{"id":6073,"date":"2014-07-26T14:39:18","date_gmt":"2014-07-26T12:39:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/copticocc.org\/site\/?p=6073"},"modified":"2017-06-07T15:14:02","modified_gmt":"2017-06-07T13:14:02","slug":"6073","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/copticocc.org\/en\/6073\/","title":{"rendered":"On Life 36 \u2013 Black Spots \u2013 July 25, 2014"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<h2 dir=\"ltr\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><\/h2>\n<h2 dir=\"ltr\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000; font-family: 'andale mono', times;\">\u00a0 \u00a0As the child walked into the room, he found his father drawing some black spots on a white sheet of paper. The sheet looked beautiful, but the black spots made it ugly. \u201cWhy did you do so, dad?\u201d asked the child. The father smiled and answered, \u201cTruly they are black, and changed the lovely piece of paper; but be patient that you might know what this means.\u201d The child was curious. After the father had finished the black spots, he joined them with some lines. Then, he brought his violin and started playing while looking at the black spots, only for the boy to listen to lovely tune that made him soar in heaven.<\/span><\/h2>\n<h2 dir=\"ltr\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000; font-family: 'andale mono', times;\">\u00a0 \u00a0No sooner had the father finished his tune, than he looked at his son, saying, \u201cHave you understood now the meaning of the black spots?\u201d The child answered, \u201cYes. How beautiful they are!\u201d The father said, \u201cThis is how our life is like: Look at what others find black spots and smile. Play tunes: for God allows tribulations which we think are bad, yet they are the best.\u201d<\/span><\/h2>\n<h2 dir=\"ltr\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000; font-family: 'andale mono', times;\">\u00a0 \u00a0It is said, \u201cBeauty is not an attribute of a certain thing, but of the mind that contemplates it.\u201d The beauty you see in the things around you is but a reflection of yourself and heart that have beauty and simplicity. On the other hand, the person who finds everything ugly has to look into his heart to know the reason of this ugliness.<\/span><\/h2>\n<h2 dir=\"ltr\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000; font-family: 'andale mono', times;\">\u00a0 \u00a0Train yourself to have a mind that sees beauty in all your surroundings. While others find them black spots, contemplate them well to find they are the secret of beauty. I liked an exercise which a university professor assigned his students, asking them to jot down the names of three colleagues, and inside each name the good attributes. After finishing, he collected the notes and read them, then asked them what they felt upon taking up the task. They answered, saying they found it difficult at first, and did not find what to write. Yet, thinking for a while, they were able to find some good attributes, only to end up finding the great ones.<\/span><\/h2>\n<h2 dir=\"ltr\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000; font-family: 'andale mono', times;\">\u00a0 \u00a0Think positive, and never make your mind stop at the black spots, but transcend them to their great meaning.<\/span><\/h2>\n<h2 dir=\"ltr\" style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"color: #800000; font-family: 'andale mono', times;\">General Bishop<\/span><\/h2>\n<h2 dir=\"ltr\" style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"color: #800000; font-family: 'andale mono', times;\">Head of the Coptic Orthodox Cultural Center<\/span><\/h2>\n<p><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u00a0 \u00a0As the child walked into the room, he found his father drawing some black spots on a white sheet of paper. The sheet looked beautiful, but the black spots made it ugly. \u201cWhy did you do so, dad?\u201d asked the child. The father smiled and answered, \u201cTruly they are black, and changed the lovely [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":10623,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[75,51],"tags":[8717,6804,6385,170,1007],"class_list":["post-6073","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-75","category-articles","tag-black-spots","tag-on-life","tag-youm7","tag-170","tag-1007"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/copticocc.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6073"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/copticocc.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/copticocc.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/copticocc.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/copticocc.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6073"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/copticocc.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6073\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47683,"href":"https:\/\/copticocc.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6073\/revisions\/47683"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/copticocc.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10623"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/copticocc.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6073"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/copticocc.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6073"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/copticocc.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6073"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}