Happy New Year!

Youth is when you're allowed to stay up late on New Year's Eve. Middle age is when you're forced to.
— Bill Vaughan

Bono - God's Gonna Cut You Down - Johnny Cash

For Today, A Window is Exactly What I Need

Window In The Skies

The shackles are undone
The bullets quit the gun
The heat that’s in the sun
Will keep us when there’s none

The rule has been disproved
The stone it has been moved
The grave is now a groove
All debts are removed

Oh can’t you see what love has done?
Oh can’t you see what love has done?
Oh can’t you see what love has done?
What it’s done to me?

Love makes strange enemies
Makes love where love may please
The soul and its striptease
Hate brought to its knees

The sky over our head
We can reach it from our bed
You let me in your heart
And out of my head, head…

Oh can’t you see what love has done?
Oh can’t you see what love has done?
Oh can’t you see what love has done?
What it’s done to me?

Oh, oh, oh, oh…
Oh, oh, oh, oh…

Please don’t ever let me out of you
I’ve got no shame,
oh no, oh no

Oh can’t you see what love has done?
Oh can’t you see?
Oh can’t you see what love has done?
What it’s doing to me?

I know I hurt you and I made you cry
Did everything but murder you and I
But love left a window in the skies
And to love I rhapsodize

To every broken heart
For every heart that cries
Love left a window in the skies
And to love I rhapsodize

meghan's translation of a rob bell quote:

"The day after Thanksgiving in America, is called Black Friday. Roughly two weeks ago the numbers came in -- they believe Americans spent, on gifts for Christmas, roughly 9 billion dollars.

So we spent, the day after Thanksgiving two weeks ago, a number that would provide water and sanitation for the WHOLE world. "


I am SO glad that we are doing buy nothing christmas.. it doesn't necessarily add to the water and sanitation thing at all but it helps with my own mental sanity.

Songs For Christmas

It's not often that the Sheffs agree on anything -- let alone music -- but Sufjan Stevens is one of a very small club of musicians: the Duhks, the Decemberists and the aforementioned Sufjan. We first heard him of NPR singing about the Lord God Bird (a 1.5 m tall woodpecker) thought to be extinct in the Arkansas backwater. Google this song -- very interesting.

In keeping with the season, I suggest you listen to some of Sufjan Steven's Songs for Christmas.

It makes everything right in the Christmas crazed world.

And helps you avoid the mall.

This man knows of what he sings.....

I Need to Remember this Quote....

maybe you do too....

We are the people we've been waiting for.
- Jim Wallis,
Sojourner Magazine

Interview with Bill McKibben ($100.00 Holiday)

One of the ironies of this business is listening to people say, Oh but if you changed Christmas it would wreck the economy. The idea that our economic success should depend on the corrupted celebration of the birth of someone who told us to give everything we had should lead us to question the rationality of a hyper-consumer economy.
--Bill McKibben

Meghan At Night

Quote(s) of the Day.....

....as stolen directly from Mike Todd:

The Prophetic Imagination

"Empires live by numbness. Empires, in their militarism, expect numbness about the human cost of war. Corporate economies expect blindness to the cost in terms of poverty and exploitation. Governments and societies of domination go to great lengths to keep the numbness intact... Thus compassion that might seem simply as generous goodwill is in fact criticism of the systems, forces, and ideologies that produce the hurt." (p. 88-89)

and...

"Quite clearly, the one thing the dominant culture cannot tolerate or co-opt is compassion, the ability to stand in solidarity with the victims of the present order. It can manage charity and good intentions, but it has no way to resist solidarity with pain or grief." (p. 91)

Mike seems to have shovelled his way to the bookshelf. And I am grateful.

Our Little Emmy....

.....All Grown Up and On MTV

Buy Nothing Day

Quote of the Day....

Even if happiness forgets you a little bit, never completely forget about it.
— Jacques Prévert

Alice Walker Quote....

"I have learned to accept the fact that we risk disappointment, disillusionment, even despair, every time we act. Every time we decide to believe the world can be better. Every time we decide to trust others to be as noble as we think they are. And that there might be years during which our grief is equal to, or even greater than, our hope. The alternative, however, not to act, and therefore to miss experiencing other people at their best, reaching toward their fullness, has never appealed to me."

Quote of the Day.....

Nothing is more difficult, and therefore more precious, than to be able to decide.
— Napoleon Bonaparte

The person who is waiting for something to turn up might start with their shirt sleeves.
— Garth Henrichs

Teamwork divides the task and multiplies the success.
— Anonymous

Quote of the Day....

Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.
-Martin Luther King Jr. (as quoted by Robson Jewitt)

Quote of the Day....

"But I want first of all to be at peace with myself. I want a singleness of eye, a purity of intention, a central core to my life.... to live 'in grace' as much of the time as possible. By grace I mean an inner harmony, essentially spiritual, which can be translated into outward harmony."
Anne Lindbergh

Quote from Waving or Drowning....

We are the people we've been waiting for.

U2 and Green Day -- The Saints Are Coming

Check out what Mike Todd is up to.....

Waving or Drowning?

Passion:

The most beautiful make-up of a woman is passion.
But cosmetics are easier to buy.
— Yves Saint Laurent

Bithday Roses

Folk Singers

It's funny -- just a little bit of hospitality and it makes all the difference in the world to people. Case in point, this 'band' (in the old english sense - not the rock'n'roll sense) were travelling by and honoured us with their presence.

We were already interested in what Catherine MacLellan was doing, and were already cheerleaders by proxy (her dad is Gene), but enjoyed getting to know her friends and fellow muscians.

When you model hospitality -- it's contagious. Our kids have invited travelling bands to stay the night. The stories from those events live on in infamy. You really haven't lived until you see several musicians stumble in at midnight -- tired and bedraggled -- but still sylin' in their tight 'girls' jeans, and "jet black (previously straightened) swept over the eyes hair" -- crash on the floor -- only to wake up bright and early -- found jumping on the trampoline in borrowed house coat (Meg's) and floppy Sponge Bob slippers (Em's)! Check out the band "Blessed by a Broken Heart" for photos of the guys. We show up on the credits for the first album. Just because somebody cared enough to make them pancakes.

The great thing about musicians is they are starving. They may have started the trip vegan, but by the time they land at your place, they will eat anything. Serve quiche, it's the best thing they have ever had. Serve it again at breakfast, and you are Martha. Make muffins from a mix, and you are voted elected to parliament. You really can't lose. Try new recipes. Try old recipes. Try out the stove. They will love you for it.

Turn the porch light on, join couch surfers.org, Tell your pastor to put you on the list for people willing to show hospitality to missionaries passing by -- that you have a pull out couch and make a mean cup of coffee. Trust me, there is no list, but you will start one.

Word gets out that you have the floor space for a mattress. Travellers are dusty and tired. You don't have to be witty and informed. Mostly they just want a quiet place to lie down.

Try it.

Get out there.

Get dirty.

Take risks.

Have somebody over.

Thought for the Day

Love one another and you will be happy. It's as simple and as difficult as that.
— Michael Leunig

A Case in Point....

The real problem of leisure time is how to keep others from using yours.
— Arthur Lacey

L.Bo's Heart Had Wings

As per Lesley's blog comment: she is a singer of rare renown.
Definetly one of my favourites.
In fact, here are my top two on stage together, SVFF 2005.

David Francis Sheffield

Hope is Healthy

He who has health has hope, and he who has hope has everything.
— Arabian proverb

Today's Thot

Those who bring sunshine to the lives of others cannot keep it from themselves.

— J.M. Barrie

Thanksgiving Sunday Family Photos

Autumn Fun

We're big fall people in this family. It could be because some of us have birthdays in October. The kids go out on some kind of adventure for 'autumn fun' -- corn maze, pumpkin patch, apple orchard, and this year -- haunted house. I hear Kate screamed so long and so loud, a security guard came over to ask her if she had ever been through a haunted house before. Her reply, "Yep, every year!"
While they were out scaring themselves silly, the rest of us we recovering from deep fried turkey. All you could ask for an more.

It never hurts to be a bit forgetful...

Happiness often sneaks in through a door you didn't know you left open.
— John Barrymore

Dragon Boating

What a great day. To see people who conquer their fears of the elements and the unknown, and step into a vessel where everyone is equal -- equal abilities/disabilities, equal strength/weakness, equal exhilaration/terror. The uniform united us: the race made us winners.

Pleasure is the flower that passes; remembrance, the lasting perfume.
— Jean de Boufflers

For My Mother

Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.
— Albert Camus

ALL ANIMALS ARE GREAT CREATURES

NAIROBI (AFP) - A baby hippopotamus that survived the tsunami waves on the Kenyan coast has formed a strong bond with a giant male century-old tortoise, in an animal facility in the port city of Mombassa , officials said. The hippopotamus, nicknamed Owen and weighing about 300 kilograms (650 pounds), was swept down Sabaki River into the Indian Ocean, then forced back to shore when tsunami waves struck the Kenyan coast on December 26, before wildlife rangers rescued him.



"It is incredible. A-less-than-a-year-old hippo has adopted a male tortoise, about a century old, and the tortoise seems to be very happy with being a 'mother'," ecologist Paula Kahumbu, who is in charge of Lafarge Park, told AFP.


"After it was swept and lost its mother, the hippo was traumatized. It had to look for something to be a surrogate mother. Fortunately, it landed on the tortoise and established a strong bond. They swim, eat and sleep together," the ecologist added. "The hippo follows the tortoise exactly the way it follows its mother. If somebody approaches the tortoise, the hippo becomes aggressive, as if protecting its biological mother," Kahumbu added.



"The hippo is a young baby, he was left at a very tender age and by nature, hippos are social animals that like to stay with their mothers for four years," he explained.

Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.

This is a real story that shows that our differences don't matter much when we need the comfort of another. We could all learn a lesson from these two creatures of God, "Look beyond the differences and find a way to walk the path together.

My Pond

What a Concept....

"Instead of bringing democracy with cluster bombs, we should support women fighting for democracy."


- Shirin Ebadi, Iranian human rights activist who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003. (Source: Associated Press)

The Sheffield Kids

Touched By An Angel

And now back to reality...

I need to go and stir my green tomato raspberry jam.
Canning season is short and sweet.