| New Year Ramblings |
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| T h e B r a i n G e a r s K e e p T u r n i n g . . . |
| E-Mail Cindy at: thecindyk@hotmail.com |
| 11/23/01: Quote of the Day- "If only I were mentally there" Kira |
| Quotes to Ponder: The meaning of life is different for each person. - Carrie Kearney History left its footprints on tomorrow.- Craig Baker(site) |
| So, here we are again, ending one year and starting another. The world continues to turn, and life keeps on coming. 2001 was a busy, scarey, enlightening, rough and tumble ride. 2002 promises more enlightenment, but via what mechanisms remains unknown.Will the world survive to see 2003? Will each of us survive to see 2003? The mystery will unfold, and we all will come closer to or farther from an understanding of what it is to be our self. |
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| Click Georgia for link to nice O'Keefe Site |
| Working with the elderly is interesting. However, we get referrals to see those people needing help, who have dementia or are physically frail; the energetic, healthy elder rarely crosses our path. Recently I met with a woman who was turning 98 next month. She had become increasingly unable to get around, was taking meals only in her room, had difficulty getting up and down so spent much of her day in her living room chair. Her eyesight had gotten worse but she could still read large print and she could still enlarge the font size on her computer but, alas, the cursor had become invisible to her eyes. She spoke of losing her husband many, many years ago, then losing one of her sons a couple of years ago to cancer, and how her brother comes to see her but it has become challenging for him because he is ill also and her surviving son has his own problems. She says she is ready for God to take her. How many times have I heard that? Sometimes the person is not really ready, it is just that they are depressed and isolated. But other times, as in this case, they are right- it is time. The body is fading fast, the loved ones are already waiting on the other side, and the purpose for being here is a more elusive concept than ever. Sometimes the party is over, but our ride has not yet arrived. In some ways death gives structure and meaning to life, yet in other ways it makes you wonder what the point is. Somedays we have made peace with this matter and on others it is astonishing still to think that we someday will die. Carol sent me a joke today and one line says that not one shred of evidence supports the notion that life is serious. It is a big ole goofy world indeed, just as John Prine says. |
| By and large Bush and his administration have done a decent job in the last 4 months, although his foray into exploring the boundaries of privacy and due process were scarey... It is worrisome how many in the administration are bent upon pursuing our old enemies, as if war and physical battles are the only way... Sometimes I doubt Bush's capacity for intellectual analysis: "I think if you know what you believe, it makes it a lot easier to answer questions. I can't answer your question." Reynoldsburg, Ohio, Oct. 4, 2000 |
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| End of the Year Ponderings Okay, so we are moving on, once again, into the unknown year, following the bright star, or something less visible. I am now reading Watership Down by Richard Adams and so you can be expecting a number of quotes from it in the near future, in fact, right now: "Some say the Black Rabbit [Devil] hates us and wants our destruction. But the truth is- or so they taught me- that he, too, serves Lord Frith[God] and does no more than his appointed task- to bring about what must be. We come into the world and we have to go: but we do not go merely to serve the turn of one enemy or another. If that were so, we would all be destroyed in a day. We go by the will of the Black Rabbit of Inle and only by his will. And though that will seems hard and bitter to us, yet in his way he is our protector, for he knows Frith's promise..." My friend [Reverend] Will says God is not capable of evil or the source thereof. If this is so, then God does not have power over everything, He is not "almighty". But perhaps Dandelion in the quote above is right, perhaps God orchestrates evil also, perhaps mankind cannot learn its lessons and cannot gain knowledge and wisdom without adversity, without the adversity that wakes us up, makes us more aware of the world around us, aware that our stay here is tenuous, aware that we are alive, and, in becoming aware that we are alive, we return to wondering how this is, and why. [Lord Frith says] "Wisdom is found on the desolate hillside, El-ahrairah, where none comes to feed, and the stony bank where the rabbit scratches a hole in vain." Physics tells us that time elapses more slowly for an individual in motion than it does for a stationary individual- time is relative, it exists all at once. [The Black Rabbit says] "You are a nuisance to me. Go home. I myself will save your people. Do not have the impertinence to ask me when. There is no time here. They are already saved." We have free will to make decisions, even though the result of our decisions is already known to God or the power/energy source of life. Evil serves the purpose of bringing us to where we are going. [The Black Rabbit says] "Bargains, bargains... There is not a day or night but a doe offers her life for her kittens... Sometimes it is taken, sometimes it is not. But there is no bargain, for here what is is what must be." [El-ahrairah, thinking] "The answer came to him suddenly. These shadows had no power either to send him away or to hurt him, except with his own consent." Our lessons are not over, we are still alive. The next year, if like the last, will bring wisdom at the usual price: adversity and pain. We become stronger in the places that heal. If our lessons have the sort of purpose that we envision, then there is a time and place when there will be peace, prosperity and a healthy environment for all beings. |
| B e H e r e N o w . . . |