The Red Badge of Courage Award: Is the Coffee Ready Yet?

Posted on by under 2013, Awards, Blog Fellowship, June

Sometimes we become the bad company we keep, other times we survive the bad company we keep. Every so often, we triumph over that company and become something truly amazing: a whole person who cares and stands up for other people and ourselves.

A while ago I made an award called The Red Badge of Courage Award.

This award is free for anyone to take or give as they see fit, there are no rules or requirements outside of writing a short post naming who you are awarding and, if you want to, why.

I haven’t given the award to anyone since I created it, and I’d kind of forgotten about it until I found myself on Claudia Bette’s blog: Is The Coffee Ready Yet?

Claudia is an amazing person who has been through a lot in life. Despite all she has been through, and possibly because of it, Claudia is determined to be the best mother she can for her son. This act of breaking the cycle takes an exceptional amount of courage, strength, patience, and love. So today I’m passing the Red Badge of Courage Award on to you Claudia.

I encourage everyone to visit her blog and show your support with lovely and loving comments!

1loveapril

 

Howdy Everybody

Posted on by under 2013, Blog Fellowship, June

Since I’m being featured (that sounds so official, now I understand a little better what WTOE feels like for participants–WTOE is not dead btw, it’s only resting) .  . .

Anyway, since I’m being *cough, featured on BBW today I thought I’d put up a list of some of my more popular posts. If it’s your first time here, I’d  recommend checking out the following:

A Triumph of the Human Spirit (this post tells another story of a little one saved, but this time it’s not written as a fairy tale)

This one is Hard to Write

An Excuse to Talk About Monty Python (as though we need one!)

Let’s Talk About It

The Final Frontier (this is a post from my WTOE project)

Be Sure to check out The World Through Our Eyes project as well, click the WTOE link on the main menu or an artist name from the sub-menu and find out what it’s all about!

Ponder on!

1loveapril

Sing Sweet Nightingale

Posted on by under 2013, Artists, bloggers 4 peace, Deep Thoughts, June, Spirituality

Today I am going to sit down and tell you a little bit about what God means to me.

I’d like to start by explaining that I use the word God because it is the name I am familiar with, but when I say God I am not speaking to any one interpretation of God. I feel that the various world religions and all of the different representation of God and Gods they provide are metaphorical representations of a larger truth. Just as no one religion is completely accurate, no one religion is completely wrong either. We are entering a time when religion is coming into question, and this is a good thing. We are meant to question it, we need to question it: that does not mean that we need to throw the baby out with the bathwater, by which I mean we do not need to completely eradicate a notion of God from the world. Instead I think we need to pursue an emerging understanding of the larger universe through scientific, artistic and spiritual endeavors, and by doing so–by blending the various methods of discovery open to us as human beings–we will arise to a true understanding of the complex interplay between God, the universe, and the world.

Continue reading →

On Learning the True Meaning of Community

Posted on by under 2013, bloggers 4 peace, Deep Thoughts, June, Memories, Ponderings

I’m not talking about the television show (for once), I’m talking about the real thing: community. I wasn’t going to post today because I’m still addressing awards and trying to keep to my novel writing schedule, but this week life handed me the most beautiful lesson about what this word truly means. I’d like to give a very big and heartfelt thank you to my neighbor S., who literally brought this lesson to my doorstep.

I grew up in the shadow of a sociopath, and this had a big effect on my mental and emotional development–both good and bad. In terms of community, it was a bad effect. You see, being close to someone who will lie, manipulate, cheat, and pretty much do anything possible to gain and maintain control of others creates an incredibly difficult living situation. By the time I became a young adult (young adult, lol, more like “gigantic child”), I had built an understanding of what community and togetherness meant based on experiences that fly in the face of everything these words truly entail. To me, community meant that if you say or do the wrong thing it can and will be used against you in a social court of your neighbors and family; if you love someone or something that love will be used against you; if you trust someone, even family, it will come back to bite you in the Red heart; and being together is a complex exercise in subtle animosity, information gathering, and unspoken social warfare.

Yeah, I was pretty ducked up for a little while there. The world, thankfully, has better people in it and with their (and your) help I have been able to begin and continue a healing process. Through my current relationship I have begun to learn how to truly trust another (and I silently thank my fiancee for his patience with this growing process every day), and through my friendships I have learned what it truly means to be non-judgmental and accepting. Both of these things and more are works in progress, however, and I still approach others with a very large degree of caution. This often causes me to alienate myself from neighbors and potential friends because I still almost immediately throw up walls when I’m engaging with others. This tendency to throw up walls is a big part of why I started to become a total Red hearthole in college, and I’m really glad I caught on to what I was becoming before I completely lost the ability to see myself at all.

Catch it I did, and because of this I’m starting to find myself in a place where I can begin to help others again (as I’m not in need of as much help myself). On my page Beginnings, I say the following:

Stand with me, speak with me, tap across your keyboards the change you want to see in the world. Make the promise that if you see someone suffering you will do what you can in that moment to ease their pain. It can be as simple as a smile or kind exchange, or as complex as a multinational aid organization that puts people before PR.

This week I lived up to this statement, and I ended up being helped far more than I was able to help. It was all so simple too. This past Saturday I was walking my dog and saw my neighbor S. (whom I had not met until this moment) in the process of opening up a trash bag from the dumpster. S. seemed pretty worried, so I stopped and asked if she’d thrown away something important, laughing a bit, I expressed that it’s something I do often. S., while continuing to look, said in a hurry that she had thrown away/lost a hundred dollar bill while preparing to leave for an appointment that morning. She was now running late, and beginning to panic. I leashed my dog to a fence and proceeded to help her look. We didn’t find it, she had to leave, and I told her I would keep looking. After she left, I finished walking my dog and then my Fiancee and I went out to look one last time. I climbed into the dumpster, S. and I had exhausted the other options earlier, and within minutes had found the bill underneath a couple of bags. This is not as noble as it sounds. I climbed in dumpsters for fun as a teenager (I choose to see this as early signs of an inclination towards archaeology and not as another example of how utterly strange I can be, lol!). I put the bill in an envelope with a little note and gave it to her son. Then I went about my life and didn’t really think about it again.

Last night there was a knock at my door. It was S., and she had brought my fiancee and I flowers and a thank you card with a gift card inside. She told me I’d been her angel that day, and she thanked both of us many times. I was flabbergasted and really didn’t know how to react. I have no template for how to respond to sincere thanks and gratitude. In that moment I suddenly knew the true meaning of community. It’s not just helping each other, it is also sharing with each other what it means to be helped. It is sharing moments, and it is being able to trust that your neighbor will do the right thing (I’m talking about me helping S. look, the thanks is awesome but I wouldn’t consider it wrong if S. hadn’t thanked me). This is a tough world to live in, and this week I learned that the simple act of saying thank you can have a drastic effect on someone’s perception of the world and on how that person feels about herself.

Later in the evening I was checking blog comments and found a response to a comment on another blog where a person expressed that I had helped to make her feel better when she hadn’t been feeling all that great lately.  I actually got a little teary eyed. I’ve been in and out of a funk lately (this year has been pretty wild, and it’s having an effect) and part of that is being down on myself for not accomplishing all that I want to or living up to my own standards. I would like to thank S. and Rachel C. Black from the bottom of my heart for helping me to see myself through their eyes for a moment and to remember that friendship and community are little more than a kind exchange away. Today I am truly thankful for both of you.

More B4Peace posts (JOIN THE MOVEMENT!)

“The Peace Sign” by Serendipity 13

“Monthly Peace Challenge” by Retired Truth

Image credit: stick figures holding hands, stock.xchng. Please do not redistribute this image as it violates the restrictions set forth by stock.xchng.

1loveapril

Shower Time!

Posted on by under 2013, Awards, Blog Fellowship, June

Awards shower that is!

I’ve gotten a lot of love lately from Madeline Laughs of Spread Information: Stop the Madness and C.K. Hope of O.K., Who Ate the Daisies, who both nominated me for some awards! I also still have some old awards to finish addressing (weeeeeee!). I am sticking to a strict novel writing schedule these days (so strict in fact that I’m already nearly a half an hour late on starting today, woot!), so I wont be kicking out my responses until next week (possibly Friday, but probably early next week). My posting might be erratic (I typed erotic the first time, lol) and short until the awards are dealt with.

A big thanks to Madeline Laughs and C.K. Hope: hop on over to their blogs and give ‘em a good read!

 

1loveapril

How are you doing?

Posted on by under 2013, bloggers 4 peace, Deep Thoughts, June

Seriously, I’d like to know!

The world is not an easy place to live, and I’ve found throughout my short years here that a genuine interest in another’s state of being can make a huge difference in his or her life.

One time, when I was around sixteen years old, I went to the eye-doctor with my mom. I do not remember why we were there, but we had to wait in a rather long line. I was standing near a woman who simply could not stop outright bawling in public. She looked to be around the same age as my mom, so this seemed particularly odd and everyone was rubbernecking the spectacle with their peripheral vision. She had dressed nicely, but her hair was in complete disarray and I could tell she had been out of sorts all morning.

I’ve never reacted normally, so I simply plopped down next to her and asked if she was okay. This must have added to the spectacle because at that time I dressed in really short dresses with patterned and rainbow colored toe-socks, Mary-Janes, and an under-shirt with clashing colors and patterns. Usually I had on a rainbow belt I had made out of a luggage strap too, and I’m sure I was wearing it that day because I was always wearing it (took me years to find a rainbow belt, and in the end I had to make it!).

Anyway, she told me through sobs of a situation she was in with her husband and daughter. Her daughter was around 14 at the time and going back and forth between the two divorced parents. She attended a high school where she was subject to bullying and ridicule, and her dad tried every emotionally abusive tactic at his disposal to turn the daughter against her while allowing her to live a dangerously free lifestyle in the hopes that she would tell the judge she preferred her father as custodial parent. I listened to her whole story, calmed her down a bit, and gave her some advice as to what to do (my mom runs a childcare, so I’d seen a lot of divorce, custody, and court situations by that point in my life). In the end she had not only stopped crying but was genuinely smiling and laughing. I could see that she felt stronger.

Quite a while later, from 6 months to a year, I was at the local movie theater and I saw her in a car with her daughter and what had to be her daughter’s friends (when we spoke she had told me her daughter had been unable to make friends at her new school). They were smiling and laughing, and they looked genuinely happy. I didn’t get to talk with them or anything, I just saw them driving away.

I will never forget standing in that Optometrist’s office next to a human being in so much pain and confusion she had visibly brought it with her, breaking cultural taboos. Despite this, an entire room full of adults stood around in awkward silence. I could feel the desire to help, but it was trumped by the distance we build between ourselves in this society. We have this notion in America of individual freedom and responsibility, and sometimes I think we interpret this as meaning that weakness is a personal failure and so we must hide it. When confronted with the reality of a person who cannot do this, instead of rushing to help we become embarrassed by the situation. Perhaps there is a subconscious idea that I am responsible for myself, and she is responsible for herself, so it is not my responsibility to help her and she should not be crying in public.

I don’t think this is what individual responsibility means. To me individual responsibility means that you and you alone are responsible for your thoughts, choices, and actions: so make them good ones. Like it or not, we have an effect on everyone we come into contact with. Simply showing a genuine interest in another person, be they stranger or friend, can make a huge difference in their day and in their life.

So, how are you doing today?

1loveapril

Cosmic Culture Shock

Posted on by under 2013, Deep Thoughts, Humor, May, Ponderings, Spirituality

When do the years begin to slip by so quickly you barely notice they passed?

I’m haunted by the thought of how long this has been going on without me taking notice. How many years have I already lost to this frantic pace? Do relationships bring this time warp, or is it just growing up that does it? Maybe as we age we become closer to the universe’s concept of time, or rather, timelessness. Sort of dip our toes in the pond, that way when we die we won’t feel as much of a shock at the change as eons suddenly fly by in seconds.

1loveapril

Life of Pi

Posted on by under 2013, Deep Thoughts, May, Reviews, Spirituality

Life of Pi is one of the most visually resplendent and meaningful films I’ve ever had the pleasure of watching. I was literally blown away by the layers of deep meaning sewn throughout the story. I’ve decided to discuss some of those meanings below, and if you have not seen the movie I warn you that anything after this paragraph contains SPOILERS. I’d recommend watching the movie before reading the discussion.

Continue reading →

On Karmic Face-palms

Posted on by under 2013, bloggers 4 peace, Deep Thoughts, May, Spirituality

I’m the kind of person who believes in signs. No, not the kind that litter roadways. I believe in the kind of signs that guide and direct a person through life. It sounds silly and adds a touch of fatalism to things, but it’s how I feel all the same.

The universe exists in patterns: small patterns graduating out into larger patterns then dwindling again in an ebb and flow that we don’t really understand yet. Our brains pick out those patterns in experience, input, and thought, and turn them into perceptions and constructions of both the self and the surrounding environment. Have you ever learned something new that fascinated you, and for a short while that idea seemed to pop up in other areas of your life? This is a natural inclination of the brain, and I believe we should pay more attention to it in our day to day. You see, patterns and signs are everywhere and learning to read them can help to guide you through life. You may not know exactly what’s going to happen next, but you will gain the ability to suss out when major changes might be coming your way.

Lately, I’ve been struggling with my direction in life. I have a lot of ideas I’ve been working to implement, and they seem to grow larger every day. Lately, I’ve looked at my plans and simply felt inadequate in my ability to actually implement any of them. It got to a point where I was completely unsure of what to work on, what direction to take with this blog, or when to implement some of the other projects I’ve been working on behind the scenes. I kept plugging away, becoming increasingly muddled, not working as productively as I usually do, and began noticing that others were already implementing some of the ideas I’ve been working towards–something that made me feel worse about myself (though good for the other people).

I’ve been here before, standing at the crossroads and unsure what direction to take. Everyone has at one time or another. The thing about being at a crossroads is that it’s never just an internal struggle. Usually, there are external factors at play as well. While I felt completely down on myself, old friends began to pop out of the woodwork and back into my life (I’ve had more out-of-state visitors in the last month than I did in all of last year). Philosophical discussions were had, good memories shared, and important ideas added to my thought process.

As I said before, while muddled I continued to plug away at everything and hope that a clearer direction would begin to form. I was set to publish a post on another blog, in the middle of re-working a now outdated business plan, completely unhappy with this blog and my novel, and fully aware that I had no idea what I should be doing anymore. Then my phone rang, and my very upset mother asked me to come home because my dad wasn’t doing so well. Long story short, he has Rheumatoid Arthritis and had been having a reaction to his medications that his doctor believed to be a virus. He had become severely dehydrated, and my mom simply couldn’t get anyone to help. His primary doctor kept sending him home saying he’d be fine soon. He almost died. Twice. The second time, his doctor decided not to be a complete tool and cleared him to be admitted to the hospital for observation. We couldn’t do this without his doctor clearing it because the health insurance wouldn’t pay for it otherwise. America,duckyeah!

Anyway, I found myself at home for one of the most stressful weeks of my life. My mom and I ran back and forth between my possibly dying father and twelve children who kept demanding to know “where Mr. Dan?” The bedroom I slept in was right next to the bathroom, and I was awakened several times a night to my dad violently up-chucking. Sleep deprived, on my third cold for the month, worried for my dad’s life, and knee-deep in kids: it was on helluva week.

Through it all my mom and I managed to keep our wits about us (well, mostly), my dad got through everything okay and is doing 100% better. I didn’t see the value of this experience right away, but I knew that it had value. After all the dust settled I began to pull the lessons and signs from the experience because I’ve learned something throughout my life: when it seems like you’re getting face-palmed by karma you are actually being taught. You are being shown things you might have missed, you are being made aware of situations, you are being groomed and strengthened. I’d spent all of this time feeling inadequate, but I know now that I can handle any situation. It’s funny how, with everything I had to go through with my Grandpa in December, I didn’t realize this before.

Certain things that happened throughout the week made me realize a lot about myself and why I’m held back by certain emotions and insecurities. I began to see more clearly the path ahead, and to feel more confident in walking it. I know that my parents have their own lessons to glean from the experience and, while I won’t pretend to know what those are, I do know that it is all related. Many people think of Karma as meaning “what goes around comes around.” Karma doesn’t mean that you do something bad so something bad happens to you: Karma refers to the ideas of cause and effect, the universal law of action and reaction. So, Karma is not a disciplinarian so much as it is a teacher. This means that, when it seems as though you are being face-palmed by Karma, you are not being punished. Karma is using cause and effect to show you things about your life, your self, and the world and people around you. I’ve wondered before if Karma would have to slap people across the face if we were better at reading signs.

So, if everything seems to be falling apart around you do not look on the situation as if you are a victim. Look at it as though you are being promoted. Life is a roller coaster. We spend a lot of time building up to things only to be suddenly whipped around a curve and into a new view. Learning t o read the signs doesn’t mean you will always know what is coming, but you might be able to recognize the bends and dips before you go flying through them and to interpret their inherent lessons as well.

1loveapril

Art, A Bloggers for Peace Post, Becoming a Writer

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly: A Romeo and Juliet Story

Posted on by under 2013, Blog Fellowship, Humor, May, Memories, Ponderings

pftpep11

Wednesday, May 1, 2013

To remake is to make anew or in a different form.

________________

While brainstorming what to write for this week’s episode, I realized that I had already started the post as a comment–and all because of something from the ever-inspiring Rarasaur and Grayson Queen! Recently I shared a memory with this dynamic duo  as a response to “Speak Geek to me Shakespeare,” which was posted on their collective blog: The Queen Creative. It’s a perfect fit for the remake theme, so I’m going to be remaking it for you today. Oh my, a remake of a remake. I do believe the creators of Community would be proud!

One day, my English Lit. teacher gave my best friend’s and I an excuse to fly our freak flag: a semester assignment prompting us to do a video remake of a scene from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Don’t ask me where the idea came from, but we decided to apply the play to the classic Spaghetti western: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. Despite the plot of the movie not really lining up with Romeo and Juliet, it worked out pretty well. We chose to film the scene where Mercutio kills Tybalt and is then killed by Romeo: Romeo was The Good, Tybalt The Bad, and Mercutio the Ugly.

The dress on the right is almost exactly like the one Juliet wore. Image source: Etsy

This is some of the most fun I’ve ever had. We put together costumes–I played Mercutio, wearing an ill-fitting, child-sized mailman costume; Romeo wore a large poncho and jeans with a white hat; Juliet wore a 1970s bridesmaid gown; and Tybalt (who was also Juliet) wore all black with a black cowboy hat. We made swords out of dowel rods and created five O’clock shadow with makeup. Thus, we became a group of sword-wielding cowboy hermaphrodites strolling down the antiquated town square of our local Pioneer Museum.

Together, we learned that acting is not easy. Even playing dead becomes difficult when a fly is sneaking up your nostril as you try not to breath in your constrictive mailman costume. We also learned that filming takes a long time to create a short video, and that editing takes even longer. The night before our project was due we realized we were several minutes shy of a six minute requirement, and we scrambled to film the next scene of the play in which the Friar and Juliet’s nurse convince Romeo to flee.

This is the actual museum where we filmed. Image Source: Pioneer Florida Museum and Village.

With an old blanket and some rope I became a monk, and a Navajo print nightgown and beaded headband made the former Juliet into her own Native American nurse. It went well considering that we had to film this bit with no script in one of our backyards. The Nurse urged Romeo to travel to Mantua by extolling the virtues of their new McDonald’s and lovely botanical gardens while the Monk, trying not to giggle, called him a moron for killing Tybalt. Romeo hammed up the drama, wailing over having to leave his beloved Juliet who now stood next to him as an Indian princess and had recently been stabbed by him as Tybalt.

Image source: alibaba.com.

Afterwards we edited until dawn, guzzled coffee, and dragged ourselves to school the next day. Our teacher loved it, our classmates seemed confused (especially when Romeo fled from killing Tybalt atop his lightening-fast stick horse), and we tried very hard to suppress both laughter and embarrassment as it played before our peers.

*clicking on an image will take you to its source.

1loveapril

This one is Hard to Write

Posted on by under 2013, Blog Fellowship, May, Memories

rarasaur, forthepromptless

Wednesday, April 24, 2013

Saudade is a Portuguese word that describes a deep emotional state of nostalgic longing for an absent something/someone that one loves. Moreover, it often carries a repressed knowledge that the object of longing will never return.

Saudade was once described as “the love that remains” after someone is gone. Saudade is the recollection of feelings, experiences, places or events that once brought excitement, pleasure, well-being, which now triggers the senses and makes one live again. It can be described as an emptiness, like someone (e.g., one’s children, parents, sibling, grandparents, friends, pets) or something (e.g., places, things one used to do in childhood, or other activities performed in the past) that should be there in a particular moment is missing, and the individual feels this absence. It brings sad and happy feelings all together, sadness for missing and happiness for having experienced the feeling.

_____________________

I’m pretty late with this Prompts for the Promptless from Rarasaur. I haven’t really been feeling 100% lately and haven’t been keeping up with other blogs well (or my own for that matter).

I could say it’s the back-to-back colds, updating pages and images for this blog, novel writing, or any number of things. The truth is I just haven’t been myself lately. Something broke inside of me in December. With the passing of my grandfather I came face-to-face with too many things, and I don’t know if I’ve been hiding from them or if my brain did what brains always do and put them neatly away in a box. It’s not a good box, things keep leaking out of it and leaving tracks across my cheeks.

As I saw him laying there, emaciated and dying, hitching breaths and refusing to go until his body simply couldn’t take anymore, I didn’t think about the good times. I thought about the times I simply wasn’t there. No matter how often my mom told me over the phone that I was missing my last moments with him, over four years of deepening states of dementia, I didn’t listen. I heard her, but there was so much between myself and going to see my grandfather that I just couldn’t bring myself to go.

My grandmother isn’t very nice, and my response to this has been to stay away from her. Not just her though, my entire extended family. I allowed my fear of and anger towards another person take from me memories I could have made, and now I have to find a way to forgive myself for that. I have to find a way because there is no going back. A slowly growing solace comes in that, recently, I have been able to remember what I couldn’t when sitting next to his death bed.

I remember weeks I would spend with my grandparents when we would work all day–my grandparents were always working–and settle down to hearty dinners followed by quiet games of Dominoes in the evenings. I remember watching a documentary on Pepsi Cola and Coca-Cola with the two of them sitting in their separate lounge chairs while I fought sleep on the sofa directly behind them. I remember the way my grandfather would hem and haw while he read the morning paper, licking his finger to turn pages, his mouth slightly open as it always was when he was trying to focus on something. He is the person who taught me how to fart and blame it on others in public, the man who never swore unless he was driving (then all bets were off), he was my only living grandpa and now he is gone.

It feels like the only tie I had left to that side of my family is gone too. The weekend of his passing and memorial services and funeral there were family events from which we were intentionally left out, though if anyone not involved in this were to ask of our absence they were most likely told we chose not to be there. People I had been told were waiting to talk to me seemed inexplicably cold and I had to wonder if they had been told lies about me before we had a chance to reunite. Other members of the family seemed to be trying to bait me into saying negative things about other family members, probably with the intent of using them against me.

Through all of this I couldn’t help but wonder how he had survived it all, and I felt so much more love for this man who had dealt with so much in his life while maintaining a grace and strength so tempered by humility that I only saw it in echoes after his passing.

I wish I could go back to that simpler time when youth helped me rise above everything and simply be a part of my extended family. What is it about teenagers and young children that makes them able to navigate rough waters so much more smoothly? As and adult I hide, from all of them, because it is simply too much to handle. It is easier to stay away from it, or so it seems, but as I learned in December: this too has its cost.

1loveapril

An Excuse to Talk about Monty Python

Posted on by under 2013, April, Deep Thoughts, Humor, Ponderings

I’d like to thank Rarasaur for giving me this excuse with Sortaginger’s suggested Prompts for the Promptless segment this week: Gallows Humor!

Really, who does Gallows Humor better than Monty Python (well, aside from the fellows who create South Park)? Whether traversing plague-infested England and admonishing people to bring out yer dead,

extolling the ex-virtues of an ex-parrot,

or harvesting organs before the harbinger has technically expired,

their view of history and the present brings an unexpected humor to the darkest travails of humanity. One could say their chief weapon is surprise, though we cannot forget their almost fanatical devotion to the pope either.

Honestly, I love anything that can make a person laugh at something taboo, serious, or dark. The reason being that learning to laugh at a thing removes its power over ourselves. Fear does little more than restrain us from moving forward. Laughter is both empowering and uplifting, and finding the humor in the grief simply highlights the human weaknesses which caused it in the first place. This serves to remind us that grief and sorrow are but a wee bite small part of life.

Besides, whenever life gets you down, Mrs.Brown and things seem hard or tough

and people are stupid, obnoxious or daft

and you feel that you’ve had quite enough,

look at gratuitous pictures of penises:

or listen to this song:

Above all remember this: if we can learn to laugh at all the darkness in the world we may gain the courage necessary to stand up to it, bringing about a day when we can sail off into the sunset together–moving against the tides of Westward expansion in all its forms. A wee band of merry pirates who will become capable of taking back this ship and setting a better course for humanity.

Note: clicking on an image will take you to its source.

1loveapril

The Gurus We Choose

Posted on by under Ponderings

Reblogged from rarasaur:

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I often find myself in situations where I have more questions than answers.  Even in finite studies, like mathematics, every time I find an answer, I reveal 3 more questions.  In spiritual matters, this ratio is magnified ten fold.

Last night, Dave and I watched a documentary called Kumaré, the "True Story of a False Prophet", and all day today my mind has been overwhelmed with questions.

Read more… 1,101 more words

I love this movie, so does Rarasaur and a bunch of other people I know: maybe you'll love it too! Give it a watch, it's on Netflix (oh, and get Netflix).