Work Partnership
INSPIRATIONAL, 7 Oct 2019
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service
Rufus Jones (1863-1948), the American Quaker who helped found the American Friends Service Committee in 1917, went to England after World War I to help with the reconstruction.
He noticed that there were large areas of public land around many cities, which remained uncultivated. He persuaded city governments to divide this land into small parcels and lend them to unemployed people so that they could grow vegetables to feed their own families and earn a modest income from selling what they could spare.
One unemployed man was daunted by the task but worked hard all summer clearing the land from shrubs and thorns, fertilizing the soil, planting various vegetables, watering them regularly and removing weeds. He earned a rich crop in the fall.
Rufus Jones said to him, “Is it not marvelous what God and you have done here together?”
The man said, “Well, yes, but you should have seen it when God had it all to himself.”
Unless we work, it is not going to happen by itself!
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Dietrich Fischer (1941-2015) from Münsingen, Switzerland, got a Licentiate in Mathematics from the University of Bern 1968 and his Ph.D. in Computer Science from New York University 1976. Fischer was a MacArthur Fellow in International Peace and Security at Princeton University 1986-88, has taught mathematics, computer science, economics and peace studies at various universities, and been a consultant to the United Nations. He was co-founder, with Johan Galtung, of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace, Development and Environment in 1993.
Excerpted from Dietrich Fischer’s Stories to Inspire You – TRANSCEND University Press-TUP.
Tags: Inspirational
This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 7 Oct 2019.
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