Fra Giovanni: Written Christmas Eve, 1513

Tahquamenon Falls

Written on Christmas Eve, 1513

I salute you. I am your friend, and my love for you goes deep.
There is nothing I can give you which you have not. But there

is much, very much, that, while I cannot give it, you can take.

No heaven can come to us unless our hearts find rest in it today.

Take heaven! No peace lies in the future which is not hidden in

this present little instant. Take peace! The gloom of the world is

but a shadow. Behind it, yet within our reach, is joy. There is

radiance and glory in darkness, could we but see.
And to see, we have only to look. I beseech you to look!

Life is so generous a giver. But we, judging its gifts by their covering,
cast them away as ugly or heavy or hard. Remove the covering, and

you will find beneath it a living splendor, woven of love by wisdom,

with power. Welcome it, grasp it, and you touch the angel's hand

that brings it to you. Everything we call a trial, a sorrow or a duty,

believe me, that angel's hand is there. The gift is there and the wonder

of an overshadowing presence. Your joys, too, be not content

with them as joys. They, too, conceal diviner gifts.

Life is so full of meaning and purpose, so full of beauty beneath its

covering, that you will find earth but cloaks your heaven.

Courage then to claim it; that is all! But courage you have,

and the knowledge that we are pilgrims together,

wending through unknown country home.

And so, at this time, I greet you, not quite as the world sends

greetings, but with profound esteem and with the prayer that

for you, now and forever, the day breaks and shadows flee away.

~ Fra Giovanni ~

Web version: www.panhala.net/Archive/Written_on_Christmas_Eve.html

Mary Oliver: White Owl Flies Into and Out of the Field

White Owl Flies Into and Out of the Field

Coming down out of the freezing sky

with its depths of light,

like an angel, or a Buddha with wings,

it was beautiful, and accurate,

striking the snow and whatever was there

with a force that left the imprint

of the tips of its wings — five feet apart —

and the grabbing thrust of its feet,

and the indentation of what had been running

through the white valleys of the snow —

and then it rose, gracefully,

and flew back to the frozen marshes

to lurk there, like a little lighthouse,

in the blue shadows —

so I thought:

maybe death isn't darkness, after all,

but so much light wrapping itself around us —

as soft as feathers —

that we are instantly weary of looking, and looking,

and shut our eyes, not without amazement,

and let ourselves be carried,

as through the translucence of mica,

to the river that is without the least dapple or shadow,

that is nothing but light — scalding, aortal light —

in which we are washed and washed

out of our bones.

~ Mary Oliver ~

(House of Light)


Web version: www.panhala.net/Archive/White_Owl_Flies.html

Full of Thanks!

Reflecting on all the good things in life!

Full of Thanks

I’m full
Full of thanks
Full of dreams, full of memories
And full of the cool air I breathed today.

Full of the earth under my feet
And the touch of a friend reaching out
Full of the child that looked at me with wonder
More and more I see how much I really have
I have more books than I’ll ever read
More clothes than I have occasion
More light shining upon me than I will ever see
I have more food than I can savor
I have more memories than I can remember
I have more dreams than I can live
I am full . . .
full of thanks . . .
and thank-full!

Thanks!

~Ilan Shamir ~

http://www.yourtruenature.com/

http://www.facebook.com/notes/your-true-nature/full-of-thanks/177121148966846

Rumi: On a Day When the Wind is Perfect

ON A DAY WHEN THE WIND IS PERFECT

On a day
when the wind is perfect,
the sail just needs to open and the world is full of beauty.
Today is such a
day.

My eyes are like the sun that makes promises;
the promise of life
that it always
keeps

each morning.

The living heart gives to us as does that luminous sphere,
both caress the earth with great
tenderness.

This is a breeze that can enter the soul.
This love I know plays a drum. Arms move around me;
who can contain their self before my beauty?

Peace is wonderful,
but ecstatic dance is more fun, and less narcissistic;
gregarious He makes our lips.

On a day when the wind is perfect,
the sail just needs to open
and the love starts.

Today is such
a day.

~ Rumi ~

(Love Poems From God: Twelve Sacred Voices from the East and West by Daniel Ladinsky)


Web version: www.panhala.net/Archive/On_a_Day.html

"Deadly Spin: An Insurance Company Insider Speaks" by Wendell Potter

Photo I took of Wendell Potter 8/29/09, Portland, Oregon

I had the privilege of seeing Wendell Potter speak here in Portland in August 2009. He is a truthteller and American hero. Wendell Potter's journey from the "dark side" to the "insurance industry's worst nightmare" speaks powerfully of this man's integrity, courage, caring, and commitment to work for a just world. I am now very excited to learn of his new book and that he will again be touring all over the country, including here in Portland again on Tuesday, December 7th at Powell’s Books at 7:30 pm. I hope to see some of you there. For a complete list of appearances, please go here: http://wendellpotter.com/media-events/. Peace ~ Molly

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By Pamela Jean

"My name is Wendell Potter and for 20 years I worked as a senior executive at health insurance companies, and I saw how they confuse their customers and dump the sick -- all so they can satisfy their Wall Street investors."

That's how he introduced himself to a Senate committee.

As a senior vice president of CIGNA, Potter had access to the inner workings of major insurance companies.

He had walked away from a six-figure salary and two decades as an insurance executive because he could no longer abide the routine practices of an industry where the needs of sick and suffering Americans take a backseat to the bottom line. The last straw: when he visited a rural health clinic and saw hundreds of Americans standing in line in the rain to receive treatment in stalls built for livestock.

Now, Wendell Potter is the insurance industry's worst nightmare.

Potter first made national headlines with his scorching testimony before the Senate panel on health care reform. This credible managed care insider explained to the senators how health insurers make promises they have no intention of keeping, how they flout regulations designed to protect patients, and how they skew and corrupt the political debate with multibillion-dollar PR campaigns designed to spread disinformation.

More: http://www.everydaycitizen.com/2010/11/deadly_spin_an_insurance_compa.html

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Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth. ~ Albert Einstein

One isn't necessarily born with courage, but one is born with potential. Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can't be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest. ~ Maya Angelou

It takes two to speak truth -- one to speak and another to hear. ~ Henry David Thoreau

"Death of the Liberal Class" by Chris Hedges

I have met Chris Hedges and, several times, Thom Hartmann, and also have several books by both authors. On Thanksgiving day I was grateful to have listened to an interview on Thom's national radio show that Thom did with Chris Hedges on his Chris' latest book. The American media does not interview the likes of Chris Hedges, Amy Goodman, Bill Moyers, Arundhati Roy, David Korten, Riane Eisler, or Howard Zinn (now deceased). Truthtellers who illuminate shadows along with strengths and hope are essential. Yet, we Americans remain largely uninformed, and I share this with the humility of knowing I have also been deeply in the dark about so much of what matters. There can be no solutions for problems denied or unknown. And, meanwhile on Thanksgiving day while many of us were blessed with being brim-full of yummy meals and loving company, millions more in America and worldwide suffer in poverty. I post this in honor and deep caring for their suffering. And I ask what compassionate action each of us can take in light of their plight? What does caring look like for you? For me, today, I am called to share this post.

Peace ~ Molly

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Book Excerpt
Death of the Liberal Class by Chris Hedges

published on truthdig

In a traditional democracy, the liberal class functions as a safety valve. It makes piecemeal and incremental reform possible. It offers hope for change and proposes gradual steps toward greater equality. It endows the state and the mechanisms of power with virtue. It also serves as an attack dog that discredits radical social movements, making the liberal class a useful component within the power elite.

But the assault by the corporate state on the democratic state has claimed the liberal class as one of its victims. Corporate power forgot that the liberal class, when it functions, gives legitimacy to the power elite. And reducing the liberal class to courtiers or mandarins, who have nothing to offer but empty rhetoric, shuts off this safety valve and forces discontent to find other outlets that often end in violence. The inability of the liberal class to acknowledge that corporations have wrested power from the hands of citizens, that the Constitution and its guarantees of personal liberty have become irrelevant, and that the phrase consent of the governed is meaningless, has left it speaking and acting in ways that no longer correspond to reality. It has lent its voice to hollow acts of political theater, and the pretense that democratic debate and choice continue to exist.

The liberal class refuses to recognize the obvious because it does not want to lose its comfortable and often well-paid perch. Churches and universities—in elite schools such as Princeton, professors can earn $180,000 a year—enjoy tax-exempt status as long as they refrain from overt political critiques. Labor leaders make lavish salaries and are considered junior partners within corporate capitalism as long as they do not speak in the language of class struggle. Politicians, like generals, are loyal to the demands of the corporate state in power and retire to become millionaires as lobbyists or corporate managers. Artists who use their talents to foster the myths and illusions that bombard our society live comfortably in the Hollywood Hills.

The media, the church, the university, the Democratic Party, the arts, and labor unions—the pillars of the liberal class—have been bought off with corporate money and promises of scraps tossed to them by the narrow circles of power. Journalists, who prize access to the powerful more than they prize truth, report lies and propaganda to propel us into a war in Iraq. Many of these same journalists assured us it was prudent to entrust our life savings to a financial system run by speculators and thieves. Those life savings were gutted. The media, catering to corporate advertisers and sponsors, at the same time renders invisible whole sections of the population whose misery, poverty, and grievances should be the principal focus of journalism.

In the name of tolerance—a word the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., never used—the liberal church and the synagogue refuse to denounce Christian heretics who acculturate the Christian religion with the worst aspects of consumerism, nationalism, greed, imperial hubris, violence, and bigotry. These institutions accept globalization and unfettered capitalism as natural law. Liberal religious institutions, which should concern themselves with justice, embrace a cloying personal piety expressed in a how-is-it-with-me kind of spirituality and small, self-righteous acts of publicly conspicuous charity. Years spent in seminary or rabbinical schools, years devoted to the study of ethics, justice, and morality, prove useless when it comes time to stand up to corporate forces that usurp religious and moral language for financial and political gain.

Universities no longer train students to think critically, to examine and critique systems of power and cultural and political assumptions, to ask the broad questions of meaning and morality once sustained by the humanities. These institutions have transformed themselves into vocational schools. They have become breeding grounds for systems managers trained to serve the corporate state. In a Faustian bargain with corporate power, many of these universities have swelled their endowments and the budgets of many of their departments with billions in corporate and government dollars. College presidents, paid enormous salaries as if they were the heads of corporations, are judged almost solely on their ability to raise money. In return, these universities, like the media and religious institutions, not only remain silent about corporate power but also condemn as “political” all within their walls who question corporate malfeasance and the excesses of unfettered capitalism.

More: http://www.truthdig.com/arts_culture/item/the_death_of_the_liberal_class_20101029/http://www.truthdig.com/arts_culture/item/the_death_of_the_liberal_class_20101029/

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The political and commercial morals of the United States are not merely food for laughter, they are an entire banquet. ~ Mark Twain

We stand now where two roads diverge. But unlike the roads in Robert Frost's familiar poem, they are not equally fair. The road we have long been traveling is deceptively easy, a smooth superhighway on which we progress with great speed, but at its end lies disaster. The other fork of the road -- the one less traveled by -- offers our last, our only chance to reach a destination that assures the preservation of the earth. ~ Rachel Carson

A Prayer for Thanksgiving

A Prayer

Let me do my work each day;

And if the darkened hours of despair overcome me,

May I not forget the strength that comforted me

In the desolation of other times.

May I still remember the bright hours that found me

Walking over the silent hills of my childhood,

Or dreaming on the margin of the quiet river,

When a light glowed within me,

And I promised my early God to have courage

Amid the tempests of the changing years.

Spare me from bitterness

And from the sharp passions of unguarded moments.

May I not forget that poverty and riches are of the spirit.

Though the world may know me not,

May my thoughts and actions be such

As shall keep me friendly with myself.

Lift my eyes from the earth,

And let me not forget the uses of the stars.

Forbid that I should judge others,

Lest I condemn myself.

Let me not follow the clamor of the world,

But walk calmly in my path.

Give me a few good friends who will love me for what I am;

And keep ever burning before my vagrant steps

The kindly light of hope.

And though age and infirmity overtake me,

And I come not within sight of the castle of my dreams,

Teach me still to be thankful for life,

And for times olden memories that are good and sweet;

And may the evening's twilight find me gentle still.

~ Max Ehrmann ~

http://www.inspirationalwordsofwisdom.com/gratitude-prayer.html

The Two Most Essential, Abhorrent, Intolerable Lies Of George W. Bush's Memoir

I share this article because it is my experience that in every crisis there is both danger and opportunity. My belief is that the invitation to us all is to embrace what is to be learned from the trauma which has impacted us all through such things as war and torture. May there be more truth telling. May there be more and more of us who are courageous enough to hear, see, and bear the horrors of what truth can hold. And may we individually and collectively grow to step up to do our part in transforming such horrors by holding all of us accountable. May we work to create genuine transformation and a world which our grandchildren will be grateful to inherit.

Peace ~ Molly

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by Dan Froomkin

WASHINGTON -- These days, when we think of George W. Bush, we think mostly of what a horrible mess he made of the economy. But his even more tragic legacy is the loss of our moral authority, and the transformation of the United States of America from global champion of human rights into an outlaw nation.

History is likely to judge Bush most harshly for two things in particular: Launching a war against a country that had not attacked us, and approving the use of cruel and inhumane interrogation techniques.

And that's why the two most essential lies -- among the many -- in his new memoir are that he had a legitimate reason to invade Iraq, and that he had a legitimate reason to torture detainees.
Neither is remotely true. But Bush must figure that if he keeps making the case for himself -- particularly if it goes largely unrebutted by the traditional media, as it has thus far -- then perhaps he can blunt history's verdict.

It may even be working. Extrapolating from the response to the book, former vice president Dick Cheney on Tuesday told a crowd gathered for Bush's presidential library groundbreaking in Dallas that "judgments are a little more measured than they were" and that "history is coming around."

The 'Decision' to Go to War

In "Decision Points," Bush describes the invasion of Iraq as something he came to support only reluctantly and after a long period of reflection. This is a flat-out lie. Anyone who paid any attention to the news at the time knew Bush was dead-set on war long before he sent in the troops in March 2003. And there is now an abundant amount of documentation, in the form of leaks, unclassified memos, witness interviews and other people's memoirs to prove it.

The historical record clearly shows that Bush had long harbored a desire to strike out at Saddam Hussein, was trying to link Iraq to 9/11 within a day of the terrorist attacks, and finally found the excuse he was looking for in skewed intelligence about alleged Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.

The only real question is whether he actively deceived the American public and the world -- or whether he was so passionate about selling the public on the war that he intentionally blinded himself to how brazenly Vice President Cheney had politicized and abused the intelligence process.

More: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/22/the-two-most-esssential-a_n_786219.html

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Do your little bit of good where you are; it's those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world. ~ Bishop Desmond Tutu

Mary Oliver: Gratitude

Gratitude

What did you notice?

The dew snail;

the low-flying sparrow;

the bat, on the wind, in the dark;

big-chested geese, in the V of sleekest performance;

the soft toad, patient in the hot sand;

the sweet-hungry ants;

the uproar of mice in the empty house;

the tin music of the cricket’s body;

the blouse of the goldenrod.

What did you hear?

The thrush greeting the morning;

the little bluebirds in their hot box;

the salty talk of the wren,

then the deep cup of the hour of silence.

What did you admire?

The oaks, letting down their dark and hairy fruit;

the carrot, rising in its elongated waist;

the onion, sheet after sheet, curved inward to the

pale green wand;

at the end of summer the brassy dust, the almost liquid

beauty of the flowers;

then the ferns, scrawned black by the frost.

What astonished you?

The swallows making their dip and turn over the water.

What would you like to see again?

My dog: her energy and exuberance, her willingness,

her language beyond all nimbleness of tongue, her

recklessness, her loyalty, her sweetness, her

sturdy legs, her curled black lip, her snap.

What was most tender?

Queen Anne’s lace, with its parsnip root;

the everlasting in its bonnets of wool;

the kinks and turns of the tupelo’s body;

the tall, blank banks of sand;

the clam, clamped down.

What was most wonderful?

The sea, and its wide shoulders;

the sea and its triangles;

the sea lying back on its long athlete’s spine.

What did you think was happening?

The green breast of the hummingbird;

the eye of the pond;

the wet face of the lily;

the bright, puckered knee of the broken oak;

the red tulip of the fox’s mouth;

the up-swing, the down-pour, the frayed sleeve

of the first snow—

so the gods shake us from our sleep.

~ Mary Oliver ~

(What Do We Know)

http://www.panhala.net/Archive/Gratitude.html

Legal Pros Say No to Citizens United

by Jeffrey D. Clements and Ben T. Clements

Experts call for Constitutional amendment to take back democracy from corporations.

In the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United v. FEC, corporate money has poured into the 2010 elections in unprecedented amounts. Now, a bipartisan group of leading law professors, former state attorneys general, former prosecutors, and prominent attorneys from across the country has signed a letter calling on Congress to consider a Constitutional amendment to overrule Citizens United and return elections and government to the people. We joined that call because the notion of “corporate rights” expressed in Citizens United is antithetical to Constitutional principles of free speech, democracy, and self-government.

In that case, the Court ruled that the First Amendment prohibits restrictions on so-called “independent expenditures” by corporations to attempt to defeat or elect candidates. The Court equated corporations with people for purposes of free speech rights and struck down key provisions of the federal Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act.

The creation of absolute corporate “speech” rights to spend money on elections is contrary to Constitutional principles and to the American vision of self-government by free people. That vision cannot coexist with elections dominated by hundreds of millions of dollars of corporate electioneering money.

More: http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/what-happy-families-know/legal-pros-say-no-to-citizens-united?utm_source=wkly20101119&utm_medium=yesemail&utm_campaign=titleClements

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What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy? ~ Mohandas K. Gandhi

The great danger for American democracy is not from the protesters. That democracy is too poorly realized for us to consider critics -- even rebels -- as the chief problem. Its fulfillment requires us all, living in an ossified system which sustains too much killing and too much selfishness, to join the protest. ~ Howard Zinn

It is possible to read the history of this country as one long struggle to extend the liberties established in our Constitution to everyone in America. ~ Molly Ivins