Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

When I hear of the suffering in Haiti, in Iraq, in Chile, in Poland… I feel a desperate desire, I mother’s desire to make it all well, to make it better. I physically crave to touch those in pain, to sooth the soul, to hold and hum away the hurt. I think I could leave… I could just get on a plane and go there… I could serve those in such great need, recovering from such destruction, devastation, loss… I think of the connections and commitments I have here. What trail of destruction would I leave behind by walking out the door, going to the airport, getting on a plane and being gone for months, years… I can go and sooth the child who has lost a mom by orphaning my own children, support a parent who has lost a spouse by denying my husband his own partner, I could work to rebuild by leaving a hole in my own company. Yes, there are ways and those who co go, who do balance, who do give so much to put the world back in the place for those who have been rocked to their very core. And it is a choice… I could go. I choose today to stay… and still I am left with the physical longing to do… something.

I sit in the silence of Quaker meeting and wander through my choices. I could and do send money… the great American way of doing… feels like handing a Scooby-Doo band-aid to a Haitian who has just lost everything… everything, every person, every item, everything.

I could simply pray.

The simplicity of it at first makes my scoff. Prayer… I could just sit here on this bench, not move, not give, not anything… and pray. That’s not doing anything my mind battles with itself.

Love. Send love. Love is always the answer, not matter the question. Find it inside, connect to it and send it out on a prayer.

I connect to the Great Connection. The force of Love that connects us all and I know, know in every cell of my being that a prayer is the most powerful thing I could do. I pray for those in suffering and in sorrow. I pray for those who are leaving home and country and loved ones to go and render aid. I pray that they will all find the strength they need to keep moving forward. I pray that they will all feel some sense of peace, if only for a moment. I pray they will feel a mother’s love, the touch of the Great Mother Spirit, watching over them. I send love out on the wire… and I know it will make a difference. It will help to make it all better.

(Thanx! for the pic: http://www.flickr.com/photos/revdave/459210631/)

I have a degree in Chemistry, very close to a minor in Physics, and in those heady days of studying the infinitely small ways the world works it would have been easy with all the formulas, rules, and equations to write God out of existence.

I did have a friend ask me well then, why did I still believe in God?

I choose to believe in God because it makes my life better.

I choose to believe in God because it makes my life sweeter.

I choose to believe in God because it make my life richer, deeper, fuller…

At the end of the day believing in God brings me peace.

There are pieces of the bible I hold very dear. Scriptures that support me, guide me, comfort me.

There are hymns from my childhood I still hum when I clean or cook, sing to my children when they are sick.

And there are pieces of the bible that don’t really resonate with me… pieces I hold a little looser.

I am choosing today as an opportunity to look within and find what Light have I stuffed away in a dark place. What gift have I covered up.

I am choosing today as an opportunity to resurrect that gift that God would ask me to bring forth into the world.

What gift have you hidden away? What gift is hidden in the dark? What gift have you been called to resurrect?

(Thanx for the pic! http://www.flickr.com/photos/fmc550uz/3056713650/sizes/m/)

Whittier: First-Day Thoughts

This is where I will be spending Easter Morning

FIRST-DAY THOUGHTS

In calm and cool and silence, once again
I find my old accustomed place among
My brethren, here, perchance, no human tongue
Shall utter words; where never hymn is sung,
Nor deep-toned organ blown, nor censer swung

Nor dim light falling through the pictured pane!
There, syllabled by silence, let me hear
The still small voice which reached the prophets ear;
Read in my heart a still diviner law
Than Israel’s leader on his tables saw!
here let me strive with each besetting sin,
Recall my wandering fancies, and restrain
the sore disquiet of a restless brain;
And, as the path of duty is made plain,
May grace be given that I may walk therein,
Not like the hireling, for his selfish gain,
With backward glanced and reluctant tread,
Making a merit of his coward dread,
But, Cheerful, in the light around me thrown,
Walking as one to pleasant service led;
Doing God’s will as if it were my own,
Yet trusting not in mine, but in His strength alone!

tags: poetry, inspiration, Quaker, First, Day, silent, meeting, whittier

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

by John Donne

AS virtuous men pass mildly away,
And whisper to their souls to go,
Whilst some of their sad friends do say,
“Now his breath goes,” and some say, “No.”

So let us melt, and make no noise,                                       5
No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move ;
‘Twere profanation of our joys
To tell the laity our love.

Moving of th’ earth brings harms and fears ;
Men reckon what it did, and meant ;                              10
But trepidation of the spheres,
Though greater far, is innocent.

Dull sublunary lovers’ love
—Whose soul is sense—cannot admit
Of absence, ’cause it doth remove                                     15
The thing which elemented it.

But we by a love so much refined,
That ourselves know not what it is,
Inter-assurèd of the mind,
Care less, eyes, lips and hands to miss.                           20

Our two souls therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
Like gold to aery thinness beat.

If they be two, they are two so                                          25
As stiff twin compasses are two ;
Thy soul, the fix’d foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if th’ other do.

And though it in the centre sit,
Yet, when the other far doth roam,                                30
It leans, and hearkens after it,
And grows erect, as that comes home.

Such wilt thou be to me, who must,
Like th’ other foot, obliquely run ;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,                                    35
And makes me end where I begun.

• John Donne: A Valediction Forbidding Mourning.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Inspiration Surrounds Us

Anything – Big or Small – Can be used to make something beautiful…

Quaker has created an application that allows you to Create Your Day.   Go to their website and create the perfect breakfast for you, for a friend, your child’s teacher, your husband.. whomever you’d like.   Using their application, answer a few questions and it creates a fun card with the ideal oatmeal to get them revved and ready for whatever lies ahead of them that day.  It then allows you to share it via email or facebook.  For every dish that you create (4 per day) through March 31, 2010… they will donate $1 up to $25,000 whoops… $25,o0o has already been donated!!! So they’ve upped the ante to $50,000.

Let’s make Quaker eat that $50,000 and up it to $75,000.

Please help me in this.  No child, no family, no person in this country should go hungry.

The App is super cute and fun… I could play around with it all day… @thisisnotapril says I am like a cat… which is so totally a compliment in our neck of the woods.

So here is my super cute Create Your Day story…

(How did they know peaches and cream is my favorite oatmeal? It’s like oatmeal magic!)

Anyway… whether you are as entertained by this as I am or not… go check out the oatmeal magic… create your day… and help Quaker Oats do a little towards ending hunger.

Go on now… go… now>>> oooo… and then tell me what kind of oatmeal did you get… I wanna know – and then go tell Rachel cause she’s got some cool stuff to give away!

Gretchen shared that 2 very important contributors to happiness is getting enough sleep and getting rid of clutter. Heloise added to choose the top 3 most important parts of our home to keep clutter free and focus on those.

I am no stranger to top 3 rule. A very wise friend of mine talked down from the ledge in one my early mommy on the verge moments with the top 3 rule. I had taken my spiritual serenity and my emotional well being and tossed them out the window over what my child care was feeding my first born. I had this very rigid idea and a long list of do’s and don’t's when it came to what my kiddos were going to put in their bodies… let me tell ya… fruit loops and white bread where on the serious don’t list. My girlfriend (who had raised 4 boys mostly on her own) suggested I make a list of the top 10 most important things. Prioritize them… demand the first… ask for number 2 & 3… then let everything else go. My sanity and the peace of my soul were worth more than anguishing over what my kids eat.

So I liked Heloise’s hints for picking 3… as I made my bed this morning I took it to a deeper level. Yes, in the beginning simply going through the motions is the beginning to shifting the way we do things. However, I believe at certain point intention needs to factor in. I may make the bed… but what is it I intend to get out of making the bed. I choose to be present and in the moment… actually using all of my senses to be in the moment making the bed. What I want to get out of making the bed is a feeling of peace and sanctuary  when I come into my room. I ask The Universe to bring this into my life as I make the bed. Simple Abundance introduced me to the idea that any action in my life can be a prayer if I do in connection to Spirit.

I intentionally leave my closet messy sometimes… it’s a conscious choice – to allow my inner rebel something to say “NO! I won’t do it” about. I like the living room to be tidy, so when I walk in from work and the day… it says out there is chaos and whirling energy – in here is a space of calm. My cook books in the corner of my kitchen however are stacked, dog-eared, open, etc… seeing them in use  – inspires me to use them. But the mail always gets opened, sorted, and filed the moment it comes into the house. In this way I say to The Universe I am responsible and accountable around the money commitments I have made… when you give me more money I will treat it with the same honor and love. Call me nutty – but this has made a huge shift in the energy I have around money and money maintenance.

These are just a few of the areas in my life where I act to “de-clutter” or stay tidy… or not… depending on what it is. The biggest thing I would invite you to think about is if you are taking on the act of de-cluttering… think about what it is you want to get out of the act… rather than just completing the act alone.