Cling

“I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with the pain.”  ~James Baldwin

First Victim

“Someone who is angry is someone who doesn’t know how to handle their suffering. They are the first victim of their suffering, and you are actually the second victim. Once we can see this, compassion is born in our heart and anger evaporates. We don’t want to punish them any more, but instead we want to say something or do something to help them suffer less.”  ~Thich Nhat Hanh

Any Given Day

At the age of 81, Jessie Lee Brown-Foveaux, born in 1899, wrote her memoirs.  It was originally intended just for her family, but happily they realized what they had and published it so we could all enjoy it.

Below is an excerpt from Any Given Day, ©1979, in which she recounts her favorite Christmas memory.  I hope you enjoy it as much as I did:

Thanksgiving 2016

Thanksgiving dinner with the family, and the inevitable question is asked, "So, how have you been?"

And I froze.

Do I talk about how many visits we've had to the hospital, how many (too many to count) times we've been to the doctor, how many specialists we've been referred to, how many medications and side effects we've endured?  Do I list the thoughts that plague me as I try to sleep, both the ones I know so well and the nameless dreads that haunt me?  Do I talk about how the world I know is fading away and being replaced by one I don't understand, one that's gaudy and mean and unfamiliar?

Or do I tell them that I read a poem that was so beautiful that I couldn't repeat it, because I choked up every time?  Do I talk about how perfect my mornings are, sharing sleepy coffee with Mona and waking up sweetly, softly, slowly?  Do I talk about the time our old cat Amanda climbed into my lap and fell asleep, and how at her age of nineteen I'm well aware that these moments are numbered but that this one was wonderful and serene and I'll never forget it?

"Oh...  We're fine."

By

"By hating that person, you have lost something very sweet in yourself."  ~Sri Chinmoy

Imagine

But...

(via BlizzardofJJ)

Fossilized Compassion

This made me happy.  Excerpted from A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson, ©2003:

Also found at Lake Turkana by (Kamoya) Kimeu was KNM-ER 1808, a female 1.7 million years old, which gave scientists their first clue that Homo erectus was more interesting and complex than previously thought.  The woman's bones were deformed and covered in coarse growths, the result of an agonizing condition called hypervitaminosis A, which can come only from eating the liver of a carnivore.  This told us first of all that Homo erectus was eating meat.  Even more surprising was that the amount of growth showed that she had lived weeks or even months with the disease.  Someone had looked after her.  It was the first sign of tenderness in hominid evolution.

All of us

One battle conservatives have won, for at least a generation, is that government can no longer be seen as a tool to help people.  It seems to exist mainly to protect the interests of the leisure class- and as a corollary, to keep the working class in their place.

So if you're sick, you're on your own; if you're poor, you're on your own; if you're hungry, you're on your own; if you're homeless, you're on your own.  This is being spun as "freedom."

And it's discouraging- but we're not helpless.  We just have to look for other ways to take care of each other.

Now, more than ever, it's important to look at our local communities and find ways to get involved, hands-on.  It's not enough to change the icon on our Facebook page or share a clever meme with our friends, we have to show up in person and help people face-to-face.

We can do a lot of good in this world, together.

Don't leave anybody on their own.

 

Plague

"We are not going to change the whole world, but we can change ourselves and feel free as birds. We can be serene even in the midst of calamities and, by our serenity, make others more tranquil. Serenity is contagious. If we smile at someone, he or she will smile back. And a smile costs nothing. We should plague everyone with joy. If we are to die in a minute, why not die happily, laughing?"  ~Swami Satchidananda, The Yoga Sutras

Approachable Elegance

“As I write this I’m thinking of my father’s unique blend of self-deprecation and dignity, his approachable elegance, his charisma without audacity, his old-world gentlemanliness and the hand-forged tower of his work.” ~Adam Cohen (source)

Skip

"Skip the religion and politics, head straight to the compassion. Everything else is a distraction."  ~Talib Kweli

Soon

“He was ready and he was at peace - how much better than that can it be? Go well Leonard Cohen.  What an inspiration on how to be.”  ~Dianne Swann

10Q

Excerpted from an article by Arjuna Ardagh in the Elephant Journal:

Jonathan heard about a great teacher in India. He was so impressed with what he had heard that he decided to travel to meet the teacher. Of course, going anywhere in India is inconvenient, so after plane rides and bus rides and rickshaw rides, he ended up meeting the esteemed and venerable swami.

After bowing down in the way customary to Indian culture, this teacher said to Jonathan, “Would you like me to give you the mantra that will set you free forever?”

Jonathan gulped. This was unexpected. Were they really going straight to third base on a first date?

“Yes,” said my friend, “that would be wonderful.”

“Okay,” said the swami. “The mantra that will set you free forever and alleviate all suffering are the words…”

A pregnant pause, a silent drum roll…

“…thank you.”

Another pause of shocked disbelief…

“That’s it?” said Jonathan. “That’s it?”

“No,” said the swami. “Not that’s it. That’s it will create more and more suffering. The mantra is thank you.”

For the rest of the article, click HERE.

Tremors

When I worked at the nursing home, there was a woman there who suffered from tremors.  At random times her right hand would begin shaking violently, but she never let it bother her.  "Oh, that's God reminding me to say my prayers!" she'd say, then pause, find something to be grateful for, and say a quick prayer thanking God for bringing it into her life.

I was very impressed with her ability to turn a negative into a positive, and I've tried to incorporate that into my own life.  Whenever I'm going about my daily routine and something interrupts me- a car honking, a baby screaming, a phone ringing- I try to use that as a signal to stop, find something to be appreciative of, and be thankful for it.

As Ferris Bueller reminded us, "Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it."  It's good to have something pull us back to the present moment, before too much of our lives goes flashing by.

I'm not as advanced spiritually as the woman in the nursing home was.  I still get fed up sometimes.

But I'm working on it.

+

"One of the first things that impressed me when I went to see the Grateful Dead was that it was the only time in my life I’d seen so many people together with a common energy that didn’t involve an enemy. In sports, you have common energy but you root against the other team. This wasn’t against anything. It was all positive."  ~Susana Millman

Ernest

Another excerpt from A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson, ©2003:

For all his success, (Ernest) Rutherford was not an especially brilliant man and was actually pretty terrible at mathematics. Often during lectures he would get so lost in his own equations that he would give up halfway through and tell the students to work it out for themselves. According to his longtime colleague James Chadwick, discover of the neutron, he wasn't even particularly clever at experimentation. He was simply tenacious and open minded. For brilliance he substituted shrewdness and a kind of daring. His mind, in the words of one biographer, was "always operating out towards the frontiers, as far as he could see, and that was a great deal further than most other men." Confronted with an intractable problems, he was prepared to work at it harder and longer than most people and to be more receptive to unorthodox explanations. His greatest breakthrough came because he was prepared to spend immensely tedious hours sitting at a screen counting alpha particle scintillations, as they were known – the sort of work that would normally have been farmed out. He was one of the first to see – possibly the very first – that the power inherent in the atom could, if harnessed, make bombs powerful enough to "make this old world vanish in smoke."

This is the sort of person kids should be reading about in school. Tenacity and open-mindedness are skills we can all cultivate.

We are stardust...

Excerpted from A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson, ©2003:

Because they are so long-lived, atoms really get around. Every atom you possess has almost certainly passed through several stars and been part of millions of organisms on its way to becoming you. We are each so atomically numerous and so vigorously recycled at death that a significant number of our atoms-- up to a billion for each of us, it has been suggested-- probably once belonged to Shakespeare. A billion more each came from Buddha and Genghis Khan and Beethoven, and any other historical figure you care to name. (The personages have to be historical, apparently, as it takes the atoms some decades to become thoroughly redistributed; however much you may wish it, you are not yet one with Elvis Presley.)

And how could I read that and not think of this? ↓

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