Martin Luther King on Love

~ By Martin Luther King Jr.
US black civil rights leader & clergyman
(1929 - 1968)

I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. That is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.

Sonnet XLIV

From "100 Love Sonnets" (Cien sonetos de amor)
~ By Pablo Neruda

You must know that I do not love and that I love you,
because everything alive has its two sides;
a word is one wing of silence,
fire has its cold half.

I love you in order to begin to love you,
to start infinity again
and never to stop loving you:
that's why I do not love you yet.

I love you, and I do not love you, as if I held
keys in my hand: to a future of joy-
a wretched, muddled fate-

My love has two lives, in order to love you:
that's why I love you when I do not love you,
and also why I love you when I do.

Angel

~ By Sarah McLachlan
City of Angels Soundtrack


Spend all your time waiting for that second chance
For the break that will make it OK
There's always some reason to feel not good enough
And it's hard at the end of the day
I need some distraction or a beautiful release
Memories seep from my veins
Let me be empty and weightless and maybe
I'll find some peace tonight

In the arms of the Angel far away from here
From this dark, cold hotel room, and the endlessness that you fear
You are pulled from the wreckage of your silent reverie
You're in the arms of the Angel; may you find some comfort here

So tired of the straight line, and everywhere you turn
There's vultures and thieves at your back
The storm keeps on twisting, you keep on building the lies
That you make up for all that you lack
It don't make no difference, escaping one last time
It's easier to believe
In this sweet madness, oh this glorious sadness
That brings me to my knees

In the arms of the Angel far away from here
From this dark, cold hotel room, and the endlessness that you fear
You are pulled from the wreckage of your silent reverie
In the arms of the Angel; may you find some comfort here

You're in the arms of the Angel; may you find some comfort here

In Memoriam

Excerpts from "In Memoriam"
~ By Alfred, Lord Tennyson.

ii

Dark house, by which once more I stand
Here in the long unlovely street,
Doors, where my heart was used to beat
So quickly, waiting for a hand,

A hand that can be clasped no more—
Behold me, for I cannot sleep,
And like a guilty thing I creep
At earliest morning to the door.

He is not here; but far away
The noise of life begins again,
And ghastly through the drizzling rain
On the bald street breaks the blank day.

viii

Love is and was my Lord and King,
And in his presence I attend
To hear the tidings of my friend,
Which every hour his couriers bring.

Love is and was my King and Lord,
And will be, though as yet I keep
Within his court on earth, and sleep
Encompassed by his faithful guard,

And hear at times a sentinel
Who moves about from place to place,
And whispers to the worlds of space,
In the deep night, that all is well.

Time To Say Goodbye

~ Time To Say Goodbye ("Con te partirò") is an Italian song written by Francesco Sartori (music) and Lucio Quarantotto (lyrics)*

When Im alone
I dream on the horizon
And words fail;
Yes, I know there is no light
In a room
Where the sun is not there
If you are not with me.
At the windows
Show everyone my heart
Which you set alight;
Enclose within me
The light you
Encountered on the street.

Time to say goodbye,
To countries I never
Saw and shared with you,
Now, yes, I shall experience them,
Ill go with you
On ships across seas
Which, I know,
No, no, exist no longer;
With you I shall experience them.

When you are far away
I dream on the horizon
And words fail,
And yes, I know
That you are with me;
You, my moon, are here with me,
My sun, you are here with me.
With me, with me, with me,

Time to say goodbye,
To countries I never
Saw and shared with you,
Now, yes, I shall experience them,
Ill go with you
On ships across seas
Which, I know,
No, no, exist no longer;
With you I shall re-experience them.
Ill go with you
On ships across seas
Which, I know,
No, no, exist no longer;
With you I shall re-experience them.
Ill go with you,
I with you.

-----------------

[More beautiful yet, here's Con Te Partiro (original Italian version)]

Quando sono solo
Sogno allorizzonte
E mancan le parole
Si lo so che non c? luce
In una stanza quando manca il sole
Se non ci sei tu con me, con me
Su le finestre
Mostra a tutti il mio cuore
Che hai accesso
Chiudi dentro me
La luce
Che hai incontrato per strada.

Con te partiro
Paesi che non ho mai
Veduto e vissuto con te
Adesso si li vivr?
Con te partiro
Su navi per mari
Che io lo so
No no non esistono pi?
Con te io li rivivro.

Quando sei lontana
Sogno allorizzonte
E mancan le parole
E io si lo so
Che sei con me con me
Tu mia luna tu sei qui con me
Mio sole tu sei qui con me,
Con me, con me, con me.

Con te partiro
Paesi che non ho mai
Veduto e vissuto con te
Adesso s? li vivr?
Con te partir?
Su navi per mari
Che io lo so
No no non esistono pi?
Con te io li rivivr?
Con te partir?
Su navi per mari
Che io lo so
No no non esistono pi?
Con te io li rivivr?
Con te partiro.
Io con te.


* It was first sung by Andrea Bocelli at the 1995 San Remo Festival and recorded on his album of the same year, Bocelli. The song achieved widespread success with a second version sung partly in English, pairing Bocelli with soprano Sarah Brightman, and released as "Time to Say Goodbye".

In November 1996 the duet Time To Say Goodbye by Sarah Brightman & Andrea Bocelli became in a few weeks time a big hit in Germany and later on also in several other countries of continental of Europe. And after it was performed on a T.V. programme of the National Lottery on 10 May 1997 it also become very swiftly successful in the Great Britain.

Watch and listen to it on YouTube

The Lake Isle of Innisfree

~ By W.B. Yeats

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee;
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear the lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.

W. B. Yeates Biography

A lesson for all parents

A tribute to my mom's moral influence
When I got in trouble with the neighbors, she gave me an indelible lesson.

~ By John Dreyer

CSMonitor.com/2007/0511

Today's Picture (04-26-07)

Mono Lake, California

What you see sometimes is not what you think

~ Author unknown

A woman was at the airport for a “red-eye” flight. She was tired, but also hungry so she bought a box of cookies. She sat down near the gate to read.

After a few minutes, she decided to eat some of the cookies she had purchased, and reached down to get them. As she opened the package, she noticed the man beside her watching with great interest. She took the first cookie and began to eat when, to her great surprise, the man reached over, smiling, and took the second cookie.

This upset the woman but she did not want to create scene. Besides, she thought, “Well, he is only eating one.” The woman ate her cookie in stunned silence, astonished at the audacity of the man. After a moment she determinedly reached for the 3rd cookie, but no sooner had she taken it out of the package than he, again smiling and without a word, reached over and took the 4th. Her indignation rose as back and forth they went in total silence, she taking a cookie, he taking a cookie, until they reached the bottom of the package where the final cookie remained.

The man picked up the final cookie and said to the woman, “Would you like to split it with me?” She was so furious that she grabbed it out of his hand, took her bag and stormed away.

Only a few moments later, already in the plane, she was still fuming. Before she sat down, as she reached into her purse to retrieve her glasses, she stopped short. She was stunned. There in the bag was her unopened package of cookies.

The man she was angry with turned out to be the generous one.

Fight Global Poverty

I want to let you all know about a cool non-profit that is doing great things: Kiva.org

Kiva.org allows individuals to make $25 loans to low-income entrepreneurs in the developing world (microfinance). By doing so,
individuals like you provide affordable working capital for the poor (money to buy a sewing machine, livestock, etc.), empowering them to earn their way out of poverty.

It's a new, direct and sustainable way to fight global poverty.

Anyways, if you have a minute, please check out the site: Kiva.org. Note that they have received great press in
publications ranging from The Wall Street Journal to NPR to BusinessWeek.

I recently viewed a Frontiline (PBS) program regarding Kiva.org and was blown away at how people are responding Kiva. It's people helping people around the world. How moving and sweet.

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.

Pablo Neruda

Sonnet XVII (100 Love Sonnets, 1960)

I don't love you as if you were the salt-rose, topaz
or arrow of carnations that propagate fire:
I love you as certain dark things are loved,
secretly, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that doesn't bloom and carries
hidden within itself the light of those flowers,
and thanks to your love, darkly in my body
lives the dense fragrance that rises from the earth.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where,
I love you simply, without problems or pride:
I love you in this way because I don't know any other way of loving

but this, in which there is no I or you,
so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand,
so intimate that when I fall asleep it is your eyes that close.

Fire

~ By Teilhard De Chardin

"Some day after we have mastered the winds, the waves and gravity, we will harness for God the energies of love; and then for a second time in the history of the world, humans will have discovered fire."

I savor glimmers of transcendence

By Ruskin Bond

http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/1205/p18s03-hfes.html

December 05, 2002

"If there be a heaven on earth, it is this, it is this, it is this!"

The words are inscribed over the entrance to the Hall of Special Audience, in the royal gardens of the Red Fort of Delhi, built by the Emperor Shah Jehan in the 17th century. It is a beautiful pavilion, the walls inlaid with jade and other semiprecious stones; and from the latticed windows one sees the waters of the river Jumna winding placidly across the plain.

In Shah Jehan's time, the river ran much closer to the fort, and I like to think that the emperor, when he found time, strolled along the ramparts of his palace while it was being built. And one evening, as the emperor gazed at the river, something happened to make him feel at peace with the world. He was so moved by the moment that he decided to build his private pavilion on that spot, inscribing on it those imperishable lines.

Such moments come to most of us - moments when we feel deeply moved or inspired, and when time seems to stand still so that we may savor and preserve in our minds a glimpse of eternity. They come but rarely, these glimmers - raindrops on a sunflower, or the fragrance of the first summer rain on parched earth, the song of the whistling thrush emerging like a sweet secret from a dark forest. Or the joy after hearing a child's laughter: moments when heaven is here, compensating for the irritations and petty disasters humans create around themselves. When all the wars are done, a butterfly will still be beautiful.

When I was only 17, I wanted desperately to be a writer. My early efforts did not meet with much success. No one encouraged me or raised my flagging spirits. At the time I was living with relatives in Jersey, one of the Channel Islands off England, and earning £3 a week as a clerk in a grocery store. Late one evening, when I was feeling particularly discouraged, I went for a walk along the seacoast. The tide was in, the sea was rough; and the wind, which was almost a gale, came pouring out of the darkness like a mad genie just released from his bottle. Great waves crashed against the sea wall, and the wind whipped the salt spray across my face. I felt like a small bird caught in a tempest.

And then something touched me, something from the elements took hold of my heart, and the depression left me. I felt as free and powerful as the wind - quite capable of building my own fort, my own private pavilion of words. And I spoke to the genie in the swirling darkness and called out: "Yes, I will be a writer, and no one's going to stop me!"

Well, more than 40 years later, the writing is still happening, though at times it's still a struggle. But whenever I feel like giving up, I try to recapture that moment when earth and sea and sky were one; and then the writing begins again.

Time, place, and emotion must coalesce, hence the rarity of such occasions. Delight cannot be planned for - it makes no appointments! Almost always, it's the unexpected that brings us joy. It may only be a shaft of sunlight, slanting through the pillars of a banyan tree; or dewdrops caught in a spider's web; or the sudden chatter of a mountain stream as you round the bend of a hill. Or an emperor's first glimpse of a winding river and the world beyond.

5 Minutes for our Planet

L'Alliance Pour La Planète, a group of French environmental organizations, appeals to all people to give our planet a 5-minute break. The initiative “5 Minutes for our Planet,” started in France, but quickly spread via the Internet to the whole world.

Everyone who wants to participate is requested to turn off his or her lights on the 1st of February, 2007 from 7:55 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. local time. It will be like a wave across the planet from East to West.

The L’Alliance says that it's not so much about saving the energy, but about letting citizens, media and political decision-makers focus on the energy that's being wasted and the urgency to take action.

A five-minute break for our planet: it doesn't take all that long and costs nothing.

Why February 1st? It will be the eve of the United Nations Climate-Change Report to be issued in Paris on Friday, February 2nd.

The Power of One can change the world, but as a collective we can make a greater impact.

Please circulate this message.

For more information in French go to L'Alliance Pour La Planète , www.lalliance.fr
For more information in Spanish go to Amigos de la Tierra, www.tierra.org
(No information about this event was found in English).