Even the saints ask "Where is my faith?"

A wise friend once counseled me through periods of doubt by pointing out that the definition of a saint is one who struggles MOST, not least. I had always thought those whom we most look up to -- such as St. Francis, Mother Theresa, St. Theresa of Avila -- had secure and steadfast surety of God. So filled with love and good works, how could they have ever doubted their belief in Christ? But they did. I guess they were the most challenged.......as revealed by these new letters of Mother Theresa.

So though I continue to experience doubts and "dark nights of the soul", at least now I know that I am in good company.....

Letters reveal Mother Teresa tormented by questions of faith


Richard Owen of The Times, in Rome

Mother Teresa, who died in 1997 and was beatified in record time only six years later, felt abandoned by God from the very start of the work that made her a global figure, in her sandals and blue and white sari. The doubts persisted until her death.

Shortly after beginning her work in the slums of Calcutta, she wrote "Where is my faith? Even deep down there is nothing but emptiness and darkness. If there be a God — please forgive me." In letters eight years later she was still expressing "such deep longing for God", adding that she felt "repulsed, empty, no faith, no love, no zeal". Her smile to the world from her familiar weather-beaten face was a " mask" or a "cloak", she said. "What do I labour for? If there be no God, there can be no soul. If there be no soul then, Jesus, You also are not true." "I am told God lives in me — and yet the reality of darkness and coldness and emptiness is so great that nothing touches my soul," she wrote at one point. "I want God with all the power of my soul — and yet between us there is terrible separation." On another occasion she wrote: "I feel just that terrible pain of loss, of God not wanting me, of God not being God, of God not really existing."

The nun's crisis of faith was revealed four years ago by the Rev Brian Kolodiejchuk, the postutalor or advocate of her cause for sainthood, at the time of her beatification in October 2003. Now he has compiled a new edition of her letters, entitled Mother Teresa: Come be My Light, which reveals the full extent of her long "dark night of the soul".  Rev Kolodiejchuk maintains that Mother Teresa did not suffer "a real doubt of faith", but that, on the contrary, her agonising demonstrates her faith in God's reality. "We cannot long for something that is not intimately close to us . . . Now we have this new understanding, this new window into her interior life, and for me this seems to be the most heroic," he said.

Going Green online

Top Ten Green Website

From eco news to ethical fashion, Hilary Osborne finds out where environmental experts get their information on the web

The internet is the first port of call for many eco-experts

CLICK HERE to check them out!

We are heading for a fiery future

The Earth Fights Back

Never mind higher temperatures, climate change has a few nastier surprises in store. Bill McGuire says we can also expect more earthquakes, volcanoes, landslides and tsunamis

The eruption of Augustine Volcano in Alaska

Unlike most apparently intractable problems, which have a tendency to go away when examined closely and analytically, the climate change predicament just seems to get bigger and scarier the more we learn about it.

Now we discover that not only are the oceans and the atmosphere conspiring against us, bringing baking temperatures, more powerful storms, floods and ever-climbing sea levels, but the crust beneath our feet seems likely to join in too.

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"shocking tragedy" - first large vertebrate forced to extinction om 50 yrs

Yangtze river dolphin driven to extinction

The Yangtze river dolphin, until recently one of the most endangered species on the planet, has been declared officially extinct following an intensive survey of its natural habitat.

The freshwater marine mammal, which could grow to eight feet long and weigh up to a quarter of a tonne, is the first large vertebrate forced to extinction by human activity in 50 years, and only the fourth time an entire evolutionary line of mammals has vanished from the face of the Earth since the year 1500.

Conservationists described the extinction as a "shocking tragedy" yesterday, caused not by active persecution but accidentally and carelessly through a combination of factors including unsustainable fishing and mass shipping.

In the 1950s, the Yangtze river and neighbouring watercourses had a population of thousands of freshwater dolphins, also known as Baiji, but their numbers have declined dramatically since China industrialised and transformed the Yangtze into a crowded artery of mass shipping, fishing and power generation. A survey in 1999 estimated the population of river dolphins was close to just 13 animals.

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Do You Have a Daily Dozen?

Too few of us take the time to think through the values and moral precepts that guide our lives. Here is an edited version of writer Robert Louis Stevenson's (1850-1894) personal creed:

1. Make up your mind to be happy.
2. Make the best of your circumstances.
3. Don't take yourself too seriously.
4. Don't let criticism worry you.
5. Be yourself.
6. Stay out of debt.
7. Don't borrow trouble; imaginary troubles are hard to bear.
8. Don't hold grudges; avoid people who make you unhappy.
9. Have a variety of interests; go places or read about them.
10. Don't brood; get over it.
11. Help those less fortunate.
12. Keep busy; a busy person never has time to be unhappy.

What precepts are guiding you?

Birth-control poisoning of streams

Contracepting the environment – Birth-control poisoning of streams leave U.S. environmentalists mum

By Wayne Laugesen
7/11/2007
National Catholic Register (www.ncregister.com/)

BOULDER, Colo. (National Catholic Register) – When EPA-funded scientists at the University of Colorado studied fish in a pristine mountain stream known as Boulder Creek two years ago, they were shocked. Randomly netting 123 trout and other fish downstream from the city's sewer plant, they found that 101 were female, 12 were male and 10 were strange "intersex" fish with male and female features.

SWAN AT SUNSET – A swan moves quietly through the water at sunset last December in the Chesapeake Bay near Cambridge, Md. A 2005 EPA study was among the first in the country to demonstrate that a slurry of hormones, including those from birth-control pills, and antibiotics, caffeine and steroids is coursing down the nation's waterways, threatening fish and contaminating drinking water. (Courtesy of Tom Lorsung/www.PeacefulPix.com)

It's "the first thing that I've seen as a scientist that really scared me," said then 59-year-old University of Colorado biologist John Woodling, speaking to the Denver Post in 2005.

They studied the fish and decided the main culprits were estrogens and other steroid hormones from birth-control pills and patches, excreted in urine into the city's sewage system and then into the creek.

Woodling, University of Colorado physiology professor David Norris, and their EPA-study team were among the first scientists in the country to learn that a slurry of hormones, antibiotics, caffeine and steroids is coursing down the nation's waterways, threatening fish and contaminating drinking water.

Since their findings, stories have been emerging everywhere. Scientists in western Washington found that synthetic estrogen – a common ingredient in oral contraceptives – drastically reduces the fertility of male rainbow trout.

Ouch..........ouch, ouch, ouch!

What a weekend! My friend Erin came up from NYC to join me and Dawn in an intensive yoga weekend. Turned out to leave us all sore and sweaty, but totally refreshed (after the hour long hot shower, of course). Two of the most intensive yoga styles compounded into one weekend, no wonder it was a boot camp! Between Baron Baptiste's style of power yoga in a heated HOT HOT HOT room, and Dharma Mittra's acrobatic style, we were "oranges that are squeezed to make orange juice" as Baron Baptiste likes to say. The range of classes and workshops ran the gamut, from mantra and chanting to pilates-like ab workouts. The people we met included beautiful Coeli Marsh from Cambridge, MA to Bapuji from a little village in India. And when it was all over, boy did we all sleep well on Sunday!

Coeli Marsh

Baptiste Master Teacher

July 28th & 29th!

A Conversation with Baptiste Master Teacher Coeli Marsh

DOWNDOG: So many people, who become yoga teachers, have advanced degrees like your Masters Degree in Human Development and Psychology from Harvard University. How did you decide to take you life in this direction and do you find your academic training comes in handy as a yoga teacher?

COELI: No matter what you come to yoga with, as a teacher, you're going to use not just your degrees but more importantly you're going to call on your life experience. One of the things that is so powerful about Baron's teacher training is the focus on letting go of knowledge so you can come into your own potential. Once you stop clinging to all thisstuff – the book knowledge, the readings and the quotes – you can integrate that kind of knowledge, when necessary, but not out of fear or a desire to hide.

When you come into yoga teaching with a lot of knowledge it can actually be a problem. Often we find the more studying and knowledge and PhDs people have, the harder it is for them to get to the essence of things. Baron is really a master of being in the process of unlearning and peeling away of the excess knowledge. That's why it's so freeing. There is nothing wrong with getting a masters degree or a PhD. But you can get lost in it and hide behind it, just the way we can get stuck in yoga knowledge.

In my particular case, my degree in psychology and education just deepened my appreciation and understanding for people and learning. And my specialization in risk and prevention is really a commitment to transformation, growth and change.

US cat 'predicts patient deaths'

Oscar meows in protest if removed from the room of a dying patient

A US cat that is reportedly able to sense when a nursing home's residents are about to die is baffling doctors.

Oscar has a habit of curling up next to patients at the home in Providence, Rhode Island, in their final hours.

According to the author of an article in the New England Journal of Medicine, the two-year-old cat has been observed to be correct in 25 cases so far.

Staff now alert the families of residents when he sits down next to their ailing loved one.

"He doesn't make many mistakes. He seems to understand when patients are about to die," David Dosa, a professor at Brown University who carried out the research, told the Associated Press news agency.

Read the rest..........

Our class is written up in the Washington Post!

Round Midnight, Out Come the Yoga Mats

By Rachel Zavala

Special to The Washington Post
Friday, July 27, 2007; Page WE49

How's this for an unconventional twist on the Friday night routine of dinner and a movie? Headstands at midnight with a roomful of yoga enthusiasts.

The rigorous Midnight Yoga class at Flow Yoga Center in Northwest Washington offers that and much more on the first Friday of each month from 10 to midnight. Since the class began almost a year ago, it has continued to grow in popularity and is full most of the time.

Read on.........

really great points about violence

Dark Underbelly of the World's most "peaceful" countries

The first-ever study ranking countries according to their level of peacefulness, the Global Peace Index, was recently published by the Economist Intelligence Unit. Yet it fails to include the most prevalent form of global violence: violence against women and children, often in their own families.

Intimate and international violence are inextricably interconnected. But we can only see this once we include in studies of violence the majority: women and children. If we are serious about peace – not just about measuring it but about creating more of it – we have to look at the whole picture. We must pay particular attention to those formative experiences when young people first learn either to respect human rights or to accept human rights violations as just the way things are.

Only as we leave behind traditions of domination and violence in the human family will we have solid foundations on which to build global peace.

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