======================= VOTT IF ... you could get a short, humorous, informative e-mail each week that was insightful and meaningful to your life? ======================= Valuing Ourselves Ah 'tis spring - the season for love, making the air a misty thick for all creatures great and small! What love really is, though, may be a little difficult to put one's finger on exactly. Martin Luther King Jr. the great civil rights activist once explained that there were essentially three types of love. The first is Eros - or what most consider 'romantic' love. This is a love that often leads to marriage of some form or another. It can lead to lots of other things too ... The second is called Philos (the root is widely used in our language, for instance, philosophy - the love of knowledge). It is the love between friends. Here there may not be romance, but there is true friendship. Such love can bridge space and time; it can endure unspeakable hardship; it will be resilient forever. We are loved and love for we see ourselves in our friends. The third love is Agape - God's love channeled through us. Here we love another person not for romance, not even for friendship, but because God loves that being. The power of Agape is manifest in the compassion of Buddha, Christ, Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Kagawa and many, many others. Agape never judges, never harms, but seeks only to reunite with the source from whence we came. We, being drops of the divine, are part of that great ocean, infinite and eternal. And if God loves each one of those little drops, Agape necessitates we do no less. Time Tippies Parallel processing is a term from the computer world that can teach us some tips about time management. Early computers had what is called a co-processor (an additional 'brain') installed in them so that computing tasks could be executed faster. Well, this worked so well that supercomputers of today are composed of many such co-processors. They essentially divide up a large problem into smaller ones, work on them simultaneously (hence the term parallel processing) and then put the results back together. Now you probably think it may be a little difficult to install another brain or two in yourself and hence may not be able to benefit from this technique. However, all you really need do, is to activate two principles. The first is to take a large job and make a series of smaller manageable tasks. The second is to get to put as many of these tasks on autopilot whenever possible. For instance, if you are going to clean your entire bathroom, it is a good idea to get the caeran bathroom cleaner to soak in the toilet bowl while you go about doing the dusting or the chrome polishing. Actually, there is even a way to compensate for the inadequacies of your favorite, neighbourhood brain surgeon. Those tasks that can't be put on autopilot can be handled with another brain through the magic of delegation, which is just a pompous word meaning 'get someone else to help you'. Inspiration The tiny grey-eyed woman who was known to the world as Mother Teresa of Calcutta was born August 27, 1910 in Yugoslavia. By the time she was 12 she was certain of her vocation to relgious life and soon developed an unshakable conviction that her calling was to become a missionary. In 1931, she took her first vows as a nun in Bengal, India. In 1946, Mother Teresa began her work with "the poorest of the poor" in the slums of Calcutta. In a city torn apart by strife and poverty, she set forth armed only with her faith and the power to communicate unlimited compassion and hope. She began with a small school and eventually opened a home for unwanted children who would otherwise live or die on the streets, a community for lepers who were shunned by society, and a home for the sick, destitute and dying. Mother Teresa developed the Congregation of the Missionaries of Charity which demanded acceptance more from the heart than the intellect. Members must love unconditionally without seeking returns or results and give whoehearted free service to the poorest of the poor in the spirit of cheerfulness. "The poor," she said,"deserve not only service and dedication but also the joy that belongs to human love." Initially Mother Teresa and the Missionaries were met by considerable hostility. People threw stones as the Missionaries tried to carry the sick to their refuge. However attitudes soon changed as people witnessed the work and spirit of these dedicated individuals. Mother Teresa was awarded the Nobel Peace prize in 1979 when the President of the World Bank declared she, "... deserves ...(this) because she promotes peace in the most fundamental manner by her confirmation of the inviolability of human dignity." Mother Teresa toiled tirelessly until her death in 1998. We honour this gentle nun whose very life spelled love. Funecdotes Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930), creator of the Sherlock Holmes detective stories, was a great believer in the hereafter. His book The History of Spiritualism is considered a classic. Once a friend asked him to visit a fellow author who was seriously ill. "I'll call in on him tomorrow," promised Doyle. "Tomorrow could be too late, he may not survive the night," said his friend. "In that case," replied Doyle, "I'll speak to him next week." ... with you on your journey Towards Freedom mailto:about@towardsfreedom.com (autoresponder) http://www.towardsfreedom.com (website) information, imagination, inspiration - truly a site for soaring I's ======================= If you ever wish to unsubscribe just do so at http://towardsfreedom.com/suvottif.html#subscription_handling =======================