Photograph by R.A.W. Photography Copyright 2009
Hyena kitten
soft, playful, unreal
hyena, who would
eat my hair whenever
I held her.
Poor eyesight
bizarre sense
of feline humor
a tortoise shell
of color patches
growling at stuffed dogs
and swatting her shadow
my little Pistol.
Our first kiss on the steps
of a funeral home. I wore
purple lilac. You wore
Old Spice cologne.
And our tiny house,
four walls painted
green, not much to see,
a good place to dream
with brown bats
hanging in willow trees
and bare wooden
floors loving our feet.
where Dan’s songs
touched our souls,
made us believe
we could run for roses
Life was lived in Lightfoot’s
lavendar and blue jeans,
Oh, what days before
the end of innocence.
Years defy physics,
moments in our minds,
treasured, we think
are here to stay,
a blink, a turn,
and they are
yesterday.
It starts in November and I sing it to myself until January and then sometimes, I listen to it in July. I really do like this song.
…from Old Seventy Creek Press, I Listened, Momma.
Old Seventy Creek Press is a publisher, specializing in Appalachian literature.
This makes me so excited.
Connected
What does it mean to be connected?
It’s strange that we live in an age where we are all connected via the internet, i-phones, and a host of other technologies, yet people are constantly telling me how alone they feel, how “disconnected” they feel.
Information is always at our fingertips. People tweet about everything from hang nails to hangings, but rather than giving us a feeling of closeness and depth, we are left feeling shallow and insignificant, lost in a multitude of voices shouting to be heard.
So why do people feel so alone in an age when we are never alone? I have my opinion, for whatever that’s worth. I believe it is due to several reasons, but I’m going to focus on one.
Western society lacks a sense of ‘community’ and a sense that comes from being ‘a part of a people’, a tribe, a clan. It is a society that is often focused on self-absorption and idolization.
For all of our tweeting and Facebooking and i-phones and smart phones and laptops, we still do not honestly communicate. We don’t touch each other where it really counts, in our spirits. We do not “life touch”. We may elicit emotional outbursts and responses, but so does Jerry Springer! It’s not the same thing.
Life-touching takes time. It takes patience. It takes a willingness to give of ourselves, asking nothing in return. Life-touching is what happens when a mom spends the afternoon dipping tadpoles out of a pond and helping her children construct an environment. It’s what happens when a man takes a day off work and teaches his son to bait a fish hook. If you see a family making tamales together, and telling stories while they work, you’re seeing life-touching in action. Life-touching involves grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins. America has become a land of nuclear families and as a result, it’s become a land of lonely and disconnected people who lack a clear identity and personal relations. To be disconnected from our ancestors is to be lost in a sea of nameless faces. I know of people who can’t even tell you the names of their grandparents, much less tell you the stories of their families. All they have is what has been gained in one generation and when that generation is gone, there will be little or no legacy to pass on and thus, there will be a new generation of disconnected people. Disconnection leads to psychological breakdown, a host of abnormal social behaviors, as well as an absence of responsibility, morality, respect, honesty and trust.
It’s never too late to start life-touching. We are not just here for ourselves. We do not live unto ourselves and we do not die unto ourselves. Whatever we do affects someone else. We are constantly either drawing someone closer and helping them feel connected or else we are reinforcing the predominant attitude of mechanical society that makes us feel like we are insignificant. The world is filled with cynical and critical people, with people who belittle and intimidate, with violent people and rude people, with arrogant people and snooty people, with people who are disconnected from others because they’re disconnected from themselves, and from the Source of the Universe.
I’m not here to be disconnected. I want to be a life-toucher, and a hope-bringer.
Written in Crestwood, Kentucky, 2012 at Green River Writers Retreat
On that turbulent morning
Frost met Fog in Winter Ghost Wonderland.
They rose and swirled together
until Sister Sun parted those icy lovers
with yellow knife fingers
bathing them in warm rays
of golden hair.
Their dance over
their mingling done
Frost melted away
like ice on a country stove.
Fog came unglued
dismembered
spreading until invisible.
I heard Kate’s voice
rich, deep as oak tree roots
singing of a homeplace
singing of coyotes at the door.
I smelled coffee
Grandpa’s kind
dark and strong
enough to stand a spoon in.
I thought of where I write
of grass by the pond
simple grass, tall grass
of juniper trees and their smell.
How they welcome me
even in winter and I wanted—
I wanted to go home again
to be with those who love me
to hear baby laughter
to see Rachel with a katydid jar
to hear little boy giggles
to feel slick Christmas paper
between my fingers
and to hear Daddy say,
“Sis, come on in here.
Let me tell you something.”
Rain sings
softly in the evening
pattering shingles
pinging gutters
making puddles.
On the porch
I close my eyes
feel cool breezes
here, now
no tomorrows
no yesterdays
just now, only now
a gift unfolding.
Who can imprison the wind
even the soft, whispering wind?
Who can possess her?
She carves mountains
makes deserts
carries the rain.
I think of Bruce
“Be water, my friend.”
Yes, be water
flowing
adaptable
uncageable
powerful
washing away cities
cutting canyons
reducing rock to sand.
I am of you
Wind and Rain.
I am of you.
This fossil
embedded, merged
cannot break free
of the rock
on its own.
If fossils could feel
this one would
cry for freedom
simply to exist
independent
of ancient stone.
Merged
in a by-gone era
this once living spirit
now bears elements
of another.
What outside force
could free the fossil
without breaking it?
Without destroying the stone ?
That traffic is an illusion
produced by human ingenuity
brilliant ignorance of true progress
a mesmerizing whoosh
hidden by trees.
Here
on this creek
where water moves lazy-like
cicada songs are real
a snorting deer
tweeter tweeters
fading light flecks
over moss-covered rocks
brown earth banks
downed branches
a pale sky.
Life happens here
recycled and upcycled
older than time
younger than tomorrow
unending, unending, unending
let me be here
at the edge of nowhere
the heart of everywhere
this—
this is real.
Lifted
beyond Northern Lights
where clouds are pink ice
I shoot
heavenward
from earth mud
streaking
like a star
launched upward.
I soar
past gray folk
on park benches.
Freely
flying away.
Away.
Away.
My grandfather was born in the early 1900s in a school for “Coloreds” and was delivered by local African-American women who were friends and neighbors of his parents. His father was half-Mexican and maybe they were the only Mexican family in Kentucky at that time in history. I really don’t know. I say he was half-Mexican because his father, who may have been born in South America, actually grew up in Mexico and came here as an orphan at the close of the Mexican-American War with a soldier named James. My great-grandmother died in childbirth, died right there in that school building, or at least that’s what the birth record says. Later, his father remarried a woman who was said to be half-Cherokee and she raised my grandfather. My dad would later be born in a Share Cropper’s shack that had once served as a slave cabin, about two miles up the road.
I have heard all of my life how my dad considered the Garnet girls to be his “sisters,” and how when their daddy was dying he sent word down the hill for Daddy to bring his guitar and come “sing him home.” So Daddy did. He took his guitar to “Uncle’s” house and sang to him just before he died. In the 1950s my dad’s siblings attended the Rosenwald School that replaced the schoolhouse where their father was born. They may have been the only “White” kids in the school at that time. I never understood any of this as a child. All I knew was that the people living in that community were my dad’s friends.
Seems like that’s the way it should always be, people just being good to each other. Some of the people in the community were my dad’s friends up until the day they died. Most of them passed away before Daddy. I still remember Billy in his wild colored clothes catching a ride into town with Daddy on Saturdays and Cat that Daddy hung around sometimes. The Gradys, the Dudleys, the Franklins and Richards from Gradyville and Jones Chapel Road, from Flatwoods—they were all friends and family.
https://www.britannica.com/place/Cumberland-Plateau
In his book, Upper Cumberland Country, William Lynwood Montel talks about a culture that permeates Northern Tennessee and parts of Kentucky that stretches from Adair County at the edge of the Pennyroyal Region across Russell, Casey, Pulaski, Wayne, Clinton, Cumberland and eastward to the Cumberland Gap and on down into Tennessee. He calls this region the Upper Cumberland and says that in this region people are “wed to the land.” I suppose one could say that for those of us who’s ancestors arrived during the 1700 and 1800s , the land is sacred. There is a “spirit” in this place that has been here since long before the first European settlers arrived and once you fall in love with this land, it remains with you forever, no matter how far you travel. It calls you back. In that sense, those of us who understand the richness and the history of this place and what it meant to our ancestors, truly are wed to the land. The land which now forms the border between Kentucky and Tennessee was once the southwestern border of North Carolina and Virginia. Eventually, Tennessee and Kentucky were carved out of Virginia and North Carolina. If Virginia is Kentucky’s mother, then North Carolina is her father and Tennessee is her sister.
This region is known as the Cumberland Plateau which technically encompasses areas of West Virginia, and Alabama, as well. The river that flows through this land is now called the Cumberland, but that was not always the case. Once it was called Wasioto by the Shawnee men, women, and children who LIVED there (not just hunted or camped but LIVED). Wasioto was home to Mound Builders before the Shawnee. The river was sacred to all tribes in the area. One legend has it that there was a terrible massacre there when an encampment of Cherokee women and children were slaughtered at Yahoo Falls near what is now the Kentucky/Tennessee border.
In the late 1700 and early to mid1800s people settled along the Cumberland River in such places as Hawkins, Hancock, Scott, Fentress and Campbell counties in Tennessee and of course, there were no state lines drawn, so some of these families also settled in what is now Leslie, Harlan, Pulaski, Wayne, Clinton, Cumberland, Adair, Russell, Johnson, McGoffin, Whitley, McQueary, Bell, Knox, Laurel, Floyd, Johnson, Perry, Knott, and Casey counties in Kentucky. They came from the New River area of Virginia and North Carolina, many of which were descendants of the White Top Band of Sizemore Indians, some of which are documented as old “Cheraw” or remnants of the Saura people who had been decimated by smallpox. Other were documented as having been born at Fort Christana and a place called Catawba Town. They were a mixture of Tutelo, Saponi, Catawba, Saura and other tribes of the area which had come together due to being decimated by diseases brought over from Europe (mainly Smallpox) for which they had no immunity. Some had Algonquian ties, as well. In time, many of them referred to themselves as “Cherokee” because Cherokee became synonymous with “Indians from the Southeastern U.S.” And, in fact, many of these families did have people of mixed Cherokee, Shawnee, Chickasaw, Creek, and Algonquian tribes marry into their lines.
As their freedoms and rights dwindled in Virginia and the Carolinas, as their lands were stolen, they pushed westward into the mountains, cliffs, caves, valleys, swamps, and gorges of the Cumberland Plateau. They were seeking a place just “to be.”
Thanks to the Racial Integrity Act in Virginia that affected all the surrounding areas, census takers labeled these people based on their own impressions of them. There was a deliberate effort to eradicate the “Indians” by making them either White citizens or designating them as “Mulattos” or “Free People of Color.” It was a time period where being White meant you got to keep your family together, own land and vote. Being mulatto meant you got to live “free,” but you had no legal rights and being Indian meant you didn’t exists unless you agreed to go to a concentration camp (well, they were called Reservations but they were the equivalent of concentration camps.) So, it came to be that Kentucky, once a part of Virginia and North Carolina, had “NO INDIANS.” Of course not, they were politically ripped asunder, buried, ignored, and forgotten.
Due to their inability to point to themselves on Cherokee rolls, they were often denied tribal membership, not because they were not Native American but because they were not documented Cherokee. The descendants of these people make up much of the Upper Cumberland area today. They handed down legends, year after year, generation after generation, of a great-grandmother or great-grandfather who was “Indian.” Some of them remembered they were not Cherokee and used terms like Blackfeet, but many genuinely believed they were Cherokee because it was the only name they had heard repeated. They were made fun of and accused of being wannabe Indians, but the truth is that their heritage was stolen through genocide, sometimes accidental, sometimes on purpose, and in time, they assimilated and became “White” or “Black” just like the government had always wanted them to do.
Sizemore Indians and their kinfolk and neighbors—they often traveled in groups from the same areas, being a mixture of multiple Native branches and Scotch-Irish, Quakers, French and German–and their neighbors settled along the Cumberland River in what is now southern Kentucky and Northern Tennessee. Family names included Riddles, Starnes/Stearns, Bowman, Bolin/Bowling/Bollin, Cox, Wallen, Leach, Harris, Choate, Turner, Gipson, Sizemore, Greene, Smith, Marsh, Moore, Collins, Mullins, Phelps, Phipps, Tallant, Ramsey, Cooper, Harmon, Neal/Neil, Denny, Downey, Wells, Brown, Graham, Blevins, Fields, Fugate, White, Adams, and more.
Now back to the Cumberland River itself, Wasioto is almost 700 miles long and drains from a whopping 18,000 square miles! Multiple rivers and streams flow into the Cumberland River including the Red River, Big South Fork and others. At one point there is only about 2.8 miles of land between the Cumberland and Tennessee Rivers (which is fed by the Holston River, flowing out of what is now North Carolina and the French Broad River.)
The Cumberland Plateau, the world’s longest hardwood forested plateau, is home to many plants and animals found nowhere else.
The Cumberland Plateau rises more than 1,000 feet above the Tennessee River Valley to a vast tableland of sandstone and shale dating as far back as 500 million years. The rivers of this region, have eroded away the softer rock beneath, leaving rock houses (natural bridges), caverns, cliffs and caves along the river and stream beds. “From Williamsburg, Ky., above the falls, to the Kentucky–Tennessee state line, the Cumberland crosses a highland bench in the Cumberland Plateau and flows in a gorge between cliffs 300–400 feet (90–120 m) high.” (encyclopedia Britannica)
In 1952, Wolf Creek Dam was built to create Lake Cumberland, caves with petroglyphs (according to older local residents that I’ve interviewed) were flooded, never to be explored again. The community of Rowena as evacuated and flooded. The graves were dug up and moved to the nearby Watauga community and the community’s official records were sent to Burnside, Kentucky, a few miles upstream. Wolf Creek Dam is the 25th largest of its kind in the United States and Lake Cumberland is over 100 miles long and over a mile wide. It is the 9th largest lake in the U.S. and the larges man-made. It has a capacity of 6,100,000 acre-feet of water, enough to cover all of Kentucky in 3” of water.
Over the years the dam has had a multitude of problems and issues, including that fact that 19 years after it was built, sinkholes developed around the electrical grid near the base of the dam and caused a near failure of the dam. In the late 1960s, liquid concrete was pumped into the dam but that didn’t stop the leaks, so in the 1970s a concrete wall was inserted in the earthen part of the dam, but that didn’t work, either. Uncontrollable seepage continued all the way up until 2005 when the dam was on the verge of collapsing and obliterating the town of Burkesville, Kentucky. In 2007, the lake was lowered to 40 feet and a seven-year, $309,000,000 rehabilitation of the dam included a longer, deeper wall built into the dam’s earthen section. This wall, completed in 2014, is two feet thick and extends 300 feet into the limestone base. The dam is now considered safe by the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers. However, they say if the dam were being built today, it would not be built in its current area due to the nature of limestone and karst formations.
Not far from Wolf Creek Dam is the Dale Hollow Dam which forms Dale Hollow Lake. Clinton County, Kentucky, sits between the two lakes with Dale Hollow to the south and Lake Cumberland to the North.
Rich in history, beautiful beyond belief, wild and rugged, a tremendous area for trout fishing, home to abundant wildlife and trees found nowhere else in the world, the Cumberland River and surrounding plateau have their enemies, TRASH, DEBRIS, and GRAFFITI. The trash is a result of human carelessness, laziness, and ignorance. The debris is a result of homes too close to the riverbanks and the graffiti is a result of stupidity and ignorance. There’s just no other way to phrase that one. I end this little essay with a plea, if you swim the waters, or fish, or kayak or go white water rafting, if you live on the banks, or go on a picnic or a hike or do anything at all, please, please and PLEASE pick up your trash and don’t leave a mess behind you. It is a karst landscape which means everything finds its ways into the streams, caves, earth and waterways.
Original Photos:
Cumberland Falls, first three photos by Scott Harris, fourth photo by Darlene Campbell
Big South Fork, photos by Darlene Campbell
Rock House Bottom/aka: Creelsboro Arch and Cumberland River, photos by Darlene Campbell
Left: Adair County, Kentucky, photo by Darlene Campbell. Left Paintsville, Kentucky in Johnson County, photo by Darlene Campbell and above: Old PennsStore in Casey County (part of the store and surrounding property are in Boyle and Marion Counties, as well.)
SOURCES:
https://www.britannica.com/place/Cumberland-River
https://www.nationsonline.org/oneworld/map/USA/tennessee_map.htm
https://sherpaguides.com/tennessee/upper_cumberland_plateau/
Explore Cumberland Plateau [dc2]
Upper Cumberland Country by William Lynwood Montell–1993 University of Mississippi Press, Mississippi
Life in These River Hills by Mary Etta Neal–2006, Old Seventy Creek Press, Albany, Kentucky
A Wandering Tribe: Dispersal of the Catawba Nation 1800 to 1900 by Steven “Pony” Hill | 2016–Backntyme Publishing, Crofton, Kentucky
Cherokee by Blood, Volume 1, Applications 1-1550 Paperback – December 30, 2019; Jerry S. Wright
History of the Cherokee Indians by Emmett Starr, originally published 1929. Now available here: https://www.amazon.com/History-Cherokee-Indians-Legends-Folklore/dp/0806317299/ref=pd_sbs_2/134-6893923-8755815?pd_rd_w=wyVES&pf_rd_p=f8e24c42-8be0-4374-84aa-bb08fd897453&pf_rd_r=X9PQGF4XQX1AZ8B6EJ4P&pd_rd_r=b0e52a4a-86f2-47e4-9ddb-48951c67f087&pd_rd_wg=fFXL2&pd_rd_i=0806317299&psc=1
I, Dragonfly
I skirt above this pond
Skimming the surface
Landing for a blink
On a cattail
On a willow branch
Then flit again
Clear wings
Catching light
Not lingering long
Ninety degrees
in dry September fields
all day long I lift
eighty pounds of green.
I am tiger lily dust
moistened from dew within,
my cocoa hair
streaked with caramel strands.
Scarred, calloused hands
twice their age,
touched by manly nails,
hoist these sacred stalks
until sinewy limbs
longing for apple tree shade
send me to drink divine
colorless warmth.
When the sky people
with their glory eyes
peep through the holes
in their velvet blanket
I fall clean
upon fresh sheets
and make love
to my peace.
*NOTE: I spent much of my youth working the tobacco fields of southern Kentucky. The work was hard and at the end of those summer days, especially the ones in September, when the fields were dry and the sky clear blue, there was nothing so inviting as a bath and a bed with clean sheets. For those who have worked the tobacco fields, you know. For those who haven’t, you have this poem to tell you a little of what it was like. This was life in Kentucky when I was young.
by Nochipa (aka, Darlene)
Pen Shells
Second Place, October 2007
Judged by E. Ethelbert Miller
Tell me what is more beautiful
than strength of a life
well-lived.
My hands, lean and firm,
are scarred by
youthful poverty.
while my sculpted arms,
sinewy and brown,
were chiseled by a farmer’s hoe
and these legs, are solid
and shapely, strong
as trees grown from hill-treading
My wit is sharp
as tobacco spears
from traps of star-dream slayers
while my heart beats steady
for hundreds of children
who listened to my song.
So, now that you know
I am not a T.V. woman-child,
am I less lovely?
Eagle Kind
Have I not given
the best of my years
days of my innocence
pureness of my heart
to you?
Have I not walked through
the Valley of the Shadow of Death
with you
more than once?
More than twice?
Have I not laughed
and cried and prayed
with you
at you
for you?
Will you not
grant me freedom
to fly
to spread my wings
over the world?
To be only
me?
Do you not know
that the cry for autonomy
has little to do
with things you have done
or said
or felt?
This longing
is only about
a need in my soul
a need to soar.
Not a lack
on your part.
No fallacy.
No blame.
No fault.
I am simply
of eagle-kind.
Soaring is what we
are made for.
My love is not diminished
yet, unless, I spread
these wings
I will die
in my nest.
“Every bird needs to fly just once.” From Looking for Pork Chop McQuade
Lavender child
you glided into this world
graceful lady
on a lotus pond
spreading peace.
Your tiny hands
grew into slender ivory
as you floated
upon time
emerging from laughter
to become
a moon dancer
elegant lover of fairies
gazer of stars.
With gentleness
more fragile than
hummingbird wings.
Calm storm chaser,
I watch.
I wonder.
When autumn comes
what will your springtime
memories be?
Awake with the morning to a smooth day.
Maker of Days
hiyi means thank you.
Arise with the dawn
feel its warmth on your face
sun on your skin.
Everlasting Provider
hiyi means thank you.
Run like a new fawn
like a butterfly
wind lifting your wings
until your spirit soars
until it sings.
Remember, myself
this day is never again
when the sun sets
it is a journeying
friend.
Hiyi means
thank you.
I am a child in rain
with hands outstretched,
catching droplets
as they fall.
I run.
Dance.
Sing.
Take an old umbrella
spin and whirl
laugh out loud
let water run
down my face
into my shoes
baptizing
my soul
brand new.
Awake with the morning
to a smooth day.
Maker of Days, hiyi.
Arise with the dawn
feel its warmth on your face
sun on your skin.
Everlasting Provider, hiyi.
Run like a new fawn
like a butterfly
wind lifting your wings
until your spirit soars
until it sings.
Remember, myself,
this day shall never be again
when the sun sets
it is but a lost
friend.
THE DREAM
I stuck my hand in a rainbow
the colors got all over me
silver and blue, fuchsia and red.
They touched the child in my mind
gave life to magic inside
this power of light
penetrated a tree
then kissed the ground
at my feet.
I looked behind me and
saw forever, all which has been
and what is yet to be.
Then I smiled to know
I am forever young yet
always old
that mortality is temporal
life eternal.
This essence of me will walk
beneath the sun
when I am dust
only ashes remaining of now
a golden sun will rise
and I will always be
just who I am.
Photo by John Cahil Rom on Pexels.com
I believe there are only two basic emotions that exist in the world; LOVE and FEAR and that all others — happiness, jealousy, anger, sympathy, compassion, etc. are manifestations of whichever one we are walking in at the moment. I believe that it is impossible to act from fear and love at the same time.
If an action is intended to harm another, either physically, emotionally, mentally, financially, socially or spiritually, it’s motivated by fear. Sometimes, it’s a fear of being wrong about something, like politics or religion. The fear is that if we are wrong about one thing, then somehow our entire universe and grasp on reality will come undone. Sometimes, it’s a fear of change, because people fear the future or that the past will repeat itself. Some people are the opposite and fear a life of boredom and sameness. Some people fear a lack of control. Others fear being controlled. Sometimes, it’s a fear of being “without,” meaning having less financially or of being poor. Sometimes people fear those of another religion, race or ethnicity. Sometimes people fear getting older while others fear dying young. Some fear they will never have a relationship while others fear commitment. Ultimately, most are afraid of death, yet everyone must face it.
Some people have been raised up in fear, believing they might not be as good as other people, so they constantly lash out at anyone who threatens their notion of being “somebody.” Maybe they get angry over something as simple as a social media post that they disagree with politically or religiously or something like that, so they lash out violently with foul language and cruel private messaging, but it’s their own insecurities and learned behaviors that come into play, not really anything you’ve done.
If someone reacts violently or hatefully to you, they are reacting out of fear. Maybe it’s a generational fear that is buried so deep in them that they don’t even know it’s there. Maybe it’s a learned behavior, instilled and ingrained, but it’s still a fear.
If an action is intended to help another, either spiritually, physically, financially, emotionally, mentally, or socially; then it is motivated by love. Love compels us to acts of faith, *true confidence, *true humility, kindness, gentleness, *forgiveness, *objectivity, patience, and selflessness. Love brings joy and laughter and fond memories. It doesn’t lash out in anger and understands that others get tired and stressed. It doesn’t hold others to impossible standards or double standards. It doesn’t act in covert contract mode, expecting something in return. Love gives for the sake of giving, not receiving and shows gratitude when it does receive. Love brings growth, joy and life to everything it touches.
Every kind, compassionate and uplifting thing is done out of love. Every unkind thing is basically, an extension of fear or just plain old habit. In some cases, it’s both. If I am secure in love, then it doesn’t matter what someone says, it shouldn’t rattle me, or at least not for very long.
Love is like sunlight and water. Where there is love there is life.
A lot of people live in fear and the ironic thing about fear is that it causes people to run away from the positive, from hope and encouragement. It causes them not to recognize what is good when they see it and to label the strongest attributes of humanity: gentleness, kindness, patience, meekness, forgiveness, mercy, etc., as weak and mistakes brutality and violence for strength.
The truth is that it takes great courage to be gentle in a world where harshness is the standard. It takes great faith to be positive in a world where we are bombarded by negativity. Love brings us that courage and faith.
I’m reminded of Gladys Aylward, a tiny English woman, who led a hundred orphaned Chinese children to safety over the mountains during a time when all of China was in the grip of fear and war and she did it with love.
Love is the greatest force on earth. It is greater than war, greater than violence. It is greater than fear and it is greater than disease. Love endures forever and nothing can ever change that. Love is God and God is Love. If you want to know the Creator of the Universe, the One Who Never Dies, Great Spirit, Ancient of Days, the Force and Source of All, then look no further than Love.
*my definition of true confidence as opposed to cocky self-assurance is doing what you need to do with the faith that all will work out as it should and without the need to control people or outcomes.
*objectivity–in my mind–is the ability to remove your “personal” preferences, likes and dislikes, from a situation and see it from many angles and from the perspective of others involved and make the decision based on what pathway yields the most positive or favorable outcomes for everyone involved, taking into considerations the effects on and motivations of others.
*true humility–I believe that there is such a thing as false humility where a person acts humble in order to appear to be a “good person” or “more spiritual” but in truth the act is motivated by self-interest. True humility doesn’t care who’s watching or who’s not and will often try to perform in secret without getting recognized or needing recognition. True humility doesn’t need a pat on the back or a trophy. In the same way, true humility will propel you to the stage even when self pride wants you to sit back and not make a fool of yourself. It does what needs to be done for the good of everyone involved, regardless of who does or does not get the credit.
*forgiveness–does not mean forgetfulness. If a person has it in their nature to lie, cheat, steal or whatever, you don’t have to be blind to that fact, just accept that they are that way, keep your distance from them. Simply let go of any anger they caused you and don’t carry it or hold it against them. Caring a grudge will not punish them. However, it may add extra stress to your life and make you physically ill.