Jungle asks you to crush your prey; but love weeps and prays.

Jakarta, 18 November 2009

You may be surprise at the thoughts that flash across the screen of your mind when hard times come along. It’s as if the person that you thought you were melted down and a new persona (which may not be new, but been laying low in your sub-consciousness; or perhaps it is new, and the present problem is the cause of its development) emerges forth. Bringing with it ideas and actions which would of never been thought or acted-out by the one who you ‘thought’ you were. These can range from thoughts that you are not worth anything to those of suicide (in extreme cases). It may feel as if the breath that is circulating through out your body is slowly being squeezed out of you, and no one cares or notice.

Unfortunately, there are many such incidents in our communities, homes, and churches that go un-noticed. Life has become so much about self-preservation that the ‘neighbor’ is treated as a stepping-stone (or a decoration that is placed along the road to your fame) and thus his/her struggles is view as his/her business; in other words, “who cares.” What has emerged from the capitalistic belly of the United States is a Christianity that has become unconcerned about the ‘neighbor.’

One may reason that it is impossible to know (as in acquaintance by experience) intimately every person that they come in contact with. That is understandable, but if “each one, reach one” (the origin of this quote escapes me) then our communities, homes, and churches will be better places. Not because there will be no crisis or difficult situations, but because the love and support from others will help those feel the sense of community and belonging that are expressed in these words, “rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep” (Rom. 12:15, ESV ).

Simple words often present sophisticated imagery; and we see this in the scripture quoted above. It calls for sensitivity to the emotional health of one other than yourself. It doesn’t say that people should weep and rejoice when you do so, but it places you (us) in the seat of the one who is to do the action; the one who is to feel concerned. This is evident in the voice that the Greek words χαίρειν (rejoice) and κλαίειν (weep) are found. Both are in the ‘active voice,’ meaning that the subject of the verb is doing the action (Black, p. 12). Paul places the addressees in the position of doers.

This verse implies that a relationship must exist. We are not called to be there only when weeping is going on, but when a person is experiencing events that make them joyful. We can’t let people slip under the radar and drown in the complexities of life, we ought to be there (writer and readers). How many times have you and I let it happen?

In a world that calls for you to “get your fame on,” why not answer the higher calling in Jesus Christ and be a good neighbor—a good Samaritan. As “ambassadors for Jesus” (in the melody of the late and great theme song for Adventurers (smile)) let us strive to be the best representatives of His character as we can. We are not guaranteed to get it right all the time, but God sees the efforts that we will make and will bless it.

Christ did not establish a people that is insensitive to the conditions of others, but one that is concerned about the good times and the bad. Maybe for you, Paul’s words to the Romans, is a “hard saying.” Perhaps you need a moment of reflection to contemplate on the solemn duties of a Christian. Pray, then take a person and be the best representative of Jesus that you can be for them. They are out there and they need us to do something.

Works Cited

Black, D. A. (1994). Learn to Read New Testament Greek: Expanded Edition. Nashville, Tenessee: Broadman & Holman Publishers.

Tanjil. You will believe a horse can cry.

By Christi Wales, Accountant and Mother.

For her twelfth birthday, I took my daughter Dana to Judy Oldmeadow’s Morgan Horse Farm.

I never thought it’d be an amazing, life-changing day for me.

We began by bringing all the mares and foals to the round yard to see how they interacted with toys and us. Dana sat in the yard and the foals loved her, perhaps because she’s young too.

Dana and Echo. Connecting with a foal? Priceless!

Judy and I noticed that one mare, Folie, was overprotective of her foal, Echo. The poor thing wanted to play, but Folie wouldn’t let him. So we joined Dana and I spent some time massaging Folie all over – which she loved. Before long, she let me near Echo and encouraged him to interact with me.

I held out my hand and let Echo toddle past me, just brushing his back to get him used to my touch. I then massaged some of the other mares. With three children myself, I figured they’d like their necks, backs and rumps massaged.

After a while, Folie was so relaxed that Echo was able to break away and play. It was a fantastic sight that I was proud to be part of. I kept massaging the mares, plus any foals that approached.

Then Tanjil decided that no other mare could have me.

I’d rub her and try to move on, but she’d come next to me, right near the other horse. Though she didn’t touch the horse, it knew she was boss and walked away.

At first I thought it was funny. Why did Tanjil want me to herself? She did it again and again with every other horse I tried to rub.

My hands were getting sore and Folie was giving her foal a chance to explore. So I decided to wait to see what happened. Well, little Echo headed in my direction with his mum’s full support – a fantastic breakthrough for both of them.

A bit later, Echo was hanging around so I gave him a rub and Tanjil just stood near me. I found it strange; had I done something wrong? Then Tanjil came and stood with her head right over me.

I started rubbing her neck thinking, ‘Why me? Was I was a strong leader? Did she feel I was a strong mother?’

Being a mother is hard. Sometimes I feel I don’t have the strength. But I find it and keep going. If I don’t, no-one else will do the things I must do to keep my family safe, together and running smoothly.

I don’t get a break from being leader of my herd. At times I hate being the one who has to pull rank, keep everyone in line and be tough to be kind in the long run.

At that moment my emotions overwhelmed me. With her fantastic intuition, Judy yelled out that the last time Tanjil had stood this way with her, it’d made her feel like everything was going to be OK.

I glanced at her and nodded; a huge lump in my throat. Then my tears flowed.

I looked at Tanjil and couldn’t believe what I saw. She was crying with me! Not just watery eyes; these were full tears, rolling down her face, one after another along with mine.

Was I delusional? No. This magnificent mare was helping me with my doubts as a mother. I thought then that maybe she also felt the pressure of being the leader who kept her herd in line.

Tanjil gave me what I never got from my mother. What I needed to know when I became a mother myself: I’m a good mum. It won’t be easy, but it’ll be OK. We can only do our best. We make mistakes, but that’s OK too.

I then thought that maybe Tanjil also needed reassurance that she was a great mum and leader. Because when I saw her with her foal and the herd, it was exactly how I felt.

I’ll never know if she felt my empathy. I’d not seen a miracle before, but that’s the only word I can use.

I have a horse named Major. When Judy took Dana and me to the rest of the herd, Major stayed with me while the other horses went to the car.

He was so affectionate. I was rubbing his body when he moved – uncomfortable with the slope. I thought he was going to walk away but he simply ambled to level ground and waited for me.

I hugged his neck and said I loved him, that he was a good boy and that I wished I could see him every day. As he wrapped his head around me, a tear rolled down his face.

It was very moving. I remembered that Major had lost his mum when very young. Maybe he perceived my feelings of abandonment.

Had I not experienced my miracle with Tanjil, I wouldn’t have thought a horse could cry.

Now I know they feel pain, sadness and love.

When Jesus therefore saw her weeping, and the Jews also weeping which came with her, he groaned in the spirit, and was troubled, and said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Lord, come and see.” Jesus wept. Then said the Jews, “Behold, how he loved him.”

John 11:33-36

It would be easy to miss what is happening here. It is a wonderful and beautiful thought that Jesus is weeping because of the death of his good friend, and while that may be a part of it, it isn’t the whole story. Jesus was weeping because of what he was about to do to his good friend. When you really get down to it, Jesus wasn’t doing Lazarus any favors by bringing him back from death. It is easy to picture Lazarus being in the presence of the Father when he was suddenly yanked back into the world. We aren’t told what Lazarus’ reaction was and that’s probably a good thing. As much as we love Jesus, would you be happy to be taken from the Father’s presence? Do you think Jesus would find any joy in doing that to someone? Jesus wept.

*Jakarta Globe, 6 February 2009

A man climbs quietly from a grave and closes a white burial cloth that shrouds a skeleton. The bones are the color of burned earth and in pieces. A maggot scuttles to hide behind the empty eye socket of the skull. After more than 30 years of interment, all that is left of a once middle-aged adult now fits into a small bundle.

A weathered, wooden plaque with jagged edges bears the name the skeleton once answered to.

At Menteng Pulo Public Cemetery in South Jakarta, the air is fresh with the scent of blossoming trees and rich earth. A lone mottled mutt threads cautiously among the graves, its skin matted and reddish from the rain and earth. She sits on top of a grave, observing as 50 gravediggers calmly go about their work. They are not burying the dead but raising them, literally, from their graves.

Along a large strip of land near the Cideng River, 10,600 square meters to be exact, emptied graves with ragged edges line the cemetery. The workers have been commissioned by the city administration to unearth about 3,500 plots to make way for a highway linking Jalan Soepomo and Jalan Rasuna Said.

“Traditionally, you cannot disturb the dead,” sayd Entong, the head gravedigger. “But this is a city that is developing, and they need to expand the road.”

Inside an open grave, Entong breaks up the damp soil with a rusty hoe. His black jeans and feet are encrusted with red earth. He hands the last of the unearthed bones to his assistant to wrap in cloth and take to another burial plot that has been allocated for the exhumed bodies.

“This one was buried in 1962, so there are very few bones left,” Entong says, pointing to the decomposed bundle of bones about the size of an infant.

Entong climbs out of the grave and begins to break the gray headstone with his hoe. Pieces of stone fly around him. He has to remove the name plaque embedded in the stone so it can be placed with the remains for identification. His skin is burnished from the 32 years he has worked outdoors as a gravedigger.

“People call me first when they want to bury someone,” Entong says.

On this overcast morning, no weeping or hushed prayers for the displaced dead are heard, only the thud of hoes hitting the soil. Entong says it has been two months since the excavation of the graves commenced and it is scheduled to end next week.

“At the beginning there were more relatives,” Entong says. “Now it is rare for families to come even though we have informed them we will be digging up the graves. Maybe they have moved. Maybe they can’t bear the process.”

The majority of the graves are Muslim but Entong estimates 800 Buddhist graves will also be uncovered this week.

The remains are being moved to new burial plots further down the road. Unclaimed remains are moved to a cemetery at Kampung Kandang in Cilandak or to Srengseng Sawah Cemetery in South Jakarta, Entong says.

The ground is soft as paste from the ongoing Jakarta showers and he flings it around him as he hoes. An errant and persistent fly flits around his bare feet.

“We take the remains out, wrap them up and then knock down the gravestone,” explains Suroh, a caretaker at Menteng Pulo since the ’70s. Wearing a red shirt, a large mole jutting from his chin, he watches Entong work in the distance.

“I do not cry at anyone’s funeral,” Suroh says. “I am used to them.

“We are here to fix their homes, their final resting place.”

It is noon when Entong rests inside a makeshift wooden hut in the middle of the cemetery. The soiled clothes of the caretakers hang to dry nearby on headstones and from overhanging trees.
A caretaker chugs on a motorcycle down the narrow dirt road that runs through the cemetery, ferrying four white bundles to an ambulance for relocation.

“It is funny. Kaplok, kaplok, kaplok is the sound of the bodies flapping,” says Suroh as he watches.
“We are all the same. In the end we will die,” he adds as he deeply inhales from a clove cigarette.
Under the cool shade of the hut, the men sit in their mud-caked clothes, sipping hot, milky coffee and talk lightheartedly about death. Entong recounts a time when he had to break the legs of a corpse.

“If I didn’t, they wouldn’t fit into the cloth,” he says.

The kain kapan, or burial cloths, are rough pieces of white cloth two meters in length. “These ones cost Rp 12,000 [about $1],” Entong says, pointing to a pile of fabric in a cupboard. “Cheap ones.”

The hush is disturbed by the arrival of Iwan Suwandi and his family. Together with his wife, Suwarti, his sister, sister-in-law and grandson, he has come to rebury his son Rachmad.

“I was shocked to get the notice from the cemetery,” Suwandi says, of being notified of the disinterment. “I found out at Lebaran,” he adds.

A gentle-looking man with glasses and specks of grey through his hair, Suwandi had been ill for the past three months and unable to come to Menteng Pulo earlier.

Wearing a tan fishing hat and checkered shirt, Ali greets Suwandi, whom he knows. The caretaker has been tending Rachmad’s grave since he was buried here four years ago. An old hand, Ali has worked at cemeteries since 1948 and takes care of 100 plots in Menteng Pulo.

Rachmad, Suwandi’s third son, died of liver problems at the age of 24. “I wanted to move him to Bogor but we have no family there,” says Suwandi, who instead asked for his son’s body to be moved nearby within the Menteng Pulo cemetery.

Entong is called upon to dig up the body.

“It is his job to dig. We each have a duty,” explains Suroh, whose own position is caring for the graves, like Ali.

Entong alternates using his hands and the hoe to scoop out the earth. The burial cloth is laid on the ground beside the grave and he begins to place the unearthed chunks of bone on it. Two assistants crouch nearby to lay them out on the burial cloth. Standing above his son’s grave, Suwandi’s face is placid as he calmly inquires about the whereabouts of his son’s skull.

The wooden headstone reads, Rachmad H. bin Iwan Suwandi, etched black upon painted white wood. Slivers of the skeleton’s rib cage are taken out one by one. Entong continues to dig and finds a hipbone. Finally, he finds the skull. Suwandi places his hand over his mouth and lets out a small gasp. The family begins to pray. A sniff escapes Suwandi as he continues to look at Entong in the grave.

“His legs aren’t here yet,” Suwandi says.

Entong clears the mud from his hoe and continues digging.

The air is hushed and the smell of rain is heavy on the breeze. “We forgot to bring an umbrella,” Suwandi says to his wife, who nods agreement. Their 7-year old grandson, dressed in blue, has his hand on his knees and keeps his gaze intently on the open grave. The women look distressed.

When Ali comes over to help wrap the bones, Suwandi asks if the bundle is heavy. Ali says it isn’t. Three men wrap the bundle tightly and hand the bones to Suwandi. With steady steps on the slippery, rain-soaked earth, Suwandi carries his son to a prepared burial site, mouthing a silent prayer.

A little way up the road from where Rachmad was originally buried, a gaping hole six feet deep awaits. The small congregation stops, and Suwandi hands the bundle to a gravedigger as he jumps in the grave. The body is gently returned to him and the gravediggers tell him to open the bundle. “All of it,” says one as the other balls up chunks of soil with his hands. “It is to prop up the body so it does not overturn,” he explains.

Suwandi carefully tucks his son into his resting place and two men start to fill in the grave. An imam in a black velvet skullcap, propping himself up with a multicolored umbrella, asks for the name of the deceased and begins a low chant. Only the boy’s name, Rachmad, rings out as the imam crouches by the grave. All else is quiet save for the sound of hoes hitting the ground.

The mother opens a prayer book, her face partially hidden under her black jilbab as she prays along with the imam. Her grandson stands behind her, holding her arm.

Suwandi straightens his son’s old headstone and turns his palms up to the sky. The imam moves toward him and they pray side by side. The earth atop Rachmad’s new grave is choppy and uneven but Ali explains it will be tidied later. He takes out a clove cigarette, lights it and stands before this new grave he will also care for.

A warm wind blows. From a nearby mosque, the resonant call to prayers rings out, echoed softly by surrounding mosques.

(photos: JG/Yudhi Sukma Wijaya)

As I left the grocery store, a red strobe came from every wall, sending all other shoppers into grand mal seizures. An auto tuned Morgan Freeman impersonator asked me to wait for an employee to assist me. A giant steel cage slammed down over me, separating me from my cart full of foodstuffs. I asked to be taken back to the security office so the ex-marine-looking gentleman eyeing my receipt could search for the stolen merchandise in my ass. But they wouldn’t do it. So I guess this Vizio LCD is mine.

What pisses me off about shoplifters is not that they violate social norms or contribute to the overhead that fuels price increases. It’s that they think they deserve some kind of dignity when they’re caught. You took a pack of Rolos, cock flap. You don’t get to walk to the back with a jacket over your hands and your head held high. You get to be tackled by seven cart-pushers and dragged, weeping, through the produce aisle, while they announce your legal name and address over the loudspeaker. You’re not taking a loaf of bread or a pair of baby shoes. You get no pity, queef whippit. Actually, even if you were, I’d still point and laugh because you’re fucking poor.

Even better: the fat bitch who tries to fight the security guys off. She’s always screaming something trashy, like “he’s trying to get down my panties!” or “Fuck you, man! I brought that chicken in with me!” or “Kick him in the nuts, Kenny!” She rolls around, pseudopods of corpulence stretching outward and covering onlookers with a yellow, pube-garnished paste before sliding back into the vicinity of her Tweety Bird tube top. She is the complete opposite of the “don’t draw attention to me” breed. She wants everyone to know that she’s the kind of nasty whore who hides crack rocks and stolen makeup in tampon applicators.

Stealing is wrong and hilarious. Seriously… is the cost of petty theft so high that it justifies the camera systems, security guys, electronic anti-theft systems and those little tag things that cum ink and battery acid? I have a great idea: smaller stores where inventories can be monitored by the people who actually work there. If you want one-stop shopping, go to the mall, shithead. Besides, they have corn dogs there. And corn dogs rule.

 

Weeping Barb (323/365 11-19-09)

Originally uploaded by CarusoPhoto

I was photographing this barbed wire when I noticed the drop on one of the barbs…and that’s what made the photograph for me.

Many people think that it is wrong to go to God with their anger and disappointments.  Many think it is not right to go before the Lord and pour out their honest feelings.  Of course we should never shake our fist at God, or curse Him and deny Him, but to go before Him and let Him know how we feel is fine.  The Lord never corrected Job for complaining, He corrected him for some self-righteousness, but not complaining.  When we say “I don’t deserve this” or “It’s not fair”, the Lord reminds us of His sovereignty and that His ways are above our ways and are perfect.  But, He never gets angry at us for being honest with Him.  He would rather we be honest and bring it out into the light to be dealt with honestly, than dwell in a state of self-pity where a root of bitterness likes to take root.  When bitterness is allowed to take root you take the chance of it taking over every part of your life and you end up looking like Spiderman in the third movie…the blackness grows and covers you.  Very ugly.  Even if that blackness has begun to grow and affect your life, we have an Advocate who helps us rip it off our bodies and throw it at His feet so He can bring healing.  Let’s look at two women who were very honest about their hurt and disappointment:

Mary and Martha had a brother they loved very much.  Mary and Martha believed Jesus loved their brother, Lazarus, and them, very much.  When Lazarus was sick they called on Jesus believing He would come save the day…He didn’t.  He allowed the thing we fear so much…death, to take place.  They couldn’t understand it.  “How, how could He abandoned us like this?  He said He loved us.   We have fed Him and sheltered Him and this is the thanks we get?”  They bury their brother, alone.  They feel so abandoned, forgotten, betrayed even.  “Why?  How?  I thought He truly cared for us.  He has helped so many others…why not us!?”  Then, He shows up.  Martha runs out and gives Him the “what for.”  She blamed Him for not being there…knowing He could have healed her brother, yet let Him know I still believe in You. Then Mary comes out and says the same thing…”If only.”

How many times have we thought the same thing and maybe even voiced it to God?  If only.  If only you had shown me the danger.  If only you had stopped that drunk from driving.  If only you had healed them, their children would not be without a mother.  If only you had answered my prayers.  If only you would remove that government that is so corrupt it starves its own people. If only, if only, if only…

When we come before Jesus with that kind of honesty, with a broken spirit, weeping at His feet as Mary did, showing the depth of our hurt and the depth of our not understanding how He could allow such a thing to happen, He weeps with us.

After we allow Him to weep with us, His power can move on our behalf.  Things may never be as they were, but those things that looked dead: relationships, dreams, hopes, the future, can be resurrected.  By His power and for His glory and purpose in your life, what seems dead can be resurrected.  But you have to go out to meet Him when He comes to you, and you have to be honest with Him, you have to let Him weep with you.  He didn’t reject or get angry with Martha or Mary, He won’t reject or be angry with you.

Psalm 34:18,  “The LORD is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart; and saveth such as be of a contrite spirit.”

John 11 tells the story of Lazarus death and resurrection.

dank live-stream im internet (zur verfügung gestellt von livedome) mitten drin statt nur dabei ; )

wer skunk anansie schon mitte/ende der neunziger geliebt hat, wird sie auch heutzutage nach ihrer reunion lieben! der unverkennbare stil der band, die sensationell aufwühlende und zugleich berührende stimme von frontfrau skin und auch die darbietung der früheren hits wie hedonism oder weep, an welche die neuen songs trotz rund 10 jahren pause nahtlos anknüpfen, haben lust gemacht auf den kauf des neuen albums smashes and trashes bzw. den besuch eines der kommenden konzerte …

infos zur band unter http://www.skunkanansie.net … eine musikalische wiederauferstehung, die spass und sinn macht – 12 points!

STEVEN WEARS A MEDAL

Steven wears a medal today,
I wonder if he knows.
It’s seen upon his suit lapel
Below a small white rose.

Steven wears a medal today,
And all his loved ones weep,
As he lies upon blue satin
In his eternal sleep.

Steven wears a medal today
His sister pinned it there,
For it was she whose life he saved
While in his old wheelchair;

Steven wears a medal today
His heroism reveals,
He saved the child from certain death,
And died beneath truck wheels.

Steven wears a medal today

8/28/93 Phyllis DeWitt-VanVleck

The next  time Mr.HoneyBee does not reach back home after a long hard days work collecting nectar, be ready to get yourself stinged and blamed, because you are the one who made Mr.HoneyBee lose his way.

Wondering whats going on??

Bees which pollinate almost 80 per cent of all fruits and vegetables, have started to disappear. The US, Europe and the UK have been reporting large bee disappearances, posing a direct threat to the survival of thousands of plants used for food, fibers and medicines – a “potential health crisis for the planet” and an already fragile ecosystem.

And the crisis has just hit home. Whats causing this phenomenon is the probably the way we talk (read MOBLIEPHONES.)

Electro Magnetic Radiations/ Radio Frequency Radiations being emitted from mobile phone towers and mobile phones hamper the navigational skills of bees who step out to collect nectar.

Dr Sainuddin Pakattazhy, a zoology expert from S N College and president of KERA, Punalur,Kerala, said electromagnetic waves emitted by such towers hamper the navigational skills of worker bees that set out to collect nectar.

During an experiment, when a cell phone was kept near a bee hive, Pakattazhy noticed that worker bees lost their way, leaving the hives with only the queens and eggs.

The result: the colony collapsed within 10 days – a phenomenon many call the ‘Colony Collapse Disorder’ (CCD). German researchers, too, have recorded behavioural changes in bees near mobile towers.

Researchers say the state has seen about 60 per cent plunge in commercial bee population.

The same phenomenon was seen in sparrows too.

A study by Kerala Environment Research Association (KERA), said the eggs of sparrows nesting on mobile phone towers failed to hatch even after a month, though their normal incubation period ranged from 10 days to a fortnight.

stop !! and talk

“The mobile communication towers emit electromagnetic waves of a very low frequency of 900 or 1,800 MHz. But this is enough to harm the thin skull of the chicks and their egg shells,” said Dr Sainudeen Pattazhy.

Flower nectar is one of two food sources used by honeybees. The other is pollen, which worker bees gather daily on foraging flights. As bees hunt for nectar, pollen sticks to the tiny hairs covering their bodies. Some of that pollen rubs off on the next flower the bee visits and this fertilizes it, resulting in better fruit production. The bees unload the remaining pollen when they return to the hive, which is stored in the honeycomb , providing protein and other nutrients for future use.

n 1960, beekeepers were charging $3 per hive. By 2004, the figure stood at $60. But due to CCD, it is $180 per hive in the US currently In 2006, US beekeepers had to import bees for the first time in 80 years.

Romans 12:1 I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service.

2 And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.

3 For I say, through the grace given to me, to everyone who is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think soberly, as God has dealt to each one a measure of faith.

4 For as we have many members in one body, but all the members do not have the same function,

5 so we, being many, are one body in Christ, and individually members of one another.

6 Having then gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us, let us use them: if prophecy, let us prophesy in proportion to our faith;

7 or ministry, let us use it in our ministering; he who teaches, in teaching;

8 he who exhorts, in exhortation; he who gives, with liberality; he who leads, with diligence; he who shows mercy, with cheerfulness.

9 Let love be without hypocrisy. Abhor what is evil. Cling to what is good.

10 Be kindly affectionate to one another with brotherly love, in honor giving preference to one another;

11 not lagging in diligence, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord;

12 rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation, continuing steadfastly in prayer;

13 distributing to the needs of the saints, given to hospitality.

14 Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse.

15 Rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep.

16 Be of the same mind toward one another. Do not set your mind on high things, but associate with the humble. Do not be wise in your own opinion.

17 Repay no one evil for evil. Have regard for good things in the sight of all men.

18 If it is possible, as much as depends on you, live peaceably with all men.

19 Beloved, do not avenge yourselves, but rather give place to wrath; for it is written, “Vengeance is Mine, I will repay, says the Lord.

20 Therefore “ If your enemy is hungry, feed him; If he is thirsty, give him a drink; For in so doing you will heap coals of fire on his head.”

21 Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

The wind said, Beautiful.  And I was listening.  So I went back into my house, and tried to record what I had heard.  I wrote in my book, Beautiful.  I said, The wind said, Beautiful.  That wasn’t enough.  I went back out again, and I asked the wind, What?  And she touched my like a mother.  She said, Beautiful.  And then I understood.  For the first time in my life, I didn’t want to weep.  I didn’t feel the distance between myself and things.  And maybe it’s true.  Maybe I had been healed.  Or maybe, it was revealed there never was a wound.  Or, if there was, then a vital one.  A one before which nothing lives or dies.  When I am dead, I know, that I’ll be dead, as along as until then I know I am alive.  What does this mean? I asked the sea, and she said, Shh.  And I asked the trees, and they agreed.