A friend is one of the nicest things you can have, and one of the best things you can be.

One Summer's Day

A picture story...

The End.

The Moon Tonight....Again.

The Moon Tonight

August, 2010 - Photography

The Vegan Evolution

The vegan ideal embodies the highest of ethical aspirations – non-violence, justice and compassion toward the innocent. Yet this deep and powerful value system continues to be marginalized by society. The example set by those who embrace these principles is too often vehemently opposed, trivialized or simply ignored. But the effects of this paradigm shift in perception are far-reaching, and the rewards beyond measure.

And yet, it somehow appears that the light of veganism is so bright that people are afraid to open their eyes to it, even individuals whose eyes are open to the truth behind other social causes. What is it that makes us cling so stubbornly to a practice that is clearly unnecessary, devastatingly cruel, and, if left unchecked, will almost certainly end up destroying us?

More and more people are recognizing the prejudice and injustice inherent in enslaving and slaughtering animals, in order to feed our appetite for flesh, eggs, milk, and other products of exploitation. It is no secret that animal concentration camps create breeding grounds for all sorts of infectious diseases. It’s also becoming known that animal products are detrimental to human health, and that animal agriculture, including ‘free-range’ and ‘organic’, is implicated in some of the worst crimes against the planet. Even the truth about the animal industry’s role in world hunger and food shortages is starting to come into the open.

Despite all the advancements of human ‘civilization’, our addiction to killing keeps us in the dark ages. It inhibits us from cultivating our capacity for kindness, empathy, and justice; the very qualities we need to develop if we are to move forward into a safe and prosperous future, in which we do not fear one another.

Animals value their lives, and strive to be free from pain. Since the same qualities exist in us, empathizing with them comes naturally. When we suppress that empathy, it makes it impossible for us to look more deeply into the true nature of animals, and the rest of the natural world that we all rely on for survival.

Indifference toward the suffering of other creatures is an accepted societal norm that calls out for us to remember what basic human values are: justice, empathy, compassion and respect; for the natural world, for the other animals, and for our fellow humans. By re-evaluating and renewing our commitment to these fundamental values, and by calling attention to the need for an ethical evolution, we can create new standards of behavior, motivated by our desire to be better people. Only in this way will we become deserving of the position of stewardship that our physical evolution has granted us, but which we have rejected in favor of self-serving domination.

All over the world, animals are imprisoned, enslaved, tortured and violently killed, and all over the world, people who are otherwise kind, gentle and caring, continue to ignore this unspeakable suffering. And yet we wonder why the human race is plagued by violence on a world-wide scale. We go about our business, acting as though this state of violence does not indicate something terribly disturbing about our psychological state, individually and as a whole. Our lack of concern for innocent beings has caused us to de-sensitize ourselves to suffering, which in turn enables us to inflict pain on each other.

The vegan ideal is at the core of the shift from predation to protection and from prejudice to justice; an essential step into a way of living that is more suited to the nature of people who care about the suffering of others, and who can empathize with another’s situation. The vegan solution contains within it the power to solve even the most overwhelming problems we are facing, on every level from personal to planetary.

If we are to have a future, the people who live in that future will not be addicted to products that are a result of exploitation, suffering and environmental devastation. They will not source their food from animal farms or slaughterhouses, but from fertile gardens, vibrant orchards and veganic farms. People will be kind, compassionate, gentle and just.

This quantum leap in perception may seem unlikely from the position we are in today, but it is within this very change that our hope for the future lies.

http://gentleworld.org

To be intact, as nature intended, is best.

END the abuse to children's genitals known as 'circumcision'.

Millions of years of evolution have fashioned the human body into a model of refinement, elegance, and efficiency, with every part having a function and purpose. Evolution has determined that mammals' genitals should be sheathed in a protective, responsive, multipurpose foreskin. Every normal human being is born with a foreskin. In females, it protects the glans of the clitoris; in males, it protects the glans of the penis. Thus, the foreskin is an essential part of human sexual anatomy.

***********

Your children are not your children.

They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.

They come through you but not from you,

and though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,

for they have their own thoughts.

You may house their bodies but not their souls,

for their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,

which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.

You may strive to be like them,

but seek not to make them like you,

for life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children

as living arrows are sent forth.

The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,

and He bends you with His might

that His arrows may go swift and far.

Let our bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;

for even as He loves the arrow that flies,

so He loves also the bow that is stable.

Kahlil Gibran

The Prophet, 1923

The Horse

Where in this wide world

Can we find nobility without pride,

Friendship without envy,

Or beauty without vanity?

Here, where grace is served with muscle

And strength by gentleness confined

He serves without servility;

He has fought without enmity.

There is nothing so powerful,

Nothing less violent.

There is nothing so quick,

Nothing more patient.

~Ronald Duncan, "The Horse," 1954

I am a Proud Intactivist

He who passively accepts evil

is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it.

He who accepts evil without protesting against it

is really cooperating with it.

~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

We cannot withhold facts for fear of offending
because the importance of the information
outweighs people's right to not be challenged in their beliefs.
~ Maddy Reid


Please.
Speak up on the issue of intactivism.
You never know what baby you will save,
or what mother will thank you later.

Jack Black on Circumcision in Antiquity:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_MWbA2_mmw&feature=player_embedded

Creatures - Big and Small

A few creatures we have had the honor of meeting during our travels throughout the month of May. More to come!

I believe in God, only I spell it Nature.

~Frank Lloyd Wright, quoted, 14 August 1966

How strange that Nature does not knock, and yet does not intrude!

~Emily Dickinson, letter to Mrs. J.S. Cooper, 1880

And what's a buterfly? At best,

He's but a ceterpillar, drest.

~John Grey

If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be a vegetarian.

~Paul McCartney

Shine, As Children Do.

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine as children do. It's not just in some of us; it is in everyone. And as we let our own lights shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

Nelson Mandela

My First Cadaver Lab Experience

My professors want to produce not only doctors with skillful hands, but doctors with a sense of humanity. And respect for a cadaver on the table helps teach compassion for living patients in the office, ethics professors say.

Anatomy lab, also known as cadaver lab, has long been a rite of passage for those committed to a life of healing. In the early 1800s, medical faculty first began lobbying for legal, as well as social, recognition of the need for human dissection to further surgical knowledge. By the 1900s, the cadaver lab became a fixture in the medical school curriculum.

As we entered the cadaver lab on the fourth floor of Humber College North in Etobicoke at 10:00 a.m., the highly concentrated smell of preservatives quickly overloaded our senses. Some placed their jackets or sleeves over their noses and mouths. Unsure of our body's reactions to both the sights and smells, we continued onward. Rows of stainless steel coffin-like containers, known simply as holding tanks, filled the room. On top of each container were partially dissected bodies, internal organs exposed, and one untouched body. Plastic buckets labeled "whole brains", "hearts", etc. could be seen on a shelf. Holding an actual human brain in my hands was priceless.

We gathered around the first cadaver peering down at the exposed viscera and detached sternum and rib cage. We immediately noticed the vertical column of steel wire spiraling down the sternum. This patient once had open heart surgery. Our professor stood next to the body and began to point out some of the various parts. He picked up the detached heart and quickly without hesitation promptly placed it in my hands. A little startled, I began to pull back the folds of cut muscle exposing the chambers. And so the the experience began.

And what an amazing experience it was.

Our body is such an incredible design. It's a huge honor for me to be a part of medicine, but it's even more special to be a part of homeopathic medicine. Though I may have to explain what an H.D. means from time to time (sometimes in a slightly defensive tone to the skeptics), I'm learning what it means to be an H.D. Someday soon (fingers crossed) those two letters will come after my name, and I can't wait for that day.

9 Years Young.

Happy Birthday Chad ☺

Every day, you take my breath away. Love Mom.

May your spirit soar gracefully

on the whispering breeze.

May your joy

run strong

as the deepest seas.

May your soul

reach out

to embrace the sky.

May your heart

guide you truly

as the years go by.

Our Igloo

Winter came down to our home one night

Quietly pirouetting in on silvery-toed slippers of snow,

And we, we were children once again.

~Bill Morgan, Jr.

The first fall of snow is not only an event, it is a magical event. You go to bed in one kind of a world and wake up in another quite different, and if this is not enchantment then where is it to be found?

~J.B. Priestley

Valentines Day

Love - a wildly misunderstood, although highly desirable, malfunction of the heart which weakens the brain, causes eyes to sparkle, cheeks to glow, blood pressure to rise and the lips to pucker.

Feeling SO blessed today, to be loved by such an amazing family.

Eye See through you

If you have seen nothing but the beauty of their markings and limbs, their true beauty is hidden from you.