Moving speech from Stuart Scott in 2014 in winning the JimmyV perseverance
Stuart, an ESPN host since 1993, was recognized towards the end of the ESPY awards show for his efforts in sports journalism. He has been battling a rare form of cancer for 7 years. He won the JimmyV Perseverance Award.
For Scott, giving up is not an option; he has refused to backdown. He has not allowed the disease to dictate how he lived. Fighting is winning and not quitting.
He has continued his work as an announcer with ESPN through it all doing what he loves and remaining a devoted father at the same time.
Here is his story and speech this week. We keep him in our prayers.
He died in early 2015.
Jim Valvano’s acceptance speech in 1993 in accepting the inaugural Arthur Ashe Courage and Humanitarian Award is moving now as it was then. He died only months later.
Valvano was a legendary coach at NC State and later announcer. His speech at the 10th anniversary of that institution’s university’s 1983 NCAA championship stressed the importance of hope, love and persistence, and included his famous "Don’t give up, don’t ever give up" quotation.
Other Voices of the Human Spirit
"The greatest achievement of the human spirit is to live up to one’s opportunities and make the most of one’s resources."- Luc de Clapiers
" Once we believe in ourselves, we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight, or any experience that reveals the human spirit."- e. e. cummings
" Never underestimate the power of dreams and the influence of the human spirit. We are all the same in this notion: The potential for greatness lives within each of us." -Wilma Rudolph
" It is inevitable that some defeat will enter even the most victorious life. The human spirit is never finished when it is defeated… it is finished when it surrenders." – Ben Stein
Celebrating the Human Spirit
Remembering Raoul Wallenberg and the "Righteous Gentiles"
July 9th is the anniversary to the day of Raoul Wallenberg’s arrival in Budapest in 1944 to begin a rescue mission that would result in his saving 100,000 Jewish lives. On that day in 2014, Wallenberg received posthumously the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest civilian award of the US.
Links:
1. More about the "Righteous Gentiles"
2. Congressional Luncheon honoring the Raoul Wallenberg Foundation
3. US Holocaust Museum article on Wallenberg
Sunday Links, July 23, 2023, Pentecost 8
Summer splendor
A Busy Tues, July 18, 2023
Everyone was trying to stay out of each other’s way!
1. Preparing the Village Harvest for Wed, July 19- removing food from the truck, organizing it and bagging them. We have canned goods, fresh corn, both white and sweet potatoes, premium white chicken as well as frozen chickens. Some good stuff!
2. Painters were continuing to paint the outside of the Parish House.
3. Workers eradicating termites in the church. Catherine was working with them.
4. Later in the day we took 95 packs of notebook paper to Caroline Middle School for their School Supply Give-Away on July 29, sponsored by Caroline’s Caroline’s Promise. Thanks to all who contributed.
“My dad, Stuart Scott, died of cancer. But he beat it by how he lived.”
Even though my dad’s fight ended and I still miss him all the time, I look back on those days with gratitude.
From USA Today
From Stuart Scott -“When you die, it does not mean that you lose to cancer. You beat cancer by how you live, why you live, and in the manner in which you live”
By Sydni Scott, daughter of the late ESPN commentator Stuart Scott. She is a Rhodes scholar after graduating as a student-athlete at Columbia University.
“At 23 years old, I’m already sick of being in hospitals. I’m unsettled by the familiar murmuring hum of the fluorescent ceiling lights and I dread the stomach-turning response I get whenever I encounter the powdery smell of blue latex-free gloves.
“I spent most of my childhood sitting in lobbies, anxiously waiting for news about my dad, Stuart Scott.
Videos, Pentecost 7, July 16, 2023
Rain before Church!
Larry Saylor – Prelude
Gospel Matthew -The Sower
The Sermon- Rev. Catherine Hicks – a Modern Parable
Offertory – Choir Trio – “Nearer, My God to Thee”
Scripture to Painting – “Sower at Sunset”
Videos about the painting
Van Gogh’s Sower and Stewardship
One of the best illustrations of the Parable of the Sower, this week’s Gospel from Matthew 13, is Van Gogh’s The Sower with Setting Sun from 1888. Look at it—a seemingly simple, rural summer scene of a farmer distributing seed. But look again at the composition and colors—the painting is unique in that the sower is almost overshadowed by the huge sun in the center and the ploughed earth.
Van Gogh had a special interest in sowers throughout his artistic career. All in all, he made more than 30 drawings and paintings on this theme. The sower in particular was a figure that Van Gogh saw in terms of representing the eternal cycle of agricultural life, of honorable endeavor and tradition, and symbolized these qualities to the artist.
Van Gogh studied to be a priest so his pictures often include religious themes. Color always provided a particular meaning for Van Gogh. Here, Van Gogh used colors meant to express emotion and passion. He assigned the leading roles to the greenish-yellow of the sky and the purple of the field. He painted the sun in his favorite color citron, a very intense yellow, which made up the sun and was used in pure form without being mixed. This is the color of God. The bright yellow sun looks like a halo, turning the sower into a saint. Here he has created a great orb of light, from which short precise brushstrokes radiate outwards so that the whole sky becomes bathed in golden rags
Visual Lectionary Vanderbilt – Pentecost 7 – Sunday July 16, 2023
Click here to view in a new window.
Videos, Pentecost 6, July 9, 2023
Gospel and Sermon – Rev. Catherine Hicks
Post Communion Prayer and Blessing
Closing Hymn – Lord of all hopefulness