This power of spirit

Joshua put this together with the magnets on our refrigerator...I noticed it last night while getting a glass of water before bed... and I thought it was brilliant... definitely good words of wisdom.

Danish proverb

I just heated up some water to make myself tea before I go to bed...

And the saying on the tea bag -- you know how some fancier teas have quotes and words of wisdom written on the tag -- seemed, well, perfect.

It reads:

"He who would leap high must take a long run"

-Danish proverb (Good Earth white tea, vanilla blend)

I started my new job today as "associate editor" of the Alaska Star... and my thoughts are pretty well summed up by that Danish proverb... this is a "high leap" and one that will take "a long run"... but I'm excited for the trail ahead. I thrive on challenge, and if its a challenge that involves writing and publishing... even better!

"But the greatest of these is charity"

Tonight I read this article in the New York Times...

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-China-Tibet.html

and saw this photo (warning: graphic)...

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2008/03/27/nytfrontpage/20080327POD_4.html

and I found myself nearly in tears...

When I finished work at 10:30 p.m., I drove to Fred Meyer to pick up hand warmers for climbing tomorrow.

As I was leaving the store a teenage daughter and dad approached me and asked if I know my way around Anchorage...

Speaking over each other in rushed, fragmented language they explained they were stranded... drove into Anchorage from Wasilla and forgot the wallet with all the cash, ID, etc. at home.

While I didn't feel confident enough in their story to give them dollar bills, I felt confident enough in them as people to give them a ride to the the place where they supposedly left their car... a nearby hospital.

I also offered them the left overs from the dinner I packed for work... a cliff bar and granola bar, which they devoured in record time.

In the car they told me a little bit about their life... raising dogs outside Wasilla... a homestead on a mountain... the daughter from Kotzebue is home schooled (in so many words her dad explained this meant she simply doesn't go to school)... her name is Laura...

The story wasn't all consistent and when we arrived at the hospital... rather than go to their van... they had me drop them off at the emergency room entrance... they said they needed go inside and make a few calls (even though they had a cell phone and I offered for them to use mine).

Nonetheless, I found the two dollars I always keep buried in my purse... handed it to them... and wished them a good evening. They walked into the emergency room arm in arm.

It seems to me the only way to face these seemingly huge crises in our world is to start with acts of charity... which in its truest sense is love made tangible.

It's TIME for The Prophet

And an astonomer said, Master, what of Time?
And he answered:
You would measure time the measureless and the immeasurable.
You would adjust your conduct and even direct the course of your spirit according to hours and seasons.
Of time you would make a stream upon whose bank you would sit and watch it flowing.

Yet the timeless in you is aware of life's timelessness,
And knows that yesterday is but to-day's dream.
And that that which sings and contemplates in you is still dwelling within the bounds of that first moment which scattered the stars into space.
Who among you does not feel that his power to love is
boundless?
And yet does not feel that very love, though boundless,encompassed within the centre of his being, and moving not from love thought to love thought, nor from love deeds to to other love deeds?

But if in your thought you must measure time into seasons, let each season encircle all the other seasons,
And let to-day embrace the past with rememberance and the future with longing.
And is not time even as love is, undivided and paceless?

-From The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran