Good Morning Kossacks and Welcome to Morning Open Thread (MOT)
We're known as the MOTley Crew and you can find us here every morning at 6:30 Eastern. Feel free to volunteer to take a day - permanently or just once in awhile. With the auto-publish feature you can set it and forget it. Sometime, the diarist du jour shows up much later, that's the beauty of Open Thread...it carries on without you! Just let us know in the comments. You can click on the Morning Open Thread "heart" if you'd like us to show up in your stream every day.
Doing one of these diaries is a good way to get your feet wet if you have been hesitant about writing a diary. You can write as much or as little as you want. The audience here is always supportive.
Last week JanF wrote on her blog about how her frigid 23° morning was suddenly and unexpectedly warmed when she witnessed two flocks of sandhill cranes flying overhead. The final paragraph of her piece particularly stuck me.
Look up and look around. The seasons are warm and comforting because they are a never ending cycle spinning us towards our destinations. And the gifts of the goddess are for everyone willing to accept them. Free of charge.
What humbugs we are, who pretend to live for Beauty, and never see the Dawn!
~ Logan Pearsall Smith
John Mason Neale was an Anglican priest who, because of his intelligence and insight, was feared by his Church superiors and sent to a remote post in the Madeira Islands where it was expected he would fade into obscurity. Instead, he established the Sisterhood of St. Margaret and from that order he began an orphanage, a school for girls and a house of refuge for prostitutes. In addition, he translated the Eastern liturgies into English and a multitude of hymns into from Latin into English, including what is agruably the oldest and most solemn Advent hymn, O Come, O Come Emmanuel.
In a gentle way, you can shake the world. ~ Mahatma Gandhi
This was the most joyous image I viewed this year. The last soldiers and the last convoys crossing out of Iraq and into Kuwait has to be the highlight of the year.
I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality... I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.
The first peace, which is the most important, is that which comes within the souls of people when they realize their relationship, their oneness with the universe and all its powers, and when they realize that at the center of the universe dwells the Great Spirit, and that this center is really everywhere, it is within each of us.
~Black Elk
They shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.
-- Isaiah, II:4
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Let us love the world to peace.
~ The Angels' Little Instruction Book