It’s said mankind has been living with their animals for some ten thousand years…. I’ve heard ‘civilisation began when people started hurling words instead of stones’…. Maybe also it can be said civilization started when someone picked up an orphaned baby animal and raised it up… finally figuring out how this could improve the lives of people… the dog was perhaps the first domesticated animal… the social needs of dogs is similar to humans.. so we naturally get along well as a family unit. The keen noses of dogs would alert of intruders.. etc. Dogs are a good animal to have on a homestead. We also like our cats as they eat the gophers that plague our cactus. Actually, I need to talk to our tax man and see if we can expense the cats on our taxes for the rodent control they do… maybe the dogs too since they bark at the deer and alert me to run them off if they try to get in our seven foot high fence.
Nah.. better not try that.
Here’s a photo of our Chihuahua Chica and the two kittens she raised up.
I imagine heaven is a bit like this… animals that would be naturally antagonistic brought together in love through the Grace of God.
Chica raised these two orphaned kitties for us… giving them the warmth they needed while we fed them kitten milk replacer from eyedroppers. It is so heartwarming and precious to see the way they’ll come in from their nocturnal hunts and lay down next to their momma the dog. They chase each other around the house in their little play times. Dang… we’ve got it good here…. we were without a TV for years… but the animals always kept us entertained. Between the sheep that acted like goats (Barbados), the goats that looked like sheep (angoras), the domestic and wild Russian boars we’ve had…. rabbits, fowls… etc.
Here’s Whitey and Little-Dude…. both are shelter-dog rescues. Both were abused in their lives…
Trauma can do so much harm to a mind and spirit….
Whitey was found by us before he was mature… after some six months with us he jumped onto my lap for the first time. We had Little-Dude for almost three years… in that time he only jumped up on me a few times in the last weeks before he died. I always had the worry it would be when he’s old and sick before he loses the edge of fear that kept him from me. Even then he was wary… eying me suspiciously when I stroked his fur. No one knows the trauma he went through… he had broken ribs and a tail with several breaks in it. He would cling near to Vickie and stay between her and me as if to protect her… whenever I approached her he would get scared and bite me.. but he was so old.. his teeth worn down to little dull nubs.
Little Dude had a little spot on the grasses near the garden in which he liked to sit in the sun… we’d laugh and call him ‘Viejo’ which means ‘old-man’…. he so reminded me of some of the southern villages in Europe… where you used to see the old men sitting on benches alongside their houses…. their dark clothes in many layers… a beret-type cap on their head… smoking smelly cigarettes… how the mind works, that a little old chihuahua can remind me of my childhood in Europe.
Little Dude passed on about a month ago on April 13 … he’d come in from his little warm-spot in the sun, and collapsed by the refrigerator…. he went through some spasms for a time, shuddered and stretched, and stopped breathing. We buried him at the little spot he liked to sit in the sun…. it was touching because both Whitie and Chica sat on that spot in the sun for the next few days, and would nap on the little blanket he always liked to lay on. Some folks say animals don’t realize death…. but I know they do. When you’re working slaughtering animal after animal as I’ve done in the past… you soon realize the first couple trust you… proceeding along the line willingly… until the smell of death starts to get to them.. then they start to realize something is amiss…. they start to protest and panic… yes, animals in slaughterhouses do get scared… and it makes a difference in the taste of the meat.
Most cultures have a way of assuaging the guilt of the people when they kill an animal…. they pray that the animal uinderstands the need to take their life and eat them… they pray for forgiveness, and that the animal will understand…. we don’t have that in this modern time when you have others do the killing for you…. if you’re gonna eat animals… I think it is best to kill them yourself… it seems more honest somehow.
As for Little Dude…. I wish we could have gotten into his mind to see what happened to him….
At least we gave him a secure home, with good animal friends he could try to be close to. I think he had as good a time for that few years as he possibly could given the internal torment he had.
R.I.P Little Dude… see you at the Rainbow Bridge one day.
In just a few weeks, millions of young men and women will graduate from high school or college.
As a friend or family member, you may be wondering what to give this year. Fortunately, I know just the gift your graduate wants.
Cash. (Yes, the same thing he or she wanted last year.)
However, it never hurts to throw in a lagniappe, something small but meaningful. Ideally, a graduation gift should encourage the graduate’s dreams, with one eye on the past and the other on the future.
That’s why I like to tuck the envelope inside a copy of James Allen’s timeless classic, “As a Man Thinketh.”
Born in Britain in 1864, Allen was a slight boy who suffered from poor health. In 1879, his father – out of work and facing insolvency – sailed to America, hoping to set up home and send for his family. Soon after arriving, however, he was robbed and murdered.
At age 15, Allen was forced to work as a factory knitter and later as a private secretary to support his family. He found the work mindless and unfulfilling but took solace in the evening among his books, often reading the Bible, Shakespeare, Tolstoy and Whitman into the early hours.
In 1903, he decided to devote himself fulltime to writing and that same year published his best-known book, “As a Man Thinketh.”
It’s a slim volume, one that can be read in less time than it takes to snooze through the average commencement address. But it packs a powerful wallop.
The essential premise is that, even if you’re unaware of it, your underlying beliefs shape your character, your health, your circumstances, and, ultimately, your destiny. Your thoughts create your reality. ** You literally are what you think. **
For this reason, you should be at least as meticulous about the ideas you feed your mind as the food you feed your body, since your life will largely become what your thoughts make it.
This is not to say that your mind alone can heal a serious illness, fix your finances, or change the world. Allen was no purveyor of New Age mumbo-jumbo. He was, above all else, a pragmatist and an advocate of hard work and effort. Yet he understood that every great undertaking begins with a particular state of mind.
Or, as he put it:
* Men are anxious to improve their circumstances, but are unwilling to improve themselves; they therefore remain bound.
* Let a man radically alter his thoughts, and he will be astonished at the rapid transformation it will effect in the material conditions of his life. Men imagine that thought can be kept secret, but it cannot; it rapidly crystallizes into habit, and habit solidifies into circumstance.
* All that a man achieves and all that he fails to achieve is the direct result of his own thoughts … a man can only rise, conquer and achieve by lifting his thoughts. He can only remain weak, abject and miserable by refusing to lift up his thoughts.
* As the plant springs from, and could not be without, the seed, so every act of man springs from the hidden seeds of thought, and could not have appeared without them.
* A man’s mind may be likened to a garden, which may be intelligently cultivated or allowed to run wild; but whether cultivated or neglected, it must, and will bring forth.
* Whatever your present environment may be, you will fall, remain or rise with your thoughts, your Vision, your Ideal. You will become as small as your controlling desire; as great as your dominant aspiration.
Allen insists that circumstances don’t make you. They reveal you. And while you can’t always command the situation, you can always command yourself.
Sadly, Allen – frail throughout his life – died of consumption at 47. His nineteen books have sold millions of copies – all of them are still in print – but most were published posthumously. Allen was never a wealthy man, at least in the traditional sense.
Yet he believed deeply in his mission. His words have inspired men and women the world over. And he was an enormous influence on followers like Dale Carnegie, Napoleon Hill and Norman Vincent Peale.
More than anything else, “As a Man Thinketh” is a meditation. But it is also a revelation. Allen demonstrates how your life is enhanced and ultimately perfected by inward development.
It’s a fine message for graduates just setting out to tackle the world – and not a bad reminder for the rest of us, either.
Others have preached a similar message, of course. But few have put it in more poetic language:
“He who cherishes a beautiful vision, a lofty ideal in his heart, will one day realize it. Columbus cherished a vision of another world, and he discovered it. Copernicus fostered the vision of a multiplicity of worlds and a wider universe, and he revealed it; Buddha beheld the vision of a spiritual world of stainless beauty and perfect peace, and he entered it.
Cherish your visions; cherish your ideals; cherish the music that stirs in your heart, the beauty that forms in your mind, the loveliness that drapes your purest thoughts, for out of them will grow all delightful conditions, all heavenly environment; of these, if you but remain true to them, your world will at last be built.”
‘The Touch of the Master’s Hand’
~Myra Brooks Welch~
It was battered and scarred,
And the auctioneer thought it
hardly worth his while
To waste his time on the old violin,
but he held it up with a smile.
“What am I bid, good people”, he cried,
“Who starts the bidding for me?”
“One dollar, one dollar, Do I hear two?”
“Two dollars, who makes it three?”
“Three dollars once, three dollars twice, going for three,”
But, No,
From the room far back a gray-bearded man
Came forward and picked up the bow,
Then wiping the dust from the old violin
And tightening up the strings,
He played a melody, pure and sweet
As sweet as the angel sings.
The music ceased and the auctioneer
With a voice that was quiet and low,
Said “What now am I bid for this old violin?”
As he held it aloft with its’ bow.
“One thousand, one thousand, Do I hear two?”
“Two thousand, Who makes it three?”
“Three thousand once, three thousand twice,
Going and gone”, said he.
The audience cheered,
But some of them cried,
“We just don’t understand.”
“What changed its worth?”
Swift came the reply.
“The Touch of the Masters Hand.”
And many a man with life out of tune
All battered with bourbon and gin
Is auctioned cheap to a thoughtless crowd
Much like that old violin
A mess of pottage, a glass of wine,
A game and he travels on.
He is going once, he is going twice,
He is going and almost gone.
But the Master comes,
And the foolish crowd never can quite understand,
The worth of a soul and the change that is wrought
By the Touch of the Masters’ Hand.
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What a beautiful little piece the above is.
I’ve been in some extreme situations… met some horrendous people in my life….
Yet, even I still have faith that nearly everyone can be saved….
Sad besotted lives… nightmares in daily living…
Even they, with the help of the right person can be freed of their demons and live a happy existence….
It just takes the right help from the right person.
When you are the right person… won’t you please help?Because NOTHING in this life is purely by chance….
everything we experience is a learning point…
every day we are given opportunities to increase our internal wealth
and you never know when the fellow you pull out of the ditch
is the one who will fill you with internal gold
“Help thy brother’s boat across, and lo!, thine own has reached the shore.”
~Hindu proverb~
We’ve been oranically certified since 1993….
This is one song that runs right into and through me…
All I want to do is grow cactus, and live in this beautiful, quiet, remote canyon.
Jason Aldean
‘Amarillo Sky’
He says
“Lord, I never complain, I never ask why…
please don’t let my dreams run dry” On his knees every night he prays
“please let my crops and children grow…”
’cause that’s all he knows
Take care of your family… you are entrusted with your role in your family. You must uphold your share of the workload and care. Give honor to your parents if you are a child… listen to them and help them to maintain the family properly… your help as a child will go far toward making your parents’ lives more pleasurable and fulfilling.
If you are a parent, it is your responsibility to raise your children well… showing them the right way to live.
There is NO responsibility in life greater than that of stewardship of your family.
Honor and fulfill your obligations. Don’t do wrong, nor engage in any activities that may disrupt the family harmony……
What you do in your family will extend to the blanket of people you surround yourself with.. hopefully some of that goodwill may creep even further into your community.. and your community may extend a gracious hand to outlying areas…. in this way, your own harmony may be shown in far-flung locals and people that you don’t even know of!
Just be good…. do good, be right and proper, and above all…. take care of your family… because ‘La Familia es Todo’.
Spring is usually pretty nice here. It’s not yet gotten hot.. most days are mild, and the hills are still green from the winter rains. And the flowers are superb…. in their many shades of gold and yellow which gave the state the nickname “The Golden State”.
As I walked I was getting an occasional tiny poke on the sole of my foot. Eventually I took my shoe off to see what the problem was.
Imagine my surprise… now… how’d I get a cactus sticker in my shoe?
This is very embarrassing…
as a professional I am not supposed to step on cactus spines.
“Twenty years a Cowboy, and never stepped in manure yet”
~Western saying
I should always wear my PPE (Personal Protective Equipment)… which in this case would be my boots. This spine would not have gone through that hard sole. And the steel toes have saved my skin and bones at least twice that I can recall…. but they were both on the same foot…. so if I HAD sawn my toes off the first time.. they would not have been there to get smashed by a big load ten years later. In both cases I suffered no damage or pain…. both the saw and the heavy load stopped at my steel toes and saved me.
Always wear your safety gear…. it’s sometimes inconvenient and often uncomfortable… but it’s better than losing parts of yourself… or getting parts poked and torn. The toes you save may be your own
Linton Kwesi Johnson
Cause when the music met I-Tops…
I felt the sting… knew the shock…
Yay… I could do and ride this rock!
