All I want is more time.

 

I haven't heard the word struggle in a long time.  Is ending war, poverty, and disease a struggle?  I think it is a struggle, but people don't call it that because it would make fighting these issues personal.  To struggle is to wrestle with the problem--to really feel it straining your muscles to make an effort so that you will not be defeated.  I know I don't feel the pressure to wrestle with the big issues.  The only place that they touch my life is on the internet.  I don't watch tv or read the paper, so I never hear about the state of the world unless I purposely search it out on the internet.  And then it becomes an issue of which sources I can trust...  I am finding that I am at a place where I can do more than just meet my own needs and face my own problems.  Now, I just pray that I can find a place where I can make a difference. 

 

Happiness is. 

 

Everybody seems to be looking for something.  Do they just want to feel satisfied, or is there something more?  There are so many things to choose from, so many things that bide for our time.  How can we choose which path to take?  How can we know what really matters?  Any thing Random is most people's guess, but a guess it does not have to be.  Find what matters to the least of these, and you will find what matters to me.  Any thing Random is a place to see what can become of these.

O throat! O trembling throat!

Sound clearer through the atmosphere!

Pierce the woods, the earth,

Somewhere listening to catch you must be the one I want.

 

Shake out carols!

Solitary here, the night's carols!

Carols of lonesome love! death's carols!

Carols under the lagging, yellow, waning moon!

O under that moon where she droops almost down to the sea!

O reckless despairing carols.

      -Whitman

"Not the sun or the summer alone, but every hour and every season yields its tribute of delight; for every hour and change corresponds to and authorizes a different state of mind, from breathless noon to grimmest midnight.  Nature is a setting that fits equally well a comic or a mourning piece."

from "Nature" by Emerson

The other day I was on campus and I stopped at a table set up by the Entomology club.  They were selling things to raise money for the club, and all of the merchandise that caught my eye had the theme of butterflies.  They also had some displays of dead butterflies that were very large and black.  They had almost no color, but that did not diminish their beauty.  The girl that was watching the table assured me that the butterflies died naturally.  They were in effect Noble Butterflies.  They died for us in a way that we would not have to kill them or cage them to appreciate their beauty.  I would like to believe all animals that die have the chance to be Noble.  There is a chance that the animals that we eat have offered to die for the sake of those that eat them.  It could be possible.  If it is, it is up to us to show appreciation to the animals by making sure that they are treated humanely during their time on this earth.  Wouldn't it be better that way?  There are many possible ways to change the world.  This is only one grain of sand on the vast shores of eternity.