Blog 3616 – 09.27.2025

“Courage To Change the Things I Can”

The middle line from the Serenity Prayer comes to me as I think of some encouraging word to share this late September morning. “Courage” it is a word that we say to others and ourselves when we are facing difficult and trying times, when the odds seem to be against us. If the Universe be for us who can be against us?

Arguably the greatest President we ever had, definitely the longest and perhaps the most courageous, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, told us during one of his weekly radio fireside chats during The Great Depression that we have nothing to fear, but fear itself. The opposite of love is not hate, but fear. Yet as another quote, this one from wise Jedi Master Yoda says:

Sometimes we all feel like the Cowardly Lion from the Wizard of Oz, yet we too can find the courage within us to rise to the occasion and change the situation that we find ourselves facing. The Lion knew what courage was even when he doubted his own and sang about it:

The Courageous Lion needed no medal to prove his courage, yet the Wizard gave him one to remind him that he had always had courage.

The most decorated soldier of WW2, the young short Texan who had his sister lie about his age so the Army would take him after the Marines and Navy had rejected him for being too small, Audie Murphy, whose Drill Sergeant in Basic Training called him “Baby” went on to prove his courage and his metal many times in combat. They awarded him many medals for his acts of bravery and courage, even the Congressional Medal of Honor, the highest medal awarded military personnel in the United States. Audie said of himself that he was no hero that he only did what needed to be done.

That my friends is, “Changing the things we can.”

The encouraging word for today is “Courage.”

Your friend and fellow traveler,

David James White