It is all God

photo by Churk Lui



I BELIEVE God is everything. . .
Everything that is or ever was or ever will be.
And when you can feel that,
and be happy to feel that,
you've found It...
My first step from the old white man was trees.
Then air.
Then birds.
Then other people.
But one day when I was sitting quiet
and feeling like a motherless child,
which I was,
it come to me:
that feeling of being part of everything,
not separate at all.
I knew that if I cut a tree,
my arm would bleed.
And I laughed and I cried and I run all round the house.
I knew just what it was.
In fact,
when it happens,
you can't miss it.

ALICE WALKER

Punishment??

The closed gate by me


Wow! I loved the note below!! Had me thinking that what if when someone committed a crime (ie: drug use, stealing, beating up someone), we loved them unconditionally and built up their self-esteem and told them what we liked about them instead of reinforcing the negative.......
............by calling them a bad person........what would happen to them???
Would they learn to love and appreciate themselves and not want to harm themself or others???
read below!
Love, Michele

In the Baemba tribe of South Africa, when a person acts irresponsible or unjustly, he is placed in the center of the village, alone and unfettered. All work ceases, and every man, woman, and child in the village gathers in a large circle around the accused individual. Then each person in the tribe speaks to the accused, one at a time, about all the good things the person....has done in his lifetime. All his positive attributes, good deeds, strengths, and kindnesses are recited carefully and at length. The tribal ceremony often lasts several days. At the end, the tribal circle is broken, a joyous celebration takes place, and the person is symbolically and literally welcomed back into the tribe. - Alice Walker

On our growth

This is our friend Kato Kailin....remember him? We met him in the L.A. airport just after the famous O.J. trial...He rode the "red-eye" home with us because he was scheduled to do a radio interview that next morning in Chicago.....weird that is the exact same time as the Rwanda Holocaust....but our eyes were pealed on O.J. and Kato Kailin.
Life is sometimes absurd. Love, Michele

No person is your friend who demands your silence,
or denies your right to grow.
-Alice Walker

Namaste

Is this beautiful or what????-Love, Michele
The extraordinary teacher, Pema Chodron, taught me, via cassette tape, Tonglen practice. Knowing how to do this ancient practice of taking in pain and suffering and sending out peace and light, has been a wonderful gift to the medicine bundle I carry in my life. One of the slogans in the Lojong teachings that accompany Tonglen is: Be grateful to everyone. Be grateful to everyone. How beautiful is that! Because everyone is a teacher. Everyone brings us something of value, even if it seems totally negative to us at the time we receive it. I would add to that, and the Buddha of course already did so: Be compassionate to everyone. Don’t just search for whatever it is that annoys and frightens you, see beyond those things to the basic human being. Especially see the child in the man or woman. Even if they are destroying you, allow a moment to see how lost in their own delusion and suffering they are. It is only this insight into brutality and any form of meanness and cruelty that lessens the pain of being oppressed and in so many cases on this planet, senselessly annihilated. -Alice Walker