Clay Balls

A man was exploring caves by the Seashore. In one of the caves he found a canvas bag with a bunch of hardened clay balls. It was like someone had rolled clay balls and left them out in the sun to bake. They didn't look like much, but they intrigued the man, so he took the bag out of the cave with him. As he strolled along the beach, he would throw the clay balls one at a time out into the ocean as far as he could. He thought little about it, until he dropped one of the clay balls and it cracked open on a rock. Inside was a beautiful, precious stone!

Excited, the man started breaking open the remaining clay balls. Each contained a similar treasure. He found thousands of dollars worth of jewels in the 20 or so clay balls he had left. Then it struck him. He had been on the beach a long time. He had thrown maybe 50 or 60 of the clay balls with their hidden treasure into the ocean waves. Instead of thousands of dollars in treasure, he could have taken home tens of thousands, but he had just thrown it away!

It's like that with people. We look at someone, maybe even ourselves, and we see the external clay vessel. It doesn't look like much from the outside. It isn't always beautiful or sparkling, so we discount it. We see that person as less important than someone more beautiful or stylish or well known or wealthy. But we have not taken the time to find the treasure hidden inside that person.

There is a treasure in each and every one of us. If we take the time to get to know another person, then the clay begins to peel away and the brilliant gem begins to shine forth. May we not come to the end of our lives and find out that we have thrown away a fortune in friendships because their gems were hidden in bits of clay.

And so the more people you are a gem to, the wealthier your life will become with happiness, joy and laughter…

So look forward to being someone’s clay vessel.

Conversations With Megan

So Megan and I were talking about bullies at school and what she should do to keep them at bay and let them know that she's not gonna take their shite.  We suggested ignoring them, giving them their own back with an insult but Megan came up with an alternative of her own:

Me :  So what do you do, Megan?

Megan:  I'll just kick them in the Knuckles!

Me: *trying very hard not to laugh*  What do you mean, "kick them in the knuckles?"

Megan:  Kick them between the legs, you know, in the knuckles *blushing*

Me : Well, Megan that's a good idea but that's not actually called "knuckles".  This is your knuckles *holding out my my hand and pointing to my knuckles*

Megan:  Oh okay *whispers in my ear* kick them in the nuts then.

*both laughing*

I guess she's just wanted to be polite...

Now we call it "Kick Him in the Knuckles".