excerpts from the book The Web of Life by Richard Louv

"When I was three or four I was stuck with a thought that stopped me in my tracks.  I was walking
through fallen pears in my grandmother' s half acre.  Their smell was full and tart at the top of my nose.
I stopped and looked at the pear tree and the corpses around it, and suddenly I knew that I had come
into this body, like everyone else into theirs, through the crown of my head, like a stream of
sparkling dust. I still believe it is true, as true as only a dream can be.  What stopped me in my
tracks was not the realization that I had been dropped into my body.  What stopped me was the question why.  Why had I been dropped into this body, instead of that one, or that one or any other  one?  I did not mind being in this body.  But why is body? Why this time?" . . . . .
. . . . . as I grow older the puzzlement is giving way to acceptance or gratitude. This is my body. This is
my time."

I made my fourth trip to Goodwill in two weeks, grateful to be giving stuff a new home. I looked up as I was about to drive away, and saw a large Goodwill truck reading, "75,000 Treasures Arriving Daily".

"A broad margin of leisure is as beautiful in a man's life as in a book. Haste makes waste, no less in life than in housekeeping. Keep the time, observe the hours of the universe, not of the cars"  - Henry David Thoreau

TV Fun

I thought it was just a joke when I heard about this new TV programming, I was wrong:

DOG TV is the first TV channel just for dogs. It is currently available in San Diego on COX (channel 2635) and Time Warner (channel 148) for $4.99 a month. They plan to be available nationwide on cable fairly soon as well. The stated purpose for broadcasting dog content through mass media is to keep dogs calmer or occupy them when their owners leave the home for work or other short trips.

how did they decide dogs wanted to watch this

and if that wasn't exciting enough, we should soon be able to change channels by telling the TV what we want to watch  . . . no more of that arduous button pushing on the remote . . .

"The shortest and surest way to live with honor in the world is to be in reality
what we would appear to be." - Socrates

Someone in our office sent out an email with error which changed it's intended meaning: "I'm going to be a log for awhile."

This led to co-workers who expressed a desire to be: a brick, water, waterfall. . .

Finally, since I hadn't joined in, came the question, "Well, what do you want to be?!!!

Giving it a  brief thought, I replied, "me".

I was perceived to be "uncreative"  . . .

"Who in the world am I? Ah, that's the great puzzle" Lewis Carroll

So the next day, I told them my revised answer, "me, with a trillion tax free dollars"

the reply, "Only a trillion?"

Wolf Trees

I came across a term new to me, Wolf Tree, so I looked for a definition which I found on www.wisegeek.com:

A wolf tree is an unusually large tree which dominates the surrounding environment because of its size. Wolf trees tend to have a very large crown, and to be heavily branched. They are also usually older than the surrounding trees, although this is not always the case. Many natural forests have wolf trees, and these trees can also be spotted in settings where people are taking a relatively hands-off approach to forest management.

Classically, a wolf tree is a tree which managed to survive when an older stand of trees was damaged or significantly depleted, making it at least a generation older than the surrounding trees. For example, a single tree might be left after clearing to create a meadow, a stand of trees might be damaged by fires or storms leaving one or two survivors, or a stand might be heavily logged, leaving only a few trees behind. In these cases, the elimination of other trees allows a wolf tree to grow big and strong, because there is no competition, and younger generations grow up around it.

Pondering

'tis day 36 of the Winter Feast For The Soul

However, I decided to read ahead, and was touched by this quote from their site

Day 38

To insist on a spiritual practice
That has served you in the past
Is to carry a raft on you back
After you have crossed the river.

Buddha

It drew me back to Rilke's reading, from A Year With Rilke, for February 13

                         The Buddha  

As if he were listening; stillness, distance.
We hold our breath and cease to hear it.
He is like a star surrounded
by other stars we cannot see.

He is all things. Do we really expect him
to notice us? What need could he have?
If we prostrated ourselves at his feet,
he would remain deep and calm like a cat.

For what threw us down before him
has circled in him for millions of years.
He, who has gone beyond all we can know
and knows what we never will.

 

As synchronicity would have it, not only was this Rilke quote the reading for February 18, the translation below was, also, at the end of the chapter of one of the books I am reading The Web of Life by Richard
Louv

I tell you I have a long way to go before I am where one begins . . . You are so young, so before all beginnings, and I want to beg you, as much as I can, to be patience toward all that is unresolved in your heart, and try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be live them.  And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now.  Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing, along some distance day into the answer.

Resolve to be always beginning- to be a beginner.

Thanks For Listening

"Listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force. The friends who listen to us are the ones we move toward. When we are listened to, it creates us, makes us unfold and expand." Karl Menninger

Thank you all

on Gratefulness.org

The only way to live is to accept each minute as an unrepeatable miracle.

Margaret Storm Jameson

"Every day we should hear at least one little song, read one good poem, see one exquisite picture, and, if possible, speak a few sensible words."  -Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

a nice find for a Valentine's Day

Random Acts of Kindness Foundation website www.randomactsofkindness.org/

They are celebrating RAK ( Random Acts of Kindness) Week February 13 to Feb 19

“How lovely to think that no one need wait a moment. We can start now, start slowly, changing the world. How lovely that everyone, great and small, can make a contribution toward introducing justice straightaway. And you can always, always give something, even if it is only kindness!” ~Anne Frank

Shopping Fun

seen on the clearance rack at Bed, Bath & Beyond - a do-it yourself breathalizer for $7.99 - since I rarely drink I'll pass on this sale - didn't know ordinary people could buy such a thing

In the dairy case at local health food store, PCC, water buffalo butter. Haven't tired it you, but I probably will. I am ever so curious.

And something I actually bought, Crisproot, cassava chips. I just bit into one, eyes closed with trepidation. My goodness to my undiscerning palate it tastes just like a potato chip. It's good, nice surprise.

And had my first piece of very delicious Tortino al Cioccolato Flourless chocolate cake.

“Nine requisites for contented living:
Health enough to make work a pleasure.
Wealth enough to support your needs.
Strength to battle with difficulties and overcome them.
Grace enough to confess your sins and forsake them.
Patience enough to toil until some good is accomplished.
Charity enough to see some good in your neighbor.
Love enough to move you to be useful and helpful to others.
Faith enough to make real the things of God.
Hope enough to remove all anxious fears concerning the future.”
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

found on www.goodreads.com

"Is not life a hundred times too short for us to bore ourselves?" — Friedrich Nietzsche

from Gratefulness.org

WORD FOR THE DAY Friday, Feb. 10

Compassionate action starts with seeing yourself when you start to make yourself right and when you start to make yourself wrong. At that point you could just contemplate the fact that there is a larger alternative to either of those, a more tender, shaky kind of place where you could live.

Pema Chödrön

Listeners at Last

Oh when, when, when will we ever have enough
of whining and defining? Haven’t champions
in the weaving of words been here already?
Why keep on trying?

Are not people perpetually, over and over and over again,
assaulted by books as by buzzing alarms?
When, between two books, the quieting sky appears,
or merely a patch of earth at evening—
rejoice.

Louder than all the storms, louder than all the oceans,
people have been crying out:
What abundance of quietude
the Universe must yield, if we screaming humans
can hear the crickets, and if the stars
in the screamed-at ether
can appease our hearts!

Let the farthest, oldest, most ancient
ancestors speak to us!
And let us be listeners at last, humans
finally able to hear.

Uncollected Poems

from A Year With Rilke reading February 9, 2011

Threads

threads connect us
circle around and thru
string us together
link us to the past
hold us within the net
inspire us to ease forward
and sometimes allow us
to swing freely

Of Community

Oh how fun to see everyone at Book Club, heartwarming sounds of familiar, friendly voices, beautiful smiles, resounding laughter, curious minds, celebration, affection, getting to share new foods

"Friendship! Mysterious cement of the soul, Sweet'ner of life, and solder of society."
 -Robert Blair

Of Love

What sweet moments when Sandy made her way around the circle to hug everyone before she left; how poignant when Mary arrived after Sandy was gone, and made her way around the circle hugging everyone just as Sandy had done. How amazing these women "separately" made the same physical, loving connection.

“Chains do not hold a marriage together. It is threads, hundreds of tiny threads which sew people together through the years" - Simone Signoret

Of Inspiration

Talking with Mary & Eleanor about music, I learned from them about the internet radio station Pandora. I went home inspired, more than of my CDs and all cassettes are in the car to go to Goodwill.

"No man is wise enough by himself."  - Plautus, Titus Maccius

Of Remembrance

With music comes memories of other times, places. I am remembering the horribly sad way I "lost" most of my favorite record recollection. I lent to my friend Jan Z. Jan went on vacation to Lake Havasu, and didn't make it home alive.

"A spider's web is stronger than it looks. Although it is made of thin, delicate strands, the web is not easily broken. However, a web gets torn every day by the insects that kick around in it, and a spider must rebuild it when it gets full of holes...." E.B. White

Of Old Adventures

I remember how Jan and her sister Barbara invited me to go to San Francisco with their friend Mark. I was still living at home with protective parents. I told my family I was spending the weekend with my friend Jan full well knowing they would think it was another friend they already met.

We arrived in San Francisco in the early am, Mark took us to an all night restaurant. Jan, Barbara and I
noted we were the only women in their. Barbara exclaimed how very strange it was none of the men in
there were looking at her. Mark had taken us to gay male hang out. Jan and I were busting up laughing while Barbara was still trying to fathom not drawing a single male glance.

And because we were young, not rich, the hotel for the night was the back of their van. I was to excited, and restless to sleep, and too dumb to think it unsafe to be out in an unknown city. So I quietly crept out of the van, and I began to walk around the streets of San Francisco in the middle of the night. Hard to see much in the dark, however ever so young and curious I continued walking. At a stop light, I had a fellow pedestrian, we quickly became acquainted. And a beautiful curly haired man name Mario walked around the city together until dawn. I can't remember a word of what we talked about or where in the city we were other than downtown. . . I just remembered how exciting it was, and his beautiful
curly hair and smile . . . and that I wrote a poem about him. . . oh, and that Jan and Barbara were horrified about the fact I went out into the night alone, I was 19.

"Aloneness and connection are like tides in the sea of your heart, separate tides, flowing in and out." - M. C. Richards.

Of Renewal

As I transferred new CDs to my laptop, I decided to release the radio with cassette player I will no longer need,  a few more pieces of clothing, a blanket I never loved, a few more books

Of Beginnings

I now await the bringers of packages. So will be the arrival of a new blanket, a couple of new shirts, new books. The new radio is already here a 5 year anniversary gift from work with an atomic clock, a line in for an MP3 player, and a feature that will play colors with music if I choose.

Of Metaphors

gazing at my old jeans i see a comrade
softened with age, flexible from experience
well woven threads of many different strands & strengths

Attitude

No idea about the quality of the contents, but love this book title by James Moore:

Attitude is Your Paintbrush: It Colors Every Situation

Some Holy Celebrations

reminders on holy celebrations  from Gratefulness.org

Feb 8,  Tu B'Shvat — The holiday of Tu B'Shvat (New Year for trees) is a Jewish arbor day, a time to appreciate our Earth and all her gifts

Navajo Sing
February 7 — February 14

The Navajo Tribe observes a lunisolar calendar in which the months begin with, and celebrations occur, at the Full Moon. All Native American religions are grounded in Nature and its rhythms.

The three-phase series of Navajo Sing Festivals are celebrated with chanting, dancing, and healing. Participants recognize Estsanatlehi (meaning "Changing Woman") as representing fertility and abundance. She manifests in the harvest and wields the power to constantly create and change the world. Changing Woman is believed to have helped twin brothers defeat the powers of evil.

Paleolithic diets

 Excerpts from article in PCC Sound Consumer

Paleolithic diets: Should we eat like our ancestors?

By Stephan Guyenet, Ph.D.
(February 2012) — PCC employee Janice Parker has eaten a whole-foods diet for many years, but 14 months ago she changed it in a way that led her to shed 30 pounds, feel less joint pain, sleep more soundly, have more energy, and, remarkably, control her diabetes without medication.
Her diet, recommended by her physician, now is based on grass-fed meat, fish, leafy greens and other vegetables, fruit, nuts and seeds.

"Sometimes my breakfast is eggs with sliced avocado and tomato, and I may have greens and chicken breast or pork loin for lunch," she says. A handful of almonds makes a satisfying snack. What you rarely find on her plate is bread, rice or other grains, dairy, beans, sugar or other processed foods.
Janice isn't the only person who has benefited from this way of eating. It has been popularized in recent years as the "Paleolithic Diet" and is based on the premise that eating like our distant ancestors can help control weight and reduce the risk of diabetes, coronary heart disease, acne, asthma, irritable bowel syndrome and certain other disorders.
.......

By the time modern humans emerged roughly 50,000 years ago, our ancestors had adopted an omnivorous diet of cooked starches, meats (including organs), nuts, fruit and other plant foods.
.......

As Michael Pollan writes in "Food Rules," "There is no single, ideal human diet." 

Modern hunter-gatherer diets, however, tend to have certain things in common. They don't rely heavily on foods that became dominant after the development of agriculture, including dairy, grains and legumes. Starch comes from root vegetables similar to sweet potatoes, potatoes and taro. But most important, they do not eat industrial, processed foods.
read the rest of the article at www.pccnaturalmarkets.com/sc/1202/paleolithic_diets.html


the amount of grains I eat dropped way off, but I still enjoy delicious goat and sheep cheese . . .
semi-Paleo

Focusing On Food

99% of the time my new diet includes no wheat, no corn, no soy/no legumes, no citrus fruits, no vinegar,  no mushrooms, no cow dairy except butter, no processed sugar

I noticed that even in a local mainstream market today one of main signs for an aisle was Gluten Free.
There is a definite shift in the world

However, after another bout of reading almost all of the gluten  free products had corn, soy, bean/pea proteins as well as sugar

Curious leads to article McDonalds French Fries not gluten free:

And on ingredients, McDonalds French Fries as listed on their website

Potatoes, vegetable oil (canola oil, hydrogenated soybean oil, natural beef flavor [wheat and milk derivatives]*, citric acid [preservative]), dextrose, sodium acid pyrophosphate (maintain color), salt. Prepared in vegetable oil (Canola oil, corn oil, soybean oil, hydrogenated soybean oil with TBHQ and citric acid added to preserve freshness). Dimethylpolysiloxane added as an antifoaming agent.
CONTAINS: WHEAT AND MILK.

*(Natural beef flavor contains hydrolyzed wheat and hydrolyzed milk as starting ingredients).

Reading that list made me so glad I have little interest/taste for their french fries

So curious about  Dimethylpolysiloxane, I found the following on CNN website

U.S. McNuggets not only contain more calories and fat than their British counterparts, but also chemicals not found across the Atlantic.

CNN investigated the differences after receiving a  blog comment asking about them.

American McNuggets (190 calories, 12 grams of fat, 2 grams of saturated fat for 4 pieces) contain the chemical preservative tBHQ, tertiary butylhydroquinone, a petroleum-based product. They also contain dimethylpolysiloxane, “an anti-foaming agent” also used in Silly Putty.

By contrast, British McNuggets (170 calories, 9 grams of fat, 1 gram of saturated fat for 4 pieces) lists neither chemical among its ingredients.

Interesting. . .

"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I . . . I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference."  Robert Frost

Wow, this was a favorite quote when I was in high school, and oh so true has it been for me

News - oldest known living thing

Mediterranean seagrass believed to be world's oldest living organism
London, Tue, 07 Feb 2012 ANI

London, Feb 7 (ANI): Scientists say a swathe of seagrass in the Mediterranean could be the oldest known living thing on Earth.

Carlos Duarte of the University of Western Australia in Perth and his team sequenced the DNA of Posidonia oceanica at 40 sites spanning 3500 kilometres of seafloor, from Spain to Cyprus.

They found that one patch off the island of Formentera was identical over 15 kilometres of coastline.

Like all seagrasses, Posidonia oceanica reproduces by cloning, so meadows spanning many kilometres are genetically identical and considered one organism.

On the basis of the plant's annual growth rate the team calculated that the Formentera meadow must be between 80,000 and 200,000 years old, making it the oldest living organism on Earth.

It beats a Tasmanian seagrass, Lomatia tasmanica, believed to be 43,600 years old

found on http://www.newstrackindia.com/

so compared to seagrass I am really just beginning

"Many a man would rather you heard his story than granted his request." Phillip Stanhope Earl of Chesterfield

found on www.leadershipnow.com

and from Gratefulness.org:

I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.

Thomas Alva Edison

Lucky

Today's Spiritual Practice from www.spiritualityandpractice.com/

Maybe one day we'll grow weary of whining and celebrate the rain, the manna, the half-filled glass of water, the little gifts from heaven that make each day bearable. Instead of cloaking ourselves in the armor of pessimism, maybe we'll concede that we are who we are: capricious, unfortune, wonderful, delicate, alive. Forgiven.
— Mark Collins in On the Road to Emmaus

To Practice This Thought: The next time you start complaining about your lot in life, don't listen.

Last night someone told her she had the worst day of her entire life, she lost her debit card right after she got her pizza, by her tone she was serious and distraught. And, as it was a stranger, I can't dispute her assessment of the situation.

However, not having made it to being non-judgmental, I couldn't help thinking how lucky it was that it was lost after the pizza, that she had money to buy a pizza, a place where people made the food for her, that she was able to go safely to the place. . . 

Nor will it probably stop me how awful that a room is cold when all I have to do is flip a switch or have a sweater I could put on

It did jar by thought track just a little to remember how lucky I am . . .

and from a fitting Rilke reading yesterday:

Unsayable

Things are not nearly so comprehensible and sayable as we are generally made to believe. Most experiences are unsayable; they come to fullness in a realm that words do not inhabit. And most unsayable of all are works of art, which —alongside our transient lives— mysteriously endure.

Paris, February 17, 1903

Letters to a Young Poet

"You don't understand anything unless you understand there are at least 3 ways." - M. Minsky

 

M. A. Rosanoff: "Mr. Edison, please tell me what laboratory rules you want me to observe."
Edison: "There ain't no rules around here. We're trying to accomplish somep'n!" Thomas Edison

Found on http://www.leadershipnow.com

"We are here on the planet once only, and might as well get a feel for the place" ANNIE DILLARD

found on solitary-walker.blogspot.com 

Reading from A Year With Rilke for Feb 4

You, God, who live next door:
If at times, through the long night, I trouble you
with my urgent knocking—
this is why: I hear you breathe so seldom.
I know you're all alone in that room.
If you should be thirsty, there's no one
to get you a glass of water.
I wait listening, always. Just give me a sign!
I'm right here.

As it happens, the wall between us
is very thin. Why couldn't a cry
from one of us
break it down? It would crumble
easily,
it would barely make a sound.

quote from yearwithrilke.blogspot.com:

"Everything is blooming most recklessly; if it were voices instead of colors, there would be an unbelievable shrieking into the heart of the night."

~ Rainer Maria Rilke 

Go ahead, bloom recklessly!

Snippets

And in releasing items no longer needed, I came across a scrap of paper with these phrases I was playing with, I will throw out the paper, but will squirrel away these tidbits here:

sharing down to the bone

circumstances of mercy

likelihood of compassion


sailing thru the space of inner knowing
kerplunk into a wall of self-doubt

snippets of conversations build new stories

a vessel with a vessel
water sits before me
we are waiting to be emptied

Conscious Shopping

I thought I would make more of an effect to buy natural shampoo with ingredients I could recognize on sight, even shopping in a natural food,  after 15 bottles or so on a grew fatigued, still unsuccessful with accomplishing what I set out to do. I did finally end up with a bar of shampoo: Happy Hair Burdock Root Shampoo by Camamu Soap, it had ingredients I didn't need a dictionary to understand, such as olive, coconut, castor, jojoba, shea butter, avocado, sweet almond and apricot kernel oils.

I was in the amazed that something with simple ingredients is so far to find.

I, also, encountered an ingredient that sounded extremely strange to me: Tissue Respiratory Factors. I thought what in the world is that???? So according to a Cosmetic Ingredient Dictionary:

 tissue respiratory factor (TRF)

Categories:

Miscellaneous

Trade name for a form of yeast suspended in alcohol.

Have you read a bottle lately?

I should add my hair and I are indeed happy with my new shampoo.

Common Sense

I am enjoying a chapter in a book entitled, Creating a Charmed Life by Victoria Moran

Chapter 15 is titled Do The Next Indicated Thing

"Doing the next indicated thing makes taking the next action life presents whether you're inspired or not."

Ah, this seems so simple, yet just the prompt I needed.

I quite enjoyed her comment, "Our various responsibilities can seem like a roomful of unruly kindergartners shouting "Pick me,pick me."

It is a fun, inspiring book with some common sense suggestions.

And, I just finished Living Feng Shui Personal Stories by Carole J. Hyder. I enjoyed the stories, but, also, got a practical idea for clearing/organizing an area. She mentions through several stories that clients use a tactic of removing 9 items from area each for 9 days.

I found this to be a good suggestion for me so for 8 days I have moved 9 items from 2 different areas I want to have better organized/less cluttered. So even at 18 items I day, even after multiple trips to Goodwill this past year, I still have a lot of pieces of stuff.

Being involved with my conscious shopping practice, I have been giving more books and clothes to Goodwill than I have purchased. . . got a load in the car now to take. . . I am glad the things may go where they will be read, worn, used rather than just sitting unappreciated.

"The most powerful weapon on earth is the human soul on fire." - Field Marshal Ferdinand Foch

A Teaching Story from Altars in the Street: A Neighborhood Fights to Survive by Melody Ermachild Chavis
Melody Ermachild Chavis recounts her efforts to take back her Berkeley, California, neighborhood from violent drug dealers. Her strategy involved Buddhist spiritual practices.
"I'd heard of monasteries where an important part of the monks' daily practice was sweeping the temple grounds. Ti had often swept the sidewalk, and I decided to take up the task. The purpose of my sweeping would not be just to clean up, but to try to walk out my gate and meet Alma Street with a fresh outlook each morning, as if for the first time. No need to visit a monastery in Tibet or Japan.
"I came to be known in the neighborhood, I think, as the lady who sweeps. Sometimes I felt angry, inwardly scolding the kids who threw down candy wrappers from the corner store, the drinkers who'd left malt-liquor cans and fortified-wine bottles inside brown bags. But usually, the sweeping itself calmed me. I tackled it all in thick orange rubber gloves, wielding my broom and dustpan, dragging my garbage can along with me. I recycled what I could. There were clothes, or shoes, or car parts. Occasionally, I fished a used syringe out of the hedge. A quote from Martin Luther King, Jr., on my refrigerator reminded me of 'the inescapable network of mutuality.'
" 'This is all sacred,' I told myself. 'All of it.' "

found on www.spiritualityandpractice.com

Restaurants Faux Pas Plus My Mostly Gluten Free Diet

So I am wondering why when I eat out the host/hostesses think it is appropriate to have someone with a cane be seated in a location far, far, far away from the door when seating is plentiful. Tonight I was seated in the booth the absolute furthest from the door when the place had 90% open seating. I would have stopped her except her pace was so fast I would have had to yell to get her attention.

It didn't occur to me til now, I should have just stopped, sat down in a closer booth. Guess I have a plan for next time.

Ah, yes I did enjoy tender, flavorful Cider Brined Pork Chops at the new Indigo Kitchen & Alehouse in Lynnwood, WA.

This was right after I had the pleasure of a new smaller size pair of jeans. 

I had a change of diet around last July. The pair of jeans I purchased today is the 6th size smaller jean since this dietary change. Don't really perceive the weight loss so much - it's about 35-40 lbs. I follow my new plan about 99% of the time. After reading so Cider Brined Pork Chops recipes online I probably had too much sugar . . . 

The change I made includes the following:

no cow dairy
no wheat
no corn
no alcohol
no legumes
no vinegar
minimal fruit

pretty much 99% gluten free
the part that didn't stick is no caffeine

the part that fluctuates is no sugar - I rarely have anything with processed sugar, I  do not have items with agave nectar, honey, organic cane sugar or brown syrup everyday, more like a health food treat once or twice a week.

I have eaten one of the best tasting vanilla ice cream I have ever had - LaLoo's Vanilla Snowflake Goat Milk Ice Cream - however it does have sugar, oh well.

Even Trader Joe's is carrying a sheep milks Bleu Cheese, grated Peccorino Romano, Brie. 

I believe the most beneficial, and significant change was cutting out wheat. I still eat well, pretty much all I want, and it is not a struggle. The amazing part is the virtual lack of food cravings. My desire for a food treat once in a while leads to sweetened items more because I tire of reading labels, still I often decide not to have anything at all.

Well, new jeans exciting, different than previous baggy pairs, just challenging enough - they will just a bit more comfortable with just a touch more weight lost. 

Rilke, Life, Synchroncity

Perhaps synchronicity is really end the unseen threads of the divine, mysterious web of existence

Anticipating the arrival on a package today, I heard an interesting knock at the door. Voila, indeed my new book is here:

A Year with Rilke
Daily Readings from the Best of Rainer Maria Rilke
By Anita Barrows, Joanna Macy

Without much thought, I tossed out, "GOOD KNOCK" Then I saw this amazing smile, and twinkling eyes return my sincere, spontaneous comment. It was one of those times I love, something so obvious, yet new to me. Knocking is so much a part of his job. I have viewed knocks as inconvenient, disconcerting, rude, with gratitude, with neutrality, with little thought, but I had never considered as a job skill. . . he is good at his job . . . it was a deep moment I still hold. . .

Before I start my year with Rilke, I must find out what piece of this work was chosen for my birthday. . .  I am beyond delighted, the piece chosen for my day is the one I keep in view at work, one of my favorites :

I want to ask you, as clearly as I can, to bear with patience all that is unresolved in your heart, and try to love the questions themselves, as if they were rooms yet to enter or books written in a foreign language. Don't dig for answers that can't be given you yet: you live them now. For everything must be lived. Live the questions now, perhaps then, someday, you will gradually, without noticing, live into the answer.

Worpswede, July 16, 1903

Letters to a Young Poet

 

 

And in looking for an easy copy and paste of the above quote I found it on this blog - yearwithrilke.blogspot.com  which I will return to and enjoy as well.

So the daily reading for my beginning day, February 2:

In the last analysis, I have a completely indescribable passion for experiencing God, and this God is unquestionably closer to that of the Old Testament than He is to the Messiah's Gospels. I must admit that what I have most wanted in this life has been to discover within myself a temple to earth, and to dwell therein.

Letter to Rudolph Zimmerman

March 10, 1922

 

                                                                  
I read through the introduction and was equally amazed with eloquence, insight, writing, observational skills of those who undertook the creation of this work, Ms. Barrows and Ms. Macy. It mentioned they started their translations in 1993, I see the date the book was published was 2009. What a commitment.

I am feeling a little smug, I might know what I am reading for a year; it's my day off, haven't even left the house, had a satisfying, uplifting interaction with a stranger; finished day 6 of my Jorge Cruise 8 Minutes in the Morning exercise program, loving that I didn't do it in the morning, and probably took 15 minutes; it looks like a get to go buy a smaller size of jeans. . .

"One person with passion is better than forty people merely interested." — E. M. Forster

Breakaway - Inspirational Commercial

I just love this commercial every time I see it, what does it say about me that I have probably watched it half a dozen in this posting process, and I am going to watch it again. I love all the commercials this group has done, this is my favorite.

"A great king summoned his wise men. He ordered them, 'Create for me a saying that will stabilize my inner state. When I am unhappy it will bring me joy, and when I am happy it will remind me of sadness. It cannot be too long, as I want to keep it with me always.'
"The wise men consulted and contemplated deeply the king's command. Finally, they returned to the king bearing a small box. In it there was a ring, and inside the ring was inscribed the following words: 'This too shall pass'.

Teaching Stories from Essential Sufism edited by James Fadiman and Robert Frager
found on  www.spiritualityandpractice.com

A book I will probably buy because I like the title:

Yearnings: Embracing the Sacred Messiness of Life

In keeping with shopping for enlightenment practice I have decided to cultivate, I did see that it won an award: Winner of the Books for a Better Life Award
Chosen as one of "The 10 Best Spiritual Books of 2006" by Spirituality and Health magazine

i will likely buy it used from Goodwill. 

This year I have so enjoyed buying used books through Amazon (I still frequent local and independent bookstore stores in person as well). It has been fun waiting for the used books to pop up offered by a local goodwill. Choosing the closest seller. Like picking Seattle Goodwill when it showed a book I have wanted for a couple months. And, well, I luck out with mega Amazon being a locally based business.

Though I have downloaded the Kindle app to my netbook, I have yet to purchase a Kindle version of a book - probably the ecological thing to do with books, well maybe new books. I still like to hold the book, will probably get a Kindle maybe this year maybe next... or maybe not. . . I have only begun the spiritual part of shopping for enlightenment so I probably have a lot more to learn about divine purchasing - 

So I stopped to add

Attention Shoppers!: The Woman's Guide to Enlightenment Through Shopping

by Eve Eliot 

to my Amazon wishlist, there is a used one available from a local bookstore now, but not Goodwill. So guess I will have to wait til some clears their shelves and making their donations. I am, also, wondering if my wishlist and intention is liked placing an order with the universe,

and this reminds me I actually have a bag of books by the door to drop off a Goodwill

It is a good spiritual practice, it's working, I am part of circle of life, recycling, and getting my chores done. . .

 

 

 

Before I was twenty I never worried about what other people thought of me. But after I was twenty I worried endlessly — about all the impressions I made and how people were evaluating me. Only sometime after turning fifty did I realize that they hardly ever thought about me at all. — Anthony de Mello in One Minute Wisdom

found on www.spiritualityandpractice.com/

A Teaching Story from Who Cares? Simple Ways You Can Reach Out by Marcy Heidish
Marcy Heidish has some very savvy insights into service. Here's a story about receiving kindness.
"She stood in a dingy hallway of a shelter and pointed to the water-stained wall. The light came in thin and gray, slanting across her cracked glasses. She pushed her dust-colored hair away from her face; a face curiously childlike for a sixty-year-old woman. On the wall was a drawing she had done of a clock. The time read 5:07. The drawing was a good one, and I told her so; she had dated it months before and, oddly enough, the date happened to be my birthday. As I told her this, her face seemed illuminated from within. Lifting her chin, she began to sing in a slow, stately, sacred way — the way a soprano sings the national anthem, perhaps.
"The song she sang was 'Happy Birthday.' It did not matter that this was not my birthday. In many ways, it was hers; it was ours. Later, when I reported this seemingly 'small' event to the nun who ran the shelter, she nodded, at first as if to herself. 'That's the best reward you could get,' my wise mentor said. 'She got to give you something. Mostly the women here, they don't get that chance — the chance to give anything to anyone. To give someone the chance to give is a gift in itself. Best kind.' "
To Practice: Rejoice in those times when you have a chance to be a graceful receiver of a gift.

found on www.spiritualityandpractice.com