EARTH MOTHER

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Peace to all who enter here
I thought it was time I turned these children around, so my friends can see their beautiful faces.
RICHMOND CHRISTMAS PARADE 2007
My roles as mother and grandmother define me. I have an 'occupation' with a non-profit organization because I still live in a material world where I require shelter and food. Possessions mean little to me. If my house were burning down, I would rescue my 12 year old cat, my 25+ year old turtle, my photos and my books. My pipe dream is to live in a tiny cottage near the ocean, take long walks on the beach at dawn and support myself working odd jobs in between doing random acts of kindness for other people. That would be a definition of 'heaven' to me.
My likes (in no particular order): Sunshine, the ocean, mountains, the sky on a clear night, music, babies and little children (because they still 'know' EVERYTHING), young adults (because they deserve better than they're getting, but they still have hopes and dreams) traveling, books, writing, poetry,'REAL' people, genuine laughter, watching people dance (wishing I could...sigh), witnessing random acts of kindness, old 'thoughts' made new again ...(to be continued)
My dislikes (in no particular order): WAR, partisan politics and politicians, SNOW (unless I can sit quietly by a window and watch it fall), anything to do with numbers or money, the inadequacies of HUMAN language and the accompanying frustration, platitudes, insincerity (blatant or subtle), cruelty, selfishness, superiority, racism, classism, intolerance...(to be continued)
I don't eat animals and they don't eat me.
"Hope is the thing with feathers That perches in the soul, And sings the tune without the words, And never stops at all."
Emily Dickinson
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
"All truly wise thoughts have been thoughts already thousands of times; but to make them truly ours, we must think them over again honestly, till they take root in our personal experience."
C. S. LEWIS
"You don't HAVE a soul. You ARE a soul. You HAVE a body."
DAWNA MARKOVA
"I will not die an unlived life. I will not live in fear of falling or catching fire. I choose to inhabit my days, to allow my living to open me, to make me less afraid, more accessible, to loosen my heart until it becomes a wing, a torch, a promise. I choose to risk my significance; to live so that which comes to me as seed goes to the next as blossom and that which comes to me as blossom, goes on as fruit."
LEO TOLSTOY
“Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is, everything exists, only because I love. Everything is united by it alone. Love is God, and to die means that I, a particle of love, shall return to the general and eternal source.”
MARK TWAIN
"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."
HOWARD THURMAN
"Don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive and then go do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive."
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
"Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I am permitted to hold for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations."
WALT WHITMAN
"Love the earth and sun and animals, Despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, Stand up for the stupid and crazy, Devote your income and labor to others... And your very flesh shall be a great poem."
ALBERT SCHWEITZER
"Impart as much as you can of your spiritual being to those who are on the road with you, and accept as something precious what comes back to you from them."
GILDA RADNER
"I wanted a perfect ending. Now I've learned, the hard way, that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next. Delicious Ambiguity."
PEARL S. BUCK
"If our American way of life fails the child, it fails us all."
ALBERT EINSTEIN
"There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle."
ANNE MORROW LINDBERGH
"I do not believe that sheer suffering teaches. If suffering alone taught, all the world would be wise, since everyone suffers. To suffering must be added mourning, understanding, patience, love, openness and the willingness to remain vulnerable."
WENDELL BERRY
"When despair grows in me and I wake in the middle of the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting for their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free."
ANNE LAMOTT
“Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: you don't give up.”
MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.
"I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. That is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant."
JIMI HENDRIX
"When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace."
PEACE PILGRIM
"This is the way of Peace: Overcome evil with good, and falsehood with truth, and hatred with love."
SOGYAL RINPOCHE
"...when we finally know we are dying, and all other sentient beings are dying with us, we start to have a burning, almost heartbreaking sense of the fragility and preciousness of each moment and each being, and from this can grow a deep, clear, limitless compassion for all beings."
THICH NHAT HANH
"When we come into contact with the other person, our thoughts and actions should express our mind of compassion, even if that person says and does things that are not easy to accept. We practice in this way until we see clearly that our love is not contingent upon the other person being lovable."
AMMA
"Love is our true essence. Love has no limitations of caste, religion, race or nationality. We are all beads strung together on the same thread of LOVE."
MAHATMA GHANDI
"When I despair, I remember that all through history the ways of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants, and murderers, and for a time they can seem invincible, but in the end they always fall. Think of it--always."
GEORGE WASHINGTON CARVER
"How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant of the weak and strong. Because someday in life you will have been all of these."
KAHLIL GIBRAN
"Keep me away from the wisdom which does not cry, the philosophy which does not laugh and the greatness which does not bow before children."
JOHN LENNON
"We've got this gift of love, but love is like a precious plant. You can't just accept it and leave it in the cupboard or just think it's going to get on by itself. You've got to keep watering it. You've got to really look after it and nurture it."
RAINER MARIA RILKE
"Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our LOVE."
FRED ROGERS
"I feel the greatest gift we can give to anybody is the gift of our honest self."
JIDDU KRISHNAMURTI
"To love is the most important thing in life. But what do we mean by love? When you love someone because that person loves you in return, surely that is not love. To love is to have that extraordinary feeling of affection without asking anything in return."
"My religion is very simple; my religion is kindness."
A. A. MILNE
"Piglet sidled up to Pooh from behind. 'Pooh!' he whispered. 'Yes, Piglet?' 'Nothing,' said Piglet, taking Pooh's paw. 'I just wanted to be sure of you.'"