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Walking in faith: Condoleezza Rice tells what inspires her [Repost]
Washington Times via WorldNetDaily.com ^ | Tuesday, August 27, 2002

Posted on 08/29/2002 1:03:38 AM PDT by JohnHuang2

     Trained as a girl to be a concert pianist and a competitive ice skater, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, 47, is undergirded by her Christian beliefs. During an Aug. 4 Sunday school class at National Presbyterian Church, she explained what inspires her. Here are some excerpts:
     
     I was a preacher's kid, so Sundays were church, no doubt about that. The church was the center of our lives. In segregated black Birmingham of the late 1950s and early 1960s, the church was not just a place of worship. It was the place where families gathered; it was the social center of the community, too.
     Although I never doubted the existence of God, I think like all people I've had some ups and downs in my faith. When I first moved to California in 1981 to join the faculty at Stanford, there were a lot of years when I was not attending church regularly. I was traveling a lot. I was a specialist in international politics, so I was always traveling abroad. I was always in another time zone. One Sunday I was in the Lucky's Supermarket not very far from my house — I will never forget — among the spices and an African-American man walked up to me and said he was buying some things for his church picnic. And he said, "Do you play the piano by any chance?"
     I said, "Yes." They said they were looking for someone to play the piano at church. It was a little African-American church right in the center of Palo Alto. A Baptist church. So I started playing for that church. That got me regularly back into churchgoing. I don't play gospel very well — I play Brahms — and you know how black ministers will start a song and the musicians will pick it up? I had no idea what I was doing and so I called my mother, who had played for Baptist churches.
     "Mother," I said, "they just start. How am I supposed to do this?" She said, "Honey, play in C and they'll come back to you." And that's true. If you play in C, people will come back. I tell that story because I thought to myself, "My goodness, God has a long reach." I mean, in the Lucky's Supermarket on a Sunday morning.
     I played for about six months for them and then I decided to go and find the Presbyterian Church again. I'm a devoted Presbyterian. I really like the governance structure of the church. I care about the Presbyterian Church. On a Sunday morning, I went to Menlo Park Presbyterian Church [in Palo Alto]. The minister that Sunday morning gave a sermon I will never quite forget. It was about the Prodigal Son from the point of view of the elder son.
     It set the elder son up not as somebody who had done all the right things but as somebody who had become so self-satisfied; a parable about self-satisfaction, and content and complacency in faith [and] that people who didn't somehow expect themselves to need to be born again can be complacent. I started to think of myself as that elder son who had never doubted the existence of God but wasn't really walking in faith in an active way anymore.
     I started to become more active with the church, to go to Bible study and to have a more active prayer life. It was a very important turning point in my life.
     My father was an enormous influence in my spiritual life. He was a theologian, a doctor of divinity. He was someone who let you argue about things. He didn't say, "Just accept it." And when I had questions, which we all do, he encouraged that. He went to great lengths to explain about the man we've come to know as Doubting Thomas; he thought that was a little story from Christ about the fact it was OK to question. And that Christ knew that Thomas needed to feel his wounds; feel the wounds in His side and feel the wounds in His hands. That it was what Thomas needed — he needed that physical contact. And then of course Christ said when you can accept this on faith, it will be even better.
     I [liked] that because my father didn't brush aside my questions about faith. He allowed me as someone who lives in my mind to also live in my faith.
     In this job, when we faced a horrible crisis like September 11, you go back in your mind and think, "Is there anything I could have done? Might I have seen this coming? Was there some way?" When you go through something like that, you have to turn to faith because you can rationalize it, you can make an intellectual answer about it but you can't fully accept it until you can feel it here (taps chest). That time wasn't a failure, but it was a period of crisis when faith was really important for me.
     I try always to not think I am Elijah, that I have somehow been particularly called. That's a dangerous thing. In a sense, we've all been, to whatever it is we are doing. But if you try to wear the imprimatur of God — I've seen that happen to leaders who begin too much to believe — there are a couple of very good anecdotes to that. I try to say in my prayers, "Help me to walk in Your way, not my own." To try to walk in a way that is actually trying to fulfill a plan and recognize you are a cog in a larger universe.
     I think people who believe in a creator can never take themselves too seriously. I feel that faith allows me to have a kind of optimism about the future. You look around you and you see an awful lot of pain and suffering and things that are going wrong. It could be oppressive. But when I look at my own story or many others that I have seen, I think, "How could it possibly be that it has turned out this way?" Then my only answer is it's God's plan. And that makes me very optimistic that this is all working out in a proper way if we all stay close to God and pray and follow in His footsteps.
     I really do believe that God will never let you fall too far. There is an old gospel hymn, "He knows how much you can bear." I really do believe that.
     I greatly appreciate, and so does the president, the prayers of the American people. You feel them. You know that they are there. If you just keep doing that, it is so important to all of us.
     In many ways, it's a wonderful White House to be in because there are a lot of people who are of faith, starting with the president. When you are in a community of faithful, it makes a very big difference not only in how people treat each other but in how they treat the task at hand.
     Among American leadership, there are an awful lot of people who travel in faith. It's a remarkable thing and I think it probably sets us apart from most developed countries where it is not something that is appreciated quite as much in most of the world.
     I've watched over the last year and a half how people want to have human dignity worldwide. You hear of Asian values or Middle Eastern values and how that means people can't really take to democracy or they'll never have democracy because they have no history of it, and so forth. We forget that when people are given a choice between freedom and tyranny, they will choose freedom. I remember all the stories before the liberation of Afghanistan that they wouldn't "get it," that they were all warlords and it would just be chaos. Then we got pictures of people dancing on the streets of Kabul just because they could listen to music or send their girls to school.



TOPICS: Editorial; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: condoleezzarice; drcondoleezzarice
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Thursday, August 29, 2002

Quote of the Day by stop_fascism

1 posted on 08/29/2002 1:03:38 AM PDT by JohnHuang2
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To: hchutch; AuntB; nunya bidness; GrandmaC; Washington_minuteman; buffyt; Grampa Dave; blackie; ...

2 posted on 08/29/2002 1:04:09 AM PDT by JohnHuang2
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To: JohnHuang2
WOW.......THAT IS ALL........just wow......Congratulations Ms. Rice, I have much more respect for you today, than I did....and will be watching you with very open eyes.........

SuZiQue
3 posted on 08/29/2002 1:24:32 AM PDT by ibld2
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To: ibld2
Bump!
4 posted on 08/29/2002 1:25:21 AM PDT by JohnHuang2
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To: JohnHuang2
I eagerly look forward to her becoming POTUS. Maybe 2008??
5 posted on 08/29/2002 2:02:18 AM PDT by upchuck
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To: upchuck
Bump!
6 posted on 08/29/2002 2:05:01 AM PDT by JohnHuang2
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To: JohnHuang2
Bumping...

If we do not run this woman for president someday, we will be missing what is probably the greatest opportunity we will have for a long, long time. She has the potential to change everything, and she would be *very* good.

7 posted on 08/29/2002 2:39:59 AM PDT by The Other Harry
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To: The Other Harry
Yes, I agree.
8 posted on 08/29/2002 2:45:23 AM PDT by Judith Anne
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To: hobbes1
just in case you didn't see this about your girl, here's a ping.
9 posted on 08/29/2002 2:50:06 AM PDT by xsmommy
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To: Judith Anne
Yes, I agree.

There seem to be a number of us on FR who do. I wonder how you get something like that started.


10 posted on 08/29/2002 3:08:38 AM PDT by The Other Harry
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To: The Other Harry

Background info on her:

Link

11 posted on 08/29/2002 3:17:02 AM PDT by The Other Harry
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To: upchuck
If Cheney is out for the next term, Condi Rice would/should be the next VP ... that sets her up as the incumbent for 2008.

The battle will be for racist America (it's there folks, let's not be blind), and the D-socialists of the bwitch's ilk.

We live in historic and frightening times.

12 posted on 08/29/2002 3:36:35 AM PDT by knarf
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To: knarf
Yet another reason, from her own mouth, why this woman should be the next President of the United States.

Be Seeing You,

Chris

13 posted on 08/29/2002 3:58:15 AM PDT by section9
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To: JohnHuang2
I haven't heard too much about Condoleezza Rice this summer.

I thought she took the summer (and War on Terrorism) off to concentrate on her piano playing.

14 posted on 08/29/2002 4:00:14 AM PDT by Tuco-bad
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To: Tuco-bad
It's nice to see Tuco contribute such a dry, arid, and analytical post now and again.

Goodbye, Troll....

Be Seeing You,

Chris

15 posted on 08/29/2002 4:07:33 AM PDT by section9
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To: upchuck
Condi is the liberals worst nightmare.

The first black and female president of the United States turns out to be (GASP!!) a Conservative.

I hope Conservatives don't miss noticing the potential here.

16 posted on 08/29/2002 4:42:20 AM PDT by cerberus
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To: JohnHuang2
I read this article, thought about it without comment. Now I have to conclude, this article is pure propaganda.

Somewhere, the powers that be are having trouble convincing the religious right to get 'under the umbrella'. Nothing like a religious smooch to win some folks over to the NWO.

17 posted on 08/29/2002 5:56:25 AM PDT by CWRWinger
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To: JohnHuang2
What a perfectly charming story of faith. So many of the things she says here strike a chord with me! And perhaps with any Christian. Very reassuring, to know that someone so humble is this near to the helm. Thanks so much for posting this, John.
18 posted on 08/29/2002 5:56:38 AM PDT by Byron_the_Aussie
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To: CWRWinger
Oh yeah, that must be it.
19 posted on 08/29/2002 6:12:16 AM PDT by mountaineer
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To: JohnHuang2
Thank you oh so very much for the heads up!!!
20 posted on 08/29/2002 7:25:18 AM PDT by Alamo-Girl
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