Today's picture (03-31-2007)

Street Mural, Philadelphia, PA.

Where love begins

Mother Teresa
The Nobel Peace Prize 1979

From the Nobel Lecture


"And so here I am talking with you - I want you to find the poor here, right in your own home first. And begin love there. Be that good news to your own people. And find out about your next-door neighbour - do you know who they are? I had the most extraordinary experience with a Hindu family who had eight children. A gentleman came to our house and said: Mother Teresa, there is a family with eight children, they had not eaten for so long - do something. So I took some rice and I went there immediately. And I saw the children - their eyes shinning with hunger - I don't know if you have ever seen hunger. But I have seen it very often. And she took the rice, she divided the rice, and she went out. When she came back I asked her - where did you go, what did you do? And she gave me a very simple answer: They are hungry also. What struck me most was that she knew - and who are they, a Muslim family - and she knew. I didn't bring more rice that evening because I wanted them to enjoy the joy of sharing. But there were those children, radiating joy, sharing the joy with their mother because she had the love to give. And you see this is where love begins - at home."

Read and/or hear the entire lecture at:
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1979/teresa-lecture.html

Today's picture (03-24-2007)

Maple tree at National Zoo, Washington, D.C.

If You Forget Me

~ By Pablo Neruda

I want you to know
one thing.

You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.

Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.

If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.

If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.

But
if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine.

UP WORD PLAY

~ author unkown

(Lovers of the English language might enjoy
this.....How do non-natives ever learn all the nuances of
English???)

There is a two-letter word that perhaps has more
meanings than any other two-letter word, and that word is
UP. It's easy to understand UP, meaning toward the sky
or at the top of the list, but when we awaken in the
morning, why do we wake UP?
At a meeting, why does a topic come UP ? Why do we
speak UP ,and why are the officers UP for election and
why is it UP to the secretary to write UP a report?
We call UP our friends and we use it to brighten UP
a room, polish UP the silver, we warm UP the leftovers
and clean UP the kitchen. We lock UP the house and
some guys fix UP the old car.
At other times the little word has real special
meaning. People stir UP trouble, line UP for tickets, work
UP an appetite, and think UP excuses.
To be dressed is one thing but to be dressed UP is
special.
A drain must be opened UP because it is stopped UP.
We open UP a store in the morning but we close it UP
at night. We seem to be pretty mixed UP about UP!
To be knowledgeable about the proper uses of UP,
look the word UP in the dictionary. In a desk-sized
dictionary, it takes UP almost 1/4 of the page and can add
UP to about thirty definitions.
If you are UP to it, you might try building UP a
list of the many ways UP is used. It will take UP a lot
of your time, but if you don't give UP, you may wind UP
with a hundred or more.
When it threatens to rain, we say it is clouding UP.
When the sun comes out we say it is clearing UP. When
it rains, it wets UP the earth. When it doesn't rain
for awhile, things dry UP .
One could go on & on, but I'll wrap it UP , for now
my time is UP, so, time to shut UP!
Oh, one more thing: What is the first thing you do
in the morning the last thing you do at night? U P

From Blossoms

By Li-Young Lee

From blossoms comes
this brown paper bag of peaches
we bought from the joy
at the bend in the road where we turned toward
signs painted Peaches.

From laden boughs, from hands,
from sweet fellowship in the bins,
comes nectar at the roadside, succulent
peaches we devour, dusty skin and all,
comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat.

O, to take what we love inside,
to carry within us an orchard, to eat
not only the skin, but the shade,
not only the sugar, but the days, to hold
the fruit in our hands, adore it, then bite into
the round jubilance of peach.

There are days we live
as if death were nowhere
in the background; from joy
to joy to joy, from wing to wing,
from blossom to blossom to
impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.