Heart disease doesn’t just hit humans. It’s the leading killer among male zoo gorillas, and scientists want to know why. Obesity? Perhaps, but the term has yet to be defined for the primates. Diet? Likely, and Elena Hoellein Less of Cleveland Metroparks Zoo is trying to prove it. As part of a multi-zoo study, she’s been feeding her two gorillas, Bebac and Mokolo, a trial menu meant to mimic the largely vegetarian one eaten in the wild. Heavy on leafy greens, the new diet is also modeled after a heart-healthy human one, says Less. Judging by the 65 pounds each of her charges has shed so far, it’s nothing to take lightly. ~ Catherine Zuckerman (National Geographic, August 2011)
When one soul meets another kindred soul, a great surge of energy rushes through the weaving of the universe as an important connection is made. In the unexplored regions of human consciousness, another light has come on, revealing shared territory. This is the work of dedicated souls on the spiritual path: their individual light illumines the universe for everyone, brings hope, and keeps open the pathway to understanding. This sacred trust is maintained by all who have consecrated their existence to spiritual wisdom; it is a kinship that runs like a golden chain from one age to another. That golden chain comes now into our hands, a sacred trust not only to our ancestors but to our descendants and every inhabitant of the universe. It is our turn to make the next link, trusting that others in turn will complete the circle until the whole cosmos is connected in one bond. ~ Caitlín Matthews (The Celtic Spirit: Daily Meditations for the Turning Year)
Two years ago on this day, Tim and I drove down to Avery Point to see the beauty of a recent snowfall by the water. I was trying to photograph the lighthouse, framed by a tree’s branches and the blanket of snow. After snapping the shot I looked on the view screen and gasped in surprise! While I had seen orbs in the photos of others before, and was curious about the phenomena, this was the first time orbs had appeared in one of my own photos! And there were so many of them!
As a person who has in the past often gotten myself into trouble by insisting on absolute answers to all questions, this marked one of the first times I was content to accept a gift of mystery and magic from the universe without demanding an explanation, satisfied to embrace not knowing. My intuition has some ideas but I’m not clinging to any particular theory, scientific or mystical.
If you have any orb pictures you’d like to share, please let me know. Perhaps I will post them here on my blog, or link to them on your blog. I have since had a few more pictures with orbs in them, though none as spectacular as this first one!
Men love to wonder, and that is the seed of our science. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson (Society & Solitude)
The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not “Eureka!” (I found it!) but “That’s funny….” ~ Isaac Asimov (The Stuff of Thought: Language As a Window into Human Nature)
Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances for survival of life on earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet. ~ Albert Einstein (Please Don’t Eat the Animals: All the Reasons You Need to Be a Vegetarian)
In my last post I described the part of my journey from eating animals to only eating animals that were humanely raised and slaughtered. Still, even after seeing EARTHLINGS, and thinking I was doing enough, my intuition was telling me that this was not the end of the story. So I starting searching at Amazon.com and settled on a book called Please Don’t Eat the Animals: All the Reasons You Need to Be a Vegetarian by Jennifer Horsman & Jaime Flowers. It is available on Kindle so I got it within moments and read the book in record time, neglecting my blog-mates and many of my chores in the process.
Hundreds upon hundreds of scientific articles from around the world demonstrate that a healthy vegetarian diet is the single most powerful thing individuals can do to promote, protect, or improve their health. ~ Jennifer Horsman & Jaime Flowers (Please Don’t Eat the Animals: All the Reasons You Need to Be a Vegetarian)
There it was, right in the first chapter. As many of my readers know, my husband survived a heart attack and had triple-by-pass surgery four years ago, and we are both taking a host of drugs to deal with hypertension and high cholesterol. Also I’m being treated for osteomalacia and migraine. Trying to keep on a low-fat, low-cholesterol diet isn’t helping those stubbornly high numbers to come down. But not one doctor has ever suggested a plant-based diet to either of us, in spite of countless scientific studies indicating that this would be the best route to a healthy lifestyle.
I don’t understand why asking people to eat a well-balanced vegetarian diet is considered drastic, while it is medically conservative to cut people open and put them on powerful cholesterol-lowering drugs for the rest of their lives. ~ Dr. Dean Ornish (Reversing Heart Disease)
I am so excited about possibly getting off all of these expensive drugs! Apparently eating even humanely raised animals is not good for us! I used to believe that since the animals ate each other nature was teaching us that it was perfectly natural to eat them. The circle of life. But while some animals are predators, there are many others who are not. The following information came as an enlightening surprise to me:
While humans can digest flesh, and it is likely that our ancestors did consume small amounts of meat infrequently, our anatomy much more strongly resembles that of plant-eating creatures. Like all plant eaters the human colon is long and complex, and our intestines are ten to eleven times longer than our bodies. Meat eaters have a short and simple colon, and in order that putrid meats pass quickly through their bodies, their intestines are only three to six times longer than their bodies. Human saliva contains digestive enzymes; meat eaters’ saliva does not. Our teeth resemble those of other plant eaters, with short and blunt canines, as opposed to long, sharp, and curved canines of the big meat eaters. Additionally, the meat our evolutionary ancestors consumed was wild game, which has less fat content than our modern domesticated meats. ~ Jennifer Horsman & Jaime Flowers (Please Don’t Eat the Animals: All the Reasons You Need to Be a Vegetarian)
Once again science and spirit come together in my life. As I shared the results of the scientific studies mentioned in the book with Tim, he seemed to be open to the idea of trying a vegan diet. And then came the next question, “What’s for dinner?”
This book, to the left, has nothing to do with having pigs for dinner, but is a heartwarming true story about a very special pig. It is called The Good Good Pig: The Extraordinary Life of Christopher Hogwood by Sy Montgomery. Christopher Hogwood was a wise old soul, a teacher to everyone in the community who melted under his spell. He was a good good pig! I hope you will read it if you haven’t already!
Science is not meant to cure us of mystery, but to reinvent and reinvigorate it. … I love science, and it pains me to think that so many are terrified of the subject or feel that choosing science means you cannot also choose compassion, or the arts, or be awed by nature. ~ Robert Sapolsky (Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers)
There is a new science of complexity which says that the link between cause and effect is increasingly difficult to trace; that change (planned or otherwise) unfolds in non-linear ways; that paradoxes and contradictions abound; and that creative solutions arise out of diversity, uncertainty and chaos. ~ Andy Hargreaves & Michael Fullan (What’s Worth Fighting for Out There?)
Science tends more and more to reveal to us the unity that underlies the diversity of nature. We must have diversity in our practical lives; we must seize Nature by many handles. But our intellectual lives demand unity, demand simplicity amid all this complexity. Our religious lives demand the same. Amid all the diversity of creeds and sects we are coming more and more to see that religion is one, that verbal differences and ceremonies are unimportant, and that the fundamental agreements are alone significant. Religion as a key or passport to some other world has had its day; as a mere set of statements or dogmas about the Infinite mystery it has had its day. Science makes us more and more at home in this world, and is coming more and more, to the intuitional mind, to have a religious value. Science kills credulity and superstition but to the well-balanced mind it enhances the feeling of wonder, of veneration, and of kinship which we feel in the presence of the marvelous universe. It quiets our fears and apprehensions, it pours oil upon the troubled waters of our lives, and reconciles us to the world as it is. ~ John Burroughs (Accepting the Universe)
There are children playing in the street who could solve some of my top problems in physics, because they have modes of sensory perception that I lost long ago. ~ J. Robert Oppenheimer (Pearls of Wisdom)
I don’t want to sound too cosmic or anything… but I think that music is a spiritual experience. … Music is true. An octave is a mathematical reality. So is a 5th. So is a major 7th cord. And I have the feeling that these have emotional meanings to us, not only because we’re taught that a major 7th is warm and fuzzy and a diminished is sort of threatening and dark, but also because they actually do have these meanings. It’s almost like it’s a language that’s not a matter of our choosing. It’s a truth. The laws of physics apply to music, and music follows that. So it really lifts us out of this subjective, opinionated human position and drops us into the cosmic picture just like that. ~ James Taylor (Performing Songwriter, May 2002)
