Jack’s Winning Words 4/8/15
“There’s a simple trick for getting along with all kinds of people.  You climb into his skin and walk around in it.”  (Atticus Finch)  The Civil Rights Movement was stirred by more than the marches.  The novel, “To Kill a Mocking Bird,” also played a role.  Do you recall Atticus who helped his children see civil rights in a new way?  His advice was wise.  When you want to understand people, you crawl into their skin.  That helps in a lot of situations.    ;-)  Jack

 FROM TARMART REV:  ...seems like a spiritual identity in there somewhere, in His coming and in our identity with Him.====JACK:  "And the Word became flesh" might mean (among other things) that God decided to climb into our skin and show us how we ought to walk.

FACEBOOK LIZ:  white people are bad!!! sick of this bs...====JACK:  Is that what "To Kill a Mocking Bird" said when you read it?  How do you think a parent should go about teaching values to a child?====LIZ:  loved to kill a mockingbird. our yellow lab was named scout.  we have a biracial president who declared we are in a post-racial society upon getting elected. then he promptly stirred up hatred for the next six years.  what do you teach your parishioners about lbgt people?====JACK:  I retired before lbgt became an issue.  But, I’ve always tried to teach “the love example” of Jesus.  I can’t see him rejecting someone because of their sexual orientation.  There is soooo much that we don’t understand about the mind and how it works in directing the lives of people.  I try not to be dogmatic in things that I don’t really understand….and they are many such things.

FROM SHARIN' SHARON:  The problems of poor people of the world, both here in the U.S.A. and in other countries frustrate me. Why do so many people suffer from poverty. Yesterday, saw a program on PBS News Hour where a company of volunteers in Minnesota are trying to design solutions for how poor people's quality of life can be improved. The women somewhere in some country could only shell 2 lbs. of peanuts in an hour. The Minnesota inventors first tried to make a non-electric peanut butter maker but in their culture they don't enjoy eating peanuts like that. So the inventors went back to the drawing board and indeed did come up with a non-electrical machine that can shell 60 to 80 lbs. of peanuts in an hour. To me, the main thing in this story is (1) that the Minnesota inventors tried to "get inside the skin of people who don't like peanut butter and (2) that when the inventors did that they were still able to invent the machine for these poor people that would solve the problem of work and time. The best kind of work in this world seems to be sort of individualized and social at the same time.====JACK:  There are many ways to help the poor.  A WWs reader from Minnesota is a retired agriculturalist.  He has regularly gone to Africa to show people how to plant crops so that they can vastly increase their yield.  That's helping the poor.  Your church's community garden which has a food sharing aspect to it is another way of helping the poor.  Giving dollars to worthy causes is still another way.  Giving free water and free electricity to people who aren't able (or do not choose) to pay their bills may sound like kindness, but it only creates other problems and can, ultimately, do more harm than good.  Like the old saying, "It's better to teach a man to fish than to give him a fish."

FROM PEPPERMINT MARY:  i learned much from atticus and boo radley.  life is so much about walking around in other's skins no matter the color, the troubles, or the situation.====JACK:  Walking around with children all day could (in a way) delay the aging process...and be fun, too.

FROM DR JUDY:  Hope you heard. New book from Harper Lee due soon.====JACK:  Yes, that's an interesting story about the 88-yr-old author.  She said about her new book, Go Set a Watchman, "It's a pretty decent effort."  I wonder what the readers will say?