this mix. Go ahead and enjoy! xxI find it quite ironic that in the span of 5 minutes I find a beautiful slideshow and a blog post with this quote below. It started at Isaacs latest blog post which lead me here, to a beautiful movie created by Amy, a photographer he is inspired by, then I read a Tweet by Jo, which lead me here... to a blog post. And to my surprise without even realising each of these presented me with the quote below by Marianne Williamson.
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”
Marianne Williamson
The father of a wealthy Mosman family took his son on a trip to country NSW, with the purpose of showing his son how poor people can be.
They spent a couple of days and nights on the farm of what would be considered a very poor family.
On their way back in the car the father turned to his son and asked him, "So, how was the trip?"
"It was great, Dad." "Did you see how poor people can be?" the father asked. "Oh yeah" said his son. "So what did you learn from the trip?" asked the father.
His son answered, "I saw that we have one dog and they have four. We have a pool that reaches to the middle of our garden and they have a creek that has no end. We have imported lanterns in our garden and they have the stars at night. Our patio reaches to the front yard and they have the whole horizon. We have a small piece of land to live on and they have fields that go beyond our sight. We buy our food, but they grow theirs. We have walls around our property to protect us, they have friends and neighbours who protect them."
Then his son added, "Thanks Dad for showing me how poor we are."
Original Post here
* The Gift of Work
* The Gift of Problems
* The Gift of Friends
* The Gift of Giving
* The Gift of Gratitude
* The Gift of Family
* The Gift of Learning
* The Gift of Money
* The Gift of Laughter
* The Gift of a Day
* The Gift of Dreams
* The Gift of Love (which leads to the Ultimate Gift)
It rained and it rained and it rained! My little girl did so well walking around that day, we basically planted the kids with Aunty at the Cook Island Village to watch the performances while we stood in the long lines for the yummy food. I must say this years performances were off the hook. The Atiu group did an amazing job at combining the younger members of their group into their performances and man can they shake. I read over on Niuzila's post that the theme of Pasifika this year was the 'frigate bird' and that this may have of had an impact on the weather. I briefly passed the NiuFM stage where the Honourable Phil Goff cheekily stated that "it never rained at Pasifika under a Labour Government" - I unfortuantely was the only one that laughed. Well it was funny! Overall a great day (except for the rain).
Wowzers! Talk about busy busy busy, we live around the corner from the Manukau Sports Bowl where the event was held and the traffic and amount of people walking to the Polyfest was outrageous. We made our way down just in time for lunch and spent most of our time at the Niuean stage. I commented over on NiuZila's post about my thoughts on the fact that MaiFM were drowning out the actual cultural performances at the Tongan and Maori stage with the HipHip & RnB music. Now I'm a fan of RnB and consider myself to be fairly up with the play in terms of music (my 9-year-old son makes sure of that). But when you go to a PolyFest expecting to hear and see Polynesian Cultural performances you kind of want that to be the highlight. Some may argue that HipHop and RnB are a 'culture' - I agree - but when your at a Polynesian Cultural Festival - turn the hip hop down and listen to the smooth sounds of Te Whanau o Tupuranga or at the very least play NZ Made music.