JANUARY - 2012

SWEDISH HUMOR

Have you heard that abortion has become so popular in Sweden that now there is a 10 month waiting period?

A little Swedish kid asked his teacher why the days in the summer are so much longer than in the winter. The teacher answered, “Oh, that’s because the heat makes everything expand.”

What’s printed on the bottom of bottles in Sweden? “Öppnas på andra sidan” (Open at other end)

What is the penalty for suicide in Sweden? Life in prison.

Why do Swedes always drink their milk in the store? Because on the bottle it says: “Öppnas här.” (Open here)

After a Swede read a phonebook, he said, “Svenson, Svenson, Svenson. It’s incredible how many phone numbers that guy has.”

A Swedish college student was in a bookstore. The clerk commented, “That book about plumbing that you are reading will do half the job for you.” “Good, I will take two,” the student responded.

A Swede was asked by a tourist if he had lived in Stockholm all of his life. “Not yet,” he answered.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Being 100% Swedish, I am proud of the intellectual nature of many Swedes who, I believe, are broadminded enough to enjoy a little belittling humor directed at them.

EDITORIAL

When reflecting on the past year, the first thing I note is the wide and growing readership of this magazine. In October there were 1,045 hits on the web site. It is true that many visits are brief but hundreds are not. Here is a list of where SUNSHINE was read in October – United States, Philippines, Great Britain, Japan, Pakistan, Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, Moldova, Bosnia-Herzegovina, China, Australia, Ukraine, and Spain. It has been a special joy to me to share quotations from Emanuel Swedenborg with many nations throughout the world. Also I grin when I think that people, for example in China and Ukraine, may be laughing at some of the clever as well as the just plain stupid jokes in SUNSHINE.

“Nothing is so fatal to religion as indifference.” Thus wrote Edmund Burke to a friend on January 29, 1795. This concept brings to mind an article in the September-October issue of New Church Life, which begins: “Yes, friends we have an 800-pound gorilla that nobody wants to talk about. His first name is Indifference and his last name is Entitlement. He conspires with the hells to thwart our attempts to grow.” The author notes: “Yet 77% of those who attended the Academy make no contribution.” And he suggests, “…replacing the indifference with caring, and entitlement with commitment.”

I believe that I stand on common ground with the 90-year-old author of this article, not just in the matter of financial contributions but in the realm of caring about and being committed to the new truths revealed through Emanuel Swedenborg, especially as they relate to personal morality, social interactions and the sanctity of marriage.

A NEW YEAR and NEW BEGINNINGS

“Be always at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let each new year find you a better man.” - Ben Franklin

“The Old Year has gone. Let the dead past bury its own dead. The New Year has taken possession of the clock of time. All hail the duties and possibilities of the coming twelve months!” - Edward Payson Powell

“Ring out the old, ring in the new – Ring, happy bells, across the snow – The year is going, let him go – Ring out the false, ring in the true.” - Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1850)

“We will open the book. Its pages are blank. We are going to put words on them ourselves. The book is called Opportunity and its first chapter is New Year’s Day.” - Edith Lovejoy Pierce

“A happy New Year! Grant that I – May bring no tear to any eye – When this New Year in time shall end – Let it be said I’ve played the friend – Have lived and loved and labored here – And made of it a happy year.” - Edgar Guest

“One resolution I have made, and try always to keep, is this: To rise above the little things.” - John Burroughs

“Take the first step in faith. You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.” - Martin Luther King, Jr.

“Life is not a dress rehearsal. Stop practicing what you’re going to do and just go and do it.” - Marilyn Grey

THE TWENTY DOLLAR CAMPAIGN

Here’s an idea for bringing money to the Academy. If the Development Office at the Academy would send me an envelope containing a smaller envelope with a return address, I would be willing to remove a twenty-dollar bill from my wallet, walk out to my mailbox and sent it to them. In fact they might do this for all members of the General Church (many of whom are alumni of the Academy) in the United States and Canada. Also they could enclose several return envelopes making it easy for us folks who might be inclined to send cash to the Academy on many occasions, perhaps in various amounts as our personal budgets allow.

Tele-evangelists have gathered untold millions of dollars from people, with happy satisfied consciences, who put money into envelopes and mail them. They did their small part to support a great cause. Those, in a development office, occasionally send out pleas for money, indicating how much to give, how often and even asking for permission to remove money from our banking accounts on a regular basis! Yet, I believe, many people RESENT being so told, guided and manipulated. Look, I believe that people want to help the Academy during this very difficult time and would gladly do so, in an easy way, such as described above.

Only about 20% of members of the General Church have ever given funds to the Academy (or the Church). So why not trying thinking “outside the box” of traditional ways of asking for money? Envision a huge box in Pitcairn Hall where, on a daily basis, someone is opening envelope after envelope containing twenty-dollar bills and filling that box. Why not try this simple program of fund raising? Your ways have not been very successful so far in reaching the 80%, have they? Do you feel intrigued and challenged by the twenty-dollar plan? I hope so.

HUMOR

FROM LINDA:

A Tennessee state trooper pulled over a pickup truck and asked the driver, “Got any I.D?” The driver replied, “Bout whut?”

A sheriff in Texas drove his car up next to a guy unloading garbage out of the back of his pickup into a ditch. The sheriff asked, “Why are you dumping garbage in the ditch? Don’t you see that sign right over your head?” “Yep,” he replied. “That’s why I’m dumpin’ it here, ‘cause it says: ‘Fine For Dumping Garbage.’”

FROM ALFIE:

On Sunday, Dec. 4th I received the following e-mail from Alfie which I will share with you. “Last night we decided to read the actual accounts of the Nativity in the Gospels together from the King James version. Halfway through the Matthew version, our dog, Chance, trotted into the room with a bunch of papers in his mouth. They turned out to be the print-out of your December issue of Sunshine Magazine which I had used to produce that issue for the web. We laughed uproariously as it seems that our dog was much preferring your prose to that of the Gospels! Actually, I believe he felt ignored and just wanted some personal attention. It worked! Him’s a smarter dog than I realized.”

HENNY YOUNGMAN:

My grandmother is over eighty and still doesn’t need glasses. Drinks right out of a bottle.

QUOTATIONS FROM EMANUEL SWEDENBORG

From all this it is evident that the Divine providence works in every man in a thousand ways, even to the most secret, and that its unceasing end is to purify him, because its end is to save him; and that nothing is incumbent on man except to remove evils in the external man. All the rest the Lord provides if He is appealed to. - Divine Providence 296

Those that have acknowledged nature alone and human prudence alone constitute hell; while those that have acknowledged God and His Divine providence constitute heaven. - DP 192

…it follows that the Lord is the heavenly Father of all men, and that all men are His spiritual children. - DP 330

For love desires to communicate its own to another, and even to give from its own as much as it can. Must not the Divine Love, then, which is infinite, do this? - DP 324

It is the unceasing effort of the Lord’s Divine providence to conjoin man with Himself and Himself with man, that He may be able to bestow upon man the happiness of eternal life; and this can be done only so far as evils with their lusts are put away. - DP 122

If man believed, as is the truth, that all good and truth are from the Lord, and all evil and falsity from hell, he would not appropriate good to himself and make it meritorious, nor appropriate evil to himself and make himself guilty of it. - DP 309

BRYN ATHYN POST 1923

April 11 The epidemic of Bridge which was rampant in Bryn Athyn social circles for the past few weeks is gradually succumbing to the warm weather and early spring planting.

April 29 Some Rules of Conduct compiled for children in the year 1879 by Rev. W.F. Pendleton: Cultivate habits of punctuality. Do not whisper in company. Avoid talking of one’s own ills and grievances. Do not monopolize conversation; we must hear and listen as well as talk. Avoid interrupting another in the midst of speech etc.

May 9 HEATH’S LITTLE STORE Persons desiring Ice Cream for Sunday dinner will please send in orders before ten o’clock Sunday morning. No deliveries made. Children should use paths coming to the Store. Property owners complain of trespassing.

June 13 Five of the boys from school purchased the famous old Ford car belonging to L. E. Gyllenhaal, for 30 cents, and had the nerve to leave for Chicago in it.

October 3 Unusually good weather brought many visitors to Bryn Athyn during the past week. The cars of tourists who came to see the Cathedral during the week and especially on Sunday filled the roads for some distance from the grounds.

October 24 Be careful of children on highways who play in the leaves. All parents are requested to remove the heaps of leaves as soon as possible and to warn their children of playing in the leaves that are on the street.

QUOTATIONS

“To be wronged is nothing unless you continue to remember it.” - Confucius

“One hour of worry is one hour of hell.” - James Dodds

“Live, so that you do not have to look back and say, ‘God, how I have wasted my life.’” - Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.” - Marcel Proust

“I read and walked for miles at night along the beach, writing bad blank verse and searching endlessly for someone wonderful who would step out of the darkness and change my life. It never crossed my mind that that person could be me.” - Anna Quindlen

“I would not fear nor wish my fate – But boldly say each night – Tomorrow let my sun his beams display – Or in clouds hide them – I have lived today.” - Abraham Cowley (17th century)

“We hate some persons because we do not know them; and we will not know them because we hate them.” - Charles Colton (1825)

“Prejudice is the child of ignorance.” - William Hazlett (1839)

“Improvisation is the essence of good talk. Heaven defend us from the talker who doles out things prepared for us!” - Max Beerbohm (1946)

“The burning conviction that we have a holy duty toward others is often a way of attaching our drowning selves to a passing raft.” - Eric Hoffer

GRANDPARENTS AND GRANDCHILDREN

In spite of all their messin’, grandchildren are a blessin’.

Our rugs and floors give evidence – Enough to wear our patience thin – That one small boy with two small feet – Can bring so much of the outdoors in!

Why did God never plan for grandparents to have children? Because they might put a baby down and then forget where they put it.

“An hour with your grandchildren can make you feel young again. Anything longer than that and you start to age quickly.” - Gene Perret

PARENTS

“How true Daddy’s words were when he said: all children must look to their own upbringing. Parents can only give good advice or put them on the right paths, but the final forming of a person’s character lies in their own hands.” - Anne Frank

“Don’t handicap your children by making their lives easy.” - R. Heinlein

“Before I got married I had six theories about bringing up children; now I have six children and no theories.” - John Wilmot

“Your children need your presence more than your presents.” - J. Jackson

“What a child doesn’t receive he can seldom later give.” - P. D. James

“There are two lasting bequests we give our children. One is roots. The other is wings.” - Hodding Carter, Jr.

HUMOR

Son: “Mom, I think that dad went to work without his glasses.” Mom: “Yes, he did. How do you know that?” Son: “The garage door is missing.”

I had to stop taking tranquilizers. I realized that I was being nice to people I didn’t even like.

Hard work never hurt anybody but why take the chance?

Did you hear about the cowboy who wore paper pants, a paper shirt, paper boots, and a paper hat? The sheriff arrested him for rustling.

Automobile bumper sticker: I brake for hallucinations.

She was only a moonshiner, but I loved her still.

I have a photographic memory but sometimes the lens cap is on.

TOASTS:

Here’s to our faraway friends. May their spirits be with us as soon as these spirits are in us.

To the boss – the person who’s early when we’re late and late when we’re early.

Here’s wishing you the kind of troubles that will last as long as your New Year’s resolutions.

May Dame Fortune ever smile on you, but never her daughter – Miss Fortune.