Just a thought for the day

[suziieq]

The older I get, the more I enjoy Saturday mornings.

Perhaps it's the quiet solitude that comes with being the first to rise, or
maybe it's the unbounded joy of not having to be at work. Either way, the
first few hours of a Saturday morning are most enjoyable.

A few weeks ago, I was shuffling toward the basement ham radio-shack with a
steaming cup of coffee in one hand and the morning paper in the other. What
began as a typical Saturday morning turned into one of those lessons that
life seems to hand you from time to time. Let me tell you about it.
I turned the dial up into the phone portion of the band on my ham radio in
order to listen to a Saturday morning swap net.

Along the way, I came across an older sounding chap, with a tremendous
signal and a golden voice. You know the kind; he sounded like he should be
in the broadcasting business. He was telling whomever he was talking with
something about "a thousand marbles." I was intrigued and stopped to listen
to what he had to say.

"Well, Tom, it sure sounds like you're busy with your job. I'm sure they pay you well but it's a shame you have to be away from home and your family so much. Hard to believe a young fellow should have to work sixty or seventy
hours a week to make ends meet. Too bad you missed your daughter's dance recital" he continued. "Let me tell you something that has helped me keep a good perspective on my own priorities."

And that's when he began to explain his theory of a "thousand marbles."
"You see, I sat down one day and did a little arithmetic. The average person
lives about seventy-five years. I know, some live more and some live less, but on average, folks live about seventy-five years.
"Now then, I multiplied 75 times 52 and I came up with 3900, which is the number of Saturdays that the average person has in their entire lifetime.
Now, stick with me, Tom, I'm getting to the important part. It took me until I was fifty-five years old to think about all this in any detail", he went on, "and by that time I had lived through over twenty-eight hundred
Saturdays."

"I got to thinking that if I lived to be seventy-five, I only had about a thousand of them left to enjoy. So I went to a toy store and bought every single marble they had. I ended up having to visit three toy stores to round up 1000 marbles. I took them home and put them inside a large, clear plastic container right here in the shack next to my gear."

"Every Saturday since then, I have taken one marble out and thrown it away.
I found that by watching the marbles diminish, I focused more on the really important things in life. There is nothing like watching your time here on this earth run out to help get your priorities straight.

"Now let me tell you one last thing before I sign-off with you and take my lovely wife out for breakfast. This morning, I took the very last marble out of the container. I figure that if I make it until next Saturday then I have been given a little extra time. And the one thing we can all use is a little more time."

"It was nice to meet you Tom, I hope you spend more time with your family,
and I hope to meet you again here on the band. This is a 75 Year old Man,
K9NZQ, clear and going QRT, good morning!"

You could have heard a pin drop on the band when this fellow signed off. I
guess he gave us all a lot to think about. I had planned to work on the antenna that morning, and then I was going to meet up with a few hams to work on the next club newsletter.

Instead, I went upstairs and woke my wife up with a kiss. "C'mon honey, I'm taking you and the kids to breakfast." "What brought this on?" she asked with a smile. Oh, nothing special, it's just been a long time since we spent a Saturday together with the kids. And hey, can we stop at a toy store while we're out? I need to buy some marbles...

A friend sent this to me, so I to you, my friend.

And so, as one smart bear once said...
"If you live to be a hundred, I want to live to be a hundred minus one day, so I never have to live without you." - Winnie the Pooh.

[PartyTBingoT]

Very good suziieq

I have one that I like to share
thought for the day
When your in the health field you always read this kind of stuff.

Good morning. The American poet Walt Whitman once wrote

Why, who makes much of a miracle?
As to me I know of nothing else but miracles.

He then went on to describe all the everyday sights and sounds which for him were nothing less than miraculous. For many people the greatest miracle of all is the way a tiny fertilised egg, less than the size of a pinhead, can divide, multiply and grow until it becomes a human being. Today Parliament is debating therapeutic cloning - whether research should be allowed on the pre-implantation embryo, up to 14 days, in order to produce stem cells that might in due course be able to help us cure very serious illnesses such as Parkinsons and Alzheimers. This process is highly controversial and the Commons, like the House of Lords next month, is likely to be divided on the issue. But I would like to suggest that there is at least some common ground. I don't think anyone debating today will think that what we are talking about is simply a blob of jelly. We are talking about a reality that has the potential to become our children or grandchildren. Roman Catholics and many others believe that this reality, from the moment of conception, is to be accorded the full rights of a human person. But even those who do not take this view believe that the pre-implantation embryo has a special status. It is at the least, a potential person, and as such needs to be protected. There is miracle here that all sides of the argument can, and should, recognise.

What then of the scientists who want to do this research?

People sometimes think that when scientists work on the very stuff of life in order to try to improve human health they are playing God. They are not. They are simply being human, because an essential part of being human is our capacity to interact with and manipulate nature for human well-being. It is human beings doing what human beings should do: but, according to the Bible, it is also a profoundly religious activity, as many of our greatest scientists have recognised. Einstein for example wrote

The scientist's religious feeling takes the form of rapturous amazement at the harmony of natural law, which reveals an intelligence of such superiority that compared with it, all systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection.

I don't want to gloss over the differences that will emerge in the debate today. But despite the disagreements there will, I hope, be an underlying sense of respect both for the miracle of human life and the equally miraculous human capacity through science, to explore nature and make it work for human health.