Floods take land and crops, yet thankful for life's gifts! [RESILIENCE], [THANKFULNESS], [FAITH]

A BEAUTIFUL piece about resilience in the face of difficulties from the excellent blog Baha'i Perspectives.

"But I am blessed."

Posted: 14 Apr 2009

You will have to forgive me if this is against proper netiquette, but I am going to blog about one of my own articles.  It's one I wrote about after a trip to flood-affected areas of northern Namibia, telling the story of Helvy, a 84-year old great grandmother.  I met her in a relocation camp, where her village had moved after their homes were submerged when the nearby river burst its banks.

Almost six hundred people are living in the camp, five or six families in each tent. They have to sleep on the hard ground, and at night when it gets colder, only a few have blankets to cover them.  There are two taps in the whole camp, and the Red Cross has built three temporary toilets on the outskirts.  They have lost not only their homes, but also their fields of maize and sorghum.  So, not only is this year's harvest gone, but next year's one is lost too, because the seeds for next year come from this year. 

I met Helvy during our brief visit to the camp, a little bit after midday.  She was dressed in what I suspect is her best dress, accessorised with a beautiful long handmade bead necklace.  There had been a state visit earlier in the day, and the whole camp was spick and span.  Helvy was sitting outside her tent, cradling a sleeping child in her arms.  I don't know if it was one of her own great-grandchildren, but from the number of children clustered around her tent, I think she must be a child-magnet.

Through an interpreter, she told me about the night they had to abandon their home and escape to the camp.  She told me that they had lost most of their possessions and their food and about how scared she had been.  Then she gave me a blinding smile, and said "But I am blessed.  My family is safe, I am safe, and we are together.  I am very thankful to God".

I was taken aback.  After all this hardship, shouldn't she be bitter and miserable? Shouldn't she be bemoaning her fate, instead of being thankful?  I kept thinking about her all day, humbled by her radiant acquiescence, her detachment from material things, and her love for her family. She seemed to epitomise what the Baha'i Writings tell us about tests and difficulties:

For what can dark doubts do with the light of guidance, or clouds with the shining moon? Tests and trials only cause agitation to weak hearts. But the pure souls, a hundred thousand tests are but to them like mirage, imagination and shadow. 

Praise be to God that thou hast kept steadfast with all firmness under the millstone of tests like unto a grain of diamond. Be not grieved; tests lead to the development of holy souls and the ardor of the flame of fire causeth the pure gold to shine and the violence of winds is conducive to the growth and thriving of a firm and well rooted tree.

So the next time there is a blip in my ordered life, and things do not go as planned and I begin to feel sorry for myself, I hope I will remember Helvy and her blinding smile.

Allowing time for what we ENJOY: value of MUSIC -- [BEAUTY], [THANKFULNESS], [JOY]

From the excellent blog Baha'i Perspectives.

 

Turn it up

Posted: 09 Apr 2009 03:19 AM PDT

Recently, my husband and I were on a long road trip using the cheapest rental car we could find. As a result of our thriftiness, we had a car with only radio access (no ipod connection), which made for some meaningful one-on-one conversation. After a good thirty minutes of talking about work and our to-do-lists and so on, we started to get more creative.

I asked him, "What are the things you enjoy doing the most?"

He replied, "Are you serious? You know what things I enjoy doing!"

"Well… sure, I know some of them… maybe even most of them… but maybe there are things that will be new to me."

My husband, always willing to play along, proceeded to highlight a list of things he enjoys doing, some of which I definitely knew and a few things that were new to me.

Then he proceeded to ask me the same question. I started to list the things I really enjoy doing, and a very strange thing happened. Halfway through my list, I began to tear up and eventually cry a bit. I realized that most of the things on my list were things I WANTED to do, but not things I was actually DOING. Woah, man!

My husband and I proceeded to break down my list and realized that most of the things I enjoy doing are creative in nature (i.e. reading for pleasure, dancing to happy music, listening to inspiring music, and the list goes on and on). Why wasn't I doing any of it?

Initially I blamed it on a lack of time, but eventually we decided that if you really want to do an activity, you tend to make some time for it. Skip past further novice psychoanalysis, and we realized it all boiled down to guilt. I felt guilty spending an hour curled up with a good book or taking the time to listen to an inspiring song rather than using that same hour to do something more "productive" like responding to work e-mail after hours or doing an extra load of laundry.

The Baha'i writings speak highly of engaging in the arts such as music. In one passage, Shoghi Effendi tells us the following:

It is the music which assists us to affect the human spirit; it is an important means which helps us to communicate with the soul.

(Compilations, The Compilation of Compilations vol II, p. 80)

Abdu'l-Baha tell us the following:

Among certain nations of the East, music was considered reprehensible, but in this new age the Manifest Light hath, in His holy Tablets, specifically proclaimed that music, sung or played, is spiritual food for soul and heart.

(Abdu'l-Baha, Selections from the Writings of Abdu'l-Baha, p. 112)

I started thinking that maybe my soul decided to start that conversation to let me know that it's starved for some creative food. Although it's still not second nature, I have allotted myself twenty minutes a day since our road trip to engage in non "productive" activities. I'm starting to think that these twenty minutes might end up being the most productive minutes I have.

 

Effect of beauty on the spirit, blessings of generosity -- [BEAUTY], [JOY], [ORDERLINESS], [GENEROSITY],

 

This is from Druzelle's enlightening blog Luminous Realities: Exploring the Creative Process. Source is here. 

 

A Cherry Blossom Day

Posted: 05 Apr 2009 07:47 AM PDT

Cherry blossoms at Washington, D.C. Tidal Basin - Wikimedia

Early April in Washington, D.C. means the Cherry Blossom Festival is in bloom once again. The cherry trees – more than 3,000 – were a gift from the mayor of Tokyo in 1912, "a diplomatic gesture of goodwill." I can still recall from my own visit what a delicious feeling it is to walk along paths surrounded by such a graceful abundance of gentle beauty.

Even if you cannot be there, allow yourself to step out of the current flow of texting, twittering, and the rest of it to spend a few meditative moments in this video of A Cherry Blossom Day, sunrise to sunset. Let the haunting, instrumental strains of Sakura, a traditional Japanese folk song, seep into your spirit as the beauty of the day opens before you.

"Although sounds are but vibrations in the air which affect the ear's auditory nerve, and these vibrations are but chance phenomena carried along through the air, even so, see how they move the heart," wrote 'Abdu'l-Baha,* another 1912 visitor to Washington, D.C. "A wondrous melody is wings for the spirit, and maketh the soul to tremble for joy."

The physical realm exerts a powerful influence on the spirit, 'Abdu'l-Baha asserted in a more detailed explanation. This month's Scientific American Mind backs him up. Did you know scientific studies show that gazing on nature improves your focus? That the amount of light, height of celings, and other aspects of our living spaces have significant affect on how our minds work? People who care are paying attention to this emerging neuroscience and figuring how to apply it in the real world. Find interesting details for your own use in the article.

In the meantime give yourself the gift of a few meditative moments amongst the cherry blossoms.

* 'Abdu'l-Baha was the eldest son of Baha'u'llah. For more see The Master - Chapter 62 in The Story of Baha'u'llah.

 

Building Unity Slowly But Surely [RESPECT], [UNDERSTANDING], [LOVE], [UNITY]

An inspirational article from Kathleen at the intelligent website Planetbahai.org. Source is here.

Unity the Easy Way

by Kathleen Kettler Lehman

Appeared: 04/03/2009

A while back Elizabeth mentioned that she and a group of her college friends were sitting around discussing their "parts". For those unfamiliar with this great American tradition, it goes like this: a bunch of American kids engage in a conversation consisting of statements like, "I'm part Swedish, and part Irish, and part Italian"; "I'm Dutch and African-American"; "I'm Cherokee, English, and a little bit German"; and so forth. You get the idea. You don't have to be a kid to do this. All ages can indulge. It is, I think, a uniquely American exercise born of the many ethnic streams that have come together to make a modern American. Even if one of your ancestors came over on Mayflower, chances are more than one of them met somebody who came over on a different ship. Or walked over. Either way, very few Americans are purebred anything, and most of them are ridiculously proud of their various "parts".

Now that everybody's curious, okay: I'm German, French, and Ukrainian. How about that one? Dale's family has been here longer than mine (the earliest Lehman dates we're sure of are 1804; earliest Kettlers are circa 1832)—as far as we can tell, he's English, Swiss, German, and Dutch for sure, with a probable Welsh connection that no one can quite pin down. In our grandkids' generation, Bill has added Irish and Scottish to the mix, and T.J. has supplemented with Greek, Scottish, and Cherokee.

One of my favorite true stories about this sort of thing was told to me by a colleague at the Chicagoland library in which I worked. Her dad's family was Polish, her mom's Czech, and all four of her grandparents had come to America as children in the early twentieth century. Her parents were both bilingual. There is apparently enough similarity between the two Slavic languages (I don't speak either, so I couldn't say for sure!) that when she and her brother were young, and her parents didn't want them to know what they were talking about, her dad would talk to her mom in Polish and her mom would answer in Czech. Mom and Dad could understand each other, but the kids hadn't a clue.

Long ago, dynastic marriages were common—you know, the king of Country X married his daughter to the son of the king of Country Y to form an alliance. Muhammad Himself was a party to some of these arrangements. It was to be understood that this sort of thing created a more permanent sort of unity than a mere treaty. Frequently both courses were pursued simultaneously to strengthen the bonds between two nations. This ancient tradition continued into the twentieth century, when monarchy began to be déclassé.

I think there's a lesson here for everyone. In America we've been carrying out a grand, freewheeling experiment in hybridization for a couple of centuries. At whatever point in time Samara's widely separated ancestors parted—Greek and Cherokee—there was probably a lot of ice on the ground. Or maybe it was just starting to snow. The long-sundered lines are back together again. I suspect that we are seeing some of the effects of this in taller, more robust people with longer lifespans. Hybrid vigor is good, in lots of ways.

I suspect that the key to solving racial issues is here, too. We've allowed the artificial designations of race to overwhelm our common sense. The more often we put checkboxes on forms and keep census statistics, the more deeply we imbed this false distinction into our consciousness. We don't solve the problem by substituting "African-American" for "black" or "Negro", we just change its name. I don't think there's any point going through Samara and Gabriel's DNA and seeing if we can isolate the Cherokee fractions from the Greek, French, or English.

Unity, perhaps, will arrive in just this manner: little by little, day by day. One friendship at a time. One marriage at a time. One family at a time. One neighborhood at a time. One day we'll all have too many "parts" to count, and by then we'll have forgotten what they were, and it won't matter anymore anyway.

Maybe we should try something like this: let's all be Americans. Or, since I'm addressing a global audience, Cosmopolites. And let's hang up our various ethnicities in a big closet. We don't have to keep them there. We can take them out when we want to celebrate Oktoberfest or Kwanzaa. We should certainly check them over from time to time for wear and tear. We can't let moths get to them, either. But when we can be human one hundred percent of the time and American eighty percent of the time, we'll have gone quite a way toward solving some of the issues that are beginning to overtake us. When we've internalized that what everyone wants is peace and quiet and a chance to raise the next generation without fear and want—and we're serious about addressing the many difficult questions involved—we'll be halfway there. Right now we're just starting. But I have hope that the more we become Japanese Spanish Apache Norwegian Persians, the closer we will come to understanding that.

Ye observe to what a degree the world is in continual turmoil and conflict, and to what a pass its nations have now come. Perchance will the lovers of God succeed in upraising the banner of human unity, so that the one-coloured tabernacle of the Kingdom of Heaven will cast its sheltering shadow over all the earth; that misunderstandings among the world's peoples will vanish away; that all nations will mingle one with another, dealing with one another even as the lover with his beloved.

It is your duty to be exceedingly kind to every human being, and to wish him well; to work for the upliftment of society; to blow the breath of life into the dead; to act in accordance with the instructions of Bahá'u'lláh and walk His path -- until ye change the world of man into the world of God.

('Abdu'l-Bahá, Selections from the Writings of 'Abdu'l-Bahá, # 47, p. 89)

Life on earth like watching a movie [UNDERSTANDING], [WISDOM], [CARE], [SERVICE]

From Elika Mahony's insightful blog http://www.elikamahony.com/. Source is here.

The World is but a Show

Thank you for your responses on my last blog post: 'The Purpose of Tests'. Many of you shared your thoughts privately and sent them to my personal email account - totally understandable as this can be a sensitive and personal subject. I asked a couple of my friends if I could share their insights on this blog and they kindly agreed… One friend shared a powerful dream they had had about learning to be a 'hollow reed' after being severely tested and having been stripped from one of their most prized possessions - their musical instrument.

Another friend shared that tests and difficulties really make you become detached from your ego…they humble you and bring you down to your knees…. Thank you to my friends who shared their responses on the blog too - I really enjoyed reading your insightful comments.

One of the reasons I wanted to make the CD, Fire and Gold, is precisely because it is on the theme of tests and difficulties and is a subject we all experience. Because it's a common thread in all our lives, everyone can identify with it.

Below is one of the quotations that I chose to set to music for the CD on a similar theme of how this world is just a show. It is the title song from the CD, Fire and Gold. You can hear it by clicking on the 2nd song on the playlist entitled 'Fire and Gold.' Click here to go to the Fire and Gold music page to listen.

"The world is but a show, vain and empty, a mere nothing, bearing the semblance of reality. Set not your affections upon it… The world is like a vapor in a desert, which the thirsty dreameth to be water and striveth after it with all his might, until when he cometh unto it, he findeth it to be mere illusion".

-Bahá'u'lláh

This quote has such depth in meaning and when I reflect on it I understand that the world is not real. It's just an illusion and it's passing. Anything that passes ultimately cannot be real. To give you an example, it's like watching a movie - it has a reality in that moment when we're watching it, but then it's over. Thinking of it in symbolic terms, it's as though we are the actors in the movie. We're here in this world observing a movie but when the movie's over, we leave the theatre. What we do in the movie dictates who we are when we leave the movie. What we've done in this world and what we've developed are who we are. I believe that when we leave this world we take two things - our good deeds (what we've done) and our virtues (who we are). The only things we get to keep eternally are things that we give away, ie. our service to others. When we are of service there is an element of sacrifice. We give up that time to help someone else. That act of service is ours forever and that's what we take with us when we leave this world. The reason we take it with us is because we gave it away. I believe, however, that one has to be of service with a pure motive and with true sincerity otherwise I don't think it translates as true service. Of course those we aid will benefit but I don't think our soul could fully benefit unless it's done with the purest of motives.

The phrase that echoes in my mind from the above quotation is: "Set not your affections upon it…" - a warning sign not to get attached to this world. I would love to hear your thoughts or any inspirational stories you would like to share…

Airways plane crash-landing in Hudson ends HAPPILY! [HELPFULNESS], [CONSIDERATION], [COOPERATION]

An optimistic and happy posting by Savvybeliever on her perceptive blog Savvybeliever's Weblog. Enjoy!

January 16, 2009

Airplane crash-landing in Hudson River cause for celebration

Posted by savvybeliever under Doing the Right Thing

Since hubby Dave is a longtime air traffic controller, he brings home aviation-related news.  When he told me about the US Airways plane crash-landing in the Hudson River near Manhattan on Jan. 16, I was really encouraged.  I just love how everyone pitched in to come to the rescue.  The ferries going right over and picking up the passengers–how neat is that?  I just wish there was a way for us to fly the flag in celebration of a national victory.  All we have is how to fly it in mourning for a national tragedy.  Suggestions on how we could show that something really good has happened in this nation?  Leave a comment!

Link to article about crash: http://www.wnct.com/nct/news/national/article/plane_lands_on_hudson_river_survivors_thankful_for_pilot_and_crews/29048/

Seeing POSITIVE - Earth Hour 2.0 a success [OPTIMISM], [HOPE], [CARE], [COOPERATION], [COORDINATION], [REVERENCE]

Source from here.

Earth Hour 2.0 a success

TARA WALTON /TORONTO STAR

St. Cuthbert's Anglican Church in Toronto during their candlelight meditation to mark Earth Hour on March 28, 2009.

City smashes last year's record low power usage as lights dim across the GTA and as far away as Beijing

Mar 28, 2009 10:58 PM

Daniel Dale
Staff reporter

And the environmentalists said let there be darkness. And – for an hour, at least – there was darkness: in downtown office towers and suburban homes, in stores big-box and mom-and-pop, at gatherings long-planned and impromptu.

Not a solution, no, but a statement. At 9:30 p.m., the conclusion of the second global Earth Hour, the meter at Toronto Hydro's control centre that measures city-wide electricity demand hit 2,545 megawatts – 15 per cent below typical demand at that time and 7 per cent below the lowest demand during Earth Hour in 2008.

Toronto's reduction of 455 megawatts was larger than the cumulative savings of the entire GTA during last year's event.

"Torontonians want to do what's right for the environment because they get it," Mayor David Miller told a cheering crowd at Nathan Phillips Square. "It's a privilege to be mayor of a city that gets it."

The increasing local popularity of Earth Hour, for which people worldwide were asked to turn off their lights between 8:30 p.m. and 9:30 p.m., reflected its rapid growth internationally. Launched in Sydney by the World Wildlife Fund in 2007 to raise awareness of the perils of climate change, it spread to more than 35 countries, including Canada, in 2008.

More than 80 countries and 3,000 cities participated today. Organizers claimed about 1 billion people spent the hour in the dark, an exponential increase from perhaps 50 million last year.

In Paris, the Eiffel Tower went noir. In Toronto, the CN Tower became as inconspicuous as a 553-metre building can ever be. In Athens, officials switched off the floodlights illuminating the Acropolis, an icon of western civilization. In Toronto, Honest Ed's iconically garish 23,000-bulb marquee temporarily ceased beckoning.

GTA hotels and stores welcomed guests by candlelight. Community groups hosted flashlight-lit walks. Amateur astronomers, savouring a rare approximation of light conditions in less dense locales, set up their telescopes in parks.

And tens of thousands congregated in private homes and public squares to both demonstrate their concern for the planet's fate and to share in the low-wattage spectacle.

At Nathan Phillips Square, thousands gathered for the city's official Earth Hour event, which featured a free concert. Many waved colourful glow sticks, loudly counting down the seconds until the beginning of the hour and cheering as City Hall went dark at the stroke of 8:30.

Many lights, of course, remained on. During the hour, Katie Szeto, 17, sat on a bench facing Queen St. W., looking dejectedly at the sky. "I'm a little disappointed, because I can't see the stars," said Szeto.

"And I'm sad that some buildings aren't dimmed," she said, pointing to several well-lit apartment buildings overlooking City Hall.

Organizers attempted to depict Earth Hour as a "global election," pitting people who "vote Earth" by turning their lights off versus people who "vote global warming" by leaving their lights on.

Some 250 Canadian cities participated. Yet some Canadians remained skeptical, arguing the event was little more than an exercise in feel-good tokenism.

At Dundas Square, hundreds lined up for free water filters Brita distributed to mark Earth Hour.

Olesya Kolisnyk, an environmentally conscious 29-year-old near the front of the line, said she had "very low expectations" about the event's long-term impact, though she supported the concept. "Something is better than nothing. Maybe we can do it quarterly."

WWF organizers said they acknowledged the limitations of a one-hour annual event. But they argued the event's worldwide popularity could influence governments to sign a new international accord on carbon emissions at the UN Climate Conference in Copenhagen in December. The Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012.

"This is a critical year for climate," WWF Canada president and chief executive officer Gerald Butts has said. "We need to come out of Copenhagen with a workable deal, based on science, that is going to lower carbon emissions globally. We think this is a turning point."

China, whose support environmental groups consider essential to the success of any worldwide climate plan, participated in Earth Hour for the first time, turning off the lights at prominent Olympic venues and office towers.

During last year's Earth Hour, Milton, Newmarket, Aurora and Halton Hills cut their electricity use by a greater percentage than Toronto. Milton led by the GTA with a 15 per cent reduction.

Before last night, Hydro officials cautiously predicted a Toronto decrease of 10 per cent. At the control centre, supervisors smiled as the reduction far surpassed expectations. "Torontonians have come through big time," said grid operations supervisor John Fletcher.

And then the city powered up. By 9:40 p.m., consumption had increased by 30 megawatts.

-With files from Paola Loriggio and Jason Miller