1) "MUSIC ECHOING THROUGH MY HEAD"
Mom often told us that human beings have extraordinary capacities if we realize our potential. She would tell us how Tchaikovsky used his capacity to "listen" as "music came singing and echoing through my head" (From Tchaikovsky diary, Kiev, June 11, 1873).
2) "THE KINGDOM OF GOD IS WITHIN YOU"
Mom loved the New Testament quote:
"Neither shall they say, Lo here! or Lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you."
3) "I AM AWAKE"
Mom liked to tell this story to show that all we need to do is to awaken to who we are here and now, to the kingdom of God that is not somewhere else, not in some external source or different time, but is within.
A Brahmin priest named Dona met the Buddha and asked him:
"Are you a God?"
"No," the Buddha replied.
Are you a heavenly being, or a spirit?
"No."
"If you are not these things, what are you?"
"I am awake."
4) "DON'T EAT TOO MUCH SUGAR!"
Mom taught by example. She loved this story.
A woman came with a child to see a great Master, and the woman said, “I have tried every way and this child won’t listen. He eats too much sugar. And I know now only one way is possible: if You say something to him, he will listen, because he respects You. And when I told him, ‘Come with me to see You,’ he said, ‘Okay, if he says, I will stop.’”
The Master looked at the child, at his trusting eyes. He said, “Come back next week.” The woman was puzzled. Such a simple thing. And the Master is known all over the world. People come from faraway countries to ask him about great problems, and he solves them immediately — and such a silly thing. He could have said, “Don’t eat too much sugar,” and that would have resolved the matter.
After a week the mother came again with the child, and the Master said to the child, “Okay, listen. Stop eating too much sugar.” The child said, “Okay, I will stop.”
The mother said, “Now one question arises in my heart — and I will not be at rest. Why did you not tell him this last week?”
The Master said, “I like sugar myself. And when you first came, I had eaten too much sugar.
So this week I stopped eating too much sugar. Now I can say, ‘You stop.”
5) "FROM MISSISSIPPI TO THE MET"
This was a story of three very strong women, from whom Mom drew inspiration.
Mom loved to tell how the great soprano Leontyone Price began singing in a black church choir in Mississippi. Her father James worked in a lumber mill and her mother Katie was a midwife. At fourteen, Leontyne was taken on a school trip to hear the renowned black contralto Marian Anderson.
Like a fairy tale, Leontyne would become the first African-American leading artist at the Met. In 1955, she was the first black to appear in a leading role in a televised opera. Many television stations cancelled the broadcast in protest.
Mom used to tell us how Leontyne Price later gave a tribute to Marian Anderson when she sang in a venue where Anderson had been denied entry because she was black. Anderson had been stopped from performing at Independence Hall by the D.A.R.--the Daughters of the American Revolution. Eleanor Roosevelt personally intervened, supported Marion Anderson, taking a stand against the discriminatory position of the D.A.R.