My grandmother had several folders with multiple yellowed clippings she snipped out over the years and poked away. When we cleaned out her house, I came across many of these but had no time to spend the hours poring through them. Instead, I poked them away just as she did and enjoy coming across these little treasures in my busy world from time to time when I am digging around in my office.
This weekend I did just that. I came across an article she had cut out of the Hoard's Dairyman in 1965 at the turn of the year. It was written by Lois J. Hurley titled From Day to Day. Here it is:
Part I
Funk and Wagnalls college dictionary defines the word happy as enjoying, giving or indicating pleasure; joyous; blessed. And it lists 32 synonyms for happy, starting with blissful and ending with sunny. Let's look for a moment at the significance of "enjoying, giving or indicating pleasure." We all know the adage that it is more blessed to give than to receive, and the same may be true of happiness: We may be at our most happy state in giving. At the same time, it is frustrating to the personality to squash all expressions of enjoyment or pleasure bestowed upon oneself by others. In short, if you are happy, or joyous, or blissful, or sunny because somebody has gone out of his way to make you so, show it. Express it. Tell him.
The very young don't worry much about the state of the world, at the beginning of a new year; the very old are very sure that things have gone to pot and all is lost. The in-between-age people, of which I am one, try to evaluate things and search hopefully for encouraging signs that the world moves ahead to the advantage of mankind.
I heard a sermon last summer that bears quoting at this season of beginnings and hope. The minister, who was a guest in my church, said that Charles A. Beard, a noted historian, was once asked if he could sum up the pattern and development of all human history in one week. In one day? In one hour?
"I can sum it up in one minute. It lies in four familiar statements: 'Whom the gods destroy, they first make mad; The bee fertilizes the flower which it robs; the mills of the gods grind slowly, but exceeding fine; when it is darkest, you can see the stars.'"
The bee fertilizes the flower which it robs. When hard luck and misfortune have had their way with us, we often find that our character has deepened; our compassion has developed to a fine point of sensitivity to the like woes of those around us, and we have learned that we can take the hard knocks and survive. While we lost a great deal, something of value was left in its place. The first use of the atom was destruction; later uses promise well for the total good of mankind.
This write up continues to break down the familiar statements which can sum up mankind, and it ends with a "middle aged" prayer I will continue next week. When I came across this on Sunday I sat and thought for a bit as to why exactly my grandmother clipped this out when she was in her middle ages. How did these words whisper to her, intrigue her, or touch her heart? I will never know, but the thought that one day my grandchild might unfold a yellowed paper of a column I once wrote is intriguing in itself. The bee fertilizes that which it robs as does the written word stringing us together.
