Inspiration

"Practice the Pause. When in doubt, pause. When angry, pause. When tired, pause. When stressed, pause.
And when you pause ... pray."

- Unknown

I was making Play-doh animals with my four-year-old niece, Chris, and her three-year-old brother, Neil. While Chris was clearly molding a crude but recognizable dog, figuring what Neil was making was a bit more challenging.

"It's a cat," he told me, "but a truck ran over it."

Sometime later, Chris had made another simple animal shape, but Neil had a rather flat slab of dough on the table in front of him.

"What happened to this one?" I asked.

Neil shrugged and said simply, "Same truck."

"Without courage we will simply accumulate a collection of good ideas and regrets."

- Andy Stanley

In a very exclusive private school near California's Silicon Valley, a third-grade teacher was lecturing her upper high-class students about the less fortunate. She asked them each to write an essay about a poor family in the area.

One young girl's paper began:

"Once upon a time there was a poor family. The father was poor. The mother was poor. The children were poor. The nannies were poor. The pool man was poor. The personal trainer was poor. The gardeners were poor. This was a very poor family."