Random Thinking

I've been thinking random thoughts, so here's a random--a fractal that's supposed to be a pansy, I think (my favorite flower for looks; roses are for smelling).

This nice quote came via my spiritual community's women's email list:

We should not seek revenge on those who have committed crimes against us, or reply to their crimes with other crimes. We should reflect that by the law of karma, they are in danger of lowly and miserable lives to come, and that our duty to them, as to every being, is to help them to rise towards Nirvana, rather than let them sink to lower levels of rebirth.

-His Holiness the Dalai Lama

This helps me a lot, and reminds me of how I try to live my life. Sums up those pacifistic urges of mine rather well.

The Dalai Lama quote makes up for this weird-ass thing that was posted on the blog of an email correspondent. It is an entire website devoted to the idea that the world will come to an end on December 21, 2012. Creepy, huh? I went to the site, thought the t-shirts were spiffy, then began to wonder, hmm, is this a collection of serious links or some very, very dry satire? Jeff seems to think satire. If so, it's even more subtle than Landover Baptist! So, I have spent a lot of the day wondering just what sorts of people surround me, and whether I can do anything at all useful when folks with beliefs based completely on conjecture, myth or legend (i.e., our evangelical friends) will just come along behind me and muck it up.

I've also been reading about this poor woman whose rape trial got set up by a judge so that she was not allowed to use "rape," "assault," and such in her defense. Led to a hung jury. Or the murder cover-up of a gay man in Indiana. (This was on another blog I read.) Downer, downer downer.

Still, I worked toward a balanced view. I wrote this on the women's group email list: "Living in today's world can be challenging, and sometimes you start to think that the people striving for peace, love and understanding of others are a minority too small to make a difference. I remind myself that sometimes we only make a SMALL difference, but that even a small positive change is a good one." I will try to stick with that.