Storytime Tapestry Newsletter

The newsletter devoted to spreading love and cultural awareness around the world.

April 19, 2007

Today’s Announcements

A Happy Birthday wish goes out to our writer and friend, Barbara Weymouth: weymouth@surewest.net

Hey ya'll

A very quick note - please pray for Skyler- he has been hospitalized

He has a virus in his tummy and is vomiting and extreme diarrhea

He has been in Phoenix Children's hospital in the middle of downtown Phoenix since Monday morning

They have him on IVs, yet he continues to throw up and extreme diarrhea, not holding much formula down

I'm home for a couple minutes and heading back now - we have finally got a bed on the pediatric floor - effective 9:30 PM tonight

The hospital number is 602 546 1000 the room will be under Skyler Dolfin

my cell may or may not work  772 812 3246

Please pray for a speedy healing and a fast recovery - please feel free to send this out to as many friends, healers, praying people you can - the more the merrier

I am also getting sick, please send healing to me - I am starting to lose my voice and got a cold in the nasal area - please help me recover quickly too, so I can take care of Skyler

thanks and we love you all !!!

acaysha@cox.net

Hi  I go and have the heart cath in the morning at 7:30.My friend Helen is going to be with me. Harold has to go to driving school for his insurance tell noon so she will take me home if I get to go. If I am in your group please put me on no mail and please hold all other mail tell I am able to get back on here. Thank you for your love and prayers. I love you and you are in my prayers daily. Love, Jesus hugs and prayers Mom/Grandma/Aunt and Barbara


May God keep you in His loving arms and I pray Jesus walks beside you as you walk the path way God has placed you on today. And I pray the Holy Ghost fill you with the Wisdom and the Knowledge to complete all God has placed on your plate each day.

barb242@swbell.net

Barb's Christian Home
http://www.geocities.com/barbwill.geo/index.html

Click to join Gods manna
http://www.groups.yahoo.com/group/GODSMANNA/join

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Today’s Stories

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ValueSpeak

A Weekly Column

By Joseph Walker

Valuespeak@msn.com 

WRESTLING WITH WHY

It’s late at night – or early in the morning, depending upon you perspective. I’m tired, but I can’t sleep. Instead, I’m sitting in front of the TV, hopping from news channel to news channel, trying to learn something – anything – about the latest unfathomable tragedy.

To be honest, I’m not really sure what I’m looking for here. I certainly don’t want to see any more grisly footage of the crime scene. Nor do I expect to find peace or comfort or closure within the words of dispassionate news reporters and commentators. Even the eyewitness accounts of students who were close to the tragedy leave me feeling hollow and hungry to know more.

I guess the one thing I keep wanting . . . yearning . . . needing to know is the one thing that ultimately we may never know: why? Why did he do it? Why did he snap? Why did he think that killing and injuring so many innocent students was . . . well . . . even thinkable?

Why? Why? Why?

I suppose that some of my angst is driven by the knowledge that my eldest son, Joe, is a college student living in Virginia. Although he is an adult with a family of his own and has been living away from home for nearly eight years, I still worry about him. And while I understand that this was an isolated incident, it serves as a painful reminder of every fear and trepidation you ever felt as a parent from the first day you sent your first child off to school.

This is the ultimate schoolyard bully doing the ultimate schoolyard harm. And tonight . . . or this morning . . . I want to know why.

Perhaps that is why I find myself flashing back to another angst-ridden night and morning many years ago. Our beloved Chihuahua, Toro, was missing. Mom had sent him out to wait for me to come home from school, as she always did, but he wasn’t in the front yard when I got there. We spent the rest of the afternoon and evening searching for him throughout the neighborhood and beyond. Toro was not a wanderer – he rarely left the confines of our living room, much less our yard. So by the end of the day it was pretty clear that he had been taken – and that we probably wouldn’t see him again.

I was heartbroken. Toro was the only pet we ever had that I had any real affection for. He was fun and playful, with a sweet and loving disposition that I understand is rare for his breed. He had captured all of our hearts and was part of the family. And now he was gone. I cried myself to sleep that night and awoke with tears in my eyes the next morning.

“Why would someone just take him?” I asked my Dad when he came in to get me for breakfast. “I would never take someone else’s dog. Why would someone do that?”

Dad sat on the bed next to me. For a moment we just sat there in silence, both of us wrestling with “why.” At last he spoke.

“I wish I could tell you why people sometimes do bad things,” he said. “My guess is there are probably lots of reasons. But even if we understood them, it probably wouldn’t change how we’re feeling this morning. We’d still be sad.”

Dad was right. No explanation could have made me feel better about losing Toro.

“So what do we do?” I asked him tearfully.

“Well, for now,” he said, smiling, as he wiped a tear from my chubby cheek, “we cry.”

Dad understood that sooner or later I would move on from my personal pet crisis. That’s the way of life. Eventually, we always have to move on – as individuals, as communities and as a nation. But in the meantime it’s OK to feel hurt. It’s OK to feel vulnerable. It’s OK to cry.

And to ask “why.”

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Poetry Corner

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 In Silence

 Dianna Doles Petry

Beyond the campus,

In towns and cities worldwide,

A river of sadness flows,

For the lost and the injured,

For the victims and the families,

Silence continues to grow.

Words cannot be found,

Images cannot be forgotten,

Terror inside school walls,

Shattered windows of time,

Cries of anguish set free,

Silence now fills the halls.

Beyond Virginia Tech,

We all feel the impact,

Tears of pain are found,

The reality of desperation,

Joining hands to find hope,

Silence falling to the ground.

Prayers across the country,

So many candles to light,

Sympathy mixed with fear,

Compassion for the living,

Broken hearts never to heal,

Silence hanging loud and clear.

©Dianna Doles Petry

dianna59@suddenlink.net

4/18/2007

http://diannapetry.tripod.com
http://members.tripod.com/~poemsbydianna/PoetryofLife.html
www.womenwithauniquesoul.com
www.myspace.com/diannawv

~**~**~

Two Beasts amongst Us

Cynthia Groopman

Two beasts wild and so ragingly fierce

.Our tapestry of life both did brutally destroy and pierce.

A storm so angry and wild,

Flooded homes and harmed the property of men, women

and child.

Pounding waves thrust with intense power and might Created an awful sight.

A young man with guns in hand,

Caused death, terror and destruction to the peaceful college compus land.

Why did the killer harbor such vicious hate,

We stop to think, sob as we ruminate.

The storm was uncontrollable too,

Occuring in a season of springtime with blooming flowers, skies of sunshiney blue

The answers to these questions, I do not know, my friend,

To the Lord, I seek comfort and consolation to those who mourn,

And broken hearts and weeping souls He will heal and mend.

Cynthia Groopman

Cynthia.Groopman@verizon.net

 ~**~**~

Readers Feedback

Carol!  Martha Jette, what an awesome contributor!  i have long believed in Lucid dreaming and often know that I am dreaming--with that i no longer have any reaction to sometimes strange dreams that would have scared me awake years ago!!!  Martha:  I truly enjoyed your column on Lucid Dreaming and I plan to save it for further reference!

Thanks so much for you insights!

Vona Marengo

Virginia School massacre: If just a few of those students, maybe one or two, would have been licensed concealed weapons carriers this sad, terrible tragedy would
have stopped in the first classroom. After all 911 is just Dial-A-Prayer.
Mark Crider

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