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Merry Christmas!

Pope Makes Appeal on the Environment

 

 

ROME — Pope Benedict XVI reinforced the Vatican's growing concern with protecting the environment in the traditional midnight Christmas Mass on Tuesday, bemoaning an "ill-treated world" in a homily given to thousands of pilgrims here in the seat of the world's billion Roman Catholics.

On the day Christians celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ some 2,000 years ago, Benedict referred to one early father of the church, Gregory of Nyssa, a bishop in what is now Turkey. "What would he say if he could see the state of the world today, through the abuse of energy and its selfish and reckless exploitation?" the pope asked, according to the Vatican's English translation.

 

He expanded on the theme briefly by saying that an 11th-century theologian, Anselm of Canterbury, had spoken "in an almost prophetic way" as he "described a vision of what we witness today as a polluted world whose future is at risk."

In recent months, Benedict has spoken out increasingly about environmental concerns, and the Vatican has even purchased "carbon offsets," credits on the global market to compensate for carbon dioxide emissions, for the energy consumed in the world's smallest state, Vatican City.

 Full Story: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/25/world/europe/25pope.html?hp

Aerobic exercise = boost your brain memory!

Jogging your memory
By Anne Underwood | NEWSWEEK

Dec 10, 2007 Issue

excerpt:
"With a reasonable amount of effort, you can improve your memory 30 to 40 percent," says Dr. Barry Gordon, founder of the memory clinic at Johns Hopkins. In the past year, research has shed new light in particular on the benefits of both mental and physical activity. It's been known for a while that aerobic exercise increases levels of a brain chemical called BDNF, which encourages neurons to form new synapses and strengthen existing ones. "I call BDNF brain fertilizer," says Carl Cotman, director of the Institute for Brain Aging and Dementia at UC Irvine. But in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences this year, Small at Columbia showed that exercise in 11 volunteers did even more. Aerobic exercise—an hour a day, four days a week for three months—led to changes on brain scans that seemed to indicate the birth of new neurons in the hippocampus. "My lab members are dusting off their sneakers," he says.

Check out GreenDimes

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and we plant 10 trees!

Just click to help!

Just click on a link at The Hunger Site and a donation goes to charitable groups that work on issues like child health, breast cancer or animal welfare. It costs you nothing. Just look at the ads.

The Hunger Site

This, the original click-to-donate site, is the perfect gift for those of us with literally no holiday shopping budget at all. If you can't buy a holiday heifer on behalf of your best friend, you can send a New Year's note to everyone on your email list telling them about this site, which receives sponsorship from advertisers in return for delivering users who will see their ads.

It's almost too simple to be true, but trust us — it is: All one does is click a button on the Hunger Site once per day, and that click results in a donation equivalent to 1.1 cups of food to needy families in impoverished countries. Most recently, the charities that have delivered the food are America's Second Harvest and Mercy Corps, which this year distributed the equivalent of more than 500 million cups of staple food as a result of the daily clicks from concerned citizens worldwide.

Visit the Hunger Site at www.thehungersite.com; then — even if you never give Christmas or Chanukah gifts — forward the link to everyone you know, with a "Happy Holiday!" greeting that will keep on giving.

OTHER IDEAS FOR HOLIDAY GIFTS: http://www.fineliving.com/fine/favorite_things/article/0,1663,FINE_1425_5732445,00.html

Clorox buys Burt's Bees

I don't know if any of you use Burt's Bees products, but please be aware that they were bought out by Clorox, who, notoriously uses animal testing on it's products.  Please take the time to encourage Clorox to maintain the integrity of Burt's Bees original policy not to test any of it's products on animals,AND, if possible to discontinue animal testing all together.  Whole Foods informed me today that Burt's Bees did NOT sign a contract to maintain the integrity of this product, so if you begin to see Burt's Bees products in your local grocery isle, in a big display, as I did tonight in Safeway, know that they are now part of the Clorox Bleach clan.

 

Jiva Focus for December: Presence

 

The Jivamukti Focus of the Month for December is "Presence" and the mantra is taken from the Buddhist "Heart Sutra." It goes as follows:

 

"Gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi svaha."

Gate means gone. Gone from suffering to the liberation of suffering. Gone from forgetfulness to mindfulness. Gone from duality into non-duality. Gate gate means gone, gone. Paragate means gone all the way to the other shore. So this mantra is said in a very strong way. Gone, gone, gone all the way over. In Parasamgate sammeans everyone, the sangha, the entire community of beings. Everyone gone over to the other shore. Bodhi is the light inside, enlightenment, or awakening. You see it and the vision of reality liberates you. And svaha is a cry of joy or excitement, like "Welcome!" or "Hallelujah!" "Gone, gone, gone all the way over, everyone gone to the other shore, enlightenment, svaha !"

 

This is one of the most sacred sutras in the Buddhist cannon, and many meanings can be explored. One of my favorite commentaries comes from the venerable Thichh Nhat Hanh, a Vietnamese monk commonly referred to as a living Buddha. He explores how this mantra teaches us about emptiness and how this translates to the  He says, 

 

"The Heart Sutra gives us solid ground for making peace with ourselves, for transcending the fear of birth and death, the duality of this and that. In the light of emptiness, everything is everything else, we inter-are, everyone is responsible for everything that happens in life. When you produce peace and happiness in yourself, you begin to realize peace for the whole world."

"If we observe things mindfully and profoundly," he explained, "we find out that self is made up only of non-self elements. If we look deeply into a flower, what do we see? We also see sunshine, a cloud, the earth, minerals, the gardener, the complete cosmos. Why? Because the flower is composed of these non-flower elements: that's what we find out. And, like this flower, our body too is made up of everything else—except for one element: a separate self or existence. This is the teaching of 'non-self' in Buddhism.

"In order to just be ourself, we must also take care of the non-self elements. We all know this, that we cannot be without other people, other species, but very often we forget that being is really inter-being; that living beings are made only of non-living elements.

"This is why we have to practice meditation—to keep alive this vision. The shamatha practice in my tradition is to nourish and keep alive this kind of insight twenty-four hours a day with the whole of our being." 

 

 

About Thich Nhat Hanh - commonly called a Living Buddha
His students call him "Thay," Vietnamese for "Teacher." Born in l926, Thich Nhat Hanh (pronounced Tick-Not-Hawn) has been a monk for fifty-three years, dedicating himself to the practice and transmission of "Engaged Buddhism," a root insight tradition melding meditation, awareness of the moment, and compassionate action as a means of taking care of our lives and society. In l967, he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by Dr. Martin Luther King for his peace work in Vietnam.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Good morning everyone! Happy Turkey Day!!!!

I must admit, I used to use this phrase freely, without thought, for much of my life. And when I became vegetarian and learned more about the treatment of the turkeys, I abhorred the usage, somewhat sadistic, of the phrase "Happy Turkey Day". How twisted, considering the atrocities that occur to these beautiful creatures. However, I have recently learned more about the wonderful things being done by animal rights activists to rescue turkeys, and have come to see how this phrase could become a rallying cry.......on this day of thanks, let's not forget to save the turkeys! Make it a happy day for them as well as you! Give them a holiday!!!!!

In Some Households, Everyday is Turkey Day

 

 

Karen Oeh and her husband, Mike Balistreri, with two new members of the family. "I am like a new parent," Ms. Oeh said.

It is one thing for the president of the United States to pardon a pair of turkeys every year and then send them off to live out their days in Florida. It's quite another to save a turkey from the Thanksgiving table by inviting it to live with you.  Two weeks ago, Karen Oeh and her husband, Mike Balistreri, who live not far from Santa Cruz, Calif., adopted two turkeys that had been rescued after an airline shipping misfortune in Las Vegas. "I am like a new parent," said Ms. Oeh, 39. "I instantly, totally fell in love, and now I just want to stay home with them."

[...]   (But the sad reality of our factory farms means even those turkeys that are saved, often don't live very long......)

Whether the turkeys come from a shelter or the White House, they don't live very long. Most adopted turkeys are commercially bred broad-breasted whites, genetically disposed to grow to a marketable size in about four months. Even on a diet of only a couple of cups of turkey feed a day, they become obese. They usually develop leg problems, congestive heart failure and arthritis. "One just couldn't get up, so I had to have her euthanized," Ms. Lane said. "Another one just dropped dead one evening."

Read on: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/22/dining/22turkey.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

Friends......becoming family among new generation

For some Gen-Yers, holidays back home are passe

It's becoming increasingly popular for young people to host Thanksgiving for their friends.

By Jenna Fisher | Contributor to The Christian Science Monitor

It had all the premeal buzz of a typical family Thanksgiving, except that the 20 or so guests were not related. The 20-somethings who gathered in Washington, D.C., last Saturday were friends, holding their third annual Thanksgiving together.

Increasingly, America's young adults appear to be spending traditional family holidays with friends rather than – or in addition to – their relatives. Chalk it up to the high cost of travel or the increasing time young people spend on their own between the end of college and marriage. For whatever reason, people in their 20s appear to be blurring the distinction between family bonding and friendship.

As more and more young people organize holiday rituals with their friends, it may lead them to redefine holidays as less family-based and defined more by friendship and community.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1121/p01s03-usgn.html?page=1

Pretty piglet given another chance to live

photograph of a piglet nicknamed Andrex who is recovering after being found in the back of a lorry full of toilet paper at a supermarket.......

Stowaway piglet survives loo roll ordeal
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071120/od_uk_nm/oukoe_uk_britain_piglet