the greatness of a nation...

The annual slaughter of dolphins in Taiji, Japan must stop.

There's a list of what you can do to help HERE.

In addition to contacting the authorities and embassies and those invested and in charge…  I say, do what you can, where you are, with what you have:

Not a sparrow falls without his maker knowing.

Bring awareness to your town.

What will you do?

What have you done?

I'd love to know.

“The greatness of a nation and its moral progress, may be judged by the way its animals are treated.”     

-Mahatma Gandhi

if we lose our hope, that’s our real disaster

Today I finished reading Love Your Enemies by Sharon Salzberg and Tenzin Robert Thurman. It's a great book that reaffirmed for me that we hold within ourselves the power to create our own happiness. Loving our enemies is about more than finding a way to forgive bullies; it's about wishing love and happiness for everyone… bullies and ourselves.

As I finished the book today, I highlighted and re-read my favorite parts. "Yep", I thought to myself… "our enemies are a gift; they are our greatest teachers." 

I thought I had it all figured out. Love, kindness, compassion… "I can do this" I thought.

I set the book down, feeling content. 

Then I went on twitter… and saw #HelpCoveDolphins. 

Today over 250 Bottlenose Dolphins were captured in the Taiji cove in Japan. Many are being slaughtered. Others are drowned in the nets. The 'beautiful' ones are being captured and sold to live in captivity.

I was suddenly sick with grief. My heart sank and then began to break beyond sadness... within this captured pod is a baby albino dolphin and his mother.

I watched the horror unfold, live-stream from the Sea Shepherd.  This baby was separated from his mother and hoisted onto the ship. This rare albino dolphin will now spend a lifetime in captivity. The fate of his mother? I don't know.

Love your enemies… how?

There is good in everyone… really?

Then I thought of a quote from HH the Dalai Lama:

“There is a saying in Tibetan, ‘Tragedy should be utilized as a source of strength.’ No matter what sort of difficulties, how painful experience is, if we lose our hope, that’s our real disaster.” 

Love your enemies. 

There is good in everyone. 

Never give up hope. 

and that you will always be kind

“I hope you will have a wonderful year, 
that you'll dream dangerously and outrageously, 
that you'll make something that didn't exist 
before you made it, 
that you will be loved and that you will be liked, 
and that you will have people to love 
and to like in return. 
And, most importantly 
(because I think there should be more kindness 
and more wisdom in the world right now), 
that you will, 
when you need to be, 
be wise, 
and that you will always be kind.”

― Neil Gaiman

pleasure in small things

“I do not miss childhood, but I miss the way I took pleasure in small things, even as greater things crumbled. I could not control the world I was in, could not walk away from things or people or moments that hurt, but I took joy in the things that made me happy.” 

― Neil Gaiman, The Ocean at the End of the Lane

best that we can

We are all doing the best that we can 

from our own level of consciousness.  

the high road

"Take the high road. 

The low road is so crowded." 

Dear 25 year old

I read Hyperbole and a Half by Allie Brosh.

From the back cover…

This is a book I wrote. Because I wrote it, I had to figure out what to put on the back cover to explain what it is. I tried to write a long, third-person summary that would imply how great the book is and also sound vaguely authoritative--like maybe someone who isn’t me wrote it--but I soon discovered that I’m not sneaky enough to pull it off convincingly. So I decided to just make a list of things that are in the book:

Pictures
Words
Stories about things that happened to me
Stories about things that happened to other people because of me
Eight billion dollars*
Stories about dogs
The secret to eternal happiness*

*These are lies. Perhaps I have underestimated my sneakiness!

This is an awesomely hilarious book! 

Here's Allie reading the first story in the book at Google...




I adore The Simple Dog and The Helper Dog, and wanting a banana but changing your mind.

I just love laughing until I cry, and Allie helps me do that…

small amendments

In a gentle way, you can shake the world. 

- Gandhi

My New Year’s resolution...

 

"My New Year’s resolution is to be more loving. 

I don’t know how it will work out as I have been quite loving up to now with some disastrous, or at least misunderstood, results. 

Anyhow, I will try even more love and I will let you know what happens. So far not so good. But then it is only the second day."   -Ursula Nordstrom