https://youtu.be/UfZUFswYGCI Mummenschanz came to Olympia, WA when we all still lived there, and we were there in the audience. It was marvelous! If you ever get the chance to see them live, I highly recommend spending whatever the tickets cost! Sign in to see full entry.
It's not easy, being human. It's damn hard living with emotions, impossible to live a full life without them. From this point of view, looking at the Universe from a wider-than-physical place, it all looks kinda different, though. This is the power of being able to see more widely than just as a body. Imagine a person as something layered, not like a target, but like a planet. At the core is our physical self, but that is surrounded by zones of mental and emotional goings-on, and further... Sign in to see full entry.
What bugs me about a lot of animal lovers is how much they hate and despise one particular animal: Human beings. In some circles, it is positively a PC thing, to deplore other people, but I suggest that it is not humans that are inherently despicable, that many are worthy and capable stewards of the natural world. There are good hearts and great hearts, and though we all have done and do deplorable things, it is very likely true that any creature with as much freedom from instinct as Homo... Sign in to see full entry.
The word 'enjoy' is a kind of passive verb, an instruction to feel joy, to find joy in... whatever. I suggest it need not be passive, but assertive: To en-joy is to fill a thing, a person, a circumstance, with joy. Like 'enchant' or 'enhance,' it is a verb of doing rather than just receiving. It is not just a feeling, an emotion, but an action. In writing, it is the hyphen that distinguishes it from the passive state; in speaking, a fragment of a beat between the syllables that we are used to... Sign in to see full entry.
That's the question posted over on Facebook. This is my response: There is going to be religion, regardless. The distinction between religion and spiritual connection, is the same as the difference between packaging and content. Youngsters love the shiny package, the glamor of ritual and the comfort of believing someone knows better than they do what's real, what's important, what's going on. They have faith in the package-wrappers. They enjoy the strength of congregation, the feeling it gives... Sign in to see full entry.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKbT59RCLgs This was my best Christmas present! Sign in to see full entry.
Our Adnohr posted this poem by Mary Oliver on FBook this morning, and it moved me not only for my appreciation of trees, but for what it offers about gratitude for the simple presence of beautiful things in this difficult and confusing and confounding world. When I am among the trees, especially the willows and the honey locust, equally the beech, the oaks and the pines, they give off such hints of gladness. I would almost say that they save me, and daily. I am so distant from the hope of... Sign in to see full entry.
Thinking about death a lot lately. Sending Embers out of this life and on to whatever comes next, tears come so readily, and I know they are not for her, but for my own loss. I don't know what's next for our animal companions. I know what fits my beliefs, and what I would like to believe. All I am certain of, is that when I think of her bright glowing fire-colored eyes, I grieve for losing them from my presence. I am certain she was in pain from her illness, that she was hungry, she was weak and... Sign in to see full entry.
Is loneliness real? Spiritually, no. Never. But living in a body, where boundaries of time and space, of skin and gender and thought, abound... we experience being apart, alone--and sometimes it is a good thing, solitude. Other times, it is that feeling of being cut off, insignificant to others, even abandoned: loneliness. We can shift perception to the spiritual, and find comfort there, when we are feeling too alone. But I can't help but think that we are here to experience such things, to... Sign in to see full entry.
"I am standing on the seashore. A ship spreads her sails to the morning breeze and starts for the ocean. I stand watching her until she fades on the horizon, and someone at my side says, She is gone. "Gone where? The loss of sight is in me, not her. Just at the moment when someone says, She is gone, there are others who are watching her coming. Other voices take up the glad shout, Here she comes! "And that is DYING." I don't know yet who to thank, who to credit this to, but it is beautiful! Sign in to see full entry.