A gift today

Monday's are always a bit tough for me. I work in oncology and it takes me a couple of days to get used to the sickness and people dying. Well, I never get used to it...just adjust to it. There are people who run into me when they check out that can totally turn my day around. I had one today. A woman who is fighting breast cancer stopped by to schedule a new appointment and dropped this sweet message off for me. It made a bad day sunny so I wanted to share it. Being a gardener made it very special.

For the Garden of Your Daily Living

Plant three rows of peas:
Peace of mind
Peace of heart
Peace of soul

Plant four rows of squash
Squash gossip
Squash indifference
Squash grumbling
Squash Selfishness

Plant four rows of lettuce
Lettuce be faithful
Lettuce be kind
Lettuce be patient
Lettuce really love one another

No garden is without turnips
Turnip for meetings
Turnip for service
Turnip to help one another

To conclude our Garden we must have Thyme:
Thyme for G*d
Thyme for each other
Thyme for family
Thyme for friends

Water freely with patience and cultivate with love. There is
Much fruit in your garden because you reap what you sow.

The Peace of Wild Things

This is how I feel when I'm on or near nature and Puget Sound....

When despair for the world grows in me

and I wake in the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake

rests in his beauty on the water,

and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought

of grief. I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars

waiting with their light. For a time

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Writer and farmer ~ Wendall Berry

True Success - Food for Thought

Success

To laugh often and much;
To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children;
To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends;
To appreciate beauty; To find the best in others;
To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition;
To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived;
This is to have succeeded.

--Ralph Waldo Emmerson

We're all the same

The following was a post from No Impact Man and it moved me, so I wanted to share:

Why bother saving the planet? posted: 11 Jun 2009 12:00 AM PDT

I am sitting in the lobby of my hotel which is the only place I can get an internet connection. Behind the couch I'm sitting on, the hotel keeps a little radio playing that is tuned to a classical station. The music makes me think of Isabella, the four-year-old girl who is the heart of my life, my daughter. Isabella always makes me stop turning the radio dial when she hears classical music. She loves classical best of all.

Anyway. The hotel where I am is in Washington, DC.

I began writing this post with the point of telling you why I'm in DC, but I can't help it--I want to write a little something about my little girl. Do you mind if I stop to tell you that she has the most amazing blue eyes? Also, she is incredibly brave. We went to a petting zoo the other day and she fed all the goats and cows and sheep. A pig bit her by mistake. When she went to school, she showed her thumb to a teacher and said, "A pig bit my thumb."

"A what bit your thumb?"

"A pig."

"A what?"

"A pig."

This went on for a while. There not being too many pigs in New York City, the teacher was having a hard time believing her ears. Isabella was quite pleased. It may have hurt when the pig first bit her, but Isabella was still the only kid in school who could point to a boo boo and say a pig caused it.

You know what I think about when I think about how much I love Isabella? I think about how everybody else has someone they love too. I think that we all have someone who makes our hearts ache with love and how since we all have that then we must be essentially the same.

We're all the same. How can I live my life with enough compassion to bear out this tremendous truth that we all have an Isabella, that we are all the same? If we are all the same, shouldn't we understand how much we all feel joy and sorrow and be moved to treat each other with tremendous kindness?

Personally, I am moved to treat everyone with tremendous kindness. The sad news is that, moved though I may be, I don't actually do it. I get mad or selfish or controlling or small minded. Then I get mean. Honestly, I am at times so disappointed in myself, in my own humanity. Then I realize that that happens to everyone else too. We all feel disappointed in ourselves sometimes, no? We have that in common, too.

Which brings me back to the fact that we're all the same.
We're none of us perfect, right?

But most of us, I think, are doing our best.

Top Ten Eco-Lifestyle Changes

From one of my favorite inspiration sites the following are great ideas to do our share to save Mother Earth one small step at a time.


No Impact Man's Top Ten Eco-Lifestyle Changes

1. Stop eating beef. Worldwide, beef production contributes more substantially to climate change than the entire transportation sector. Plus, a diet with no or less beef is better for you anyway.
2. Give up bottled water. The production of plastic water bottles together with the privatization of our drinking water is an environmental and social catastrophe. Bottled water costs more per gallon than gasoline. Plus, the health consequences of drinking water from plastic are not clear.
3. Observe an eco-sabbath. For one day or afternoon or even hour a week, don't buy anything, don't use any machines, don't switch on anything electric, don't cook, don't answer your phone, and, in general, don't use any resources. In other words, for this regular period, give yourself and the planet a break. Keep your regular eco-sabbath for a month. You'll find that the enforced downtime represents an improvement to your life.
4. Tithe a fixed percentage of your income. Currently, many of our societal health and welfare services, at home and abroad, are tied to consumer spending which, in turn, depends upon planetary resource use. But the idea of buying stuff to help people is crazy, especially when you consider that our consumption is harming the habitat that we depend upon for our health, happiness and security. If you want to help, don't go shopping. Just help. Commit to tithing part of your income to the non-profits of your choice.
5. Get there under your own steam. Commit to getting around by bike or by foot a certain number of days a month. Not only does this mean using fewer fossil fuels and creating less greenhouse gasses, it means you'll get good, healthy exercise and we'll all breathe fewer fumes. A city with pedestrian and bike traffic is a lot more pleasant to live in than a city filled with vehicles.
6. Commit to not wasting. Wasting resources costs the planet and your wallet. Don't overheat or overcool your home--a few degrees make a huge difference. Let your clothes hang dry instead of using the dryer. Take half the trips but stay twice as long. If your old cell phone works, consider not getting another. Repair instead of rebuy. The list goes on and on.
7. Build a community. Play charades. Have dinners with friends. Sing together. Enjoying each other costs the planet much less than enjoying its resources. Let's relearn to joke around and play in ways that cost nothing to our pocketbooks or our planet.
8. Take your principles to work. The old adage "the cost of doing business" can no longer hold true. We must act as though we care about the world at work as much as we do at home. A company CEO or a product designer has the power to make a gigantic difference through their business, and so do the rest of us.
9. Dedicate a day's worth of TV viewing to eco-service each week. The average American watches four and a half hours of TV a day. Take one day off from the tube each week and joining with others to improve our planet. Voluntary eco-service is a great way to find community who support your values and also a great way to learn about environmental issues and the quality of life issues that go along with them.
10. Believe with all your heart that how you live your life makes a difference to all of us. We are all interconnected. We make a difference to each other on many different levels. Every step towards living a conscious life where we consider the consequences of our actions provides support to everyone else--whether you know it or not--who is trying to do the same thing. We are the masters of our destinies. Let's act as though it is so.