I heard a song today that made me cry.
They were tears of wonder, and love. Portia and I were crying, and smiling. Because it made me think of all the people I love, and my family. And all the people in the world, that have spent a winter without heat, without food, without water.
Without a hug to warm their soul,
Without a family to call them home.
I’ve been to those worlds, many a time and each time needed someone to be there to help me, to understand and love me for every imperfection.

I have found, and lost love along the way. I have been hurt, and sadly, hurt others in my life. We’ve all changed, we’ve all aged, and we’ve all walked the branches of our tree. And if you can find that moment where your heart is lightened, your smile is bright, and your laughter merry… then you are the richest of any person this holiday. No matter what religion, sect, or creed you call your faith, may you follow it in love.

Love to all

Johnny Cash – The Christmas Guest

It happened one day near December’s end,
Two neighbors called on an old-time friend
And they found his shop so meager and mean,
Made gay with a thousand boughs of green,
And Conrad was sitting with face a-shine
When he suddenly stopped as he stitched a twine
And he said, “Old friends, at dawn today,
When the cock was crowing the night away,
The Lord appeared in a dream to me
And said, ‘I am coming your guest to be’.
So I’ve been busy with feet astir,
Strewing my shop with branches of fir,
The table is spread and the kettle is shined
And over the rafters the holly is twined,
And now I will wait for my Lord to appear
And listen closely so I will hear
His step as He nears my humble place,
And I open the door and look on His face. . .”

So his friends went home and left Conrad alone,
For this was the happiest day he had known,
For, long since, his family had passed away
And Conrad had spent many a sad Christmas Day.
But he knew with the Lord as his Christmas guest
This Christmas would be the dearest and best,
So he listened with only joy in his heart.
And with every sound he would rise with a start
And look for the Lord to be at his door
Like the vision he had a few hours before.
So he ran to the window after hearing a sound,
But all that he could see on the snow-covered ground
Was a shabby beggar whose shoes were torn
And all of his clothes were ragged and worn.
But Conrad was touched and went to the door
And he said, “Your feet must be frozen and sore,
I have some shoes in my shop for you
And a coat that will keep you warmer, too.”

So with grateful heart the man went away,
But Conrad noticed the time of day.
He wondered what made the Lord so late
And how much longer he’d have to wait,
When he heard a knock and ran to the door,
But it was only a stranger once more.
A bent, old lady with a shawl of black,
With a bundle of kindling piled on her back.
She asked for only a place to rest,
But that was reserved for Conrad’s Great Guest.
But her voice seemed to plead, “Don’t send me away
Let me rest for awhile on Christmas day.”
So Conrad brewed her a steaming cup
And told her to sit at the table and sup.
But after she left he was filled with dismay
For he saw that the hours were slipping away
And the Lord had not come as He said He would,
And Conrad felt sure he had misunderstood.

When out of the stillness he heard a cry,
“Please help me and tell me where am I.”
So again he opened his friendly door
And stood disappointed as twice before,
It was only a child who had wandered away
And was lost from her family on Christmas Day.
Again Conrad’s heart was heavy and sad,
But he knew he should make the litte girl glad,
So he called her in and wiped her tears
And quieted all her childish fears.
Then he led her back to her home once more
But as he entered his own darkened door,
He knew that the Lord was not coming today
For the hours of Christmas had passed away.
So he went to his room and knelt down to pray
And he said, “Dear Lord, why did you delay,
What kept You from coming to call on me,
For I wanted so much Your face to see. . .”

When soft in the silence a voice he heard,
“Lift up your head for I kept My word–
Three times My shadow crossed your floor–
Three times I came to your lowly door–
For I was the beggar with bruised, cold feet,
I was the woman you gave something to eat,
And I was the child on the homeless street.
Three times I knocked and three times I came in,
And each time I found the warmth of a friend.
Of all the gifts, love is the best,
I was honored to be your Christmas guest.”

Dear Friends and Family in Spirit,

During this sacred time we regret that we will not be holding a public Yule ceremony. We encourage you to enjoy the time with loved ones, or by volunteering to help increase the greater good. May the Lord and the Lady hold you in their hands until we meet again.

Rev. Tracie Voss

Rev. Adrian Tremayne

by Cait Johnson

(Cross-posted from Care2 for not-for-profit educational purposes)
Each solstice falls upon the ecliptic midway between the equinoxes, when the sun reaches that midway point, generally about June 21 and December 21. Winter Solstice on December 21 is the shortest day of the year. After Winter Solstice each day becomes longer until the longest day of the year arrives around June 21st. The solstices have been observed and celebrated by cultures throughout the world.

A central aspect of the winter solstice rites observed by many Native American tribes includes the making and planting of prayer sticks. Prayer sticks are made by everyone in a family for four days before the solstice. On the day named as the solstice, the prayer sticks are planted – at least one by each person – in small holes dug by the head of the household. Each prayer stick is named for an ancestor or deity.Here’s how to make a prayer stick; they are usually:

• Made out of cedar and are forked;
• Are equivalent to the measurement from the maker’s elbow to the tips of
  their fingers; and
• Are taken from a tree that the maker feels connected to.
• Tobacco is offered to the largest tree of the same species in the area and
  permission is asked to take a part of its relative.
• The bark can be stripped.
• The bark can be carved on the stick.
• One feather should be added to the prayer stick; traditionally this is a
  wild turkey feather.
• A bit of tobacco is placed in a red cloth and tied onto one of the forks.
• Fur or bone from an animal that the maker wishes to honor is tied onto the
  stick.
• Metal or stones should not be tied to the stick.
• It is also customary to say prayers silently as one makes the prayer stick.

Winter Solstice Project II: Discover Stones

All matter whirls at incredible speed, atoms in constant, breathtaking motion. But the rock people are seemingly still. We are all of us surrounded by the stillness of stone; if you dig in any patch of earth, you are likely to find bits and pieces that are unimaginably old and likely to outlast us by countless lifetimes.

Just as trees may be intuited to have individual spirits and personalities, so the humble rocks beneath our feet may be known and their energies felt in ways that have much to teach us.

Children are inveterate rock collectors, often seeing unique power and beauty in a rock that looks plain and nondescript to us. By seeing with the open inner eyes of our children, we can share their fascination for the magic of stone. And when we surround ourselves with rocks that are special to us, when we take time to hold one in our hands or stroke its weighty smoothness or striation, we make a bodily connection with the oldest matter on this planet and with the element of winter.

Particularly at this often harried time, building a relationship with rocks–allowing them to permeate our consciousness in quiet and stillness–is a great gift of peace for the entire family.

Care for a slice?

11/24/2009 4:17:55 PM
by Bennett Gordon
Giving junk food to rats can make them into addicts, exhibiting similar behavior to heroin junkies. For a recent experiment, researchers gave rats a diet of HoHos, sausage, poundcake, bacon, and cheesecake. The subjects quickly began compulsively eating and became obese, and soon, the pleasure centers in the rats’ brains became less sensitive to the food. “As a result,” Science News reports, “the rats ate more to get the same amount of pleasure—just as heroin addicts require more and more of the drug to feel good.” The changes due to binge eating lasted weeks after the rats began eating healthier, and researchers are now looking into the long-term affect of messing with the brains reward systems.

Source: Science News

Image by Tracy Hunter , licensed under Creative Commons .

11/25/2009 2:32:36 PM
by Jeff Severns Guntzel
(Source: Foto8)
Reproduced here for not-for-profit, educational purposes only.

The photojournalist who blogs under the moniker Afghan Hound at the documentary photography website Foto8 has posted a photo he took of Oz, a soldier serving in Afghanistan who was killed on his last day of deployment. The photographer talks a little bit about Oz and a lot about life as a war photographer. It’s a long post and an important read. But really, his opening paragraph says it all:

Another Op-Ed in The New York Times, another well balanced political essay in Foreign Affairs, another eulogy to a departed soldier, another boring politician, another retired military commander, another demand for more troops, another demand we pull out now, another request for more helicopters, another comparison to the Soviet invasion, another Vietnam, another rant, another point of view… I just see dead people.

Source: Foto8

Crossing the border for Dental Care

American patients on a budget travel to Los Algodones,
a dental paradise for the underinsured

November-December 2009 by Bobby Neel Adams, from Diner Journal

Inches across the U.S. border there is a surreal oasis of tooth decay: Los Algodones, Baja, Mexico. Two-thirds of the town’s storefronts are dental clinics and approximately 85 percent of all employment is in the medical field. It is a mecca for American snowbirds and the uninsured. Los Algodones requires no appointment. Within 15 minutes of crossing the border, you can hear the screech of a drill and smell the enamel of your tooth as it vaporizes…

(for more, click here)

“According to the U.S. Congressional Research Service, the cost of keeping a single American soldier in Afghanistan is $1.3 million per year. According to Greg Jaffe and Karen DeYoung of the Washington Post, it costs the Pentagon about $1 billion per year to station 1,000 U.S. troops in that country. It’s fair to assume that this estimate doesn’t include, among other things, long-term care for wounded soldiers or the cost of replacing destroyed or overused equipment. Nor do these figures include any civilian funds being spent on the war effort via the State Department, nor undoubtedly the funds being spent by the Pentagon to upgrade bases and facilities throughout the country. In other words, just about any decision by the president, including one simply focused on training Afghan soldiers and police, will involve an outlay of further multi-billions of dollars. Whatever choice the president makes, the U.S. will bleed money.”

From TomDispatch

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Donate now to help us raise $75,000  to make sure Congress  enacts climate legislation  that protects wildlife I’m afraid that one day we may be asking ourselves… What happened to the grizzlies in Yellowstone…or the bighorn sheep in Canyonlands…or the salmon in Olympic…or any number of other magnificent wildlife that inhabit our national parks? It’s difficult to imagine and even harder to accept. But iconic wildlife being driven from national parks is a looming reality we all must contemplate and take action to prevent. That’s the bottom line message of NPCA’s new report, Climate Change and National Park Wildlife: A Survival Guide for a Warming World. I encourage you to read the report and help us act on its wildlife survival recommendations by making an online donation to NPCA. Shrinking snow cover, rising temperatures, weather pattern disruptions, and non-native species invasions–all results of climate change–are combining to push park wildlife toward the brink. Numerous wildlife species are suffering terribly and facing an uncertain future.   This threat to our parks’ living legacy won’t be lifted quickly or easily. But with your help, it can be done. NPCA has the knowledge–based on our scientific research–to advocate “climate smart” management strategies, but we need the funds. We need $75,000 now to make sure Congress enacts climate legislation that protects wildlife. That’s why I am calling on you to support NPCA now with a special contribution. America’s national parks will continue to support abundant, healthy wildlife populations, if we can: stop contributing to global warming pollution, ensure that the parks have clean air and water, give wildlife freedom to move to new homes as the climate warms, and other action steps outlined in our report. But we can’t do it without your financial support.   Click here now to support NPCA with a tax-deductible gift that will help protect wildlife and our national parks against climate change. Sincerely,  Thomas C. Kiernan President This message was sent to you by the National Parks Conservation Association. E-mail us at TakeAction@npca.org, write to us at 1300 19th Street, NW, Suite 300, Washington, DC 20036, or call us at 800-NAT-PARK (800-628-7275). Are you having trouble making a donation online? Call us at 1.800.628.7275 Monday – Friday from 9:00 AM – 5:00 PM Eastern Time and one of our associates will be able to assist you. Can’t see this message? View it at the NPCA Web Site. Visit the web address below to tell your friends about how they can help us fight for America’s best idea.  Tell-a-friend! If you received this message from a friend, you can sign up for NPCA.

NPCA | 1300 19th Street, NW | Suite 300 | Washington, DC 20036 | 800.NAT.PARK | npca@npca.org

11/19/2009 8:59:45 AM

by Bennett Gordon

One Nation Under CCTV

The millions of cameras currently keeping a silent watch over London have caused alarm among civil libertarians. The Orwellian police state or the unblinking panopticon of surveillance, however, has failed to materialized so far. There are currently 4.3 million cameras in the United Kingdom, but according to Jamie Malanowski in the Washington Monthly, “the practical effect on a person’s behavior is negligible.”

Rather than preventing crimes, the cameras have proven most helpful in catching perpetrators after crimes have already happened. The massive numbers of cameras are too disjointed, for now, to provide a measure of central control. Malanowski reports that police aren’t trying very hard to link them up, either. “Perhaps because bureaucracies in the UK are mighty forces for inefficiency and inaction, perhaps because abuses have been reined in by good English common sense,” Malanowski writes, “the cameras have been deployed in a largely benign way.”

One company is aiming change the disjointed nature of England’s massive surveillance infrastructure by putting crowds, rather than the government, in charge. Kris Kotarski, reports for the Calgary Herald that the British company Internet Eyes is allowing people to anonymously monitor some closed circuit televisions (CCTVs), and make money while doing it.

Internet Eyes turns surveillance into a game, where anonymous users try to spot shoplifting or vandalism on CCTVs, and then report the crimes for possible cash rewards. The company charges its viewers £20 per month and £1 per crime alert, and offers users a chance at £1,000 per month as a reward for reporting the most crime. It’s like “crowdsourcing” repressive surveillance of a country, or, as Kotarski calls it, a move toward “iPod fascism.”

Source: Washington Monthly , Calgary Herald

Image by JapanBlack, licensed under Creative Commons.