January Leftovers

One of these, please:

 Love in a casserole:

Badge of an English Teacher:

 It takes time...

 Enough

Last Sunday's scripture

 The long view...Rob would love these.

 Wheeeeeeeeeeee!

January 19th - Oh, Happy Day!

Neighbor Karla gets a new nest. : ) : (

OH BOY!

January 21, 2017 The Stand for Love

Gathering at the Timothy Cole Memorial

THIS!

November 21, 2017

Rivers of marchers

In a stream of solidarity

Creating a cocoon of peace

Sowing seeds of hope

Spectrums of color,

gender, ethnicity

Labels dissolving as love

surrounds

Cheers, signs, standing

still

Chants, songs, speeches

Peaceful hands held high

Arms linked in chains of

love

~Coco

Austin

Now what?

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bal-leonard-pitts-jr-the-great-trumpkin-rises-from-the-trumpkin-patch-20170118-story.html

Affirmation

HOW TO CARE FOR A LOVED ONE
(WITHOUT LOSING YOURSELF)

When you're sitting with
a loved one who's suffering,
don't pretend to be invulnerable.
Don't pretend to be strong.
Let your heart break a little or a lot.

Bow to your fragility, your lack of answers.
Feel your sorrow, your fear, your frustrations.
And your guilt. You're not a superhuman.
It's hard to see someone you love in pain.
However 'evolved' you are, it's hard.

Now: Watch where your attention goes.
Does it fly out of your body?
Are you holding your breath?
Are you ignoring and neglecting yourself
in your wish to 'help' or even 'save' the other?
Are you abandoning your precious body
in your longing to take away their pain?

The universe doesn't need two suffering.
One is more than enough.

Offer your presence now.
Your wide open heart.
Your listening.
Cry with them.
Validate where they are.
But remember, it's not your job to save them,
fix them, heal them,
take away their pain.
It's up to God. It's up to the Universe.

You don't know what's best for them.
You might give the wrong answers.
They are on their own journey.
Their journey is not yours.
(This doesn't mean you're selfish.)

It's your job to be their friend now,
not their saviour.
Be a reflection of their own presence,
their courage, their ability to withstand
even the most intense energies.

In order to care for another
you have to care deeply for yourself,
you have to care abundantly for yourself,
so that care spills over,
so that care flows to your friend,
even if they aren't aware of it.

Don't abandon yourself
in the name of 'compassion'.
Walk your path now, not theirs.
Do less, then. Radiate more.

Alive and well...

Fork in the road...

Today in the United States we inaugurate a new president.

While I pray President Trump leads with

wisdom, compassion, and justice,

we cannot simply sit back and watch whatever unfolds.

We the people have a tremendous responsibility to work together,

to speak truth to power,

to peacefully advocate for the rights of all beings and the earth.

This requires maturity and contemplative consciousness,

empathy for the “other,”

and courage to stand with those who are suffering.

It is not a popular or easy path.

But as human beings, we are called to be active participants

in our salvation and mutual survival.

I hope that by rediscovering the great gifts of Christianity

we might live as our whole selves,

becoming the united Body of Christ. 

~R. Rohr

"God share grace on thee..."

This is the day that you have made, O LORD.

May those who rejoice and are glad in it prove the goodness of this day

with charity towards all and malice towards none.

And may those who are anxious or dismayed on this day

lift up their heads and be not afraid to speak their own truth in love

for the sake of this our beloved country and world. 

~R. Price

Tender Places

As we move into a brand new year,

full of uncertainty, full of joy, full of heartbreak, full of life,

let's remember to be grateful (or not) for the things that trigger us,

because uncomfortable thoughts and feelings are just parts of the Whole

asking to be included, embraced, permitted in the vast Love that we are.

Waves in our Ocean.......................

When anger surges, as it will, can you stay close,
and not numb it, or lash out?

When fear bursts in the body, can you breathe into it,
and not fuse with it, or run away into stories?

When you feel hurt, rejected, unloved, abandoned,
can you make room for that feeling,
welcome it in the body,
bow to its intensity, its fire, its presence,
and not attack, or act out, or call people names?

Can you commit to not abandoning yourself
now that you need your own love the most?

It's easy to talk about love.
It's easy to teach.
Until our old wounds are opened.
Until life doesn't go our way.

What triggers you
is actually inviting you
to a deeper self-love.
Can you see?

There is no shame in this:
We all have tender places.

With love, 

Jeff x

Timely too...

Today is a good day to remember Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” King was jailed for campaigning against racial segregation in Birmingham, in violation of an injunction against anyone “parading, demonstrating, boycotting, trespassing and picketing.” His letter was written on the margins of a newspaper, scraps of paper that another prisoner gave to him, and then a legal pad that his attorney left behind.

It has been an inspiration to millions of people; I am one of them. Here are some excerpts:

MY DEAR FELLOW CLERGYMEN: . . . .

I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly....

We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God-given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we stiff[ly] creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging dark of segregation to say, “Wait.” But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can’t go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Fu town is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son who is asking: “Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?”; when you take a cross-country drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading “white” and “colored”; when your first name becomes “nigger,” your middle name becomes “boy” (however old you are) and your last name becomes “John,” and your wife and mother are never given the respected title “Mrs.”; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you go forever fighting a degenerating sense of “nobodiness” then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience....

But though I was initially disappointed at being categorized as an extremist, as I continued to think about the matter I gradually gained a measure of satisfaction from the label. Was not Jesus an extremist for love: “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.” Was not Amos an extremist for justice: “Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” Was not Paul an extremist for the Christian gospel: “I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus.” Was not Martin Luther an extremist: “Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise, so help me God.” And John Bunyan: “I will stay in jail to the end of my days before I make a butchery of my conscience.” And Abraham Lincoln: “This nation cannot survive half slave and half free.” And Thomas Jefferson: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal ...” So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice? In that dramatic scene on Calvary’s hill three men were crucified. We must never forget that all three were crucified for the same crime—-the crime of extremism. Two were extremists for immorality, and thus fell below their environment. The other, Jesus Christ, was an extremist for love, truth and goodness, and thereby rose above his environment. Perhaps the South, the nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists....

I have no despair about the future. I have no fear about the outcome of our struggle in Birmingham, even if our motives are at present misunderstood. We will reach the goal of freedom in Birmingham, and all over the nation, because the goal of America [is] freedom. Abused and scorned though we may be, our destiny is tied up with America’s destiny. Before the pilgrims landed at Plymouth, we were here. Before the pen of Jefferson etched the majestic words of the Declaration of Independence across the pages of history, we were here. For more than two centuries our forebears labored in this country without wages; they made cotton king; they built the homes of their masters while suffering gross injustice and shameful humiliation-and yet out of a bottomless vitality they continued to thrive and develop. If the inexpressible cruelties of slavery could not stop us, the opposition we now face will surely fail. We will win our freedom because the sacred heritage of our nation and the eternal will of God are embodied in our echoing demands....

One day the South will recognize its real heroes. There will be the James Merediths, with the noble sense of purpose that enables them to face jeering and hostile mobs, and with the agonizing loneliness that characterizes the life of the pioneer. There will be the old, oppressed, battered Negro women, symbolized in a seventy-two-year-old woman in Montgomery, Alabama, who rose up with a sense of dignity and with her people decided not to ride segregated buses, and who responded with ungrammatical profundity to one who inquired about her weariness: “My feets is tired, but my soul is at rest.” There will be the young high school and college students, the young ministers of the gospel and a host of their elders, courageously and nonviolently sitting in at lunch counters and willingly going to jail for conscience’ sake. One day the South will know that when these disinherited children of God sat down at lunch counters, they were in reality standing up for what is best in the American dream and for the most sacred values in our Judaeo-Christian heritage, thereby bringing our nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the founding fathers in their formulation of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.

Never before have I written so long a letter. I’m afraid it is much too long to take your precious time. I can assure you that it would have been much shorter if I had been writing from a comfortable desk, but what else can one do when he is alone in a narrow jail cell, other than write long letters, think long thoughts and pray long prayers?...

Let us all hope that the dark clouds of racial prejudice will soon pass away and the deep fog of misunderstanding will be lifted from our fear-drenched communities, and in some not too distant tomorrow the radiant stars of love and brotherhood will shine over our great nation with all their scintillating beauty.

Yours for the cause of Peace and Brotherhood,

Martin Luther King, Jr.