If someone hits you in the face with a bat, do you get angry with the bat or the person who hit you?Perhaps the bat was wrong for existing. But that could not have been used as a weapon had the person not picked it up and smacked you across the face with it.
An interfaith, interdenominational church with members of various walks of life and religious/spiritual backgrounds including but not limited to Jews, Christians, Moslems, Hindus and all other spiritual believers.
I am , religiously speaking, a practicing Jew as well as I consider my self to be MetaSpiritual which in my definition means I acknowledge various world spiritual writings to be valid missives from which I can obtain knowledge of religion and spirituality.
I believe in miracles and hands on healing that is spoken of in the Hebrew Scriptures as well as the Christian scriptures and other eastern scriptures throughout the world.
All of these religions practiced some form of energy healing which in modern times has become known by various and numerous monikers such as Reiki, Chios Healing, Prayer, Laying on of Hands and through such schools of thought as Barbara Brennan and Donna Eden to name a scant few.
It is my 1st Amendment right to practice my religion and spirituality according to the dictates of my religious/spiritual beliefs in G-d.
the 1st. Amendment:"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; etc...."
Seeking for a convinient homestudy way to enhance your spiritual/holistic practice?
Check out Reiki Blessings Academy which was founded by Dharmadevi.
What does The Creative Force, God or Higher Power means to me.
My connection to the Divine Consciousness/Supernal Source of Life was something I felt from a very early age. I was not raised in a religious home however my mother was very spiritual in her outlook on life. She believed that we must always be thankful for what we have and to try and do what is good and what is right. She is naturally intuitive and exhibited great many psychic God given gifts of which my brother and I both inherited. My mother is a beautiful example of unconditional LOVE. God is Love. Throughout the years I have studied many religions including Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormonism, Vaishnavism, and Judaism.
I am, through descent as well as through formal acknowledgment, apart of the Jewish people and the Jewish faith. However, my attachment to Judaism, it's people and principles is not one of a pure and solely dogmatic nature. Through my life's experiences of both religious and spiritual in nature I have determined that God is far more infinite and far more inclusive that any religion teaches.
I have come to the knowledge that God, our "Creator",HaShem, Shekhinah our Source of Light and Life or the Collective Consciousness as some prefer, is far more infinite, far more everything that we could ever imagine. God our Mother/Father our Ultimate Source is pure Love and pure Light.
God is a verb, Life Becoming, Life that is, that will be and that always was. God is the Creative Principle, air, light, dark, God is everything and we are part and parcel of God. Within each and everyone of us resides our own portion of the Spark of Divinity and we are not separate from it. God or, as some understand, AIN SOF is complete, perfect and Absolute and container of all LIFE and is all life.
As sparks of Divinity, as I believe, it is our mission to exhibit unconditional Love, Light and healing to all.(Yes, not always easy for ourselves or others) Restoring physio/spiritual healing to all of Creation. Love life as God loves life, as God Is, was and will be. And this is my life's mission as a healing minister.
This is what I believe that God's messenger, the radiant Swan, came to deliver to me when I was 4 years old. Thankfully it has only taken me 32 years to come into an understanding of my mission.
Be Blessed Love & Light,
RSwan; Healing Minister, LightWorker, Priestess
From The Heart of Awareness: A Translation of the Ashtavakra Gita, by Thomas Byrom, 1990. Reprinted by arrangement with Shambhala Publications, Inc., Boston. www.shambhala.com. 
With clear and steady insight
He sees this world is a mirage,
And he no longer wonders about it.
How can he fear the approach of death?
-Ashtavakra Gita 3:11
SWAN
Grace, Beauty, Power of Self
The Swan is one of the most powerful
and ancient of totems.
As you begin to realize your own true beauty,
you unfold the ability to bridge
new realms and new powers.
Swan can show you how to the inner beauty
within yourself and in others.
A Swan totem heralds a time of altered states of awareness
and the development of intuitive abilities.
Swan people have the ability to see the future,
and to accept the healing and transformation that is beginning in their lives.
Accept your ability and go with the flow.
Stop denying you know who is calling when the phone rings.
Pay attention to your hunches and inner knowledge,
and Swan medicine will work through you.
The Swan's call teaches the mysteries of song and poetry,
for these touch the child and the beauty within.
Be Still and Know That I AM
I AM
say these words outloud to yourself
and be still
I AM
say these words silently within your mind
and be still
Just accept that you are
I AM love
I AM kindness
I AM strong
I AM all
I AM
When you pray, thank you God/dess, Great Spirit,
Source of Life, Ain Sof, Baruch Hu.....
for all that you are... YOU ARE... for all that I AM
the spark is inside of you
your divine birthright... there whether you acknowledge
or not....
in me, you, her, him, them, us....
WE ARE ONE
I AM
be still and know that I AM
SANTA CRUZ — As she lay dying on the bed inside her Santa Cruz home, her last words were, "It's better now."
And with that, Shekhinah Mountainwater, a key figure in Santa Cruz's alternative spiritual culture, died Saturday after battling uterine cancer for more than a year and a half.
She was 67.
She was surrounded by friends and family. On Monday they recalled her impact. They said it was not only in the way she lived her life, but in the way she left it: courageous in the face of pain. Then, finally, peacefully.
She was a healer, a tarot reader, a teacher, a singer, a musician, an author, a goddess, a pagan, a witch.
"The good kind of witch, not the bad kind," her friends and family pointed out Monday, occasionally motioning to her body, which lay a few feet away inside a plain wooden coffin in the backyard; occasionally they spoke to her.
"She was dedicated to her work and changing the world," said son Frey Faust, who followed in his mother's artistic footsteps by becoming a dance teacher. "She was a creative mother, and she was very disciplined as an artist herself. Nature was important to her. Values were important to her. She was never interested in monetary wealth"
While thousands of Santa Cruz residents could fit that very description, what made Mountainwater's life so interesting is that she dedicated her life to empowering women long before it became fashionable.
And she never let up.
And it wasn't a political movement along the lines of feminism, although that was certainly important to her.
It was a spiritual movement — one whose roots can be traced to an ancient time, long before Judaism and Christianity "came to be," said daughter Angel Brandwein, who, as a child growing up in Ben Lomond, would sing and dance with her mother and older brother in front of the old Cooper House in downtown Santa Cruz.
"She was always at the forefront of any new movement whose purpose was to enlighten and unravel the patriarchal regime," said Brandwein, who now lives in Phoenix and works at Arizona State University. "She was the original beatnik, the original hippie; she was always anti-establishment"
She sang and played acoustic guitar in the same coffee houses as Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and Joni Mitchell in the 1960s in New York's Greenwich Village, before eventually moving to Los Angeles in the early 1970s, then settling in Santa Cruz, where she lived for 35 years in the same house on Effey Street.
Born Ellen Adler on Oct. 24, 1939, she was raised in New York and attended Bard College for a few years before she set off on her own in an attempt to become a folksinger.
Over the course of her life, however, Mountainwater would adopt a long line of names before settling on her final one, Shekhinah — "the female aspect of god in ancient Judaism," her daughter said.
"Her name changes represented her journey in life at the time and the discovery of a new part of herself," she added.
In 1991, she wrote "Ariadne's Thread: A Workbook of Goddess Magic," a book about feminist spirituality and magic.
"You may have heard of the five steps or keys to magic," she writes. "See, know, will, dare and keep silent. Those correspond to the five elements of the witch's star, as spirit, mind, action, emotion, and body"
Or, perhaps, a more prophetic line would be this one: "Great are the life forms that let us eat them/Some day our bodies too will be food/Great is the goddess who makes things so yummy/Great is the woman who cooks it so good"
In December 2005, however, Mountainwater was dealt a blow when she was diagnosed with cancer. Soon, she found herself having to mix alternative methods of healing, such as herbs, massage and acupuncture, with modern-day practices such as chemotherapy and radiation.
The chemotherapy may have taken her beautiful hair, friends say, but it didn't take her soul, or her fire, or the goddess within her.
"She taught us how to find the goddesses in ourselves. She taught us how to hold ourselves sacred," said Juniper Spring, a close friend. "That's what made her so special"
What neighbor Cindia Boyle said she will miss most of all is their day-to-day friendship.
"She was always here," said Boyle. "And now she isn't"
Contact Tom Ragan at tragan@santacruzsentinel.com.
Shekhinah Mountainwater
Born: Oct. 24, 1939.
Died: Aug. 11, 2007.
Occupation: Author, artist, healer, teacher, spiritual leader.
Survivors: Daughter Angel Brandwein of Phoenix; son Frey Faust of Santa Cruz; brother Seth Adler of San Francisco; father Bill Adler of San Francisco; and three grandchildren.
Services: 10 a.m. today at Soquel Cemetery, 550 Old San Jose Road. A public memorial will be announced in coming weeks.
Yes, it is definitely always so easy to speak about the practice of METTA....universal loving-kindness (chesed). How easy is it to actually put into action....
But just for today I will practice Metta....blessing of others regardless of their actions towards me.
Please watch the video below....allow its message to bless your soul...yea, just for today.
Just for today
i've recently seen the movie... the updated version and here is my review....
MY AMAZON REVIEW
| Reviewer: | (ME) - |
it is important to trust yourself.
to trust that still small voice.
it is important to spend time alone
to be still
and know that God is....
you know more than you realise
if you would only be still
be silent
Diners at Habesha, a traditional restaurant in Addis Ababa, where the specialty is injera, the ubiquitous flatbread, with vegetable wat, and a singer entertains during dinner.
ETHIOPIA is not a country people go to for food. But despite its lack of culinary fanfare, Addis Ababa, the capital city, has a rich and unexpected food culture. And more than just great meals, this is food that comes with a story.
This is a country that serves up grass-fed beef and organic vegetables by default. There are no trendy macro-organic-vegan movements; rather, the livestock graze in open fields because there are no factory farms, and vegetables are rarely treated with pesticides because farmers can’t afford the chemicals. Going there is a step back in time, literally — Ethiopians follow a version of the Julian calendar, so the year is 1999, and Ethiopia will have its millennium celebration on Sept. 12.
On a trip to Addis Ababa last year, I became increasingly intrigued with the cuisine. Everywhere — from dingy streets to polished hotels — I saw people of every age, class and occupation eating the same food and embracing the same traditions. The food is a source of national pride, and a daily reminder of this country’s history.
There are no appetizers or desserts in Ethiopia. Chefs do not craft menus to whet the appetite with an amuse bouche. Food has a primal role: to be filling, nutritious and packed with as much flavor as possible, whether it’s spicy chickpea hummus with caramelized onions, or grilled chicken dripping with a sweet yogurt sauce.
Even at the city’s handful of high-end restaurants (the ones with table service and uniformed servers), there is an unspoken obligation to provide true sustenance. This is a country, after all, that suffered some of the worst famines of recent decades.
And at the heart of every Ethiopian meal is injera. Basically a pancake — or more accurately, a really, really big pancake — injera is made from tef, a sour-wheat-like grain that is mixed with cool water and a pinch of yeast. But unlike a pancake, it isn’t flipped over, so the topside remains spongy, the better to sop up the vegetables and meat in the saucelike wat (sometimes spelled wot or wett) that is ladled on top. In a country where utensils are scarce, injera is not only your dinner plate, it’s also your knife, fork, spoon and sometimes napkin.
When a platter of injera arrives at the table, covered in dips of fresh, locally grown vegetables and farm-raised meats, it is immediately torn apart by everyone within arm’s reach. The ritual is as much about silent gratitude for what the land has offered, as it is about digging into a great meal.
Habesha
The first place I tried injera was at this candlelit tukul, a traditional hut with low wooden tables and colorful ceiling murals on the city’s main drag, Bole Road. As I sat down with my friend Tariku Warigtay, a local guide, local residents were drinking St. George beer, and pretty waitresses in white cotton dresses were scurrying about.
After a moment, a young waitress approached with a silver tray and pitcher. In the tray was a bar of soap.
“It’s for washing your hands,” Tariku explained. “There are no utensils, so we must have clean hands.”
It was the most decadent hand washing I’ve ever had: after I soaped up, the waitress poured warm water over my lathered palms, then gave me a warm towel. She lighted a stick of incense on our table, and the room filled with the scent of sandalwood. A minute later, she brought over two bottles of icy St. George, and as far as I was concerned, the meal could have almost ended right there.
Luckily, it did not. Tariku ordered the specialty of the house, injera with mixed-vegetable wat. Our injera arrived on a woven grass mat otherwise bare until the waitress returned with a collection of ceramic bowls. On our injera she spooned sautéed spinach with caramelized onions, spicy potatoes with red peppers, yellow lentil hummus, fried green beans with garlic, mashed chili peppers, refried beans with tangy pepper, crushed chickpeas and a crisp, green salad.
I ripped off a small piece, and gingerly dipped it into the chickpea sauce. Then I watched how Tariku — who’s been eating the stuff for 30 years — approached his half. There is nothing delicate or refined about eating injera. He ripped off big sections and dunked them in the savory dips until his fingers were dripping with onions and spinach. I rolled up my sleeves and joined him.
Eating injera is a sensory feast — the sweet smell of sandalwood, the rhythmic drumming from a trio of musicians, sporadic bursts of flickering candlelight, and a sweet and spicy meal that clings to my fingers. All five senses are abundantly fed, and the entire meal comes to only 100 birr, or roughly $11 at 9.4 birr to the dollar.
Agelgil
Across town, down a treacherously bumpy and forlorn dirt road, is one of Addis’s swankiest restaurants, Agelgil. This is where the businessmen, diplomats and the Italian-suit-wearing crowd come to feast.
The bar is more of a lounge, with a canopy of dried palm fronds — you’ll think you’ve landed in Los Angeles. But walk in back, to the dining room with its traditional art, big wooden tables and trays made of animal skins for serving injera, and it’s clear that this place is authentically Ethiopian. There’s also a small stage in the center.
We parked ourselves at a table in the middle of the room and perused the menu — injera with assorted meat or vegetable wats, teps (spicy fried lamb or other meat) and a fajita-like dish of sizzling lamb, beef or chicken with peppers and onions. Main courses cost 50 to 100 birr.
This night’s dinner consisted of assa kitfo, or chopped fried tilapia. It arrived on injera, and with wedges of flat bread, along with traditional vegetable wats — potatoes, peppers, beans and onions in spicy sauces, all delicious. But the assa kitfo is truly stupendous. This time, I was not shy about digging in.
I asked Selamawit Tekeste, the manager, how the assa kitfo is prepared, and she was coy. “We are the only place you can find this dish,” she said. “We can’t give out our secret.”
From what I could tell, the recipe calls for batter-fried tilapia, mixed with onions, chili peppers, spicy sauce and something else I can’t quite place. Ms. Tekeste was pleased. “It’s the part you don’t know that keeps our customers coming back,” she said.
Well, that and the dancing girls. The draw at many of the restaurants in Addis Ababa is as much the entertainment as it is the food. At Agelgil, two men and two women, in tribal dress from the southern Oromo region, twisted, vibrated and shook in several highly choreographed dances, culminating with the two men performing a traditional spear dance in baboon wigs (yes, real, and no, not legal).
The meal ended with a coffee ceremony — a ritual inherited from the countryside. A waitress came to our table and roasted coffee beans over hot coals, fanning the smoke under our noses. She then ground the beans in a mortar and pestle, poured the grounds into piping hot water and filled our espresso cups. As she left, she sprinkled sweet incense leaves over a small bowl of smoldering coals.
When the incense burned down, it was time to leave.
Teshomech Kitfo House
The top of the food chain in Addis Ababa is kitfo — raw, spiced beef — and nowhere does it better than the Teshomech Kitfo House, hidden down a bumpy, unpaved road flanked by abandoned dwellings and small flocks of sheep. Two iron gates and a mammoth acacia tree marked its entrance; this popular restaurant, it seems, is only for those who know its whereabouts.
The speakeasy vibe continued inside. There were no menus, the clientele was entirely well-dressed local residents, and there was only one thing to order: kitfo, which literally translates to “diced into pieces” in Amharic. It is the favored way to eat meat in Ethiopia, for those who can afford it (an order of kitfo at Teshomech costs 33 birr, about $3.55).
The owner, Antonios Tekle Mariam, a tall, affable man, told me that he named the restaurant after his wife, Teshomech. But it was not time for small talk — he weaved me through the patio and dining room packed with a lunchtime crowd, past a yard where banana palm fronds and cabbage were drying in the sun, and into his kitchen.
In one room, three women in white butcher’s coats were chopping up raw meat with machetes, discarding fatty pieces and neatly arranging the choice ones. The meat was brought to a second room, to be spiced, seasoned and occasionally sautéed.
“You can have the meat cooked if you like,” Mr. Mariam said. “But real kitfo is raw. It is just warmed for a moment and served.”
Actually, it’s a little more than that. I watched as a teenage sous chef poured melted butter over the raw meat, warmed it in a wok (meat slightly warmed like this is called leb leb) and sprinkled it with a bright orange powder known as mit mita, a fiery mix of red pepper, mustard seed and salt.
Once it was blended (but still quite raw), she scooped the meat onto a banana leaf next to three sides: grated cheese, drawn butter and a cabbage, cheese and pepper sauce. A small wrap of injera was added before the banana leaf was whisked off to the dining room.
I was squeamish about eating the kitfo, but my curiosity got the better of me. It was faintly oily from the butter but warm and spicy, not unlike steak tartare, but with more kick.
“Anyone can prepare kitfo,” Mr. Mariam said, as we watched the women scurry about the kitchen, armed with machetes and wooden gavels. “But kitfo comes from the Gurage region. I am from the Gurage region, and everyone in Addis knows I make the best kitfo.”
He paused and took in the surroundings again — deftly sliced sides of beef, neat rows of flank steaks pounded paper thin, a table piled high with assorted ground meat. Then he smiled and made his only joke of the day: “It’s in my blood.”
Tarik House
Just when I didn’t think it was possible, I got even closer to the source of kitfo. The Tarik House is a white clapboard butcher’s stand in the Lideta neighborhood, recessed a few feet from the road and barely larger than the two men I found inside.
The men, each in a white butcher’s coat, silently sliced up a side of beef. It looked like something from a meat locker, except it was not cold. In fact, the cows hanging on the wall are never frozen, going swiftly from organic grass fields to these racks, with a brief stop at the slaughterhouse.
But Tarik House is not only a butcher shop, it is also a restaurant. And here’s the thing: there’s no kitchen. The dish of the house is tire siga, or raw meat.
Unlike kitfo, tire siga is not mixed with warm butter or heated on the stove or served on a pretty banana leaf. The butchers carve generous slabs of beef while it’s hanging on the hooks, slice it into fist-sized pieces and deposit it, with no frills, on a metal tray. And they can’t fill orders fast enough.
The loyal customers, mostly men, sit outside at flimsy fold-up tables, diving into the platters before them. One of them when we were there was Solomon, a friend of Tariku who lives nearby.
He cut bite-size pieces of meat with a crescent-shaped carving knife. He dunked one into a dish of mit mita, squirted a lime wedge on top, and wrapped it in a piece of injera and ate. He washed it down with chilled red wine. The meal costs 40 birr for a kilogram (2.2 pounds) of beef (most people get half a kilogram).
This time, I could not do it — I dunked the injera in the mit mita, squirted the lime juice on, and found it plenty flavorful without the meat. Yet when I saw Solomon’s face, I could not help thinking I was missing out.
Occasionally, the Tarik House will fry the meat for a moment on a hot plate if the customer is queasy about raw beef. That’s how Chuchu, a grumpy regular who goes there for lunch daily, prefers it.
“I never eat raw,” he said, waving his index finger for emphasis. “It must be cooked.”
A few patrons looked up briefly and dismissed him — they’ve heard this speech before.
“Some of my countrymen are out of their minds,” Chuchu continued. “Raw meat is only for the lions.”
VISITOR INFORMATION
Prices are for dinner for two with drinks.
Habesha Restaurant, Bole Road near the Wollo Sefer junction; (251) 551-8358; 120 to 170 birr, or $13 to $18, at 9.4 birr to the dollar.
Agelgil National Food Restaurant and Hotel, old Villa Verde house in the Meskel Flower area; (251) 011-465-3299; 200 birr.
Teshomech Kitfo House, 636 Haile Gebre Selassie Road; (251) 618-2442; about 70 birr.
The Tarik House, Lideta area, across from the Lideta church; about 60 birr.
Tariku Warigtay charges $50 a day for a restaurant or shopping tour of Addis Ababa; e-mail: gltguide2000@yahoo.com.
as most of us know earth lost a wonderful son this past sept. 4, 2006.
steve irwin who dedicated his life to educating people on conservationism
and that nature and wildlife are important.
i was very sad when i learned of his death. but no need to go into the emotional
details.
last night barbara walters, host of 20/20, did an interview with steve's american
wife teri.
i decided not to watch the interview because i knew that teri would be wracked
with mourning emotions and being the empath that i am it would have just
been too difficult to watch or listen. when you feel others pain so intensely
as i do, it can be a very stressful situation to endure.
i acknowledge his death,the pain of it, and most importantly respect the memory
of his life.
well this morning i decided to walk to school with the kids as a great way to start my day.
their school is well over half a mile away.
i came back into the house to turn on Good Morning America believing that they might
have just snippet of the interview or at least babs on there talking about it.
well as soon as i turn the tv on i see teri's face. you can see that the woman was doing
her best to be strong, to be brave and mustering up the courage to go on. the pain
in her face, in her voice….it was intense.
ms. walters asked her what does she miss the most about steve?
teri replied,” i know this is selfish, but what i miss most is steve's ability to have fun. steve taught me that it was ok to play in the rain, to jump in mud puddles. it was okay if the kids got dirty or spilled ice cream on your pants. steve didnt sweat the small stuff because he saw the bigger picture….”
she also said something about she hopes soon that she will be able to have fun again because she is mrs. steve irwin and she has a lot to live up to.
of course when she said that i just burst into tears.
prior to that portion she mentioned that steve believed that if we each did our part in the world to help the world it would all add up. we have to each do our part.
***
while you are going about your day, your life… doing your part in the world…
please do not forget to have fun. do not forget the 12 year old that you were,
that you are, that you should be. live life with joy, love, responsiblity and most
importantly FUN.
*****
steve irwin's 8 year old daughter bindi sue reading her speech at her fathers memorial service. btw, bindi was named after his favorite crocodile and his best mate dog sui :-)
photo from AP Yahoo!
on one of my artist's communities a fellow artists posted this. i found it to be packed full of wisdom so very simply and straightforward.embracing it both because cherokee is part of my ancestral heritage and the spiritual heritage of america and thus the world.
some of you may have heard it before….and even those who haven't…enjoy and may you find something worth of incorporating into your being… be love.
******
Two Wolves
The Feminine principle….is…identified with the Divine Presence (Shekhinah), the essence of God that pervades all creation. It is this Essence that is the true beauty of all things. Thus, whenever one contemplates any beauty, s/he must realise that this is the Divine Essence, and can thus make use of it to begin the ascent on the Ladder.
—Nehunia ben Hakanah (trans.AryehKaplan)
The most direct means for attaching ourselves to God from this material world is through music and song.
—-Rebbe Nachman of Breslov
