thinking thursday.
[Can you spot the gay soldier? I thought not.]
mind :: my brain and yours
John McCain, really: "Why are we now trying to jam this thing through?" said Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who led the campaign against the provision. 'It is all about the battle-effectiveness, the morale, of the men and women who are serving in the military.'" No, John, honey, it's all about discrimination.
"We are taught nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, grammar, punctuation, annunciation, the list goes on. However, intent behind words – psychological and emotional intent that is, is left mostly untouched. Many don’t understand the impact of single words that dramatically affect our life." Should = Guilt, for example: "Every time you use the word 'should' or someone tells you 'you should do something' replace the word 'SHOULD' with the word 'COULD.'"
What’s behind Rhonda Byrne’s spiritual empire? An interesting look at "The Secret" author/producer–beneath the multimillion dollar manifesting surface. It ain't all that pretty.
How to hatch a natural writer:
- Model reading.
- Make sure kids have a variety of writing instruments: paper, pencils, pens, access to a computer. Don't be stingy with masking tape, like some people we know.
- Help kids make "love books" as presents instead of wobbly ashtrays.
- Coerce relatives into writing real letters and postcards to your children, not just "Wish you were here." It'll be good for the relatives too.
- Give each child a place to keep his or her writing. For teens, this means a locked box whose privacy no one, including you, will violate.
body :: my place and yours
What a real, honest, beautiful world it would be if beauty wasn't defined by magazine editors.
Brave girl eating: "I learned that anorexia isn't a choice or a joke. That in fact it's a one-way ticket to hell, a hell made even worse by virtue of the fact that other people don't recognize it as suffering because they think, as I did, that anorexia is something you decide to do, not something that happens to you. That when people say, 'I could use a little anorexia,' they're speaking out of the same ignorance I shared, before anorexia became deeply personal to my family. Before it moved into our house, got into every closet and cabinet, infected all of us with its insidious illogic, its perverse and self-destructive poison." (Thanks to Kathryn Ruth Schuth)
soul :: my heart and yours
Go on ahead, sugar. Have a wild love for the world. Live your life in widening circle that reach out across the world.
As if there is nothing to lose: "When I had little, everything I had was important. If I found a sweater I liked at the Goodwill, it felt like my birthday. In a way, having nothing meant everything in the world was mine. Even a sandwich was cause for celebration, and nothing distracted me from enjoying it. Every gift was a delight, and I was grateful for everything I had." (Thanks to Judy Kinney)
Wisdom on top of confusion: "We need to give up something. We can’t try to layer wisdom on top of confusion. The spiritual path is about what we give up, not what we get. We seem to always want to get something––spiritual insights or experiences––as a kind of commodity. But don’t these wisdom traditions teach us that, in essence, there’s nothing to get? We need to give up what obscures the abiding wisdom and the abiding reality that is already there." -Tim Olmstead (Thanks to Kathryn Ruth Schuth)
Follow the fun, the magic. Settle for nothing less. Know when it's not right.
A final thought :: Why is it that, as a culture, we are more comfortable seeing two men holding guns than holding hands? -Ernest Gaines
(image from Tim V Johnson on Facebook)
