join him.
By offering compassion, Mr Ritchie helps those who are suicidal think beyond the terrible present moment, says psychiatrist Gordon Parker, executive director of the Black Dog Institute, a mood disorder research centre that has supported the council's efforts to improve safety at The Gap.
"They often don't want to die, it's more that they want the pain to go away," Mr Parker said. "So anyone that offers kindness or hope has the capacity to help a number of people."
Tuesday, 15 June 2010
How can we do this? Do you know?
Does anyone have an idea how we can do this?
Last night these thoughts came to me and I want to ask you for your help and thoughts:
Can´t we all see the clouds gathering on the horizon, some being even near and above?
They will break eventually, and we can hear already the thunder in some places. We have also heard from the seers, different faiths and predictions that a great storm is to be expected sooner or later, a lot depending on peoples decisions and prayers.
Now my big question and concern lately has been, what can we do to prepare? What needs to be done to be ready and able to survive these times? When a storm is coming we take an umbrella when we go out, we fasten the ropes and make sure things can´t fly away, fall, and or be damaged by the wind and rains. A friend told me how they had in Germany such a storm recently that the big living room windows were bending and she was afraid that they would break!
Yesterday I watched the movie “Josef” about the amazing life of this patriarch and servant of God in good and bad times. He was used of God to save many lives from famine by interpreting the dreams of Pharaoh correctly which gave God’s warning and prepared him for what was to come, collecting during the good years so they had enough during the bad ones.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wQrQk0MODg&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLk_WAP3h9E&feature=related
What does this mean for us? How can we prepare? What do we know of what is to come?
“Surely the Lord God will do nothing but He reveals his secrets unto His servants the prophets.” The Bible tells us. Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon was shown the future in a dream and Daniel the prophet interpreted it. (Daniel chapter 2). So God warns and shows in advance, so we can be prepared if we ask Him how.
In the prophecies of Sarah Hoffmann it talks about visions of the future with people who are prepared!
Let it be us…. Does anyone have an idea how we can do this?
http://www.moneyteachers.org/Hoffman.Prophecy.htm
“….The air seemed to be filled with smoke as many buildings and cities burned and no one put them out. As I looked upon the scene of chaos, destruction and smoke, I noticed that there were these little pockets of light scattered all over the United States. There were, I would guess, about twenty or thirty of them. I noticed that most of these places of light were in the Western part of the United States, with only three or four in the East.
These places of light seemed to shine through the darkness and caught my attention and so I concentrated on them, asking, “what are these things?”
I could then see that they were people who had gathered together and they were on their knees and they were praying. The light was coming from them and I understood that it represented their goodness and love. I understood that they had gathered together for safety and that they cared more for each other than for themselves. Some of the groups were small, with only a hundred people or so, but in other groups there were what seemed several thousand.
I realized that somehow many, if not most of these cities of light had been established just before the disease attack and that they were very organized. It was like they had known what was coming and had prepared for it. I didn’t see who or what had organized them, but I saw many people struggling to get to them with nothing but what they could carry.
These cities of light had food and were sharing their food with those who joined them in their groups. There was peace and safety in the groups. They were living in tents, all kinds of tents, many of which were just blankets, covering poles. I noticed that the gangs left these groups alone, choosing to pick on easier targets and unprotected people. They also preyed on the people who were trying to get to the cities of light. Many people in these cities of light had guns to defend themselves with and so the gangs left them alone but it seemed that the gangs just didn’t want to come against them.”
There are many more prophecies like from Mitar Tarabich, Nostradamus etc.
http://www.futurerevealed.com/future/texts-date-2.htm
We can´t prepare by ignoring the clouds and warnings.
Our best preparation is to be close to and led by God, and to be under His protection.
The safest place is in the will of God.
“See, I am with you always, even until the end of the world.” Jesus said.
Last night these thoughts came to me and I want to ask you for your help and thoughts:
Can´t we all see the clouds gathering on the horizon, some being even near and above?
They will break eventually, and we can hear already the thunder in some places. We have also heard from the seers, different faiths and predictions that a great storm is to be expected sooner or later, a lot depending on peoples decisions and prayers.
Now my big question and concern lately has been, what can we do to prepare? What needs to be done to be ready and able to survive these times? When a storm is coming we take an umbrella when we go out, we fasten the ropes and make sure things can´t fly away, fall, and or be damaged by the wind and rains. A friend told me how they had in Germany such a storm recently that the big living room windows were bending and she was afraid that they would break!
Yesterday I watched the movie “Josef” about the amazing life of this patriarch and servant of God in good and bad times. He was used of God to save many lives from famine by interpreting the dreams of Pharaoh correctly which gave God’s warning and prepared him for what was to come, collecting during the good years so they had enough during the bad ones.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wQrQk0MODg&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLk_WAP3h9E&feature=related
What does this mean for us? How can we prepare? What do we know of what is to come?
“Surely the Lord God will do nothing but He reveals his secrets unto His servants the prophets.” The Bible tells us. Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon was shown the future in a dream and Daniel the prophet interpreted it. (Daniel chapter 2). So God warns and shows in advance, so we can be prepared if we ask Him how.
In the prophecies of Sarah Hoffmann it talks about visions of the future with people who are prepared!
Let it be us…. Does anyone have an idea how we can do this?
http://www.moneyteachers.org/Hoffman.Prophecy.htm
“….The air seemed to be filled with smoke as many buildings and cities burned and no one put them out. As I looked upon the scene of chaos, destruction and smoke, I noticed that there were these little pockets of light scattered all over the United States. There were, I would guess, about twenty or thirty of them. I noticed that most of these places of light were in the Western part of the United States, with only three or four in the East.
These places of light seemed to shine through the darkness and caught my attention and so I concentrated on them, asking, “what are these things?”
I could then see that they were people who had gathered together and they were on their knees and they were praying. The light was coming from them and I understood that it represented their goodness and love. I understood that they had gathered together for safety and that they cared more for each other than for themselves. Some of the groups were small, with only a hundred people or so, but in other groups there were what seemed several thousand.
I realized that somehow many, if not most of these cities of light had been established just before the disease attack and that they were very organized. It was like they had known what was coming and had prepared for it. I didn’t see who or what had organized them, but I saw many people struggling to get to them with nothing but what they could carry.
These cities of light had food and were sharing their food with those who joined them in their groups. There was peace and safety in the groups. They were living in tents, all kinds of tents, many of which were just blankets, covering poles. I noticed that the gangs left these groups alone, choosing to pick on easier targets and unprotected people. They also preyed on the people who were trying to get to the cities of light. Many people in these cities of light had guns to defend themselves with and so the gangs left them alone but it seemed that the gangs just didn’t want to come against them.”
There are many more prophecies like from Mitar Tarabich, Nostradamus etc.
http://www.futurerevealed.com/future/texts-date-2.htm
We can´t prepare by ignoring the clouds and warnings.
Our best preparation is to be close to and led by God, and to be under His protection.
The safest place is in the will of God.
“See, I am with you always, even until the end of the world.” Jesus said.
Friday, 4 June 2010
Be the one
Be The One: Serve
By John Maxwell, June 1, 2010
In life, it's not what happens to you, but what happens in you and through you that counts. When adversity visits your life, you have two choices: to be a victim or to be a victor. Victims allow circumstances to get them down, and they spend their lives asking others to redress the grievances life has dealt them. Victims are needy and demand to be served. Victors, on the other hand, rise above the challenges they encounter. They rebound from life's hardships with newfound strength, and they use their strength in service of those around them.
Juliette Magill Kinzie Gordon was born in 1860 to a wealthy family in Savannah, Georgia. Far from the typical Southern belle, Juliette was willful and tomboyish, always in search of adventure. She was the type of person never to be caught sitting still; she enjoyed trying new things and traveling new places.
In her mid-twenties, the first of a series of misfortunes struck Juliette. Suffering from chronic earaches, she sought medical care, but doctors mistreated her. As a consequence, Juliette lost the majority of her hearing in one ear. The following year, Juliette was married, but as she and the groom exited the ceremony a grain of rice, tossed by a well-wisher, lodged in her good ear. While attempting to remove the grain, a doctor punctured her eardrum, and Juliette lost hearing in her second ear.
For someone who enjoyed an active lifestyle, deafness could have been devastating, but Juliette persevered. She moved to her husband's estate in England where she became a favorite in social circles. Her humor and vivacity made her a sought-after guest and celebrated hostess.
However, Juliette soon crossed paths with tragedy again. Her husband's alcohol abuse and infidelity contributed to the gradual decline of their relationship, and in the middle of divorce proceedings, Juliette's husband died from a stroke. To make matters worse, he bequeathed his substantial estate to his mistress rather than giving it to Juliette.
Having lost her hearing, her husband, and her home, you would have expected Juliette to feel bitter and victimized. However, at this very point in her life, she chose to serve. Somehow, she moved past her own tragic circumstances to see the good she could do for others.
Having befriended Sir Robin Baden-Powell, founder of the Boy Scouts, Juliette became intrigued by the Girl Guides, Britain's sister organization to the Boy Scouts. The Girl Guides program awakened passion in Juliette, reminding her of youthful adventures from days gone by. With the help of Sir Baden-Powell, Juliette returned to the United States with a notion to launch the Girl Scouts.
Over the next 15 years, Juliette devoted her life to pioneering the Girl Scouts of the USA. She founded its inaugural troop, authored its bylaws and handbooks, and solicited its startup funds. Thanks to her tireless recruiting and relentless campaigning, the Girl Scouts program blossomed. The organization was such a source of joy for Juliette that, when diagnosed with cancer, she hid the illness as long as possible in order to continue advancing the scouting movement. While she never had children of her own, by the time of her death Juliette had an "adopted family" of more than 160,000 girl scouts. Her legacy lives on today in the 3.4 million young ladies who belong to local Girl Scout troops in America.
Study may shed light on when it's appropriate to remove wisdom teeth
By Laura Hambleton, The Washington Post, June 1, 2010
Bethesda oral surgeon David Ross studied the X-ray of my 17-year-old daughter's mouth. She had 28 fully grown adult teeth, with long roots, looking pretty straight after a few years of orthodontia. In her upper jaw, though, two errant teeth floated above the rest out of alignment, lurking in the shadows.
"These teeth are completely impacted," said Ross, pointing to where they hid in her upper jaw, to explain his recommendation to pull them. "In this position, they probably aren't going to drop down."
Or they might. And if they do, my daughter would have two perfectly functioning molars at the back of her upper jaw.
But if the teeth don't come through or push through only part way, they might cause problems down the road. Ross showed us the X-ray of a 75-year-old man who left in place a wisdom tooth that was now growing sideways, surrounded by a cyst. The man's jawbone could be in jeopardy, and so the choice was clear: The tooth needed to come out.
For my daughter and me, the decision was not so straightforward. We had to weigh the risks of possibly unnecessary surgery against the advantage of taking the teeth out then, while their roots were less formed and easier to pull, in the hope that she would avoid problems--ranging from infection and damage to adjacent teeth to cysts or even tumors--that might, or might not, happen in the future.
This is the dilemma for those whose wisdom teeth aren't causing them problems.
Dentists often recommend that young people get those teeth pulled, particularly before they head off to college for the first time. Yet, as I discovered when trying to decide what to do with my daughter's two errant teeth, there just aren't any etched-in-stone, must-do rules, good scientific studies or even helpful statistics to indicate when it is reasonable to pull a wisdom tooth and when you can leave it.
A controversial 2007 article in the American Journal of Public Health by retired dentist Jay Friedman likened pulling an asymptomatic wisdom tooth to removing a healthy appendix just to prevent the future possibility of appendicitis. "If there's no evidence to support a surgical procedure, then it should not be done," he said. But others say that there aren't enough data to support that conclusion--or any other at this point.
The National Institutes of Health hopes to fill in some of these statistical and clinical gaps through a study it launched a year ago that is following 750 dental patients in five northwestern states. The study will look at the reasons given by general dentists when they recommend either keeping or pulling third molars and what the patients then decide to do. It will follow those patients for two years after their decision to assess rates of complications, according to Greg Huang, principal investigator for the study and head of the Department of Orthodontics at University of Washington School of Dentistry.
"There isn't any good information about the life cycle of third molars," said Donald DeNucci, a periodontist with NIH'S National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research in Bethesda. "In Great Britain, they have been looking at this closer. They state that if a wisdom tooth has a cavity or is causing swelling of the gum or has periodontal issues, remove it. Then things move into the gray area, where it's not so clear. In Great Britain, the National Health Service now says if impacted wisdom teeth are not causing problems, don't remove them." DeNucci said the NIH study will help oral surgeons and dentists in this country make informed decisions about wisdom teeth based on scientific evidence.
Most people are born with four wisdom teeth, or third molars, which ordinarily begin to come into the mouth between ages 17 and 25. "They are called wisdom teeth, I suppose, because they come in during the late teens and 20s, when a man begins to possess some wisdom," said DeNucci.
Wisdom teeth can become impacted--or trapped in the jawbone, unable to grow above the gum--for a variety of reasons, most commonly for a lack of space or because another tooth is in the way. Or the teeth grow in a skewed manner, sideways in the gum or at a slant toward adjacent teeth.
Chevy Chase dentist Steven Kahan, who has been practicing for 40 years, said: "It is the kind of thing where all of us make a somewhat educated guess. You can't always predict how a tooth will grow. I have one wisdom tooth locked in my upper arch, and it's been there forever. The advice of the oral surgeon when I was in dental school was to leave it alone. I've never had a problem."
Yet it is clear that there can be problems.
"Sometimes a sac forms around a wisdom tooth," said Washington dentist Richard Steinlen, who estimates he has cared for about 4,000 patients a year during his 28-year career. "Mouths are more cyst-prone than other parts of the body. Lots of cysts form around wisdom teeth."
Partially erupted wisdom teeth also create troubles because they are hard to clean, he said. As a result, food can get lodged in the back of the mouth and create a perfect environment for a bacterial infection called pericoronitis, which can cause pressure, pain and swelling. (Antibiotics are often prescribed to treat it.) In addition, partially erupted wisdom teeth are prone to tooth decay.
Thomas Dodson, a professor of oral surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital and author of an April study in the British journal Clinical Evidence that reviewed other studies on impacted wisdom teeth, found that 25 percent of patients who had wisdom teeth without symptoms had periodontal disease on those teeth.
According to Dodson, this shows that the absence of symptoms does not mean the absence of disease. As a result, he said, patients who keep their wisdom teeth should be monitored periodically to assess the health of those teeth.
Often when Dodson tells patients with asymptomatic wisdom teeth that "there are no data" to help them decide whether to pull the teeth, "60 percent elect extraction; 40 percent choose to retain the wisdom teeth and schedule a two-year follow-up visit with me," he said.
Dodson noted that whatever the patient decides, the surgery has become easier.
Still, pulling a wisdom tooth is surgery, and surgery can lead to problems. Wisdom teeth in the upper jaw can be very close to sinuses, which can get perforated during surgery. The lower teeth, meanwhile, lie very close to several nerves; damaging them can cause temporary or even permanent numbness in the lips, tongue or chin.
"But the most common complication is infection," Dodson said, and "that happens one in 20 times. Then there can be postoperative bleeding, nerve injury and a host of rare complications, such as a possible break in the jaw. Dry socket [which occurs when the blood clot that is left after a tooth is pulled dislodges and the bone is exposed] and infection can be as high as one in 20."
By John Maxwell, June 1, 2010
In life, it's not what happens to you, but what happens in you and through you that counts. When adversity visits your life, you have two choices: to be a victim or to be a victor. Victims allow circumstances to get them down, and they spend their lives asking others to redress the grievances life has dealt them. Victims are needy and demand to be served. Victors, on the other hand, rise above the challenges they encounter. They rebound from life's hardships with newfound strength, and they use their strength in service of those around them.
Juliette Magill Kinzie Gordon was born in 1860 to a wealthy family in Savannah, Georgia. Far from the typical Southern belle, Juliette was willful and tomboyish, always in search of adventure. She was the type of person never to be caught sitting still; she enjoyed trying new things and traveling new places.
In her mid-twenties, the first of a series of misfortunes struck Juliette. Suffering from chronic earaches, she sought medical care, but doctors mistreated her. As a consequence, Juliette lost the majority of her hearing in one ear. The following year, Juliette was married, but as she and the groom exited the ceremony a grain of rice, tossed by a well-wisher, lodged in her good ear. While attempting to remove the grain, a doctor punctured her eardrum, and Juliette lost hearing in her second ear.
For someone who enjoyed an active lifestyle, deafness could have been devastating, but Juliette persevered. She moved to her husband's estate in England where she became a favorite in social circles. Her humor and vivacity made her a sought-after guest and celebrated hostess.
However, Juliette soon crossed paths with tragedy again. Her husband's alcohol abuse and infidelity contributed to the gradual decline of their relationship, and in the middle of divorce proceedings, Juliette's husband died from a stroke. To make matters worse, he bequeathed his substantial estate to his mistress rather than giving it to Juliette.
Having lost her hearing, her husband, and her home, you would have expected Juliette to feel bitter and victimized. However, at this very point in her life, she chose to serve. Somehow, she moved past her own tragic circumstances to see the good she could do for others.
Having befriended Sir Robin Baden-Powell, founder of the Boy Scouts, Juliette became intrigued by the Girl Guides, Britain's sister organization to the Boy Scouts. The Girl Guides program awakened passion in Juliette, reminding her of youthful adventures from days gone by. With the help of Sir Baden-Powell, Juliette returned to the United States with a notion to launch the Girl Scouts.
Over the next 15 years, Juliette devoted her life to pioneering the Girl Scouts of the USA. She founded its inaugural troop, authored its bylaws and handbooks, and solicited its startup funds. Thanks to her tireless recruiting and relentless campaigning, the Girl Scouts program blossomed. The organization was such a source of joy for Juliette that, when diagnosed with cancer, she hid the illness as long as possible in order to continue advancing the scouting movement. While she never had children of her own, by the time of her death Juliette had an "adopted family" of more than 160,000 girl scouts. Her legacy lives on today in the 3.4 million young ladies who belong to local Girl Scout troops in America.
Study may shed light on when it's appropriate to remove wisdom teeth
By Laura Hambleton, The Washington Post, June 1, 2010
Bethesda oral surgeon David Ross studied the X-ray of my 17-year-old daughter's mouth. She had 28 fully grown adult teeth, with long roots, looking pretty straight after a few years of orthodontia. In her upper jaw, though, two errant teeth floated above the rest out of alignment, lurking in the shadows.
"These teeth are completely impacted," said Ross, pointing to where they hid in her upper jaw, to explain his recommendation to pull them. "In this position, they probably aren't going to drop down."
Or they might. And if they do, my daughter would have two perfectly functioning molars at the back of her upper jaw.
But if the teeth don't come through or push through only part way, they might cause problems down the road. Ross showed us the X-ray of a 75-year-old man who left in place a wisdom tooth that was now growing sideways, surrounded by a cyst. The man's jawbone could be in jeopardy, and so the choice was clear: The tooth needed to come out.
For my daughter and me, the decision was not so straightforward. We had to weigh the risks of possibly unnecessary surgery against the advantage of taking the teeth out then, while their roots were less formed and easier to pull, in the hope that she would avoid problems--ranging from infection and damage to adjacent teeth to cysts or even tumors--that might, or might not, happen in the future.
This is the dilemma for those whose wisdom teeth aren't causing them problems.
Dentists often recommend that young people get those teeth pulled, particularly before they head off to college for the first time. Yet, as I discovered when trying to decide what to do with my daughter's two errant teeth, there just aren't any etched-in-stone, must-do rules, good scientific studies or even helpful statistics to indicate when it is reasonable to pull a wisdom tooth and when you can leave it.
A controversial 2007 article in the American Journal of Public Health by retired dentist Jay Friedman likened pulling an asymptomatic wisdom tooth to removing a healthy appendix just to prevent the future possibility of appendicitis. "If there's no evidence to support a surgical procedure, then it should not be done," he said. But others say that there aren't enough data to support that conclusion--or any other at this point.
The National Institutes of Health hopes to fill in some of these statistical and clinical gaps through a study it launched a year ago that is following 750 dental patients in five northwestern states. The study will look at the reasons given by general dentists when they recommend either keeping or pulling third molars and what the patients then decide to do. It will follow those patients for two years after their decision to assess rates of complications, according to Greg Huang, principal investigator for the study and head of the Department of Orthodontics at University of Washington School of Dentistry.
"There isn't any good information about the life cycle of third molars," said Donald DeNucci, a periodontist with NIH'S National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research in Bethesda. "In Great Britain, they have been looking at this closer. They state that if a wisdom tooth has a cavity or is causing swelling of the gum or has periodontal issues, remove it. Then things move into the gray area, where it's not so clear. In Great Britain, the National Health Service now says if impacted wisdom teeth are not causing problems, don't remove them." DeNucci said the NIH study will help oral surgeons and dentists in this country make informed decisions about wisdom teeth based on scientific evidence.
Most people are born with four wisdom teeth, or third molars, which ordinarily begin to come into the mouth between ages 17 and 25. "They are called wisdom teeth, I suppose, because they come in during the late teens and 20s, when a man begins to possess some wisdom," said DeNucci.
Wisdom teeth can become impacted--or trapped in the jawbone, unable to grow above the gum--for a variety of reasons, most commonly for a lack of space or because another tooth is in the way. Or the teeth grow in a skewed manner, sideways in the gum or at a slant toward adjacent teeth.
Chevy Chase dentist Steven Kahan, who has been practicing for 40 years, said: "It is the kind of thing where all of us make a somewhat educated guess. You can't always predict how a tooth will grow. I have one wisdom tooth locked in my upper arch, and it's been there forever. The advice of the oral surgeon when I was in dental school was to leave it alone. I've never had a problem."
Yet it is clear that there can be problems.
"Sometimes a sac forms around a wisdom tooth," said Washington dentist Richard Steinlen, who estimates he has cared for about 4,000 patients a year during his 28-year career. "Mouths are more cyst-prone than other parts of the body. Lots of cysts form around wisdom teeth."
Partially erupted wisdom teeth also create troubles because they are hard to clean, he said. As a result, food can get lodged in the back of the mouth and create a perfect environment for a bacterial infection called pericoronitis, which can cause pressure, pain and swelling. (Antibiotics are often prescribed to treat it.) In addition, partially erupted wisdom teeth are prone to tooth decay.
Thomas Dodson, a professor of oral surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital and author of an April study in the British journal Clinical Evidence that reviewed other studies on impacted wisdom teeth, found that 25 percent of patients who had wisdom teeth without symptoms had periodontal disease on those teeth.
According to Dodson, this shows that the absence of symptoms does not mean the absence of disease. As a result, he said, patients who keep their wisdom teeth should be monitored periodically to assess the health of those teeth.
Often when Dodson tells patients with asymptomatic wisdom teeth that "there are no data" to help them decide whether to pull the teeth, "60 percent elect extraction; 40 percent choose to retain the wisdom teeth and schedule a two-year follow-up visit with me," he said.
Dodson noted that whatever the patient decides, the surgery has become easier.
Still, pulling a wisdom tooth is surgery, and surgery can lead to problems. Wisdom teeth in the upper jaw can be very close to sinuses, which can get perforated during surgery. The lower teeth, meanwhile, lie very close to several nerves; damaging them can cause temporary or even permanent numbness in the lips, tongue or chin.
"But the most common complication is infection," Dodson said, and "that happens one in 20 times. Then there can be postoperative bleeding, nerve injury and a host of rare complications, such as a possible break in the jaw. Dry socket [which occurs when the blood clot that is left after a tooth is pulled dislodges and the bone is exposed] and infection can be as high as one in 20."
Tuesday, 11 May 2010
Implants?
Pentagon Looking to Repair Damaged Brains with Implants
Adam Frucci, Gizmodo, May 7, 2010
Pentagon research arm DARPA has handed out about $15 million to various institutions to research new implants that would replace damaged parts of the brain, allowing people to return to normal.
The implants developed by the project will likely be composed of electrodes or optical fibers, and will sit on the surface of the brain. They'll read electrical signals from neurons, and deliver appropriate light pulses to stimulate other brain regions in response. The implants would allow the brain to operate normally, by acting as substitutes for areas that were damaged or "unavailable."
But if we're replacing parts of the brain, is it still the same person? What percentage of the brain can be replaced before the person is more implant than person? 20%? 51%? 95%? Will people be really the same or will they be made more "generic?" Or will the brain adapt to the new implants, retaining the personhood and using the implant to return to normalcy?
Adam Frucci, Gizmodo, May 7, 2010
Pentagon research arm DARPA has handed out about $15 million to various institutions to research new implants that would replace damaged parts of the brain, allowing people to return to normal.
The implants developed by the project will likely be composed of electrodes or optical fibers, and will sit on the surface of the brain. They'll read electrical signals from neurons, and deliver appropriate light pulses to stimulate other brain regions in response. The implants would allow the brain to operate normally, by acting as substitutes for areas that were damaged or "unavailable."
But if we're replacing parts of the brain, is it still the same person? What percentage of the brain can be replaced before the person is more implant than person? 20%? 51%? 95%? Will people be really the same or will they be made more "generic?" Or will the brain adapt to the new implants, retaining the personhood and using the implant to return to normalcy?
Monday, 10 May 2010
Super good programm to feed your soul and ears....
Hi, there!
God Bless You! This is a plug for "NightLight" which you can download, listen to on-line or received by podcast.
The show is 60 minutes long and contains a variety of good music and inspirations. There are also some very interesting interviews.
These shows could be very feeding for you.
"NightLight" has been on air for over 5 years now and is rated as one of the most popular late night shows. This international version can be played on any radio station anywhere as it makes no reference to time or place.
So you may have a desire to try booking it on Christian radio stations in your area. (Secular stations may also take it as part of their Sunday night programming.) We are posting a new show every week and they can download it from our website.
So please do check out 'NightLight" at www.radioactiveproductions.org.
"NightLight" can also be subscribed to as a podcast from TFI site.
With much love and prayers, Simon
God Bless You! This is a plug for "NightLight" which you can download, listen to on-line or received by podcast.
The show is 60 minutes long and contains a variety of good music and inspirations. There are also some very interesting interviews.
These shows could be very feeding for you.
"NightLight" has been on air for over 5 years now and is rated as one of the most popular late night shows. This international version can be played on any radio station anywhere as it makes no reference to time or place.
So you may have a desire to try booking it on Christian radio stations in your area. (Secular stations may also take it as part of their Sunday night programming.) We are posting a new show every week and they can download it from our website.
So please do check out 'NightLight" at www.radioactiveproductions.org.
"NightLight" can also be subscribed to as a podcast from TFI site.
With much love and prayers, Simon
Friday, 7 May 2010
The Butterfly Circus
A beautiful movie, just 20 minutes but long good effect!
Please watch it! It really touched me.
http://www.thedoorpost.com/hope/film/?film=4dd298f102c77b625cf37a9e7744ac68
Please watch it! It really touched me.
http://www.thedoorpost.com/hope/film/?film=4dd298f102c77b625cf37a9e7744ac68
Wednesday, 28 April 2010
Noah's Ark found in Turkey
'Noah's Ark' found in Turkey
The Sun (UK), April 26, 2010
THE remains of Noah's Ark have been discovered 13,000ft up a Turkish mountain, it has been claimed.
A group of Chinese and Turkish evangelical explorers say they have found wooden remains on Mount Ararat in eastern Turkey.
They claim carbon dating proves the relics are 4,800 years old--around the same time the ark was said to be afloat.
Yeung Wing-Cheung, from the Noah's Ark Ministries International research team, said: "It's not 100 per cent that it is Noah's Ark, but we think it is 99.9 per cent that this is it."
He said the structure contained several compartments, some with wooden beams, that they believe were used to house animals.
The group of evangelical archaeologists ruled out an established human settlement on the grounds none have ever been found above 11,000ft in the vicinity, Yeung said.
Local Turkish officials will ask the central government in Ankara to apply for UNESCO World Heritage status so the site can be protected while a major archaeological dig is conducted.
The Sun (UK), April 26, 2010
THE remains of Noah's Ark have been discovered 13,000ft up a Turkish mountain, it has been claimed.
A group of Chinese and Turkish evangelical explorers say they have found wooden remains on Mount Ararat in eastern Turkey.
They claim carbon dating proves the relics are 4,800 years old--around the same time the ark was said to be afloat.
Yeung Wing-Cheung, from the Noah's Ark Ministries International research team, said: "It's not 100 per cent that it is Noah's Ark, but we think it is 99.9 per cent that this is it."
He said the structure contained several compartments, some with wooden beams, that they believe were used to house animals.
The group of evangelical archaeologists ruled out an established human settlement on the grounds none have ever been found above 11,000ft in the vicinity, Yeung said.
Local Turkish officials will ask the central government in Ankara to apply for UNESCO World Heritage status so the site can be protected while a major archaeological dig is conducted.
He knows how to love and how to be loved
Have you ever experienced meeting someone and felt as though you’ve come across a dear friend upon your very first introduction? That’s how it was with Nick. Touring the Taft prison with our Wheels for the World Conference in September of 2006, Nick was at the prison as well, speaking to the inmates. We all were in the dining hall, having lunch. Nick is hard to miss in a crowd, especially when he stands on a table. Born without arms or legs, it’s a very different sight than any of us are accustomed to seeing. But that’s not even what drew me to him, it was his warm smile and his penetrating eyes. He looks deep within. It doesn’t take Nick long to get past an introduction. He’s spent his life avoiding the trivial, getting to the important. I guess when you are born with such an obstacle to overcome, you don’t waste time trying to become proficient at things that in the long run, really don’t matter.
The next day, when he was sitting by the pool, we ended up having lunch together. Surrounded by large tables full of people, we had a good long time for discussion without interruption. It was one of those kinds of conversations that goes beyond the normal every day chit chat that most people are so good at. We got right to the heart of the matter, talking about our faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. During our conversation, I had many spine tingling moments, the kind when you recognize that this is not just a conversation, it is more like a message, a message brought through a man but coming from God, through the power of the Holy Spirit. There were just too many moments of confirmation, too many words that were used which God had already whispered into my heart and right here in front of me was the smallest man I have ever met, delivering one of the largest messages I’ve ever received.
Later, as I thought about our conversation, as I thought about Nick’s life, I realized that every single part of Nick’s physical body, he is putting to use. He doesn’t have the luxury of taping his fingers or swinging his legs off the edge of a chair when he’s bored. What little he has, he uses to maximum capacity. Many of the tasks he must do take every ounce of focus and concentration. Flipping a light switch takes time and effort and the use of a golf club, not just tapping it once but possibly several times until it’s hit properly and the light goes on.
What if every one of us had to live our lives that way? What if in everything the Lord gave us to do, we focused our attention and gave it our best efforts? What if we utilized everything we were given? What if when we are walking through this life, we looked into the eyes of those we pass by, rather than ignoring them because we are too busy to stop and care. What if when we spoke, we did it to get to the heart of the matter, rather than dancing around the cosmetic?
When Nick shared his testimony later that night, he told us that at one point in his life, he feared not being able to show a wife his love, he wouldn’t be able to hold her hand. How would he hug his own children? But then the Lord told him that even though he wouldn’t be able to hold their hands, he would always hold their hearts.
The Lord then gave me a word for Nick, actually, it was more like an understanding and I had to put it into words. At the end of the evening, I shared it with him:
More abundant is the life of a man who has no arms and legs yet chooses to love the Lord with his whole heart than a man who has both limbs and heart yet refuses to love God with either.
Nick has gone into third world countries where people with disabilities are still thought of as cursed and he’s changing the tide with his testimony. This young man, who stands only 3 feet, 3 inches tall may be the one God uses to change that kind of thinking throughout the entire world. He goes into the crowds and asks to be hugged, no one can resist. He says the words, “I love you” and he means it.
I don’t think this young man will ever have to worry about not being able to show his love, his heart is huge.
One of the things I have learned over the last three years, is that Nick Vujicic knows how to show love more deeply through his words, through his eyes, even through his willingness to be loved than we who were given arms and legs because we are the ones who have forgotten how to best use them.
For more information about Nick and his ministry, Life Without Limbs visit: http://www.lifewithoutlimbs.org
The next day, when he was sitting by the pool, we ended up having lunch together. Surrounded by large tables full of people, we had a good long time for discussion without interruption. It was one of those kinds of conversations that goes beyond the normal every day chit chat that most people are so good at. We got right to the heart of the matter, talking about our faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. During our conversation, I had many spine tingling moments, the kind when you recognize that this is not just a conversation, it is more like a message, a message brought through a man but coming from God, through the power of the Holy Spirit. There were just too many moments of confirmation, too many words that were used which God had already whispered into my heart and right here in front of me was the smallest man I have ever met, delivering one of the largest messages I’ve ever received.
Later, as I thought about our conversation, as I thought about Nick’s life, I realized that every single part of Nick’s physical body, he is putting to use. He doesn’t have the luxury of taping his fingers or swinging his legs off the edge of a chair when he’s bored. What little he has, he uses to maximum capacity. Many of the tasks he must do take every ounce of focus and concentration. Flipping a light switch takes time and effort and the use of a golf club, not just tapping it once but possibly several times until it’s hit properly and the light goes on.
What if every one of us had to live our lives that way? What if in everything the Lord gave us to do, we focused our attention and gave it our best efforts? What if we utilized everything we were given? What if when we are walking through this life, we looked into the eyes of those we pass by, rather than ignoring them because we are too busy to stop and care. What if when we spoke, we did it to get to the heart of the matter, rather than dancing around the cosmetic?
When Nick shared his testimony later that night, he told us that at one point in his life, he feared not being able to show a wife his love, he wouldn’t be able to hold her hand. How would he hug his own children? But then the Lord told him that even though he wouldn’t be able to hold their hands, he would always hold their hearts.
The Lord then gave me a word for Nick, actually, it was more like an understanding and I had to put it into words. At the end of the evening, I shared it with him:
More abundant is the life of a man who has no arms and legs yet chooses to love the Lord with his whole heart than a man who has both limbs and heart yet refuses to love God with either.
Nick has gone into third world countries where people with disabilities are still thought of as cursed and he’s changing the tide with his testimony. This young man, who stands only 3 feet, 3 inches tall may be the one God uses to change that kind of thinking throughout the entire world. He goes into the crowds and asks to be hugged, no one can resist. He says the words, “I love you” and he means it.
I don’t think this young man will ever have to worry about not being able to show his love, his heart is huge.
One of the things I have learned over the last three years, is that Nick Vujicic knows how to show love more deeply through his words, through his eyes, even through his willingness to be loved than we who were given arms and legs because we are the ones who have forgotten how to best use them.
For more information about Nick and his ministry, Life Without Limbs visit: http://www.lifewithoutlimbs.org
Sunday, 25 April 2010
dreams...life after life....
Thousands dream about Jesus in Iran
Joel News, 4/22/10
In Tehran, the capital of Iran, thousands of Muslims have become Jesus followers over the last months. They gather illegally in house churches. This is reported by Iranian pastor Mahim Mousapour, living in exile in Germany. Iranian friends have told her that Jesus appeared to people in dreams, and in a number of cases sick people were surprisingly healed.
Khosrow, an Iranian teenager, described his experience vividly as "waves of electricity flowed through my body over and over again. I wept for the first time since I was a child and joy filled my heart."
The new believers in Iran take courage and speak about their faith more publicly. Mousapour estimates that in Tehran alone there are now more than 100,000 Christians.
Clinically dead boy saw grandmother
By Allan Hall, Daily Mail, 19th April 2010
A boy of three claims he saw his great grandmother in heaven while he was clinically dead after falling into a pond.
Paul Eicke came back to life more than three hours after his heart stopped beating.
It is believed he was in the pond at his grandparents' house for several minutes before his grandfather saw him and pulled him out.
His father gave him heart massage and mouth-to-mouth during the ten minutes it took a helicopter to arrive.
Paramedics then took over and Paul was taken the ten-minute journey to hospital. Doctors tried to resuscitate him for hours. They had just given up when, three hours and 18 minutes after he was brought in, Paul's heart started beating independently.
Professor Lothar Schweigerer, director of the Helios Clinic where Paul was taken, said: 'I have never experienced anything like it.
'When children have been underwater for a few minutes they mostly don't make it. This is a most extraordinary case.'
The boy said that while unconscious he saw his great grandmother Emmi, who had turned him back from a gate and urged him to go back to his parents.
Paul said: 'There was a lot of light and I was floating. I came to a gate and I saw Grandma Emmi on the other side.
'She said to me, "What are you doing here Paul? You must go back to mummy and daddy. I will wait for you here."
'I knew I was in heaven. But grandma said I had to come home. She said that I should go back very quickly.
'Heaven looked nice. But I am glad I am back with mummy and daddy now.'
Paul is now back at home in Lychen, north of Berlin in Germany, and there appears to be no sign of brain damage.
Statistics from America show the majority of children who survive drownings--92 per cent--are discovered within two minutes following submersion.
Nearly all who require cardiopulmonary resuscitation die or are left with severe brain injury.
Professor Schweigerer said: 'My doctors were close to saying "we can do no more" after two hours of thorax compression.
'But then suddenly his heart started to beat again ... it was a fantastic miracle.
'I've been doing this job for 30 years and have never seen anything like this. It goes to show the human body is a very resilient organism and you should never give up.'
Joel News, 4/22/10
In Tehran, the capital of Iran, thousands of Muslims have become Jesus followers over the last months. They gather illegally in house churches. This is reported by Iranian pastor Mahim Mousapour, living in exile in Germany. Iranian friends have told her that Jesus appeared to people in dreams, and in a number of cases sick people were surprisingly healed.
Khosrow, an Iranian teenager, described his experience vividly as "waves of electricity flowed through my body over and over again. I wept for the first time since I was a child and joy filled my heart."
The new believers in Iran take courage and speak about their faith more publicly. Mousapour estimates that in Tehran alone there are now more than 100,000 Christians.
Clinically dead boy saw grandmother
By Allan Hall, Daily Mail, 19th April 2010
A boy of three claims he saw his great grandmother in heaven while he was clinically dead after falling into a pond.
Paul Eicke came back to life more than three hours after his heart stopped beating.
It is believed he was in the pond at his grandparents' house for several minutes before his grandfather saw him and pulled him out.
His father gave him heart massage and mouth-to-mouth during the ten minutes it took a helicopter to arrive.
Paramedics then took over and Paul was taken the ten-minute journey to hospital. Doctors tried to resuscitate him for hours. They had just given up when, three hours and 18 minutes after he was brought in, Paul's heart started beating independently.
Professor Lothar Schweigerer, director of the Helios Clinic where Paul was taken, said: 'I have never experienced anything like it.
'When children have been underwater for a few minutes they mostly don't make it. This is a most extraordinary case.'
The boy said that while unconscious he saw his great grandmother Emmi, who had turned him back from a gate and urged him to go back to his parents.
Paul said: 'There was a lot of light and I was floating. I came to a gate and I saw Grandma Emmi on the other side.
'She said to me, "What are you doing here Paul? You must go back to mummy and daddy. I will wait for you here."
'I knew I was in heaven. But grandma said I had to come home. She said that I should go back very quickly.
'Heaven looked nice. But I am glad I am back with mummy and daddy now.'
Paul is now back at home in Lychen, north of Berlin in Germany, and there appears to be no sign of brain damage.
Statistics from America show the majority of children who survive drownings--92 per cent--are discovered within two minutes following submersion.
Nearly all who require cardiopulmonary resuscitation die or are left with severe brain injury.
Professor Schweigerer said: 'My doctors were close to saying "we can do no more" after two hours of thorax compression.
'But then suddenly his heart started to beat again ... it was a fantastic miracle.
'I've been doing this job for 30 years and have never seen anything like this. It goes to show the human body is a very resilient organism and you should never give up.'
Saturday, 24 April 2010
Childrens Vaccines withdrawn because of danger
The FDA Shuts Down Common Infant Vaccine After Startling Discovery
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2010/04/17/major-vaccine-suspended-due-to-contamination-with-pig-virus.aspx
“U.S. federal health authorities recommended … that doctors suspend using Rotarix, one of two vaccines licensed in the U.S. against rotavirus, saying the vaccine is contaminated with material from a pig virus,” CNN reports.
The Rotarix vaccine, which is made by GlaxoSmithKline and was approved by the FDA in 2008, has already been given to about 1 million U.S. children along with 30 million worldwide. The vaccine was found to contain DNA from porcine circovirus 1.
“The FDA learned about the contamination after an academic research team using a novel technique to look for viruses in a range of vaccines found the material in GlaxoSmithKline's product and told the company,” FDA Commissioner Dr. Margaret Hamburg told CNN.
Sources:
CNN March 22, 2010
Dr. Mercola's Comments:
One million U.S. children, and about 30 million worldwide, have already received GlaxoSmithKline’s Rotarix vaccine. Now a research team has discovered it is contaminated with “a substantial amount” of DNA from a pig virus.
What is pig virus DNA doing in a vaccine intended to prevent rotavirus disease, which causes severe diarrhea and dehydration?
It’s anybody’s guess, although CNN reported that GlaxoSmitthKline detected the substance in the cell bank and the seed used to make the vaccine, “suggesting its presence from the early stages of vaccine development.”
It is actually common for vaccines to contain various animal matter, including foreign animal tissues containing genetic material (DNA/RNA), but even FDA Commissioner Dr. Margaret Hamburg told CNN:
"It [Pig virus DNA] should not be in this vaccine product and we want to understand how it got there.
It's not an easy call and we spent many long hours debating the pros and cons but, because we have an alternative product and because the background rates of this disease are not so severe in this country, we felt that the judicious thing to do was to take a pause, to really ask the critical questions about what this material was doing in the vaccine, how it got there."
Disturbing Findings in Rotarix and Two Other Common Childhood Vaccines
Dr. Eric Delwart is the researcher who, along with colleagues, made the discovery of contamination in Rotarix. Their intent was reportedly to “show that live attenuated vaccine only contained the expected viral genomes and no other,” but what they found told a different story.
Using new technology to test eight infectious attenuated viral vaccines, the results showed three of the vaccines contained “unexpected viral sequences”:
1. A measles vaccine was found to contain low levels of the retrovirus avian leukosis virus
2. Rotateq, Merck’s rotavirus vaccine, was found to contain a virus similar to simian (monkey) retrovirus
3. Rotarix (GlaxoSmithKine’s rotavirus vaccine) was found to contain “significant levels” of porcine cirovirus 1
So in their tests, nearly 40 percent of the vaccines they tested contained viral contaminants. The implications of these findings on the alleged safety of the vaccine supply remains to be seen, but clearly there is contamination occurring that was a complete surprise to researchers, health officials and vaccine manufacturers alike.
As Barbara Loe Fisher, founder of the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC), said in her commentary on the Rotarix contamination issue:
“There are lots of questions about how the manufacturer of Rotarix vaccine and the FDA both missed the pig virus DNA contaminating the original seed stock and all doses of Rotarix vaccine given to more than one million American children in the past few years.
Is there state-of-the-art technology that is being used by private laboratories but not by drug companies and the FDA?
Why did the independent team of scientists, who found the contamination, notify the vaccine manufacturer first rather than also immediately reporting their finding directly to the FDA?
What about the significance of finding bird viral DNA in measles vaccine and the monkey viral DNA in RotaTeq vaccine?”
There are clearly a lot of unanswered questions right now. At the very least, it certainly makes you wonder what other “unknown” contaminants are lurking in vaccines. At worst, we could be injecting children with substances that could potentially cause serious health problems down the road.
Animal Ingredients Common in Vaccines
You should know that it is very common for vaccine manufacturers to use cells from animals and birds in their manufacturing process.
To put this in perspective, Barbara Loe Fisher has explained what animal material is par for the course in manufacturing the Rotarix vaccine for your children:
“Rotarix is a genetically engineered vaccine that GSK created by isolating human rotavirus strain infecting a child in Cincinnati and using African Green monkey kidney cells to produce the original viral seed stock from which all Rotarix vaccine has been made.
In the FDA licensing process, Rotarix had to meet certain FDA standards, that included demonstrating the vaccine was not contaminated with, for example TSE (Transmissable Spongiform Encephalopathy or “mad cow” disease, a brain wasting disease) or with cow viruses because bovine (cow) serum was used to prepare the original viral seed stock.
Porcine trypsin, an enzyme in the pancreatic juice of a pig, was also used to make the viral seed stock.”
So the fact that Rotarix contains animal material is not a surprise … it’s the type of animal material, an unexpected variety, that has even the FDA raising their eyebrows.
Why it’s Dangerous to Have Various Animal DNA in Vaccines …
Both the FDA and GlaxoSmithKline spokespeople continue to state that no safety risk has been uncovered from the contamination, at least not yet.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health, said “a substantial amount” of the DNA was found in the vaccine. But, he stressed, “there is no evidence that it causes any disease. … There is no evidence that it ever does anything.”
Dr. Paul Offit added, “The PCV1 virus they found is an orphan virus, i.e., it is not associated with disease”.
Of course there are no studies provided or have ever been done to show this, it doesn’t stop them from making these statements without any facts to back up their safety assurance, despite the fact that SV40 from monkeys has been associated with cancer in multiple studies.
History has shown that it can indeed be very dangerous when an animal virus unintentionally enters the vaccine supply.
During the 1950s and 1960s, the polio vaccine, which is still given in the United States, typically four times during a child's first 16 months of life, was widely contaminated with the monkey virus, SV40, which had gotten into the vaccine during the manufacturing process (monkey kidney cells, where SV40 thrived, were used to develop polio vaccines).
In lab tests, the virus was found to cause several different types of cancer, including brain cancer, and now SV40 is showing up in a variety of human cancers such as lung, brain, bone and lymphatic.
According to the authors of The Virus and the Vaccine: The True Story of a Cancer-Causing Monkey Virus, Contaminated Polio Vaccine, and the Millions of Americans Exposed, leading scientists and government officials turned their heads to repeated studies showing that SV40 was in the vaccine, and even today some well-known agencies are still dismissing study results.
The virus is even showing up in children too young to have received the contaminated vaccine, and some experts are now suggesting the contaminated virus may have been in the polio vaccine up until as late as 1999.
It is because of risks like this that Barbara Loe Fisher said:
“With mounting evidence that cross-species transfer of viruses can occur, the United States should no longer be using animal tissues to produce vaccines.”
This is also the same reason why Donald Miller, a cardiac surgeon and professor of surgery at the University of Washington, suggests in his more User-Friendly Vaccination Schedule that if you choose to get your child vaccinated against polio, you request only an inactivated (dead) virus vaccine that is cultured in human cells, not monkey kidney cells.
The United States no longer uses the live oral polio vaccine, so parents don't really have to ask for the injected version. However, if you live internationally, this is still an issue.
Are the Benefits of Rotarix Worth the Risks?
Even without a potential contamination scare, there are serious risks to every vaccine. So before vaccinating you really need to be certain that the benefits will outweigh those risks.
In the case of Rotarix, along with RotaTeq (a similar vaccine made by Merck), the benefits are very questionable, especially if you live in the United States or another developed country.
Rotavirus is very contagious and does cause more than 500,000 deaths in young children each year, but this is mostly in developing countries. In the United States, rotavirus is responsible for only “several dozen” deaths a year, according to Hamburg.
Typically, when a child in the United States contracts rotavirus, and most do, only rest and fluids are required to recover. This infection also provides natural immunity that will protect your child for life.
As NVIC writes
“The CDC estimates that, by age 3, almost every US child has had a case of rotavirus. Once a child has been infected with a strain of rotavirus, he or she develops antibodies and is either immune for life or has a milder case if infected with that same strain in the future.
Most healthy children, who are infected with several strains of rotavirus in the first few years of life, develop lifelong natural immunity to rotavirus infection.”
The rotavirus vaccine, meanwhile, has shown little benefit for rotavirus rates in the United States. According to NVIC:
“Today, even though almost all US infants receive vaccines for rotavirus, and despite efforts to improve the management of childhood rotavirus-associated diarrhea, hospitalizations of children in the U.S. with the disease have not significantly declined in the past two decades.”
Along with showing little benefit for a disease that is typically entirely treatable with fluids and rest, a recent drug review by the FDA found that Rotarix is associated with a significant increase in pneumonia-related deaths in children, compared to a placebo.
So with this particular vaccine, children are taking on serious risks with what appears to be very little benefit -- and that was before the contamination was uncovered.
The moral of the story?
Whatever you do, please do your homework before subjecting your children to any vaccine. A great way to get started is to simply use the Search Feature at the top of each of my Web pages and search my site as it contains a litany of research on vaccine safety, and the lack thereof.
Related Links:
Pulled Rotavirus Vaccine Proved Dangerous
Vaccine Doctor Given at Least $30 Million Dollars to Push Vaccines
Overlooked Contaminant Found in Donated Blood…
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2010/04/17/major-vaccine-suspended-due-to-contamination-with-pig-virus.aspx
“U.S. federal health authorities recommended … that doctors suspend using Rotarix, one of two vaccines licensed in the U.S. against rotavirus, saying the vaccine is contaminated with material from a pig virus,” CNN reports.
The Rotarix vaccine, which is made by GlaxoSmithKline and was approved by the FDA in 2008, has already been given to about 1 million U.S. children along with 30 million worldwide. The vaccine was found to contain DNA from porcine circovirus 1.
“The FDA learned about the contamination after an academic research team using a novel technique to look for viruses in a range of vaccines found the material in GlaxoSmithKline's product and told the company,” FDA Commissioner Dr. Margaret Hamburg told CNN.
Sources:
CNN March 22, 2010
Dr. Mercola's Comments:
One million U.S. children, and about 30 million worldwide, have already received GlaxoSmithKline’s Rotarix vaccine. Now a research team has discovered it is contaminated with “a substantial amount” of DNA from a pig virus.
What is pig virus DNA doing in a vaccine intended to prevent rotavirus disease, which causes severe diarrhea and dehydration?
It’s anybody’s guess, although CNN reported that GlaxoSmitthKline detected the substance in the cell bank and the seed used to make the vaccine, “suggesting its presence from the early stages of vaccine development.”
It is actually common for vaccines to contain various animal matter, including foreign animal tissues containing genetic material (DNA/RNA), but even FDA Commissioner Dr. Margaret Hamburg told CNN:
"It [Pig virus DNA] should not be in this vaccine product and we want to understand how it got there.
It's not an easy call and we spent many long hours debating the pros and cons but, because we have an alternative product and because the background rates of this disease are not so severe in this country, we felt that the judicious thing to do was to take a pause, to really ask the critical questions about what this material was doing in the vaccine, how it got there."
Disturbing Findings in Rotarix and Two Other Common Childhood Vaccines
Dr. Eric Delwart is the researcher who, along with colleagues, made the discovery of contamination in Rotarix. Their intent was reportedly to “show that live attenuated vaccine only contained the expected viral genomes and no other,” but what they found told a different story.
Using new technology to test eight infectious attenuated viral vaccines, the results showed three of the vaccines contained “unexpected viral sequences”:
1. A measles vaccine was found to contain low levels of the retrovirus avian leukosis virus
2. Rotateq, Merck’s rotavirus vaccine, was found to contain a virus similar to simian (monkey) retrovirus
3. Rotarix (GlaxoSmithKine’s rotavirus vaccine) was found to contain “significant levels” of porcine cirovirus 1
So in their tests, nearly 40 percent of the vaccines they tested contained viral contaminants. The implications of these findings on the alleged safety of the vaccine supply remains to be seen, but clearly there is contamination occurring that was a complete surprise to researchers, health officials and vaccine manufacturers alike.
As Barbara Loe Fisher, founder of the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC), said in her commentary on the Rotarix contamination issue:
“There are lots of questions about how the manufacturer of Rotarix vaccine and the FDA both missed the pig virus DNA contaminating the original seed stock and all doses of Rotarix vaccine given to more than one million American children in the past few years.
Is there state-of-the-art technology that is being used by private laboratories but not by drug companies and the FDA?
Why did the independent team of scientists, who found the contamination, notify the vaccine manufacturer first rather than also immediately reporting their finding directly to the FDA?
What about the significance of finding bird viral DNA in measles vaccine and the monkey viral DNA in RotaTeq vaccine?”
There are clearly a lot of unanswered questions right now. At the very least, it certainly makes you wonder what other “unknown” contaminants are lurking in vaccines. At worst, we could be injecting children with substances that could potentially cause serious health problems down the road.
Animal Ingredients Common in Vaccines
You should know that it is very common for vaccine manufacturers to use cells from animals and birds in their manufacturing process.
To put this in perspective, Barbara Loe Fisher has explained what animal material is par for the course in manufacturing the Rotarix vaccine for your children:
“Rotarix is a genetically engineered vaccine that GSK created by isolating human rotavirus strain infecting a child in Cincinnati and using African Green monkey kidney cells to produce the original viral seed stock from which all Rotarix vaccine has been made.
In the FDA licensing process, Rotarix had to meet certain FDA standards, that included demonstrating the vaccine was not contaminated with, for example TSE (Transmissable Spongiform Encephalopathy or “mad cow” disease, a brain wasting disease) or with cow viruses because bovine (cow) serum was used to prepare the original viral seed stock.
Porcine trypsin, an enzyme in the pancreatic juice of a pig, was also used to make the viral seed stock.”
So the fact that Rotarix contains animal material is not a surprise … it’s the type of animal material, an unexpected variety, that has even the FDA raising their eyebrows.
Why it’s Dangerous to Have Various Animal DNA in Vaccines …
Both the FDA and GlaxoSmithKline spokespeople continue to state that no safety risk has been uncovered from the contamination, at least not yet.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health, said “a substantial amount” of the DNA was found in the vaccine. But, he stressed, “there is no evidence that it causes any disease. … There is no evidence that it ever does anything.”
Dr. Paul Offit added, “The PCV1 virus they found is an orphan virus, i.e., it is not associated with disease”.
Of course there are no studies provided or have ever been done to show this, it doesn’t stop them from making these statements without any facts to back up their safety assurance, despite the fact that SV40 from monkeys has been associated with cancer in multiple studies.
History has shown that it can indeed be very dangerous when an animal virus unintentionally enters the vaccine supply.
During the 1950s and 1960s, the polio vaccine, which is still given in the United States, typically four times during a child's first 16 months of life, was widely contaminated with the monkey virus, SV40, which had gotten into the vaccine during the manufacturing process (monkey kidney cells, where SV40 thrived, were used to develop polio vaccines).
In lab tests, the virus was found to cause several different types of cancer, including brain cancer, and now SV40 is showing up in a variety of human cancers such as lung, brain, bone and lymphatic.
According to the authors of The Virus and the Vaccine: The True Story of a Cancer-Causing Monkey Virus, Contaminated Polio Vaccine, and the Millions of Americans Exposed, leading scientists and government officials turned their heads to repeated studies showing that SV40 was in the vaccine, and even today some well-known agencies are still dismissing study results.
The virus is even showing up in children too young to have received the contaminated vaccine, and some experts are now suggesting the contaminated virus may have been in the polio vaccine up until as late as 1999.
It is because of risks like this that Barbara Loe Fisher said:
“With mounting evidence that cross-species transfer of viruses can occur, the United States should no longer be using animal tissues to produce vaccines.”
This is also the same reason why Donald Miller, a cardiac surgeon and professor of surgery at the University of Washington, suggests in his more User-Friendly Vaccination Schedule that if you choose to get your child vaccinated against polio, you request only an inactivated (dead) virus vaccine that is cultured in human cells, not monkey kidney cells.
The United States no longer uses the live oral polio vaccine, so parents don't really have to ask for the injected version. However, if you live internationally, this is still an issue.
Are the Benefits of Rotarix Worth the Risks?
Even without a potential contamination scare, there are serious risks to every vaccine. So before vaccinating you really need to be certain that the benefits will outweigh those risks.
In the case of Rotarix, along with RotaTeq (a similar vaccine made by Merck), the benefits are very questionable, especially if you live in the United States or another developed country.
Rotavirus is very contagious and does cause more than 500,000 deaths in young children each year, but this is mostly in developing countries. In the United States, rotavirus is responsible for only “several dozen” deaths a year, according to Hamburg.
Typically, when a child in the United States contracts rotavirus, and most do, only rest and fluids are required to recover. This infection also provides natural immunity that will protect your child for life.
As NVIC writes
“The CDC estimates that, by age 3, almost every US child has had a case of rotavirus. Once a child has been infected with a strain of rotavirus, he or she develops antibodies and is either immune for life or has a milder case if infected with that same strain in the future.
Most healthy children, who are infected with several strains of rotavirus in the first few years of life, develop lifelong natural immunity to rotavirus infection.”
The rotavirus vaccine, meanwhile, has shown little benefit for rotavirus rates in the United States. According to NVIC:
“Today, even though almost all US infants receive vaccines for rotavirus, and despite efforts to improve the management of childhood rotavirus-associated diarrhea, hospitalizations of children in the U.S. with the disease have not significantly declined in the past two decades.”
Along with showing little benefit for a disease that is typically entirely treatable with fluids and rest, a recent drug review by the FDA found that Rotarix is associated with a significant increase in pneumonia-related deaths in children, compared to a placebo.
So with this particular vaccine, children are taking on serious risks with what appears to be very little benefit -- and that was before the contamination was uncovered.
The moral of the story?
Whatever you do, please do your homework before subjecting your children to any vaccine. A great way to get started is to simply use the Search Feature at the top of each of my Web pages and search my site as it contains a litany of research on vaccine safety, and the lack thereof.
Related Links:
Pulled Rotavirus Vaccine Proved Dangerous
Vaccine Doctor Given at Least $30 Million Dollars to Push Vaccines
Overlooked Contaminant Found in Donated Blood…
Sunday, 18 April 2010
Thefour letter word that changes everything....
The Four-Letter Word that Makes You and Your Work Irresistible
Mark Sanborn, Harvard Business Review, April 14, 2010
LOVE is a four-letter word in the business world. It makes us uncomfortable. It seems inappropriate or even taboo.
It can also make you and your work irresistible.
Let me explain: Some years ago I wrote a book about an extraordinary individual who loves his work. My editor at the time deleted the word love every place I used it. Instead, he suggested using the phrase "generosity of spirit."
"Why not love?" I inquired.
"Because the word love freaks out businesspeople," he responded.
In my estimation, he was half-right. I think the word love freaks out most people, especially when applied to work. That's because more often than not it is associated with sugary sweet emotion or sentimentality. "I love my colleagues." "I love my customers." "I love the daily grind." Hollow. Superficial. Cliché.
Nobody I know loves every aspect of her or his job. I don't know of any perfect jobs in this imperfect world. I wish they existed. But I know that it is possible to love the work we perform, love the people we work with, and love the people we serve.
What does love look like when it shows up for work? If you pay attention, you'll notice it more often than you think.
A few months ago, I spent time at the Ritz-Carlton in downtown Atlanta. Everyone you'll meet at the Ritz is typically on top of his or her game. The staff refers to you by name and exhibits the attitude of "ladies and gentlemen serving ladies and gentlemen." Their unique brand of service will ruin you for all other hotel chains. But it also makes it challenging for a Ritz-Carlton employee to truly stand out.
After a night's rest, I entered the hotel restaurant and took my place in line at the breakfast buffet. A chef named Jeremy staffed the omelet station. "What can I prepare for you, sir?" he asked.
I ordered an egg-white omelet with lots of vegetables, ham, and a little cheese. "You've got to add a little cheese to an egg-white omelet;" I shared with Jeremy, "otherwise it's just too boring."
"Not my omelets!" he boomed. "They're never boring. That's because I add a special ingredient. He paused for effect. "I make my omelets with loooovvvveeee!"
His unorthodox pronouncement got my attention, but I smiled politely and took the plate. With one bite, I could tell that Jeremy had created an extraordinary dish for me. A few moments later, he came by the table to see how I liked it. I told him it was terrific, probably because it was made with love. Jeremy got serious for a moment and said, "If you can't do it with love, why do it at all?"
Chef Jeremy gets it. He understands that when we allow love to define who we are as we work, we become people with a contagious passion for what we do.
To begin, we must reorient our conventional understanding of the term love, defining it as finding a deep-seated passion for what we do, the people we do it with, and the people we do it for. Regardless of the type of work we do, we can find fulfillment and meaning in at least one of these areas.
Take Sam, for instance.
One hot South African afternoon, a stranger photographed him carrying a frail 75-year-old man down the side of a busy road. The rescued man had missed his bus home and collapsed outside the Pick n' Pay where Sam Tsukudu has worked for twenty-plus years.
Sam's heroic act of kindness is just part of who he is. He walks a blind man home from the store every week and helps him unpack his bags. Over a decade of friendship, Tsukudu decodes what groceries Chandler needs, using bits and pieces of empty cartons and labels.
According to one of Sam's customers, "We can't imagine Pick n' Pay without him. He always comes to our rescue and says, "Don't fear; Sam is near."
I don't know Sam, obviously, but I'd be willing to wager he loves his work and his customers. When I first read the story, I was reminded of Duke Ellington. He used to end his performances with "Love you madly!"
Can you say--or at least think--something like that at the end of your "performance" each day? Do you find satisfaction or fulfillment in your daily responsibilities? Do you enjoy working with your colleagues on specific projects or for a common cause? Do you desire to see your business or company have an impact on your town, city, or country? And if no, why not?
Our lives and work are marked by love when we seek to give instead of receive, focus on how we do something rather than just doing it, see a task as a privilege rather than an obligation, make relationships a priority, and move beyond simple action to the accompanying emotions.
Kahil Gibran famously said, "Work is love made visible." That probably sounded exotic when back in seventh grade when we didn't have a job . . . but after a few years of employment, I wonder how many of us could quote him with a straight face?
But there are those who love--whether it be what they do, who they do it with, who they do it for, or all three--and they "make love visible" in a variety of ways.
For love to make any difference it needs to be demonstrated and not simply felt; it needs to be both attitude and action. To remember what can be done to infuse the irresistible ingredient into any type of work, I use the acronym "P-R-A-C-T-I-C-E-S." If you can understand the powerful upside of adding love to your work, here's a way to do it regardless of your job or title or lack thereof:
Patience. I don't think Mother Theresa woke up in the morning and mourned, "Oh Lord, not more lepers!" She did some of the hardest work on the planet, and she seemed to be far more fulfilled and content than we who sit comfortably in our air-conditioned offices. How could that be?
Love is choosing to accept someone--imperfections, weaknesses, demands, and all--no matter his or her circumstances or needs. We need to meet our coworkers and customers where they are, not where we want them to be. Patience requires us to set our own expectations aside without indulging in frustration or negativity.
Recognition. According to Mary Kay Ash, founder of the eponymous multi-million dollar cosmetics company, "There are two things people want more than sex and money--recognition and praise."
Love is paying attention. We don't ignore that which we love, whether a person or an activity. Focus equals fondness.
Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, "Our chief want is someone who will inspire us to be what we know we could be." Not surprisingly, the recognition of another's potential often starts him or her toward its achievement.
We have to recognize the specific needs and desires of those with whom we work and those whom we serve. Applying the irresistible ingredient requires us to move beyond small talk to the deeper issues in people's lives. It's far too easy to judge a coworker or customer by how he or she looks or acts rather than doing the hard work of understanding why. Challenging ourselves to really know people is unusual in our culture, but the relationships we build will measure our success in the long run.
Appreciation. Friends of mine just launched an Internet company called Propadoo. The idea is insanely simple: use the web to make it easy for people to give and receive "props" online. Want to give a service provider a recommendation? Do it instantly at Propadoo. Want your clients to know about the rave reviews others give you? Use Propadoo. Yes, there is a monetary payoff, but the social driver is more interesting to me. Propadoo is about recognition and appreciation. Propadoo lets people use technology to send a message that says, "You matter. Your work matters. I appreciate you."
Appreciation comes from looking for what's right rather than being hypersensitive to what's wrong. It is about choosing to focus on the positive even when you can't ignore the negative.
Too often we forget to stop and express our appreciation to the people who serve alongside us and the people who serve us. From the smallest gesture--a smile or a quick internet "prop"--to the largest bonus or award, people need to know that their work matters to us. Our customers and coworkers will respond positively every time we offer genuine appreciation.
Counsel. Don't tell people what they want to hear. Tell them what they need to hear. Just make sure you tell them in a way that they will listen!
I recall being put off by a sales professional in an electronics store until he confided in me that the DVD player I was about to purchase was inexpensive but laden with problems. He would have made a commission had I bought the unit, and yet he demonstrated his concern for me by sharing that insight instead. His interest in helping me make a good buying decision instantly changed my attitude about him.
Love is offering wise and insightful advice that is in the best interest of the receiver rather than the giver. When asked, it is easy to criticize or suggest the first thought that comes to mind, no matter its validity. A thoughtful input or response shows that we value the individual and care about his or her need.
Time. Love is taking time to address another's needs. In our lightning-fast world where the average attention span is less than two minutes, time is a valuable commodity and should be handled as such. By giving the gift of time to a coworker or customer, we show that we value them above all of the other things that cry out for our attention.
One of the most powerful love practices at work is the pause, making time to be fully present with another person. We ask each other "How are you doing?" all the time and never really mean it. How tragic! Take the time.
Instruction. Teacher Tom Lewis started The Fishing School decades ago in downtown Washington, D.C., hoping to give children from a disadvantaged background a chance to succeed as adults. Recently, the team from ABC's Extreme Makeover: Home Edition stumbled across Tom's school while working in the area. The camera showed shot after shot of bright-eyed children studying, working with their teachers, and playing in a broken-down building with heavy bars on every window and door.
Interviewers asked the kids where they thought they might be if they didn't have the Fishing School. "On the street. . . . In jail with my brothers. . . . Maybe dead like my dad." Next, they asked what the kids wanted to be when they grew up. "Mr. Lewis said I can be a doctor someday if I study hard." "I want to be a pilot." "I'm gonna be the president!"
Best of all were the comments, "I want to be Mr. Lewis. I asked him to be my daddy because I never had one. I want to build my own school and teach kids just like he does."
One of my favorite teachers from high school taught a subject for which I initially had little regard. However, it soon became clear that he was as interested in his students as he was his subject, and he taught it in such a way that they would truly benefit from his instruction.
Love is teaching someone else with gentleness, discernment, and selflessness. By offering up our experience and hard-won knowledge, we can help others to avoid mistakes that we've made, achieve results that we've been able to achieve, and improve beyond what we've been able to accomplish. The most effective teachers walk alongside their students as they learn, appreciating their accomplishments rather than emphasizing their shortcomings.
Compassion. Of course we can all go through the motions--do the right things, implement the right practices and believe in the right ways--but how we do our work makes all the difference. Acting with passion and out of compassion is the difference between mundane and memorable.
Over thirty years ago I heard a highly successful entrepreneur speak. The only point I can remember is his comment, "Everybody hurts." As professionals, we carefully cultivate a slick, confident veneer with our Armani suits. But in truth, we are all broken, hurting, wounded people. That's life. My pal author and speaker Ken Davis encapsulated our situation well: "I'm not okay, you're not okay, and that's okay."
Acknowledging our weaknesses, mourning our losses, and comforting each other through difficult times will strengthen our relationships like nothing else can. True compassion requires us to be vulnerable and to admit our own struggles even as we offer empathy and support to others.
Encouragement. Love is offering heartfelt words of affirmation, inspiration, and motivation to our customers and coworkers. We all need someone--not something--to root us on from the sidelines of our lives. We should seek to notice when others do well and hold them up when they fail. Often neglected, encouragement is probably the easiest way to incorporate the irresistible ingredient into our lives and relationships. If we just look around, opportunities to encourage others are everywhere.
Service. Love is serving others without expecting anything in return. Service is part of nearly every job description, but the concept goes far beyond making sure that a customer's questions are answered or requests are fulfilled. Irresistible service happens when we anticipate needs and respond with insight and excellence.
Becky Rand owns a small short-order diner on the wharf in Portland, Maine. The tony area held several upscale restaurants--all of whom charged high prices and didn't want a blue collar crowd. Nearly twenty years ago, Becky scraped together her savings and opened a democratic little place where lobstermen and captains of industry, cops on the beat and paranoid schizophrenics, university professors and cab drivers rub shoulders at the counter.
All of her meals are backed by a no-strings-attached guarantee: If you don't like it, you don't pay. Better yet, every customer quickly becomes a regular . . . and a treasured friend. Many folks in the area eat at Becky's daily. When regulars don't show, they call in beforehand. Otherwise, Becky or one of her staff is on the way with a bowl of homemade soup and a muffin straight from the oven.
Her outstanding service has inspired countless publicity offers, franchise opportunities, and more. But there is only one Becky, and she's motivated by one thing: love. She loves what she does, the staff she does it with, and the customers she does it for.
Ernest Dimnet in The Art of Thinking wrote, "Love, whether it be the attraction of Truth, or pure, simple, elemental love, always opens up the intellect and gives it freedom of genius."
We all work. Whether we cook omelets, prepare taxes, sell cars, or lead corporations, we spend more than one-third of our lives in the workplace. We can choose to blend in, putting in our time with one eye on the clock, or we can take part in something bigger than ourselves.
When we add the irresistible ingredient of love into every element of our work, a job becomes an occupation, then becomes a career, and then becomes a successful career. We will build meaningful relationships with our colleagues. We will cultivate solid, trustworthy business relationships with our clients. And we will develop a very real, satisfying connection with the actual tasks at hand.
A positive cycle develops quickly, greatly impacting the effectiveness of our business. When we deliver them with love, our products and services become more attractive, leading to better customer response, greater employee retention, and more. Best of all, the results will invariably lead to a sense of personal fulfillment and renewed motivation.
According to an article in USA Today, a Dutch psychologist investigated the differences between chess masters and grand chess masters. He found no difference in IQ, memory, or spatial reasoning. The only difference he could identify: the grand masters simply loved chess more. He concluded that they had more passion about and commitment to the game.
I've observed that you don't have to love what you do to be very good at it. I know very competent and successful individuals who have developed the skills to succeed at their work. By their own admission, they see what they do as a means to an end. They don't love their work, nor are they passionate about it. They are, however, good at it.
But when it comes to greatness, I intuitively concur with the Dutch researcher. The inspired performers, the über-achievers and the grand masters of life seem to share a common denominator.
Love is the difference. This four-letter word will make you and what you do quite irresistible.
Mark Sanborn, Harvard Business Review, April 14, 2010
LOVE is a four-letter word in the business world. It makes us uncomfortable. It seems inappropriate or even taboo.
It can also make you and your work irresistible.
Let me explain: Some years ago I wrote a book about an extraordinary individual who loves his work. My editor at the time deleted the word love every place I used it. Instead, he suggested using the phrase "generosity of spirit."
"Why not love?" I inquired.
"Because the word love freaks out businesspeople," he responded.
In my estimation, he was half-right. I think the word love freaks out most people, especially when applied to work. That's because more often than not it is associated with sugary sweet emotion or sentimentality. "I love my colleagues." "I love my customers." "I love the daily grind." Hollow. Superficial. Cliché.
Nobody I know loves every aspect of her or his job. I don't know of any perfect jobs in this imperfect world. I wish they existed. But I know that it is possible to love the work we perform, love the people we work with, and love the people we serve.
What does love look like when it shows up for work? If you pay attention, you'll notice it more often than you think.
A few months ago, I spent time at the Ritz-Carlton in downtown Atlanta. Everyone you'll meet at the Ritz is typically on top of his or her game. The staff refers to you by name and exhibits the attitude of "ladies and gentlemen serving ladies and gentlemen." Their unique brand of service will ruin you for all other hotel chains. But it also makes it challenging for a Ritz-Carlton employee to truly stand out.
After a night's rest, I entered the hotel restaurant and took my place in line at the breakfast buffet. A chef named Jeremy staffed the omelet station. "What can I prepare for you, sir?" he asked.
I ordered an egg-white omelet with lots of vegetables, ham, and a little cheese. "You've got to add a little cheese to an egg-white omelet;" I shared with Jeremy, "otherwise it's just too boring."
"Not my omelets!" he boomed. "They're never boring. That's because I add a special ingredient. He paused for effect. "I make my omelets with loooovvvveeee!"
His unorthodox pronouncement got my attention, but I smiled politely and took the plate. With one bite, I could tell that Jeremy had created an extraordinary dish for me. A few moments later, he came by the table to see how I liked it. I told him it was terrific, probably because it was made with love. Jeremy got serious for a moment and said, "If you can't do it with love, why do it at all?"
Chef Jeremy gets it. He understands that when we allow love to define who we are as we work, we become people with a contagious passion for what we do.
To begin, we must reorient our conventional understanding of the term love, defining it as finding a deep-seated passion for what we do, the people we do it with, and the people we do it for. Regardless of the type of work we do, we can find fulfillment and meaning in at least one of these areas.
Take Sam, for instance.
One hot South African afternoon, a stranger photographed him carrying a frail 75-year-old man down the side of a busy road. The rescued man had missed his bus home and collapsed outside the Pick n' Pay where Sam Tsukudu has worked for twenty-plus years.
Sam's heroic act of kindness is just part of who he is. He walks a blind man home from the store every week and helps him unpack his bags. Over a decade of friendship, Tsukudu decodes what groceries Chandler needs, using bits and pieces of empty cartons and labels.
According to one of Sam's customers, "We can't imagine Pick n' Pay without him. He always comes to our rescue and says, "Don't fear; Sam is near."
I don't know Sam, obviously, but I'd be willing to wager he loves his work and his customers. When I first read the story, I was reminded of Duke Ellington. He used to end his performances with "Love you madly!"
Can you say--or at least think--something like that at the end of your "performance" each day? Do you find satisfaction or fulfillment in your daily responsibilities? Do you enjoy working with your colleagues on specific projects or for a common cause? Do you desire to see your business or company have an impact on your town, city, or country? And if no, why not?
Our lives and work are marked by love when we seek to give instead of receive, focus on how we do something rather than just doing it, see a task as a privilege rather than an obligation, make relationships a priority, and move beyond simple action to the accompanying emotions.
Kahil Gibran famously said, "Work is love made visible." That probably sounded exotic when back in seventh grade when we didn't have a job . . . but after a few years of employment, I wonder how many of us could quote him with a straight face?
But there are those who love--whether it be what they do, who they do it with, who they do it for, or all three--and they "make love visible" in a variety of ways.
For love to make any difference it needs to be demonstrated and not simply felt; it needs to be both attitude and action. To remember what can be done to infuse the irresistible ingredient into any type of work, I use the acronym "P-R-A-C-T-I-C-E-S." If you can understand the powerful upside of adding love to your work, here's a way to do it regardless of your job or title or lack thereof:
Patience. I don't think Mother Theresa woke up in the morning and mourned, "Oh Lord, not more lepers!" She did some of the hardest work on the planet, and she seemed to be far more fulfilled and content than we who sit comfortably in our air-conditioned offices. How could that be?
Love is choosing to accept someone--imperfections, weaknesses, demands, and all--no matter his or her circumstances or needs. We need to meet our coworkers and customers where they are, not where we want them to be. Patience requires us to set our own expectations aside without indulging in frustration or negativity.
Recognition. According to Mary Kay Ash, founder of the eponymous multi-million dollar cosmetics company, "There are two things people want more than sex and money--recognition and praise."
Love is paying attention. We don't ignore that which we love, whether a person or an activity. Focus equals fondness.
Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, "Our chief want is someone who will inspire us to be what we know we could be." Not surprisingly, the recognition of another's potential often starts him or her toward its achievement.
We have to recognize the specific needs and desires of those with whom we work and those whom we serve. Applying the irresistible ingredient requires us to move beyond small talk to the deeper issues in people's lives. It's far too easy to judge a coworker or customer by how he or she looks or acts rather than doing the hard work of understanding why. Challenging ourselves to really know people is unusual in our culture, but the relationships we build will measure our success in the long run.
Appreciation. Friends of mine just launched an Internet company called Propadoo. The idea is insanely simple: use the web to make it easy for people to give and receive "props" online. Want to give a service provider a recommendation? Do it instantly at Propadoo. Want your clients to know about the rave reviews others give you? Use Propadoo. Yes, there is a monetary payoff, but the social driver is more interesting to me. Propadoo is about recognition and appreciation. Propadoo lets people use technology to send a message that says, "You matter. Your work matters. I appreciate you."
Appreciation comes from looking for what's right rather than being hypersensitive to what's wrong. It is about choosing to focus on the positive even when you can't ignore the negative.
Too often we forget to stop and express our appreciation to the people who serve alongside us and the people who serve us. From the smallest gesture--a smile or a quick internet "prop"--to the largest bonus or award, people need to know that their work matters to us. Our customers and coworkers will respond positively every time we offer genuine appreciation.
Counsel. Don't tell people what they want to hear. Tell them what they need to hear. Just make sure you tell them in a way that they will listen!
I recall being put off by a sales professional in an electronics store until he confided in me that the DVD player I was about to purchase was inexpensive but laden with problems. He would have made a commission had I bought the unit, and yet he demonstrated his concern for me by sharing that insight instead. His interest in helping me make a good buying decision instantly changed my attitude about him.
Love is offering wise and insightful advice that is in the best interest of the receiver rather than the giver. When asked, it is easy to criticize or suggest the first thought that comes to mind, no matter its validity. A thoughtful input or response shows that we value the individual and care about his or her need.
Time. Love is taking time to address another's needs. In our lightning-fast world where the average attention span is less than two minutes, time is a valuable commodity and should be handled as such. By giving the gift of time to a coworker or customer, we show that we value them above all of the other things that cry out for our attention.
One of the most powerful love practices at work is the pause, making time to be fully present with another person. We ask each other "How are you doing?" all the time and never really mean it. How tragic! Take the time.
Instruction. Teacher Tom Lewis started The Fishing School decades ago in downtown Washington, D.C., hoping to give children from a disadvantaged background a chance to succeed as adults. Recently, the team from ABC's Extreme Makeover: Home Edition stumbled across Tom's school while working in the area. The camera showed shot after shot of bright-eyed children studying, working with their teachers, and playing in a broken-down building with heavy bars on every window and door.
Interviewers asked the kids where they thought they might be if they didn't have the Fishing School. "On the street. . . . In jail with my brothers. . . . Maybe dead like my dad." Next, they asked what the kids wanted to be when they grew up. "Mr. Lewis said I can be a doctor someday if I study hard." "I want to be a pilot." "I'm gonna be the president!"
Best of all were the comments, "I want to be Mr. Lewis. I asked him to be my daddy because I never had one. I want to build my own school and teach kids just like he does."
One of my favorite teachers from high school taught a subject for which I initially had little regard. However, it soon became clear that he was as interested in his students as he was his subject, and he taught it in such a way that they would truly benefit from his instruction.
Love is teaching someone else with gentleness, discernment, and selflessness. By offering up our experience and hard-won knowledge, we can help others to avoid mistakes that we've made, achieve results that we've been able to achieve, and improve beyond what we've been able to accomplish. The most effective teachers walk alongside their students as they learn, appreciating their accomplishments rather than emphasizing their shortcomings.
Compassion. Of course we can all go through the motions--do the right things, implement the right practices and believe in the right ways--but how we do our work makes all the difference. Acting with passion and out of compassion is the difference between mundane and memorable.
Over thirty years ago I heard a highly successful entrepreneur speak. The only point I can remember is his comment, "Everybody hurts." As professionals, we carefully cultivate a slick, confident veneer with our Armani suits. But in truth, we are all broken, hurting, wounded people. That's life. My pal author and speaker Ken Davis encapsulated our situation well: "I'm not okay, you're not okay, and that's okay."
Acknowledging our weaknesses, mourning our losses, and comforting each other through difficult times will strengthen our relationships like nothing else can. True compassion requires us to be vulnerable and to admit our own struggles even as we offer empathy and support to others.
Encouragement. Love is offering heartfelt words of affirmation, inspiration, and motivation to our customers and coworkers. We all need someone--not something--to root us on from the sidelines of our lives. We should seek to notice when others do well and hold them up when they fail. Often neglected, encouragement is probably the easiest way to incorporate the irresistible ingredient into our lives and relationships. If we just look around, opportunities to encourage others are everywhere.
Service. Love is serving others without expecting anything in return. Service is part of nearly every job description, but the concept goes far beyond making sure that a customer's questions are answered or requests are fulfilled. Irresistible service happens when we anticipate needs and respond with insight and excellence.
Becky Rand owns a small short-order diner on the wharf in Portland, Maine. The tony area held several upscale restaurants--all of whom charged high prices and didn't want a blue collar crowd. Nearly twenty years ago, Becky scraped together her savings and opened a democratic little place where lobstermen and captains of industry, cops on the beat and paranoid schizophrenics, university professors and cab drivers rub shoulders at the counter.
All of her meals are backed by a no-strings-attached guarantee: If you don't like it, you don't pay. Better yet, every customer quickly becomes a regular . . . and a treasured friend. Many folks in the area eat at Becky's daily. When regulars don't show, they call in beforehand. Otherwise, Becky or one of her staff is on the way with a bowl of homemade soup and a muffin straight from the oven.
Her outstanding service has inspired countless publicity offers, franchise opportunities, and more. But there is only one Becky, and she's motivated by one thing: love. She loves what she does, the staff she does it with, and the customers she does it for.
Ernest Dimnet in The Art of Thinking wrote, "Love, whether it be the attraction of Truth, or pure, simple, elemental love, always opens up the intellect and gives it freedom of genius."
We all work. Whether we cook omelets, prepare taxes, sell cars, or lead corporations, we spend more than one-third of our lives in the workplace. We can choose to blend in, putting in our time with one eye on the clock, or we can take part in something bigger than ourselves.
When we add the irresistible ingredient of love into every element of our work, a job becomes an occupation, then becomes a career, and then becomes a successful career. We will build meaningful relationships with our colleagues. We will cultivate solid, trustworthy business relationships with our clients. And we will develop a very real, satisfying connection with the actual tasks at hand.
A positive cycle develops quickly, greatly impacting the effectiveness of our business. When we deliver them with love, our products and services become more attractive, leading to better customer response, greater employee retention, and more. Best of all, the results will invariably lead to a sense of personal fulfillment and renewed motivation.
According to an article in USA Today, a Dutch psychologist investigated the differences between chess masters and grand chess masters. He found no difference in IQ, memory, or spatial reasoning. The only difference he could identify: the grand masters simply loved chess more. He concluded that they had more passion about and commitment to the game.
I've observed that you don't have to love what you do to be very good at it. I know very competent and successful individuals who have developed the skills to succeed at their work. By their own admission, they see what they do as a means to an end. They don't love their work, nor are they passionate about it. They are, however, good at it.
But when it comes to greatness, I intuitively concur with the Dutch researcher. The inspired performers, the über-achievers and the grand masters of life seem to share a common denominator.
Love is the difference. This four-letter word will make you and what you do quite irresistible.
Wednesday, 14 April 2010
Birthdays
Birthdays are good for you. Statistics show that the people who have the most live the longest. ~Larry Lorenzoni
You're not 40, you're eighteen with 22 years experience. ~Author Unknown
Youth would be an ideal state if it came a little later in life. ~Herbert Asquith
You are only young once, but you can stay immature indefinitely. ~Author Unknown
They say that age is all in your mind. The trick is keeping it from creeping down into your body. ~Author Unknown
A birthday is just the first day of another 365-day journey around the sun. Enjoy the trip. ~Author Unknown
Believing hear, what you deserve to hear:
Your birthday as my own to me is dear...
But yours gives most; for mine did only lend
Me to the world; yours gave to me a friend.
~Martial
Because time itself is like a spiral, something special happens on your birthday each year: The same energy that God invested in you at birth is present once again. ~Menachem Mendel Schneerson
You're not 40, you're eighteen with 22 years experience. ~Author Unknown
Youth would be an ideal state if it came a little later in life. ~Herbert Asquith
You are only young once, but you can stay immature indefinitely. ~Author Unknown
They say that age is all in your mind. The trick is keeping it from creeping down into your body. ~Author Unknown
A birthday is just the first day of another 365-day journey around the sun. Enjoy the trip. ~Author Unknown
Believing hear, what you deserve to hear:
Your birthday as my own to me is dear...
But yours gives most; for mine did only lend
Me to the world; yours gave to me a friend.
~Martial
Because time itself is like a spiral, something special happens on your birthday each year: The same energy that God invested in you at birth is present once again. ~Menachem Mendel Schneerson
Saturday, 10 April 2010
Did you know this about basketball? I didn't...
The Roots of Basketball
Chuck Colson, BreakPoint, April 7, 2010
Here's a good trivia question for you. Which major sport was invented as an evangelistic tool?
In a recent Wall Street Journal article, John Murray recalled the story of the game's founding. The inventor of basketball, James Naismith, became convinced that he stood a better chance of exemplifying the Christian life through sports rather than through preaching. So he took a job as a physical education instructor at the YMCA's International Training School for Christian Workers in Springfield, Massachusetts. Naismith's vision was "to win men for the Master through the gym."
In 1891, Naismith set out to invent a new indoor game that students could play during winter. He spent weeks testing various games, including versions of soccer, football, and lacrosse, to no avail. "Finally," Murray writes, "Naismith decided to draw from all of these sports: with a ball that could be easily handled, play that involved running and passing with no tackling, and a goal at each end of the floor." In short, he came up with basketball.
From the beginning, Naismith and his athletic director, Luther Gulick, held the players to a high standard. As Gulick wrote in 1897, "The game must be kept clean." A Christian college cannot tolerate "not merely ungentlemanly treatment of guests, but slugging and that which violates the elementary principles of morals." He recommended that a coach should "excuse for the rest of the year any player who is not clean in his play."
Basketball served as an important evangelical tool during the next 50 years, Murray noted. In 1941, Naismith wrote that "whenever I witness games in a church league, I feel that my vision, almost half a century ago, of the time when the Christian people would recognize the true value of athletics, has become a reality."
In the last 100 years, we've seen no shortage of Christian athletes who use their skill, self-discipline, and sportsmanship as a witness to Christ-from Olympic runner Eric Liddel in the 1920s, to football player Tim Tebow in our own generation.
In fact, so many athletes give the glory to God after a game that sportswriters sometimes get irritated with them. To which I respond: Which would you prefer--players known for their faith and good sportsmanship, or players who are arrested for assault or drug use?
If you have a young basketball fan in your family, tell him or her the story of how basketball was invented. And pray for Christian players who can use the public's love of sports the way Naismith envisioned when he invented basketball--as a witnessing tool to "win men for the Master through the gym."
Chuck Colson, BreakPoint, April 7, 2010
Here's a good trivia question for you. Which major sport was invented as an evangelistic tool?
In a recent Wall Street Journal article, John Murray recalled the story of the game's founding. The inventor of basketball, James Naismith, became convinced that he stood a better chance of exemplifying the Christian life through sports rather than through preaching. So he took a job as a physical education instructor at the YMCA's International Training School for Christian Workers in Springfield, Massachusetts. Naismith's vision was "to win men for the Master through the gym."
In 1891, Naismith set out to invent a new indoor game that students could play during winter. He spent weeks testing various games, including versions of soccer, football, and lacrosse, to no avail. "Finally," Murray writes, "Naismith decided to draw from all of these sports: with a ball that could be easily handled, play that involved running and passing with no tackling, and a goal at each end of the floor." In short, he came up with basketball.
From the beginning, Naismith and his athletic director, Luther Gulick, held the players to a high standard. As Gulick wrote in 1897, "The game must be kept clean." A Christian college cannot tolerate "not merely ungentlemanly treatment of guests, but slugging and that which violates the elementary principles of morals." He recommended that a coach should "excuse for the rest of the year any player who is not clean in his play."
Basketball served as an important evangelical tool during the next 50 years, Murray noted. In 1941, Naismith wrote that "whenever I witness games in a church league, I feel that my vision, almost half a century ago, of the time when the Christian people would recognize the true value of athletics, has become a reality."
In the last 100 years, we've seen no shortage of Christian athletes who use their skill, self-discipline, and sportsmanship as a witness to Christ-from Olympic runner Eric Liddel in the 1920s, to football player Tim Tebow in our own generation.
In fact, so many athletes give the glory to God after a game that sportswriters sometimes get irritated with them. To which I respond: Which would you prefer--players known for their faith and good sportsmanship, or players who are arrested for assault or drug use?
If you have a young basketball fan in your family, tell him or her the story of how basketball was invented. And pray for Christian players who can use the public's love of sports the way Naismith envisioned when he invented basketball--as a witnessing tool to "win men for the Master through the gym."
Wednesday, 7 April 2010
Happier children
"Both faith and fear may sail into your harbor, but allow only faith to drop anchor."--Author unknown
Children happier for being spiritual: study
By Shannon Proudfoot, Canwest News Service, April 6, 2010
Kathleen Ennis's son was three years old and leafing through a book in the back seat as she drove him home from swimming lessons when he suddenly piped up and asked who her mother and father were. They're his grandparents, she explained. And who are their parents, he wanted to know, and where are they?
Ennis explained that their parents were her grandparents, and they had died. There were a few beats of silence before the little boy exclaimed, "Oh, they're risen!" revealing an understanding of his family's Catholic faith that caught his mother by surprise.
That day a decade ago, Ennis discovered something as a parent that new Canadian studies have just revealed, much to the surprise of researchers: Children have an unexpectedly sophisticated grasp of spirituality, and they're happier for it.
"There had never been that language; that link had never been made for him," Ennis, director of the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd, a children's program in the Catholic Archdiocese of Toronto, says of her son's epiphany.
Newly published research from the University of British Columbia finds that spirituality--a personal belief in a higher power--is strongly linked to the happiness of children ages eight to 12, but religiousness--practices such as attending church--is not. The original study was conducted with relatively affluent, predominantly Caucasian and Christian children in B.C., but it's just been repeated with children in the very different milieu of New Delhi, and lead author Mark Holder, an associate professor of psychology at UBC's Okanagan campus, says preliminary analysis shows the same surprising results.
"I wasn't even sure we could measure spirituality in kids," he says. "I wasn't sure when we gave them the questionnaires whether they'd be able to understand it (or) we'd end up with what we refer to as a 'wash,' which means we don't find anything significant because children don't get it and they just guess and respond randomly. The fact that we got such strong results indicates that they must somehow be understanding it."
What's more, the studies showed varying effects for different aspects of spirituality, suggesting that children grasp their faith with a subtlety that may elude many adults, Holder says.
Ennis works with children under age six in the Archdiocese of Toronto, and she says she's constantly amazed by the spiritual and metaphorical links they're able to build on their own. She starts talking about the Parable of the Good Shepherd who cares benevolently for his flock when the children are just three or four years old, she says, and almost immediately they grasp that they themselves are the sheep watched over by Jesus.
"They're beautiful and also profound, and theologically, they're very sound," she says of their revelations.
She uses simple stories and few words to convey these religious lessons to the youngest parishioners, Ennis says, and the Biblical stories come to life with the help of figurines to act out the stories or tiny mustard seeds representing those to which God's kingdom is compared.
And she always knows when the children are enthralled because the wiggling and fidgeting stops, she says.
Amy Crawford, program minister for children, young teens and youth with the United Church of Canada, says she believes that, rather than limiting spirituality, the developmental stage of childhood enhances it.
Often when people talk about a spiritual experience, they'll recall something from childhood, she says, but over time, society and even religious institutions themselves encourage people to suppress that youthful capacity for wonder.
For a long time, society failed to "honour and respect" the capabilities of children in this context, Crawford says, but she believes children experience the presence of a higher power in the same moments adults do--even if they don't always know how to express it.
There's been plenty of academic research on the relationship between adult spirituality and happiness, Holder says, and even some work on adolescents, but very little on the spiritual lives of children. Now that his studies have demonstrated that children understand these concepts, he's hopeful more research on the topic will follow.
Children happier for being spiritual: study
By Shannon Proudfoot, Canwest News Service, April 6, 2010
Kathleen Ennis's son was three years old and leafing through a book in the back seat as she drove him home from swimming lessons when he suddenly piped up and asked who her mother and father were. They're his grandparents, she explained. And who are their parents, he wanted to know, and where are they?
Ennis explained that their parents were her grandparents, and they had died. There were a few beats of silence before the little boy exclaimed, "Oh, they're risen!" revealing an understanding of his family's Catholic faith that caught his mother by surprise.
That day a decade ago, Ennis discovered something as a parent that new Canadian studies have just revealed, much to the surprise of researchers: Children have an unexpectedly sophisticated grasp of spirituality, and they're happier for it.
"There had never been that language; that link had never been made for him," Ennis, director of the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd, a children's program in the Catholic Archdiocese of Toronto, says of her son's epiphany.
Newly published research from the University of British Columbia finds that spirituality--a personal belief in a higher power--is strongly linked to the happiness of children ages eight to 12, but religiousness--practices such as attending church--is not. The original study was conducted with relatively affluent, predominantly Caucasian and Christian children in B.C., but it's just been repeated with children in the very different milieu of New Delhi, and lead author Mark Holder, an associate professor of psychology at UBC's Okanagan campus, says preliminary analysis shows the same surprising results.
"I wasn't even sure we could measure spirituality in kids," he says. "I wasn't sure when we gave them the questionnaires whether they'd be able to understand it (or) we'd end up with what we refer to as a 'wash,' which means we don't find anything significant because children don't get it and they just guess and respond randomly. The fact that we got such strong results indicates that they must somehow be understanding it."
What's more, the studies showed varying effects for different aspects of spirituality, suggesting that children grasp their faith with a subtlety that may elude many adults, Holder says.
Ennis works with children under age six in the Archdiocese of Toronto, and she says she's constantly amazed by the spiritual and metaphorical links they're able to build on their own. She starts talking about the Parable of the Good Shepherd who cares benevolently for his flock when the children are just three or four years old, she says, and almost immediately they grasp that they themselves are the sheep watched over by Jesus.
"They're beautiful and also profound, and theologically, they're very sound," she says of their revelations.
She uses simple stories and few words to convey these religious lessons to the youngest parishioners, Ennis says, and the Biblical stories come to life with the help of figurines to act out the stories or tiny mustard seeds representing those to which God's kingdom is compared.
And she always knows when the children are enthralled because the wiggling and fidgeting stops, she says.
Amy Crawford, program minister for children, young teens and youth with the United Church of Canada, says she believes that, rather than limiting spirituality, the developmental stage of childhood enhances it.
Often when people talk about a spiritual experience, they'll recall something from childhood, she says, but over time, society and even religious institutions themselves encourage people to suppress that youthful capacity for wonder.
For a long time, society failed to "honour and respect" the capabilities of children in this context, Crawford says, but she believes children experience the presence of a higher power in the same moments adults do--even if they don't always know how to express it.
There's been plenty of academic research on the relationship between adult spirituality and happiness, Holder says, and even some work on adolescents, but very little on the spiritual lives of children. Now that his studies have demonstrated that children understand these concepts, he's hopeful more research on the topic will follow.
Miners miracles
Rescue of 114 at Chinese Coal Mine Called 'Miracle'
By Sharon LaFraniere, NY Times, April 5, 2010
BEIJING--From the start, China's latest coal mine disaster seemed likely to end like so many others in a country where an average of seven miners die every day: a failed rescue effort, grieving relatives and few, if any, survivors.
But for reasons still unclear, the March 28 accident at the Wangjialing mine in Shanxi Province in northern China turned out differently.
More than a week after the mine flooded with water, rescuers found that most of the 153 men trapped underground were still alive. And by midafternoon Monday, 114 of them had been pulled to safety.
Rescue efforts continued on Monday, and rescuers hugged each other and wept for joy, a scene broadcast repeatedly on national television on Tomb-Sweeping Day, China's national holiday to commemorate the dead. A spokesman for a rescue team of more than 3,000 workers declared the outcome "a miracle."
"This is probably one of the most amazing rescues in the history of mining anywhere," David Feickert, a coal mine safety adviser to the Chinese government, told The Associated Press.
The accident occurred when workers digging tunnels broke through a wall into an old shaft filled with water, suddenly flooding the new V-shaped shaft with millions of gallons and submerging five of the miners' nine work platforms.
The mine's managers had ignored evidence of dangerous water leaks in the half-built mine days before the disaster, according to a preliminary investigation by the State Administration of Work Safety. Workers had been ordered to step up the pace of construction in order to meet an October deadline to begin production, the agency found. The Chinese government has managed in recent years to dramatically cut the death rate at its coal mines, but they remain among the world's most dangerous.
There were 261 workers in the mine when the March 28 accident occurred. Of them, 108 quickly made it to safety, but 153 remained trapped in the watery pit and were feared dead.
The rescue operation was huge: A battery of pumps was installed, draining as much as half a million gallons of water a day from the mine in the hope that rescuers could safely enter it. By Friday, five days after the flooding, the water level inside the mine had dropped nearly 11 feet.
Then on Friday afternoon came a glimmer of hope as rescuers heard tapping on a metal pipe underground. They tapped and shouted into a pipe in response, and sent down hundreds of bags of glucose, a phone, pen, paper and two letters of encouragement inside a plastic bottle.
When they pulled a pipe back up to the surface, rescuers found an iron wire tied to the end, an apparent signal from survivors, according to Xinhua, the state-run news agency. Rescuers also spotted swaying lights at the opposite end of the shaft, another possible sign of life.
By Sunday night, 100 rescue workers had descended into the mine and located the first group of nine survivors. They were carried out of mine shortly after midnight and rushed to the nearest hospital in ambulances as thousands of people keeping vigil along the roadside cheered. Those survivors were later reported to be in stable condition.
Up to 300 rescuers were inside the mine by Monday morning. China Central Television, the state-controlled network, showed rescuers carrying out miners one by one. The men were wrapped in green blankets on stretchers, their eyes covered with towels to shield them from the light.
Some of the trapped miners had used their belts to attach themselves to the shaft walls, and hung there for days. Some managed to jump into a floating mine cart, the network reported.
The miners did not drink the water that flooded the mine, afraid that it was contaminated, the state news media reported. A medical officer told reporters that the survivors suffered from severe dehydration, hypothermia and skin infections from prolonged exposure to the water.
Some were in shock, according to news reports, and one was still gripping his miner's lamp when rescued.
"I have not slept for several days," one rescuer, Wei Fusheng, told the television station, weeping with happiness. "Our efforts have not been in vain."
By Sharon LaFraniere, NY Times, April 5, 2010
BEIJING--From the start, China's latest coal mine disaster seemed likely to end like so many others in a country where an average of seven miners die every day: a failed rescue effort, grieving relatives and few, if any, survivors.
But for reasons still unclear, the March 28 accident at the Wangjialing mine in Shanxi Province in northern China turned out differently.
More than a week after the mine flooded with water, rescuers found that most of the 153 men trapped underground were still alive. And by midafternoon Monday, 114 of them had been pulled to safety.
Rescue efforts continued on Monday, and rescuers hugged each other and wept for joy, a scene broadcast repeatedly on national television on Tomb-Sweeping Day, China's national holiday to commemorate the dead. A spokesman for a rescue team of more than 3,000 workers declared the outcome "a miracle."
"This is probably one of the most amazing rescues in the history of mining anywhere," David Feickert, a coal mine safety adviser to the Chinese government, told The Associated Press.
The accident occurred when workers digging tunnels broke through a wall into an old shaft filled with water, suddenly flooding the new V-shaped shaft with millions of gallons and submerging five of the miners' nine work platforms.
The mine's managers had ignored evidence of dangerous water leaks in the half-built mine days before the disaster, according to a preliminary investigation by the State Administration of Work Safety. Workers had been ordered to step up the pace of construction in order to meet an October deadline to begin production, the agency found. The Chinese government has managed in recent years to dramatically cut the death rate at its coal mines, but they remain among the world's most dangerous.
There were 261 workers in the mine when the March 28 accident occurred. Of them, 108 quickly made it to safety, but 153 remained trapped in the watery pit and were feared dead.
The rescue operation was huge: A battery of pumps was installed, draining as much as half a million gallons of water a day from the mine in the hope that rescuers could safely enter it. By Friday, five days after the flooding, the water level inside the mine had dropped nearly 11 feet.
Then on Friday afternoon came a glimmer of hope as rescuers heard tapping on a metal pipe underground. They tapped and shouted into a pipe in response, and sent down hundreds of bags of glucose, a phone, pen, paper and two letters of encouragement inside a plastic bottle.
When they pulled a pipe back up to the surface, rescuers found an iron wire tied to the end, an apparent signal from survivors, according to Xinhua, the state-run news agency. Rescuers also spotted swaying lights at the opposite end of the shaft, another possible sign of life.
By Sunday night, 100 rescue workers had descended into the mine and located the first group of nine survivors. They were carried out of mine shortly after midnight and rushed to the nearest hospital in ambulances as thousands of people keeping vigil along the roadside cheered. Those survivors were later reported to be in stable condition.
Up to 300 rescuers were inside the mine by Monday morning. China Central Television, the state-controlled network, showed rescuers carrying out miners one by one. The men were wrapped in green blankets on stretchers, their eyes covered with towels to shield them from the light.
Some of the trapped miners had used their belts to attach themselves to the shaft walls, and hung there for days. Some managed to jump into a floating mine cart, the network reported.
The miners did not drink the water that flooded the mine, afraid that it was contaminated, the state news media reported. A medical officer told reporters that the survivors suffered from severe dehydration, hypothermia and skin infections from prolonged exposure to the water.
Some were in shock, according to news reports, and one was still gripping his miner's lamp when rescued.
"I have not slept for several days," one rescuer, Wei Fusheng, told the television station, weeping with happiness. "Our efforts have not been in vain."
Monday, 5 April 2010
Raw Potatoe juice to heal Rheuma, Artheritis etc....
The potato (Solanum tuberosum) is one of the most favorite and popular vegetables in many countries of the world. It came to our lands from the Southern American continent, namely the mountains of Peru, and for centuries it has been used in many folk medicines (starting from Oriental or Russian and ending with Central American) for its numerous therapeutic properties. Recently, it was scientifically proven that the vitamins, organic acids, mineral composites, enzymes and microelements that can be found in raw potato juice have various positive effects on our health.
First of all, potato juice is a valuable natural remedy which can assist in improving the function of our digestive system to a great extent. It can help eliminate an acid condition in the stomach and relieve ulcer pains. For such treatment, it is recommended to use the juice of red potatoes. It is important that red potato juice should be consumed right after is it made. For making a good potato juice, red potatoes should be washed out, dried out, grated and squeezed. Also, you should never use juice of immature potatoes or the potatoes with black dots since such potatoes can contain certain toxic substances. If you mix it with carrot juice (50 g of raw potato juice and 100 g of fresh carrot juice), raw potato juice can help to calm down burning sensation and gastritis pains.
The second most valuable property of potato juice is its ability to treat rheumatoid arthritis, rheumatism, lumbago, and so on. In terms of such treatment, potato juice can be taken with various herbal teas, such as sage or nettle teas. Also, arthritis pains can be very effectively relieved by using a tea made of clean potato peels. Raw potato juice is effective for constant migraines and constipation. Finally, taken regularly on rising in the morning (or 30-20 minutes before breakfast), 100-150 g of raw potato juice can be used as a very powerful liver cleanser. Some patients reported that drinking raw potato juice assisted in relieving certain skin problems, such as eczema, skin blemishes, dry and itchy skin, and so on.
Since raw potato juice can not be considered too pleasant for drinking, it can be mixed with other juices: not only with carrot or other vegetable juices, but also with fresh lemon juice and honey. In particular, drinking raw potato juice mixed with some honey can substantially lower the risks of possible food poisoning, and also can remove the excess uric acid from the body and disinfect your bowels in a natural way. In addition, raw potato juice has very good properties and can assist in diarrhea treatment.
If you want to try some more or less serious raw potato juice treatment program, I would recommend drinking 100-150 g of fresh juice for a fortnight every morning and every evening, 1.5-2 hours before meal. Then, after a 7-day break you should repeat the treatment for other 2-3 weeks. It is very important to remember that you should eat a light and healthy diet during the treatment. However, you should not start a potato juice treatment or eat a potato diet without consulting a nutritionist or your personal therapist. There are certain problems and ailments connected with the function of our digestive system, which can be escalated by using a potato therapy.
Author Info: Hi! My name is Carla and I am a 5th year medical student at HYMS. I am interested in alternative medicine and I have done months researching the topic of herbal medicine. Besides, I like interviewing people and learning more about their experiences with one or another type of herbal treatments. I am willing to contribute to this site with my knowledge, and I would be happy to help you out to the best of my ability with any specific questions or problems related to alternative medicine.
First of all, potato juice is a valuable natural remedy which can assist in improving the function of our digestive system to a great extent. It can help eliminate an acid condition in the stomach and relieve ulcer pains. For such treatment, it is recommended to use the juice of red potatoes. It is important that red potato juice should be consumed right after is it made. For making a good potato juice, red potatoes should be washed out, dried out, grated and squeezed. Also, you should never use juice of immature potatoes or the potatoes with black dots since such potatoes can contain certain toxic substances. If you mix it with carrot juice (50 g of raw potato juice and 100 g of fresh carrot juice), raw potato juice can help to calm down burning sensation and gastritis pains.
The second most valuable property of potato juice is its ability to treat rheumatoid arthritis, rheumatism, lumbago, and so on. In terms of such treatment, potato juice can be taken with various herbal teas, such as sage or nettle teas. Also, arthritis pains can be very effectively relieved by using a tea made of clean potato peels. Raw potato juice is effective for constant migraines and constipation. Finally, taken regularly on rising in the morning (or 30-20 minutes before breakfast), 100-150 g of raw potato juice can be used as a very powerful liver cleanser. Some patients reported that drinking raw potato juice assisted in relieving certain skin problems, such as eczema, skin blemishes, dry and itchy skin, and so on.
Since raw potato juice can not be considered too pleasant for drinking, it can be mixed with other juices: not only with carrot or other vegetable juices, but also with fresh lemon juice and honey. In particular, drinking raw potato juice mixed with some honey can substantially lower the risks of possible food poisoning, and also can remove the excess uric acid from the body and disinfect your bowels in a natural way. In addition, raw potato juice has very good properties and can assist in diarrhea treatment.
If you want to try some more or less serious raw potato juice treatment program, I would recommend drinking 100-150 g of fresh juice for a fortnight every morning and every evening, 1.5-2 hours before meal. Then, after a 7-day break you should repeat the treatment for other 2-3 weeks. It is very important to remember that you should eat a light and healthy diet during the treatment. However, you should not start a potato juice treatment or eat a potato diet without consulting a nutritionist or your personal therapist. There are certain problems and ailments connected with the function of our digestive system, which can be escalated by using a potato therapy.
Author Info: Hi! My name is Carla and I am a 5th year medical student at HYMS. I am interested in alternative medicine and I have done months researching the topic of herbal medicine. Besides, I like interviewing people and learning more about their experiences with one or another type of herbal treatments. I am willing to contribute to this site with my knowledge, and I would be happy to help you out to the best of my ability with any specific questions or problems related to alternative medicine.
Thursday, 1 April 2010
Ein frohes Auferstehungsfest
A man who was completely innocent offered himself as a sacrifice for the good of others, including his enemies, and became the ransom of the world. It was a perfect act. -- Mahatma Gandhi
http://tommyswindow.com/new_downloads_english.htm
Ein total unschuldiger Mann bot sich selbst dar, als Opfer für alle anderen, seine Feinde eingeschlossen, und erlöste damit die Welt. Es war eine perfekte Handlung. -- Mahatma Gandhi
http://tommyswindow.com/downloads_german_01.htm
Un homme complètement innocent s'offre comme sacrifice pour le bien des autres, ses enemies inclus, et a payé la rançon pour le monde. C'était une action parfaite.
Mahatma Gandhi
http://tommyswindow.com/downloads_french_01.htm
http://tommyswindow.com/new_downloads_english.htm
Ein total unschuldiger Mann bot sich selbst dar, als Opfer für alle anderen, seine Feinde eingeschlossen, und erlöste damit die Welt. Es war eine perfekte Handlung. -- Mahatma Gandhi
http://tommyswindow.com/downloads_german_01.htm
Un homme complètement innocent s'offre comme sacrifice pour le bien des autres, ses enemies inclus, et a payé la rançon pour le monde. C'était une action parfaite.
Mahatma Gandhi
http://tommyswindow.com/downloads_french_01.htm
Wednesday, 31 March 2010
Radical Love
Radical Love and Resurrection Catapulted Christianity
Audrey Barrick, Christian Post, Mar. 29, 2010
Why is it that Jesus' message lasted beyond his short life? Why did the message and person of Jesus not evaporate like all the other wannabe messiahs?
Because at the core of his message was a brand new kind of love and at the core of his experience and history was a resurrection, Andy Stanley told his congregation at the start of Holy Week.
A few years ago, Stanley was in Rome with his wife when he noticed something that took him aback. Hanging over the entrance of the Roman Colosseum where the emperor once entered was a cross. Another hung over the entrance where gladiators had entered through.
Stanley posed to North Point Community Church members: "If you could imagine going back 2,000 years ago and ... what if we were able to gather ... some of the Christians that lived in Rome [and] say to them 'someday there will hang in the entrance of this arena of death a cross, a cross that does not reflect or represent the power of Rome, a cross that does not reflect or represent the anger and the death associated with crucifixion, ... [but] one single crucifixion of a Jewish carpenter ... who never traveled more than 25 miles from his home, was basically a public figure for three years, was betrayed by his own people and executed by the Roman authorities but whose message impacted the entire world ... and long after there was a Roman Empire people would worship and celebrate this one Jewish carpenter."
Jesus did not have any political influence, nor did he write any books. He was condemned to crucifixion which was the most shameful and painful way to die, the lead pastor noted. And decades after his death, Jerusalem and its Temple were razed during the Jewish-Roman Wars in 70 A.D. and all the Jews were expelled. With that, the entire context for Jesus' ministry and for what he taught vanished.
So how did Jesus' message last so that today a cross hangs at the emperor's gate of the Roman Colosseum?
Radical love and the resurrection, Stanley answered. Citing Jesus' famous words, Stanley read: "As I have loved you, love one another."
Though the commandment may sound commonplace today, at that time, it was radical.
"In that statement and in the statements that would follow, Jesus did something that was so unusual that I'm sure it took them ... maybe the rest of their life to get their arms around," Stanley noted. "He said ... every single person that has been born has value."
"The primary thing that would mark Christians in the first century was that they had this unusual, fanatical ... selfless, sacrificial, weird ... love for one another," he stressed.
And that love was directed to all including slaves, women, the rich and poor and enemies.
While many Christians today may push for legislation or petition and protest in efforts to change a secular culture, Stanley pointed to a method that really works when trying to change culture--love.
"What we know works ... is this radical, unusual, unconditional love for one another," he said.
"The reason I know it works is because there is a cross hanging in the emperor's entrance to the colosseum in Rome."
Couple that message of radical love with the resurrection of Jesus and that's the answer to why Christianity has spread and why Jesus' name has become so powerful.
"Today we're here because of that radical love and because of an undeniable resurrection that catapulted this message out of a context where it should have been buried once and for all," Stanley said.
Audrey Barrick, Christian Post, Mar. 29, 2010
Why is it that Jesus' message lasted beyond his short life? Why did the message and person of Jesus not evaporate like all the other wannabe messiahs?
Because at the core of his message was a brand new kind of love and at the core of his experience and history was a resurrection, Andy Stanley told his congregation at the start of Holy Week.
A few years ago, Stanley was in Rome with his wife when he noticed something that took him aback. Hanging over the entrance of the Roman Colosseum where the emperor once entered was a cross. Another hung over the entrance where gladiators had entered through.
Stanley posed to North Point Community Church members: "If you could imagine going back 2,000 years ago and ... what if we were able to gather ... some of the Christians that lived in Rome [and] say to them 'someday there will hang in the entrance of this arena of death a cross, a cross that does not reflect or represent the power of Rome, a cross that does not reflect or represent the anger and the death associated with crucifixion, ... [but] one single crucifixion of a Jewish carpenter ... who never traveled more than 25 miles from his home, was basically a public figure for three years, was betrayed by his own people and executed by the Roman authorities but whose message impacted the entire world ... and long after there was a Roman Empire people would worship and celebrate this one Jewish carpenter."
Jesus did not have any political influence, nor did he write any books. He was condemned to crucifixion which was the most shameful and painful way to die, the lead pastor noted. And decades after his death, Jerusalem and its Temple were razed during the Jewish-Roman Wars in 70 A.D. and all the Jews were expelled. With that, the entire context for Jesus' ministry and for what he taught vanished.
So how did Jesus' message last so that today a cross hangs at the emperor's gate of the Roman Colosseum?
Radical love and the resurrection, Stanley answered. Citing Jesus' famous words, Stanley read: "As I have loved you, love one another."
Though the commandment may sound commonplace today, at that time, it was radical.
"In that statement and in the statements that would follow, Jesus did something that was so unusual that I'm sure it took them ... maybe the rest of their life to get their arms around," Stanley noted. "He said ... every single person that has been born has value."
"The primary thing that would mark Christians in the first century was that they had this unusual, fanatical ... selfless, sacrificial, weird ... love for one another," he stressed.
And that love was directed to all including slaves, women, the rich and poor and enemies.
While many Christians today may push for legislation or petition and protest in efforts to change a secular culture, Stanley pointed to a method that really works when trying to change culture--love.
"What we know works ... is this radical, unusual, unconditional love for one another," he said.
"The reason I know it works is because there is a cross hanging in the emperor's entrance to the colosseum in Rome."
Couple that message of radical love with the resurrection of Jesus and that's the answer to why Christianity has spread and why Jesus' name has become so powerful.
"Today we're here because of that radical love and because of an undeniable resurrection that catapulted this message out of a context where it should have been buried once and for all," Stanley said.
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