"A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another" (John 13:34)
To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you. ~Lewis B. Smedes
When we heal the earth, we heal ourselves. ~David Orr
A living planet is a much more complex metaphor for deity than just a bigger father with a bigger fist. If an omniscient, all-powerful Dad ignores your prayers, it's taken personally. Hear only silence long enough, and you start wondering about his power. His fairness. His very existence. But if a world mother doesn't reply, Her excuse is simple. She never claimed conceited omnipotence. She has countless others clinging to her apron strings, including myriad species unable to speak for themselves. To Her elder offspring She says - go raid the fridge. Go play outside. Go get a job. Or, better yet, lend me a hand. I have no time for idle whining. ~David Brin
If women want any rights more than they's got, why don't they just take them, and not be talking about it. (Sojourner Truth)
"My advice to the women of the world is to raise more hell and fewer dahlias" - W.A.White
“I propose that the core of sadism, common to all its manifestations, is the passion to have absolute control over a living being, whether an animal, a child, a man, or a woman†(Eric Fromme)
"It is no measure of emotional health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society"
The capacity to give one's attention to a sufferer is a very rare and difficult thing; it is almost a miracle; it is a miracle.
"There are trying days when your last nerve is being played like a fiddle.
There are discouraging times when the word 'hope' has lost all meaning.
There are days when you stand between a rock and a hard place and the hard place feels better.
BUT YOUR SPIRIT WILL NOT BE BROKEN.
Remember those who came before you: the countless women who cried, who suffered, who struggled and who died......so that you would have a smoother path to walk on.
They stood and you'll stand.
Be proud and strong and know:
YOUR SPIRIT WILL NEVER BE BROKEN"
There is no pillow so soft as a clear conscience
People are afraid of what they might find
if they analyse themselves too much.
But you have to crawl into the wound
to discover what your fears are.
Once the bleeding starts, the cleansing begins.
LIFE IS DIFFICULT
This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths (The first of the 'Four Noble Truths' which Buddha taught was 'Life is suffering'). It is a great truth because once we truly see this truth, we transcend it. Once we truly know that life is difficult--once we truly understand and accept it--then life is no longer difficult. Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters.
M. Scott Peck (The Road Less Travelled)
“If to be feelingly alive to the sufferings of my fellow-creatures is to be a fanatic, I am one of the most incurable fanatics ever permitted to be at large.â€
(William Wilberforce)
"Jesus was a dissident on the fringes of the Empire of his day. He stood with everybody who was nobody. He made a beeline to stand with those on the margins, those whose dignity had been denied, the poor and excluded the easily despised, the demonized, and those whose burdens were more than they could bear. And they killed him for it."
— Fr. Gregory Boyle
There is little to no evidence that Jesus ever intended for us to worship him. Rather, he wanted us to be like him: to trust like him, to think like him, to love like him, to follow in his steps and do greater things than even he did. And to ensure that our natural feelings of devotion would manifest in healthy ways, he said, "Whatever you do to the least of these (the poor, the outcast, the needy, the hungry, etc), you do unto me."
That little man in black says woman can't have as much rights as man because Christ wasn't a woman. Where did your Christ come from?...From God and a woman. Man has nothing to do with him.†(Sojourner Truth)
WRITING, BOOKS, INJUSTICE, POETRY, ART, MUSIC, FAITH, SOUND, COLOUR, LIGHT, ANTIQUES, POLITICS, KARMA, ANCIENT HISTORY, WOMEN, HOPE, MEDITATION, SERENITY, CHILD PSYCHOLOGY, NARCISSISTIC PERSONALITY DISORDER, THE SACRED and the DIVINE, CHILD PROTECTION, ANIMAL PROTECTION
MATERNAL-FEMINISM, SELF-HARM, THEOLOGICAL DEBATE, ADDICTION MEDICINE, LEARNING, SUICIDE PREVENTION, HUMOUR, SELF-ILLUMINATION, THE PEACEFUL WAY.
"Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm — but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves."" — T. S. Eliot (1888-1965)
You don't have to be anti-man to be pro-woman
I have come to the conclusion, from observation and experience, that marriage is like long fart. An unpleasant experience that we must walk through and the only good thing about it is that we learn how long we can really hold our breath.
WITH PROFOUND GRATITUDE AND ADMIRATION FOR THEIR COURAGE AND REFUSAL TO BE BROKEN - THE PIONEERS OF THE WOMEN'S RIGHTS MOVEMENT:
SUSAN CADY STANTON, SOJOURNER TRUTH, ALICE PAUL, EMMALINE, SYLVIA and CHRISTABEL PANKHURST, ALICE PAUL, EDITH COWAN, INEZ MILHOLLAND BOISSEVAN, LUCY BURN, DORA LEWIS
Ida Wells-Barrett, Wangari Maathai, Sarah Bernhardt, Carrie Chapman Catt, Mourning Dove, Gabriela Mistral, Edith Spurlock Sampson, Georgia O'Keeffe, Jeanette Rankin, Junko Tabei, Margaret Mead, Aung San Suu Kyi, Gabrielle Chanel, Bessie Smith, Josephine Baker, Wilma P. Mankiller, Lucretia Mott, and Karen Horney
and my personal heroes: the New Zealand suffragette KATE SHEPPARD (Among self-governing countries still extant today, New Zealand was the FIRST to give women unrestricted voting rights in national elections in 1893) and SUSAN B. ANTHONY (I am a descendant of Susan B. Anthony, hence my theory that Feminism is genetic!)
THE NIGHT OF TERROR
The women were innocent and defenseless. And by the end of the night, they were barely alive. Forty-prison guards wielding clubs and their warden's blessing went on a rampage against the 33 helpless women wrongly convicted of "obstructing sidewalk traffic." They beat Lucy Burn, chained her hands to the cell bars above her head and left her hanging for the night, bleeding and gasping for air.
They hurled Dora Lewis into a dark cell, smashed her head against an iron bed and knocked her out cold. Her cellmate, Alice Cosu, thought Lewis was dead and suffered a heart attack. Additional affidavits describe the guards grabbing, dragging, beating, choking, slamming, pinching, twisting and kicking the women.
Thus unfolded the "Night of Terror" on Nov. 15, 1917, when the warden at the Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia ordered his guards to teach a lesson to the suffragists imprisoned there because they dared to picket Woodrow Wilson's White House for the right to vote. For weeks, the women's only water came from an open pail. Their food--all of it colorless slops--was infested with worms. When one of the leaders, Alice Paul, embarked on a hunger strike, they tied her to a chair, forced a tube down her throat and poured liquid into her until she vomited. She was tortured like this for weeks until word was smuggled out to the press. It is jarring to watch Woodrow Wilson and his cronies try to persuade a psychiatrist to declare Alice Paul insane so that she could be permanently institutionalized. And it is inspiring to watch the doctor refuse. Alice Paul was strong, he said, and brave. That didn't make her crazy.
The doctor admonished the men: "Courage in women is often mistaken for insanity."
I am passionate about child protection. My career is in child safety/protection/intervention which is a very emotionally harrowing job but I wouldn't want to do anything else.
I AM STRONGLY OPPOSED TO THE CHEMICAL STRAITJACKET - RITALIN (far too many of the children I see have their pain 'silenced' by this appalling drug).
“In today’s society, writes Dr. Breggin (Talking Back to Ritalin), Ritalin is being used to medicate children into submission. This makes the drug yet one more version of the chemical straightjacket, ensuring that the teacher has an easier task in maintaining classroom order, but only by doping out the children who would otherwise make it harder. Dr. Breggin accuses our school system of waging a “war on children†in which schools are selectively suppressing some of the most intelligent, brave, energetic, and creative children.
He writes:
There’s a war against children going on in our schools and the most outstanding of our children are the first to be targeted for control by drugs. We’re using drugs the way gardeners use herbicides to destroy weeds—except these toxins are aimed at the flowering of our children. Schools are not the only institutions that encourage the drugging of children. Controlling children with psychiatric medications is rampant in foster homes and in any institutional setting, such as juvenile detention centers, youth shelters/refuges and prisons, where docility is valued. "The psychiatric diagnosing and drugging of children should be viewed as a form of technological child abuse — conformity enforced by physical suppression of the brain. However, I do not blame the millions of parents and teachers who have been hoodwinked by organized psychiatry and medicine."
THR TRUTH ABOUT KIDDIE COKE (AKA RITALIN)
Common Names for Ritalin:
Diet Coke – Kiddy Cocaine – R-Ball – Vitamin R – Rids – Skittles – Smarties – Poor man's cocaine
Ritalin is the common name for methylphenidate, classified by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) as a Schedule II narcotic — the same classification as cocaine, morphine and amphetamines. It is abused by teens for its stimulant effects.
While the law forbids unrestricted distribution of these powerful stimulants, the sad fact remains that these substances are freely available almost anywhere. "Kiddie cocaine," as it has been called, is handed out like candy. In some schools as many as 20 percent of the students take Ritalin regularly.
"Children may not remember what you did or said but they will ALWAYS remember how you made them feel"
I adore ALL animals - ALL OF THEM!
MY DOG OSCAR, IS MY 'BESTEST' FRIEND
IN THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD.
HE WAS TRULY A GIFT FROM GOD
AND HAS PLAYED A MAJOR PART
IN MY RECOVERY.
I LOVE YOU MY LITTLE MAN...
P.S.
My precious daughter Tonia again...
She died suddenly when she was 5yrs old
and I miss her so very, very much...
"tears are words from the heart that can't be spoken"
Stephen Hawking. Tanya Major. Peter Breggin MD. Michael Leunig. Max Lucado. Aung San Suu Kyi. Deepak Chopra. Marianne Williamson. Father Chris Riley. Helen LaKelly Hunt. Sojourner Truth. Hetty Johnstone. Patch Adams MD. Debbie Kilroy. Robert Frost. Carl Jung. Anais Nin. High Court Chief Justice Michael Kirby. Rosa Parks. Melody Beattie. Dr. Seuss. Theodore Dalrymple. Master Charles Cannon. Elie Wiesel. Father Joseph Martin. John Walsh. Sir Winston Churchill.
William and Catherine Booth - co-founders of the Salvation Army
Dr. Edward Bach - founder of Bach Flower Remedies
Dr Joseph Hahnemann - founder of Homeopathy
Dr. Bob and Bill W. - co-founders of Alcoholics Anonymous
Bravehearts
YOUTH OFF THE STREETS
SISTERS INSIDE
TO WRITE LOVE ON HER ARMS
LINDY CHAMBERLAIN
HIS HOLINESS THE 14th DALAI LAMA OF TIBET
IAN WHITE
THE SALVATION ARMY
THE INNOCENCE PROJECT
MUSIC IS WHAT FEELINGS SOUND LIKE
WHEN WORDS FAIL, MUSIC SPEAKS
Reading books has always been, and continues to be, one of the greatest joys of my life.
Old Hippies, Feminists (preferably old too!), ANYONE IN RECOVERY or who has the desire to stop drinking.
Rebels, eccentrics, dissidents, activists and pacifists, loonies and weirdo's, anarchists, the marginalised and the excluded.
The first Hippie is said to have been a drop-out Jewish carpenter, named Jesus ("The Nazz"). He rebuked the state approved religious leaders of his time and instructed his disciples to sell what they had, give to the poor and follow him.
Picture this guy, with long hair, a beard, a robe, a rope belt and sandals on, who just came to Jerusalem, his first trip for the Passover. Lo and behold, he walks into the Temple of Herod and upends all the tables of the money changers. “Usurers, get out of here, you turned this place into a den or robbers!†What an entrance! What a mouth! What heads turn!
“Who is this guy,†one money changer says to another. “Who knows! I heard someone say he thinks he’s the King of the Israelites.†“No,†the other says, “he must be nuts.†“Nuts or very ambitious. How can we get something on him?†“Somebody should turn him into the Romans.†“Hey, not a bad idea.†And someone says, “What’s his name?†And somebody answers, “Jesus, no less, you know short for ‘Yahweh,’ and Christ, the ‘anointed one,’ the Messiah.†“Wow, this guy’s got big ones!†“Yeah, he’s going places. Where, I’m not sure.â€
Meanwhile, this Jesus of Nazareth climbs from his first dissident step to the height of his ministry, attracting huge crowds, thousands around Galilee and Perea (Israel and Jordan in modern day parlance). He speaks in parables, like the Prodigal Son and the Sower. He’s talking unconditional self-sacrifice and God-like love for God and all people. In his sermons he preaches service, humility, forgiveness of sin, faith, turning the other cheek, even loving your enemies as well as friends, and following the spirit as well as the letter of the law. He’s goes on, it is said, to have raised a fellow named Lazarus from the dead.
The guy’s radical, out there, making waves in a dead sea. In other words, this guy is a hippie!
The Alcoholic Blackout: walking, talking, unconscious and lethal
Blackouts devastate individuals and families, and the price tag is enormous. Yet the police and courts, doctors and hospitals, know little or nothing about them. The social consequences of blackouts are enormous. I have no doubt there are thousands of Americans blacked out as I write this. Some fraction of them will cause great damage today.
My experience is that people will not believe blackouts are anything other than a transparent excuse for anti-social behavior. People in a blackout are in great peril. And no one realizes it. They risk harming themselves and others. Nothing less than death and ruined lives may be at stake. Blackouts are not harmless fun.
People in a blackout are potentially lethal, a danger to themselves and all others. They walk but have no idea where they are going, talk but do not know what they say, drive without destination. They are in an unconscious state. If they have a violent streak, they are a serious menace. (by Donal F. Sweeney, M.D. with Robert A. Liston)
MINDFUL RECOVERY
I FIRMLY believe that my alcoholic cravings and mental obsessions have been healed by God's Grace, by following the 12 Steps of the AA program, applying nutritional, neuro-biochemical and orthomolecular restoration/maintenance and by practicing a Buddhist philosophy based on "mindfulness"
"You are not your thoughts. Our thoughts take us away from being here now. If I am thinking about the past, or worried about the future, I am a prisoner of my thoughts. When I take a moment to observe myself having thoughts, I am no longer the thoughts. I get to be and observe at the same time. That's why if I continue to come back to my breath which always occurs in the here and now, it draws me into the present. And from that vantage point I can observe as past and future attempt to draw me away from the moment"
Alcoholics Anonymous
Big Book Online
The first thing in the human personality that dissolves in alcohol is dignity
Everyone who drinks is not a poet. Some of us drink because we're not poets. ~From the movie Arthur
Don't do drugs because if you do drugs you'll go to prison, and drugs are really expensive in prison. ~John Hardwick