The Apple of His Eye

I just finished reading a book that messed with my head - in a good way. I have to admit I've never really understood much about the divine connection that Christians share with Jews outside of the obvious. The Messianic Church Arising is a real eye-opener and I'll be pondering the message for quite some time.

In the meantime, I saw the statistics below and find them astonishing.

The Global Islamic population is approximately 1,200,000,000; that is
ONE BILLION TWO HUNDRED MILLION or 20% of the world's population.
They have received the following Nobel Prizes:

Literature:
1988 - Najib Mahfooz

Peace:
1978 - Mohamed Anwar El-Sadat
1990 - Elias James Corey
1994 - Yaser Arafat:
1999 - Ahmed Zewai

Economics:
(zero)

Physics:
(zero)

Medicine:
1960 - Peter Brian Medawar
1998 - Ferid Mourad

TOTAL: 7 (SEVEN)

The Global Jewish population is approximately 14,000,000; that is FOURTEEN MILLION or about 0.02% of the world's population.
They have received the following Nobel Prizes:

Literature:
1910 - Paul Heyse
1927 - Henri Bergson
1958 - Boris Pasternak
1966 - Shmuel Yosef Agnon
1966 - Nelly Sachs
1976 - Saul Bellow
1978 - Isaac Bashevis Singer
1981 - Elias Canetti
1987 - Joseph Brodsky
1991 - Nadine Gordimer

World Peace:
1911 - Alfred Fried
1911 - Tobias Michael Carel Asser
1968 - Rene Cassin
1973 - Henry Kissinger
1978 - Menachem Begin
1986 - Elie Wiesel
1994 - Shimon Peres
1994 - Yitzhak Rabin

Physics:
1905 - Adolph Von Baeyer
1906 - Henri Moissan
1907 - Albert Abraham Michelson
1908 - Gabriel Lippmann
1910 - Otto Wallach
1915 - Richard Willstaetter
1918 - Fritz Haber
1921 - Albert Einstein
1922 - Niels Bohr
1925 - James Franck
1925 - Gustav Hertz
1943 - Gustav Stern
1943 - George Charles de Hevesy
1944 - Isidor Issac Rabi
1952 - Felix Bloch
1954 - Max Born
1958 - Igor Tamm
1959 - Emilio Segre
1960 - Donald A. Glaser
1961 - Robert Hofstadter
1961 - Melvin Calvin
1962 - Lev Davidovich Landau
1962 - Max Ferdinand Perutz
1965 - Richard Phillips Feynman
1965 - Julian Schwinger
1969 - Murray Gell-Mann
1971 - Dennis Gabor
1972 - William Howard Stein
1973 - Brian David Josephson
1975 - Ben jamin Mottleson
1976 - Burton Richter
1977 - Ilya Prigogine
1978 - Arno Allan Penzias
1978 - Peter L Kapitza
1979 - Stephen Weinberg
1979 - Sheldon Glashow
1979 - Herbert Charles Brown
1980 - Paul Berg
1980 - Walter Gilbert
1981 - Roald Hoffmann
1982 - Aaron Klug
1985 - Albert A. Hauptman
1985 - Jerome Karle
1986 - Dudley R. Herschbach
1988 - Robert Huber
1988 - Leon Lederman
1988 - Melvin Schwartz
1988 - Jack Steinberger
1989 - Si dney Altman
1990 - Jerome Friedman
1992 - Rudolph Marc us
1995 - Martin Perl
2000 - Alan J. Heeger

Economics:
1970 - Paul Anthony Samuelson
1971 - Simon Kuznets
1972 - Kenneth Joseph Arrow
1975 - Leonid Kantorovich
1976 - Milton Friedman
1978 - Herbert A. Simon
1980 - Lawrence Robert Klein
1985 - Franco Modigliani
1987 - Robert M. Solow
1990 - Harry Mark owitz
1990 - Merton Miller
1992 - Gary Becker
1993 - Robert Fogel

Medicine:
1908 - Elie Metchnikoff
1908 - Paul Erlich
1914 - Robert Barany
1922 - Otto Meyerhof
1930 - Karl Landsteiner
1931 - Otto Warburg
1936 - Otto Loewi
1944 - Joseph Erlanger
1944 - Herbert Spencer Gasser
1945 - Ernst Boris Chain
1946 - Hermann Joseph Muller
1950 - Tadeus Reichstein
1952 - Selman Abraham Waksman
1953 - Hans Krebs
1953 - Fritz Albert Lipmann
1958 - Joshua Lederberg
1959 - Arthur Kornberg
1964 - Konrad Bloch
1965 - Francois Jacob
1965 - Andre Lwoff
1967 - George Wald
1968 - Marshall W. Nirenberg
1969 - Salvador Luria
1970 - Julius Axelrod
1970 - Sir Bernard Katz
1972 - Gerald Maurice Edelman
1975 - Howard Martin Temin
1976 - Baruch S. Blumberg
1977 - Roselyn Sussman Yalow
1978 - Daniel Nathans
1980 - Baruj Ben cerraf
1984 - Cesar Milstein
1985 - Michael Stuart Brown
1985 - Joseph L. Goldstein
1986 - Stanley Cohen [& Rita Levi-Montalcini]
1988 - Gertrude Elion
1989 - Harold Varmus
1991 - Erwin Neher
1991 - Bert Sakmann
1993 - Richard J. Roberts
1993 - Phillip Sharp
1994 - Alfred Gilman
1995 - Edward B. Lewis
1996- Lu Rose Iacovino
TOTAL: 129!

The Jews are NOT promoting brain washing children in military training camps, teaching them how to blow themselves up and cause maximum deaths of Jews and other non Muslims. The Jews don't hijack planes, nor kill athletes at the Olympics, or blow themselves up in German restaurants.

The Jews don't traffic slaves, nor have leaders calling for Jihad and death to all the Infidels.

Perhaps the world's Muslims should consider investing more in standard education and less in blaming the Jews for all their problems.

Muslims must ask 'what can they do for humankind' before they demand that humankind respects them.

Regardless of your feelings about the crisis between Israel and the Palestinians and Arab neighbors, even if you believe there is more culpability on Israel 's part, the following two sentences really say it all:

'If the Arabs put down their weapons today, there would be no more violence. If the Jews put down their weapons today, there would be no more Israel ." Benjamin Netanyahu

General Eisenhower Warned Us - It's a matter of history that when the Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces, General Dwight Eisenhower, found the victims of the death camps he ordered all possible photographs to be taken, and for the German people from surrounding villages to be ushered through the camps and even made to bury the dead.

He did this because he said in words to this effect: "Get it all on record now - get the films - get the witnesses because somewhere down the road of history some bastard will get up and say that this never happened."

Recently, the UK debated whether to remove The Holocaust from its school curriculum because it 'offends' the Muslim population which claims it never occurred. It is not removed as yet. However, this is a frightening portent of the fear that is gripping the world and how easily each country is giving into it.

Something to think about!

It's About Time!

I gasped Monday when I turned the calendar to November. The holidays are almost upon us! The end of the year is staring me in the face! How can that be? Then the words of a song popped into my head, “If I could save time in a bottle, The first thing that I’d like to do, Is to save every day, Till Eternity passes away…” Only I rewrote it in my mind to say, ” If we could save time in a bottle, we’d create a whole new addiction and people would be totally discombobulated and running frantically in a marathon until they can’t move…”

I figure time can be my friend or my enemy so we might as well be friends. Things sure flow better that way. In business, you will be effective to the extent to which you jealously guard your time. In your personal life, you will be effective to the extent to which you jealously guard your time. The key is deciding what you want. You can have it all, but you can’t have it all at one time.

Work ethic has never been an issue for me. I come from a long line of passionately hard workers. I recall when I called my grandmother on the occasion of her 90th birthday and inquired “How are you?” Her response was, “I’m just TOO busy!” What a legacy. The issue for me has been one of pacing and focus. Learning how to be completely present at whatever I have chosen to be doing at the time is the key to enjoying the rhythm of the day. Focusing on the truly important things is my other guiding star. I’m sad for people who make short term problems a lifestyle. I’ll not fall into the trap of letting the craziness of the world steal my joy.

With those thoughts in mind, I welcome November. Bring it on and finish strong.

To achieve great things, two things are needed; a plan, and not quite enough time.”~ Leonard Bernstein

Note: This month is NaBloPoMo and with insanity gripping me, I committed to participating over at my LifePoint Blog. Forgive me for a duplicate post today. I'll be around here with family news. I consider that blog my office -sometimes living room. This is my family room. Thanks for coming by to hang out when you can.

The Battle is Not Yours

While dancing down the road this morning to some lively music (exercise has to be fun or I'm not in), I sang along to the words, "the battle is not yours, God said it's mine..."

I've been meditating on the life of David lately, the King who went down in history as a man after God's own heart. His fame began on a battlefield with his astonishment at the audacity of Goliath to mock the army of the Living God. He came along as a "nobody" and left the battlefield as a "somebody." Not because he thought he was tough stuff, but his faith was in a God who's tough stuff. He knew that if God's on your side, you're going to win.

Then it occurred to me that I'm in trouble if I enter any battle in my own strength. I don't need gizmos and widgets, degrees, endorsements or my own well thought-out justification. What I need is the presence of God. Only then is the outcome certain.

Selah.

Two Sizes Bigger

My heart is two sizes bigger. Last month when our family all gathered for a weekend of laughter and love, I was surprised with happy news when Addison came out dressed in this shirt: If you can't read it, it says, "I'm the Big Sister."

I was momentarily confused, as I knew that our son and his wife had brought the shirt when they came and we had known for 2 months that they are expecting their first baby in March. So when I read the shirt, I was thinking, "they must not have had a "cousins" shirt." They laughed at me and said, "No, the shirt is correct, Mom". And immediately my heart grew another size bigger.

Joy. Thanksgiving. So much to be thankful for. I had to wait to share until Uncommon Blonde had announced it.

Now our little pumpkin will have company.
2011 already holds so much promise, my heart is growing every day.

Walking on Sunshine

October gave us an absolutely beautiful weekend for Parent's weekend festivities at FSU. I don't attend many football games, so it was a fun experience to do the whole football scene on Saturday, made even sweeter by a win.


Enjoyed the grand tour of Cupcake's new home away from home. Very traditional Southern manor and quite lovely and full of life.

Some of her new sisters. I'm learning a new language... they call Big Sisters just "Bigs" now. And the girl on the left is her "grand big." Fun.

Of course, the best part was just hugging and hanging out with our girl! It's good for a mom's heart to see your heart's delight doing well.

Do you Hear What I Hear?

The joyous cheers from Chile echoed around the world this week as the miners were rescued from the tons of rock that entrapped them for months, half a mile underground. In August, when the earth caved in on them, it was sound that was used to determine there were survivors. Tap, tap, tap.... and then the responding tap, tap, tap. How sweet the sound of life.

In my studies of Neurolinguistics, I've not been surprised to learn that sound is especially important to me since I am an auditory (and kinisthetic) learner. I've often told people that I'm bilingual; music is my first language and English is my second. For the record, did you know that our DNA is actually a musical coding? That each of us vibrates at a certain frequency and that even the stones in the earth are vibrating? No, this is not some weird philosophy I've bought into, this is science (and art and music).

The word personality has its origin in the Latin word per which means "passes through" and sonant which means "sound." Sound passes through you - your life is a song! You have a unique sound that is meant to be heard in the earth. No one else has the same message you have. Your voice is important.

I give a lot of attention to the need for innovation in business, sales and marketing and have come to the conclusion that so much creativity is squelched by our inability to recognize our own unique gifts and the important contribution we can make. We each have dreams that we discount and bright ideas that we dismiss. The greatest waste of natural resources is in the failure to develop human potential.

You could be on the very edge of breakthrough if you pause in the midst of the noise and listen. (easier siad than done, right?) Give ear to your own originality. What if you decide to act on just a fraction of the ideas you have? Creativity is part of our inheritance, regardless of whether we've recognized it. I'm certain that most of us have treasure that is yet to be discovered. What if we drill down and recover that which has been buried within each of us? The best is yet to come.

These thoughts were inspired by a message that Ray Hughes gave at the Aglow International Conference in San Jose, CA. This You Tube video of an older message in a different place is an hour and 10 minutes, but I promise, if you watch it. you will love every minute and thank me for telling you about it. (It inspired me to fly to Califfirnia for more!)A fascinating teaching on SOUND. Profound.

All the Trees of the Field Clapped Their Hands

The Econfina Creek is a gem of Northwest Florida and it's only a few miles from us. I really enjoy the day canoe trip that is available through the nearby canoe livery- they'll pick you up at the end and transport you back to your car for a reasonable fee.

On a recent weekend, I mentioned to Builderman that I missed doing that this year and we should go. The creek is spring-fed so the clear water is ice cold and refreshing on a hot day. After some discussion, he determined that the all-day trip was more than he was in the mood for and that we would create a shorter trip ourselves. After all, he knows those woods quite well, being the adventurer that he is, so off we went.

It was a beautiful day and it was a good thing I was in the hands of a capable guide. The portion of the river we were on and had not been cleared of downed trees and it took skillful steering and actually hauling the canoe across several obstacles. The reward was we didn't see anyone else for hours. The sound of the wind in the trees accompanied us. We saw a kingfisher (bird) that that was quite beautiful as we quietly made our way.

A change of pace brings refreshing. This past week, the weather changed and we welcomed fall. I'm thankful the sun kissed us for our last day of summer...and all the trees of the field clapped their hands for us.