Author: kansas

This is a quick update for everybody who’s been following the progress of Diane101’s young friend Diva from Baghdad to the University of Kansas. What a trip!

You already know how kind and helpful ManEegee was to Diva when she and her fellow Fulbright scholars went there for a week of orientation. She thinks he is the greatest, which is no surprise to us.

You might say that Diane handed her off to ManEegee, who then handed her off to me when I picked her up at the Kansas City airport this past Saturday night. I drove her to Lawrence and got her installed in a dorm room provided for her until her own studio apartment is ready. The minute I saw her I liked her, as Diane and ManEe had told me I would. She is delightful. She speaks English like a native–okay, better than a lot of natives, and she’s also fluent in Italian.  She’s vivacious, articulate, and beautiful, and so so grateful for all the help.

She fended for herself through Sunday and Monday, making friends and going through a lot of orientation.  Today I drove back to Lawrence, this time taking with me a friend who used to live there and who knows the town and university much better than I do. My friend, Andie, was wonderful today! She directed us where we needed to go, nabbed the right people to ask the right questions, and just generally was helpful in ways I could never have been.  We worked on getting Diva a cell phone, took her to see her apartment (it’s cute and she likes it) and to get the leasing paperwork finished, and we got info on bus passes, etc.  We got a lot done, but there’s still a lot to do. We felt sorry for all the foreign students who didn’t have us!! Or, rather, I felt sorry for all of them who didn’t have Andie.

Her first few days have been tough–confusing, exhausting, HOT. She misses her mom. It’s just hard in so many ways, but she’s a fighter and an amazing person and she’s coping. As Andie said to her just before we left her today, “This week will probably be the hardest week you ever have in this country. After this week, everything will start to get easier.”

I’ll go up Thursday to get her moved into the apartment and we’ll go shopping for cool stuff.  A friend of mine sent $100 to help with that, and another friend sent $25.  Andie is giving her a small microwave and probably a tv.

Two amazing bits of synchronicity happened today that I just loved. We were standing in the cell phone shop in the student union when my son walked in! Totally unplanned. So they got to meet, which made me happy.  And then guess what? It turns out Diva will live right across the street from him! Can you believe that? In this big campus, with so much different housing, the house he will be living in with his friends turns out to be across the street and just down a bit from Diva’s apartment. Six degrees. . .

SHE NEEDS A COMPUTER! Fulbright gives her a $500 stipend to buy one, but we all know that’s not enough. She needs a laptop that can do photoshop, because she’ll be studying photography along with American studies. We’ll work on getting her one from this end, but if any of you can help, please jump right in. You can email me at Nanpickard at kc.rr.com

So, that’s the news from sunny Kansas, where we all love Diva.

 

GOOD THURSDAY, BOOTRIBBERS!

Come on in! The Coffee’s Hot!

Something for Everybody!

Come on in!
It’s Almost Friday!
*Depending on your time zone.

 

GOOD MORNING,* BOOTRIBBERS!

Come on in!
It’s Almost Friday!
*Depending on your time zone.

Hi, All,
    I’m not going to be able to extend these diaries over as long a time as I had planned, though that doesn’t mean we can’t all continue the conversation in other ways, or later. But for now, I’m going to give you a quickie list of “the “fours'” from Peace Pilgrim’s pamphlet. What you will read in cursory form below is what it took her fifteen years to do. If you want to read about them in more detail, there’s a website link below. I will be happy to answer any questions about them, if I can.
    One more thing I will do, I hope, is post a wrap-up diary where I’ll review what I set out to do with this series, and you can say what you got out of it, or not.
    In the meantime, thanks, and. . .Peace. 🙂
kansas

SUMMARY

The Four Preparations

• Assume right attitude toward life.
• Live good beliefs
• Find your place in the Life Pattern
• Simplify life to bring inner and outer well-being into harmony.

The Four Purifications

• Purification of the body
• Purification of thoughts
• Purification of desires.
• Purification of motives

The Four Relinquishments

• Relinquishment of self-will
• Relinquishment of the feeling of separateness.
• Relinquishment of attachments
• Relinquishment of negative feelings.

“All people can be peace workers. Whenever you bring harmony into any unpeaceful situation,you contribute to the total peace picture. Insofar as you have peace in your life, you reflect it into your surroundings and into your world.”
    Peace Pilgrim

Further sources:

LINK: The pamphlet. (Scroll down)

LINK: Peace Pilgrim Website & other links

LINK: The Peace Pilgrim Book. (Different from the pamphlet, longer, with many PP quotes.)

Sick of peace yet?  🙂

Sweetness and light can be sooo annoying.

You ain’t seen nothin’ yet. If you didn’t feel annoyed, or possibly even threatened, by anything that went before in this series, you may find your peace capacity tested over the final days of this series as we set out Peace Pilgrim’s 4 Preparations, 4 Purifications, & 4 Relinquishments.

What she says next sounds incredibly simplistic.

Please, we want to say, it can’t be that simple.

I think that’s true, and not true. It could be that simple if we just did it, but nooooo.  So for 99.9% of us, it’s not that simple.  If it were, we would all be doing it and there would be peace on earth. Ha. So maybe saying it is easy, but doing it is hard. She keeps telling us that, but excuse me, I didn’t hear you.

As you read these first two of what she calls The Four Preparations (just wait until we get to the purifications!), I suggest keeping a few things in mind:

l. It worked for her.

2. It took a long time.
3. It was hard.
4. She thought it could work for anybody.
5. It’s the same as, or very close to, almost all other “peace paths.”
6. She’s saying it the best way she knew how, and directing it to an audience of millions of people of varying degrees of sophistication and intelligence. (Sometimes I have to laugh, thinking she may have had to simplify it the most for sophisticated people.)

I have taken mercy on you and have edited a bit to shorten it.

From Steps Toward Inner Peace. Reprinted with permission.

NOW, when I talk about the steps toward inner peace, I talk about them in a framework, but there’s nothing arbitrary about the number of steps (or their order). This is just a way of talking about the subject. Just take whatever steps seem easiest for you, and as you take a few steps, it will become easier for you to take a few more. In this area we really can share. None of you may feel guided to walk a pilgrimage, and I’m not trying to inspire you to walk a pilgrimage, but in the field of finding harmony in our own lives, we can share.

Some preparations that were required of me.

The first preparation is a right attitude toward life.

This means – stop being an escapist! Stop being a surface-liver who stays right in the froth of the surface. There are millions of these people, and they never find anything really worthwhile. Be willing to face life squarely and get down beneath the surface of life where the verities and realities are to be found. That’s what we are doing here now.

It is through solving problems in accordance with the highest light that we have that inner growth is attained. Now, collective problems must be solved by us collectively, and no one finds inner peace who avoids doing his or her share in the solving of collective problems, like world disarmament and world peace. So let us always think about these problems together, talk about them together, and collectively work toward their solutions.

The second preparation has to do with bringing our lives into harmony with the laws that govern this universe. (She means things like The Golden Rule.)

We are our own worst enemies. If we are out of harmony through ignorance, we suffer somewhat; but if we know better and are still out of harmony, then we suffer a great deal. I recognize that these laws are well-known and well-believed, and therefore they just needed to be well-lived.

So I got busy on a very interesting project. This was to live all the good things I believed in. I did not confuse myself by trying to take them all at once, but rather, if I was doing something that I knew I should not be doing, I stopped doing it, and I always made a quick relinquishment. And if I was not doing something that I knew I should be doing, I got busy on that. It took the living quite a while to catch up with the believing, but of course it can, and now if I believe something, I live it. Otherwise it would be perfectly meaningless. As I lived according to the highest light that I had, I discovered that other light was given, and that I opened myself to receiving more light as I lived the light I had.

So. . .

Does any of that appeal to you?
Does any of it irritate you?
Does any of it make you fearful?
Does it accord, or not, with your experiences?
What do you read between the lines?

Express yourselves, any way you like.
Thanks a lot.

SCHEDULE UPDATE: Instead of extending this into next week, I’m going to get it all in tomorrow, with maybe a wrap-up on Friday. So tomorrow, we’ll have all 4 Preparations, Relinquishments, & Purifications.

Ordinarily, you probably wouldn’t read a George Will column in the Washington Post unless you were stuck in a bathroom with nothing else to read, but you’ve just got to make an exception today. It’s hilarious, and in a good way.

Here’s how it starts. . .

Before evolution produced creatures of our perfection, there was a three-ton dinosaur, the stegosaurus, so neurologically sluggish that when its tail was injured, significant time elapsed before news of the trauma meandered up its long spine to its walnut-size brain. This primitive beast, not the dignified elephant, should be the symbol of House Republicans.

Yes, one should not taint all of them because of the behavior of most of them.

Except for a couple of zingers at “liberals,” it just gets better, including this:

House Republicans, perhaps emboldened by the examples of Afghanistan and Iraq, are going to risk elections.

Enjoy: LINK:   WaPo.

(Please do not recommend this diary. Enjoy and then let it slide. Thanks.)