Heroes

Who advances mankind's quality of life?
Who makes medical and scientific breakthroughs?
Who works to save and heal the planet?
Who spreads light, acceptance and understanding?
Who carries the lame, feeds the sick, leads the blind?
Who makes peace and brings enemies together?
Who rejects violence and resists hatred?
Who choses integrity and honesty over money?
Who rejects obsessing over buying and selling things?
Who decides to work for others in need selflessly.

Practice is being the person who does these things.
Practice is deciding every day to be among those
who do these things.

Ice

Yesterday it snowed, then rained and then froze. This left the entire area covered in thick sheets of ice, which could not be thawed by the below-freezing temperatures which have persisted. A minuscule ice age. The lessons of ice are many. Ice, unlike snow, cannot be shoveled. Ice, unlike water, cannot be diverted or drained. Ice is a very tricky walking or driving surface. It is unforgiving. Not only will it gladly steer your center of gravity to the ground, it will also resist your muscles and bones when they land with impact. This hurts and can damage. Ice, unlike wind-swept snow or shimmering pools of water, is not particularly attractive atop cement and asphalt. The science of ice dictates patience. The patience leads to reflection. The reflection leads to acceptance of the power of ice over one's habits and routines. Perhaps ice can be likened to disabling illness. Perhaps dealing with an ice storm can bring all of us closer to understanding the terribly ill, whose illnesses paralyze, hobble and inconvenience. The truth of ice, along with the science of ice, deepen my understanding of my outer and inner universes.

Bimbo

Last week, a famous drug-addicted woman killed herself in a Florida hotel. She was a woman with an 8th grade education from humble beginnings in The South. She married an ancient man in his 80s when she was in her 20s. He was an oil baron. Subsequently, when he died, she wrangled in court battles over the man's estate with his surviving relations. She managed to buy her way into celebrity, since she had no education and no ostensible talent, other than her shameless exhibitionism of her surgically modified body. She even had her own TV show. She could have used her money to educate herself, to find the help she needed to control her addiction, to share what she might have learned with others. Instead, she chose to feed her addiction to attention and drugs. She managed to give birth to two children. One has already killed himself. The other, an orphaned infant, survives her. Posthumously, she received even more attention than she did when she was alive from people apparently fascinated by her useless and self-indulgent life. Perhaps this story is a barometer of the times. Rather than craving liberation from stupidity and dysfunction, many, it seems, now seek validation of those traits in themselves. This can only mean that there is a sickness in this society which might be healed by more vigorous efforts to educate and rehabilitate. However, the government obsesses on war abroad and horror of global warming, seen as a threat to the high-tech toys of today's wealthy. Man's social and intellectual evolution is at a low ebb. One can only hope that the tide will soon reverse.

Cold

I saw this cardinal in a bare tree yesterday on my walk. It was well below freezing. Yet this small bird was active and minimally curious about me. Last evening, after I had seen this cardinal, I watched a PBS (http://www.pbs.org/) 'Nature' program about rhinoceros. The great lumbering animals were wonderfully photographed. Then my mind drifted back to a recent radio show on NPR (http://www.npr.org/) which was focused on the implications of global warming and the problems involved with our oil dependency. This morning it was about 10 degrees Fahrenheit when I ventured out. This all pulled together in my mind as a question: When the power runs out and it's cold, what will happen to our human habitat? I had visions of people hooking up wood stoves to their chimneys where their oil or gas furnaces once vented. I imagined people chopping up furniture, fences, hedges. How little time it would take for the suburban landscape to become denuded. Would there be mass migration to warmer climates? Would men with guns line the highways to the south to prevent refugees from digressing off the beaten path. Where would the refugees find a safe haven? What would they do to provide for themselves? Would it be the end of society and civilization as we know it? Well, I'm sure of one thing. The cardinal and the rhino would probably go on doing what they do without devoting much interest to the plight of the once-dominant species, gone awry. I find it helpful to think about my life in the context of the lives of other species around me. Anthropocentric thinking can lead to the kind of imbalance that is now destroying the planet's atmosphere.