Category: World Events

JUGGLING LIFE by D.L.McHale

On By Dennis McHaleIn #compassion, #dreams, #Rehab, #WordPress, Art, #Art, #Gallery, #Open Submission,, Death, Depression, Divorce, Friends, Humanity, life, Loss, Love, Marriage, Motivational, Poem, Poems, poet, Poetry, Relationships, Speaking, Suicide, The Winter Bites My Bones, War, Women, WordPress, World Events, WritingLeave a comment

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Consider for a moment that we are all jugglers. It is, afterall, what life demands of us; constant juggling – of time, relationships, our attention, responsibilities. We feel ourselves continually caught up in the demanding task of keeping many things up in the air simultaneously, smoothly rotating, round and round.

Suppose then, in our quest to be the best juggler possible, we see that we are juggling three balls: one rubber, one wooden, and one crystal.

In the course of our juggling, we slip and drop one ball. Let’s say it’s the rubber ball. What happens to it? No real damage done, right? It bounces. It comes back to you. This rubber ball might represent your education, your job, your contributions to the community in which you live. It is the decisions you make everyday that defines not the depth, but the breadth of living. In the course of your life you may drop this ball several times…you may change jobs, you advance, you are laid off, you make new friends, old ones slip away, you go back to school…it is constantly moving in new directions.

Do not overly concern yourself when this rubber ball slips and falls to the ground; it will retain its resiliency, bounce back, and everything will be fine.

Suppose now you lose your focus for a second, perhaps a day or two. You drop the wooden ball. What becomes of it? Well, it’s a bit noisier, true, but in all likelihood it will become scratched, perhaps chipped. In time, after a few falls, it may even take on a new shine, a new patina.

This wooden ball represents your health and your spirituality. It changes…constantly. It evolves.  It will not look the same today as it will tomorrow. That is its nature. Be mindful of keeping this one aloft, but do not distress if from time to time it slips your grasp. It, too, is resilient and in the long run, it endures.

But what then of the third ball? The crystal ball? What happens if you take your eye from it for a moment and it hits the floor? What becomes of it?

It shatters! It will not return to you for it is utterly destroyed.

This crystal ball represents your close, intimate relationships. Your husband, your wife. Your Mother and Father and sisters and brothers. It represents your children and their children, et. cetera, et. cetera. It represents family and all close and cherished relationships. It represents the giving and the receiving of love.

If you drop this ball, no amount of effort will repair it. It is lost forever. For this reason alone, you must be acutely and forever focused on keeping this ball in the air at all costs.

As you juggle life, keep this lesson in mind, and keep your priorities likewise aligned. Allow for mistakes in life (the rubber and the wooden balls), but never accept your life as the mistake (the crystal ball!)

LIVING FOR TODAY: NECESSARY CHOICES by D.L.McHale

On By Dennis McHaleIn #compassion, #dreams, #fantasy, #WordPress, Death, Depression, Humanity, life, Loss, Love, Poem, Poems, poet, Poetry, Suicide, The Winter Bites My Bones, Travel, World Events, Writing2 Comments

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Three Roads: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow. Which One Shall I Choose?

The reason most people find themselves stuck in a rut is because they insist on seeing tomorrow as an extension of today, and today as an extension of yesterday. This has been the most difficult, and necessary, lesson of the past year and a half of my life. My ignorance in adhering to this faulty belief invited me to# voluntarily step into mental leg irons that have no key. It has hobbled me in everything I have striven to achieve, for it is a false assumption and a dangerous one at that.

Yesterday is a story that has already been told. The book is closed. The lessons, oh dear God, hopefully, learned. No amount of regret can change the ending of a story that is now complete. How can I ever hope to begin a new chapter if I continue to dwell upon an ending that cannot be altered? My past has served its only purpose, which was to instruct and to deliver me to today. My only regret, my biggest regret, is that the lesson came at such a cost to another.

Today is all that truly matters. Today, I write the story, big or small, dull or incredible…the words are all there – and it is up to me to arrange them as I see fit. I am the protagonist. Only I can determine whether I turn left or right, whether I move forward, stand still or retreat backward. I have come to the realization that to stand still or move backward is to settle for a weak plot. Only in moving can the inspiring stories be written… and written well.

And of my tomorrow? It is nothing more than a blank piece of paper not yet ready for mwhatforwardy pen. If I live with one foot planted in today and the other in tomorrow, all I will have managed to do is straddle the fence of possibility. To be stuck on that fence is to surrender half of the possibilities of today. I have chosen to get off of the fence and plant both feet firmly on the path of “ Now.” The fallacy of tomorrow is the falsehood that I need to “plan for.” Plan for what? All the things I missed today?

This worldview is not clever or unique. I did not come up with it. Smarter minds than mine have been advocating this for eons. I am just serving as the echo of their wisdom. If I choose to live fully at this moment which is today, I have no choice but to surrender yesterday to the sweetness of memory, and tomorrow to the providence of faith.

Beginning now, I choose to immerse myself in the wonder and infinite possibility that is today. I do so with the humility to comes from the sacrifices of others who helped me find my way.

FREE OPEN INVITATION TO SUBMIT: International Mail Art Project – Life in the XIX Century (hosted by Roberta Savolini)

On By Dennis McHaleIn #Art, #WordPress, Art, Art, #Art, #Gallery, #Open Submission,, Beauty, Humanity, life, Motivational, Poem, Poems, poet, Poetry, Relationships, Women, WordPress, World EventsLeave a comment

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To All My Friends and Followers of “THE WINTER BITES MY BONES”

Artists from all over the world are invited to participate in this International Mail Art Project organised by the Faenza’s Watercolourists Association.

Everyone is welcome to participate, all ages and skill levels. An exhibition of the received works will have place in Faenza, Italy, during the first days of November 2015 for the yearly St. Rocco fair of the city .

All the works will be exhibited online in a special album posted in the event too and later there will be also pictures taken at the exhibition.

Theme: “Life in the XIX century” (years 1800/1899)
Size: Postcard (10 x 15 cm) 
Technique: Free (watercolour, painting, drawing, collage and so on)

Rules: No jury, no fees, no return of the works, only original works, no copies. It is up to the artist to send in envelope or not, only 1 piece for each artist.

Deadline: Works must arrive by the 15th of October 2015.
Please clearly indicate name, address and email address on the back of the card.
Send your card to:

Associazione Acquerellisti Faentini
c/o Silvano Drei
Via Portisano 46
48018 Faenza (RA)
Italy

Thank you!

Album with the received works:
https://www.facebook.com/roberta.savolini/media_set?set=a.10153250359764359.1073741941.542694358&type=3

My thoughts on life….

On By Dennis McHaleIn #compassion, #WordPress, Art, Beauty, Endangered Species, life, Love, Motivational, Poem, Poems, poet, Poetry, Relationships, Suicide, The Winter Bites My Bones, War, Women, WordPress, World, World Events, WritingLeave a comment

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We are closest to God when we exhibit compassion.  We are furthest when we withold it.

– dlmchale

WHERE IS OUR STORY by D.L.McHale

On By Dennis McHaleIn Art, Beauty, Humanity, life, Love, Motivational, Photgraphy, Poem, Poems, poet, Poetry, Relationships, Speaking, The Winter Bites My Bones, WordPress, World, World Events, WritingLeave a comment

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Death in Syria and Libya, financial collapse in Greece, fires in California, ISIS atrocities in Chattanooga, famine in the Sudan, murder by cop everywhere!

The list is endless.

Where are the uplifting stories?

Where are the tales of human heroism
that lift us beyond our everyday blues ,
the stories that reveal the true range
of human experience?

Are we shackled prisoners of a media
obsessed with the belief that the only thing that sells is grief and despair?

To overcome evil, we must be vigilant
about the abuses we humans bestow upon one another, stalwart against the evil forces of our inner demons.

We cannot stick our head in a bucket of wilted flowers and hope that things get better.

We need inspiration.

We need stories of triumph and victory.

We need to imagine and create.

Our imagination is a book of inspiration;
On its pages are found the stories of shared love,creativity, hope, and universal promise.

Ours is the story of lives imperceptibly bound, threads weaving a rich and colorful tapestry of humankind, of hope.

Where can we find hope?

It is found in our children, our future,
a new generation moving out into
and experiencing their worlds.

It is found in the creative outpouring of strangers ever reminding us that the true nature of humanity is to seek higher ground and to share with one another the voice of our inner genius.

It is found in the artists, the dancers, the poets and writers…the storytellers, the musicians, the singer’s, the community activists, the revolutionaries, the preachers, the atheletes, the lovers, and the loved.

It is found in the spiritual and collective vision of each of us.

The stories that diminish us will one day
be supplanted by those that lift us up!

Ours is a story of the capacity to love,
to overcome, to perservere.

MY REFLECTIONS ON CECIL AND OUR CULPABILITY IN THE CONTINUING TRAGEDY OF FAILED ANIMAL STEWARDSHIP

On By Dennis McHaleIn Endangered Species, Humanity, Loss, Motivational, World Events3 Comments

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by Dennis McHale

The slaying of Cecil has galvanized thousands of individuals who have in dismay and agony expressed their collective outrage for this incomprehensible tragedy. The murderer (a word I chose carefully to express my own dismay) is now in hiding, fearful of retribution against his physical self, no doubt in fear for his life. The mob is assembling, the pitchforks are gathered, the torches lit.

I can not, and will not deny them their anger, nor will I offer any defense for the dentist who perpetrated this senseless and cruel crime against nature…but neither will I deny that he is not the only villain in this blood-fest.  We are all culpable in the slaying of this majestic lion, for when was the last time any of us demanded an end to this business of savagely hunting down and killing the world’s precious and endangered species for sport and for profit?

When was the last time we raised our voices, as we do today, to cry out for protection for the lions and rhinos and elephants and whales and seals, and indeed, all defenseless creatures charged by nature and by God to our care?  Ask yourself, as you hunt down the perpetrator of Cecil’s demise, what have you yourself actually done to prevent such craven and barbaric acts…not only against animals, but against ourselves?

It takes more than flooding social media with tear-soaked tweets and emotion charged re-posts. It takes sacrifice and commitment. It takes money and it takes action. Words are a cheap substitute, and even this, what I write, falls woefully short of what Cecil needed most in the awful hours as he slowly bled with an arrow sticking out of his majestic body. As he endured the hunt in his final hours.

Diane Fossey gave her life defending lowland gorillas. Jane Goodall devoted her entire earthly existence to the protection, understanding, and preservation of chimpanzees and other primates. And what do we do? We content ourselves with casting the first stone. We hunt for one depraved man who feeds his lust for massacre upon our very apathy and inaction. We text our outrage and then just as quickly check our “likes” on Facebook.

Shame on this man for his near psychopathic yearning for destroying Cecil.  And shame on us for not beforehand putting in place protection against such acts of depravity in the first place.