A Beautiful Day

Well, it's been a lovaly Mother's Day. My mother and I went to a Standing Women event at a local park. If you don't know, Standing Women is a movement where women (and men) get toegether to stand to bring attention to the issue of creating a safe future for the world's children.

Including me, there were five women at the park, only one of which had participated last year. She came and read the Standing Women's reason for standing and an amazing speech called "Mother's Day Proclamation." written in 1870 by Julia Ward Howe, it calls for women to come together. Here's an exerpt, but you can go to http://www.peace.ca/mothersdayproclamation.htm for the full reading:

We women of one country will be too tender of those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs. From the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with our own.It says "Disarm, Disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance of justice."

In the name of womanhood and of humanity, I earnestly ask that a general congress of women without limit of nationality may be appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient and at the earliest period consistent with its objects, to promote the alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement of international questions, the great and general interests of peace.

Wow, huh? It was so relavent to today that it just blew me away.

And then, after all that serious talk of war and peace, and children and mothers, we noticed this on the pavement below our feet. You can just barely see it, but someone had scribbled the words "Your mom's HOT!!" I have to say, it gave me a fit of giggles.

Spirit Women taking off

The women's spiritual activism group (a millionth circle group) my mother started is growing slowly, but surely. We've had more people show up at each meeting, and this month's meeting was a good one. We had fun with the roles of both sound and silence in a spiritual practice, and came up with some great ideas about how we can make a difference in the community as a group. I'm getting really excited about it and am planning to participate in it more and more. One of the members mentioned the Standing Women movement. It's women (and men) who stand in silence for five minutes to help bring awareness to the goals of creating a safe world for our children. It's happening May 11th, at 1pm local time all over the globe. Because of conflicting schedules we didn't decide to meet as a group, but there are women standing in the Dallas area. You can check it out at standingwomen.org. I'm going to be in a continuing education class that day, so I'm going to e-mail the school and let them know about it. Maybe the class would like to participate!

If you are interested in attending a Spirit Women circle, please let me know. We had to move the meeting day and place for May. We are meeting at a member's office and she asked me not to post it online. I think we'll be back at the Spiritual Fitness Center in June, but I'll definitely post any changes here and on out website: spiritwomen.bravehost.com.