Some do's and don'ts for Bo...or any Portuguese Water Dog

Here's a little interesting info. that I found out about the Portuguese water dog. It sounds like a good dog for a family with young kids like the Obamas, yet maybe a little much if you don't have the time and energy to dedicate to this pet. ://www.nydailynews.com/lifestyle/2009/04/15/2009-04-15_some_dos_and_donts_for_boor_any_portuguese_water_dog.html

  
S.T.C.

Words...

...are those funny things that are the writer's paint brush.
  ...are unique in that unlike a paintbrush, they can be used wrongly.
  ...are subject to other people's judgments.
  ...have started wars and have brought peace to chaos.
  ...are the pen's swordstrokes.
  ...unlike a paintbrush can be misunderstood.
  ...take an untold amount of abuse from their audience.
  ...have the power to soothe and console.
  ...have the power to raise ire.
  ...long to be free of logical consternation like the paintbrush.
  ...are the commonly misunderstood parishners of authors.
  ...are multicolored and textured tools disguising themselves as black. They are Brilliant in their Blackness!
  ...aaahH words. What tools of blessing you are.

  
S.T.C.

All States Included

Thank goodness for the mercurial element of human behavior and life itself. Otherwise I think we would all crack up, fragment and breakdown due to the changes that take place in the events of living. Thanks be to process of evolving consciousness.
  I think that all the elements and states of matter that are mirrored in physical reality are in a way a necessary part of the human energetic makeup. We all need earth, air, fire and water inside of our beings as physical forces, but also as energetic resources in our living day to day. This is also true of the states of physical matter such as fixed, fluid and the changing nature from one to the other and back again. It is our flexibility that allows us to live fully in the face of Life's undulations, and steadfastness to an inner cause helps us survive these as well. It is also our belief and trust in the bottomline goodness and love upon which the Universe is built that keeps the door to our own House of Love open.
  The saint and the heretic are both needed in the Grand Process of Enlightenment and Experiential Enrichment that is the Soul's Journey. All 'states' are part of the Grand Design. The 'struggle' is just as much a part of this Journey as is the 'ease'.
  Stepping back you can see the Perfection of Spirit/God in the mechanics of the process itself. The learning, taking to Heart and implementation of the actual real life lessons for you and me throughout our life Is the Substance of the Evolving Universe.
  We tend to see things compartmentally for ease of understanding, yet it is these compartments that later get in the way of the same.
  Blessed be the universal spin of existence.

 S.T.C.

Katabasis, Blessed Be Katabasis

As I get older I relax into the finite nature of my mind and my abilities as a human being, as a man. "It's okay to be human", I tell myself. "It's okay to be a common man of modest means. It's quite alright not to be perfect by other people's standards." I am relaxing into Who I Am.
  It's arresting that on the average it takes a male human half of his life more or less, hopefully less, to come to some point of katabasis-tic inner realization. The author Robert Bly has some very interesting things to say about this stage of a male's development in his remarkable book 'Iron John'.
  In 'Iron John' he speaks of a stage called Katabasis ( Greek word meaning 'descent') in which a main takes his personal pain seriously because he has no choice. He has escaped from it over and over over and now realizes that he is 'back here once again' (at 35 or 40 or even 45 or beyond) and that he MUST go through it if he is Ever to find the 'Golden Ball' that he has been searching for all of his life. Katabasis is the cessation of trying to overcome inner grief by 'flying' over the offending material of our past. Instead, it is coming to the point where one stays on the 'ground' meeting the goblins and such that are there and walking through our 'emotional offspring' that we have heretofore pushed aside or denied the existence of altogether. In our Western culture this perversion is extremely pervasive. This is not a 'wallowing' in pain nor an indeterminate 'poor me' session, but rather a moving through one's pain via careful steps of Honesty and Acceptance from one's Self to one's self. In humility (if you're really here this is all you've got!) you take these badges of experience and mix them into a foundation upon which you live a life that means something....to you...and to human kind, the joined human experience.
  Our past does not have to enslave us. It can infact enrich us, if we so chose it. We can use the jewels of our past located in the mire that we try so hard to ignore to be the fuel for a really meaningful life, not only for ourselves, but for all.
 
S.T.C.