Be Encouraged!!

I  just received an e-mail from the Care2 petition site. On a typical day I might delete this kind of update e-mail or skim it quickly before trashing it. Not that I don’t care deeply about many causes I hear from in my inbox, but those e-mails accumulate so fast that before you know it you can’t find that one important e-mail from you boss that must have gotten swallowed up by all of the updates from political campaigns, activism sites, fundraisers, catalogs, etc etc. It’s the digital version of the two brown bags I have in my kitchen overflowing with mail for my neighbor that I have been collecting while he is out of town. I’ve told him, “You can go paperless with many of these things,” but on and on it arrives into the NON-metaphorical mailbox outside his house…fliers and advertisements, solicitations and bills, coupons and newsletters.

This is NOT a complaint post, believe it or not. I’m not spending time on this beautiful evening ranting about spam. Actually, what I wanted to share with you was what I mentioned at the beginning…this update from Care2. The subject?: LOOK WHAT YOU’VE DONE! And in the body of the e-mail is a list of just a few of the game changers in environmental issues, animal welfare, and public health that have occurred all over the world just in July due (at least in large part) to individuals signing petitions on the Care2 petition site. Here are the headlines and links:

FDA Bans BPA in Baby Bottles, Sippy Cups

Santa Monica Mountain Lion Shooting Leads to Policy Changes

Urban Decay Gets Cruelty-Free Status Back

FOUR PAWS Team Rescues Cub From Cruel Fate

Leatherback Turtles Protected in Puerto Rico

Forage Fish Protected in the Pacific

Chevron to Pay $19 Million For Environmental Damages

 

 

 

So BE ENCOURAGED!! You can be an activist and an advocate from the comfort of your own home if that is what feels right to you. Don’t like PETA? No worries! But it doesn’t mean that you can’t stand up for the welfare of animals. Don’t live in the Ukraine? It doesn’t mean you can’t help little Nastia find a better future at Four Paws. Amazing isn’t it? We can impact our world in ways that would have been inconceivable just a few decades ago. You should know that YOUR life has an impact. Always has. Always will.

Remembering a Sip of Cream

Note: This is the next in a series of posts contributed by our 90 year-old author, ~~~M Wave~~~. Show her some love! Visit her category “Memoirs of a Nonagenarian” at the right to see what else she has written.

I know that last week-end will remain memorable in my mind as I had a wonderful visit from one of my nieces and her family. I had not had the chance before to meet two of her three daughters, nor her husband. What a joy each person was. These girls are my great nieces and I am their great aunt. This fact stimulated the memory of a great aunt of my own…

When I was small, many extended family members lived nearby. As my brother and I walked home from school, we passed our grandparents’ house. And if we just turned right at the church house before we reached our grandparents’ and walked about a mile or so, we would arrive at my other grandfather’s sister, Lavina Smith and her husband Will’s house. We called them Aunt Vine and Uncle Will.

I was quite young when the grandparents of whom I just wrote were put in charge of my brother and me while my mother was in Chicago at the University of Illinois hospital with her mother whose own story is quite unique. It was at a time when X-rays were rather new and it was not known exactly how they could be used. Our doctor used X-rays “treatments” on my grandmother’s abdomen before he realized she was receiving what was actually, I guess, radiation and now grandmother was one of the first patients who needed help for a radiation burn which would not heal. In fact, since it seems that medical photography was not immediately available, an artist was commissioned to paint the interesting new look of a radiation burn. My grandmother used to joke that, somewhere in Chicago, perhaps she had quite an interesting picture of herself hanging on a wall. Eventually, skin was grafted from her hip onto her abdomen and she recovered. But, “Don’t touch me” became her motto.

On one of the days that Mother was away, my grandparents who were in charge of us had to be away when school was over and my brother and I had been instructed to walk to Aunt Vine’s house, which we did. When we arrived, however, both Aunt Vine and Uncle will were gone somewhere and the doors were locked. So my brother and I explored the area. In one of the nearby buildings, there was something rather special. It was where the milk was stored. (Remember this was wintertime.) It was skimmed milk, and the cream that had been skimmed off was there in a separate container. A tincup was hanging on a wire on the outside water pump and we, being typically hungry right after school, decided we shouldn’t allow ourselves to starve, so we took just a sip of cream. Back then, thick cold cream was tasting a bit close to ice cream in the middle of winter. Anyway it tasted great to us right then and we each had a good helping.

Then reality set in. We knew better than that. This was just like stealing since we did not have permission. We were in bad trouble. Maybe we should just keep quiet about it and no one would notice. Aunt Vine and Uncle Will came home and drove us back to my grandparents’ who had also returned home.

It was days before Mother called us in to her and said she had something important to ask us. “Did you help yourselves to the cream that was stored at Aunt Vine’s house the day you were there after school?” She instructed us to be sure to answer truthfully. Hesitantly we confessed. Mother went through the explanation of all the reasons that was wrong. First of all, Aunt Vine and Uncle Will sold cream at the town creamery and then bought groceries with the money. So we were affecting their having proper food. Secondly, since we did not have permission, it was too much like stealing. We both hung our heads. We felt guilty, and also were dreading punishment. Mother went on. It seems Aunt Vine had told my mother about it, but told her she did not want us punished, but just be given the explanation about the situation. Aunt Vine said she could recall how hungry she always was as a child when she had just arrived home from school and realized that we must have been famished. What a good soul–and how great that her memories were there to help our being forgiven–and to give me a wonderful memory of my great aunt and uncle.

I hope you are building sweet memories. Many friends around my own age have lost almost all of their brain power except for very old memories like this one. Some of these friends appear quite content with only those memories! Perhaps that isn’t all bad.

Connectedness…on a dreary day

I’m not going to lie. I’m not always a happy person sitting around praying and contemplating love and life. A blog is where, for many of us, we want to just be ourselves. We want to be authentic to a circle of strangers who, through words and common ideas, have come to feel somehow like distant friends or respected colleagues. So although I’m tempted to strictly maintain an uplifting vibe on this site, even at the cost of authenticity, I also just want to be real. Some days are dreary! I’m not Amma or the Dalai Lama after all!

But thank goodness that it also takes some thought to put together a blogpost because trying to write about feeling down got me to thinking….maybe the darker days and the less hopeful moments are just as important as the positive days in respect to being interconnected. After all, isn’t the challenge to maintain some kind of elevated perspective even through those times? To believe in hope and a greater love when there seems to be no hope, especially in “love”?? (Sheesh, I’m sorry but doesn’t love just deserve sarcastic quotes sometimes??) To hold each other up when that is what’s needed and to be sensitive to the energy of others?

The other day I cried. Just a few years ago I used to cry A LOT. I used to be quite sad quite often. Not so much anymore, except that last Sunday there was a familiar dark cloud over me whose presence felt like an old frenemy. And since my grasp on hope and optimism was already slipping that day, I willingly (and I would say, weakly) invited that old friend to come on over and stay for a while. The familiarity of something destructive is sometimes more comforting than all the (mere) potential good that the unknown holds.

The downside to inviting gloom to hang out is that it isn’t a friend who knows when it has overstayed its welcome. Hence, here I am on Wednesday night still entertaining my guest. If I had to counter that with an upside, I guess it would be this: letting gloom settle in for a while is a great way to get a lot of tears out…which feels so good sometimes,  especially when it’s been a while.

So point is, on Sunday I was crying a lot. Not that anyone saw that. I was supposed to spend part of the day with my sister and 21 month-old niece, two of the most luminescent lights in my life. But I called to say that the day was rough and I needed to be alone.  I didn’t think being around my niece who is pure joy would be the best place for me to be…like I would “contaminate” her with my energy. So instead I went for a long hike (and cried), I went to a matinee (and cried), I gave extra attention to my two cats (and cried), I talked to a few close friends on the phone (and cried), I cleaned the house (and cried).

And then something amazing happened later in the day. My sister sent me a short video of my niece, who calls me Momo. She was just sending it to say hello, but my niece surprised us both. On the video, my sister asked my niece, “What’s Momo doing?” My niece didn’t give her typical response of “sleeping,” “playing,” or “home.” Instead, she paused, her face became worried and she said, “Cry.” When my sister, perplexed, asked, “She’s crying? Why is she crying?” my niece responded with, “Tears on it,” in the same worried tone.  Then, as my sister prompted her, my niece went on to tell me she loved me, missed me, and that I should feel better. At the end her two little hands flew into the air, her smile broke out and my sister exclaimed, “All better!”

In talking about the video later that day, my sister told me that she hadn’t said anything about crying to my niece. We have no way of explaining why she would say that. That has to be a living, breathing example of interconnectedness right there!  At least I’m going to believe it is. And believing in anything right now is not something for me to scoff at. My niece’s video has been more than enough to get me through these last few nights anyway…and I’m beginning to think that, in the end, that is part of the purpose of being connected at all.

 

 

Protest Pictures

For the last three years I have been attending the Ringling Brothers protest at The Staples Center in Downtown Los Angeles. 2009′s protest was my first ever. Last year was the first protest at which I actually summoned my voice and spoke with the circus patrons about the truth of Ringling Bros.’ treatment of its animals. This year, I was quieter yet more confident in my right (even my duty) to be there for the animals. Here are some pictures from this year’s protest.

Opening night of the circus, 2011.

Opening night of 2012 circus. Tail end of the protest.

My favorite. Young protester taking the cause seriously.

Protestors gathering for the group photo.

Quote from August Harper’s

Regarding the questionable worth of a college degree….

 

Never has the nation’s system for choosing its leaders seemed more worthless. Our ruling class steers us into disaster after disaster, cheering for ruinous wars, getting bamboozled by Enron and Madoff, missing equity bubbles and real estate bubbles and commodity bubbles. But accountability, it seems is something that applies only to the people at the bottom, the ones who took out the bad mortgages or lied on their resume.

 

Thomas Frank

In Harper’s Magazine, August 2012

One foot, two foot…..

Dear everyone,

I would love to share the ongoing collection of travel shots that we’ve  collected. No, they’re not mountains and castles…they’re just our feet. But we love them! Here they are:

Afoot and Lighthearted.

Enjoy your travels!!

~~~S Wave~~~

In One Person by John Irving

How is everyone’s summer reading list going? Mine is moving along like the swift and nimble rush of a gazelle turtle.

I did finish one book though. It wasn’t on my list but when someone brought to my attention that John Irving recently came out with his next novel I was at the bookstore the next day. And as if holding In One Person in my hands wasn’t enough of a joy,  another joy introduced itself to me during my neighborhood search for the elusive independent bookstore.

Little did I know that  Skylight Books in Los Feliz was such a great place! I didn’t find it at all pretentious, it’s in a great location—-go get a book and then a cup of coffee at Fred 62!—- and they have a whole lineup of great visiting authors at their venue.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

But back to John Irving’s book…

I am not a literary critic. I was tempted to go online and read a bunch of book reviews so I could copy the general style of a critic, but why in the world would I do that?? How about I just use my own words and my own way of thinking. First, I will be honest and say that anything Irving writes automatically begins at a 6 on a scale of 1 to 10 for me. The man’s weakest tale (which for me would probably be Hotel New Hampshire) is still more captivating than almost any other modern novel I’ve read. He amazed me when he basically included two novels in one in Until I Find You. And of course, The World According to Garp is going to be a classic. Ciderhouse Rules, The 158-Pound Marriage, and A Widow For One Year are three other favorites of mine.

This latest book is special, though, and probably ranks high for me because of how it is situated in America’s current societal discourse. We’ve been seeing more and more attention paid to equal rights for LGBT individuals. Today’s young people are more comfortable accepting gender differences and there is even a popular pop music video that nonchalantly includes a gay crush in the story’s punchline.  In One Person revolves around the life of one bisexual man and introduces the reader to a cast of characters that are just an endearing as any of Irving’s best. As individuals, these characters can’t all be easily categorized into straight, gay, bi, trangender, etc. Irving examines the blurry lines that are the reality of gender and sexuality. We may try to categorize people, but it’s not that simple. The reverberating message of the novel is “Please don’t put a label on me…don’t make me a category before you get to know me.” And ultimately doesn’t that apply to all of us? Isn’t it yet another commonality that we all share? Whatever gender or sexuality we identify with, don’t we all just want to live without judgement and with a modicum of understanding from our fellow humans?  So even though Irving has written a novel about characters that may initially appear to be on the fringe—-universes unlike you and I—-he ultimately exposes them to be precisely the opposite. He does it without preaching and without sacrificing all of the quirky and kinky tendencies of Irving characters that we love so much!

Now it’s time for some nonfiction. How about quantum physics?? Laszlo here I come! Stay tuned….

2012 - The Awakening (Part 7)

Reblogged from The Sacred Art of Language:

Greetings friends! It has been some time since Part 6, but there has been a strange breeze blowing lately, and I thought it about time to revisit this topic… If you are new to my blog, or would like to re-read the older posts, follow the link below or click the ‘2012’ category in the sidebar.

The condition of modern man – at least the vast majority of mankind – is one of alienation.

Read more… 792 more words

Here is something I read today that I wanted to share. I continue to encounter signals like this that encourage me to remain curious and studious about the question of consciousness and interconnectedness. The author of this blog writes with such love and wisdom. When you read this, I hope you feel a surge in your spirit, an ache for freedom and knowledge, and a belief in the Greater Good as I did.

Elephants and a Watchtower Moment

I have all these posts planned in my head and drafted here on wordpress, but sometimes you need to just click on that “New Post” button and let the words flow in the moment because something has just resonated in your heart and reminded you that you are on the right path–doing what you need to do and learning what you need to learn…

photo by ~~~S Wave~~~

To set the scene: I have been dealing with some life anxiety. Work, relationships, big decisions, little decisions, health…you know how sometimes it all culminates and seems as though you’ve got too much in your brain and not enough synapses to handle it all? Well that has definitely been happening. But this evening I was feeling better and had planned to attend a massive gathering at the Los Angeles Staples Center to protest the Ringling Brothers Circus which has just arrived. It is an annual event (hopefully an unnecessary one next year!) and even though I only had an hour to participate after work, being there reminded me sweetly of my first time going two years ago. It had been my FIRST protest. So each July since then when I attend, it is a time for me to reflect on the progress I have made toward being my most authentic self—-being a person who speaks up for what she believes in and is learning to face some pretty daunting fears.

I came home, spent some time in prayer, ate dinner, and continued reading Laszlo’s Science and the Akashic Field (which you may remember from my summer reading list!) This book is opening my mind up to new ways of understanding interconnectedness…beyond a sentimental ideal or a farfetched fable. More to come on this book in a future post. I’m chomping at the bit!! For now, I will say that this book is scientifically fortifying my belief that there IS something connecting us all with each other beyond time and space. I had just finished reading the section titled The Puzzles of Coherence in Consciousness where the author introduces concepts of transpersonal connection (think twins who feel each others’ pains), telesomatic effects (minds affecting bodies), spiritual healing and intercessory prayer.

As I closed the book for the night, little did I know that I would shortly receive what I will call a “watchtower” moment. These are those moments when you are reminded that you are entirely known right where you are, that the path under your feet is not so much of a mystery as you might sometimes think, and that there will always be something to guide you when that is what you need.  A fellow protestor posted an article on Facebook. It made sense that she would post a story about elephants, but what I hadn’t expected was the message of interconnectedness—-demonstrated in an almost otherwise inexplicable witnessed event—-between our two species. A man who was called The Elephant Whisperer, died in March. During his life, he rescued hundreds of elephants that had been deemed too aggressive for rehabilitation. By connecting with them through hours of talking to them and communing with them in a spirit of patience, compassion and humility, they came to trust him. When he died, his family recounts that dozens of these elephants began marching through his preserve toward his house. One person said it was like a funeral procession. How could they have known he had died?

Click here to read the article: Elephants Mourn

“If there ever were a time, when we can truly sense the wondrous ‘interconnectedness of all beings,’ it is when we reflect on the elephants of Thula Thula. A man’s heart’s stops, and hundreds of elephants’ hearts are grieving. This man’s oh-so-abundantly loving heart offered healing to these elephants, and now, they came to pay loving homage to their friend.”

For me, it was a moving and confounding example of true interconnection, yes. But it was also a fusion of the most wonderful and inspiring parts of my little, human day; it was a message of, “I know where you are in your life…even down to this very evening. Keep going. I am with you.” I hope it will mean something equally benevolent and sustaining to you as well.

In love,

~~~S Wave~~~

Thought For Today

“We are prone to judge success by the index of our salaries or the size of our automobiles, rather than by the quality of our service and relationship to humanity.”

~~~Martin Luther King, Jr.