151 years ago today.

Today's blog is going to be taken from the Library of Congress
Appendix number 19, Volume 12
of the United States at Large

By The President of The United States of America:

A Proclamation

For a Day of National Humiliation

Fasting and Prayer

Whereas, the Senate of the United States, devoutly recognizing the Supreme Authority and Just Government of the Almighty God, in all the affairs of men and of nations, has, by a resolution, requested the President to designate and set apart a day for National prayer and humiliation:

And whereas, it is the duty of nations, as well as of men, to own their dependence upon the overruling power of God, to confess their sins and transgressions, in humble sorrow, yet with assured hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy and pardon; and to recognize the sublime truth, announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history, that those nations only are blessed whose God is the Lord:

And, insomuch as we know that, by His divine law, nations, like individuals, are subjected to punishments and chastisements in this world, may we not justly fear that the awful calamity of the civil war, which now desolates the land, may be but a punishment inflicted upon us for our presumptuous sins, to the needful end of our national reformation as a whole People?  We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven.  We have been preserved these many years, in peace and prosperity.  We have grown in numbers, wealth, and power as no other nation has ever grown.  But we have forgotten God.  We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own.  Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us!  It behooves us, then, to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness.

Now, therefore, in compliance with the request, and fully concurring in the views of the Senate, I do, by this my proclamation, designate and set apart Thursday, the 30th day of April, 1863, as a day of national humiliation, fasting, and prayer.  And I do hereby request all the People to abstain on that day from their ordinary secular pursuits, and to unite, at their several places of public worship and their respective homes, in keeping the day holy to the Lord, and devoted to the humble discharge of the religious duties proper to that solemn occasion.

All this being done, in sincerity and truth, let us then rest humbly in the hope authorized by the Divine teachings, that the united cry of the Nation will be heard on high, and answered with blessings, no less than the pardon of our national sins, and restoration of our now divided and suffering country, to its former happy condition of unity and peace.

In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand, and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.

Done at the city of Washington this thirtieth day of March, 

in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, 

and of the Independence of the United States the eighty-seventh.

-Abraham Lincoln

By the President:

WILLIAM H. STEWARD, Secretary of State


( I did type this out and I'm not a great editor so please point out any mis-strikes...thanks!)

Mondays

Mondays,

They have such a bad reputation, but do they need to?  It's funny that we view the start of a New Year as a good thing and yet the start of a new work week is....blahhhh it's Monday :(

I have really been changing my mind on some things lately and this morning before I left for work, I heard myself say out loud, "It's Monday and it's going to be a fantastic Monday, in fact today is going to go by so fast!"  Yes, I am a total dreamer and nerd at heart.  But maybe it's time to also consider the words "Dreamer" and "Nerd" positive words, why not?

Your mind is the one thing you have control over, I realize for some that may not be the case and there are varying circumstances for sure.  However, for the majority of us on planet earth, we are not harnessing the choice we do have with our mind. 

I choose to identify Monday as a good thing, a new week with new possibilities, and I do understand change takes time.  Change is like a baby, it needs constant care, attention and nurturing.  Much like the investment of rearing a human being, it takes work. 

Actually I could use a plethora of examples for Changing your mindset.  There are big changes...which require large investments of time and attention.  These would be things that have been identified in your mind since you can remember.  We start to see these items as part of our identity, such as "well I've always been shy", or "I've always been this way, I have a short temper" etc etc.  But it doesn't have to be that way.

Maybe most of us are just plain lazy or have a lack of belief that change can actually happen.  Permanent change is the hardest to believe for, especially permanent identity change. 

But it's there, your mind, and the capacity for so much more than what "is" or what "has been" or what "has been Foreverrrrrr".  Doesn't matter how long or how deep that identity or habit or characteristic about you has been there....it doesn't have to be. 

Everyday you wake up, the choice is there and your mind is there as well, waiting for you to unleash it's potential.  We are an incredible creation of God, we should stop minimizing our capabilities.
:)

Ruby's Birthday 2014

Good Morning World.

It's a Sunday Morning, and as usual I don't have much time to write.  
I am leaving for church in a few minutes. 

I will have to get used to this sort of Blogging, public blogging.  Usually, I write on "750words.com."  That website is private, for my own viewing and therefore I am used to writing without restraint.  I would suggest that website to anyone who has a surplus of thoughts they need to relieve their minds from.  

I believe there is an actual tie between the brain, emotions and the act of writing.  I read once that the act of using a pen or pencil and writing in long hand, aka cursive is even better.  

It's sad to me to finally have lived long enough to see things go by the wayside, such as cursive.  It makes me wonder what my grandmother saw go by the wayside.  

Today is her birthday, she would have been 97.  She died before her birthday in 2006.  I remember the last time I was with her, she was an in-patient at a rehab center here in Las Vegas.  Rehab centers are never a good place to stay, they are a step down from hospitals..a pretty big step down.  

It was Super bowl Sunday evening and I was at her bedside.  She was incoherent for the most part, and her breathing was labored.  A small and I mean small TV, like 7 inch screen was mounted with a long arm on the wall next to her bed.  I held her hand and prayed and sang while watching football.  She labored her breath in her bed, "asleep".  

I wasn't actually present when she died, but she was the first person whom I was close to that had passed away in my life.  Her role in our family was huge.  She was a pioneer, not in the literal sense but in creating new paths for our family.  

She was a first generation Christian and had influenced much of my family for Christianity.  She was also an oil artist, so creative.  She was doing things in her era that most women didn't do.  She finished high school early, finished college.  She even went on a trip to Europe with a group of artists, leaving her husband and teenage children at home.  It was the early '60's at that time.  She's even in the "who's who" of artists.  She also has a painting hanging in the Australian U.S. embassy.  

What a woman!  The thing I remember the most about my Granny, Ruby Jewel Newsom was her prayers.  That woman could pray, she also had the gift of healing.  She would pray for a person who was sick and they would be healed.  She prayed for my sisters warts on her feet and they were healed.  We would joke about Granny getting "revved-up" or "revving her engine" when she prayed..because as soon as one of us would state a request in front of her ...she immediately started to pray in the spirit.  It was hilarious and we all loved it.  Ever since then we all refer to it as the "Granny Revv".  Funny now that I look at that typed out...she was a Reverend.  I remember seeing an identification card that said "Reverend Ruby Newsom".  She was an ordained minister as well.

If I could be half the things she was, or have half the faith or will that she had.  I am part of her legacy and I am so so very wealthy because of it.  I have so much gratitude for this.  We never choose to whom we are born to, but like my Granny she chose to pave a new path for her descendants, regardless of where she came from, regardless of the lack she was dealt in her life and I'm so so very thankful she had the heart and courage to do so.