Humanize the Earth!

Where is the title on this post?  Is it there?

niece just doesn’t want to wait

My sister-in-law was due with her 1st child on Dec 12th, 2002 and my nephew Maxwell made his grand debut quite early on Sept 30th. Too early seemed (and seems) to be the general consensus.

Now Max is ready for a baby sister, due Dec 14th and my sister-in-law is in the hospital trying to teach this new whipper-snapper some patience (this is still more than a week earlier than Maxwell). Every day counts, though I’m still hoping for weeks (plurals on that, please).

So far so good.

Regula Frey: Joy of Movement Humanist Centre

I’d like to welcome my partner in life and peer in the Humanist Movement to the blogosphere: Regula Frey: Joy of Movement Humanist Centre. Check her out!

5. The Principle of Acceptance 2

At tonight’s weekly meeting, John and Gerry and I looked again at one of the Principles of Valid Action:

If day and night, summer and winter are fine with you, you have surpassed the contradictions.

John shared an example about making a mistake at work but not feeling embarrased about it, while owning up to it, after a particularly good meditation session. Enlightenment does not make one any less prone to human error!

Gerry is struggling with what he referred to as “good and evil” or perhaps “good and neutral” when thinking about the upcoming presidential election. Is it perhaps acceptance to see the possibly life-changing questions that come out of an anticipated or feared Bush win? “Will I leave the country or will I become a revolutionary?”

upcoming Zambia trip

I’m going to Zambia for the first week in October. I haven’t been there in over two years, but in the meantime I’ve been to Ghana & Liberia quite a bit. Here are the (pre-blog) writeups for those trips.

In the Humanist Movement, we’re working as volunteers to create a world with the human being as the central value. Some people do that by forming teams, then teaching those teams to have a weekly meeting with personal work (see links to my blog posts about Principles of Valid Action in the sidebar) and organizing of social projects. That’s what I was doing in Ghana & Liberia.

Some volunteers have other roles. One of those roles is the admi and is primarily concerned with the circulation of information. Before my stint in Ghana & Liberia I travelled quite often to Zambiato perform this admi role, and I’m going back to do so again. I’ll be working with the teams of my peers Regula and Julius.

email up and feeling uncurled

Yep, it’s all good.

email down

My email has been down since Saturday afternoon. I’m not sure if you’ve been receiving bounce messages or not, but if it’s time-sensitive, please phone me. Thanks.

uncurling

Still not feeling chipper, but am surly uncurling today. Still don’t want to talk with friends about it, but thanks all for the warm and loving thoughts. They do help even when I try to shut them out.

curl up in a ball and shut everything out

That’s what I’d like to do right now. I think I will. Life is just too painful to contemplate talking with a friend or figuring out how it’s all not as bad as it seems. I have a friend that feels like this every day. How can she stand it? How can I stand it even for one day? Sometimes when I feel this way talking with a friend helps. Tonight I have no interest in that. I have no interest in feeling better. See you on the other side.