Bloom where you're planted...

"Take on difficulties while they are still easy, do great things while they are still small.
Step by step the world's burden is lifted. Piece by piece the world's treasure is amassed."

. Tao 63
If you are awake, it is easy to see the challenges that face us. Injustice, violence, hatred and bigotry. At least for me, it can be so overwhelming as to tempt me to disengage. I ask myself in these moments, "What can I do? The task seems so large, the result so uncertain, what difference can one person make?"

Surely, Harriet Tubman, the founder of the Underground Railroad, faced a much more stark version of this dilemma. A black woman, a slave born in the 1820's in Dorchester County, Maryland. She could have resigned herself to her fate, and the fate of her people.

But, instead, she saved not only herself, but also more than 300 slaves from slavery, and personally lead them to freedom. This woman, called the "Moses of her people", made a small choice - to save herself.

"Step by step the world's burden is lifted?". I have that choice every day - "does what I do - does what you do - make a difference?"

Harriet Tubman says YES!

dg

7/5/2010

Sent from my iPad

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