can you blog away the blues?

sometimes!

Wise Advice from Mother Teresa
( because it was never between you and them )

People are often unreasonable, illogical, and self-centered;
Forgive them anyway.

If you are kind,
people may accuse you of selfish ulterior motives;
Be kind anyway.

If you are successful,
you will win some false friends and some true enemies;
Succeed anyway.

If you are honest and frank,
people may cheat you;
Be honest and frank anyway.

What you spend years building,
someone could destroy overnight.
Build anyway.

If you find serenity and happiness,
they may be jealous;
Be happy anyway.

The good you do today,
people will often forget tomorrow;
Do good anyway.

Give the world the best you have,
and it may never be enough;
Give the best you've got anyway.

You see, in the final analysis
it is between you and God;
it was never between you and them anyway.

This poem is engraved on the wall of Mother Teresa's home for children in Calcutta.

===================++++++======================

LIFE IS******
Life is an opportunity—benefit from it.

Life is beauty—admire.

Life is bliss—taste it.

Life is a dream—realise it.

Life is a challenge—meet it.

Life is a duty—complete it.

Life is a game—play it.

Life is costly—care for it.

Life is wealth—keep it.

Life is love—enjoy it.

Life is a mystery—know it.

Life is a promise—fulfil it.

Life is sorrow—overcome it.

Life is a song—sing it.

Life is a struggle—accept it.

Life is a tragedy—confront it.

Life is an adventure—dare it.

Life is luck—make it.

Life is too precious—do not destroy it.

Life is life—fight for it!Mother Teresa

==+==

Time and time again I think of you . . . and smile

Jamie Delere

----+----

Its easy to look on the bright side of things, when all is going well...

when the smiles outweigh the frowns and the sunshine is streaming in the window

- But the happiest people are the ones who can say

- when all is going wrong, when the clouds get in the way,

that a little unhappiness must balance the joys,

and that a bit of sadness has its place in the world, too.

For they know, these special people, of the balace of natures ways.

They know that nothing grows where the sun always shines,

and that gray skies and rain can be an unregrettable sign of the day...

For these fortunate people, their favorite season is always the one they are in,

and they continue to look on the bright side,

knowing that the sunshine might leave for awhile,

but that it will never be gone for long!!! Jamie Delere

Helen Razer writes in response to Rudds excision of carers payments

This strange vinyl seat is neither pretty nor particularly comfortable. Nonetheless, it offers a sort of nervous intimacy. As I sit in the chair, holding a blended spoonful of something between puree and broth, I ease into its familiar slouch.

Thousands of people were sat in this chair before me in, what I imagine to be, an almost identical humour. We offer food. We cajole, "Go on. Eat something. Keep your strength up!" And we hope that the patient will just eat a little. And we hope (although we wouldn't tell you) that the patient will eat nothing at all.


It is clear that my grandmother is dying. She's just doing it very slowly.


I'm sitting on a sofa in a room that will shortly be described by real estate copy writers as a "family" area. It's far too big for my parents who are on their own for as long as the respite centre will care for my grandmother. My mother, who looks at least ten years older than her physical age, has been crying and asking the same question for an hour or two.


It is clear that my mother is dying. She's just doing it very slowly

Unleashed: Crying for carers

danke :)

hattip mothy
"The Pieces Don't Fit Anymore"

I've been twisting and turning in a space that's too small
I've been drawing the line and watching it fall
You've been closing me in , closing the space in my heart
Watching us fading and watching us fall apart

Well I can't explain why it's not enough
Coz I gave it all to you
And if you leave me now
Oh just leave me now
It's the better thing to do

It's time to surrender
It's been too long pretending
There's no use in trying
When the pieces don't fit anymore

Oh, don't misunderstand how I feel
Coz I've tried, yes I've tried
Still I don't know why
No I don't know why

Why I can't explain why it's not enough
Coz I gave it all to you
And if you leave me now
Oh just leave me now
It's the better thing to do

It's time to surrender
It's been too long pretending
There's no use in trying
When the pieces don't fit anymore
The pieces don't fit anymore

You pulled me under so I had to give in
Such a beautiful mess that's breaking my skin
Well I'll hide all the bruises; I'll hide all the damage that's done
But I show how I'm feeling until all the feeling has gone

Well I can't explain why it's not enough
Coz I gave it all to you
And if you leave me now
Oh just leave me now
It's the better thing to do

It's time to surrender
It's been too long pretending
There's no use in trying
When the pieces don't fit anymore
The pieces don't fit anymore

For many years now I have been a follower/supporter/promoter of Catherine Hamlins' work in Ethiopia. Her book The Hospital by the River has been a constant seller over many years. Late last year Catherine was airlifted out of Ethiopia with an acute illness, but is recovering.

She is coming to Canberra this month and speaking at Canberra Girls Grammar..

The ABC promoted her work in late 2007, and a movie has recently been released, WALK TO BEAUTIFUL.


Wiki biography.

USA readers of my blog can contribute to her work here. Thank You.

Heroes are important, Catherine is one of mine.

many chain emails come through to me from friends around the world.

This one gives me pause as it reflects sentiments that have echoed on down the ages:

Rick Warren (REMEMBER HE WROTE "PURPOSE DRIVEN LIFE")
You will enjoy the new insights that Rick Warren has, with his wife now having cancer and him having "wealth" from the book sales. This is an absolutely incredible short interview with Rick Warren,

"Purpose Driven Life " author and pastor of Saddleback Church in California

In the interview by Paul Bradshaw with Rick Warren, Rick said:

People ask me, What is the purpose of life? And I respond: In a nutshell, life is preparation for eternity. We were made to last forever, and God wants us to be with Him in Heaven.

One day my heart is going to stop, and that will be the end of my body-- but not the end of me.

I may live 60 to 100 years on earth, but I am going to spend trillions of years in eternity. This is the warm-up act - the dress rehearsal. God wants us to practice on earth what we will do forever in eternity.

We were made by God and for God, and until you figure that out, life isn't going to make sense.

Life is a series of problems: Either you are in one now, you're just coming out of one, or you're getting ready to go into another one.

The reason for this is that God is more interested in your character than your comfort.

God is more interested in making your life holy than He is in making your life happy.

We can be reasonably happy here on earth, but that's not the goal of life. The goal is to grow in character, in Christ likeness.

This past year has been the greatest year of my life but also the toughest, with my wife, Kay, getting cancer.

I used to think that life was hills and valleys - you go through a dark time, then you go to the mountaintop, back and forth. I don't believe that anymore.

Rather than life being hills and valleys, I believe that it's kind of like two rails on a railroad track, and at all times you have something good and something bad in your life.

No matter how good things are in your life, there is always something bad that needs to be worked on.

And no matter how bad things are in your life, there is always something good you can thank God for.

You can focus on your purposes, or you can focus on your problems.

If you focus on your problems, you're going into self-centeredness,"which is my problem, my issues, my pain." But one of the easiest ways to get rid of pain is to get your focus off yourself and onto God and others.

We discovered quickly that in spite of the prayers of hundreds of thousands of people, God was not going to heal Kay or make it easy for her.

It has been very difficult for her, and yet God has strengthened her character, given her a ministry of helping other people, given her a testimony, drawn her closer to Him and to people.

You have to learn to deal with both the good and the bad of life.

Actually, sometimes learning to deal with the good is harder. For instance, this past year, all of a sudden, when the book sold 15 million copies, it made me instantly very wealthy.

It also brought a lot of notoriety that I had never had to deal with before. I don't think God gives you money or notoriety for your own ego or for you to live a life of ease.

So I began to ask God what He wanted me to do with this money, notoriety and influence. He gave me two different passages that helped me decide what to do, II Corinthians 9 and Psalm 72

First, in spite of all the money coming in, we would not change our lifestyle one bit. We made no major purchases.

Second, about midway through last year, I stopped taking a salary from the church.

Third, we set up foundations to fund an initiative we call The Peace Plan to plant churches, equip leaders, assist the poor , care for the sick, and educate the next generation.

Fourth, I added up all that the church had paid me in the 24 years since I started the church, and I gave it all back. It was liberating to be able to serve God for free.

We need to ask ourselves: Am I going to live for possessions? Popularity?

Am I going to be driven by pressures? Guilt? Bitterness? Materialism? Or am I going to be driven by God's purposes (for my life)?

When I get up in the morning, I sit on the side of my bed and say, God, if I don't get anything else done today, I want to know You more and love You better. God didn't put me on earth just to fulfill a to-do list. He's more interested in what I am than what I do.
That's why we're called human beings, not human doings.

Happy moments, PRAISE GOD.
Difficult moments, SEEK GOD.
Quiet moments, WORSHIP GOD.
Painful moments, TRUST GOD.
Every moment, THANK GOD.

NOW . PLEASE SHARE THIS WITH YOUR FRIENDS

Another day, another song. Apparently it won some award at the Oscars? But I don't watch them, so have no idea. Great lyrics. Enjoy:

ONCE: Fallling Slowly

I don't know you
But I want you
All the more for that
Words fall through me
And always fool me
And I can't react
And games that never amount
To more than they're meant
Will play themselves out

Take this sinking boat and point it home
We've still got time
Raise your hopeful voice you have a choice
You've made it now

Falling slowly, eyes that know me
And I can't go back
Moods that take me and erase me
And I'm painted black
You have suffered enough
And warred with yourself
It's time that you won

Take this sinking boat and point it home
We've still got time
Raise your hopeful voice you had a choice
You've made it now

Take this sinking boat and point it home
We've still got time
Raise your hopeful voice you had a choice
You've made it now
Falling slowly sing your melody
I'll sing along

hattip Mothy! :)


Jess @ thecornellian writes

There are few things better in life than discovering new music that moves your soul, and when it happens, there’s cause for applause. Irish born Indie band The Swell Season, now on tour with fellow paddy Damien Rice, have recently released their self-titled debut album and are now garnering praise for the sullen and simplistic work of art. Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova make up the band, switching between main vocals, guitar and piano with each track. The Swell Season is a new project (and once hobby) for Hansard, who fronts the vocals for Irish rock band “The Frames,” who have been together since 1991 and which he took time off from to explore new projects. He found one such project in The Swell Season’s much more laid-back and low key vocals and composition.

The Swell Season happened by accident for the pair of singers as they were asked by a mutual friend to record a few tracks for his Irish independent film “Once” (premiering this month at the Sundance Film Festival) and ended up recording ten songs with Irglova which moved the director so much, he insisted they release them outside of having them be the soundtrack to the film.

The songs themselves are written based on extremely personal and sometimes disturbing material taken from the performers’ own lives and people they know. One of the most powerful tracks on the album is undoubtedly “Drown Out,” a choppy and almost haunting song based on the story of someone Hansard knew who hunted ghosts in Ireland. A pair of boys, who were burned at the stake for witchcraft, somehow found the ghost hunter and, following two lights in the distance, realized they were the ghost hunter’s eyes and they could see out from the darkness and through them. The band’s web site reveals few of these details, but Hansard is quite chatty at concerts and loves to explain the relevance and story behind the songs, something fans adore about the frontman.

The most moving (and perhaps single-friendly track) on the album is the pleading and heartbroken ballad “Falling Slowly.” In the time right now when The Fray’s song “How to Save a Life” is topping the charts, “Falling Slowly” would blow it away if people would give it a listen. You can’t help but be moved as Hansard begs “Take this sinking boat / and point it home.” It’s quite a bit more moving than a song made famous for being featured in “Grey’s Anatomy.”

So with a new year, why not try some new music? Explore bands and sounds you’re not accustomed to listening to, and give change a chance. Perhaps The Swell Season is your ticket to exploring new musical landscapes. Punch it and get on board.



another version with introductory comments:

Quotes, again!

"My friend, let's not think of tomorrow, but let's enjoy this fleeting moment of life”

“Be happy for this moment. This moment is your life.”

Omar Khayyam.

Enjoy this picture!

In the midst of my shock and turmoil two years ago I read Riding the Dragon, and then I was able to listen to it on audio book driving around...
My trip to Tintagel back in the day, and more recently to the Bay of Islands in NZ re-inforced the dragon motif for me, and whilst in NZ I came across a neat ring with dragons on it.

Whilst suffering the consequences of the great meltdown by some posters at UB's I decided to re-register as dragon_rider, and hold my head up. I googled frenetically to find an image to use as an avatar which reflected my sense of strength, oneness with the earth, the circular nature of life, and the facts that we really never know another. I came across this brilliant paintingicture.
Enjoy Chris Mathies' other works including pottery.

Excerpt: "The Third Jesus"
Redeeming the Redeemer
Jesus is in trouble. When people worship him today--or even speak his name--the object of their devotion is unlikely to be who they think he is. A mythical Jesus has grown up over time. He has served to divide peoples and nations. He has led to destructive wars in the name of religious fantasies. The legacy of love found in the New Testament has been tainted with the worst sort of intolerance and prejudice that would have appalled Jesus in life. Most troubling of all, his teachings have been hijacked by people who hate in the name of love.
"Sometimes I feel this social pressure to return to my faith," a lapsed Catholic told me recently, "but I'm too bitter. Can I love a religion that calls gays sinners but hides pedophiles in its clergy? Yesterday while I was driving to work, I heard a rock song that went, 'Jesus walked on water when he should have surfed,' and you know what? I burst out laughing. I would never have done that when I was younger. Now I feel only the smallest twinge of guilt."
No matter where you look, a cloud of confusion hangs over the message of Jesus. To cut through it we have to be specific about who we mean when we refer to Jesus. One Jesus is historical, and we know next to nothing about him. Another Jesus is the one appropriated by Christianity. He was created by the Church to fulfill its agenda. The third Jesus, the one this book is about, is as yet so unknown that even the most devout Christians don't suspect that he exists. Yet he is the Christ we cannot--and must not--ignore.
The first Jesus was a rabbi who wandered the shores of northern Galilee many centuries ago. This Jesus still feels close enough to touch. He appears in our mind's eye dressed in homespun but haloed in glory. He was kind, serene, peaceful, loving, and yet he was the keeper of deep mysteries.
This historical Jesus has been lost, however, swept away by history. He still lingers like a ghost, a projection of all the ideal qualities we wish for in ourselves but so painfully lack. Why couldn't there be one person who was perfectly loving, perfectly compassionate, and perfectly humble? There can be if we call him Jesus and remove him to a time thousands of years in the past. (If you live in the East, his name might be Buddha, but the man is equally mythical and equally a projection of our own lack.)
The first Jesus is less than consistent, as a closer reading of the gospels will show. If Jesus was perfectly peaceful, why did he declare, "Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword"? (Matthew 10:34) If he was perfectly loving, why did he say, "Throw out the unprofitable servant into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth"? (Matthew 25:30) (Sometimes the translation is even harsher, and Jesus commands "the worthless slave" to be consigned to hell.) If Jesus was humble, why did he claim to rule the earth beyond the power of any king? At the very least, the living Jesus was a man of baffling contradictions.
And yet the more contradictions we unearth, the less mythical this Jesus becomes. The flesh-and-blood man who is lost to history must have been extraordinarily human. To be divine, one must be rich in every human quality first. As one famous Indian spiritual teacher once said, "The measure of enlightenment is how comfortable you feel with your own contradictions."
Millions of people worship another Jesus, however, who never existed, who doesn't even lay claim to the fleeting substance of the first Jesus. This is the Jesus built up over thousands of years by theologians and other scholars. He is the Holy Ghost, the Three-in-One Christ, the source of sacraments and prayers that were unknown to the rabbi Jesus when he walked the earth. He is also the Prince of Peace over whom bloody wars have been fought. This second Jesus cannot be embraced without embracing theology first. Theology shifts with the tide of human affairs. Metaphysics itself is so complex that it contradicts the simplicity of Jesus's words. Would he have argued with learned divines over the meaning of the Eucharist? Would he have espoused a doctrine declaring that babies are damned until they are baptized?
The second Jesus leads us into the wilderness without a clear path out. He became the foundation of a religion that has proliferated into some twenty thousand sects. They argue endlessly over every thread in the garments of a ghost. But can any authority, however exalted, really inform us about what Jesus would have thought? Isn't it a direct contradiction to hold that Jesus was a unique creation--the one and only incarnation of God--while at the same time claiming to be able to read his mind on current events? Yet in his name Christianity pronounces on homosexuality, birth control, and abortion.
These two versions of Jesus--the sketchy historical figure and the abstract theological creation--hold a tragic aspect for me, because I blame them for stealing something precious: the Jesus who taught his followers how to reach God-consciousness. I want to offer the possibility that Jesus was truly, as he proclaimed, a savior. Not the savior, not the one and only Son of God. Rather, Jesus embodied the highest level of enlightenment. He spent his brief adult life describing it, teaching it, and passing it on to future generations.
Jesus intended to save the world by showing others the path to God-consciousness.
Such a reading of the New Testament doesn't diminish the first two Jesuses. Rather, they are brought into sharper focus. In place of lost history and complex theology, the third Jesus offers a direct relationship that is personal and present. Our task is to delve into scripture and prove that a map to enlightenment exists there. I think it does, undeniably; indeed, it's the living aspect of the gospels. We aren't talking about faith. Conventional faith is the same as belief in the impossible (such as Jesus walking on water), but there is another faith that gives us the ability to reach into the unknown and achieve transformation.
Jesus spoke of the necessity to believe in him as the road to salvation, but those words were put into his mouth by followers writing decades later. The New Testament is an interpretation of Jesus by people who felt reborn but also left behind. In orthodox Christianity they won't be left behind forever; at the Second Coming Jesus will return to reclaim the faithful. But the Second Coming has had twenty centuries to unfold, with the devout expecting it any day, and still it lies ahead. The idea of the Second Coming has been especially destructive to Jesus's intentions, because it postpones what needs to happen now. The Third Coming--finding God-consciousness through your own efforts--happens in the present. I'm using the term as a metaphor for a shift in consciousness that makes Jesus's teachings totally real and vital.
When Jesus Comes Again
Imagine for a moment that you are one of the poor Jewish farmers, fishermen, or other heavy laborers who have heard about a wandering rabbi who promises Heaven, not to the rich and powerful, but to your kind, society's humblest. On this day--we can surmise that it was hot and dry, with the desert sun beating down from overhead--you climb a hill north of the blue inland lake known as the Sea of Galilee.
At the top of the hill Jesus sits with his closest followers, waiting to preach until enough people have gathered. You wait, too, seeking the shade of the crooked olive trees that dot the parched landscape. Jesus (known to you in Hebrew as Yeshua, a fairly common name) delivers a sermon, and you are deeply struck, to the heart, in fact. He promises that God loves you, a statement he makes directly, without asking you to follow the duties of your sect or to respect the ancient, complex laws of the prophets. Further, he says that God loves you best. In the world to come, you and your kind will get the richest rewards, everything you have been denied in this world.
The words sound idealistic to the point of lunacy--if God loved you so much, why did he saddle you with cruel Roman conquerors? Why did he allow you to be enslaved and forced to toil until the day you die? The priests in Jerusalem have explained this many times: As the son of Adam, your sins have brought you a wretched existence, full of misery and endless toil. But Jesus doesn't mention sin. He expands God's love to unbelievable lengths. Did you really hear him right?
You are the light of the world. Let your light shine before all men.
He compares you to a city set upon a hill that can't be hidden because its lights are so bright. You've never been told anything remotely like this or ever seen yourself this way.
Don't judge others, so that you may not be judged. Before you try to take a mote out of your brother's eye, first remove the log from your own.
Do to others what you would have them do to you. This one rule sums up what the law and the prophets taught.
Ask, and it will be given to you. Seek, and you shall find. Knock, and the door will open.
How can you explain your reaction to this preacher--jumbled feelings of disbelief and hope, suspicion and an aching need to believe? You wanted to run away before he was finished, denying everything you heard. No sane man could walk the streets and judge not the thieves, pickpockets, and whores on every corner. It was absurd to claim that all you had to do, if you needed bread and clothes, was to ask God for them. And yet how beautifully Jesus wove the spell:
Consider the lilies, how they grow: They neither toil nor spin, but I tell you, not even Solomon in all his glory clothed himself like one of these. Consider the crows, for they neither sow nor reap, they have no storeroom or barn, and yet God feeds them. How much more valuable are you than the birds!
Despite years of hard experience that made a lie of Jesus's promises, you believed them while you were listening. You kept believing them as you walked back down the hill near sunset, and for a few days afterward they haunted you. Until they faded away.
Time hasn't altered this mixture of hope and puzzlement. I had an experience that centers around one of Jesus's most baffling teachings: "Whoever hits you on the cheek, offer him the other also." (Luke 6:29) These are words that our Jewish laborer could have heard that day on the hilltop, but time hasn't altered human nature enough to make this teaching any easier. If I let a bully hit me on one cheek only to turn the other, won't he beat the stuffing out of me? The same holds good, on a larger scale, for a threat like terrorism: If we allow evildoers to strike us without reprisal, won't they continue to do so, over and over?
On the surface my experience only vaguely fits this dilemma. Yet it leads to the heart of Christ's mission. I was in a crowded bookstore promoting a new book when a woman came up to me, saying, "Can I talk to you? I need three hours." She was a compact, forceful person (less politely, a pit bull), but as gently as I could I told her, pointing to the other people crowded around the table, that I didn't have three hours to spare.
A cloud passed over her face. "You have to. I came all the way from Mexico City," she said, insisting that she must have three hours alone with me. I asked if she had called my office in advance, and she had. What did they tell her? That I would be busy all day.
"But I came on my own anyway, because I've heard you say that anything is possible," she said. "If that's true, you should be able to see me."
The PR person in charge of the event was pulling at my elbow, so I told the woman that if she came back later, I might find a few minutes of personal time for her. She became enraged in front of everyone. She released a stream of invective, sparing no four-letter words, and stalked away, muttering darkly that I was a fraud. Later that night the incident wouldn't leave me in peace, so I considered an essential spiritual truth: People mirror back to us the reality of who we are. I sat down and wrote out a list of things I'd noticed about this woman. What had I disliked about her? She was angry, demanding, confrontational, and selfish. Then I called my wife and asked her if I was like that. There was a long silence at the other end of the phone. I was more than a little shaken.
I sat down to face what reality was asking me to face. I found a veneer of annoyance and irritation (after all, wasn't I the innocent victim? hadn't she embarrassed me in front of dozens of people?). Then I called a truce with the negative energies she had stirred up. Vague images of past injuries came to mind, which put me on the right trail. I moved as much of the stagnant energies of hurt as I could.
To put it bluntly, this was a Jesus moment. When he preached, "If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer him the other also" (Luke 6:29), Jesus wasn't preaching masochism or martyrdom. He was speaking of a quality of consciousness that is known in Sanskrit as Ahimsa. The word is usually translated as "harmlessness" or "nonviolence," and in modern times it became the watchword of Gandhi's movement of peaceful resistance. Gandhi himself was often seen as Christlike, but Ahimsa has roots in India going back thousands of years.
In the Indian tradition several things are understood about nonviolence, and all of them apply to Jesus's version of turning the other cheek. First, the aim of nonviolence is ultimately to bring peace to yourself, to quell your own violence; the enemy outside serves only to mirror the enemy within. Second, your ability to be nonviolent depends on a shift in consciousness. Last, if you are successful in changing yourself, reality will mirror the change back to you.
Without these conditions, Ahimsa isn't spiritual or even effective. If someone full of desire for retaliation turns the other cheek to someone equally enraged, the only thing that will occur is more violence. Playing the part of a saint won't make a difference. But if a person in God-consciousness turns the other cheek, his enemy will be disarmed.
COPYRIGHT
Copyright © 2008 by Deepak Chopra

Random blog of the day ; dated but current, and yes we are always at point A, lets forget about point B.

Meanwhile, my mate Ron Rolheiser emphasises elsewhere that we need to move beyond victim mentality and fully live the gospel, looking at what we can do for others and living more fully each day. I am managing to smile and greet strangers each day as I wander to work.

Lent is happening too quickly this year. Daily devotional reading and attending a study group are helping make Lent a reflective, thoughtful time for me. Long gone are my attitudes of fast, abstinence and penance. More so these days, and interestingly discussed by others in the study group; are attempts to smile and greet strangers.

I look back over the past months and think how fortunate I am that I have friends who accept me as I am, a confused, pathetic human being at times but one who still strives to stand upright and proud of my humanity. I gained new insight into the woman at the well story this week, Jesus spoke to the woman her reality, and she responded by telling others of her new found reality. Indeed just as for her, countless others down through the centuries and today there is someone who truly knows us, carries us on eagles wings and holds us in the palm of his hand. Truly, there is no need to fear, but only to accept loves embrace. Hurrah!

I have pondered the following since December. hattip LS.

The Cost of Compassion

But when he was still a great way off, his father saw him and had
compassion, and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him. Luke 15:20.
Recommended Reading Genesis 45:14-15

The word sacrifice is the costliest word in the biblical lexicon, especially when it comes to the price God paid--allowing His Son to be sacrificed for our sins. Sacrifice means to offer up something of one's own--to relinquish ownership, to give it up for a higher purpose or calling.

But there is another word that has a high price attached to it, one that gets less attention than sacrifice.


The cost of compassion, while perhaps not as high as sacrifice, is nonetheless high--as all compassionate people can attest. Take the father of the prodigal son in Jesus' parable, for instance (Luke 15:11-32). When the rebellious son returned home after a period of profligate living, the father welcomed him home with compassion. What price did he pay for his compassion?

How about the sleepless nights that he agonized over the fate of his son?
Or the forgiveness he extended? Or the large sum of money that the son wasted in riotous living?

Compassion's price is the loss of whatever we could be doing for ourselves instead of spending ourselves on another. Keep your compassion account balanced, ready to spend when needed.

Compassion will cure more sins than condemnation. Henry Ward Beecher

attributed to Turning Point by David Jeremiah .

Auntie has put up some photos, as the nation prepares to say sorry.

Funny how life moves on, apparently this song came out in 1979, from a time before...

and now

I am ready to watch sunrises and sunsets again...

Maybe, just maybe someone will want to watch them with me, and grow old along with me, enjoying the years as they unfold into eternal time.

February 13th is a real special day, after years of seeking a sorry to the stolen generations, a sorry will be issued.

Join up here

hattip Shanelle.

Haere Mai, gentle readers.

New Zealand was wonderful.

Totally different from anywhere I have been before, with a natural beauty that inspired me.

I made my sage retreat trip down a gorge at Taupo, and ended up with badly scratched legs physically. A black peg and pumice apparently now have spiritual import for me. I chanted, wept, prayed and sang and when I opened my eyes much later, a huge geyser went off about 20 meters along the gorge floor. Interestingly two days later, much further north, a Maori confirmed the spiritual significance of pumice for the Taupo region.

However NZ was not just solitary spiritual time: I enjoyed the Polynesian Spa, a flight across the great fault line in a Cessna, a day cruise on on the Bay of Islands, and saw over 120 dolphins. Visits to cultural and historical museums, and lots of wonderful meals. Visits to falls and geothermal sites also were eye openers. Made other tourists days by practicing RAOK.

Life and Death is understood well by the Maori, I appreciate now even more my own life.

from the vault, a random post selected purely at random...

bizarre!

of all the posts to select, 'twas this one that I clicked on.... hmmm.... interesting... very very interesting....

ah well, bags are packed and I'm out the door again..

only a little hop this time to New Zealand.

I hope to purify myself with sage at Lake Taupo.

DEATH Happens, dear ones. Remember Heath alive and skating!

about to fly out of Oz once again...