HOPE

GOOD MORNING AND HAPPY FRIDAY!  

Congratulations to Lady Blue Jasmine Sims!  She has been selected as a Texas Girls Coaches Association (TGCA) All-Star.  This a huge honor as only 12 girls from 1A, 2A, 3A and 4A  were selected to represent Blue Team in the All-Star Game that will be held this coming July.

Congrats to the Lady Blues who received Volleyball All-District Honors! Offensive Player of the Year- Jasmine Sims; Newcomer of the Year- Emma Ranger; 1st Team All Dist Nicole King and Marleigh Sanders; 2nd Team All Dist- Emily Davis and Delaney Sullivent; Honorable Mention- Baylee Loomis and Skylar Morris

Congrats to the Graham Steers that received Football All-District Honors!  Those receiving honors include: Jack Hays- Defensive MVP; Will Hays- Defensive Sophomore; Jaxon Brockway- First Team Running Back; Adam Groves- First Team Receiver; Hunter Dooley- First Team Offensive Tackle; Hector Alejo- First Team Offensive Guard; Alfonso Duran- First Team Defensive Tackle; Cy Holt- First Team Outside Linebacker; Wes Martin- First Team Cornerback; Tucker Horn- Second Team Quarterback; Kody Perry- Second Team Receiver; Riley Wyatt- Second Team Center; Preston Langley- Second Team Defensive End; Joel Jones- Second Team Outside Linebacker; Peyton Johnston- Second Team Safety.

Congratulations to the Graham Steers Basketball team on Tuesday’s victory over Bridgeport.

Best of luck to the Lady Blues competing in basketball tournaments at Jacksboro and Mineral Wells this weekend.

Good luck and safe travels for our Ag Leadership Team students competing at Sam Houston State today and tomorrow.

The Chamber of Commerce Hot Chocolicious Competition and Movie has been moved to the GHS gym. The event will be held from 5:30 pm to 9:00 pm with the movie, It’s a Wonderful Life, set to begin at 6:45 pm.

HOPE

Barry Haenisch with the Texas Association of Community Schools organization shared this with me this week. Enjoy!

I hope that each of you enjoyed a blessed Thanksgiving. The passing of Thanksgiving marks the official beginning of the Christmas season. Christmas is one of my favorite times of the year. It is a season filled with symbolism, both religious and secular. While it is the time that the Christian tradition celebrates and remembers the birth of Christ, it is also a time of excess; too much food, too much celebrating, and too many presents. Christmas is the one time of the year where the gaudier and brighter the lights in the neighborhood, the better!

Two hundred years ago in the early 19th Century, as astonishing as it may seem, Christmas almost ended in England. The primary newspaper of the country at that time did not mention the word “Christmas” one time between 1790 and 1835. Beginning in the 1840s, famine and unemployment were widespread throughout the country. About 10% of the population lived in extreme poverty; worse poverty than you can even imagine. For too many people life seemed hopeless. At that time an author, Charles Dickens, was planning to challenge the government and the wealthy to act with generosity and compassion. His little book, A Christmas Carol, through the character Ebenezer Scrooge brings the challenge into focus. In many ways, the book struck a chord with the populace. Many historians credit the return of Christmas in England to the popularity of the book. As a result of the work, a scrooge became a miserly, miserable person. From this little work, hope began to creep back into the lives of the British populace.

It’s kind of sad the effect despair can have. Despair can swing elections. It can infect the culture of companies and nations. Despair can poison the spring of “peace on earth, good will to men”. With the gap between the haves and the have-nots in our country, the verbal and physical battles at play after our recent election, and the prospect of an economy in down-turn, too many people are in despair in our country.

In England in the mid-19th Century a little book about a mean, money-grubbing miser who got to really see his past, his present, and his future somehow brought hope to the people. Even today, when we hear the story again, we aspire to be the joyful, genial, generous Scrooge from the end of the book. Funny, isn’t it, how sometimes the smallest of things can make the biggest difference in a person’s life or in the direction of a country?

As a country we face a real unknown. Is our future in good hands? Will the terrorism that others are facing impact us? Will world tensions spring out of control into another global conflict? As a state, we worry about the price of oil and its impact on our lives. Higher taxes seem to suck up every salary increase most people receive. Health care costs just keep spiraling upward. Educators worry that public education seems to be a lower priority with our leaders each year.

And yet, hope springs eternal. As we enter the Christmas season most of us will get the Christmas spirit. We will wish one and all a very Merry Christmas! We will sing the songs of the season with vigor and gusto! We will, like Scarlet O’Hara in Gone With the Wind, decide to “…think about that tomorrow”.

In reality, hope is a frame of mind. Hope lies within each of us, and it is a choice that we make…or choose not to make. I like the words from the book, Grateful the Heart of Prayer. “Hope looks at all things the way a mother looks at her child, with a passion for the possible. That way of thinking is creative. It creates the space in which perfection can unfold. More than that, the eyes of hope look through the imperfections to the heart of all things and find it perfect. The eyes of hope are grateful eyes. Before our eyes learned to look gratefully at the world, we expected to find beauty in good looking things. But grateful eyes expect the surprise of finding beauty in all things.”

As we look forward to the future with a new President, to the cheer of the holiday season, the uncertainty of a legislative session, and to the new beginnings of a new year, may you feel real hope; may you look with grateful eyes at the beauty that you take for granted every day. Or, as Desmond Tutu once said, “Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all the darkness.”

Corny Joke of the Day

What do Santa's little helpers learn at school?
 (scroll down go to for the answer)

The elf-abet!