Do All the Good

If

If your passion starts to die, it won't be because of your spiritual work,

your friends, your lover, or because of life's down times.

Your passion will die because you have bought

-- hook, line, and sinker -- an attitude that was sold to you by your parents,

your school teachers, and this society.

You've bought the attitude

that you've got to look like that Playgirl man (if you're a man)

or that Playboy woman (if you're a woman).

You think you've got to be cool and cultured,

that you've got to dress right

and smell like the corporate world wants you to smell.

If your passion dies it will be

because you've bought that appearances are everything,

including the appearance of your worldview, politics, opinions, and beliefs.

Lee Lozowick

In the infinite

In the Infinite

All things

are too small

to hold me,

I am so vast.

In the Infinite

I reach

for the Uncreated

I have touched it,

it undoes me

wider than wide

Everything else

is too narrow

You know this well

you who are also there

- Hadewijch II

be not like dumb, driven cattle

The Psalm of life

.........Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our heats, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.

In the world's broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!.........

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)

Longfellow's A Psalm of Life encourages you and me to take a thoughtful look at the brief span of time given to us, which is our life, and to adopt an enthusiastic and grateful attitude for all that we are and all that we experience.

In this poem, Longfellow tells us that the soul is our true essence and things are not what they seem. Our bodies and material surroundings are a myth and a way of thinking that lead us to a dull and unfulfilled life.

I love his choice of words to get us out of the doldrums of a life in which we often act like dumb, driven cattle, doing whatever our herd mentality directs us to do. Rather, he says, be a hero, which I interpret to mean, be enthusiastic until it positively thrills you. Demonstrate your enthusiasm for life and radiate it outward in everything you do until it infects all those around you. This is heroism. You don't have to run into a burning building to save a child to be a hero, you just have to be in touch with that God within.

-Wayne Dyer

the planet of mars

you like how I decorated our kids' bathroom?

Be Happy

I want to hold your hand

All the things in our lives, all the complicated structures we spent so much time and energy creating, are built on sand. Only our relationships to other people endure. Sooner or later, the wave will come along and knock down what we have worked so hard to build up. When that happens, only the person who has somebody’s hand to hold will be able to laugh. -Rabbi Harold Kushner

Kindness

sacred community

We are birthed into sangha,

into sacred community.

It is called the world.

-Adyashanti

Yup!

above quote written by Mira

Express Your Emotions

"The ability to feel is indivisible.

Repress awareness of any one feeling and all feelings are dulled.

When we refuse to allow fear we correspondingly lose the ability to wonder.

When we repress our grief we blunt our capacity to experience joy.

The same nerve endings are required for weeping and dancing, fear and ecstasy."

quote by Sam Keen

— Fire in the Belly: On Being a Man

Namaste

Our friend Paul just got a puppy....isn't he cute?????
Love,
Michele


Beyond our aching bones, our tired feet
and our multi-colored real life soap operas,
lurks a dimension that is more than the body,
the persona, the ego
and all the 'trappings and the suits of woe' as Hamlet would say
—- a dimension where there isn't a 'you' and 'me'
but rather a synergy that is more than all that,
a space for the eternal to rest within the temporal.
-Namaste Cafe

Happy Happy - Joy Joy

OK, All together now .... 1 - 2 - 3 .....

Happy Happy - Joy Joy Happy Happy - Joy Joy Happy Happy - Joy Joy
Happy Happy - Joy Joy Happy Happy - Joy Joy Happy Happy - Joy Joy
Happy Happy - Joy Joy Happy Happy - Joy Joy Happy Happy - Joy Joy

Come on ... Stomp your feet and clap your hands ... LOUDER! ......

Happy Happy - Joy Joy Happy Happy - Joy Joy Happy Happy - Joy Joy
Happy Happy - Joy Joy Happy Happy - Joy Joy Happy Happy - Joy Joy
Happy Happy - Joy Joy Happy Happy - Joy Joy Happy Happy - Joy Joy

If you knew

If You Knew
by Ellen Bass
What if you knew you'd be the last
to touch someone?
If you were taking tickets, for example,
at the theater, tearing them,
giving back the ragged stubs,
you might take care to touch that palm,
brush your fingertips
along the life line's crease.
When a man pulls his wheeled suitcase
too slowly through the airport, when
the car in front of me doesn't signal,
when the clerk at the pharmacy
won't way Thank you, I don't remember
they're going to die.
A friend told me she'd been with her aunt.
They'd just had lunch and the waiter,
a young gay man with plum black eyes,
joked as he served the coffee, kissed
her aunt's powdered cheek when they left.
Then they walked a half a block and her aunt
dropped dead on the sidewalk.
How close does the dragon's spume
have to come? How wide does the crack
in heaven have to split?
What would people look like
if we could see them as they are,
soaked in honey, stung and swollen,
reckless, pinned against time?

thank you

To Larissa, Gus?, nurse with ice cream cone, man with cell phone, woman from La Hacienda with wet towels:
Thank you
for your generous care and kindness when I fell off of my bike
and my stitches are healing.
You give me faith in humanity!!!
-Suzanna

Karma

San Jose Ballet Nutcracker

Macy and her mice friends


In Cleveland until Dec. 2nd....come see!

love,
Michele

When I am old

Mark's dad and Aunt Sarah......(Robear's mom)....both passed away too soon!!!
read this poem below....how beautiful!
Love,
Michele

When I Am Old

When I am old I shall wear a ball cap
From the St. Louis Browns
Because my grandfather once played in their farm system,
Or maybe a John B. Stetson hat, three-corner fold,
Four X and black chinos with both suspenders and a belt
And the knees ripped out, not as a fashion statement,
But from work.
And black biker boots and a T-shirt with the slogan
"I'm Working On My Issues."
I'll use a walking stick and not a cane
And have a key ring with about a hundred keys
And I won't know what any of them open and I won't care.

When I am old I'll drink whiskey in the morning
And coffee at night
And laugh and spit and swear wherever I want.
When I am old I'll help Girl Scouts across the street
Even if they don't want to go
And I won't have a car
And I won't have a bike
And I'll walk everywhere.

When I am old I'll have a dog named Sam Peckinpaw
And some summer's morning I'll lock up the house
And old Sam and I will walk over to see to see one of my sons
Even if he lives two states away.
When I am old I'll tell people exactly what I think of them
And surprisingly, most of the time it really will be good stuff.
When I am old I won't have a TV
And I won't have a radio
And I won't have a computer or a clock or a phone in the house.
I won't read books and I won't read magazines
And I won't read newspapers and maybe, finally
I'll learn something just watching the birds and the weather.


Poem: "When I Am Old" by Ray Nargis, from Almost Tomorrow.
© Raven Productions, Inc, 2008.

Happy 60th Birthday Nola

Today is my Aunt Nola's 60th birthday!!!!
She has been a big part of my life and is probably the reason that I am a nurse.
I have always been close with her and she has helped me through so much.
She is a huge baseball fan and made me memorize each Cincinnati Reds player and their position they played in like 1976 (the big red machine).......I did it so she would sleep over our house.
I still remember them and have the whole baseball collection of the team from that year.
I looked to her for advice with boyfriends when I was in high school, have called her at 3am before from Ohio State crying and she was there for me.
She is one person who helped put me on this spiritual path that I seem to be on.
She introduced me to new concepts like meditation, and mindfulness.
I enjoyed working with her this past year......we had a ball during our commute to and from work. Her sense of humor is one that I so appreciate I am sad that she was let go from the World Class Cleveland Clinic for "financial reasons"....yeah right.
anyway....I don't want to dwell on that .....I just wish you a Happy Happy Birthday Nola.
Love,
Michele

Peace!!!

Hugs

Robear and Sangita in like 1989



i mean, there are times when you have no clue what to say to someone,
no clue how to end their pain, but to give them a hug,
it doesnt take away the pain, doesnt make the problem go away,
but it gives them this little ounce of hope,
that makes it all okay.. just for one moment.
-jacqueline kelly

Happy Thanksgiving!

Meatloaf again???????

Man in a parking lot

My friend, Alison sent me this poem below.
She is my Aunt Nola's bestfriend and a cancer survivor.
She HAD breast cancer which had spread to her lungs....but thanks to Ambrotose.....she is cancer free. She is such a giving person.
Happy Thanksgiving.
Love,
Michele

Man in a Parking Lot

When you have a son
you start seeing men
backwards, intuiting their childhood
selves beneath the years of accretions--
the bags and jowls, paunches,
thickened, crumpled skin,
the whole weight of the individual
personality, its freight of filters,
opinions, prejudices, habits,
likes, congealed--as if you knew them
before they even knew themselves.

So when a man stumbles toward you,
mumbling, across the Cubb's Foods parking lot,
unkempt and coatless in the snow,
and your discriminating mind says
"madman," "danger," though he never
once looks up, locked in an altered world,
fixed, unfixable, you lock your car door and then
sit there wondering how it happened,
when things started going wrong.
Knowing he was once a toddler--
for pity's sake--you find it
strange, unreal, this mane of wild
grey hair, grey beard. Somehow
you know it doesn't belong on him,
all that hair, and you don't know
how he got to be so lost, so sick, so old.

by Catherine Jagoe

from Casting Off (c) Parallel Press 2007

Wallflower???

Yo! Marko da rapper


We choose how actively we take part in the cosmic dance of life.
We can become wallflowers,
mere spectators to life,
if we get trapped in the patterns
and habits of the past.
Or we can choose to dance by being present
and open to the energies,
the opportunities
and the guidance available to us each moment.

Sanskrit poem

Attachment

I get log jammed a lot....seems like the only thing that helps to open the flow is silence....
when I sit in silence I clear my attachments.....yoga, sketching, morning walks help too, but I think it is the silence.....the clearing of all that clutters my mind.
Have a great day.....hope you like the quote below.
Love, Michele

Attachment

What is in the mind does not belong to the mind. The content of consciousness flows in and out. But mind is not the content.
Attachment to content creates a log-jam in the river of mind. It complicates and confuses. For everything that we want there is something that we don’t want.
This attachment is an attempt to control what cannot be controlled.

Every time you surrender ego, more ego comes up. That is the nature of the process. It doesn’t mean that you are doing anything incorrectly. It just means that you are going deeper.

-Paul Ferrini

The Streak

Nude Man Accused of Causing I-95 Crashes


Nov 20, 10:49 PM (ET)

BRANDYWINE HUNDRED, Del. (AP) - Delaware State Police have arrested a Chester, Pennsylvania, man who they said was running naked and drunk on Interstate-95 and caused three accidents.

Police said Ardonas Gilbert, 26, was running along the southbound lanes near Marsh Road about 10 p.m. Monday. He is charged with two counts of assault and a single count of being drunk on the highway.

Two citizens tried to help Gilbert, but police say he began to assault them. Then police said he ran back into traffic and caused three accidents when cars tried to avoid hitting him.

No one was seriously injured.

Gilbert is being held at the Howard Young Correctional Institute in Wilmington.

The Turkey song

The Greatest Danger Before You

My friend Sarah sent me this today. Very powerful. Happy Day......jump off the treadmill of the daily grind and enjoy it!!! Namaste, Michele

In the end -- and it will end -- your life will seem to have sped by like a fleeting dream. Much of your story will be the age-old but ever joyful human experience: romance, family, satisfying work, and happy completion. I wish you a great fountain of successes. You will also be provided with all the failures and tragedies necessary to deepen and widen your soul -- sufficient, I hope, to make you wise and forgiving of all human frailties. I pray that these necessary troubles will never long crush your optimism nor your love for this magical life.

The greatest danger before you is this: you live in an age when people would package and standardize your life for you -- steal it from you and sell it back to you at a price. That price is very high.

You have already been selected for this program. You have its credit cards and designer labels already expensively around you. In the months ahead, you will find yourselves working long hours, too exhausted for community life or even good friendships -- too compromised to take a stand against the abuses of the system you serve. A great treadmill has been devised for you, and its operators do not care much if it wears you out or kills you. A system is in place to steal your life from you, if you will let it. Don't let it.

Read, study, meditate and think for yourself. Let your most serious education now commence, if it has not already done so. Refine and hold your own values, and pay the high price necessary to live those values. Decide what is important to you, and hold your ground against all temptations and tortures. From the pink granite of your own values, build a fortress against the world's ethical compromises, or you will soon be among those dead of eye who stand next to you in elevators but who are not alive. Don't let them steal your life. This is the only warning you will receive.

--Granny D

and who are you?

The most common ego identifications have to do with possessions,
the work you do, social status and recognition, knowledge and education,
physical appearance, special abilities, relationships, person and family history,
belief systems, and often also political, nationalistic, racial,
religious, and other collective identifications.
None of these is you.
-Eckart Tolle

wonder

It's not just that I'm getting older and cramming for finals.
It's that it becomes more and more real. And the closer you get
into that experience, the less any words describing it make any sense.
And so you're finally reduced to silence, awe and wonder.
John Shelby Spong

Enlightenment

You may have expected that enlightenment would come like sap!
Instantaneous and permanent. This is unlikely. After the first "aha"
experience, it can be thought of as the thinning of a layer of clouds.
-Ram Dass

The Jimiller Band

Come see our friend Jim Miller and his band....The Jimiller Band on this Friday, Nov. 23rd!!
He is playing at the Brew Keeper in North Ridgeville.
He is awesome!!!!!
You can even brew your own beer there!!
Come join us!!!
Here is the link to the Brew Keeper:
http://www.brewkeeper.com/

and the Jimiller Band link is:
http://www.jimiller.com

our curtains

5-6-89

Remember the whole thing is just a play and the Lord has assigned you a part.
Act your part well; there all your duty ends.
He has designed the play and he enjoys it.

-Sai Baba

love

Miss Kelly

Miss Kelly
By: Macy

My dance teacher, Ms. Kelly is great at many things. She is a mom, she owns her own dance studio, she is in charge of a dance company, and she has to deal with all the studio parents. I seriously don’t know how she does it!
Ms. Kelly has short, curly blonde hair, and a wide smile. What she usually wears is a colorful stretchy shirt, jazz pants, and hip-hop shoes; this wonderful teacher always has a hopeful spirit. She helps you improve, she is very patient, and she is also always willing to work things out.
She also has a family. Her husband’s name is Scott. He always does maintenance at the studio such as scenery for a recital. The three kids that she has all dance. There is Samantha (Sami), Andrea, (Andie), and Daniella (Danni). They are in 10th grade, 6th grade, and 4th grade. It amazes me how busy she is but yet she still has time for her family.
Ms. Kelly owns Medina Centre for Dance Art (MCDA). She teaches tap, jazz, ballet, pointe, and combo. Trinity Dance Company is the company at MCDA, and she is in charge of it. All the costuming, choreographing and scheduling performances are up to her. Sometimes she is not the most organized person, however she always pulls everything together in the end, Her tolerance level must be very high, with all the parents and kids worrying and asking questions. Eventually, she fixes everything and answers all the questions. She is also very giving. The dance company does charity work such as UNICEF and danced at The Race for the Cure. I’d never want anyone as a dance teacher but her.
Now you know how busy Ms. Kelly is. She probably never rests! Her talent amazes me and I am very inspired be her. If I was her, I would always be crabby and tired, but she never seems to be (well sometimes). She is AWESOME!

forgiveness

“The anger, the resentment, the bitterness,
the desire for
recrimination against people you believe have wronged
you:
they harden the heart and deaden the spirit and lead
to self-inflicted wounds.”
-Bill Clinton