PRAY THE DEVIL BACK TO HELL

Dear Readers,

Awesome. I just finished watching a wonderful interview and highly recommend it to every one out there as a "must see". I expect that you can request a copy from your local PBS station or find it online. I worked in Liberia from 2004-2006, a country in West Africa that boasts the first female president in the history of the continent of Africa. An amazing story with amazing heroes. Check it out & you'll be glad that you did. It only takes someone ordinary to do something super-ordinary. Open your heart today and let God use you to move mountains and change lives and reshape the world into a better place. Let us all join hands and stand in prayers of agreement that we each will do our best to follow our heart and do the right thing because every little step counts. This has stirred up my spirit so strong this afternoon that I feel I could preach a sermon- lol! Be blessed as you watch the documentary film "Pray The Devil Back To Hell". It is about the Liberian struggle, when the mothers (local market women) rose up to declare that enough was enough. They fought for freedom.

Pray The Devil Back To Hell - a PBS television interview of Liberian Leyman Gbowee (she fought for freedom) and American Abigail Disney (she told the story of freedom). This topic is also presented by Bill Moyers on his web page: Bill Moyers Journal. Have a blessed week and do come back and share your feedback about the film. Thanks.

LJ

A Psalm of Life

What the heart of the young man said to the psalmist

Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
    Life is but an empty dream! --
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
    And things are not what they seem.

Life is real!  Life is earnest!
    And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
    Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
    Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each to-morrow
    Find us farther than to-day.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
    And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
    Funeral marches to the grave.

In the world's broad field of battle,
    In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
    Be a hero in the strife!

Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant!
    Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act, -- act in the living Present!
    Heart within, and God o'erhead!

Lives of great men all remind us
    We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
    Footprints on the sands of time;

Footprints, that perhaps another,
    Sailing o'er life's solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
    Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us, then, be up and doing,
    With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
    Learn to labor and to wait.

 -- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Keep looking beyond tomorrow…
temptation whispers in ill-humored fashion.
Sand sifts smoothly through the hourglass
half full, half empty at the birth of twilight
and an eerie notion stills my heart.
Keep looking beyond tomorrow…
temptation now drones my name.
But sand has drifted in errant ways.
My path has steepened; I labor to climb.
Wind’s shifted north, I’m facing south
and pushing forth one inch at a time.
Keep looking beyond tomorrow…
temptation calls its wretched wish,
though I can’t see one grain of sand
past the one on which I stand.
Doubts pushing and pulling with equal force,
one step forward two steps back
till silence roars; temptation no longer calls.
Sand sifts quickly through the hourglass
half empty, half full at the birth of twilight
and a black moon eclipses the sun.

Carmen Ruggero ©2005