Native American Prayer --translated by Lakota Sioux Chief Yellow Lark

Chief Yellow Lark, Lakota Sioux

"Oh, Great Spirit

Whose voice I hear in the winds,

And whose breath gives life to all the world,

hear me, I am small and weak,

I need your strength and wisdom.

Let me walk in beauty and make my eyes ever behold

the red and purple sunset.

Make my hands respect the things you have

made and my ears sharp to hear your voice.

Make me wise so that I may understand the things

you have taught my people.

Let me learn the lessons you have

hidden in every leaf and rock.

Mark Nepo: The One Conversation - OWN Super Soul Sunday

In the interviews I've been blessed to have with Oprah, we seem to enter what I would call the "One Conversation," the one ongoing story of how we spend our time on earth. All our lives contribute to this conversation. All our stories contribute to the one ongoing story. Let me share some reflections on where that conversation has been taking me.

I keep returning to the ever-present riddle, that being who we are is the necessary adventure. It unlocks everything, not because our self is so important but because our essential nature that our self carries is the immediate doorway to everything that is life-sustaining. We learn early on that being who we are means fending off unwanted influence without cutting ourselves off from the chance to learn from others. Regardless of the culture we are born into, it isn't long after we arrive that everyone starts pointing and telling us where we need to be and what we need to do to get there. There's no time to really ask why. Soon, things happen and we are thrown off course and now there's all this effort to win their approval, no matter who "they" are. If lucky, love will distract us more than suffering. If blessed, we are broken of everyone's plans and regrets and thrown like a hooded bird into a sea of light. If trusting the fall, we find our wings.

Dr. Horace (“Hap”) Crater Presents Public Talk, Sunday, February 19 from 2-4pm, Unity Church of Life, Murfreesboro, TN

Dr. Horace ("Hap") Crater, President, SPSR

ACOF Member, Dr. Horace (“Hap”) Crater, will present a public talk Sunday, 2/19, from 2-4pm on at the Unity Church of Life, 130 S Cannon Ave, Murfreesboro, TN

For those of you who are interested Hap will be leading a discussion on the presentations that Stephen Hawking gives on two videos Into the Universe and Did God Create the Universe. The subject is Cosmology and the Creation of the Universe.

Bio for Dr. Horace Crater (President, SPSR)

Ph.D. Yale University, 1968. Professor of physics at the University of Tennessee Space Institute.

Member of the American Physical Society in The Division of Particles and Fields and Topical Group of Few Body Systems and Multi particle Dynamics.

Tender Photos Unearthed from a Turbulent Time --by Sarah B. Weir (HBO to Air Story on Landmark Civil Rights Ruling February 14)

Some of our members are LGBT.  Accordingly, when I read this story, I thought of them.  We support Love, no matter the package in which it comes!  May this article, describing Interracial marriage, only 54 years ago, as illegal in 15 states, help our friends who wish to marry "Keep Hope Alive"!
--ACOF Administration


Mildred and Richard Loving on their front porch,
King and Queen County, Virginia. April 1965. 
Photo by Grey Villet

When Mildred and Richard Loving married in Washington, D.C. in 1958, they didn't think they were breaking the law. Both were from the small town of Central Point, Virginia. Mildred was of African-American and Native American decent and Richard was white. They did know it was illegal for them to marry in their state-as well as 15 others--which is why they left to tie the knot. Within a month of returning home, police burst into their bedroom in the middle of the night and arrested them under the state's anti-miscegenation law. They were sentenced to a one-year in prison term that could be suspended if they left Virginia. 


Peggy, Sidney, and Donald Loving playing,
King and Queen County Virginia. April 1965
Photo by Grey Villet

Banished to Washington, D.C., Mildred Loving, who did not consider herself a political person, wrote about her plight to Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy. The American Civil Liberties Union took up the case and brought it all the way to the United States Supreme Court. In 1967, in a landmark Civil Rights ruling, the court struck down America's laws against interracial marriage.

ACOF Celebrates the Year of the Dragon this Saturday!

To Regularly Attending ACOF Members: Please view your invitations for details!

Quietly centered is the way to leave 2011 behind and enter into 2012, the time of the Dragon!  The Dragon brings with her good luck and is, in fact, the symbol of good fortune in Chinese Astrology.  The Dragon is bigger than life.  Now is the time, the Dragon reminds us, to look towards transformation.

 

This is also the year of the WATER Dragon. The Dragon herself is fixed, and the water element brings about the flow.  As you know, 1996 to 2011 was a long period of lessons and learning, the Dragon marks the beginning, transformation, the ability to move forward with these learned lessons in hand, enjoying the flow of creativity in every manner. 
May we all celebrate the entrace of the Dragon.  It is an exciting time!

Soul-Talk: What Happens When God Closes a Door? --by Russell Bishop

Ever heard or even repeated that hackneyed phrase, "Whenever God closes a door, he opens a window"? While I haven't always found that window when the door closed in the past, some part of me has clung to that belief over the years. In my recent experience, I have discovered that it just isn't true: He doesn't merely open a window, He actually opens a universe.

I'm pretty sure this will rile a few folks out there, and if you find yourself to be one of the riled, maybe you're not the one to be reading this article. Then again, it could be that the riled are the ones most in need of this frame of reference into the twists and turns of life. In order to find the power in this principle, you need to keep your mind open. Perhaps you have heard this tired cliché: "Minds are like parachutes -- both function best when open." If you can keep your mind open just a bit, you may discover an enormous source of solace and guidance in this simple yet powerfully revamped principle.

WHERE IS GOD? --by Mark Nepo

WHERE IS GOD?

It’s as if what is unbreakable—

the very pulse of life—waits for

everything else to be torn away,

and then in the bareness that

only silence and suffering and

great love can expose, it dares

to speak through us and to us.

It seems to say, if you want to last,

hold on to nothing. If you want

to know love, let in everything.

If you want to feel the presence

of everything, stop counting the

things that break along the way.

Full, Dark --by Stephen Jenkinson, MTS, MSW

Photo by Bryan Touchstone, BKT Photography, All Rights Reserved

A few weeks ago I had a wretched autumn flu, meaning that kids have gone to school, swapped pathogens like playing cards and brought them home for all to enjoy. The fact that you've no school age kids at home doesn't save you. It didn't save me. Some well meaning neighbours lent me their social justice dvd library to get through my miseries. Watching the various Armageddons hour after fluish hour - not something I would recommend - I was reminded often that everything of merit is being dragged to the abyss in high gear. The prime adjective describing our time: Dark.