Beautiful, Clare.
Louise
On Mar 19, 2017, at 7:52 PM, Clare Green (Redacted sender "dclara_2000" for
DMARC) <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Posted by Clare Green:
and may I just humbly add a reminder
that our thoughts are like powerful missives sent within grace. Your thoughts
are like deeds done, be mindful of your thoughts.....You may call these
thoughts - prayers or affirmations, but they are energy which flow within the
matrix of life of which we are all connected...and so never doubt that your
good-will intentions receive its target; it is a natural flow of life and
energy. We are what we think, do, be.
from one who has walked through the veil of life and returned.... to simply
affirm life's peace and joy.....
From: Lawrence Pruyne <docpruyne@xxxxxxxxx>
To: WarwickList@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Friday, March 17, 2017 12:59 PM
Subject: [The-L] Re: "How we become more"
Yes, real nice stuff, that was (as Yoda would say).
Any lifetime is but a sentence in the story of a soul. Some of us forget that.
They think we have a beginning, and that we end.
I suppose there's no scientific proof that part of us survives physical death;
but it's a truth we register in the part of ourselves that we cannot sense. We
just have to stop long enough to observe what happens between the words.
Quote of the day: "We are the warm tip of God's finger tracing a word on a
misty window."
Oh yes, this too: "In order to see you have to stop being in the middle of the
picture."
Sri Aurobindo
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On Fri, Mar 17, 2017 at 12:12 PM, Daniel Dibble <metcalfucc@xxxxxxxxx
<mailto:metcalfucc@xxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
Thanks Claudia. These are words that capture the heart of the community that we
help build, one embrace, physical, emotional and spiritual, at a time. It helps
to be reminded of how powerful love and compassion can be.
-Dan
On Fri, Mar 17, 2017 at 11:50 AM, Claudia M. Lewis <all.one.daydream@xxxxxxxxx
<mailto:all.one.daydream@xxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
Words written by a friend: "How we become more"
"In a nearby town there was recently a fire. Fires happen far too often in our
area in the winter. Many of us burn wood for heat. Many old houses (there are
plenty around here) have questionable wiring. And fires these days often burn
hot and fast, thanks to the flammability of the synthetic materials used in
furnishings.
There were seven members of the family home in this fire. Only two made it out
of the building. The mother and four children were lost.
Friends of ours were among the first firefighters to arrive from the small
volunteer force in this small rural town. The truck arrived promptly, and there
was still nothing they could do to get inside. The fire had moved that quickly.
This is not a post about tragedy, although that is what I think of every day.
This is about community. This is about empathy. This is about what we still
have, and what we are forgetting, and why it matters so much.
In my husband’s family, two parents have lost children. In my family, two of my
aunts lost adult children. On the highway I commute on, I’ve come upon the
aftermath of fatal accidents more than once. On a twisty back road I take down
to town, I once spent fifteen minutes of a warm sunny day slowing traffic
around a still young man and his fallen motorcycle.
This is part of being alive, that death is always there. It is, in fact, the
only promise we have, and yet we pretend it isn’t. The woods and fields know
better. In the winter, the track of a mouse scurries across the snow to a point
where it vanishes, the imprint of owl wings left to either side. The
scatterings of bluejay feathers among the leaf litter on the ground, the smell
of decay in along the trail on a hot humid day—there is nothing to hide.
We have a beginning and an end, all of us.
In this small town where a father and child escaped from a fire into a future
without so many loved ones, this is what has happened. Town members have
gathered, in church, at the school, and they have mourned and comforted. The
fire department has asked for help and hugs for the volunteers who are
grappling with their inability to save a family, and they have received both.
Funds are being raised for new clothes, new furnishings, food and housing. A
living space has been found for father and child. Children are supported as
they try to understand how death comes for the young and the loved, not just
the mouse in the snow.
This is the best of us. This is what we are born to be to one another. The
volunteers who run into a freezing night to try to save their neighbors, the
families who give what they have to help one another. The people who recognize
grief—their own, others—and open themselves to feel it, not to turn away. The
potential for pain in this world is legion.
So is the potential for grace.
Compassion requires one giant step: to acknowledge that loss waits for us all.
We do not protect ourselves by refusing to take it. We simply make it easier to
become the people who do not care, who see suffering and step around it, mock
it, incite it. To become people for whom community is simply a misspelling of
commodity.
Last fall, my husband and I stopped to help a young woman broken down on the
side of the highway. She was traveling to visit a friend, and something on the
road had punctured her tire and caused a blowout. As is the case in much of our
area, there was no cell service. She’d managed to contact her mother via a
hotspot she had rigged, and while we changed her tire in the soft ground of the
shoulder, I could hear her mother in the background. Are you with good people?
Are you sure?
We stopped to help because she was young, and a woman, and alone, and because
we wanted to protect her. Because I could hear the fear in her mother’s voice,
and because mothers know that when we send our children into the world, we are
dependent on good people being there for the times we are not. Because tragedy
waits for us all, and because compassion is the truest thing we can offer. I
have rescued many birds trapped in buildings. There is always a moment, as you
open your hands to release them into the world, that they sit stunned for just
a second, weightless in your palm, and then, when they fly, you can feel their
freedom like your own. Seeing this woman drive away, I could feel the same.
When I have hope, it is not in things. It is not in political thought. It is in
the moments when we recognize our constant vulnerability. When we step into the
grief, instead of away. We are made to care for one another. When we do, we
become so much more."
This can be found online at: www.cosmicdriftwood.com
<http://www.cosmicdriftwood.com/>
(posted with love by Claudia Lewis all.one.daydream@xxxxxxxxx
<mailto:all.one.daydream@xxxxxxxxx>)
...
