one crow bad news
two crows myrth
three crows a wedding
four crows a birth
five crows for riches
six crows a thief
seven crows
the journey of a pilgrim
eight crows bring grief
nine crows a secret
ten crows for sorrow
eleven crows for love
twelve crows the good tomorrow...

from the scottish verse

www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/bunny.php

www.scarysquirrel.org/special...ml1.html

www.youtube.com/watch

www.youtube.com/watch

http//www.youtube.com/watch

Love the quick profit, the annual raise, vacation with pay. Want more of everything ready-made. Be afraid to know your neighbors and to die. And you will have a window in your head. Not even your future will be a mystery any more. Your mind will be punched in a card and shut away in a drawer. When they want you to buy something they will call you. When they want you to die for profit they will let you know.
So, friends, every day do something that won't compute. Love the Lord. Love the world. Work for nothing. Take all that you have and be poor. Love someone who does not deserve it. Denounce the government and embrace the flag. Hope to live in that free republic for which it stands. Give your approval to all you cannot understand. Praise ignorance, for what man has not encountered he has not destroyed.
Ask the questions that have no answers. Invest in the millinium.Plant sequoias. Say that your main crop is the forest that you did not plant, that you will not live to harvest. Say that the leaves are harvested when they have rotted into mold. Call that profit. Phophesy such returns.
Put your faith in the two inches of humus that will build under the trees every thousand years. Listen to carrion, put your ear close, and hear the faint chattering of the songs that are to come. Expect the end of the world. Laugh. Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful, though you have considered all the facts. So long as women do not go cheap for power, please women more than men. Ask yourself; will this satisfy a women satisfied to bear a child? Will this disturb the sleep of a women near to giving birth?
Go with your love to the fields. Lie down in the shade. Rest your head in her lap. Swear allegiance to what is nighest your thoughts. As soon as the generals and the politicos can predict the motions of your mind, lose it. Leave it as a sign to mark the false trail, the way you didn't go. Be like the fox, who makes more tracks than necessary, some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection...

the mad farmer liberation front
wendell berry
1973

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.

It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.
We ask our selves, who am i to be so brilliant,
so gorgeous, so talented, and so fabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be?
You are a child of the Universe.
Your playing small doesn't serve the world.
There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that
other people won't feel insecure around you.
We are born to manifest in the glory of
the Universe that is within us.
It's not just in some of us,
it's in us all.
And as we let our own light shine,
we unconsciously give other people
permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our own fear,
our very presence automatically liberates others..."

Marriane Williamson

"First you must love your body.
In games, in wild places, in the bodies of others.
Then you must enter the world of men
and learn all it's worldly ways.
You must sicken.
You must return to your mother and notice
how quiet the house is.
Then come back to the world that is not man
that you may finally walk in the world of men,
speaking..."

lew welch


"and wake, poet
nomad
to the rawest day to be man..."

ce`sar vallejo

Animals, refered to by John Muir as our horizontal brothers, have long been recognized as essential to our development and wellbeing. Throughout history they have played a major role in human thought and culture. They inhabit our myths, fables, proverbs, and stories. There is a profound, inescapable need for animals among all peoples, for while animals have inhabited a world without people, we have never lived without the companionship, example, and practical help of animals.
Today, because of the widespread pollution of air and water, the rapid expansion of cities, and the destruction of wilderness habitat, we are seeing an imminent and irreversible loss of untamed animal life. We can only guess at the future effect on our children of living in a world in which elephants exist only in zoos, the great whales no longer fill the seas with their song, and the remaining forests are silent.
The fact that so many of us are increasingly isolated from the presence of animals may contribute to the growing despair we feel. Direct encounter with animals, meeting them eye to eye on their own ground, evokes a sudden wonder and respect. Their vivid life brings us alive to the source that creates and sustains all beings. Without such encounters we risk losing that part of ourselves which most deeply resonates with nature - the heart of compassion.
If our greatest loss with the animals is to lose touch with the reality of their existence, our second loss has been to banish them from our minds. We assume they have nothing to teach us about the predicaments of our existence. We no longer know how to listen to the wisdom of the various four legged, six legged, finned and winged creatures that share our life on this Earth. We forget they are ancestors as well as kindred. Long before we existed they worked out the round of life in thousands of variations, as though anticipating the experiments of human cultures.
Now, more than ever before, our powers of empathy and compassion are called upon. We are asked to awaken to the plight of our animal relatives, to let their beauty and power come alive for us once more. We are members of a human family and society, but the presence of animal "others" enlarges our perception of the self beyond the city and opens us inward to that ground of being where live the lizard and monkey, the fish and the bear.
These are our relations.
These are, like us, offspring of the great mystery, and necessary parts of a balanced and living whole.

from Earth Prayers

... The North American Gray Wolf's extraordinary comeback from the ledge of extinction in Greater Yellowstone, one of our country's most beloved and protected wilderness', is one of America's greatest enviromental success stories. But your government, the Bush administration, is pushing a proposal that would authorize, that is, order the killing of some 700 wolves- more than half the current population in the Northern Rockies. Exercise what is not only your right but also your duty as a citizen of The United States to voice your opposition aloud to what you feel is unjust and unwarranted. Speak out now for their protection and help shield the wolves of Wyoming and Idaho from the coming massacre...

www.nrdconline.org/campaign...olfaerial

... Your President, G.W. Bush, and his allies in the last Congress, tried repeatedly to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to massive oil development raids, but with the help of NRDC and other enviromentally reverent organizations we succeeded in stopping them. Even with a new Congress in place the White House has shown repeatedly through it's actions that it will continue to target the Arctic Refuge, so that it may rape it solely to garnish the profit from it's oil, which you pay for, laying to waste America's greatest birthing ground for Arctic wildlife. But Congress has the power to thwart those attacks and save the Arctic Refuge forever, even if it has to do so again and again, and you have the power to tell Congress to do so, by insisting that Bill H.R.39, which has been introduced into the House of Representitives be passed, permantly protecting the Arctic Refuge by law. Please tell your Senators And Representitives to support this important bill...

www.nrdconline.org/campaign...arctic207

... Only 300 Beluga Whales survive today in Alaska's Cook Inlet, and it is their last refuge in U.S. waters. If we act quickly, which is to say right now, we can help save these magnificent creatures from extinction. The National Marine Fisheries Service is proposing that Cook Inlet Belugas recieve crucial protections under The Endangered Species Act. But this proposal is opposed by industry. Please urge the agency to finalize this Life saving plan and give Belugas a fighting chance.
I will say it again.
There are 300 of them left in the last safe place in U.S. waters.
And extinct, as we all know, is forever.

this one's for Kirsten...

www.nrdconline.org/campaign...luga_0507

... Scientists are advising us that a rise of more than 2 degrees Fahrenheit threatens to trigger the irreversible melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet, a 20 foot rise in sea levels, and the extinction of innumerable species. Make your government do something about it. Congress must act this year to pass legislation that will cut our nation's global warming pollution 25% by the year 2020 and 80% by 2050, at the very least. Tell your Congress, the people who are supposed to be your Trusted Servants, to pass tough global warming laws now...

www.nrdconline.org/campaign...arming107

the modules that follow contain images that many will find disturbing. in fact, we should ALL be disturbed by them. they address the issues of animal testing, whale hunting, and the unflinching cruelty and indifference to all the other living creatures on the Earth not human. they are difficult to watch. they were difficult for me to watch when i first saw them. but i have seen these and other things with my own eyes now, and i can never again walk this planet the way i did before i saw them, before i opened up my mind and my heart and looked without turning away. if you wish for a different world to live in, one that is kinder and loving towards all life, then know that there are and always have been those who have and are taking action to make it so. there are those who are fighting for what may be the one thing worth fighting for; a reverence for all Life. and perhaps, if more of us would join the struggle, that kinder, more loving world would become a reality sooner.
don't watch these video's if you're not ready to do something about what is taking place in them.
they'll only stain your heart...

'The world cannot be discovered by a
journey of miles... only by a spiritual journey...
by which we arrive at the ground at our feet,
and learn to be at home.'


'We who prayed and wept
for liberty from kings
and the yoke of liberty
accept the tyranny of things
we do not need.
In plentitude too free,
we have become adept
beneath the yoke of greed.
Those who will not learn
in plenty to keep their place
must learn it by their need
when they have had their way
and the fields spurn their seed.
We have failed Thy grace.
Lord, i flinch and pray,
send Thy necessity."


I. The time will soon come when we will not be able to remember the horrors of September 11 without remembering also the unquestioning technological and economic optimism that ended on that day.

II. This optimism rested on the proposition that we were living in a "new world order" and a "new economy" that would "grow" on and on, bringing a prosperity of which every new increment would be "unprecedented."

III. The dominant politicians, corporate officers, and investors who believed this proposition did not acknowledge that the prosperity was limited to a tiny percentage of the world's people, and to an ever smaller number of people in the United States; that it was founded upon the oppressive labor of poor people all over the world; and that its ecological costs increasingly threatened all life, including the lives of the supposedly prosperous.

the first three points in Berry's essay
"In the Presence of Fear"
there are twenty seven points made in all


"the most alarming sign of the state of our society now is that our leaders have the courage to sacrifice the lives of young people in war but have not the courage to tell us that we must be less greedy and less wasteful."

"Something will have gone out of us as a people if we ever let the remaining wilderness be destroyed; if we permit the last virgin forests to be turned into comic books and cigarette cases; if we drive the few remaining members of the wild species into zoos or to extinction; if we pollute the last clear air and dirty the last clean streams and push our paved roads through the last of the silence, so that never again will Americans be free in their own country from the noise, the exhausts, the stinks of human and automotive waste. And so that never again can we have the chance to see ourselves single, separate, vertical and individual in the world, part of the enviroment of trees and rocks and soil, brother to the other animals, part of the natural world and compentent to belong to it."

wallace stegner


"I would rather be ashes than dust.
I would rather my spark burn out in a brilliant blaze
than it should be stifled in dry rot.
I would rather be a superb meteor,
every atom of me in magnificent glow,
than a sleepy and permanent planet.
Man's chief purpose is to Live,
not to exist.
I shall not waste my days trying to prolong them.
I shall use my time."

Jack London


What does the voice of Fear whisper to you?
Fear speaks to you in logic and reason. It assumes the voice of Love itself.
Fear tells you, "I want to make you safe."
Love tells you, "You are safe."
Fear says, "Give me symbols. Give me frozen images. Give me something I can rely on."
Loving Truth says, "Only give me this moment."
Fear would walk you on a narrow path, promising to take you where you want to go.
Love says, 'Open your arms and fly with me."
Every moment of your Lfe you are offered the opportunity to choose.
Love or Fear.
To tread the Earth.
Or to soar the Heavens...

from the book Emanuel

I want to lose my self in the vastness of the universe
become enmeshed and entangled and
a part of it all
i want to feel the comfort and the unity in being
vitally unimportant
and honor the sacredness that is the nature of life
of my life and of all the life around me
i want to be one word in a long and eloquent sentence
uncelebrated and quietly present
accentuated only when i am removed or erased
and pertinent to everything
i want to be distilled by an ocean
be bathed and cleansed by the smile of
a weeks old child
cast shadows easily mistaken or not even noticed
and feel joy because i hear the laughter of
someone i do not know
i want to whisper encouragement into a river's ear
by walking it's banks and picking up another's trash
i want to understand the body language of mountains
embrace the trust of the trees and the soil
and be borne along with the leaves by a fall wind
all aflame in reds and golds and the first light of day
i want to be known as the rain rather than the raindrop
horizonless, panoramic
broad, borderless, and undefined
like all the stars in a winter's sky
countless seeds strewn from the hands of
countless gods
across the fields of eternity
interconnected, intertwined, interlaced
sacred life bestowed and then lovingly
scattered aloft...

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I live in a place that breeds a civilized sort of suffering
that strews around thoughtlessly the seeds of
class seperation and a prejudice
born from fear and ignorance
a land reaping bountiful harvests of social inequity
and poorly disguised contempt
a state of consciousness
a spiritual affliction
a disease, really
a way of life that is celebrated
that is often times visciously defended
and always self rightously justified
if we are truely created equal then
why does the one who dies with the most toys win?
and i have no doubts that the meek shall indeed
one day inherit the Earth
(what good is it inheriting an Earth that has been
depleted of it's soul?)
but until then
brother, can you spare a dime?

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black ghost
sail the blue water skin
swell and tide
cry red rose light often
bed with cold storms dark clouds
and sometimes
a warm Woman singing while
autumn groans and stretches shaking
gold and crimson from her wind torn hair
standing before the looming winter
defiant crone
knowing seer
casting spells of regeneration
ressurrection
uttering invocations for rebirth
in the midst of her death song
autumn lives her death
so that winter can die it's life
and she has been doing so lovingly
and with a melancholy joy
year after year
century after century
and he has watched her do so
through red rose tears of light
since she was a child...

"immortal"




newborn,
if i could i would
wrap you softly in sun warmed
swathes of clouds and strands of
woven kelp still safe with the scent
of the ocean in soothing darkness but for
one echoing campfire beneath the
moon of a forgotten forest where there is
no such thing as time or separation
i would introduce you to The People
"child,
these are the Tree People
these are the Stone People
these people are The Stars"
and i would hold you up and
out before them and they would all
welcome you into your life
The Whales and The Mountains would
come forward and they would stand in
the center of The People's Circle for they
are the oldest and wisest amongst us and
they know all things and i would ask them
to tell us your name the name that was
chosen just for you the name that belongs
only to you the name they were given to
remember a forever ago so that they
could speak it aloud on this very night and they
would reach out with gentle flukes and
tender cliffs and they would touch your brow and
the sound of joyful Thunder People would rise
up on the distant horizon as they sang your
name and all The People would hear it and
take it into their hearts where they would
cherish the sound it made there for
all the forevers to come
if i could
i would do that

if i could i would
place you in the arms of every
one of The People so they could
hold you for a moment and they could
look into your tiny eyes and into your
infinite soul and you into their's and each
one of them would become a part of you like
blood and bone and sinew and you a
part of them and you would breathe in a
piece of one another's spirit and you would
always know that no matter what occurred from
that instant forth you would always belong to
a family that surrounded you even when you
walked alone in the world of Man amidst the
constant noise of concrete and steel and
electricity and that there was no one and no
thing that could sever the bond between
you and your kindred
not ever
"in our world, little one",
The Wolves and The Elephants would tell you
"there are no such people as orphans"

there are prayers, newborn
there are words that The People spoke into
my heart when i was first brought into
Our Circle that are more sacred and
more holy than any of those i've heard spoken
at me by the voice of men and i
remember these words
i remember them with all of what is
left of my soul just as i remember the
sound your name makes inside me
i could whisper these prayers into the
night sky so that the Wind People could
catch them and bring them to you no matter
where you were and in the morning they would
be wrapped around you like sun warmed
swathes of clouds and strands of woven kelp
and you'd never need worry that you
might forget them
if you wished, child
i would do that...

for Madison Crow
wherever she is...




Lover
i see
far beyond ourselves and away
into eternity
it isn't pretty
all that has not yet been forsaken
will be cast aside then
the lament of autumn
the birth cries of spring
verses holy and sacred
that now only the forests will sing
but i swear
Lover, i swear
i know the words...

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