From the Dusk to the Dawn.

A stone's throw out on either hand
From that well-ordered road we tread,
And all the world is wild and strange;
Churel and ghoul and Djinn and sprite
Shall bear us company to-night,
For we have reached the Oldest Land
Wherein the Powers of Darkness range.
—From the Dusk to the Dawn.

The Gate of the Hundred Sorrows
In The house of Suddhoo (Rudyard Kipling)
The Gutenberg Project

Thought cannot avoid the ethical or reverence and love for all life.
It will abandon the old confined systems of ethics
and be forced to recognize the ethics that knows no bounds.
But on the other hand,
those who believe in love for all creation
must realize clearly the difficulties involved
in the problem of a boundless ethic
and must be resolved not to veil from [humankind]
the conflicts which this ethic will involve [us],
but allow [us] really to experience them.
To think out in every implication the ethic of love for all creation
-- this is the difficult task which confronts our age.

Albert Schweitzer

15 years after Rwanda genocide

April 7, 2009, marked the 15th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide.
On this date in 1994, Rwandan Armed Forces and Hutu militia
began one of the most intensive killing campaigns
in human history with the mass slaughter of
more than 800,000 Rwandan Tutsis
and moderate Hutus. First forced to
witness the annihilation of their
families, many women were then
subjected to unconscionable forms
of sexual violence – gang rape, rape
with sharpened objects, sexual mutilation.
In the aftermath of the destruction, many female
survivors learned that they had been impregnated
by their captors, contracted HIV/AIDS, or both.

I first traveled to Rwanda in February 2006
on assignment for Newsweek magazine
with then-health editor, Geoffrey Cowley,
to work on a story about HIV/AIDS on the
25th anniversary of the disease’s identification.
It was then that I met Odette, a woman who had been
brutally raped multiple times during the genocide.
She described how her entire family had been killed
and recounted the abuse she experienced, in detail.
The ordeal resulted in a pregnancy
– a baby boy –
and HIV/AIDS.
It was the most powerful and saddest interview I had ever witnessed.
Odette’s horrific story led me to return to Rwanda
to document her story
and those of others
like her.

Intended Consequences: Rwanda’s Living Legacy of Violence and Healing

Story and Photos by Jonathan Torgovnik

Global Health magazine artical

foundation Rwanda

To be free,
as I then knew myself
to be, is to realize that all
conquest is vain, even the conquest
of self, which is the last act of egotism.
To be joyous is to carry the ego to its
last summit and to deliver it triumphantly.
To know peace is total: it is the moment after,
when the surrenderer is complete, when there is no
longer even the consciounsness of surrender.
Peace is at the centre and when it is
attained
the voice issues
forth in praise and
benediction.
Then the voice carries far and wide,
to the outermost limits of the universe.
Then it heals,
because it brings light and the warmth of compassion.

The Colossus of Maroussi (1941)
Henry Miller

Navajo Blessing Way Prayer

In beauty may I walk.

All day long may I walk.

Through the returning seasons may I walk.

On the trail marked with pollen may I walk.

With grasshoppers about my feet may I walk.

With dew about my feet may I walk.

With beauty may I walk.

With beauty before me, may I walk.

With beauty behind me, may I walk.

With beauty above me, may I walk.

With beauty below me, may I walk.

With beauty all around me, may I walk.

In old age wandering on a trail of beauty, lively, may I walk.

In old age wandering on a trail of beauty, living again, may I walk.

It is finished in beauty.

It is finished in beauty

Adopt a Native elder

The Adopt-A-Native-Elder Program started through the efforts of Linda Myers of Park City, Utah. In the late 1980's Linda, an artist, was very moved by a Rug Show displaying the Navajo (or Dine' as they prefer to be called) weavings of the Elders of Northern Arizona. Touched by the stories of the Dine' people as told by Grace Smith Yellowhammer and Rose Hulligan during that Rug Show, Linda was soon very involved in gathering donated food, clothing and simple medicines and was driving to the reservation in Northern Arizona to deliver them to Elders living traditionally on the Land.

Within a year, and with the help of Jeannie Patton, a network grew around the vision that Linda had for supporting the traditional Elders in the native tradition of the Giveaway. At first it was just a group of one or two four-wheel drive vehicles making their way through the remote areas of Northern Arizona -- but those few were soon joined by many others who were touched by the purpose of the Program. Today over 2500 people from all over the United States and a few foreign countries have joined in the Spirit of the Giveaway Circle.

Adopt a Native Elder video

Adopt a Native Elder Website

This is a very cool organization, in many ways.

May you walk in beauty.

Bike Bus

I believe our talents are given to us by the Creator. I was struck by lightning in 1969 in a stormy cornfield in Iowa and came through it okay. It is things like that that have given me my unusual perspective. The Bicycle Bus is a very odd thing to exist upon the earth in the United States at the tail-end of the twentieth century, if you stop and think about it. There is obviously some deep spiritual purpose going on here. Recycling bicycles -- with the earth running out of oil... Isn't the Bike Bus like a sign? A huge incredible sign? Wherever we went people loved to see the Bike Bus. They smiled. They waved. They rubbed their eyes in disbelief.

In the picture on the right we are set up in a small Washington town fixing the local people's bikes. They would let us stay for a week or two without bothering us at all. After all, the nearest bike shop was a round trip of a hundred miles away from there. The kid's bikes needed someone to adjust the brakes and fix the flats, and repair the bearings. I came through twice a year, more or less. I bartered when people couldn't afford to pay cash. Sometimes we got fresh pies and loaves of home-made bread... Sometimes fresh Salmon or Dungeness crab... Once it was a large pot of fresh crawdads and a pound of butter...

There's a lot of ways to get paid for life. Sometimes the guy who receives piles of money for his "work" is miserable. One thing is for sure. I was never miserable. Not only were these kids great, but their mothers and fathers were great too. Hard working people most of them. The Indian culture has retained family values that have fallen into disuse in white society. They still all gather together to eat dinner around the same table. They still respect their elders. They still enjoy doing things for themselves and knowing the thing is done well, and that they have accomplished something. I mean, you see it in the children's eyes. But watch out when they are pissed at you! The white world hasn't always been their friend... So there I was, in the thick of things you might say. Up to my ears in clashing cultures. Sometimes kids would steal my bikes, or parts. I would go out looking for them. Sometimes the kids would help me, because they knew everyone in the neighborhood and had a pretty good idea who had done it.

History of the Bike Bus

A kind of Northwest, Gypsy Santa clause

A long story, but worth reading.