help

i’m seeking assistance from professional procrastinators who understand how difficult it is to motivate oneself to do activities that one is not motivated to do! from doing one’s taxes, to reading a book, to cleaning the bathroom!!

any suggestions (besides… stay away from the computer!).

political passion

Here’s Jake Stewart’s letter to the editor in today’s Dallas Morning News

Iraq: Enough is enough

Friday marks the first anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. Having completed my four-year tour in the Army in November 2002, I feel compelled to take a moment and write for those soldiers whose voices you might not hear in the news clips.

Over 550 American service men and women have been killed in Iraq and over 3,200 have been seriously injured. We have the finest military in the world, and there is no doubt in my mind that these soldiers will press on and follow their orders. But as a civilian now, I can tell you that true patriotism is not blindly following a political drum to war but rather it is our inherent responsibility to hold politicians accountable for the young lives they send to harm’s way.

This was a political war from square one. Though I’m certain this letter will invoke neoconservative responses that question my patriotism or worse, I would humbly ask that we take a moment and step aside from the talk-radio rhetoric to recognize that young soldiers die daily for a political war being deceptively pitched as part of the war on terror.

and here’s another email that i received on a similar topic:

“Enough is enough, it’s time to stand up for our soldiers and hold this commander in chief accountable.

The link is to the latest piece by William Rivers Pitt. His piece draws the very poignant and very necessary analogies between what has happened in Spain over the last week and what is going on in our country. In two days, the Spanish people staged a loud, strong, but peaceful revolt against a lying, irresponsible government who they, correctly, saw as being soaked in the blood of innocent people. Remember, the United States government is ultimately responsible for this. George Bush and his administration lied their way into a war that can’t be won and should never have been fought. Not only is the world no safer because of their actions, it is actually more dangerous. The Spanish people made their revolt in two days. We have just over 8 months. I implore each of you to do anything and everything you can to fuel our own strong, loud and peaceful revolt against the lying, irresponsible dangerous people who have the reins of our country right now. Letters to the editor, e-mails (just like this one) to people, marches, communications with your representatives and senators; the stakes are simply too high, on every front. From the economy, to civil liberties, to equal rights, to the environment, to a continually growing mound of dead bodies, this administration has failed in every way imaginable… Our voices, together, are a deafening roar of freedom, peace and democracy…Please shout loudly and often so that the tragedy in Spain, the debacle in Iraq and the atrocities in our own country can be no more. George Bush needs you to be silent. The rest of the world needs you to scream.”

more truth stuff!

i wrote:

“right now there seems to be a huge current about speaking and living in truth. it’s amazing to me how alive it is. for me personally, it’s a spiritual truth… personal “identity” and divine connection sort of thing (nothing big!!). i see that ALIVE pulse around me in many forms. vocationally, politically, civicly, etc. do you notice this in your neck of the woods?”

to which Christy Lee-Engel replied:

“A phrase that has been keeping me company and guiding many of my choices in the past few months is one I learned from my friends at LIOS: “conversations of love and truth”–

and intersecting with that lately is the frequent realization that the truth is *always* bigger than I know (maybe bigger than I can know!). Recently, I have been in situation after situation where I create an interpretation of a situation, or I hear someone’s version of a story, and I believe it, till I hear someone else’s completely contradictory version of the same situation…so I have been imagining “what if I didn’t believe all of my thoughts?”, a practice I gleaned from an astrologer friend I think you might enjoy (Eric Francis, at http://www.planetwaves.net), and have been learning to be more comfortable dwelling in uncertainty!”

sun dogs

my friend, brian, called me up yesterday to tell me that there were sun dogs in the sky. do you know about those? it’s when there is a little rainbow on both sides of the sun. (actually, you can find a more technical definition at any of these links that brian shared with me.) he also said that he had noticed (with sunglasses on) a halo around the sun for most of the day. immediately i ran outside to see what i could see. and i saw one little rainbow on one side of the sun….

but then,

last night when my eyes found the darkness,

i saw what i was told to be mars glowing with a halo of her own.

it was like the sky around her was reflecting her brilliant light.

and then as the night passed on,

the moon came out to sing her praise.

the atmosphere was filled with crystals of ice

reflecting the moon’s light.

and she was so still and solid in the center…

with this amazing radiance illuminating from her breadth.

i stood in my back yard, breath-taken… and breath-filled.

i’ve never seen the sky light up the way it did.

it tingled throughout my entire body.

there was magic in the air.

is this a regional thing? are other people in other parts of the world experiencing this phenomena right now (it’s still that way, though not as dramatic tonight)?

compliment machine

some more on compliments from the book, positive discipline in the classroom:

“Explain to students that it can feel awkward to give and receive compliments when they aren’t used to it. Use the analogy of leaning to ride a bike. Ask students how many of them would have never learned to ride if they had stopped because it was awkward at first… Spend some time on how to receive a compliment.”

“By focusing on the specifics of what someone does, the person being complimented will get a better idea of what the other person likes… Junior high school students, who seem to find appreciation and acknowledgment more appropriate than compliment, often feel that giving complements is embarrassing”

The authors suggest that the first part of classroom meetings is spent in complementing and appreciating. they mention that in a complimenting circle, students have the opportunity to “give, get, or pass.” i love this concept. i can choose to give a compliment to another, i can choose to pass my turn, or i can state that i need to receive a compliment. if i choose to get, i have another choice. i can tell the group what i need to hear and someone can volunteer to tell it to me or members of the group who would like to give me a compliment can raise their hand and i can choose someone.

i am really drawn to this step in teaching children to state what it is that they need. imagine a world where we all stated our needs. ahhh… sounds refreshing doesn’t it. verses always having to guess and assume…