The end of all stories, even if the writer forebears to mention it, is death, which is where time stops short. Sheherezade knew this, which is why she kept on spinning another story out of the bowels of the last one, never coming to a point where she could say: "This is the end. " Because it would have been.
All my forebears worked for a living. My grandfather painted portraits. My mother too. My aunt painted seascapes.
Genealogy: A perverse preoccupation of those who seek to demonstrate that their forebears were better people than they are.
We, the people, declare today that the most evident of truths - that all of us are created equal - is the star that guides us still; just as it guided our forebears through Seneca Falls, and Selma, and Stonewall; just as it guided all those men and women, sung and unsung, who left footprints along this great Mall, to hear a preacher say that we cannot walk alone; to hear a King proclaim that our individual freedom is inextricably bound to the freedom of every soul on Earth.
Nothing is so soothing to our self-esteem as to find our bad traits in our forebears. It seems to absolve us.
You create your own audience, and your own community of peers, and in some ways you create your own forebears as well.
If we have the courage and tenacity of our forebears, who stood firmly like a rock against the lash of slavery, we shall find a way to do for our day what they did for theirs.
I hear poets complaining: 'We face what our forebears did not face. We face TV. We face radio. We face this and that. '
Those who have no record of what their forebears have accomplished lose the inspiration which comes from the teaching of biography and history.
Something extraordinary is happening. Do you sense it? Truly, as obedience and morality decline in the world, the Lord is sending more exceptional spirits to earth. As a body they excel the average capacity of their forebears. Their potential for personal growth and positive contribution is enormous.
