Compassion is not something artificial, like telling yourself you are good at something when you’re not, or that you are a ‘good person’ when you don’t feel as if this is true. Compassion naturally flows once the blocks of shame and self criticism are removed.
I certainly consider lethargy, melancholy and intense desires to sleep and to pile on the carbs to be natural parts of the season. I wonder if our ancestors didn’t do exactly that, sleep and eat their way through the winter months. We now have to keep going, keep working, studying, at a constant pace, as if our deep biological rhythms had adjusted to keep up with the society we now live in. Unfortunately, they haven’t.
According to an article in the Observer Food Monthly, happy cows make for better meat. As a life long vegetarian, I am not writing this as an advert for anyone’s meat or a justification for its being ‘produced’ in the first place. But I do think the experiences of farms which do everything to provide a stress-free life and death for their cattle are, as well as a lesser evil, interesting for us humans too…
The “Beguns/Wanderers” are a minor group of the “Old Believers” — Russian Christians who broke off from the Russian Orthodox church in the fifteenth century, believing that the devil had captured the world and that the only way to escape from his power was to keep moving…
JK Rowling’s revelations about the sexuality of the most powerful wizard in the Harry Potter series have made headlines around the world. I have read comments from disappointed parents, complaining that the books ‘promote homosexuality’ — maybe they also promote the ability to fly and the sporting of long grey beards? Others feel forced by the author to discuss sexuality with their children ‘too soon’. But is the fact that Dumbledore is gay really relevant?
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