Blessings of Light...

May all the joys of the season be yours...
and may there be peace and light in the coming year.

Whatever you're celebrating, may it be happy, healthy, and safe.

See you next year.

Food for Thought

We can't control our destiny, but we can control who we become.

Anne Frank

'Tis the season

art credit: Jackie Ocean

For what avail the plough or sail, or land or life, if freedom fail?
~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Food for Thought series

For all that has been, thanks; to all that will be, yes.

Dag Hammarskjold

How old are you?

Girls leave their schedule wide-open and wait for a guy to call and make plans.
Grown women make their own plans and nicely tell the guy to get in where he fits.

Girls want to control the man in their life.
Grown women know that if he's truly hers, he doesn't need controlling.

Girls get upset with you for not calling them.
Grown women are too busy to realize you hadn't.

Girls are afraid to be alone.
Grown women revel in it-using it as a time for personal growth.

Girls ignore the good guys.
Grown women ignore the bad guys.

Girls make you come home.
Grown women make you want to come home.

Girls worry about not being pretty and/or good enough for their man.
Grown women know that they are pretty and/or good enough for any man.

Girls try to monopolize all their man's time (i.e., don't want him hanging with his friends).
Grown women realize that a lil' bit of space makes the 'together time' even more special-and goes to kick it with her own friends.

Girls think a guy crying is weak.
Grown women offer their shoulder and a tissue.

Girls want to be spoiled and 'tell' their man so.
Grown women 'show' him and make him comfortable enough to reciprocate without fear of losing his 'manhood'.

Girls get hurt by one man and make all men pay for it.
Grown women know that was just one man.

Girls fall in love and chase aimlessly after the object of their affection, ignoring all 'signs'.
Grown women know that sometimes the one you love, don't always love you back-and move on, without bitterness.

....It's too bad for all the grown women out there that there are so many Boys dressed up as Men

use it...

When I dare to be powerful -- to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.

Audre Lorde

Affirmations

I love my strange beauty and amazing pain
I love my hungry soul and entertaining games
I love my flaws, my gaps, my fears
I love my mysterious, dazzling frontiers

I will never forsake, betray or deceive myself
I will always adore, forgive and believe in myself
I will never refuse, abandon or scorn myself
I will always amuse, delight and redeem myself

Beauty and truth and love will always find me
Chaos and wilderness will always sustain me
I'm the fire and water and earth and air that are forever fresh from eternity
I'm a perfect creation and everything alive is naturally in love with me

from Pronoia is the Antidote for Paranoia, by Rob Brezsny
(found on mysticmirth's LJ)

You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.

Eric Hoffer (1902 - 1983)

Sometimes it does pay to open your email...

Food for Thought series

Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
and things are not what they seem.
Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art; to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Food for Thought series

Honor the tradition but expand the understanding. That's what religions must do right now if they hope to be helpful to humans in the years ahead.

Neale Donald Walsch
Tomorrow's God

Food for Thought series

You don't get to choose how you're going to die. Or when. You can decide how you're going to live now.

Joan Baez

Choose well!
Namaste

Happy Father's Day

He didn't tell me how to live; he lived, and let me watch him do it.
~Clarence Budington Kelland


HAPPY FATHER"S DAY
to all the Dads out there!

ashes to ashes...

All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another. ~Anatole France

They say that nothing endures but change; that change is the constant, the signal for rebirth, the egg of the phoenix…

But just because everything is different doesn't mean anything has changed, does it?

Vote thoughtfully.
Act responsibly.

Who knows what will rise from the ashes

...and there it is

I have a right to my anger, and I don't want anybody telling me I shouldn't be, that it's not nice to be, and that something's wrong with me because I get angry.

Maxine Waters, in Brian Lanker, I Dream a World, 1989

Food for thought...

We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are.

~Anaïs Nin

green streaks in my hair...

For you, even if you haven't got a drop of Irish blood in you...

Bless your little Irish heart-
and every other Irish part.
Wherever you go and whatever you do,
May the luck of the Irish be there with you.

May your heart be warm and happy
With the lilt of Irish laughter
Every day in every way
And forever and ever after.

Here's to good friends
Never above you
Never below you
Always beside you…

Always beside you.

We Can Make a Difference...

Dear friends,

I am one of over 50,000 people from 131 countries around the world demanding G8 leaders to take action to stop the climate crisis. This is urgent, and I thought you might be interested - please see the email below.
-----------------------------------------

Dear friend,

This Thursday, the environment ministers from the G8, the world's biggest contributors to climate change, will be meeting in Germany. The outcome of this meeting is crucial to world's response to global warming.

Avaaz.org has been invited to attend this meeting to present our climate change petition. A strong voice for action could help set the agenda for the G8. To help seize this opportunity, click below:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/climate_action_germany/tf.php

The G8 is a summit of world leaders from the "Group of 8" largest economies. Together, these countries account for 50% of global greenhouse gas emissions--the gasses that cause climate change. The full G8 summit is coming in June, but the agenda and outcome of this type of high-profile event is usually set far in advance--at meetings like the one this Thursday.

This year, the president of the G8 is German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Her environment minister, Sigmar Gabriel, is in charge of the ministers meeting Thursday. And at 4 pm on March 15th, we have a personal meeting with Mr. Gabriel to present our petition for binding emissions targets to stop catastrophic climate change.

Merkel has indicated an interest in making climate change a top priority. With a significant global petition, we can make the case that the world is ready for aggressive leadership on climate change--and pave the way for truly historic commitments at the G8 summit this June.

It's a rare opportunity to have a global impact. Add your voice to the petition now:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/climate_action_germany/tf.php

50,000 people from 131 countries have already demanded action. Our goal is to reach 100,000. Please sign the petition, forward this email to friends and family, and post the link on your blog--we only have a few days to make this statement count.

If we add our voices together, now, 2007 can become the year we took the first step to save the world.

With hope,

Ricken, David, Iain, Lee-Sean, Galit, Graziela, and the rest of the Avaaz.org team

Say Hi!

Create your own visitor map!

May it be.

Normal day, let me be aware of the treasure you are.
Let me learn from you, love you, bless you before you depart.
Let me not pass you by in quest of some rare and perfect tomorrow.
Let me hold you while I may, for it may not always be so.
One day I shall dig my nails into the earth, or bury my face in the pillow, or stretch myself taut, or raise my hands to the sky and want, more than all the world, your return.

~Mary Jean Iron

The speed of thought...

Now is the winter of our discontent.
William Shakespeare

We are, perhaps, uniquely among the earth's creatures, the worrying animal. We worry away our lives, fearing the future, discontent with the present, unable to take in the idea of dying, unable to sit still.
Lewis Thomas

Where does discontent start? You are warm enough, but you shiver. You are fed, yet hunger gnaws you. You have been loved, but your yearning wanders in new fields. And to prod all these there's time, the Bastard Time.
John Steinbeck

Spring was moving in the air above and in the earth below and around him, penetrating even his dark and lowly little house with its spirit of divine discontent and longing.
Kenneth Grahame

...and the theme for today?

Happy Day of Love

The grimoire has been opened to a fresh page.
What story do we tell today?

Daily Affirmation...

Look to this day!
For it is life, the very life of life.
In its brief course
Lie all the verities and realities of your existence
For yesterday is but a dream,
And tomorrow is only a vision;
But today, well lived, makes every yesterday
a dream of happiness,
And every tomorrow a vision of hope.

Namaste

- Attributed to Kalidasa

May it be.

Grant me the strength from day to day
To bear what burdens come my way.
Grant me throughout this bright New Year
More to endure and less to fear.
Help me live that I may be
From spite and petty malice free.

Let me not bitterly complain
When cherished hopes of mine prove vain,
Or spoil with deeds of hate and rage
Some fair tomorrow's spotless page.
Creator, as the days shall come and go
In courage let me stronger grow.

Creator, as the New Year dawns today
Help me to put my faults away.
Let me be big in little things;
Grant me the joy which friendship brings.
Keep me from selfishness and spite;
Let me be wise in what is right.

A happy New Year! Grant that I
May bring no tear to any eye.
When this New Year in time shall end
Let it be said I've played the friend,
Have lived and loved and labored here,
And made of it a happy year.

Namaste