Zebra Calls

Who would have thought the Zebra's bold black and white stripes would help them blend in? Certainly don't blend into the olivey grey green of the South African bush much. Makes them really easy to stripe, er, I mean spot. Anyway, if you're a meat eating, zebra hunting cat, you have a problem, because when you start lurking around the herd they call to each other, like donkey-call barks, and they huddle and run close together.

Because your cat eyes can see mostly in shades of grey, when them zebra stripes are all moving around in a huddle you can't spot what is a hoof and what is a head -- and then you could leap into the mellee and be pummelled to pieces by a hysterical black, white and grey fuzzy moving zebra pile. It all turns into a kaleidoscopic, eye-tricking, mind numbing, checker boarding rushes of flesh.

Dangerous.

Yet, to some cats, it still seems worth it.

Did I mention the can of Zebra Pate I saw in the supply store in Stellenbosch? I didn't buy it. I eat Lucky Charms.

What do you think about Zebra pate?  Why do you think it causes some people to gasp?  What makes it OK to make duck and rabbit pate and not cat and dog pate?  Just curious.  I don't eat any of it.  Just wondering what you think.

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Haircuts and Forced Relocation

I went to the mall today to get a hair cut from an old fashioned barber staffed by a retired barber helping out during the busy cape town tourist season. What a character -- friendly, knowledgeable (he confessed that in his line of work he has learned to be a minister, an attorney, advisor, friend, minister, coach -- all contributing to his current ability to sit with prince or poor person and converse easily) and skilled.

He didn't waste much time getting to talking when I answered "San Francisco" to the question of where-from (Santa Rosa draws questions and confusion, San Francisco, well it's close enough).

He launched into the ever available history lesson for visitors on apartheid and I braced myself for that moment when he would ask for my name and hear "Viljoen".

But he didn't ask. He just told me the story of his family and the forced relocation that fell on them and all the colored (in south africa colored is a term to describe people of mixed race and is not considered derogatory. Colored is a distinct category and americans sometimes have to get used to a local announcing "I am 100 percent cape colored") folk who lived in District Six when the government passed the group areas act and decided that yummy piece of land where the coloreds lived was to be allocated to whites and arrived with bulldozers one day and level led the place, forcibly moving folk elsewhere.

I guess it was my turn to listen and his turn to talk and a short clean-up-buzz became an hour long soul emptying as he stood for moments with his hand on my shoulder and clippers ready while he remembered to me the shock of the international community at what the south african government had done and what it was like for him and the current colored population to look at that empty place which has remained undeveloped -- conscience or pressure, I don't know -- empty prime real estate even when the government offered it back and no one would set foot on it - a powerful statement. So it remains today and will perhaps be turned into a public space one day as a tribute to the fierce history it stands for.

He didn't ask my name. I didn't tell him. He thanked me for listening. I left with another piece of my country in my memory pocket, an excellent haircut, and some more sighs in my heart for the culture I come from, lived and flourished in.

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Storms, Good Hope, Points and Penguins

We visited the curious South African Penguins

We posed at the "Sentinel"

We trekked from Cape Point to the Cape of Good Hope

We didn't get blown away by the wind.

And we said goodbye at the bus this morning at 11:00 a.m.

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Prosperity

“The road to freedom lies not through mysteries or occult performances, but through the intelligent use of natural forces and laws.” Ernest Holmes

Try this: Google the word Prosperity and just look at the first page that pops up. Look at the Google topic-relevant ads lining the page. There’s even an article in Wikipedia stating New Thoughts position: “…teaches that God wants all people to prosper (regardless of religion), leaves it up to the individual to define prosperity (rather than defining it in terms of material wealth), and does not condone the accumulation of vast fortunes at the expense of others.



There are offers of coaching on how to attract it, how to learn it, how to teach it to others, the secrets of it, the secrets behind the secrets of it. I love Ernest Holmes quote above about finding our freedom through the intelligent use of natural forces. I am imagining that finding our prosperity is similar.



One such natural force to me is the power of our ability to think. And goodness, we need to be able to think clearly when wading through the current volume of ideas and methods that are guaranteed to bring us wealth. I am beginning to make a collection of points of view I have about prosperity as I read through much of what is available…points of view that I feel are superstition free and solid. I can never know for sure that my mind will stay made up the way it is to day, but as I gather these ideas, I start to become better evaluate ideas about prosperity and think for myself.



What is your definition of prosperity? And what ideas from prosperity teaching to you feel 100% in alignment with? And what ideas do you reject? And why?

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Nkosi

Yesterday we went up table mountain - some of us went in the swiss made 360• rotating cable car made by the same folk who made the Palm Springs cable car. Four of us walked, well climbed, well struggled, well we made it up -- and in just 90 minutes...on step/rock at a time.

I would have taken a foto but I thought I was going to perish in the heat perched on the side of the mountain.

When triumphantly we met our friends at the top there was only time to pose with the serene meditators and gondola back down where I sat at a side walk cafe and listened to an all male acapella group sing and sing and sing witjh choreographed moves and to the delight of the african people who seemed to recognize the songs they sang.
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Star Birds and not-Champagne

We're headed south in mini vans to Johannesburg International Airport to fly to Cape Town on South African Airlines.

We are tired. Three mornings of being woken at 5 am and late dinners has got us perched on the edge of cranky! However, the payoff keeps us on the better side of the perch where we remember lion cubs frolicking alone in a river bed while mom hunts, a lone male waking up from a day long nap hears his brother's call miles away and answers with an earth shuddering roar plus gutsy yelp.

The orienting ranger challenged us to find and see the ten star birds of the area. Among the 300 bird species in this area, the ten star birds include some on the 'vulnerable species' list and others that are just plain hard to see.

He said he'd buy a bottle of sparkling wine (Champagne recently won a law suite, we heard, against South African wine makers for using their name) for any group that saw all ten. On day three we radioed the happy message back for him to start chilling the not-Champagne! We'd done it. And almost all with photos to prove it (some fly so fast that truthfully we rely on the tracker's confidence that that dashing black spot was a Sterling's Wren-Warbler or a Red-billed Quelea) and jubilantly clinked our waterford crystal flutes so that the less fortunate jeep groups could hear. Truthfully, each group was a winner in seeing sights to boggle the urban mind that not all groups saw. Sharing our highlights was the best part of the safari for me.

On evening we resolved on our jeep to do the game ride without cameras. Just to go, be, see, hear and take in the messages and sounds of Africa. It was a beautiful experience and softer and quieter than those exciting moments when we playfully climbed over each other and click, click, clicked, flash'd at the posing leopards or baby elephant or angry scorpion.

In the afternoons we met to share our thoughts about this land tried to imagine how experiencing it would change us.


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ShishkaHogs and Gerbils

It is inconceivably fortunate to see the Big Five in one day, the first day (Elephanr, Rhino, Lion, Leopard and Water buffalo) plus a Cheater, Warthog, Hippo, Giraffe, Gnu and the top ten most difficult birds to spot, IN ONE DAY! (Ok, we only saw the tenth bird on the list today, the second day, nut the rest is true).

Some visiotors are jubilant if the seem some of that their entire stay. And we've seen more: Golden 0rb spiders, chameleons, owls, terrapins, water buck, kudu, leopard tortoise, duiker, franklins (three kinds), bee eaters, starlings, horn bills, eagles, storks, egyptian geese, hyena, milipedes, bobbejans, grasshoppers, orange spotted ticks, hippos, rabbits, impala, steenboks, go away birds, boabab trees, european rollers, squirrals, bats.

So much that when the ranger asked us today what we wanted to see we said: kangaroos and poodles and gerbils.

How we laughed. But we stopped laughing when lunch was announced: Warthog Kebabs.

Some of us just couldn't do it!


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Ngala

Ready to go! News to follow

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Apartness

After yoga, breakfast, prayer and a workshop on Oneness and Diversity, we piled into mini busses and zoomed off into the rain to skirt the western, then southern, then eastern border of Johannesburg City to reach the Apartheid Museum.

The stark grey concrete and wire architectural features really do set the tone for this national tribute to the spirit of reconciliation that has allowed the people of South Africa to survive a painful transition from legislated segregation to today's ideal of cooperation and forgiveness.

At the entrance we're divided into races, whites go in one entrance and everyone else goes into a separate door. This was the way of things in South Africa just a short while ago, as it was in America and other places on our planet.

But because this particular history is so recent, the impact of being divided and treated differently because of skin color presses down on our hearts as we begin the walking tour on which the story of white rule is told, its arrogance, cruelty and eventual unravelling when at last students in high schools made the irreversible move of burning their schools rather than be forced to learn in the language of the oppressors.

The museum affects people in different ways, some stand still weeping openly others can take only so much and flee, still others stay much longer than the allotted 2 hours to take in the history with awe for human cruelty and human resilience.

We are changed, inspired, grateful, sad, peaceful. We are humans: complex, creative. We are resolving again for our planet to live honorable peaceful lives.

Let there be...and with me let it start...


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Breakfast at the Ferns

A message to the choir: Kelly and Joann miss you.

The kids have arrived. It's all fun and games now, but just wait till 2 pm when jet lag hits 'em.

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Electric South Africa

We may stumble, but always there is that eternal voice, forever whispering within our ear, that thing which causes the eternal quest, that thing which forever sings and sings" Ernest Holmes

My friend Matthew is playing the game "Where in the world is Edwaldo." Thanks to his research I am equipped with all kinds of statistics about South Africa I had forgotten or didn't know.

The full name of the Country is "The Republic of South Africa.". Sometimes, and I'm not kidding, when someone in America asks me where I'm from and I use the short form "South Africa" they respond, "What country in South Africa.". I guess I shouldn't be indignant, after all I didn't know where or what Patagonia is, or where to find Tierra Del Fuego or what the capital is of any of the new exSoviet states is.

For the record, Pretoria is the capital (unless its name has changed since I last looked on a map), and Cape Town is the legislative center and Bloemfontein the judicial center

The country is a little less than two times the size of Texas and home to 43,421,021 people. Since the fall of Apartheid, the new Constitution is built with the diversity of the population in mind and therefor 11 (eleven) official languages are recognized including Afrikaans (a form of Dutch brought to Africa by the Dutch East Indies Trading Company. Stripped of exceptions and pesky things like verb conjugations, it is fairly easy to learn, and up until recently, the language of the ruling elite), English, Ndebele, Pedi, Sotho, Swazi, Tsonga, Tswana, Venda, Xhosa (the colorful language of clicks and Nelson Madela's mother tongue), and Zulu.

Altough a good 68% of the population is Christian (and a mighty variety of denominations and hybrid Sects there are to choose from), there remains a strong following of the ancient animism beliefs and practices -- very strong -- about 28%, with the remaining folk identifing as Muslim, Hindu or other.

South Africa is the world's largest producer of platinum, gold, and chromium. It exports the gold ad other metals along with diamonds and machinery and equipment made in South Africa.

And here is the rough spot. The country is growing and demands on resources are out pacing the availability of water and electriity: it is a national crisis situation. Added to the problems facing the rest of world like pollution of rivers from agricultural runoff and urban discharge; air pollution resulting in acid rain; soil erosion; desertification -- all of which might sound out there and distant enough to not trouble the person on the street -- the electrical grid of South Africa is in serious trouble and is one of the first, real, tangible, this-is-affecting-me, side effects of careless use of resources.

Just twice the size of Texas. Imagine the same thing in America where we are going in the same direction if I understand correctly.

We can get an idea of what is awaiting by observing rolling power shedding, which means that areas of the city have power shut of without warning for hours and hours at a time while the system attempts to catch up with demand. Not even hospitals are exempt and just yesterday the news reported the happy outcome that a patient on the operating table survived the outtage when finally 30 minutes later the hospital back up generator kicked in.

Why did it take so long. Well, it's not intended for hours long use two or three times a day!

However, South Africa is a resourceful place in its people. I trust that this power inconvenience is just the kick in the pants the people need to come up with something. Surely these people who are the authors of one of the most progressive, inclusive constitutions in the world will take an enviromentally sound stand and model it for the world?

Thanks Matthew for "Where in the World is Edwaldo".

Did I mention, the Santa Rosans are flying over the ocean right now, landing in about 7 hours.

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They Are Coming!

The road to freedom lies not through mysteries or occult performances, but through the intelligent use of natural forces and laws. (Ernest Holmes)

They are coming. Probably packing bags right now... the bunch of Santa Rosans coming to South Africa.

I'm excited to see them. I'm going to be taking pics of them and posting them here (internet connection available at the game park hopefully, or at least on my fancy, new blackberry, if there is coverage... otherwise we'll catch up from Cape Town.)

I haven't been able to upload the vids I took in Johannesburg because of the extensive power-outages we're experiencing here. The demand on electricity has skyrocketed -- it is summer and now the population in the suburbs has increased since there is no more inter-suburb restrictions on travel like there used to be in Apartheid days. Now multiple families live in single family homes and everybody has got something to plug in. Illegal immigration from Zimbabwe and other neighboring countries is in the news and until it's figured out, the hopeful visitors are in the suburbs. Electricity was promised to all people when the change took place, and the promise was fulfilled - now electrical lines can be seen taking power even to shanty communities made of corrogated tin, wood and plastic.

Warnings scroll over the bottom of the TV screens during age-old American Soap Operas, warnings that say "turn off all non essential electronic equipment now, help prefent the outtage". Surely they can't mean the TV? My aunt assures me that watching the local Soap that is about to start, Isidingo, is mandatory.

So we turn absolutely everything off. Everything. We put my mothers insulin in cooler box with ice and turn on battery powered lamps and gather around the essential equipment, the TV to watch South Africa's multi language, subtitled, fast moving, intrigue filled Soap Opera. Who knew Dynasty, Dallas, Days of Our Lives would have a step child in Africa. And guess what! It's great! I haven't been so involved with other peoples lives in ages. I can barely wait till tomorrow to find out who done it. How do people manage without TV? I see my aunt's point.

We laugh deeply at the end of the episode because we both predict EXACTLY what will happen, and still we come back tomorrow. Of course. But first we will go back to Eastgate, one of the largest shopping centers I have ever encountered - we need a second day there, of course. The first one wasn't enough. My Mom and Aunt are thrilled to have a driver, porter and personal shopper.

I would rather be watching Isidingo. :)

At least the mall has their own power generator. and Lattes. And biltong. (Google it.) I am embarrassed by how much of it I've consumed.

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Shhhhhh, don't talk to me

• "To live affirmatively is to live as God lives, so we must plunge beneath the appearance. Here is where the test comes. We are testing ourselves to see whether we can forget evil and conceive more good, let go of limitation and take hold of the limitless, let go of the appearance and embrace reality." (Ernest Holmes)

Sitting on the flight from Cape Town to Johannesburg to set up and get ready for the tour group coming soon, empty-ish flight......why does he have to have the seat next to me, this jolly, good-old boy, extra talkative man. Don't look at him. He'll talk. Don't make eye contact. He'll ramble on for hours. Shhhh.

He yells out to two men boarding "Haai, wat maak julle twee totsies hier??" [What are you two thugs doing here??]. They laugh and exchange banter. (But they are kinda thug-like. Don't look.) And still chatting above the heads of the people. Sigh. Just read your book and look intently into the words and he'll leave you alone. I'm not really reading, i'm staring at the paper.

Success!

"Ladies and gentlemen, we've begun our desent." Ahh, and I managed to remain quiet the whole flight.....

"Excuse me, sir."

[Oh no.]

Smile - "Yes?"

I noticed the book you are reading. [Loving what is: How to live in harmony with what is - Byron Katie]

Smile - "Yes?"

That's very difficult to do, isn't it? Live in harmony with how things are.

Smile - "Yes."

"I was just talking to my people about that on Sunday." And then,....he goes on to describe the most wonderful program he runs, working with convicts to develop this new concept of Home Church. From what I can understand, its a way of creating small cell groups that are like families, centered around a home group - they do Church without having to congregate in large groups. Part of the program is developing relationships and he has created this thing where convicts get to work with, guide and mentor children.

I am spell bound.

Oh my god! [said in my now mixed up accent that doesn't have a home anywhere anymore] - here next to me was this resource, this fascination, this real live example, this .... person I would have wanted to talk to for hours. We exchange book titles and last words and thoughts about mega church in Korea and strategies for working in harmony with the way things are but we're both headed for our next journey stage and.... its gone....he is gone...

Sigh.

Now the Universe's turn: Smile "Yes?"

"To live affirmatively is to live as God lives, so we must plunge beneath the appearance. Here is where the test comes. We are testing ourselves to see whether we can forget evil and conceive more good, let go of limitation and take hold of the limitless, let go of the appearance and embrace reality." (Ernest Holmes)

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Franschoek

Today we drove to Franschoek, the valley where French Calvinists settled in 1688. As refugees fleeing persecution by the Catholics in France these Protestant Reformers accepted the Dutch Government's offer of an area know as Olifantshoek (because of the vast herds of elephants that used to roam the valley) but which soon became known as Franschoek, the French area. A large monument commemorates the establishment of this French Hugenot colony under the supervision of my ancestor, Francois Villion (Viljoen) who actively recruited settlers from among those fleeing France. Hugenots also settled in New York and other Eastern U.S. States and in South Africa they established a wine industry that has placed South Africa among the elite of world wine producing countries.

Visitors familiar with the Napa Valley will feel a certain sense of being at home with the climate, the color, the vineyards, the wine tasting rooms, tourist nick nack shops and world class restaurants. However, here, in Franschoek, these farm houses really are ancient. White washed walls and dark black thatched roofs and curled facade in the Dutch style - old and dramatic against the back drop of the Swartberge (Black Mountains) - dramatic and majestic, as if the whole place had been commissioned to pose for a century to be painted over and over again.

Nearby Stellenbosch is famous also for its University where Dr. Christian Barnhard, of first heart transplant fame, was educated. Over lunch I asked my host what has been the most significant change in his life since the end of Apartheid. After some thought, because there has been a lot of change, both good and bad, he told me that on a personal level the change that has meant a lot to him is that now he can get married to anyone he wants, white, black, male, female, and that his choice is protected by the Constitution.

It takes a moment to take it in. It's true. In this country that has a history of hanging on to discrimination and segregation and imbalances of power...there is a real, experienced change. We've seen male couples holding hands in the street and sitting as close together as the heterosexual couple in the next booth in the same restaurant and white with black couples and among them all there seems to be an easy, obvious, straightforward acceptance of the way things are.

My host tells me "We have the most beautiful country in that we have everything in it from the magnificent scenery to the housing. I mean, we lack for nothing. We have it all. It's not that we're bigger or better or anything like that, but w have it all." I asked what the downside is. "We are so far from the rest of the world that it is a trek to get anywhere." What else? "I don't like that the population balance is uneven among the colors of people. It results in an uneven balance of power. In a way we're in the same position we we're before, when there was an uneven weight of power among the whites. We lack a balance in power."

I think of St. Bartholomews Day, Paris, September 17, 1572 when an estimated 110,000 Hugenots were killed in an unbalanced power situation when their Catholic oponenents went against the edict of the time and murdered their Protestant critics. Later the perpotrators were granted amnesty and more edicts promised safety. Like the irrevocable Edict of Nantes which granted equal status and safety to Catholics and Protestants, and which was revoked later - probably conributing to the exodus of French settlers to the Dutch East Indian Company settlement where they would become part of one of the most oppressing goverments and then, pendulum swing again - part of a constitution that is a model of human rights among the communities of the world.

Swing swing swing

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Mirror, Mirror on the wall...

Patience. Is the practice of being at peace with the actions and choices of others, particularly when those actions do not match your idea of what is best.

Patience includes making space for others to express themselves in their own way, as well as granting adequate time for them to express.

Patience is not in a hurry to speak, is not over-bearing and, at the heart of patience is a deep acceptance of the idea that "Everything is in its right time and place."

Mirror, mirror on the wall - you trickster.....!

"The world will test you in every way,
so that you can realize that last little piece that' unfinished inside you.
It's a perfect setup. Check mate."
Katie

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Everything they say is true

"I am at peace with my world. I give thanks for my life and all that is in it."

Everything?

Well, it seems I still I have a whole list of things I am not at peace with.

Other people' opinions about me, for example. Still. Still on the list.

I had a giant point of view dropped down on me today and I noticed my feelings were hurt and the opinion lingered like a somber gargoyle peering down at me right into the place where it was supposed to be holy and worshipful.

If I take everything that is inside the opinion, its not so bad, really. And its not that no one has ever thought this or other critical thoughts about me before...

I try this "what if its true?" In that question's answer I sometimes find the painful spot where the gargoyle's claw is lodged in my shoulder, long enough its been there that it's a dark poisonous ache.

It's so humbling to practice gratitude for moments when someone aims a flashlight at your gargoyle. What gargoyle? No demons here!

"I am at peace with my world. I give thanks for my life and all that is in it."

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Roaring

Last night I had dinner with a friend who knew me when I was 16 years old. The picture is taken on our trip over the mountain to camps bay where we ate in the trendy, ever popular beach front area where diners can watch the sun set and the moon rise through palm trees accompanied by gentle roar of the ocean.

This is Lion's Head, a jutting, fierce mountain in cape town that roars out over the ocean and city and sky and gives launch to parasailing adventurers who land slow motion and elegant on the beaches. (The don't look too elegant tho when they meet the sand - yikes.)

We talked about lost friends, events that shaped us as young men, parents, choices and memorials, first loves, tragic loves, murders, deaths, jobs, careers, suicides, favors secret societies and kindnesses, soap operas and nations and inside me there there is another kind of roaring. This big, gigantic life. It's so huge. Powerful. Roaring.

Sometimes I feel like I'm living my life just there in the roar where the surf breaks white and dramatic and beautiful or out there where it smashes up against the rocks and nothing can hold onto nowhere for long -- and there goes that floating seaweed, it would have been nice to hold on to it for a while.

And sometimes I feel like my life is deeper down, like a scene from an oceanic documentary - under the foamy frenzy in this quiet that comes when I'm still with all my wantings and let them unravel themselves.

It's always the same - the only thing available is to be still with what is happening. It will be gone soon anyway and its best not to miss the portion here in front of me.. Eat the fancy desert, every single expensive strand. Drink the nutty, wide eyed Chardonnay, listen, listen, listen, love. Inside me there is this roaring. This big, gigantic life. It's so huge. Powerful. Roaring. Sometimes I think if I don't sit still and be quiet I will explode.

I am remembering two ideas from a movie on the flight: happiness does not come primarily from human interaction. Later, tho, the character who expresses this idea writes something like "Happiness is not entirely real unless shared."
I will have to think about both of these ideas. I am not sure of either of them. And like the character, I am trying to understand happiness and why love is like an ocean.

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Gentleness

Gentleness is being conscious of your actions and the impact they have on others and your environment. Actions include your spoken word, your thoughts, opinions and aspirations.

At the center of the practice of gentleness is the idea that all of life is connected, and that every action is significant because of the effect it has on creation.

With gentleness as a guide comes the shedding of control, dominance and strategies that employ dread, fear or intimidation.

I am Embracing Gentleness
I am Shedding Control
I am Eliminating Fear
I am Following Courage

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Land Fill is Full

I am headed for South Africa via Frankfurt on Lufthansa. I will arrive ahead of the touring group with enough time to visit family, reconnect with childhood friends, take in some sun and meet the tour operator who is located in Cape Town.

Cape Town is featured in Lufthansa's In-Flight "Magazin" in the spot-lighted satellite photo article for this month. It reminds me of San Francisco in its shape and its curves and size, however, it differs in that there is a dominating rugged rock, dark and fierce on the map -- as seen from space. Table Mountain is 1,083 meters high and 600 million years old, frequently covered in a daily "table cloth" of clouds, yet in this particular photo it is clear, crisp. The photo shows how the city hugs the slopes of the flat topped mountain. Slopes which were once covered by "Silver Trees" (luecadendrom Argenteum, or something like that) which fell to the axes of cold and weary settler. Now all that is left is a Silver Tree here and there or a couple as a specially featured precious plant in Cape Town's famous Kirsenbosch Botanical Gardens.

If Cape Town is not in your travel plans, Strybing Gardens in San Francisco has a number of these glimmering silver leaved trees in the South African section -- good for viewing all year round.

The denuding of the slops of Table Mountain isn't the only lasting impact of the settlers .. not the only devastating remains. Not only on th slopes of Tabe Mountain, but in other places too all over the world.

Looking down from space through the magazine --I wonder about the kind of lasting impact I have made wherever I have settled. I've left my own fair share of devastation and blessings. I've settled on points of view, and inside of opinions an I've used up things, resources and who knows what else.

I was recalling a conversation about using up resources from the evening before I left, in which I learned that the Sonoma Land Fill, is Full. (Here comes the in-flight service, I love it with the tiny portions each in their own place on the compartmentalized tray, each wrapped hygenically in plastic, plastic wrapped utensil set with individual portions of sugar and salt, milk and butter [each with foil and paper wraps] and here comes the clean up crew down the aisles behind carts, in a hurry, whipping up stuff and jamming it into the cards -- packing up so much garbage, so much un-consumed individual portions - all that salt and pepper, all of it.).

Isn't someone on the planet hungry? Isn't some landfill somewhere full? What is the right thing to do?

(I. have to stop writing, the duty free shopping has begun - I love how they package the merchandise)

I am also remembering a conversation I had somehere on the planet with someone about all kind of existing eco-friendly technology. But it's not known, or used. Why? Perhaps because it's more expensive and sometimes less convenient. Or maybe it's because there is no strongly moneyed market to draw investors. The people and places who needed it most are penniles... I don't know. I know cost has played a major role in deciding between eco-frendly tiles and less expensive composite-something-or-the-other tiles in several of the places I have settled.

"I want to be better an opening for God - to make me stronger"

Oh, to do the right thing!

Noble
Right.
Good.

Oh to do that thing and to settle there. Perhaps if I sit very, very still, I will cause no harm today.

Ps. Lufthansa's in-flight Magazin is printed on 100% high quality recycled paper. That's the right thing to do. Or - is it a strategy?

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Conduct

• I am carried along by this Right Action and am compelled to do the right thing at the right time.
  (Ernest Holmes)
  
• In joy and sorrow, in pleasure and pain, one should act towards others as one would have them act towards oneself. (The Mahabharata)
  

Ernest Holmes described Intuition as God in humankind. Each of us has this intuition, an inner voice of guidance compelling us to do the right thing. Sometimes we wonder how we shall know the difference between intuition and the dialogue of the group mind. We come to the question: When am I being inspired and when am I simply obsessing?

Perhaps the way to know the voice of God (intuition0 is by the deep "Yes!" that rings within us when It speaks. By the nature of its speaking too: It probably will never berate us. Neither will It humiliate or criticize us. It will never set us up for failure.

And yet, that voice of God within, can sound so very much like our own, we sometimes distrust it. God is the voice within us that is always saying I love and support you.

My Intuition speaks clearly to me. I am sensitive to Its voice. I am alert to the guidance it provides. I base my choices and decisions on that deep sense of God's Goodness in my life. I give thanks for my life and all that is in it.

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Truthfulness

Truthfulness is the practice of steadfastly speaking only that which, to the best of your knowledge, is true. It is a commitment to refrain from lying and breaking agreements.

But more than a blind adherence to facts, truthfulness goes hand in hand with a love of kindness, fairness, accuracy and humility.

Application


The starting place for practicing truthfulness is watching the words that come from your mouth and maintaining a practice of speaking accurately, gently, honestly.

With the words you speak in good shape, the next step is to watch the thoughts you think. Rather than violently stopping or negating critical, gossipy thoughts, begin instead to question if they are accurate. Do this silently and over time you will notice a pattern: Unkind thoughts are frequently based on inaccuracies, assumptions and impulses.

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Happy Birthday!

Six a.m. In the hot tub in Palm Springs! A great way to celebrate. Yipee! Shhhhh, the resort is sleeping in.

As for me? Dinner at LG's Steakhouse is about all I can think of!

:)

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Indian Canyon

January 3, 2007
Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T

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I am a visitor here

Today we went to Indian Canyon "where you walk in the footsepts of our ancestors". Centuries ago the Cahuilla Indians developed a complex society in the canyons near Palm Springs where there is still a generous supply of water and wildlife even today. It's a surprise in this desert dry area -- this luscios secret hideaway. It's the kind of landscape that brings to mind the words in the hymn "when I consider allthe worlds Thy hands hath made." Giant sized views with spectacular shifing lihting, rust colored rocks and palm trees growing out of an inch deep nook of soil, satisfied to thrive on so little, painfully cold-fresh springs (william stood in one and felt the cold from his toes to his scull) and plants that provide medicine, clothing, housing and art supplies.

I feel like a visitor here. Stumbling upon.a silent and sacred spot, I feel the awe of witnessing somewhere that has been important and sacred for a long, long time. But not william, this place touches him deeply, like India touched me. Here he sinks into the surrounding sand, rock and sun like a lizard that has found its home on a hot rock and sits still. We sat still on a rock, so vast and solid and silent and around us was the sound of no-people. It takes a while to take it in and after enough time I become aware of just how noisy it is inside. Hey! I am the noisiest thing here. Even the wild, frantic ants are silent. So, I sit and resolve to let the quiet touch me.

Later, we drive through the extra-wealthy suburb which hugs the base of the reserve and the scene changes dramatically to ostentatious displays of emerald green lawns, well watered and immaculate -- about as natural to this desert area as diamond studded collars are to the pets parading the Rodeo Drive of the desert: Palm Desert's El Paseo Drive. The fabulously rich shopping strip is lined with one outstanding expensive car after the other. All clean and shiny as are their owners: Clean, shiny and well put together. (Are we underdressed?) We spot merchandise we recognise from the "poorer" end of town -- here it is priced $150 higher than the already too high price for a wrought iron candle holder.

I remember the palm tree thriving in an inch of soil in the canyon. I think I want all these things in the windows, but reality is I am deeply happy with my inch of soil.

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Love

• The one who has learned to love all people will find plenty of people who will return that love. Ernest Holmes

Perhaps it seems inconceivable to be able to love ALL people. And certainly it seems like we must first be able to love ourselves before we can love anyone else. However, these ideas might be reactions to the Group Mind thought that to love is to be vulnerable, and to be vulnerable is dangerous.

Actually, the only thing we know how to do is to love. All of living, all urges, desires and responses grow out of our natural ability to love. Underneath our fear of each other, or underneath our disdain we sometimes feel for ourselves, is a pure, raw natural love. It is what "Spirit in us" means.

We need not do anything first before we can love.

John I -- Beloved,let us love one another, because love is from God..... Those who say, I love God, and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not
love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen.

I accept my true nature as love. I express my true nature as love. I recognize my love everywhere. I feel my love within my being. My love, my God, my reason for being. I give thanks for my life and all that is in it.

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Kindness

• The mind which condemns, understands not the truth of being. . . . to him
  who loves much is forgiven. SOM pp. 457

Simple heart felt kindness seems to be an effective key to unlocking the potential of global cooperation and love. An act of kindness is particularly effective in providing joy and well being when it is performed
without reason and with no expectation of reciprocation.

If it is our purpose to express God’s Life of Love, we might begin by asking, When in my life can I be more kind, more loving and more gentle?

The rewards of kindness are difficult to explain, but there effects are far reaching and powerful.

Today I am the instrument of Spirit's peace. From my mouth is spoken only love. From my hands is accomplished only kindness. I give thanks for my life and all that is in it.

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