{"id":59958,"date":"2011-09-02T05:03:15","date_gmt":"2011-09-02T05:03:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/thesmokingpriest\/?p=59958"},"modified":"2011-09-02T05:03:15","modified_gmt":"2011-09-02T05:03:15","slug":"new-beginnings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thesmokingpriest\/2011\/09\/new-beginnings.html","title":{"rendered":"New Beginnings"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"color: #000000\">Thomas\u00a0 Edison was a prolific inventor.\u00a0 He invented over 1,000 things, but he is best known for inventing the incandescent light bulb, the phonograph, the microphone, the storage battery and talking movies.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000\">It was December 1914, and he had already been working for ten years on the storage battery.\u00a0 This adventure had greatly strained his financial situation.\u00a0 One evening, spontaneous combustion had broken out in the film room.\u00a0 Within minutes, all the packing compounds, celluloid for records and film, and other flammable material were in flames.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000\">Firefighters from eight surrounding towns arrived, but the fire was so intense and the water pressure so low, that the fire was out of control.\u00a0 Everything was destroyed and Edison was sixty-seven years old.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000\">Edison\u2019s twenty-four year old son, Charles, searched for his father during the fire.\u00a0 He finally found him, calmly watching the fire.\u00a0 \u201cMy heart ached for him,\u201d said Charles.\u00a0 \u201cHe was sixty-seven, no longer a young man, and everything was going up in flames.\u00a0 When he saw me, he shouted, \u2018Charles, where\u2019s your mother?\u2019\u00a0 When I told him I did not know, he said, \u2018Find her.\u00a0 Bring her here.\u00a0 She will never see anything like this as long as she lives.\u201d \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000\">The next morning Thomas Edison looked at the ruins of his life\u2019s work and said, \u201cThere is a great value in disaster.\u00a0 All our mistakes are burned up.\u00a0 Thank God we can start anew\u201d.\u00a0 Three weeks after the fire, Thomas Edison delivered the first phonograph.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"color: #000000\">My dear friends, we must never be discouraged by the difficulties and even the tragedies that take place in our lives. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"color: #000000\"> We all experience storms in our lives.\u00a0 We must not be surprised that this life is a continual struggle.\u00a0 Temptation, failure, difficulties, trials and tribulations are a normal part of our earthly existence.\u00a0 To seek an easy and comfortable life without the challenge of difficulties is not realistic.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"color: #000000\">Past failures and present disappointments keep people frozen in time, unable to move on to a better life.\u00a0 We must never be afraid of failure.\u00a0 Success can only be achieved by taking risks. We must not focus on the past; instead we should look forward with hope to a new beginning.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Thomas\u00a0 Edison was a prolific inventor.\u00a0 He invented over 1,000 things, but he is best known for inventing the incandescent light bulb, the phonograph, the microphone, the storage battery and talking movies. It was December 1914, and he had already been working for ten years on the storage battery.\u00a0 This adventure had greatly strained his&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":382,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[85],"tags":[30,29,27],"class_list":["post-59958","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-inspiration","tag-inspiration","tag-motivation","tag-spirituality"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>New Beginnings - The Smoking Priest<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thesmokingpriest\/2011\/09\/new-beginnings.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"New Beginnings - The Smoking Priest\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Thomas\u00a0 Edison was a prolific inventor.\u00a0 He invented over 1,000 things, but he is best known for inventing the incandescent light bulb, the phonograph, the microphone, the storage battery and talking movies. It was December 1914, and he had already been working for ten years on the storage battery.\u00a0 This adventure had greatly strained his&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thesmokingpriest\/2011\/09\/new-beginnings.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Smoking Priest\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2011-09-02T05:03:15+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Father James Farfaglia\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"New Beginnings - The Smoking Priest","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thesmokingpriest\/2011\/09\/new-beginnings.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"New Beginnings - The Smoking Priest","og_description":"Thomas\u00a0 Edison was a prolific inventor.\u00a0 He invented over 1,000 things, but he is best known for inventing the incandescent light bulb, the phonograph, the microphone, the storage battery and talking movies. 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