We Are One: 10% increase

We Are One: 10% increase
Excerpt:
I remember an airplane pilot sharing how a plane became lost...the problem was  a 1 degree difference at the start of the flight.  Changing a flight pattern by 1 degree won't seem much 10 miles later but 500 miles later it can land you in totally different city.  Another example that helped me see what it takes to change my life is changing the direction of an oil tanker.  Found this at Yahoo: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070604081339AAkf0rL

The immense size of these ships, as well as the heavy loads they carry, mean that each supertanker has enormous inertia.

A crash stop maneuver (from 'full ahead' to 'full reverse') can stop a fully loaded supertanker within approximately three kilometres, which takes about 14 minutes.
The turning diameter is almost two kilometres.
(These values vary according to ship size and weight, of course).

 Changing a lifetime of thinking takes time with setbacks and obstacles to impede my progress.  In this day and age of instant on, instant breakfast, and high speed everything taking time seems like there must be something wrong.  I like to think about the cathederal in Rome that I saw with a mosaic dome that took hundreds of years to complete.  A masterpiece takes time and is completed just a bit at a time.  
http://www.rome.info/pictures/vatican/images/chapel.jpg

10% at a time gets me where I need to be...I just need to be patient with myself.

War Poetry: Rudyard Kipling: 'The Changelings'

War Poetry: Rudyard Kipling: 'The Changelings'
Excerpt:
Kipling's poem, 'The Changelings'.

The Changelings

Or ever the battered liners sank
   With their passengers to the dark,
I was head of a Walworth Bank,
   And you were a grocer's clerk.

I was a dealer in stocks and shares,
   And you in butters and teas,
And we both abandoned our own affairs
   And took to the dreadful seas.

Wet and worry about our ways---
   Panic, onset, and flight---
Had us in charge for a thousand days
   And a thousand-year-long night.

We saw more than the nights could hide---
   More than the waves could keep---
And---certain faces over the side
   Which do not go from our sleep.

We were more tired than words can tell
   While the pied craft fled by,
And the swinging mounds of the Western swell
   Hoisted us Heavens-high...

Now there is nothing---not even our rank---
   To witness what we have been;
And I am returned to my Walworth bank,
   And you to your margarine!
This is light verse of the darkest kind. Its rhythms are a variation on the ballad stanza --- four beats followed by three --- but their jauntiness disguises intimate dangers. How easy to read that final line as a joking pay-off, as if the speaker were to be believed that the horrors of war can be pushed away and a banal diurnal career resumed. Everything in the poem resists that paraphrasable meaning. Even the final exclamation mark manages to betray anxiety.

During the Boer War, Kipling had written of the difficulties faced by soldiers returning to civilian life. The irregulars come home to a petty, prissy nation, with its ''ouses both sides of the street'. In this context, there can be nothing pettier than a career in 'margarine'. For all that the banker and grocer are traumatised by memory of---a horrible euphemism---'more than the waves could keep', they continue to hanker for 'what they have been'. As the poem title reminds us, they have changed and cannot go back to their previous lives. Could it be that the trauma of naval warfare is outstripped by the greater trauma of trying to resume the trite rigmarole of civilian existence? 

Gentleness

Lest we forget.  

                
"For in the way you judge, you will be judged; and by your standard of measure, it will be measured to you."

                           ~Matt. 7:2

Brethren, even if anyone is caught in any trespass, you who are spiritual, restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness; each one looking to yourself, so that you too will not be tempted.   Gal. 6:1

Sufficient for such a one is this punishment which was inflicted by the majority,

so that on the contrary you should rather forgive and comfort him, otherwise such a one might be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow.

Wherefore I urge you to reaffirm your love for him.  2 Cor. 2:6,7,8

Who can discern his errors? Acquit me of hidden faults.  Ps. 19:12

We Are One: Who's the Judge?

We Are One: Who's the Judge?
Excerpt:

Identify the Judge

Like many abuse survivors I have this hideous horrible tape that plays in my head.  Part of counseling is confronting where this negativity comes from.  How did I came to have such a poor self image?  When my DH suggested it was my mother, I denied it angrily.  No way...not my mother.  Then KavinCoach said the same thing, I started to doubt what I thought I knew.  Then I watched my mother in action with someone else....kind of a fly on the wall distorted reality when all the pieces come together.  I understood.  Every compliment contained an insult.  Ever insult carried a barb...becoming healthy, I identified my judge.  I recognized how I internalized the never ending lists of how to correct me into the person she wanted.  Nobody warned me that the most devastating part of counseling was the total collaspe of the house of lies and distortions that was my childhood.   My happy childhood vanished under the onslaught of truth.  The truth denied me when I was a child.  I remember telling.  I remember questioning.  I remember not understanding...

Las Vegas hospital gives mentally ill patients one-way Greyhound tickets out of town - Yahoo! News

Las Vegas hospital gives mentally ill patients one-way Greyhound tickets out of town - Yahoo! News

Stuck On Wide Open: Emotional Dysregulation - Stresshacker | Stresshacker

Stuck On Wide Open: Emotional Dysregulation - Stresshacker | Stresshacker
Excerpt:

Disorders of Emotional Dysregulation

PTSD, or posttraumatic stress disorder, is characterized by very significant emotional dysregulation. Its sufferers experience unwarranted arousal—often caused by stimuli processed outside of conscious awareness—and exhibit an exaggerated startle response, vivid intrusive thoughts, and flashbacks and nightmares related to past traumatic events. PTSD victims may frantically try to avoid physical or psychological reminders of their trauma, and may experience dissociative symptoms or emotional numbing. PTSD is a disorder of emotional dysregulation characterized by excessive fear, triggered by a severe and often life-threatening traumatic event.
Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is characterized by emotional dysregulation, the temporary but frequent inability to change or regulate emotional cues, experiences, actions, verbal responses, and nonverbal expressions. Individuals with BPD experience greater emotional sensitivity, greater emotional reactivity, and slower return to normal levels of arousal after intense stimulation.
Frontal lobe disorders, which have become rather common among combat survivors, are the product of traumatic brain injury and are characterized by emotional dysregulation, attention deficit, impulsivity, lack of inhibition,  poor insight, impaired judgment, and low motivation. These frontal-subcortical disorders can result not only from war zone trauma, but also from infection, cancer, stroke, and neurodegenerative disease. Explosive violence, often directed at family members, is a common occurrence, particularly in individuals in whom impulsivity, disinhibition, and emotional dysregulation are the most dominant features.
Finally, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is characterized by emotional as well as cognitive dysregulation, brought on by a disruption of both the “thinking” prefrontal and the “feeling” paralimbic networks.
In these and other disorders that feature emotional dysregulation, it is interesting to note that the anatomic structures that are affected have emotional as well as cognitive functions.

Hospitals Exchange BBQ, Pizza After Disasters in Boston and West, Texas | ABC News - Yahoo!

Hospitals Exchange BBQ, Pizza After Disasters in Boston and West, Texas | ABC News - Yahoo!
Excerpt:

It all started when Dr. Chris Kabrhel, an emergency room physician at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, sent pizza to the Hillcrest Hospital staff members in Waco, Texas, to thank them for their hard work after the fertilizer plant explosion that killed 14 people and injured hundreds of others 20 miles away in West, Texas.

Kabrhel sent the pizza to Texas Friday night even though his own hospital had received 29 Boston marathon bombing victims earlier in the week and were working with a smaller staff Friday because of the citywide lockdown that continued till the early evening...

Poems by Wendell Berry | Paying Attention To The Sky

Poems by Wendell Berry | Paying Attention To The Sky
Excerpt:
he Real Work
It may be that when we no longer know what to do
we have come to our real work,
and that when we no longer know which way to go
we have come to our real journey.
The mind that is not baffled is not employed.
The impeded stream is the one that sings.
The Peace Of Wild Things
When despair grows in me
and I wake in the middle of the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting for their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Warsaw marks 70 years since uprising in ghetto - Yahoo! News

Warsaw marks 70 years since uprising in ghetto - Yahoo! News
 Excerpt:

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Sirens wailed and church bells tolled in Warsaw as largely Roman Catholic Poland paid homage Friday to the Jewish fighters who rose up 70 years ago against German Nazi forces in the Warsaw ghetto uprising.

The mournful sounds marked the start of state ceremonies that were led by Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski at the iconic Monument to the Ghetto Heroes. The president was joined by officials from Poland, Israel and beyond as well as a survivor of the fighting, Simha Rotem, to honor the first large-scale rebellion against the Germans during World War II.

About 750 Jews with few arms and no military training attacked a much larger and well-equipped German force that was about to send the remaining residents of the ghetto to death camps. The revolt was crushed the following month, and the ghetto was razed to the ground, most of its residents killed...

We Are One: Body guard?

We Are One: Body guard?
Excerpt:
This is one of the best short versions I have read about the "amygdala-hijack."  Before counseling I had no name for this reaction...

 Another link about this[pdf]

First Known When Lost: "Edward Thomas In Heaven"

First Known When Lost: "Edward Thomas In Heaven"

Church: Pastor Rick Warren's son commits suicide - Yahoo! News

Church: Pastor Rick Warren's son commits suicide - Yahoo! News
Excerpt: 
LAKE FOREST, Calif. (AP) — The 27-year-old son of popular evangelical Pastor Rick Warren has committed suicide at his Southern California home, Warren's church and authorities said on Saturday.

Matthew Warren struggled with mental illness, deep depression and suicidal thoughts throughout his life, Saddleback Valley Community Church said in a statement. His body was found in his Mission Viejo home Friday night, said Allison O'Neal, a supervising deputy coroner for Orange County. She declined to release the cause and manner of death pending an autopsy of the young man.

"Despite the best health care available, this was an illness that was never fully controlled and the emotional pain resulted in his decision to take his life," the church statement said...
=======================
We are so much deeper psychologically, emotionally and spiritually and we need to respect this.
"The mind of man is very deep" the psalmist says.

We Are One: PTSD not just for soldiers

We Are One: PTSD not just for soldiers
Excerpt:
I was never a soldier...I admire their courage.  I do however meet the criteria.   PTSD a brief history and criteria are at this link:

http://www.ptsd.va.gov/professional/pages/ptsd-overview.asp

Raising awareness for those that have PTSD and encouragement for answers is one of my goals to this blog.  One of the post on facebook was a list of things to say and not say to a Vet.  I would like to modify it a little to what not say to a Child abuse survivor:..

We Are One: Crash-Boom-Splat

We Are One: Crash-Boom-Splat
Excerpt:
Every morning I jump out of bed and step on a landmine. The landmine is me. After the explosion, I spent the rest of the day putting the pieces together.
Ray Bradbury 
I was on a hunt for a particular quote and this one came up under the search.  I think that was my biggest shock after integration.  I still go crash-boom-splat.  Takes me a few days to even figure out what blew me up.  I was suspecting what was wrong and my sister's blog....

Happy Catholic*: Well Said: No Time for Being

Happy Catholic*: Well Said: No Time for Being

We Are One: Mud Bogs

We Are One: Mud Bogs