Learning to Live in This One

The Amish: Shunned

This week PBS is offering several free documentaries online, including The Amish: Shunned, which features seven Amish people who have left the fold. I'm eager to watch it.

If you've already seen it, please let us know your thoughts in the comment section. What resonated with you? What would have made it a better documentary?

Wild Geese

Another poem for Poetry Month. 

WILD GEESE

by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain

are moving across the landscapes,

over the prairies and the deep trees,

the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,

are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things.

Compassion

The Dark Magic of Tribal Shame

Photo: A Child's Cry for Peace by D. Sharon Pruitt (cc) 

I am fearlessly copying this post from Elizabeth Gilbert's Facebook page as it is relevant to readers who have abandoned Laestadianism. It's long, but worth it. Put your feet up and dig in.

BEWARE OF TRIBAL SHAME

Dear Ones -

OK, my friends — this will be a long post!

In fact, this will be the longest post I’ve ever written here on Facebook — but I also think that perhaps it’s the most important.

I want to share with you some revolutionary new ideas I’ve heard recently about emotional health and wellbeing. I came upon all this information just a few months ago, and I can’t stop thinking about it and talking about it with my friends and family.

This has been some really life-changing stuff for me — some of most life-changing stuff I’ve learned in ages — and I want to tell everyone about it!

It will take a while to explain this theory, but if you have the time…stay with me, OK?

I think you may find it’s worth it.