A Soulful Journey

  When Gerald Ford was president, they were hosting a state dinner for Queen Elizabeth. The upstairs living quarters of the White House were in an uproar as everyone was getting dressed in anticipation of the arrival of the queen. Jack Ford, their son, could not find the cufflinks for his tuxedo. He was running around without his shirt or pants on when the announcement came that the queen was being ushered upstairs to be greeted in the family quarters. Out she came from the elevator and out from another door came Jack Ford in just his underwear. Bette Ford, terribly embarrassed, began to apologize, when the queen cut her off and said, “Please don’t bother…I’ve got one like that too!” Forgive yourself.

  There once was a king who had an exquisite collection of jewels.  Of all his treasures, the King’s most prized gem was a large perfect diamond.  After a long day of seeing to the affairs of state, the king would retreat to his private chambers to meditate on the beauty and perfection of this diamond.  Gazing upon the diamond’s perfectly smooth surface, down its precise facets, to a sharp cut where all the angles and lines converge in a singular point at the bottom, the king concluded that this diamond is proof that something perfect could exist in this world.  Everything else in the world was compromised, flawed. One night a tragic thing happened.  The king was holding his perfect diamond up to the light, admiring its faultless radiance, when the gem slipped from his hands and dropped to the hard stone floor.  With trepidation, the king scooped up the diamond and peered into its interior.  To his horror, the king perceived a long spindly crack r...

“That’s marvelous, having a lion and a monkey in the same cage,” said the visitor to a small zoo.   “How do they get along?” “Okay, usually,” answered the zookeeper.  “Occasionally they have a disagreement, and we have to get a new monkey.”          – Ohio Motorist Life is imperfect.  Our task is not to imagine it as perfect but to work toward that end.