Category Archives: Spirituality

Posts related to spiritual topics, including the works of Seth, Abraham-Hicks, Elias, Kris, Ramtha, Bashar, Ernest Holmes, and others

The Man Who Made a Forest

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Hi Folks:

Sometimes you come across a story that leaves you (almost) speechless.  I am a writer, after all.  Although this story appeared in the April 1, 2012 edition of ‘The Indian Times‘, it’s no April Fool’s joke.  One man, two hands, two feet and thirty years created a 550 ha (~1360 acre) forest in rural India.  By himself.  Jadav ‘Molai’ Payeng began by planting bamboo when he was 16, then when that had grown he began planting, watering and pruning tree seedlings.  He brought in red ants from his village to help the soil.  Nature built the rest.  The full story is in the Indian Times article.

I salute him.

He’s not alone in his work, though. Wangari Maathai began the ‘Green Belt Movement‘ in Kenya, and it’s now become an international organization.  Although Ms. Maathai is no longer with us, the GBM continues its goal of planting one billion trees internationally.  In Indonesia, Willie Smits and the Masarang Foundation are helping local communities, wildlife and the rainforest, and the people of Vakan’Ala (‘Pearls of the Forest) are doing similar work in Madagascar.  Amazing.

Hugs,
Mike.

P.S. You can read Jean Giono’s fictional story, ‘The Man Who Planted Trees‘ and a similar one, ‘Where the Sun Spilled Gold‘, by following the links.

Victorious Voices 2012

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Hi Folks:

UPDATE: This post is about the 2012 event.  If you’re looking for our 2013 Victorious Voices post, you can find it here.

Although Marcia and I have both been writers for most of our lives, our introduction to ‘slam poetry’ is somewhat recent – only since Shane Koyczan performed at the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver.  Like all forms of poetry there are a few rules to follow, and since slam poetry is spoken, most of those rules relate to presentation.  Poetry slams are ‘competitive’, but competitive in the true sense of the word – from the Latin, meaning ‘to strive together’.  All work must be original.  Poetry may be spoken individually or in ‘teams’.  Each poet has up to 3 minutes to perform his/her piece, with a 10-second grace period following that.  Any longer and the poet begins losing points for going over time.  The time begins when the poet first engages the audience.  The poet may not use props or musical accompaniment, and may not wear a costume.  That’s the essentials of it.

Last night marked the 3rd annual ‘Victorious Voices‘ final – Victoria’s Secondary School Slam Championships.  The semi-finals were on Monday night, but unfortunately we missed that event.  Eight teams from local secondary schools made the semi-finals, and the final four teams performed last night.  The students were from Esquimalt High School, Pearson College, and Reynolds Secondary (Junior and Senior).  The event was held at the Victoria Event Centre, on Broad Street between Johnson and Pandora. Continue Reading →

“Years”, by Bartholomäus Traubeck

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Hi Folks:

I sent this out to a number of people by e-mail yesterday; thought I’d share it here as well…

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Follow this link and play the video, but listen first, without looking at the video or trying to interpret what you hear:

Years
“Years”

Continue Reading →

Red Flags

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Hi Folks:

If you were among those who have visited our blog in the past few days, you will have found that it was ‘red flagged’  for distributing ‘malware’.  Rather than attempting to rail against the folks at Google for marking our site ‘unsafe’, we should instead be grateful that such action alerted us to the code that had been installed on our blog.  There is a saying in the corporate world that there are two kinds of companies – those who know they have been hacked and those who don’t.  However, when it comes to a site where one invests as much of one’s self as Marcia and I do here, having someone hack into it is equivalent to having someone break into one’s home.  There is a certain senselessness to it.  It may be more benign to talk of ‘spamming robots’ as autonomic devices, but the truth is that there is a person behind all such actions.  We can’t begin to understand their motivations, but we can imagine that it stems from a search for ‘power’ based on a perceived feeling of inadequacy.  Our wish is for that person to come to see and celebrate his/ her own magnificence instead.

So, Dear Reader, if you’ve come by our blog recently and been put off by the ‘red flag’ status, we apologize.  It’s not the first time this has happened, and may or may not be the last.  We trust you’ve found something of benefit here, and we invite you to return.  And to whomever has been adding malicious code to our site, we offer you only love.  May you come to see yourself as we do – a truly wonderful Being!  We don’t invite or encourage such attacks, but we don’t do much to defend against them either.  Doing so only escalates the feelings of negativity, and there is already far too much of that in the world.  We wish you peace.

Love,
Marcia and Mike.

P.S. Special thanks to our son Nick for all you do every day to keep our site running so beautifully!

Marcia’s Meanderings ~ Most Definitely!

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Hello Dear Ones!

In a world where possibility and probability have become buzz words, where potential is highly praised yet expectation remains in question, where receiving product just on time rather than ahead of schedule is the norm ~ wouldn’t it be delicious to make room for: Most Definitely! Why Certainly! Absolutely!

Rather than building in contingencies for problems, limitations, setbacks and just-in-case scenarios ~ resulting in a greater probability of encountering them by the very matching of that same energy ~ how be we grow, develop and come to expect the very best of everyone, the power of teamwork, and the perfection of an idea, a dream ~ and live into its fulfillment by choice and by design!

In Light and Laughter,

Marcia

New Beginnings… and Old Memories…

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Hi Folks:

It’s now closing in on the end of January, so if you’re still maintaining your New Year’s resolutions, my congratulations to you!  It may be sheer coincidence that Remembrance Day and New Year’s Day fall so closely together on the calendar but our memories of the past and our dreams of the future always seem bound together.  It may be true that (as espoused by George Santayana), “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”  It’s also true that much of how we see ourselves today is based on and built out of who we have believed ourselves to be and that person no longer exists.  It’s not just that your body is continuously refreshing itself – building new cells and removing old ones.  Our thoughts, ideas, understandings – in some ways the essence of who we are – is also different… unless of course we hang on tight to the past memories of who we used to be.  Memories can be pleasant or painful and there are varying degrees of both, but there’s one thing memories rarely are, and that’s an accurate recollection of the past as it happened.  My grandmother was a very wise woman with a Grade 5 education, and one of her sayings was, “No matter how thin the paper, there are two sides to every page.”  In some cases there are many more than two sides to an issue, more than two sides to a memory, but the point is made. Continue Reading →

You Like Me! You Really Like Me!!

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Hi Folks:

So far as I know, Facebook was the first to introduce the concept of the ‘Like’ button to user posts and comments, and it’s such a good idea that it’s been adopted by others as well. Google+ uses the ‘+1’ button instead, but it’s the same idea. The folks at TED.com used to give users the ability to up vote or down vote another user’s comments, but they changed that policy so that only up votes are possible. The people at 50opx.com have both ‘Like’ and ‘Dislike’ buttons on the images displayed there; I suggested to them that they remove the ‘Dislike’ button but the choice is of course theirs.

Why is this so important? Well, in a pre-internet world (yes, I’m old enough to remember such a time), personal interactions were less frequent and more intimate. People waited days, weeks, even months sometimes to hear from a friend or loved one, and as such contacts were treasured. People exchanged long notes, thank you cards and more. Today we live in a much different world. Long letters are hardly ever written, thank you cards are almost forgotten, and even e-mail has become passé, especially among the younger generation. We’re swamped with ever more information, almost all of it short and almost all of it impersonal. The internet is largely considered anonymous and while on one hand that gives people the freedom to express their ‘true’ feelings behind that mask of anonymity it also distances the connections we have with those who are close to us in different ways. Internet friendships can be as strong as any ‘personal’ relationship, but without being face to face we lack inflection, touch and more. Apparently studies have shown that people are more likely to ‘trust’ links that their friends have ‘liked’, but I think it’s much more than that.

Continue Reading →

Happy Holidays!

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Happy Holidays!

Happy Holidays, Everyone! There are a lot of different celebrations this time of year, but they all share the same general ideas… so whether you prefer Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Saturnalia, Solstice or something more personal (the Muslim celebration of Eid al-Fitr is on a different, lunar calendar), we wanted to wish you a safe and happy Holiday Season and a New Year filled with as much love, joy, peace, adventure, contentment, prosperity and excitement as you can handle!

As a gift, we’d love to share this with you: TEDxSF – Louie Schwartzberg – Gratitude

Thanks so much for dropping by our little corner of the ‘net!

Hugs,
M&M

(P.S.  Thanks to John for the idea for the image at the top!)

Understanding Criticism

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Hi Folks:

This is going to be a very short (for me) post, and is really just a pointer to some excellent articles written by someone else.  Photographer Alain Briot recently wrote a series of three articles for the Luminous Landscape, and while they’re primarily written for the understanding of photographers, I think the points Alain makes have a broader reference to the criticisms we all deal with in our daily life.

You can find them here:

Understanding Criticism, Part 1: The Many Faces of Criticism
Understanding Criticism, Part 2: Responding to Criticism
Understanding Criticism, Part 3: A few words on perseverance

Okay, that’s it for now!

Hugs,
Mike.

(See, I told you it was going to be short… 😉 )

It’s Our Birthday!!

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Hi Folks:

Happy 2nd birthday to our blog!  Since tomorrow is Thanksgiving Day in the US, it seemed appropriate to offer some thanks here as well.  After all, we have a lot to be thankful for.  So, in no particular order:

We Give Thanks for You: While this little corner of the ‘net is our own window on the wider world, it wouldn’t mean much without you, our readers.  You’re really the reason we’re here!  Both of us are writers, but a writer without an audience speaks only to himself, or herself as the case may be.  According to Google Analytics, in the past 2 years we’ve had nearly 40,000 page views from over 15,000 different people.  That may be small by some standards, but we’re both amazed and delighted by your continued presence!

We Give Thanks for Family: Together we have the usual number of parents and an ever-increasing number of relations, from sisters and brothers to nieces, nephews and beyond.  We have two wonderful sons, and two wonderful nieces who are like daughters.  We also have two grandsons and one great-nephew who counts as a grandson too.  The little ones bring such joy to our lives!  There’s a saying that one can choose one’s friends but not one’s family; even if we could we’d stick with the ones we have!  Special thanks goes out to our son Nick, not only because starting this blog was his idea to begin with, but because he continues to do a lot of the ‘behind the scenes’ technical support for us.

We Give Thanks for ‘Family’:  Ever since the invention of Facebook, the words ‘Friend’ and ‘Like’ will never be the same again.  Nonetheless, our connection to others around the world through Twitter, Google+ and several forums has opened doors for us that would be possible in no other way.  Because of that we’ve made ‘friends’ with some remarkable people!  We give thanks for your presence in our lives!

We Give Thanks for Each Other: A few days ago we celebrated our 225th Monthaversary of the day we met.  Earlier this month we celebrated our 17th Anniversary of being a couple, and last month we celebrated our 9th Anniversary of being married.  In truth, we celebrate every day together.  We are both truly blessed to have each other, and we acknowledge it in every way we can.  In the movie ’50 First Dates’, Drew Barrymore plays a woman who is incapable of making new memories, and Adam Sandler plays a man who devotes himself to having her fall in love with him every day.  We treasure all of the memories we have, but it’s easy to say we fall in love with each other every day. 😀

And with that, we thank you for coming by; we’re serving (virtual) coffee and cake (two candles ¡¡ ) in the living room!!

Hugs,
M&M