How many other things do we miss?

 

A man sat at a metro station in Washington DC and started to play the violin; it was a cold January morning. He played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes. During that time, since it was rush hour, it was calculated that 1,100 people went through the station, most of them on their way to work.

Three minutes went by, and a middle aged man noticed there was musician playing. He slowed his pace, and stopped for a few seconds, and then hurried up to meet his schedule.

A minute later, the violinist received his first dollar tip: a woman threw the money in the till and without stopping, and continued to walk.

A few minutes later, someone leaned against the wall to listen to him, but the man looked at his watch and started to walk again. Clearly he was late for work.

The one who paid the most attention was a 3 year old boy. His mother tagged him along, hurried, but the kid stopped to look at the violinist. Finally, the mother pushed hard, and the child continued to walk, turning his head all the time. This action was repeated by several other children. All the parents, without exception, forced them to move on.

In the 45 minutes the musician played, only 6 people stopped and stayed for a while. About 20 gave him money, but continued to walk their normal pace. He collected $32. When he finished playing and silence took over, no one noticed it. No one applauded, nor was there any recognition.

No one knew this, but the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the most talented musicians in the world. He had just played one of the most intricate pieces ever written, on a violin worth $3.5 million dollars.

Two days before his playing in the subway, Joshua Bell sold out at a theater in Boston where the seats averaged $100.

This is a real story. Joshua Bell playing incognito in the metro station was organized by the Washington Post as part of a social experiment about perception, taste, and priorities of people. 

The outlines were: in a commonplace environment at an inappropriate hour: Do we perceive beauty? Do we stop to appreciate it? Do we recognize the talent in an unexpected context?

One of the possible conclusions from this experience could be: If we do not have a moment to stop and listen to one of the best musicians in the world playing the best music ever written, how many other things are we missing?”

A Prayer for the New Year

Holy Father,

God of our yesterdays, our today, and our tomorrows.

We praise You for Your unequaled greatness.

Thank You for the year behind us and for the year ahead.

Help us in Your new year, Father, to fret less and laugh more.

To teach our children to laugh by laughing with them.

To teach others to love by loving them.

Knowing, when Love came to the stable in Bethlehem, He came for us.

So that Love could be with us, and we could know You.

That we could share Love with others.

Help us, Father, to hear Your love song in every sunrise,

in the chriping of sparrows in our backyards,

in the stories of our old folks, and the fantasies of our children.

Help us to stop and listen to Your love songs,

so that we may know You better and better.

We rejoice in the world You loved into being.

Thank You for another new year and for new chances every day.

We pray for peace, for light, and for hope, that we might spread them to others.

Forgive us for falling short this past year.

We leave the irreparable past in your hands, and step out into the unknown new year knowing You will go with us.

We accept Your gift of a new year and we rejoice in what’s ahead, depending on You to help us do exactly what You want..

I say it again, we rejoice!

In Jesus name,

Amen.

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Morgan Freeman Connecticut, Sandy Hook Elementary School Shooting Statement a HOAX, Actor’s Bogus ‘Sensationalist Media’ Post Goes Viral

Reports confirm that a recent statement released by Morgan Freeman, where the 75-year-old actor supposedly blames the media for “sensationalizing” monsters such as 20-year-old Adam Lanza (the gunman involved in the tragic school shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut), is a hoax. Reddit users recently discovered that the bogus post was actually initially posted on Facebook by a man named “Mark” from Vancouver. The school shooting response has since gone viral on popular social networking sites including Facebook and Twitter. Read on for further details.

Here is the post allegedly written by Morgan Freeman, where the Oscar winner blames these types of violent tragedies directly on CNN, Fox News, and other popular media/news outlets. Reports now confirm that the statement isn’t necessarily “fake,” but it was not actually released by Freeman:

“You want to know why. This may sound cynical, but here’s why.
It’s because of the way the media reports it. Flip on the news and watch how we treat the Batman theater shooter and the Oregon mall shooter like celebrities.
Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris are household names, but do you know the name of a single *victim* of Columbine? Disturbed people who would otherwise just off themselves in their basements see the news and want to top it by doing something worse, and going out in a memorable way.
Why a grade school? Why children? Because he’ll be remembered as a horrible monster, instead of a sad nobody.
CNN’s article says that if the body count “holds up”, this will rank as the second deadliest shooting behind Virginia Tech, as if statistics somehow make one shooting worse than another. Then they post a video interview of third-graders for all the details of what they saw and heard while the shootings were happening. Fox News has plastered the killer’s face on all their reports for hours.
Any articles or news stories yet that focus on the victims and ignore the killer’s identity? None that I’ve seen yet. Because they don’t sell. So congratulations, sensationalist media, you’ve just lit the fire for someone to top this and knock off a day care center or a maternity ward next.

You can help by forgetting you ever read this man’s name, and remembering the name of at least one victim. You can help by donating to mental health research instead of pointing to gun control as the problem. You can help by turning off the news.”
The above quote was never actually associated with Freeman or any reputable news/media outlet, which prompted initial rumors that it had to be a hoax.
The man who actually wrote the post on Facebook (identified simply as “Mark”) later commented, “If I know the Internet, someone will attribute the quote to Morgan Freeman or Betty White and it’ll go viral.”
As Reddit notes, everything does sound better coming from the actor’s smooth and deliberate voice.
Even though Freeman didn’t write the response, do Mstarz readers agree with what “Mark” has to say about the tragic shootings?
Mstarz earlier reported:
Reports allege that Adam Lanza (from Hoboken, NJ) killed his mother Nancy and father Peter at their home before heading to the Sandy Hook school, where he shot and killed several faculty and young students (between the ages of 6-7) that Nancy may have worked with at approximately 9:40 a.m on Friday (Dec. 14). He then died of an alleged self-inflicted gun wound. Authorities first named the gunman as Lanza’s 24-year-old brother Ryan, because the gunman had Ryan’s ID on him at the time of the shootings. Apparently Adam had gotten into an argument with his mother Nancy which prompted him to go off on the morbid killing spree. While some initial reports had it Nancy was actually one of the victims found among the carnage at Sandy Hook, new reports confirm that she was shot in the face by Adam at the family’s home in Newtown. He then used her car to drive to the school.
Little else is known about Adam Lanza other than that he was wearing a “black battle fatigues, military vest, and bullet proof vest” at the time of the shooting Family members insist Adam was emotionally disturbed and “not well.”
An updated report on Yahoo! provides more in-depth details on the gunman as well as his mother, Nancy (Adam was supposedly an honor student at Newtown High School, and Nancy had divorced her husband Peter back in 2008).
The names of the 26 Sandy Hook shooting victims have since been released (with further details here).
Thoughts and condolences go out to those affected in and throughout the Newtown community during the sorrowful aftermath of this tragic event.

Read more at http://www.mstarz.com/articles/7074/20121216/morgan-freeman-connecticut-sandy-hook-elementary-school-shooting-statement-hoax-actor-bogus-sensationalist-media-post-goes-viral.htm#cj7lJ7TdLZi2eiTs.99

My Girls… My Best Friends


I am extremely lucky to have met and forged a great friendship with these special girls over the past few years. Having several great friends that I believe would do anything for me and I know I would give a kidney, half my liver, my legs, and arms to save any of them is worth more than its weight in gold or… platinum..
My girls more like sisters now than friends….

A good friend accepts you for who you are and doesn’t make you change. Acceptance is one of the basic human needs and without it, we can’t be happy. When you find a friend who knows you and loves you anyway, that friend is worth keeping around.

A good friend is….
Someone who is always there for you when you need them, someone you can tell anything and everything, someone who buys you a drink at Pepeniro’s when you don’t have money, someone you ride taxi’s with you, someone who you do crazy things with that other people wouldnt understand, someone you can fake laugh with for hours just to create real laughs, someone who comes to this website to find crazy words for you to look up that will make you laugh so hard you almost pee your pants, someone who can make your day better just by being there, someone you ALWAYS wanna hang out with, someone you can never get sick of, someone who covers your FB page with special pics on your birthday, someone who fits in just like family, someone who can know what you’re thinking just by the look on your face, someone you have inside jokes with, someone who is really good at listening, someone who hangs out with you at work, someone you love, someone you have nicknames with that could fill up a whole paper, someone that cheers you up when you’re down, someone who is a crazy bitch but only in the best way possible, someone you can have pointless text-a-thons with everyday and never gets old, someone you laugh with, but mainly someone you can always be yourself with 🙂 ❤

Letting go and letting God

Letting go is the hard part in life. letting God, when done with Faith and Hope, makes everything it easy.

We are a nation of individuals who are intent on creating, controlling, forming and pre-determining our own destinies. True to the cliche though. ” life is what happens when you are making other plans.”

I am not writing this as a means of preaching and saying sit back, relax I.e. be lazy and God will make everything perfect for you! Quite the opposite.He blessed each and every one of us with talents and abilities which enable us to reach and achieve our dreams.

I am talking about Letting Go from an emotional perspective. God has each of our hearts in the palm of His hand, he knows ever hair on our head and most important, he knows what makes us happy and what makes us sad.

Sometimes we want a situation with a boyfriend, animal or friend to just “work out” and be perfect … We pray night and day on bended knees, in the car, whilst at work and sometimes even in our sleep… When this Thing doesn’t work we blame God and decide that FAITH is simply not effective…. We get sad : ) and then as time heals all wounds we all of a sudden wake up one day and realize that what didn’t happen was the best thing that could have happened and that something or someone much better comes along … Put in our paths by Our Heavenly Daddy … And filling us with abundant joy

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