Touching life story.....

A young man was getting ready to graduate college. For

many months he had admired a beautiful sports car in a dealer's

showroom, and knowing his father could well afford it, he told

him that was all he wanted.

As Graduation Day approached, the young man awaited

signs that his father had purchased the car. Finally, on the

morning of his graduation his father called him into his private

study. His father told him how proud he was to have such a fine

son, and told him how much he loved him. He handed his son

a beautiful wrapped gift box.

Curious, but somewhat disappointed the young man

opened the box and found a lovely, leather-bound Bible. Angrily,

he raised his voice at his father and said, "With all your money you

give me a Bible?" and stormed out of the house, leaving the holy

book.

Many years passed and the young man was very successful in

business.

He had a beautiful home and wonderful family, but realized his

father was very old, and thought perhaps he should go to him. He

had not seen him since that graduation day. Before he could make

arrangements, he received a telegram telling him his father had

passed away, and willed all of his possessions to his son. He

needed to come home immediately and take care things.

When he arrived at his father's house, sudden sadness and

regret filled his heart.

He began to search his father's important papers and

saw the still new Bible, just as he had left it years ago. With

tears, he opened the Bible and began to turn the pages. As he

read those words, a car key dropped from an envelope

taped behind the Bible.

It had a tag with the dealer's name, the same dealer who had the

sports car he had desired. On the tag was the date of his graduation,

and the words...PAID IN FULL.

How many times do we miss God's blessings because they are not

packaged as we expected?

A brief overview about Iranian new year

Nowrūz (Persian: نوروز, IPA: [nouˈɾuːz], "New Day", originally "New Light") is a traditional ancient Iranian festival which celebrates the start of the IranianNew Year. Nowruz is also widely referred to as the Persian New Year.
Nowruz is celebrated and observed by Iranian peoples and the related cultural continent and has spread in many other parts of the world, including parts ofCentral Asia, South Asia, Northwestern China, the Crimea and some ethnic groups in Albania, Bosnia, Serbia and the Republic of Macedonia.
Nowruz marks the first day of spring and the beginning of the year in Iranian calendar. It is celebrated on the day of the astronomical vernal equinox, which usually occurs on March 21 or the previous/following day depending on where it is observed. As well as being a Zoroastrian holiday and having significance amongst the Zoroastrian ancestors of modern Iranians, the same time is celebrated in the Indian sub-continent as the New Year. The moment the Sun crosses the celestial equator and equalizes night and day is calculated exactly every year and Iranian families gather together to observe the rituals.
Originally being a Zoroastrian festival, and the holiest of them all, Nowruz is believed to have been invented by Zoroaster himself, although there is no clear date of origin. Since the Achaemenid era the official year has begun with the New Day when the Sun leaves the zodiac of Pisces and enters the zodiacal sign of Aries, signifying the Spring Equinox. The Jewish festival of Purim is probably adopted from the Persian New Year. It is also a holy day for Sufis,Ismailis, Alawites, Alevis, and adherents of the Bahá'í Faith.
The term Nowruz in writing, first appeared in Persian records in the second century AD, but it was also an important day during the time of the Achaemenids(c. 648-330 BC), where kings from different nations under the Persian empire used to bring gifts to the emperor also called King of Kings (Shahanshah) of Persia on Nowruz..
The UN's General Assembly in 2010 recognized the International Day of Nowruz, describing it a spring festival of Persian origin which has been celebrated for over 3,000 years. During the meeting of The Inter-governmental Committee for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Heritage of the United Nations, held between 28 September – 2 October 2009 in Abu Dhabi, Nowrūz was officially registered on the UNESCO List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

Etymology

The term Nowruz is Persian and is a compound-word consists of:
1- now (Old Persian nava) has the following cognates, in English new, in Latin novus, German neu, Sanskrit nava, etc. The Persian pronunciation differs in the many dialects of the language: while theeastern dialects have preserved the original diphtong (IPA: [næuˈɾoːz]), the western dialects usually pronounce it with a different diphthong (IPA: [nouˈɾuːz]), and some colloquial variants (such as theTehrani accent) pronounce it with a monophtong (IPA: [noˈɾuːz]).
2-rōz (also with various pronuciations, such as rūz, rozh, or roj) means "day" in Middle- and Modern Persian, as well as related languages, such as Kurdish. The original meaning of the word, however, was "light". The term is derived from Avestan *rowch-, itself derived from Proto-Indo-European *leuk- (l <-> r and k <-> ch sound changes are common in Indo-European languages), and is related to Sanskrit ruci, Latin lux and, in fact, English light.

Haft Sīn

Haft Sīn (هفت سین) or the seven 'S's is a major tradition of Nowruz. The haft sin table includes seven specific items starting with the letter 'S' or Sīn (س) in the Persian alphabet. The items symbolically correspond to seven creations and holy immortals called Amesha Sepanta protecting them. The seven elements of Life, namely Fire, Earth, Water, Air, Plants, Animals, and Human, are represented. They also have Astrological correlations to five planets Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and Sun and Moon. With the advent of Islam the word Amesha Sepanta shortened to and eventually was remembered by just the letter S and the number 7. The Haft Sin has evolved over time, but has kept its symbolism. Traditionally, families attempt to set as beautiful a Haft Sīn table as they can, as it is not only of traditional and spiritual value, but also noticed by visitors during Nowruzi visitations and is a reflection of their good taste.

The Haft Sīn items are:

1. sabzeh -wheat , barley or lentil sprouts growing in a dish - symbolizing rebirth
2. samanu - a sweet pudding made from wheat germ - symbolizing affluence
3. senjed - the dried fruit of the oleaster tree - symbolizing love
4. sīr - garlic - symbolizing medicine
5. sīb - apples - symbolizing beauty and health
6. somaq - sumac berries - symbolizing (the color of) sunrise
7. serkeh - vinegar - symbolizing age and patience

Other items on the table may include:

1. Sonbol - Hyacinth (plant)
2. Sekkeh -coin - representative of wealth
3. traditional Iranian pastries such as baghlava,toot , naan-nokhodchi
4. Aajeel - dried nuts, berries and raisins
5. lit candles (enlightenment and happiness)
6. a mirror (symbolizing cleanness and honesty)
7. decorated eggs, sometimes one for each member of the family (fertility)
8. a bowl of water with goldfish (life within life, and the sign of pisces which the sun is leaving). As an essential object of the Nowruz table, this goldfish is also "very ancient and meaningful" and with Zoroastrian connection.
9. rosewater, believed to have magical cleansing powers
10. the national colours, for a patriotic touch
11. a holy book (e.g., the avesta, qur'an, bible, torah, or kitab-i-aqdas) and/or a poetry book (almost always either the shahnama or the Divan of hafez)

what is love?????

Love is any of a number of emotions related to a sense of strong affection and attachment. The word love can refer to a variety of different feelings, states, and attitudes, ranging from generic pleasure ("I loved that meal") to intense interpersonal attraction ("I love my wife"). This diversity of uses and meanings, combined with the complexity of the feelings involved, makes love unusually difficult to consistently define, even compared to other emotional states.
As an abstract concept, love usually refers to a deep, ineffable feeling of tenderly caring for another person. Even this limited conception of love, however, encompasses a wealth of different feelings, from the passionate desire and intimacy of romantic love to the nonsexual emotional closeness of familial and platonic love to the profound oneness or devotion of religious love. Love in its various forms acts as a major facilitator of interpersonal relationships and, owing to its central psychological importance, is one of the most common themes in the creative arts.





The English word "love" can have a variety of related but distinct meanings in different contexts. Often, other languages use multiple words to express some of the different concepts that English relies mainly on "love" to encapsulate; one example is the plurality of Greek words for "love." Cultural differences in conceptualizing love thus make it doubly difficult to establish any universal definition.
Although the nature or essence of love is a subject of frequent debate, different aspects of the word can be clarified by determining what isn't love. As a general expression of positive sentiment (a stronger form of like), love is commonly contrasted with hate (or neutral apathy); as a less sexual and more emotionally intimate form of romantic attachment, love is commonly contrasted with lust; and as an interpersonal relationship with romantic overtones, love is commonly contrasted with friendship, although other definitions of the word love may be applied to close friendships in certain contexts.
When discussed in the abstract, love usually refers to interpersonal love, an experience felt by a person for another person. Love often involves caring for or identifying with a person or thing, including oneself (cf. narcissism). In addition to cross-cultural differences in understanding love, ideas about love have also changed greatly over time. Some historians date modern conceptions of romantic love to courtly Europe during or after the Middle Ages, although the prior existence of romantic attachments is attested by ancient love poetry.
Two hands forming the outline of a heart shape.
Because of the complex and abstract nature of love, discourse on love is commonly reduced to a thought-terminating cliché, and there are a number of common proverbs regarding love, from Virgil's "Love conquers all" to the Beatles' "All you need is love." St. Thomas Aquinas, following Aristotle, defines love as "to will the good of another." Bertrand Russell describes love as a condition of "absolute value," as opposed to relative value. Philosopher Gottfried Leibniz said that love is "to be delighted by the happiness of another."
Love is sometimes referred to as being the "international language", overriding cultural and linguistic divisions.

ali karimi1985

William Blake (28 November 1757–12 August 1827) was an English poet, painter, and print maker. Largely unrecognized during his lifetime, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of both the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic age. His prophetic poetry has been said to form "what is in proportion to its merits the least read body of poetry in the English language". His visual artistry has led one modern critic to proclaim him "far and away the greatest artist Britain has ever produced". Although he only once journeyed farther than a day's walk outside London during his lifetime, he produced a diverse and symbolically rich corpus, which embraced the imagination as "the body of God", or "Human existence itself"

Considered mad by contemporaries for his idiosyncratic views, Blake is held in high regard by later critics for his expressiveness and creativity, and for the philosophical and mystical undercurrents within his work. His paintings and poetry have been characterized as part of both the Romantic Movement and "Pre-Romantic", for its large appearance in the 18th century. Reverent of the Bible but hostile to the church of England, Blake was influenced by the ideals and ambitions of the French and American revolution, as well as by such thinkers as Jakob bohme and Emanuel Swedenborg.

Despite these known influences, the singularity of Blake's work makes him difficult to classify. The 19th century scholar William Rossetti characterized Blake as a "glorious luminary," and as "a man not forestalled by predecessors, or to be classed with contemporaries, or to be replaced by known or readily surmisable successors."

Historian peter Marshall has classified Blake as one of the forerunners of modern anarchism, along with Blake's contemporary William Godwin.

LOVE'S SECRET

by: William Blake (1757-1827)

NEVER seek to tell thy love,

Love that never told can be;

For the gentle wind doth move

Silently, invisibly.

I told my love, I told my love,

I told her all my heart,

Trembling, cold, in ghastly fears.

Ah! she did depart!

Soon after she was gone from me,

A traveller came by,

Silently, invisibly:

He took her with a sigh.