Not Marzipan Babies

These cuties are made from modeling clay NOT almond paste and egg white. Sorry for the misinformation...

Warm Tootsies

No, I don't want to go outside, thank you, I am comfy right where I am!

Albert

I was offered presidency of the new Israeli State in 1952. I declined.
I was married twice. My first wife was, like me, a physicist.
I was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1921.
I worked for Princeton University in my later years.
I was a sailing fanatic, though I never learned to swim.
Physicist Niels Bohr and I had a lasting dispute about the nature of reality.
I played violin quite well and often donated my talents to charity balls.

I shared this info with some elders this morning and one of them piped up and shared that he had walked in Einstein's footsteps--literally. He was attending Princeton and came out of a building and there was Einstein walking by. There was snow on the ground and this elder promptly stepped into Einstein's footprints that were in the snow and walked in his footsteps. I was so impressed!! I love my work.

The Next Season On Its Way

Robert Frost (1915)


Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers to-day;
And give us not to think so far away
As the uncertain harvest; keep us here
All simply in the springing of the year.

Oh, give us pleasure in the orchard white,
Like nothing else by day, like ghosts by night;
And make us happy in the happy bees,
The swarm dilating round the perfect trees.

And make us happy in the darting bird
That suddenly above the bees is heard,
The meteor that thrusts in with needle bill,
And off a blossom in mid air stands still.

For this is love and nothing else is love,
The which it is reserved for God above
To sanctify to what far ends He will,
But which it only needs that we fulfill.

The Lotus Flower

The lotus rises through the murky waters of ponds and lakes yet, when it blooms, it floats upon the surface, its petals shining and untainted by the mud from which it emerged. In the scriptural language and sacred poetry of Hinduism and Buddhism, the lotus perfectly embodies the soul, rising up through the murkiness of worldly experience until it reaches the surface of the spiritual realm and blooms, vibrant and pure, free from all taint and attachment.

The lotus is so fundamental to the spiritual language of Yoga that it has become a technical term. The word "lotus" is used interchangeably with the word chakra referring to the spinning wheels of spiritual energy located along the spinal axis. While the lotus can refer to any of the chakras, it is most especially associated with the radiant white-gold crown chakra.

Hot YouTube Video

They shot this whole thing in reverse and had to learn how to sing the lyrics backwards. Creativity blooming.

How Do You Grieve?

I discovered not too long ago that when I am grieving I get snippy. I snap and get a little bit mean. I seem to lose patience with everything. My tolerance for everyday, superficial expressions disappears. I become like a wounded creature clutching my pain and curling up into my burrow licking the throbbing with stillness and isolation. This becomes an opportunity for others to forgive me for my roughness, shortness, and cruelty, and for me to forgive myself for pushing others away. Sharing becomes quite tender and difficult. How do you grieve? I am looking around to see how we as a community grieve, as a culture grieve. In some cultures grieving rituals and ceremony are a regular practice. The community rallies around the grieving parent or citizen and shares in the expression of distress and pain. Purging grief from the group and from its individuals transmutes the mourning so that the sun can shine in on the morrow. Wise practice I think.

You are being watched...

From Peter Philips: Project Censored in California
FYI
Global Censorship Technology used in U.S.
Deep packet inspection technology monitors everything that goes through the internet. It is readily available in the United States and there’s no legislation that prevents the US government from employing it. Deep packet inspection is currently used in Iran. The Iranian Government has the ability to look through everything, land line telephones, mobile telephones, email, websites, looking for keywords and actually monitoring the entire traffic going through one chokepoint in Iran. Deep packet inspection is the use of sophisticated equipment that literally watches the entire internet for every piece of data, voice, and video looking for key words, such as "rebel" or "grenade." It is widely known that since 9/11, AT&T and Verizon were being asked by the Bush administration to deploy this sort of off-the-shelf technology. And they did. Again, Obama came out against the law and said we must punish these carriers for doing this, because it’s illegal, and then he flipped under enormous pressure from the lobbies.

A New Courage

From Gary Zukav:
Spiritual growth requires becoming aware of everything you are feeling and using your will to change yourself instead of trying to change others. It takes courage to experience your emotions because many of them are painful, and it takes courage to do something you have not tried before or really applied yourself to doing before.

Courage is using your will to face your own fears instead of trying to change everyone else. That is the new courage. It is not the recklessness of a daredevil, or breaking thirty bones in your body while rock climbing (which an acquaintance of ours did), or parachuting at night with combat equipment (which I did). It is the courage to do what you need to do in order to keep your commitment to yourself, especially when your commitment is to experience all of the frightened parts of your personality and challenge and change them instead of indulging them or running from them.

When you are in a power struggle, for example, and you know you are right, you are impatient, judgmental, and angry. Will you continue the struggle until you win or until you and the other are both fatigued and more distant than ever, or will you challenge the part of your personality that does not care about the other and stretch yourself beyond the limited perceptions of the frightened part of your personality that is determined to be victorious? Choosing love at that moment requires more courage than most feats of bravery that you can imagine (such as rock climbing and night parachute jumps).

Multitasking Generation

There he was. Spoon in his left hand, a cup of oatmeal in his lap, and texting on his blackberry with his right hand. Who was driving? His knees. Where was I? I was sitting in the passenger seat, sinking into mother-worry. "At least give me the spoon!" I whined. I knew that if I, as his mother, were to exert control over his behavior that I would not be in his company for some time. So, I did my best to sit in pray and allow wise words to come out of my mouth in a soothing, reasoned manner. "You know if your car were to have a blow out you would most likely lose control, don't you?" "I just got new tires on it, Mom" Oyyyyyy..........!! I will always give him my words of wisdom, but as a young adult he rides under God's protection and will arrive where he is bound to go. Thank you God!!

Opening the Global Heart

10,000 Steps

How many steps do you take in a day? I hiked, then walked, and I still only made it to 5400 steps. What does 10,000 steps look like?

How many steps do you walk each day?

Maybe you have heard the recent guidelines about walking 10,000 steps per day. How far is 10,000 steps anyway? The average person's stride length is approximately 2.5 feet long. That means it takes just over 2,000 steps to walk one mile, and 10,000 steps is close to 5 miles.

A sedentary person may only average 1,000 to 3,000 steps a day. For these people adding steps has many health benefits. I have outlined the basic 10,000 steps program, but also added a commentary below.

A reasonable goal for most people is to increase average daily steps each week by 500 per day until you can easily average 10,000 per day. Example: If you currently average 3000 steps each day, your goal for week one is 3500 each day. Your week 2 goal is 4000 each day. Continue to increase each week and you should be averaging 10,000 steps by the end of 14 weeks.

Time to get it together body!!

The Art of Blessing

The Miracle of Friendship

by Anonymous

There is a Miracle called Friendship
that dwells within the heart
and you don't know how it happens
or when it even starts.


But the happiness it brings you
always gives a special lift
and you realize that
Friendship
is God's most precious gift.