As a hospital chaplain, Cy Eberhart,
now retired. was a first-hand witness to the entire spectrum of emotions: individual successes and failures, the deepest despair and great joy.
This ministry offered a laboratory-type setting to observe behavior in the most intense circumstances.
Two questions became paramount:
•How was it that some people could find inner strength that brought courage and hope and others could not?
•What could be learned from these experiences that would have a positive and creative effect for daily, routine living outside the hospital?
From childhood on, Will Rogers had a single life ambition:To become a world champion trick roper.As he pursued that goal people noticed other things about him more important to them than his roping skills. He expressed attributes that revealed a quality of life that appealed to almost everyone, regardless of their social status, ideology or ethnicity. People came to consider him as the conscience of America because his comments about affairs carried so much wisdom and common sense. Some claimed that in the days of the Great Depressions his presence helped prevent a revolution. President Franklin D. Roosevelt said that “he held the secret of banishing gloom, of making tears give way to laughter and supplanting desolation and despair with hope and courage.”
The encouraging thing about Rogers’ story for our time is that you have these same attributes within you. They are in you ready to bring joy, hope and courage to you and those around you. The need to get what’s in you, out, is as great for our times as it was back then.
My FREE essay Will Rogers: An Antidote for Hate, examines the needs, the challenges and reward in “taking your humanity public” Sign your name now.
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