Truthful words are not beautiful.

Truthful words are not beautiful.
Beautiful words are not truthful.
Good men do not argue.
Those who argue are not good.
Those who know are not learned.
The learned do not know.
The sage never tries to store things up.
the more he does for others, the more he has.
The more he gives to others, the greater his abundance
The Tao of heaven is pointed but does no harm.
The Tao of the sage is work without effort.

Tao Te Ching, Chapter 81
as translated by Gia-Fu Feng and Jane English

Little Tao for the BDay

Knowing others is wisdom;
Knowing the self is enlightenment.
Mastering others requires force;
Mastering the self needs strenght.
He who knows he has enough is rich.
Perseverance is a sign of willpower.
He who stays where he is endures.
To die but not to perish is to be eternally present.

Tao Te Ching, Chapter 33
as translated by Gia-Fu Feng and Jane English

More on Water..

The highest good is like water.
Water gives life to ten thousand things and does not strive.
It flows into places men reject and so is like the Tao.
In dwelling, be close to the land.
In meditation, go deep in the heart.
In dealing with others, be gentle and kind.
In speech, be true.
In ruling, be just.
In business, be competent.
In action, watch the timing.
No Fight: No Blame

Tao Te Ching, Chatper 8
translated by Gia-fu Feng and Jane English


Under heaven nothing is more soft and yielding than water.
Yet for attacking the solid and strong, nothing is better;
It has no equal.
The weak can overcome the strong;
The supple can overcome the stiff.
Under heaven everyone knows this,
Yet no one puts it into practice.
Therefore the sage says:
He who takes upon himself the humiliation of the people
is fit to rule them.
He who takes upon himself the country's disasters deserves
to be king of the universe.
The truth often seems paradoxical.

Tao Te Ching, Chapter 78
translated by Gia-fu Feng and Jane English

Water

Every day I must remind myself how important it is to my goals in life that I am more like water. Especially as I embark upon my journey into the desert.

A New Community

Over the Memorial day weekend, I was able to attend a conference for the Krista Foundation which I've mentioned a little bit in my earlier blogs. Going into the situation, I was completely unaware of what to expect from this weekend and with my leaving so soon I almost viewed it as a burden which was taking away one of my few remaining weekends to connect with my family and friends in the short time before I leave for Africa. But, they were giving me a check for $1000 so who was I to say no? Well, it turns out that by the end of the weekend I hadn't thought about the grant at all and money was the least of things I had gained from my weekend.

What I ended up finding was a whole community of people who in a short time have become sincere, dear and lifelong friends. I'm lucky to have found a budding community already in connecting with many of the other people who I will be serving along with in Mauritania. But, in the Krista Foundation community I have found a group of people who will be able to help me along in my personal spiritual journey through the Peace Corps. Already, I know that finding this community will help to both enrich my service experience and, I believe, enrich me in my ability to better serve the community into which I'm entering.

One of the things we were told by this amazing story teller who was the guest speaker at our conference is that in some cultures, God is viewed as a spider who spins the webs that connect and hold the universe together. If that is true, then surely this universal spinner has touched my life, once again, connecting me with far reaching webs to other people, communities and experiences all across the world. The speaker also at one point had us all close our eyes and envision in 4 or 5 words the world we wanted to live in. The world we wished could exist on this Earth. When I closed my eyes I heard and saw, "There will be food (Of Course! my first thought!), music, laughter and dance! Looking back on the weekend and the community, that is exactly how I would describe it. This weekend was one of those serendipitous moments which marks a distinct change in a persons life that will shape the rest of the years to come and I am full of gratitude for that.

Mauritanian Bloggers!

So while looking through some of the google news stories that are automatically sent to me on Mauritania I saw one on Ahmad Ould Islam (by the way, I'm pretty sure that's everyone's name in Mauritania because it seems like every person I read about has a name that looks and sounds just like that, yes I know that's culturally insensitive of me but it's honest at the moment and I'm not there yet!). Ahmad is the founder of the Mauritanian Bloggers Union. Pretty cool right? Well I think it's pretty cool and appropriate to post on my blog

So here's the story

Here's the link to his blog (in Arabic)

And here's the link to his blog (translated by google)

Remember as always dear friends, Keep the Peace and Spread the Love

Over priced decor for my concrete hut?

Here's my new computer for Africa i just got to day. Who's willing to take bets that my final site placement after training won't have electricity let alone internet access?

French...

So, now that I'm less than a month away from Africa, my French is no where near as good as I hoped it would be. We get free access to Rosetta Stone and we're supposed to use it for 40 hours and I guess there's no particular profiecency we are supposed to reach since we all start at different levels... but for anyone else going through Rosetta stone I'm at like 31 hours so close to my forty but I'm only at like Unit 4, assignment 31... which means I've done a bit but I still can't really speak any French! Probably understand a good portion of it, slowly with hand gestures. If only life were like the Matrix and you could download it into your head... I think I'm just going to communitcate with winks, nods, making my hands into the pointing/gun shape and wiggling it around making a Fonzi face and other kinds of gestures you might see the two brothers from a Night at the Roxbury making. That should be good enough til I learn the French and other language(s) right?

Clear..

Got my dental clearance. All my little duckies are in a row now. Of course, they are swimming to the Sahara desert.. but at least they're all in a row!

More Exciting News..

Okay, so it's basically the same story that keeps getting played again and again and again. The repetition dulls you to it right?

http://allafrica.com/stories/200805191635.html

Hey hey hey, looks like i got my staging kit even with the dental hold. Awesome. On to africa!

and the Beat goes on?

Well, I finally got all my dental stuff done and I'm sending it off today. Hopefully it's all done-done cause everyone else is getting their staging kits and now I'm a lil behind!

Final Countdown...

Yeah, so it's officially like one month til I depart for Atlanta from where I'll depart to Africa. Other people in my group are getting their staging kits, unfortunately I haven't gotten all my dental stuff in yet so it might be like a week or so before I get mine.. The closer it gets to going the less real the whole thing seems.. exciting.

No one to blame but myself..

HA HA.. read this article. I guess if I get killed in a food riot then it's my own damn fault!

I'll miss you in africa wonka bar.

Three Things...

So, I was doing this dumb MySpace survey and one of the questions was, what are three things you can't live without? and I realized that any three things I could think of are in fact things I'm going to be living without or living without a certainty of access to them for the next two years... CRAZY.

I just got my solio solar charger for cell phones and other small electric devices like mp3 players... Yeah... It's basically the coolest thing ever. Look at of charging my cell phone right now. I'm a big liberal but i don't know that i really believed that solar energy really worked like magic... But look! I'm so amazed and so unhappy with my government yet again for not investing more in this.

Optimism...

I just realized when reading an article in an old Time magazine that one of the many 'benefits' of living in conditions where the average temp us over 100 degrees is that you can do Bikram yoga outside!

Mr. Forester goes to D.C.

So, it's the last night of my trip to D.C. to visit family before I leave for two years. I got to do lots of cool things including talking to one of my states congressmen to convince him that it's time to go for Obama and stop this silly uncommitted thing... and lots of other great things.. but most of my time was occupied by helping to be a facilitator at this conference for an organization my cousin works for, Tellin' Stories... it's a program that helps to get parent and community involvement to improve schools and education. Anyways.. it was an awesome program to work for and I got to learn a lot of wonderful techniques and approaches that I might be able to use and adapt for my experience in Africa. Of course, I might not be able to use any of it, can't start looking for solutions and answers for a community that I haven't entered yet.. but participating in this three day conference it got me excited about being an educator for the next two years. YAY. That's all.

More mobile blogging and some mula.

So i'm playing with this mobile blogging again and It's easier to do with a picture from my phone. Anyways, i just got invited to participate with the Krista Foundation which involves a grant of $1000. So That's cool.