“Love is what we were born with. Fear is what we learned here.”

Marianne Williamson, author of A Return To Love: Reflections on the Principles of “A Course in Miracles”

Her Wikipedia entry describes her as a “spiritual activist, author, lecturer and founder of The Peace Alliance, a grass roots campaign supporting legislation currently before Congress to establish a United States Department of Peace. She is also the founder of Project Angel Food, a meals-on-wheels program that serves homebound people with AIDS in the Los Angeles area.”

Just a quick gift to all. I just looked out the back window and saw the two geese parents carefully, slowly watchfully, ascending the bank behind our house, with 5 wobbly new goslings stumbling along behind them.

We live on property that backs up to a pond. For the last month, a lone male goose has been standing a lonely vigil, guarding the pond. He sits all day, quiet, watchful. At dusk, and in the early morning, he flies up over the trees behind the pond, drops down, and checks on his mate who has spent the last 12 or 14 hours sitting on a nest.

He escorts her back to the pond and watches over her while she eats and bathes. The two then take off for a short flight to give her exercise, then he escorts her back to the nest. That done, he returns to the bank of the pond near our house and spends those same hours…protecting the territory for her.

Now that they are born, he leads his family up to my platform feeder in the back yard, to introduce his offspring to cracked corn. He will stand guard over them all while they eat. He eats last. He will drive away any other geese, and watches for hawks. When they take the newborns for a swim, the babies will follow in a line, sandwiched between dad and mom.

Perhaps people don’t like geese because they can be messy and there’s so many. But I always have to appreciate and respect the way they treat each other as mates, and how they nurture and look after their offspring. In watching them interact as a family, if I could apply three words of description, they would be:

“present” “serene” unhurried”

I don’t know about anyone else, but as a hurried, often unserene person racing around, I have to wonder which of us has got it right?

Will try to get photos…..

In the course of reading the June 2008 Vanity Fair article about Robert F. Kennedy, “The Last Good Campaign,” I came across two Thurstons.

The first is the author of the book excerpted in that magazine article, Thurston Clarke.

The book is:
The Last Campaign: Robert F. Kennedy and 82 Days That Inspired America.

A few quotes from the book, give a good sample of the flavor of the book and the man:

1) RFK asked a friend if she thought he was crazy to run for president. He told her “my brother thinks I’m crazy. He doesn’t like this….but then we’re two different people. We don’t hear the same music.” He told another friend: “I can’t be a hypocrite anymore.”

2) “The only kind of sense that Kennedy’s decision made was moral sense. By charging that the tactics being employed by the Johnson administration in Vietnam were immoral, and that the war had inflicted grave wounds on the national soul, he had made it impossible for himself to support Johnson while maintaining his honor. Forced to choose, Kennedy chose honor.”

3) “He would run on issues his brother had seldom raised and in a manner his brother would have found undignified.”

4) And lastly- when a group of Kennedy press corps members were having a meal in the Kansas City airport, reporter Jimmy Breslin asked them if Kennedy has the stuff to go all the way.

The prophetic reply by John J. Lindsay:

“Yes, of course he has the stuff to go all the way…But he’s not going to go all the way. The reason is that somebody is going to shoot him. I know it and you know it. Just as sure as we’re sitting here somebody is going to shoot him. He’s out there now waiting for him…And, please God, I don’t think we’ll have a country, after it.”

In some ways, I think that comment was right. Something changed in 1968. To me, it’s never felt right since. Maybe it was the people who came to power after that. I often felt that the word “power” was their motivator. Honor, maybe not. Except for Jimmy Carter. A skewered presidency, an honorable man. I often wondered if the behind-the-scenes powers at the top of our government didn’t set that man up to fail…. For 40 years I’ve watched government with a sense of despair, cynicism, distrust, and dread. Until now. Perhaps now, 40 years later, in another vibrant young candidate who speaks to a similar hope for something better in this country, there is chance for a fundamental change?

From the May 13th entry in God Calling:

“…Never judge. The heart of a man is so delicate, so complex, only its Maker can know it. Each heart is so different, actuated by different motives, controlled by different circumstances, influenced by different sufferings. How can one judge another? Leave to Me the unraveling of the puzzles of life. Leave to Me the teaching of understanding. Bring each heart to Me, its Maker, and leave it with Me. Secure in the certainty that all that is wrong I can set right.”

As an added gift, there is a God Calling website so that anyone who does not have the book, can go to the website and get that day’s reading. The readings for the evening companion volume, God at Eventide are there as well. Just click here or on the entry in the Blogroll on the right side panel of my main blog page.

I am trying to root out the source of my Photoshop problem crashing, and am testing something before going to the onerous task of taking it off the computer and reloading. So with any luck, here’s a couple closeup pics of the wharf details on my New England seascape painting :

The water has since had more details of foam and surf added, and I’ve added reflections in the water since then as well, of the rowboat, ladders and building. The painting itself is almost done as I’ve moved forward, finishing the waves, surf, foam, and front rocks. The rocks now have black and green algae coating, wave spray, small seashells, barnacles and blue mussels. Still some front details to go yet, but getting close.

Anyway, since this test worked, I am hoping it was the folder the pictures were in that was the problem and not Photoshop  per se. I’ll try some other pics soon, including some I have of the map of my Under the Pier town. Stay tuned.

Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.”

The Buddha

“War and peace begin in the hearts of individuals.”

Pema Chodron, from her book, Practicing Peace in Times of War

“Love the whole world as a mother loves her only child.”

The Buddha

“You can never hate somebody if you stand in their shoes.”

Pema Chodron, from her book: Practicing Peace in Times of War

“I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and incur my own abhorrence.”

Frederick Douglass, American abolitionist and writer, 1818-1895