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Wednesday, May 1, 2024
Via Daily Dharma: People Are Everything
Via Ram Dass - Love Serve Remember Foundation // Words of Wisdom - May 1, 2024 💌
Acting with compassion is not doing good because we think we ought to... It is giving ourselves into what we are doing, and being present in the moment. It is acting from our deepest understanding of what life is and not compromising the truth.
-Ram Dass -
Via White Crane Institute // BELTANE
2022 -
Today is BELTANE. This festival officially begins at moonrise on May Day Eve, and marks the beginning of the third quarter or second half of the ancient Celtic year. It is celebrated as an early pastoral festival accompanying the first turning of the herds out to wild pasture.
The rituals were held to promote fertility. The cattle were driven between the Belfires to protect them from ills. Contact with the fire was interpreted as symbolic contact with the sun. In early Celtic times, the druids kindled the Beltane fires with specific incantations. Later the Christian church took over the Beltane observances, a service was held in the church, followed by a procession to the fields or hills, where the priest kindled the fire. A rowan branch is hung over the house fire on May Day to preserve the fire itself from bewitchment (the house fire being symbolic of the luck of the house).
This is a holiday of Union — both between the Goddess and the God and between man and woman. Handfastings (Pagan marriages) are traditional at this time. It is a time of fertility and harvest, the time for reaping the wealth from the seeds that we have sown. Celebrations include braiding of one's hair (to honour the union of man and woman and Goddess and God), circling the Maypole for fertility and jumping the Beltane fire for luck. Beltane is one of the Major Sabbats of the Wiccan religion.
Those who observe this holiday celebrate sexuality, something seen as holy and intrinsic to humans and they celebrate life and the unity which fosters it. The myths of Beltane state that the young God has blossomed into manhood, and the Goddess takes him on as her lover. Together, they learn the secrets of the sexual and the sensual, and through their union, all life begins.
May Day has long been marked with feasts and rituals. May poles, supremely phallic symbols, were the focal point of old English village rituals. Many people arose at dawn to gather flowers and green branches from the fields and gardens, using them to decorate the village Maypoles. The insertion of the May-pole into the hole in the earth is symbolic of this erotic theme.
The May Queen (and often King) is chosen from among the young people, and they go singing from door to door throughout the town carrying flowers or the May tree, soliciting donations for merrymaking in return for the "blessing of May". This is symbolic of bestowing and sharing of the new creative power that is stirring in the world. As the kids go from door to door, the May Bride often sings to the effect that those who give will get of nature's bounty through the year.
In parts of France, some jilted youth will lie in a field on May Day and pretend to sleep. If any village girl is willing to marry him, she goes and wakes him with a kiss; the pair then goes to the village inn together and lead the dance which announces their engagement. The boy is called "the betrothed of May."
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Gay Wisdom for Daily Living from White Crane Institute
"With the increasing commodification of gay news, views, and culture by powerful corporate interests, having a strong independent voice in our community is all the more important. White Crane is one of the last brave standouts in this bland new world... a triumph over the looming mediocrity of the mainstream Gay world." - Mark Thompson
Exploring Gay Wisdom & Culture since 1989!
www.whitecraneinstitute.org
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Via White Crane Institute //May Day or Workers Day
Noteworthy
1886 -
The start of the general strike which eventually wins the eight-hour workday in the United States. These events are today commemorated as May Day or Workers Day in most industrialized countries. So don't work more than eight hours today! Also...a general strike has a nice ring to it.
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Gay Wisdom for Daily Living from White Crane Institute
"With the increasing commodification of gay news, views, and culture by powerful corporate interests, having a strong independent voice in our community is all the more important. White Crane is one of the last brave standouts in this bland new world... a triumph over the looming mediocrity of the mainstream Gay world." - Mark Thompson
Exploring Gay Wisdom & Culture since 1989!
www.whitecraneinstitute.org
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"With the increasing commodification of gay news, views, and culture by powerful corporate interests, having a strong independent voice in our community is all the more important. White Crane is one of the last brave standouts in this bland new world... a triumph over the looming mediocrity of the mainstream Gay world." - Mark Thompson
Exploring Gay Wisdom & Culture since 1989!
www.whitecraneinstitute.org
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Tuesday, April 30, 2024
Via White Crane Institute // ALICE B. TOKLAS
This Day in Gay History
April 30
Born
1877 -
ALICE B. TOKLAS, American companion of Gertrude Stein (d. 1967); There are any number of stories that can be told about this homely woman, ranging from nasty cracks about her spidery mustache to vicious bon mots about the disfiguring hump on her forehead. But there is really only one Alice B., that one very beautiful indeed, who need concern us here.
Throughout most of her life, this selfless woman’s major occupation was the care and maintenance of Gertrude Stein. She was cook, secretary, manager, nurse and lover, and in return received s love as faithful and intense as any recorded in history of friendship. She was also a highly intelligent woman, whose correspondence reveals her to be a writer and commentator no less brilliant than her more famous partner. She called Gertude “Lovey.” Lovely called her “Pussy.” And they lie together, head to head, in Père Lachaise.
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Gay Wisdom for Daily Living from White Crane Institute
"With the increasing commodification of gay news, views, and culture by powerful corporate interests, having a strong independent voice in our community is all the more important. White Crane is one of the last brave standouts in this bland new world... a triumph over the looming mediocrity of the mainstream Gay world." - Mark Thompson
Exploring Gay Wisdom & Culture since 1989!
www.whitecraneinstitute.org
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Via Dhamma Wheel | Right Intention: Cultivating Appreciative Joy
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Via Daily Dharma: Unpredictability Is an Opportunity
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