Merry Christmas from our home to yours. I trust that wherever you are this Holiday Season that you are enjoying the wonder of family, friends and reflection in this moment of happiness for life and hope. Our wish for you this joyous season is that you find happiness and renewal in the twinkle and sparkle of your children, grandchildren, neighborhood kiddos and students that fill your life with the promises of tomorrow. Peace on Earth to all persons of goodwill.

Please share our website with your friends and collagues - - The ARKGROUP's new look on the WEB can assist you now to get to the information you need. The ARKGROUP's newly redesigned website awaits you. We believe the site will provide our most understandable information we have generated to date about the ARK (Adults Relating to Kids) Programs and Processes for Teachers and Schools, Parents and Others who would be Intentional in the lives of Kids, both faith based and secular. Visit our site today. ARK (Adults Relating to Kids) programs and processes are here to help.

May you enjoy the four greatest blessing:
Honest Work to occupy you.
A hearty appetite to sustain you.
Good people to love you.
And a wink from the God above.
Bill
William R. Duffy
National Executive Director
281-537-1301

Last minute Christmas gifts that will bring renewal and growth the whole year through are available in the ARK Program DVDs: ARK for Teachers, ARK for Parents (Faith and Secular based), ARK Facilitator Training, The ARK Group Process and an Introduction to ARK hosted by Pat Summerall. Order yours today at www.thearkgroup.org. The ARK excellent lessons, DVD's, manuals, workbooks, texts and advertising materials -- equip you to begin ARK programs today. ARK programs provide breakthrough parenting and teaching "skills courses." With your help, we can make ARKrelationships the norm for the 21st century family, church, school and community.

For our Friends and Followers in the Dallas area, we have had outstanding record breaking participation through December in our ARK for Parents - Churches Programs . Facilitation training can be scheduled to fit your schedule. Thanks to a wonderful gift by a local benefactor, we are able to provide ARK for Parents Programs to Dallas area churches. The program includes facilitator training, lessons on DVDs, books, and a host of supporting materials and services. We invite you to take advantage of this wonderful opportunity. Contact us today by e-mail, letter or by telephone in Dallas at 817- 268-2100 or Houston at 281-537-1301 to reserve these programs for your church to enable your church family to become the parents and intentional adults in the lives of children that will change the world through your care

I Promise Myself

To be strong that nothing can distrub my peace of mind.
To talk health, happiness and prosperity to every person I meet.
To make friends feel there is something worthwhile in them.
To look at the sunny side of everything and make optimism come true.

To think only of the best, to work only for the best and to expect only the best.
To be enthusiastic about the success of others as I am about my own.
To forget the mistakes of the past and press on to the greater achievements of the future.

To wear a cheerful expression at all times and give a smile to every living creature I meet.
To give so much time to improving myself that I have no time to critize others.
To be too large for worry, too noble for anger, too strong for fear and too happy to permit the presence of trouble.

To think well of myself and to proclaim this fact to the world, not in loud words, but in great deeds.
To live in the faith that the whole world is on my side, so long as I am true to do the best, to do the right thing and to always unconditionally care and love others -- that which is truly in me.

I will remember, to say, I love you to the loved ones in my life, but most of all to those who would not know love, but through me.

To the little children in all of us ... Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night.

Read on...

I suspect, that though literature and narrative forms are shaped by larger historical movements, the novel my be especially well-suited to the tasks of social critique and psychological analysis of each one of us to find Community - Common Unity - and our place as a contributing piece to a unity that can create a nurturing environment of promise, care and growth. This place is where we would all want to live and raise our families.

I bring this up today not only as ideas for your gift ideas this Christmas, but as a "challenge" to consider in your New Years resolutions. Are you eager to transform and expand the opportunities of the beauty of your "caring community"? Introducing your neighborhood children, students and family to the richness of life in novels with your mentoring through intentional invested time might well be the beginning of a rich common- unity, "community" for your part of the world.

Dr. Ralph Draper, Superintendent of Spring Independent School District in Spring, Texas recently illustrated the individuality of all of us in his "story of the ketchup bottle". It seems as a young married, he went looking for the ketchup bottle in the refrigerator only to find that his young bride was accustomed to storing it in the cupboard. You see, what we believe and how we practice our lives is in the richness of our past and the traditions we inherit. The point is not that the "best and only place" that a ketchup bottle can be stored is what you and your family have always practiced. This story illustartes that community is a collection of all of our individual "ketchup" practices and we can be merely or only our history unless we form a community discussion and dialogue to understand our unique practices and beliefs. Then if we live our lives surrounded by those discussions and seek to interpret each day with a common-unity that honors each difference while aggreeing on relationship practices with each other, we set up the potential to care and nurture the best in our joint living.

How we choose to make the interpretations is the beginning of community. Reading and dialogue do this. Great novels open the doors to ideas of respect and care. The mentor in each of us to read to and with children can begin a lifelong journey of new ideas and possibilities made knowable in the interplay of the novel as a "picture" on our lives.

How to live in community, respect others ideas, beliefs and practices, and have relationships of opportunity to make fewer judgements and iron out challenges without judgement starts with the first novel and reading that you share with a child.
It holds the promise of showing our children the life long road of education and it's hope for the best in all of us.

Elementary schools could use your presence with a good book and an open mind to plant the seeds of community in a child. In the words of Charles Dickins Christmas Carol, when Tiny Tim declares "Merry Christmas - everyone". He declares an excitement to our souls. In our reading of that novel, we know what it means to find empathy, compassion, love, support, understanding, responsibility for others and mercy.

We invite you to begn an ARK program today for those people who can come into your life and be richer by your actions.

An Excellent IDEA for today, compliments of The FAMILY CIRCUS - one of my favorite newspaper cartoons.

And as spoken to many of us by numerous philosophers, theologans, teachers and grandparents througout the ages:
"You may not be what you think you are little grandchild
" "...BUT REMEBER MY DARLIN - WHAT YOU THINK...YOU ARE!."

Please share your ideas and read on...

What these phrases have in common is you and I, history and what we know and what we don't know.
The Beauty and Power of the greatest ideas of humankind are as close as books. Ideas of the works of Shakesspeare, Plato, Michelangelo, the prophets, Hawkins, Einstein, Jefferson, Rubens, Beethoven, Mozart, Freud, Newton, Twain, Austen,Wilde, James, Yeats, Beckett, Faulkner, Emerson, Thoreau, Hemingway, O'Neil, Miller, Hobbs, Locke, Decarte, Kant, Camus, Kierkegaard, Dostoevsky, Heidegger, Sarte, Tocqueville, Leibniz and Wilkerson, to mention a few, belong in your student's and children's lives.

As I reflect this Christmas Season, I am thankful for faith that has been brought down to each of us thorugh our fathers and mothers.
I am thankful for education and the hope and promise it brings made possible by the dedicated teachers and administrators at your schools. Their care of our learning environments and processes prepares us to grow and contribute even unto our final moments on this earth.
I am thankful for you, our readers and your intentional participation in the ARK Programs.

The "unconditional love" in all of us, children of the universe which can separate the person from the behavior and love another for who they are rather than for what they do brings (especially this Season) the promise of tomorrow and the future of the world...the children in our neighborhoods to their fullness and potential.

I am confident you will be there when they hear and learn the beautiful and powerful ideas of humankind's greatest works. Those ideas whch spark destiny to become the "twinkle" and "magic" of this Holiday Season.

Honoring our past and pursuing our vision.

The ARK Family wishes you and your family the very best this joyous time of year.

We will have you in our prayers this Christmas eve.

Check out this website for writings of Dr. Robert Brooks - In particular on the Questions about Kids and Gift Giving:

Your support of The ARKGroup, Inc. creates possibilities in our churches, community centers, and public and private schools. If you have an opportunity, idea, challenge, or destiny to fulfill through helping children to grow into their full potential, please contact us. Together we can improve the quality of life in our communities--one child, one family, one classroom, one school at a time. Helping other people lifts one's spirits and gives hope for the future.

Read on...