I haven't been posting often in the last while but in the last few days I've been sorting through photos and I like this one (my copyright, btw). When he was here visiting in February, my friend Fraser bought me a dozen roses. My favourites are white but he bought me a mix of colours and they lasted a long time. I got several lovely pictures. This one is one of the loveliest, I think....very Georgia O'Keeffe, of course, but I can't paint it. Wish I could.

Have I recommended my current best reading? I know that EWS pops in from time to time to check out recommendations, so here is one: Dr. Norman Doidge's The Brain That Changes Itself. I am delighted to find that many of the things I am learning about the soul and its connection with quantum physics also find confirmation in a lot of the things being learned about brain anatomy. There's a wonderful prayer in the Bahá'í teaching, the Short Healing Prayer, and I find that its first line forms almost a mantra in my mind and spirit: "Thy name is my healing, O my God." That's it, isn't it, in a nutshell: if we are connected, body, mind, spirit, to the Creator and healing, then the truth of another of Baha'u'llah's reassurances becomes plain to me: "Nothing but that which profiteth them can befall my loved ones." I think it's a very eastern concept being translated to the western mind, gradually, through meditation and through a deeper understanding that we are not isolated. If we view suffering and tests in life with a gratitude for the richness of experience which they offer, rather than bemoaning or bewailing our fate, and are grateful for the opportunity to grow, it brings a particular joy, almost a submission, which is quite unusual for those of us in an individualistic society which views winning, competition, and assertiveness as greater victories than giving our hearts to the collective spirit of unity that is all around us.

Some of these ideas have been percolating through various DVDs I've been watching, too, probably most particularly the biopic of Leonard Cohen, I'm Your Man, which includes some wonderful covers by several musicians previously unfamiliar to me. I promptly bought the soundtrack. My nephew, Tim, who is a complete groupie for both Cohen and Bob Dylan (the latter, btw, just won a Pulitzer Prize, yay), and who is a wonderful musician in his own right, would be proud of me...but there's something about the crack in the world letting through the light idea, in Cohen's song, that I find quite moving. Not to mention Alleluia. Oh Oh Oh. The cracks in the physical universe allow us to see through to light, to spirit...yes, Leonard, I think I get it. Thank you.

I also heard, for the first time today, Sarah McLachlan's song from the new version of the film of Charlotte's Web, I think called "Ordinary Miracles." I was looking for a spring song for my drama production for my grade 5/6 class...and started with Hayley Mills' version of the Pollyanna song, "I'm as happy as a little clam." Sometimes, actually, I am.