Reflection 133 (listening to books)

Books

Books are something so valuable to many people
But still, to a majority, that overwhelms the book lovers in great numbers,
books are not fully appreciated.

I love books, I love to read books.
But recently I also fell in love with audio-books.

Audiobooks are books read out aloud and recorded.
The voice is often the author and with voice (s)he can often give an extra dimension to the text.
When I drive I cannot read, not even a short SMS message from my wife, but I can listen to an audiobook.

I generally drive every day 30 minutes to my work and 30 minutes back. This means one hour of audiobooks. Truly enjoyable.

For everyone who had not yet discovered the joy of audiobooks, I recommend them warmly.
Audiobooks could help our youth as well to get exposed to a variety of written materials.
It may be a solution for our dyslexics. True enough, we have to help our dyslexics to be able to read but they may never enjoy reading books. Audiobooks may be of great help.

Reflection 132 (teach)

Let's teach

Let's teach our children 
Not the history of conqueror-mass murderers
but the glory of humble servants to humanity

My heart worries if I see award giving ceremonies
for children achieving excellent results in school

The all important scoring of As
Maybe we have to stop the madness

Let us stop and think for a while what we want most for our children
Any reasonable parent would answer:
I want them to be first and foremost happy people, if possible happier than myself.


But there are so many unreasonable parents out there who give a wicked twist to the above into:
I want my children to be first and foremost high achievers, achieving higher aims than myself. (and higher aims means more money, more power, more influence, something for parents to be proud of). There is nothing noble about ignoring what the talents and true ambitions of your children are. I have met medical students who were not interested in Medicine at all. Some of them dreamed of becoming movie directors but were pushed in medical school by their enormously egoistic (or/and unintelligent) parents

Let us stick to the happiness ideal for our children.
Happiness is so closely linked to basic values.
Let us teach them values first before we teach them that being first is all that's valued

Let's teach our children
the long lasting happiness that lies in humbly serving
Let us put that as priority number one.
to be able to help and serve in an optimal way they may need to work hard, to achieve

Let us teach them to serve and help friends along the way and never make achievement a lofty aim by itself...

Reflection 131 (success)

Success

In so many books about success we read the stories about the poverty stricken students performing not very well in school and still becoming superb billionaires. These heroic stories put up quite a distortion in the concept that we want to impart in to our youths about success.

True enough Bill Gates and Warren Buffet rank among true huge successes among the human race. But the huge problem with examples of super rich and famous people lies in the definition of success.
So many super rich and famous have committed suicide. Do we count them in as successes? So many are on drugs; are they among the successes?

Let us stop hanging up picture of people achieving exceptional wealth or fame to define success in our world.

Almost every child has the potential to be truly successful in his or her life.
By true success here, I mean the achievement of enough peace of mind to lead a happy fulfilled life.
Isn't this a better more realistic definition?

Peace of mind, happiness, fulfillment. Every ordinary human has the capacity and talents to achieve this. Each in their very own special way. Imagine how the world would look like if the primary purpose of our educational institutions would be that and schools would be assessed based on how their ex-students fare in these terms rather than based on how many A's are produced.

The largest happy community

The largest happy community

This reflection starts with a real story:

There was a woman
She had a disabled child.
Taking care of the child was extremely stressful, tiring.
The husband could not take it any longer and just left.
The woman was alone, alone with her very abnormal child.

The woman had financial problems. She had no income.
The husband did not bother to pay anything, she herself had no job
Luckily she had some land on her name, which she could sell.
But the sale of the land took a very long time. No money
She had borrowed from most friends. Grew desperate.
Prayed so hard for help from our God

On a scheduled visit to the doctor of her child,
the doctor inquired about  the family and the social problems
She broke down in front of the doctor and sobbed bitterly
While tears were flowing, she explained she had borrowed about 2K
2K from loan sharks who were now threatening her.
The good doc organized a blitz collection among his colleagues 
and was capable of giving her the money she needed so badly

She thanked all who contributed profusely
and expressed her commitment to pay back 
as soon as the land sale was done.

Her prayers had been answered.
Our God had softened the heart of so many
The good doc had prayed in the morning to be a tool of our God's peace.
His prayers had been answered too.
Our God is answering prayers through people.



You think the Woman was happy?
Bet she was
You think the good Doc was happy?
Bet he was
You think the colleagues donating were happy?
Bet they were.

If we can create a community of people sincerely asking every morning to be made a tool of our God's peace,  I think every member will be able to the see and act on at least one one of the many opportunities that present to each of us every single day to help people. When we are used by our Creator to answer someone's prayer, we can find a deep peace of mind. Let us create the largest happy community in this world by just joining a group of people who pray every morning to be able to HELP.  Put your daily stories in the comments section of this blog and help the community grow fast.


The above story is not yet finished.

One of the docs who helped and had received 
the thank you message with the promise to pay back, 
had responded:
Please keep the money as long as you need it.
If you are comfortably capable of paying back, 
please do not pay to me but pass on the favor 
to someone praying to our God for help....

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Vertaling in het Nederlands: Klik hier (juweeltjes voor de ziel)

Refection 129 (how mad)

How mad can it get?

As if the IS movement is not doing enough harm to the image of Islam,
some more madness is added

Recently there had been organized an event with dogs by a Muslim for Muslims in KL.
The organizer has received multiple death threats!!!

How mad can it get?

Sending death threats to anyone who has different opinion...
How arrogantly can one choose to damage the image of religion?
Death threats, so called for the sake of religion...
How much further away can one get from our God?

The Quran is mentioning dogs 5 times in three passages without any mention of it being an unclean animal. Dogs were companions of the people of the cave which were good people. Opinions about dogs among scholars differ widely, even within this country. Why is it so difficult for some people to accept there is a wide difference in opinions about almost everything int his world? We certainly can defend our opinion, but still respect other people who can defend their own opinion, just as we defend ours.

Somehow we were made all different.
There must be a purpose. Indeed we can all learn from each other.

Some people think they know all already and have closed their mind for anything else than what is already in it. An extremely sad state of events that brings one far, far away from our Creator.

Death threats because people differ in opinion from you and they happen to profess the same religion as you???? How mad can it get????

reflection 128 (sweet)

Possessions 

I was reading to day a piece of James Allen the famous author of "as a man thinketh"
What i read today contains some serious wisdom, I think:

"Sweet are companionships, pleasures, and
material comforts, but they change and
fade away. Sweeter still are Purity, Wisdom,
and the knowledge of Truth, and these
never change nor fade away.

He who attained to the possession of
spiritual things can never be deprived of
his source of happiness; he will never have
to part company with it, and wherever he
goes in the whole universe, he will carry
his possessions with him. His spiritual
end will be the fulness of joy. "

I think this among the greatest wisdom that is beyond the awareness of so many people
The sweet pleasures of life are giving us pleasure for a while and then fade away into nothing
The spiritual things are a source of happiness that does not fade away.

It is ok to strive for comfort..
But comfort without spirit is not comfortable for very long.
Keep up humanity and spirit.

Reflection 127 (condolences)

Condolences

I was almost 6 when my grandmother died

Shortly after her death, my grandfather walked into our kitchen

And he showed me a ring, saying it was the ring of my grandmother

I did not know what to say

I did not know what to do

I just give him a smile

And he was not too pleased with it,
saying these were no 'laughing'-matters

An aunty of my father who happened to be in our kitchen said

Oh stop, he is just a child.

I was only a child and I did not know what to say or do. 

Later my other grandmother, my uncles died 

I understood more, I felt the emotions

I learned to express condolences

But I did still not know what else to say or do in the moments

I was very grief struck when my own mother died when I was 33

Many  people came and expressed condolences

I remember one friend who seemed to know what to say and do.
He came over and talked about the feeling of guilt
We feel guilt for things we did that our love one didn't like
and for things we didn't do (or didn't do enough) that they like
And this guilt is often the worst feeling and bitterest part of our grief.
That is true.
Then he added that people we love most, we forgive automatically
Even if the person we love does not ask forgiveness, we still forgive
that is also true.
And being aware of this can relieve some of the guilt we tend to feel.
It made me feel better and relieved some bitterness.

This was really good for me.
When I met grieving people after that,
I tried to talk about guilt.
But not everyone is the same
Some people may be helped by it
Some people not.

Recently one of my very close working colleagues lost both parents in one day
I felt as lost for words and deeds as before my mother died.

 All of us will die.
 Some earlier, some later.
 But all will die.
 Every day, every hour, every second is a moment closer to our death.

If we have known great people, extremely dear to us,
we can be angry because they are no longer here
or we can be grateful for having known them.
This is an oversimplification.
Definitely we miss our loved ones
But the way we miss can be very different 

I pray for strength
for all grieving people
for my colleague.
for all.