My two memes delayed and combined

 For Saturday's Critters...a bit late to the table due to the holiday!

Some photos of my 3 sons and myself (with curls and a bandana) and my ex-daughter-in-law.

Not sure which grandbaby is shown here, but likely William. The kittens are Tiny Patches, Garfield and probably their mom, Patches.

Sharing with Saturday's critters!

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And for Sepia Saturday...another favorite meme that I sometimes contribute to...usually a day early, and seldom on topic...

How about free art?

A clay puzzle piece, size 14 x 22 inches. Backed permanently on a piece of board...it is rather heavy and ready to hang...with a wire attached on the back. This is more or less the true color.

But I don't want it any more. And so I gave it to the local thrift store Kiwanis.

I meet the theme of this week on Sepia Saturday by having a sepia art work in clay. Sepia, I tell you! Sepia!

In everyone's life, at some time,

our inner fire goes out. 

It is then burst into flame 

by an encounter with 

another human being. 

We should all be thankful 

for those people who 

rekindle the inner spirit.

Albert Schweitzer

The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved -- loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves.

 -Victor Hugo, novelist and dramatist (1802-1885)

Savor moments big and small,

Let worries go then watch them fall.

With open heart, dear grateful soul,

In every breath let joy unfold.

                      blogger Cloudia 

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Climate Change notes:

If you live in the Northern Hemisphere, we’re already well into a hot summer - and Reuters just launched Climate Monitor, an interactive globe showing how much hotter (or colder) today’s temperature is compared to what was typical on that date between 1961 and 1990.
 
I spent a few minutes on the site. Where I live in Dallas: 4.7 degrees Fahrenheit (that’s 2.6C) above normal this past week. Toronto, Ontario, my hometown: 19.6F or 11C degrees above normal. 11C above normal is incredible to me, and in case you didn’t know, Toronto’s one of the World Cup cities with an outdoor stadium! That stopped me in my tracks.

Yesterday, Philadelphia cancelled their 250 year celebration parade as the heat index soared to 118F, and in DC, temperatures 22F above normal led to the closing of the Great American Fair on the Mall.
 
This week, take just a minute and look up your city. Look up where your parents live, where your kids go to camp, or somewhere currently experiencing a heat emergency. And don’t stop there. Talk about it! Share what you find out — not as a lecture, but as a conversation starter: “Did you know it’s 6 degrees warmer than normal here right now? I just found this tool that shows you in real time.” 
 
Abstract statistics about global average temperatures are easy to dismiss. But when someone sees that their hometown is running 8 degrees hotter than usual, or that the town where their grandchildren live is having its warmest July on record, it hits differently. Climate change stops being a headline and feels personal. 

Thanks  Katharine Heyhoe

Pink dogwood 2021

 

What with the disease that's killing the dogwoods, I was glad about half of this tree still bloomed this year....same tree that's been in the header for about a month!

Today's quote:

There is within each of us a modulation, an inner exaltation, which lifts us above the buffetings with which events assail us. Likewise, it lifts us above dependence upon the gifts of events for our joy.

ALBERT SCHWEITZER

The hardest person to forgive, or just have any compassion towards...

 

Compassion....

That's what I'm considering, as suggested by our Sunday (Jan 3) speaker at our virtual church.

Toward those for whom I would surely turn away, or speak harshly to...

Well, I found a quote that I'd saved, about Kuan Yin. She's a goddess of compassion. Here the prayer is focused on the Abuser. That's someone to whom I definitely have trouble having compassion!

I consider our politics lately. A hard place to start!

(NOTE: I wrote that sentence before Jan 6's mob at the Capitol. I am now so angry I considered not posting this...but the viewpoint is still valid. However I want the perpetrators of the mob as well as the followers to have legal consequences. It's about time! I could be a lot more compassionate if they didn't continually (and literally) get away with murder.

Today's quote:

Kuan Yin’s Prayer for the Abuser

To those who withhold refuge,

I cradle you in safety at the core of my Being.

To those that cause a child to cry out,

I grant you the freedom to express your own choked agony.

To those that inflict terror,

I remind you that you shine with the purity of a thousand suns.

To those who would confine, suppress, or deny,

I offer the limitless expanse of the sky.

To those who need to cut, slash, or burn,

I remind you of the invincibility of Spring.

To those who cling and grasp,

I promise more abundance than you could ever hold onto.

To those who vent their rage on small children,

I return to you your deepest innocence.

To those who must frighten into submission,

I hold you in the bosom of your original mother.

To those who cause agony to others,

I give the gift of free flowing tears.

To those that deny another’s right to be,

I remind you that the angels sang 

in celebration of you on the day of your birth.

To those who see only division and separateness,

I remind you that a part is born only by bisecting a whole.

For those who have forgotten 

the tender mercy of a mother’s embrace,

I send a gentle breeze to caress your brow.

To those who still feel somehow incomplete,

I offer the perfect sanctity of this very moment.

Another quote:

Compassion, in which all ethics must take root, can only attain its full breadth and depth if it embraces all living creatures and does not limit itself to mankind. -Albert Schweitzer, philosopher, physician, musician, Nobel laureate (14 Jan 1875-1965) 

"Reverence for Life"

An interesting quote came my way this morning.
I don't claim to know a thing about Albert Schweitzer. (I did include some info from Wikipedia below the quote.)

But I liked reading these words of his. Editing was done by my friend.

"I am life which wills to live, in the midst of life which wills to live.

As in my own will to live, there is a longing for a wider life and

pleasure, with dread of annihilation and pain: so is it also in the will to live all around me, whether it can express itself before me or remains dumb.  The will to live is everywhere present, even as in me..........

Ethics consist in my experiencing the  compulsion to show to all wills to live the same reverence as I do my own.  A person is truly ethical when obeying the compulsion to help all life which one is able to assist, and shrinks from injuring anything that lives............ 

(But it is true that in practice, not all life can be saved)  We are forced to choose....which forms of life, and even which individuals, we shall save and which we shall destroy.

But the principle of reverence for life is nonetheless universal....

(It) compels one to decide for oneself in each case how far one can remain ethical and how far one must submit to the necessity for destruction and injury to life.  No one can decide (for anyone else) at what point, on each occasion, lies the extreme limit of possibility for persistence in the preservation and furtherance of life.  (Each person) has to judge this issue , by letting oneself be guided by a feeling of the highest possible responsibility toward other life.  We must never let ourselves become blunted.  We are living in truth when we experience these conflicts more profoundly."

Albert Schweitzer,  (14 January 1875 – 4 September 1965) was a German—and later French—theologian, organist, philosopher, physician, and medical missionary in Africa, also known for his interpretive life of Jesus. He was born in the province of Alsace-Lorraine, at that time part of the German Empire, considered himself French and wrote mostly in French.

He received the 1952 Nobel Peace Prize for his philosophy of "Reverence for Life",^[1] expressed in many ways, but most famously in founding and sustaining the Albert Schweitzer Hospital in Lambaréné, now in Gabon, west central Africa (then French Equatorial Africa). As a music scholar and organist, he studied the music of German composer Johann Sebastian Bach.