“The Gate in the Rocks” by Karl Friedrich Schinkel
And the world cannot be discovered by a journey of miles, no matter how long, but only by a spiritual journey, a journey of one inch, very arduous and humbling and joyful, by which we arrive at the ground at our feet, and learn to be at home. ~ Wendell Berry (The Unforeseen Wilderness)
As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives. ~ Henry David Thoreau (Thoughts from Earth)
When one soul meets another kindred soul, a great surge of energy rushes through the weaving of the universe as an important connection is made. In the unexplored regions of human consciousness, another light has come on, revealing shared territory. This is the work of dedicated souls on the spiritual path: their individual light illumines the universe for everyone, brings hope, and keeps open the pathway to understanding. This sacred trust is maintained by all who have consecrated their existence to spiritual wisdom; it is a kinship that runs like a golden chain from one age to another. That golden chain comes now into our hands, a sacred trust not only to our ancestors but to our descendants and every inhabitant of the universe. It is our turn to make the next link, trusting that others in turn will complete the circle until the whole cosmos is connected in one bond. ~ Caitlín Matthews (The Celtic Spirit: Daily Meditations for the Turning Year)
Two years ago on this day, Tim and I drove down to Avery Point to see the beauty of a recent snowfall by the water. I was trying to photograph the lighthouse, framed by a tree’s branches and the blanket of snow. After snapping the shot I looked on the view screen and gasped in surprise! While I had seen orbs in the photos of others before, and was curious about the phenomena, this was the first time orbs had appeared in one of my own photos! And there were so many of them!
As a person who has in the past often gotten myself into trouble by insisting on absolute answers to all questions, this marked one of the first times I was content to accept a gift of mystery and magic from the universe without demanding an explanation, satisfied to embrace not knowing. My intuition has some ideas but I’m not clinging to any particular theory, scientific or mystical.
If you have any orb pictures you’d like to share, please let me know. Perhaps I will post them here on my blog, or link to them on your blog. I have since had a few more pictures with orbs in them, though none as spectacular as this first one!
Because I am an early bird and a creature of habit, every morning I lay out in little trays our morning prescription meds (4 for Tim and 3 for me) and vitamins. A couple of days ago I suddenly realized that I had just taken most of Tim’s pills and vitamins. The shock paralyzed me for a few moments. Am I losing my mind??? For the rest of the day I worried about the effect his pills would have on me – one of them was definitely just for men – and worried about my brain’s increasing inability to pay attention. A few days later now and I’m still here and breathing so evidently no lasting harm done.
12.19.11 ~ Groton, Connecticut
I’ve always been too easily startled and confused. And like most dreamers I do spend an inordinate amount of time living in my head. (One reason I was a sympathetic fan of the J.D. character on “Scrubs.”) But this latest episode was most unsettling. And I can’t even remember what thoughts were distracting me when it happened.
Mid-December is thus one of the most positively magical times of the year. Things are possible during December’s darkening days that are not even dreamt of at other spokes of the Wheel of the Year. We should use this magic as a vehicle for deepening our awareness of the world around us and preparing our souls for the ongoing pilgrimage of our lives. A seeker of Wisdom in the thrall of Winter’s Solstice should consider their celebrations as a spiritual pilgrimage or even a quest, during which, through the disciplined use of the spiritual imagination, he or she may encounter one’s own truest self along the way and in communion with Spirit. ~ Montague Whitsel (The Fires of Yule)
Years ago in therapy I learned that if one feels weird on a particular day for no apparent reason it is sometimes helpful to see if it is an anniversary of some event that has left unresolved feelings lurking around in the subconscious mind. I didn’t have to dig too far to figure it out… But after figuring it out I had to deal with the feelings of regret and sadness and the fact that some situations don’t lend themselves to being neatly settled once and for all. Collateral damage from my spiritual quest… But deepening my awareness of the world around me, and inside my head, has helped.
12.11.11 ~ Preston, Connecticut
No kids around this year to decorate the Tree so Tim cut a small one and I decorated it myself. Tim’s been working 17 days straight and I’ve been trying out vegan holiday recipes for our Solstice Party. Still haven’t completely settled on a menu. And we’ll be going up to see Dad and Auntie for Christmas. So it will be a subdued holiday season, but that’s OK, I’m content with the blessings we have.
shake, then bundle ~ 12.11.11 ~ Preston, Connecticut
The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift. ~ Albert Einstein (The G.O.D. Experiments: How Science Is Discovering God in Everything)
The metaphoric mind includes rationality, linearity, and logic – for it created them. But like some children, the rational mind often seems embarrassed by the presence of its parents. ~ Bob Samples (The Metaphoric Mind: A Celebration of Creative Consciousness)
“Bouquet of Chrysanthemums” by Pierre-Auguste Renoir
We return thanks to our mother, the earth, which sustains us. We return thanks to the rivers and streams, which supply us with water. We return thanks to all herbs, which furnish medicines for the cure of our diseases. We return thanks to the corn, and to her sisters, the beans and squash, which give us life. We return thanks to the bushes and trees, which provide us with fruit. We return thanks to the wind, which, moving the air, has banished diseases. We return thanks to the moon and stars, which have given to us their light when the sun was gone. We return thanks to our grandfather He-no, that he has protected his grandchildren from witches and reptiles, and has given to us his rain. We return thanks to the sun, that he has looked upon the earth with a beneficient eye. Lastly, we return thanks to the Great Spirit, in whom is embodied all goodness, and who directs all things for the good of his children. ~ 19th-Century Iroquois Prayer (The Joy of Family Traditions: A Season-by-Season Companion to Celebrations, Holidays & Special Occasions)
Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances for survival of life on earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet. ~ Albert Einstein (Please Don’t Eat the Animals: All the Reasons You Need to Be a Vegetarian)
In my last post I described the part of my journey from eating animals to only eating animals that were humanely raised and slaughtered. Still, even after seeing EARTHLINGS, and thinking I was doing enough, my intuition was telling me that this was not the end of the story. So I starting searching at Amazon.com and settled on a book called Please Don’t Eat the Animals: All the Reasons You Need to Be a Vegetarian by Jennifer Horsman & Jaime Flowers. It is available on Kindle so I got it within moments and read the book in record time, neglecting my blog-mates and many of my chores in the process.
Hundreds upon hundreds of scientific articles from around the world demonstrate that a healthy vegetarian diet is the single most powerful thing individuals can do to promote, protect, or improve their health. ~ Jennifer Horsman & Jaime Flowers (Please Don’t Eat the Animals: All the Reasons You Need to Be a Vegetarian)
There it was, right in the first chapter. As many of my readers know, my husband survived a heart attack and had triple-by-pass surgery four years ago, and we are both taking a host of drugs to deal with hypertension and high cholesterol. Also I’m being treated for osteomalacia and migraine. Trying to keep on a low-fat, low-cholesterol diet isn’t helping those stubbornly high numbers to come down. But not one doctor has ever suggested a plant-based diet to either of us, in spite of countless scientific studies indicating that this would be the best route to a healthy lifestyle.
I don’t understand why asking people to eat a well-balanced vegetarian diet is considered drastic, while it is medically conservative to cut people open and put them on powerful cholesterol-lowering drugs for the rest of their lives. ~ Dr. Dean Ornish (Reversing Heart Disease)
I am so excited about possibly getting off all of these expensive drugs! Apparently eating even humanely raised animals is not good for us! I used to believe that since the animals ate each other nature was teaching us that it was perfectly natural to eat them. The circle of life. But while some animals are predators, there are many others who are not. The following information came as an enlightening surprise to me:
While humans can digest flesh, and it is likely that our ancestors did consume small amounts of meat infrequently, our anatomy much more strongly resembles that of plant-eating creatures. Like all plant eaters the human colon is long and complex, and our intestines are ten to eleven times longer than our bodies. Meat eaters have a short and simple colon, and in order that putrid meats pass quickly through their bodies, their intestines are only three to six times longer than their bodies. Human saliva contains digestive enzymes; meat eaters’ saliva does not. Our teeth resemble those of other plant eaters, with short and blunt canines, as opposed to long, sharp, and curved canines of the big meat eaters. Additionally, the meat our evolutionary ancestors consumed was wild game, which has less fat content than our modern domesticated meats. ~ Jennifer Horsman & Jaime Flowers (Please Don’t Eat the Animals: All the Reasons You Need to Be a Vegetarian)
Once again science and spirit come together in my life. As I shared the results of the scientific studies mentioned in the book with Tim, he seemed to be open to the idea of trying a vegan diet. And then came the next question, “What’s for dinner?”
This book, to the left, has nothing to do with having pigs for dinner, but is a heartwarming true story about a very special pig. It is called The Good Good Pig: The Extraordinary Life of Christopher Hogwood by Sy Montgomery. Christopher Hogwood was a wise old soul, a teacher to everyone in the community who melted under his spell. He was a good good pig! I hope you will read it if you haven’t already!
“Shepherd with Cows on the Lakeshore” by Christian Friedrich Mali
The process of becoming a vegetarian acts like a spark to consciousness, and as you journey down this path, you become mindful of the connection between the living, breathing creature and the package of meat or fish neatly wrapped in the supermarket. ~ Jennifer Horsman & Jaime Flowers (Please Don’t Eat the Animals: All the Reasons You Need to be a Vegetarian)
In the past, the idea of being a vegetarian has always appealed to me, but marriage is about compromises and I married a devout meat-and-potatoes guy. Our children had to put up with a few episodes of me trying to convert everyone to my way of thinking, but my lack of cooking talent and the lack of helpful information made for many unappealing meals. They all remember, without fondness, the TVP debacle – the cookbook didn’t mention that the textured vegetable protein needed to be soaked until soft before adding it to spaghetti sauce! No one appreciated the crunchy spaghetti and TVP sauce…
A little background of my journey from omnivore to herbivore…
My mom loved all things Native American. I remember her telling me that Indians worshiped nature and believed they should only take from her, with gratitude, what they needed to survive. With her words, she painted a picture for me that I still see to this day, of a hunter respectfully kneeling over the animal he had killed with his arrow, thanking its spirit for the sacrifice of its life for the benefit of his family or tribe.
One day I asked my father about hunting. He told me his story about a gun his father gave him as a gift so he could go hunting in the woods. Not wanting to disappoint his father, he set off to find some game. He found a squirrel and shot it on his first try. When he went over to retrieve it he found himself devastated and sick to his stomach that he had taken its life. He never hunted again.
But, Mom’s knowledge and Dad’s experience did not stop them from eating the all-American died of meat and dairy products! And while my paternal grandfather lived us, until he died when I was 8 years old, he regularly used his ax on a stump in the back yard to chop the heads off of chickens for dinner. It was very disturbing to me to see the decapitated chickens running around for what seemed like an eternity.
You have just dined, and, however scrupulously the slaughter-house is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson (A Political Companion to Ralph Waldo Emerson)
Over the years I got an inkling that animals were suffering terribly on factory farms and in slaughterhouses, so Tim & I agreed that we would only eat meat that was naturally raised, cage-free, and slaughtered humanely. A friend, knowing my sensitivity to violence, warned me not to watch the documentary, EARTHLINGS, but I did watch it, in August, while Tropical Storm Irene was raging outside. It did deeply disturb me, and removed all doubt from my mind about how bad things were in these torture chambers.
In one scene there was a pig who had spent its whole life squished in a cramped pen and had never seen a ray of sunshine or a blade of grass. Now it was time for it to be slaughtered. The worker opened the gate and started poking the terrified pig with a sharp prong. It fell down repeatedly and was pierced over and over to make it get up and move on. All the while the merciless worker kept shouting at it, over and over, “Come on, mother-f—-r, move.”
And a sharp contrast appeared in my mind between these two images: one, the cruel words coming out of the mouth of that heartless factory farm worker; and the other, much different picture: the sincere words of thanks coming out of the mouth of the respectful Native American hunter.
summer 2008 ~ Center Street, Provincetown, Massachusetts
Our moods do not believe in each other. To-day I am full of thoughts, and can write what I please. I see no reason why I should not have the same thought, the same power of expression, to-morrow. What I write, whilst I write it, seems the most natural thing in the world; but yesterday I saw a dreary vacuity in this direction in which now I see so much; and a month hence, I doubt not, I shall wonder who he was that wrote so many continuous pages. Alas for this infirm faith, this will not strenuous, this vast ebb of a vast flow! I am God in nature; I am a weed by the wall. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson (Circles)
“Roses Fancy Still Life” by Robert Scott Duncanson
These roses under my window make no reference to former roses or to better ones; they are for what they are; they exist with God to-day. There is no time in them. There is simply the rose; it is perfect in every moment of its existence. Before a leaf-bud has burst, its whole life acts; in the full-blown flower there is no more; in the leafless root there is no less. Its nature is satisfied, and it satisfies nature, in all moments alike. But man postpones or remembers; he does not live in the present, but with reverted eye laments the past, or, heedless of the riches that surround him, stands on tiptoe to foresee the future. He cannot be happy and strong until he too lives with nature in the present above time. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson (Self-Reliance)
