This Bitter Earth

Oliver and I stood at the back door last night and looked up into the sky. Terrific winds have been raging all across California the last couple of days, and our backyard is littered with palm fronds and tree debris. The stars, though, shone brightly, despite our urban setting, and we both exclaimed how many there were and how bright. Maybe the wind has blown out the darkness and allowed the stars to shine through! I said.

No, Mom! Oliver said. Haven't you heard? Pollution is getting less and less here in Los Angeles and the stars are coming back! I heard it in the news!

I must have looked dubious, but Oliver insisted and said, again, We're getting more aware, Mom, of the planet! It's good!

And I felt so hopeful in that moment, that we have these young, bright minds, these stars, actually, still here, hoping and confident.

I later stumbled across this video on the On Being website, and thought it was perfect to end this post. That's the voice of the Dalai Lama and, later, Dinah Washington, singing This Bitter Earth. May both Oliver's hope and the short film bring YOU hope today!

Words to Live By

Skyline, Normandie Avenue, Los Angeles on March 13th, 2011

If you have fear of pain and suffering, you should examine whether there is anything you can do about it. If you can, there is no need to worry about it; if you cannot do anything, then there is also no need to worry.

the Dalai Lama

Sunday Musings

I'm hard put to post anything at all these days as I'm barely afloat what with starting up a cake business, reviewing grants for the federal government, wrapping up a children's healthcare project, taking care of children with chicken pox and seizure disorders and newly navigating teendom. Throw in marriage, visits from family, impending spring break and April is poetry month, well, there is no end to what I could write about, but I don't write about.

Here's a quote from an editorial that one of my favorite columnists, Nicholas Kristoff wrote in today's New York Times:

 Isn’t it better to inconsistently save some lives than to consistently save none?


Kristof is speaking about the current conflict in Libya and what some people call a humanitarian response to the American intervention there and others deem another act of aggression. I don't have clear thoughts about this -- partly due to ignorance and mainly due to a general fatigue at matters outside of my immediate reach. The older I get, the more I become or keen toward pacifism, toward non-violence, but wonder, too, how one can possibly be engaged in the world and not recognize brutality and meet it with force.


The Dalai Lama says The principle of nonviolence should be practiced everywhere. This cannot be achieved simply by sitting here and praying. It means work and effort, and yet more effort.


This might be what I'll muse about as I cheer for my son at his 8:30 am on a Sunday baseball game. If you have any further thoughts, let me know, because I'll be back soon and would love to read them.

Some more thoughts on witness

bodies preserved by ash from Pompeii after the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius

I said before, like many other people, that it seems impossible to write or think about anything else when so much tragedy is unfolding in Japan. I've scrolled through the photos, looked at the videos, heard the audio footage, teared up at the woman, sitting in the wreckage of her town, and felt my smallness and the preciousness of my children, our lives, all life. What can I do? What can we do? What is happening to this crazy world of ours? When does it end?

I found a list of sixty-six of the world's worst natural disasters and will copy a few here --

Syria - Aleppo - 1138
Earthquake kills 230,000 people


Japan, 1118
Famine wipes out 118,000 people


Egypt and Syria, 1201
Earthquake wipes out 1.1 million people


Netherlands, 1228
floods after a dyke breaks kills more than 100,000


China, 1290
100,000 people dead


Europe and beyond 1347-1350
Bubonic plague kills 25 million


China, 1556
Earthquake kills 830,000


China 1876-1979
Drought and starvation kills 9 million people

I have to think that part of the paralysis many of us feel when seeing and reading about the situation in Japan is because we are, as a people, privy to these disasters in ways that we never were before. I'm not sure the human brain can fully take it all in and then react in any constructive way, outside of literally being there. The ability we have now, through technology, to be there, is deceptive, I think -- we aren't there, really. The beauty, though, of the technology, is that it draws us a bit closer to our fellow humans and enables us, in some small way to be there as best we can.

I saw this quote today of the Dalai Lama, a man I'm certain has witnessed his fair share of cruel natural and human tragedy:

If you think you are too small to make a difference, try sleeping with a mosquito.

Donate HERE.

More from the Dalai Lama

an extremely loud crow in the palm tree in my backyard

It is said that a real meditator never feels the lack of external

materials.

I lay in bed early, early this morning listening to the sprinklers go off and keep going off the valves clicking and the water rushing under the house and are we wasting this precious water is always what I think to water our gardens of flowers and green grass when we actually live in a desert so then I got up and sat, did my sitting, my meditation and the thoughts of what was coming that day kept coming in, insistent, the jewelry party I'm hosting and whether or not Sophie would be over her flu and ready for school and if so I wouldn't have to call a babysitter to come early since I'm going to a focus group this afternoon to talk about epilepsy and specifically rectal valium, the only reason because I get paid one hundred and twenty five dollars which basically would be enough to pay the babysitter so that I could go and Oliver has basketball tonight and what should I make for dinner because the cupboards are bare as mother would say.

Synchronicity, Part 2

Given my recent musings about aging, I wasn't surprised to find this quote on my "Insight from the Dalai Lama" daily calendar today:

The at least causes me a tiny bit of concern, though.

Words of wisdom

I find the following words so much more helpful than


God only gives you what you can handle 

or

 There's a larger purpose to this kind of suffering 

or


Sophie chose you to be her parent because she's an angel and you needed just this type of blessing.

The period of greatest gain in knowledge and experience is the most difficult period in one's life. Through a difficult period you can learn; you can develop inner strength, determination, and courage to face the problems.

His Holiness, the Dalai Lama