I MUST find this motel

I'm not waiting

Last week I went up to the stables to ride and brought along a bag of apples pieces for the horses. 

This one horse, the one in the photo below, decided he didn't want to wait for his piece of apple and somehow opened his stall with his nose, walked down the barn to where I was and stood in front of me like "Okay I'm here" 

I gave him his apple and said "Now you have to go back inside your little house because your not suppose to be out here and its not fair to everybody for you to cut the line. I'm sorry"  and I'll be damned if he didn't turn around and go back to his stall.

My favorite month

Photography for the Blog of it: Ranch-way

Photography for the Blog of it: Ranch-way

Compassion

The word compassion comes to us from the Late Latin word compati, to bear suffering, to sympathize.  To have compassion, that is, to have sympathetic consciousness of others' distress and a desire to alleviate that stress, is to practice one of the finest and noblest of emotions that we have.

What we seem to be losing these days, is the understanding that the practice and acceptance of compassion is a relationship between two equals. It is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded or the have and the have not’s’.  

Self-perfection and success

Having a national orientation on self-perfection and success is fine, it is, in part, what makes America great and what makes Americans exceptional. But within that, we should remember that we are not now, nor will we ever be, perfect and that our measurement of success should include unconditional acceptance of our imperfect selves.  If we can accomplish that unconditional acceptance of our imperfect selves and if we could instill that unconditional acceptance of our imperfect selves in our children, we would transform and elevate our nation and our world to magnificent heights beyond what any generation before had ever dreamed possible.

Smile.................

I don’t know

I don’t know…..we seldom have room in our selves, in our minds, for “I don’t know” but we should have room for it because the unknown factor, the “I don’t know” is a big, big part of everyday life.  

We don’t know what the rest of this hour or day will bring. In fact, in the course of daily events, we don’t know much at all, how someone will react, what will happen in the world etc. But we do know that the “I don’t know” the unknown factor, is what makes life an adventure, a challenge. Here’s the bottom line; not knowing is okay, not preparing for it and avoiding it isn’t okay.      

Protect with caution

It’s all right to protect yourself from pain and heart break and stress. In fact it’s a normal healthy thing to do, so do that when you must. Self-protection only becomes a bad thing…..and this is very common in the human condition…..when we over protect ourselves and our loved ones, even when it’s done with the highest and noblest of intentions.  (Which it almost always is)  

You see, the problem is that our self-protection can insulate us for the real world, which is full of as much pain and hurt as it is with joy and goodness.  And when we insulate ourselves, we insulate our heart and compassion and we stand in danger of becoming hard and uncaring. 

Protect with caution and common sense and remember people will disappoint you and injure you but they will also lift you up and compete you. Take the good with the bad.

...and remember to smile, here, watch this puppy-baby wrestling match 

Plan for it

Divorce, bankruptcy, poverty, loss of a loved one….whatever the thing is, it isn’t causing us to suffer. We cause ourselves to suffer by how we react to what the tragedy is and by how we relate to it.

Having everything fall down around you while you watch helplessly will happen. That sort of happening will come and go in your life like the seasons, so prepare for the bad thing, make room for it in your life, expect it and in the midst of it, whatever it is, remember these things;

You are not alone. There is a God and he’s with you and he will not desert you even though sometimes it will feel like he left high and dry, he’s there.  

No matter how much it hurts or humiliates you, this too shall pass.

You’re going to be okay or as okay as you can be in this life. It won’t hurt forever even though it seems like at the moment of impact. Time will heal this wound too.

There is something to learn and gain in all of this and eventually, when you least expect it, you’ll learn what that lesson is.   

Rethink success

Rethink the success of your day by remembering that a successful day isn’t dependent on how much you got out of it…..those things come and go….. but rather by the number of seeds you were able to plant for a better tomorrow.

and remember to smile, its good for you, here, watch this guy dance

To be fully alive

 “To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest. To live fully is to be always in no-man’s-land, to experience each moment as completely new and fresh. To live is to be willing to die over and over again.” Pema Chödrön

FYI: 

Pema Chödrön (born Deirdre Blomfield-Brown on July 14, 1936) is a notable American figure in Tibetan Buddhism. A disciple of Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, she is an ordained nun, author, and teacher in the Shambhala Buddhist lineage Trungpa founded.

 A prolific author, she has conducted workshops, seminars, and meditation retreats in Europe, Australia, and throughout North America. She is resident and teacher of Gampo Abbey, a monastery on Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, Canada.

Pema Chödrön was born Deirdre Blomfield-Brown in 1936 in New York City. She attended Miss Porter's School in Farmington, Connecticut, and grew up on a farm in the countryside with an older brother and sister. She graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, and worked as an elementary school teacher in California and New Mexico before her conversion to Buddhism.

You

People aren't against you: They are for themselves.

Mustard

This is how big a mustard seed is

If only there was a name for this curved yellow fruit......hmmmm......

Here. read this..

                                                      (Positive change doesn't happen without and effort)

When your past calls

I dream too much

“I dream too much, and I don’t write enough, and I’m trying to find God everywhere.”  

Anis Mojgani  

The possible and the impossible.

There is a significant difference between the possible and the impossible.

You are the significant difference because you decide how much determination it will take to overcome the impossible.

 It’s up to you. It is not in the stars. It’s not in the silliness of destiny, it’s within you.

Here...enjoy this picture for awhile, I put it here for you.

Life is the art

“Life is the art of drawing without an eraser." 

                                                                        John W. Gardner

Winning

When the other guy wins and you lose, all it means is that it was the other guys turn to win. That’s all it mean . Next time it will be your turn to win.

Winning doesn’t mean a person is strong or smart or clever.

But not giving up when you lose, no matter how many times you lose, that DOES mean  you are strong, smart and clever.

Time you give to your self

Time you give to your self doing whatever it is that makes you happy, no matter how inane it may seem to others, is a fantastic gift you give to yourself. Or, put in simpler words, time you enjoy wasting, was not wasted at all.

Inane, by the way means empty, insubstantial lacking significance, meaning, or point. It comes from the Latin inānis, empty.

Light tomorrow with today

“Light tomorrow with today” Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

Do you know the works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning?  They very good, very spirtual. You’ve probably heard the open ning line “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.”, she wrote that, it a great poem. Here it is. Enjoy!

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

 I love thee to the depth and breadth and height

 My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight

 For the ends of being and ideal grace.

 I love thee to the level of every day's

 Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.

 I love thee freely, as men strive for right.

 I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.

 I love thee with the passion put to use

 In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.

 I love thee with a love I seemed to lose

 With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath,

Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,

I shall but love thee better after death.

Sonnet XLIII

and remember to smile

People see what they want to see

“The higher we soar” Nietzsche said “the smaller we appear  to those who cannot fly.”

I say that people see what they want to see and it’s always from their perspective.

and remember to smile because life is short....we should enjoy what we have of it............ 

Fissiparous:

Fissiparous:  Tending to break into parts. From Latin fissi- (cleft) + -parous (bearing, producing). 

What a great idea

Vermont’s largest city has a new success to add to its list of socially conscious achievements: 100 percent of its electricity now comes from renewable sources such as wind, water and biomass.

With little fanfare, the Burlington Electric Department crossed the threshold this month with the purchase of the 7.4-megawatt Winooski 1 hydroelectric project on the Winooski River at the city’s edge.

When it did, Burlington joined the Washington Electric Co-operative, which has about 11,000 customers across central and northern Vermont, which reached 100 percent earlier this year.

“It shows that we’re able to do it, and we’re able to do it cost effectively in a way that makes Vermonters really positioned well for the future,” said Christopher Recchia, the commissioner of the Vermont Department of Public Service.

It’s part of a broader movement that includes a statewide goal of getting 90 percent of Vermont’s energy from renewable resources by 2050, including electricity, heating and transportation. Across the state, Vermonters are urging their electric utilities to provide them with renewable sources of power, and the utilities are listening, Recchia said.

It’s also a growing movement across the country, as governments and businesses seek to liberate themselves from using power produced by environmentally harmful fossil fuels.

Diane Moss, the founding director of the Southern California-based Renewables 100 Policy Institute, said that she wasn’t sure if any other communities as large as Burlington — a city of 42,000 — have reached 100 percent, but that many are working on it.

“It’s these front-runners that are showing that it’s possible,” Moss said.

Nearly 1,000 businesses both large and small and many communities have also committed to 100 percent, she said.

Greensburg, Kansas, almost wiped out by a 2007 tornado, rebuilt with energy efficiency in mind. A 12.5-megawatt wind farm went online in 2009, producing electricity in excess of that consumed by the community of 850, said Administrator Ed Truelove.

“We’re trying to be as sustainable a community as we can be,” Truelove said.

For both Burlington and Washington Electric, reaching 100 percent was the result of a yearslong strategy to wean themselves from traditional sources of power in favor of renewables.

Utility officials in the lakefront city known for its liberal politics and extensive social service network first began discussing becoming 100 percent renewable a decade ago. Four years later they realized it could be done.

“The transition in thought from 2004 to 2008 was ’We want to do this’ to ’This actually makes economic sense for us to do this,’” said Ken Nolan, the manager of power resources for Burlington Electric.

Neither utility claims that each of their customers’ lights comes from renewable sources all the time. When the wind isn’t blowing and the rivers are low, they will buy power from traditional sources that include electricity generated from fossil fuels.

When the resources are right, though, they get more than they can use, and the difference is sold to other utilities. Over time, they sell more than they buy.

Another caveat that, to some, minimizes the 100 percent achievement is that both Burlington and Washington Electric sell renewable energy credits for the renewable power they produce to utilities in southern New England where their value is highest.

In turn, they buy less expensive credits from other sources to offset the credits they have sold.Sandy Levine, of the Vermont office of the Conservation Law Foundation, commended Vermont utilities for seeking renewable sources of power but questioned the credit trading.

“They are selling the renewable energy credits to customers in other states. Those customers have the renewable and clean energy benefits of that power,” Levine said. “Simply using accounting measures to make claims about clean energy doesn’t get us there.”

Patty Richards, Washington Electric general manager, said the utility does sell high-value credits and then buys less expensive credits, which help keep rates low and ensures their power is 100 percent renewable.

“It’s like if you get a big old car you’re never going to use, you let somebody rent your car, then you rent back a little smart car or a scooter or something because you don’t have the need,” Richards said.

Taylor Ricketts, the director of the Gund Institute for Ecological Economics, an interdisciplinary research center that works on sustainability issues at the University of Vermont, a Burlington Electric customer, said reaching 100 percent was a big achievement.

“It definitely makes me feel better here at UVM to know that every time I turn on a light switch or fire up my computer or anything else, to know that it’s 100 percent renewable,” he said.

http://www.news-journal.com/news/nation/in-vermont-city-of-energy-comes-from-renewable-sources/article_33999a7f-3ee9-5cb2-9990-a8b891646686.html

#vermont#renewable energy

I adore autumn

Frederick Childe Hassam - At the Writing Desk

Take away its power

I’ve been working on trying to find a positive aspect in everything no matter what it is. So I looked over the tragedies of my life; like being born poor, raised as an orphan, my failures along the road of life, and I asked myself “Where’s the positive?” 

I looked and I looked and I looked some more but I couldn’t find it.

I thought about it for months. I went over each horrible event and I think the answer might be that those episodes made me a better man. They gave me a sense of humility and with time a higher sense of social intelligence that helps me to better understand what others are going through.  I see them as part of the positive and in that I took away their power  

What I've lost.

The other day I mention to someone, in the course of a conversation, that I pray every day and they said “I didn’t know you were religious”

I’m not religious.

I’m not religious because religion is belief in someone else’s version of spirituality. I try, and please note that I used the try, to be a spiritual person, meaning I’m developing my own experience with God. 

So I pray. And so question is then, what have I gained from taking a few moments to pray, which means stopping to examine my daily life and speak to God?

Actually, I haven’t gained anything from it.  I mean nothing, tangible. But I’ll tell you what I’ve lost from prayer. I’ve lost my perpetual anger that has ruined so much of my life, I’ve lost my hostility over being born poor, I’ve lost the sense of being alone in the world….I’ve lost a lot and I’m a better man for it. 

Don’t get discouraged with the world

Don’t get discouraged with the world because your decency and kindness gets trampled on and remember that more often then not you won’t see the results of your good work in the world. 

But don’t stop because your decent makes a difference.

When I look back on my life in foster care and I look past all the dehumanizing meanness and the coldness of it all…and I have to look past it to see  all of those wonderful people who made a difference in my life, and they were many and they weren’t extraordinary in anyway. They weren’t brilliant, rich or beautiful; they were common and ordinary but they saved me. In a hundred small ways, they saved me and gave me faith in the human race that I needed not to fail. They cared enough to spare a poor kid a few moments of their time and looked past all the things I was and saw all the things I could be. That’s all it takes to change a persons world, a moments kindness. It goes deeper and lasts longer than you know.

Keep your chin up and stay decent. 

For almost all of my life I never discussed being born poor

For almost all of my life I never discussed being born poor or raised in foster care. I didn’t discuss it with anyone, ever, under any circumstances.  I thought that if I did discuss it I would have to come up with reasons for it all, why I was born poor, why my parents were they way they were. I thought that I’d need excuses and apologies and I just didn’t want to deal with it, especially when I was younger. I thought there was a sort of nobility in keeping it in but there isn’t.  I realize now, all these years later that true courage is in facing who and what you are and to own it. You don’t have to explain it. You don’t have to apologize for it. You don’t have to wear the mask of normalcy. Be who and what you are. That in itself  is an enormous act of courage. Just because we accept things doesn’t we we resign our ambitions to improve ourselves or to better our lot in life. It just means you understand that it is what it is. I look at it this way. I know who and what I am and I’m happy with that. The mistake I had made all years was thinking that happiness was outside of me, that happiness was being middle class normal. I thought that if I could have that, I could have happiness. But that isn’t how it works. This is how it works; happiness is something that you are and it comes from the way you think about things.

The bad guys

You know why the world so often seems like a miserable place? Not because the evil doers. There aren’t enough of them to make a lasting difference. The world seems so awful sometimes because of those hundreds of millions of people who look at evil, watch it happen and do nothing.  

Motivated

You can get motivated but to stay motivated you need to make motivation a habit. And that’s not easy. It’s something you train for, its something work at. 

Talk it out

It took me years of heartbreak and loss to figure this simple formula out……express your feeling of anger WITH WORDS and tell people why you’re upset. Tell them you don’t want to be upset.

 I had an awful temper problem and I would just blow up and the cost to me was incredible.

So I learned to explain my anger and not to act on it, I try to explain it in a reasonable, non-threatening manner.

Do that and watch how positive the path to an open, calm solution will arrive. 

Slow down.

Before you speak, listen to what is being said.  Before you react something, think it through first.

Then think it through again.

If you still feel you need to react, okay, go to it.

 If you’re going to criticize, wait it out, hold your tongue and see the above to steps.

Pick your battles carefully. Sure, you can win certain struggles but as a natural born fighter I can tell you this; sometimes having peace in your life is a lot better, a lot better, than being right. 

also,when you have a cold, take a hot shower

Does someone matter in your life?

Does someone matter in your life? Tell them. 

Just say to them “ I want to be sure you know that you matter to me. You make a difference in my life” 

That’s all you got to say.

You have to say this to them at least  because, as I must keep reminding myself, surprisingly, people can’t read our minds or are hearts and life is short. People can go away and out of your life forever very suddenly.

Destiny

Destiny? 

There’s no such thing as destiny because destiny says that no matter what you do, it will happen anyway. That’s insane. 

God gave you free will, use it, make things happen in the future. 

You have that kind of power. 

Destiny is a lie that lazy people use as an excuse for not trying to control their lives.

Don't worry be happy

My experience is that we spend most of our worry time worrying about things that will never happen.