An everyday prayer

I was here

I lived, I loved

I was here

I did, I've done, everything that I wanted




And it was more than I thought it would be.

"May God bless the memory of the victims and in the words of scripture heal the broken hearted and bind up their wounds."

President Barack H. Obama

Happy Secrets

When I was in college, I loved to check PostSecret once or twice each week. It is an incredible idea, which has been mimicked by many but never replaced. I always came away from PostSecret - before a final, after a fight with a friend, or just getting through a normal week - feeling like I was part of a greater humanity, and that it was all going to be okay.

The founder of PostSecret is someone I've heard speak, and who I think continues to have a lot of important nuggets of wisdom to pass on to us all.

Here's his latest, just in time for any holiday blues or New Year's worries you may be experiencing:

If you ever catch yourself feeling blue, as we all sometimes do from time to time, here are ten things that if you do three days in a row (I promise) will make you feel better.

1. In the morning write down five things you are grateful for.

2. Think about a random act of kindness you can do for someone that day.
3. Eat well (you know what that means); drink well (no coffee, soft drinks or alcohol).
4. Exercise hard for 20 minutes.
5. Write an old friend an email or better yet a letter.
6. Actively relax, meditate or pray for 10 minutes.
7. Take a walk in the sun.
8. Watch a John Hughes' movie like "Ferris Bueller’s Day Off" or "The Breakfast Club".
9. Sleep deep and long.
10. Remember that you are loved (I promise).

Sound simple? If there's one thing I've learned this year, it's that simple is as simple does. We earn the right to call something simple only after we actually live it out day-to-day in our lives. If we never try it, we never know what courage or persistence "simple" might actually take.

So thanks, PostSecret, for keeping us all a little happier, and a little more connected!

Prayers

http://www.cnn.com/2012/12/13/world/europe/uk-prank-nurse-death/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

I am having a happy day today, but this is just so sad. So so sad. Prayers to her family, the royal family, and the DJs especially.

Never underestimate the power of "little things." They are all we really have the ability to control.

Continuing Advent

"Accept one another."

 

Romans 15

And a nicer post about Ke$ha

Let's be honest, if I was a member of the YouTube generation, this...

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwO5_joq3Z4

 ...would so be me.

You are sweet and adorable, and I hope that in 10 years, you are still dancing with just as much fervor. One day you'll rule the world..

I would like to thank and blame Ke$ha all at once

So this weekend I was doing a little bit of work at the office, scanning in a survey from one of our client schools.

Scanning is a long, drawn out process whereby each single sheet of the 4-sheet survey that students take must be sent through a Scantron machine in order to be read and recorded.

It is a fun process, because, well, Scantron sheets are kind of 1980's and cool, but there are also "skew errors" and plenty of paper jams along the way, making it a tedious process too.

So when I scan surveys, I put on some mindless dance music, and dance...as I scan.

Usually I listen to Flo Rida, but this week, I chose Ke$ha, having enjoyed her new single on the radio and being ready for a change.

And as I was scanning, a survey about student use of alcohol and other drugs, I started thinking about pop culture trends, and trends in...well, student use of alcohol and other drugs.

Scanning, dancing, thinking, this pretty much sums up my life.

But I began to think about this concept that one of the U.S. national research studies talks about - "generational forgetting." The idea is that kids forget how dangerous the drugs their parents used can be, and parents forget to warn their kids about these kinds of drugs, and then the same types of drugs and drug problems keep re-surfacing over and over in society, in cycles.

Then I thought about how, when I was in high school, everyone was worried about ecstasy, because of our generation's rave culture, and about how we kids didn't use X, because we heard about people dying after awhile.

But then this happened:

And sure, other things happened, lots and lots of other things may have contributed to this:

The resurgence we've seen in dance music - with perhaps the Black Eyed Peas being forerunners, and folks like David Guetta, Flo Rida, Ke$ha and LMFAO taking over - is correlating to today's high schoolers rising use of ecstasy. Fascinating!

So the very music that helps me to scan the survey, to find the trends, to prevent the student use of dangerous substances, may also be contributing to the student use of dangerous substances.

Life is so very intriguing.