A Soulful Journey

“An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.”   -Benjamin Franklin

A friend called in response to an invitation to help Benjamin Franklin celebrate his sixty-ninth birthday. “But,” said the friend,, “what does this mean, Benjamin?  I helped you celebrate your seventieth birthday last year.” “Yes I know,” said Franklin. “But I concluded that if I were to go on in the way Ii have been going there was not future for me.  So, I decided to turn around and go the other way.” Age brings us closer to our end.  Better sometimes is to look backward in order to look forward.

There is an ancient fable about a man walking through the forest who saw a fox that had lost its legs. He wondered how it lived. Then he saw a tiger with game in its mouth.   The tiger had its fill and left the rest of the meat for the fox. The next day the same thing happened. The man began to praise God for providing the fox and said to himself, “I too shall just rest in a corner with full trust in the Lord that He will provide me with all I need.” He did this for many days but nothing happened. He almost starved. He was nearly at death’s door when he heard a voice say,   “You who are in the path of the error, open your eyes to the truth! Follow the example of the tiger and stop imitating the disabled fox.” That’s good advice for us. It was Benjamin Franklin, not the Bible, who said,"God helps those who help themselves.”

June 4, 1883 in Annonay – near Paris – a balloon thirty-three feet in diameter was fed by a smoking bonfire of wet stew and old rags. The machine de aerostat was cut and rose 6,000 feet.   When it landed the baloom was attacked by pitchfork waving peasants and torn to pieces as an instrument of evil. Benjamin Franklin, a witness, was asked what possible good could come out of such an invention. “Eh, a quoi bon enfant qui vient de naitre?”   (“What good is a newborn infant?”) ~f rom Robert Fulghum Who was right? After all, planes soon dropped bombs from these flying machines.

"We must indeed all hang together or most assuredly we will all hang separately."  -Benjamin Franklin

“For want of a nail the shoe was lost, For want of a shoe the horse was lost, For want of a horse the rider was lost. For want of a rider the battle was lost. For want of a battle the kingdom was lost- And all for want of a horseshoe nail.” - Poor Richard’s Almanac , 17 th century poet George Herbert Moral?   Everything and everyone matters no matter how insignificant it appears.