"I am tired and sick of war. Its glory is all moonshine.
It is only those who have neither fired a shot
nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood,
more vengeance, more desolation.
War is hell."

General William Tecumseh Sherman

Time for a little art . . . and a little fun.

Kandinsky
Compositions

There is nothing quite like the sound of truth echoing down the hall of lies. How you perceive the sound of it depends on what is in your heart.

Heroes

I have a student who for privacy reasons I will call Aamir. I have had him for three years now. He has cerebral palsy. Aamir has had some pretty hard knocks in life. On top of dealing with cerebral palsy, his mother died about a year ago. Now he lives with his father and stepmother, whom he feels does not understand him. He has a very highly developed sense of humor, and is extremely articulate and intelligent. I would like to tell you that the other children are understanding and helpful, but Aamir has had the misfortune of dealing with some really cold hearted bullies. He gets angry and lashes out from time to time, but this year he has an excellent teacher who is really on top of the dynamics of the classroom atmosphere, so things are getting much better for him.

A few weeks ago the children had a classroom project. They had to list their goals and how they intended to accomplish them. Then they stood up in front of the class and read them out loud. After all of the future doctors, lawyers, teachers, rap artist, singers, and sports stars had their say, Aamir went to the front of the class. It was all I could do to choke back the tears as I heard him read, "My goal is to walk up the stairs. To accomplish this I will have to put one foot in front of the other."

Kind of puts it all in perspective doesn't it?

Westward Ho

I'm trying to grapple with what I learned about Algeria and French colonization, and I just can't. I can't wrap my mind around one out of every three people being killed. And then I start thinking about the history of colonization worldwide and Iraq and Afghanistan and Rwanda and Sudan and on and on and on. We read about these statistics and I don't think they are ever quite real to us. They are numbers on a page and we might stop for a moment and sigh but then we just keep right on going. I'm very good at feeling sorry for myself and thinking I go through some stuff, but when I stop to actually try to put myself in the shoes of someone who has lost a loved one due to some kind of imperialist violence, I wonder if I know the meaning of the word suffering. I can't imagine the pain and the anger that would inflict on a human being.
Wikipedia states that Colonialism was often based on the belief that the morals and values of the colonizer were superior to those of the colonized.

Sound familiar?

Cést Strange

Yet another odd little chapter in my strange life. I have been listening to this c.d. relentlessly for the past couple of months. It is by the Algerian violinist Djamel Ben Yelles, the most famous violinist of the Rai music genre. It only takes a few seconds of listening to realize this musician is very special. The sounds are brilliant and haunting, like nothing I have ever heard before in my life. Rai music became a major source of identity for the Algero-French community in the mid 80's. The C.D. is currently out of print but a few used copies can be found online. Needless to say I highly recommend it.
Okay, so what is so strange about that, you might ask. Monday I went out to see a movie. I had time to kill so I stopped at a major dept store near the theater just to window shop. I remembered this perfume that a friend of mine had gotten there several years ago. It was cold, I had walked a ways and was standing in a semi frozen daze staring at the perfume counter when a young man walked up and asked if I needed assistance. Normally, I would have mumbled no and wandered off, but I didn't this time. I told him what was on my mind and he started to show me a few things. We began conversing and he mentioned "home". Turns out he is Algero-French. If this weren't my life, I would ask what the chances of that happening are - but this kind of stuff happens to me all of the time. Its no longer even spooky to me - and I've almost come to expect it. We discussed Djamel BenYelles. I found out Djamel is pronounced Jamel and the young man made me promise to burn the c.d. and drop it off for him. He told me, "French people don't like Algerians. Its everywhere." I had kind picked up on this from watching so many French movies. But this comment peaked my curiosity. I looked up Algeria on line, a country I previously knew next to nothing about. I found out that when the the French invaded Algeria to colonize it they annihilated one third of the Algerian population. One Third. No wonder the music is so haunting.

Sacre Coeur - Anticipation II

Anticipation

" Relationships don't thrive because the guilty are punished but because the innocent are merciful."
Max Lucado

Happy New Year

Dont worry about a thing,
cause every little thing gonna be all right.
Singin: dont worry about a thing,
cause every little thing gonna be all right!

Rise up this mornin,
Smiled with the risin sun,
Three little birds
Pitch by my doorstep
Singin sweet songs
Of melodies pure and true,
Sayin, (this is my message to you-ou-ou:)

Singin: dont worry bout a thing,
cause every little thing gonna be all right.
Singin: dont worry (dont worry) bout a thing,
cause every little thing gonna be all right!

Rise up this mornin,
Smiled with the risin sun,
Three little birds
Pitch by my doorstep
Singin sweet songs
Of melodies pure and true,
Sayin, this is my message to you-ou-ou:

Singin: dont worry about a thing, worry about a thing, oh!
Every little thing gonna be all right. dont worry!
Singin: dont worry about a thing - I wont worry!
cause every little thing gonna be all right.

Singin: dont worry about a thing,
cause every little thing gonna be all right - I wont worry!
Singin: dont worry about a thing,
cause every little thing gonna be all right.
Singin: dont worry about a thing, oh no!
cause every little thing gonna be all right!

Mon Soapbox

And this accomplished what?
Is one more American soldier coming home?
Does it feed or house even one more Iraqi child?
Will it bring stability to the region?
Will anyone rest better tonight knowing that a weak and powerless has-been dictator who was brought to power by the CIA is now dead?
Just what the world needs right now,
more meaningless bloodshed.
Right.

Searching for Me

A couple of years ago Hollywood released the movie "Traffic". I didn't see it. I had already seen the British version that it was based on. Over the holidays I rented it from Netflix and watched it again. It had been a long while. My babies were little the first time I saw it. Now they tower over me.

The series tells several interwoven stories of people whose lives are all affected by the heroin trade coming out of Pakistan. One particularly poignant story is of a government minister who's daughter becomes addicted to heroin. We watch as she and her family go through all of the typical stages of a family affected by drugs. Finally after she steals from the home and makes it look like a burglary the father puts her out and tells her, "You are not my daughter."

A while later, after dreaming that he is standing over his daughter's grave he begins to search for her. He does everything he can think of, including walking the streets at night. He finds a dealer who knows her and pays him a visit. After talking to him for a little while he gets ready to leave and the young man tells him, "I wish I had someone searching for me."The father finally finds his daughter passed out half dressed with a John standing over her demanding service for his money. The Father says, "That's my daughter." The John runs off and the father takes his daughter home. Once there he begins to talk to her. He tells her, " I love you. I love you unconditionally. You don't have to stop taking heroin. You don't have to stop anything. No matter what I will still love you."

How many of us, like the young dealer, are wistfully thinking, "I wish I had someone searching for me?". We spend so much of our lives it seems searching for love. How different our lives would be if we only woke up and realized that like the father desperately searching for his daughter to bring her safely home, love is searching for us. How would our lives and our feelings about ourselves change if we realized that His love is unconditional, we don't have to stop anything to receive it, we don't have to be anything to receive it, we can just BE.

You don't have to search for love.
Love is searching for you.
Love is searching for me.
Can't you hear him calling your name?

More Great Quotes

The instinct of nearly all societies
is to lock up
Anybody who is truly free. 

First, society begins
by trying to beat you up.

If this fails,
they try to poison you. 

If this fails too,

they finish
by loading honors on your head.

--Jean Cocteau (1889-1963)

It is better to deserve honors
and not have them 

than to have them
and not deserve them.

--Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)

Dignity does not consist
in possessing honors, 

but in deserving them.

--Aristotle

Joyeux Noel!

Christmas in Paris

Pascal

“Dieu est une sphère infinie, dont le centre est partout et la circonférence nulle part.”

God is an infinite sphere whose center is everywhere

and circumference is nowhere.

Blaise Pascal

Its pretty cliche at this point to lament the commercialization of Christmas. Its the same old complaint usually voiced in pretty much the same way. And each and every year I have to confess, I make and break the same promise - to not wait until the last minute to shop, to avoid the crowds, to finish early and bunker down safe at home for the duration. This year as I was once again fulfilling my annual tradition of breaking said promise, I found a new irritant rankling away on my nerves. It wasn't the crowds, it wasn't the end cap loaded with the animated dancing Santa's playing the saxophone for $14.99, and it wasn't the much harangued sales clerks. This year is was the Christmas muzak.

As I walked through the aisles of the local department store it seemed almost insidious to me. But apart from some very poor recording choices on the part of some very well known vocalist, there was something else that was bothering me. I think it was that so much of the music had so little to do with the actual event of the birth of Christ. And perhaps also to hear an event that is so sacred to me trivialized with brainless diddies about sleds and reindeer. But the most irritating to me were the songs of recording artist talking about what Christmas "means to me."

Is Christmas really open to our individual interpretation?

I mean the message seems pretty clear to me, and it is backed by prophesy going all the way to the fall of man and God's promise that one day Eve's heel would crush satan's head. ( Sorry, English majors, he doesn't get capitalized.) It isn't that I don't enjoy family, and cranberry sauce, lights and mistletoe, depending on who is standing directly underneath it, but as we are rushing about in a mad dash for that perfect gift, fighting over that space at the mall, and fussing at the person who had the nerve to sojourn down the same aisle at the same time as us, perhaps we do need to stop and take a deep breath and ponder our own interpretation of Christmas.

What images and words immediately come to our minds when we think of Christmas?

Lights
Presents
trees
food?

What about

stranded
pain
blood
tears?

Usually we don't hear those words in the latest Christmas jingle. But any woman who has given birth can tell you, they were very much a part of the Christmas equation. He came through water and blood, pain and anguish, and He left in water and blood, pain and anguish.
And when he did he left us with a very clear message and he gave us the interpretation.

Salvation
Hope
Deliverance

Mon Secret

"What makes the desert beautiful," said the little prince,
"is that somewhere it hides a well . . ."

Merci

quotes

Slartibartfast:...I'd much rather be happy than right any day.
Arthur Dent: And are you?
Slartibartfast: Ah, no. Well, that's where it all falls down, of course.

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy