My Mother Taught Me:

My mother was buried 52 years ago today. She died August the 5th but I now have a wonder grandson born on Aug the 5th that I would rather be grateful for. He is a great addition to our family and my mother would have love him as she would have loved her grand children if she had lived to know them.

My mother wanted an education more than anything. Her first husband left her and she believed it was because she was uneducated. That wasn't true but when she died she was still working on her high school diploma.

I was the first in my family to graduate from high school. I was the first to attend college. I didn't get a degree but I had enough credits to graduate with a four year degree. My father didn't believe girls should go to college so I didn't start college until I had two children and was divorced. Having six children and attending school when I could wasn't the best way to get an education. I would change a lot of things if I could start over but that isn't something I want to do so I'll be happy with the education life has given me. I'm happy that all of my children have been to college, some have degrees some are still working on getting their degrees and one is in high school.

Since I grew up in an uneducated family they didn't teach me how to be open minded. That was something I got to learn on my own. It has only been in the last few years that I have come to realize people are a product of their parents and the struggles they have been given. We chose to blame or we chose to forgive. We make life hard for people or we love them. It often doesn't matter what we do except if we are wrong it is important to ask forgiveness and if someone else has done you wrong it is best to forgive and move on. Usually we have misunderstandings and only forgiveness can heal. This is the only misconception educated people seem unwilling to accept. The most foolish attitude I have ever come accross is the attitude of many educated people who believe it is a weakness not to admit when they are wrong. Many of the problems we have in American society is caused by this misconception.

My offering today on behalf of all the people I love and who have loved me is a quote by Kenneth Cloke in his book: "Mediating Dangerously".

• "Society takes on itself the right to inflict appalling punishments on the individual, but it also has the supreme vice of shallowness, and fails to realize what it has done. When the man's punishment is over, it leaves him to himself, that is to say it abandons him at the very moment when its highest duty toward him begins. It is really ashamed of its own actions, and shuns those whom it has punished, as people shun a creditor whose debt they cannot pay, or one on whom they have inflicted an irreparable, an irredeemable wrong. I claim on my side that if I realize what I have suffered, Society should realize what it has inflicted on me: and that there should be no bitterness or hate on either side." Judgments are rarely correct and real justice is poetic not punitive. Real Justice is teaching the criminal what it feels like to be victimized. This can only occur through mediation not through the court of punitive justice. Through mediation all parties are allowed to express the pain and suffering the actions of others has caused. At this point the parties can negotiate a true and meaningful solution. and both can benefit from the experience.
  
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