Category: potraits
Mr. Frankyl
“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.” – Victor Frankl
Viktor Frankl survived a nazi concentration camp, though his mother father and wife did not. He determined as a neurologist, psychiatrist and philosopher that attitude is the last of the human freedoms and it cannot be taken from a man when everything else can be and for him as an Austrian Jewish man everything was taken. how can We not admire this man, who took particular interest in studying depression and suicide, set up counseling centers and headed a female suicide prevention program seeking to decrease teen suicide. After seeing his family murdered and suffered in a concentration camp he somehow rose from the ashes returned to Vienna and became head of the neurological department publishing the well known book, “man’s search for meaning.” Our lives are weighed down every day with things we cannot change or control and I think the temptation is to crumble beneath this reality. Unless we change our approach. Viktor is proof that humanity has the inborn ability to be resilient. His life is evidence of an inner dimension of strength that permeates our DNA and transcends the darkness in the world. He says this, “what is to give light must endure burning.” Not only is Viktor himself evidence of resiliency in mankind, but of reality that suffering produces something far beyond anything we can produce synthetically, suffering is the organic way life emerges. And even in suffering we have a choice in how we will respond; even in our darkest hour there is a shred of freedom and hope and light.
Cousins
Harriet Tubman
“Twant me, ‘‘twas the Lord. I always told him, ‘I trust you. I don’t know where to go or what to do, but I expect you to lead me,’ and He always did.” – Harriet TUBMAN
Here stands a woman we all admire. Her strength, resiliency and determination to be free inspires regardless of what divides us. I am fascinated that Harriet with all her setbacks , weaknesses and obstacles rose up to victory; not in the name of herself or feminism or social justice. She rose in the name of God who gave her strength. Americans should look to her , perhaps we should look to how she walked, prayed and believed, perhaps we ought to look to her savior and her faith and find strength for our own journey to freedom. It’s not politics that divide us or color or religion in my opinion, what divides is that we are enslaved by our own self-righteousness , sinful nature and the need to be right. It is the heart of man that needs to be set free above all else. “ God’s time is always near. He set the north star in the heavens; he gave me the strength in my limbs; he meant I should be free.” – Harriet Tubman Harriet cannot be separated in any way from her faith in a loving God without forfeiting her accomplishments and giving up the freedom she gained. It was her desire for freedom working in tandem with her faith in the power of God that broke the chains she was bound by. I want to remember that Harriet struck against the root of slavery with one act of bravery, but there have been many since then; the freedoms we have access to today in this country were first sought by those who trusted in God to free them. we cannot have one without the other. Freedom without God or God without freedom.Dear God raise up a generation of Harriet Tubmans! “I could have freed thousands more, she said, if they had only known they were slaves”
The Art Place 