Miscellaneous Selections
A PRAYER FOR PARENTS: Oh, Jehovah, make me a better parent. Teach me to understand my children, to listen patiently to what they have to say and to answer all their questions kindly. Keep me from interrupting them, talking back to them and contradicting them. Make me as courteous to them as I would have them be to me. Give me courage to confess my sins against my children and to ask of them forgiveness when I know that I have done them wrong.
May I not vainly hurt the feelings of my children. Forbid that I should laugh at their mistakes or resort to shame and ridicule as punishment. Let me not tempt my child to lie and to steal. So guide me hour by hour that I may demonstrate by all I say and do that honesty produces happiness..... Reduce, I pray, the meanness in me. May I cease to nag; and when I am out of sorts, help me, 0 Lord, to hold my tongue.
Blind me to the little errors of my children and help me to see the good things that they do. Give me a ready word for honest praise.... help me to grow up with my children, to treat them as those of their own age; but let me not expect of them the judgments and conventions of adults. Allow me not to rob them of the opportunity to wait upon themselves, to think, to choose and to make decisions.
Forbid that I should ever punish them for my selfish satisfaction. May I grant them all their wishes that are reasonable and have the courage always to withhold a privilege which I know will do them harm... Make me so fair and just, so considerate and companionable to my children that they will have a genuine esteem for me. Fit me to be loved and imitated by my children.
With all thy gifts, 0 Jehovah, give me calm and poise and self control.
— Dr. Garry Cleveland Myers
DOROTHY DIX ON PETTING: The question of petting is one of the most perplexing problems of teen-agers — if one may judge from the mail I receive.
The questions most girls ask about petting are: "Is it wrong?" "Is it wise?" "Is it smart?" "Is it modem?" "If I refuse to pet, the gang says I'm old fashioned." The implications are that family, church, even society in general, frown upon petting because they just don't want young folks to have fun.
Answers are simple and emphatic: it is wrong, it is not wise, it is not smart, it is not modern. Perhaps a few companions may consider virtue, chastity and modesty old fashioned, but you will find these same friends scattered like stardust if you call upon them in time of trouble. Rely upon the precepts of your family and religion. They are not intended to interfere with your fun. In fact, they safeguard the happiness of your future.
Society is geared to expect most young persons to enter a happy, fruitful, and constructive marriage. If the physical relationship that will make this hope a reality is dissipated by indiscriminate petting in the teens, the future stretches ahead as a dismal, rather than a rosy, path. So pay no heed to the sophist who call you old fashioned; be proud of the designation.
Since it is the girl's responsibility to preserve propriety on a date, it is to them that I write particularly. Boys make the advances but it's up to the young lady to repel or accept them. It's not easy to take a stand once acquiescence has been taken for granted, so the place to establish a precedent is at the beginning.
It's a fallacy accepted by many girls that unless they pet, boys won't like them or won't make another date. Girls who aren't afraid to put this contention to the test find out quite soon that worthwhile boys are only too anxious to continue a friendship with a girl who isn't too yielding. The easy girls soon learn that not only one, but all boys, shun them for any dates except clandestine ones.
To be popular, be selective. Maintain high standards, and your friends will respect them. Let down the barriers, and you lose your own self-respect, as well as the esteem of your friends. Trust your own conscience, not the questionable theories of reckless persons.
— Dorothy Dix MONEY: Jesus never needed to give back any money because he never possessed any. He gave the order to His disciples not to carry bags for offerings on their journeys. He made one single exception, and that a fearful one. The Gospel tells us that one apostle kept the common purse. This disciple was Judas, and even Judas felt himself forced to give back the payment for his betrayal before disappearing in death. Judas is the mysterious victim sacrificed to the curse of money. Money carries with it, together with the filth of the hands which have clutched and handled it, the inexorable contagion of crime. Among the unclean things which men have manufactured to defile the earth and defile themselves, money is perhaps the most unclean. These counters of coined metal which pass and repass every day among hands still soiled with sweat or blood, worn by the repacious fingers of thieves, of merchants, of misers; this round and viscid sputum of the mint, desired by all, sought for, stolen, envied, loved more than love and often more than life; these ugly pieces of stamped matter, which the assassin gives to the cut-throat, the usurer to the hungry, the enemy to the traitor, the swindler to his partner, the simonist to the barterer in religious offices, the lustful to the woman bought and sold, these foul vehicles of evil which persuade the son to kill his father, the wife to betray her husband, the brother to defraud his brother, the wicked poor man to stab the wicked rich man, the servant to cheat his master, the highway man to despoil the traveler; this money, these material emblems of matter, are the most terrifying objects manufactured by man. Money which has been the death of so many bodies is every day the death of thousands of souls. More contagious than the rags of a man with the pest, than the pus of an ulcer, than the filth of a sewer, it enters into every house, shines on the counters of the moneychangers, settles down in money-chests, profanes the pillow of sleep, hides itself in the fetid darkness of squalid back-rooms, sullies the innocent hands of children, tempts virgins, pays the hangman for his work, goes about on the face of the earth to stir up hatred, to set cupidity on fire, to hasten corruption and death.
— The Life of Christ by Papini, pages 202-203.
DID YOU READ THIS? Santa Cruz, Calif. (AP)--Rock and roll dancing is out in Santa Cruz — by police order.
They say its heavy, pounding beat leads its fans to "highly suggestive, stimulating and tantalizing motions."
Police Lt. Richard Overton explained that he closed a weekend dance at Civic Auditorium because the music "drove to abandon" too many of the 200 teen-agers there.
Rock and roll music may still go on but the public dancing to its rhythms "will not be tolerated in the future anywhere in Santa Cruz," said Police Chief Al Huntsman.
ASHAMED OF CHRIST: A church member was going up to a lumber camp in the north, and a friend said to him, "If those lumberjacks find out you're a Christian, they'll make sport of you." The man went up there, and when he came back his friend said, "Well, how did you get along with the lumberjacks?" The man answered, "All right. They didn't find it out."
That's the way with so many people who profess to be Christians. They're church members, but a stranger would have a mighty hard time finding it out. The first thing a man does when he joins a lodge is to get a pin, and if anybody says anything about the lodge, he will stand up and fight for it; but there are a lot of church members who will see the church and Jesus Christ insulted and never open their mouths!