Christmas milking

Early Christmas morning in Chile... time to milk the cows and, later, make Christmas cookies!

Mother Teresa

  People are often unreasonable, irrational, and self-centered.  Forgive them anyway.

  If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives.  Be kind anyway.

  If you are successful, you will win some unfaithful friends and some genuine enemies.  Succeed anyway.

  If you are honest and sincere people may deceive you.  Be honest and sincere anyway.

 What you spend years creating, others could destroy overnight.  Create anyway.

  If you find serenity and happiness, some may be jealous.  Be happy anyway.

 The good you do today, will often be forgotten.  Do good anyway.

 Give the best you have, and it will never be enough.  Give your best anyway.

 In the final analysis, it is between you and God.  It was never between you and them anyway.

-this version is credited to Mother Teresa

Favorite Photo of the Week

I took this at the Shalom Center this week!

Community metamorphosis

Hello to each of you!  I wanted to share with you a selfie video filmed by Marta Espinoza and Elisabet Martínez about the values they have received from the Shalom Center.  I hope you enjoy it!

Shalom
E
Community metamorphosis

José Martí

Todo es música y razón
   Todo es hermoso y constante
Y todo, como el diamante,
   Antes que luz es carbón.

All is music and reason
   All is constant and beauty
And all, like the diamond
   Before light is coal.

José Martí

Traveling by Wendell Berry

Traveling 

Even in a country you know by heart
its hard to go the same way twice.
The life of the going changes.
The chances change and make a new way.
Any tree or stone or bird
can be the bud of a new direction. The
natural connection is to make intent
of accident. To get back by dark
Is the art of going.

—Wendell Berry

Little Piece of the Sky

Highlands of Paraguay,
   Butterfly garden, giant wings of blue and black.
Deep orange patterns painted on mushrooms.
   Pearled weavings of spider webs stranded
Across green grass and red mud paths.
   Wind whispering in palms,
Emerald parrots screeching above the distant
   Rumble of trucks.  I look down, down,
Down to the distant valley.  Smoke from
   Clearing forests for soybeans and cattle,
Patches of yellow fields fallow, foreign pines
   And eucalyptus plantations.  Here up, up, up,
above, I rest in
                 A little piece of the sky.

Elena Huegel
July 2015