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

2007

He who breaks a resolution is a weakling;
He who makes one is a fool.
~F.M. Knowles

New Year's eve is like every other night; there is no pause in the march of the universe, no breathless moment of silence amidst all of creation that acknowledges the passage of another year, and yet we humans look on this nights’ coming darkness as a marker, a new start, another chance…

We will open a new book, and find that its pages are blank. We will put our words onto those pages. That book is called Our Life and its first chapter is New Year's Day.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.
~Alfred, Lord Tennyson, 1850

To the family who have become friends,
and to the friends who have become family:

Beannachd Dia dhuit et Bonne Année

Translation: blessings of God be with you (Scots Gaelic) and Happy New Year (Quebecoise)
With inspirational nods to Hamilton Wright Mabi & Edith Lovejoy Pierce

T'was The Diet After Christmas...

T'was the day after Christmas, and all through the house
Not a damn thing would fit me, not even a blouse.
The cookies I'd nibbled, the eggnog I'd taste
At the holiday parties had gone to my waist.

When I got on the scales there arose such a number!
When I walked to the store (less a walk than a lumber),
I'd remember the marvelous meals I'd prepared;
The gravies, and sauces, and beef nicely rared,

The wine and the rum-balls, the bread and the cheese,
And the way that I'd never said, "No thank you, please."
As I dressed myself up, in my husband's old shirt,
And prepared once again to do battle with dirt -

I said to myself, (as only I can),
"You can't spend the winter disguised as a man!"
So, away with the last of the sour cream dip,
Get rid of the fruit cake, each cracker, and chip,

Every last bit of food that I like must be banished
'til all the unwanted ounces have vanished!
I won't have a cookie, not even a lick...
I'll just have to chew on a celery stick.

I won't have hot biscuits, or corn bread, or pie;
I'll munch on a carrot, and quietly cry.
I'm hungry, I'm lonesome, and life is a bore -
But isn't that what January is for?

Unable to giggle, no longer a riot...
Happy New Year to all, and to all a good diet!

T'was the Night Before Christmas

Live, Love, Laugh,

Smell the Sweet Spirits,

Dance with the Skies,

Hearken unto me my friend and

Hear my Prayer for your Happiness,

Your Safety, and Your Love this Holiday Season..

Blessed Be.

Happy Solstice!

Rejoice! The Light Returns!

Namaste

(photo credit: tenetsi, deviantart)

Food for Thought

How many of our daydreams would darken into nightmares, were there a danger of their coming true?


~Logan Pearsall Smith

and a peace fell over the land...

I don't support the war, but a wholeheartedly support the men and women who serve in the military from all our countries...Let's bring them all home safely.

Different Christmas Poem

The embers glowed softly, and in their dim light,

I gazed round the room and I cherished the sight.

My wife was asleep, her head on my chest,

My daughter beside me, angelic in rest.

Outside the snow fell, a blanket of white,

Transforming the yard to a winter delight.

The sparkling lights in the tree I believe,

Completed the magic that was Christmas Eve.

My eyelids were heavy, my breathing was deep,

Secure and surrounded by love I would sleep.

In perfect contentment, or so it would seem,

So I slumbered, perhaps I started to dream.

The sound wasn't loud, and it wasn't too near,

But I opened my eyes when it tickled my ear.

Perhaps just a cough, I didn't quite know,

Then the sure sound of footsteps outside in the snow.

My soul gave a tremble, I struggled to hear,

And I crept to the door just to see who was near.

Standing out in the cold and the dark of the night,

A lone figure stood, his face weary and tight.

A soldier, I puzzled, some twenty years old,

Perhaps a Marine, huddled here in the cold.

Alone in the dark, he looked up and smiled,

Standing watch over me, and my wife and my child.

"What are you doing?" I asked without fear,

"Come in this moment, it's freezing out here!

Put down your pack, brush the snow from your sleeve,

You should be at home on a cold Christmas Eve!

"For barely a moment I saw his eyes shift,

Away from the cold and the snow blown in drifts..

To the window that danced with a warm fire's light

Then he sighed and he said, "Its really all right,

I'm out here by choice. I'm here every night."

"It's my duty to stand in the front of the line,

That separates you from the darkest of times.

No one had to ask or beg or implore me,

I'm proud to stand here like my fathers before me.

My Gramps died at Pearl on a day in December,"

Then he sighed, "That's a Christmas Gram always remembers.

My dad stood his watch in the jungles of Nam,

And now it is my turn and so, here I am.

I've not seen my own son in more than a while,

But my wife sends me pictures, he's sure got her smile.

Then he bent and he carefully pulled from his bag,

The red, white, and blue... an American flag.

"I can live through the cold and the being alone,

Away from my family, my house and my home.

I can stand at my post through the rain and the sleet,

I can sleep in a foxhole with little to eat.

I can carry the weight of killing another,

Or lay down my life with my sister and brother..

Who stand at the front against any and all,

To ensure for all time that this flag will not fall."

"So go back inside," he said, "harbor no fright,

Your family is waiting and I'll be all right."

"But isn't there something I can do, at the least,

Give you money," I asked, "or prepare you a feast?

It seems all too little for all that you've done,

For being away from your wife and your son.

"Then his eye welled a tear that held no regret,

"Just tell us you love us, and never forget.

To fight for our rights back at home while we're gone,

To stand your own watch, no matter how long.

For when we come home, either standing or dead,

To know you remember we fought and we bled.

Is payment enough, and with that we will trust,

That we mattered to you as you mattered to us."

PLEASE, Would you do me the kind favor of sending this to as many people as you can? Christmas will be coming soon and some credit is due to our U.S. service men and women for our being able to celebrate these festivities. Let's try in this small way to pay a tiny bit of what we owe. Make people stop and think of our heroes, living and dead, who sacrificed themselves for us.

LCDR Jeff Giles,

SC, USN

30th Naval Construction Regiment

OIC, Logistics Cell One

Al Taqqadum, Iraq

Amen
Let there be Peace
Blessed Be.

What we have once enjoyed we can never lose. A sunset, a mountain bathed in moonlight, the ocean in calm and in storm. We see these, love their beauty, hold the vision in our hearts. All that we love deeply becomes a part of us.
~ Helen Keller

Photo Credit: Suzanne Gabriel (photo.net)

Speak Friend and Enter...

I felt it shelter to speak to you. ~Emily Dickinson

Trouble is part of all our lives, and if you don't share your troubles, you don't give those people who love you enough chance to show you that love.
Some people come and go quickly in our lives.
Some come to stay, forever marking our hearts, and we are never, ever the same.

???

Did you ever stop to think whether we stop and think about the really important things?

We all get pensive at times. Most of us have considered the the future, the past, and the points in between.

but have we ever stopped to consider whether our ponderings ponder that which needs to be pondered?

are our minds so cluttered with the mundane that we fail to see?
and how would we know?

well?

Food For Thought Series

I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.

~Mahatma Gandhi

A wish for my American Friends....

Not what we say about our blessings, but how we use them, is the true measure of our thanksgiving.

~W.T. Purkiser

may your Thanksgiving be a blessed one...

Food For Thought series

In war, there are no unwounded soldiers.

~José Narosky

The Eleventh Hour of the Eleventh Day of the Eleventh Month







Lest We Forget...

those that served and died in the War to End All Wars, and all our wars since then,
and lest we forget those who continue to serve and die in all our current conflicts.

War does not determine who is right, it only determines who is left...

Blessed Be

Have I lost?

I would empty my soul of the dreams that have gathered in me,
I would beat with your heart as it beats, I would follow your soul as it leads.
I would live in your love
Sarah Teasdale

A beautiful sentiment perhaps...Can one love this much without losing one's own being? and better yet, should we?

The dreamer in me says yes, to love this passionately is to feel the divine
The cynic in me says no, that to give up one's own dreams is to give over to an emptiness which can never be filled by another.

Perhaps, we should ask whether someone who loves us as much as we love them would ever ask us to give up our own dreams or sacrifice our soul to live in their love...