Mothers Do It Every Day...They Make The Impossible Happen! Fact:  In 2003, the Jakarta Post reported that the maternal mortality rate in Indonesia is 373 per 100,000 births. This number reflects the number of MOTHERS who die in childbirth in Bali annually. To bring that fact closer to home and heart, in the U.S. that number is 12 per 100,000. Tsunami to Terrorism, Balinese Culture Crippled: Rising Malnutrition: In 2002 and 2005, following the devistation of the Tsunami in Indonesia, terrorist bombings in Bali lead to the collapse of the tourist industry, resulting in economic devastation, mass poverty, and malnutrition on the island.  As a result, poorer families cannot afford to go to a hospital for birthing, so they have their babies at home. This is usually a safe alternative for birthing a baby, however when mothers are malnourished and they give birth, there’s a far greater chance that they will tear, and without proper medical attention, the mother can bleed to death, which explains the high maternal mortality rate in Bali today. Hope Exisits For Mothers in Bali! In 1999 Midwife Robin Lim set up a free birth clinic for women to come and receive prenatal care, as well as to give birth in a safe, compassionate environment. To learn more, please visit the website of Yayasan Bumi Sehat (www.BumiSehatBali.org).  Bumi Sehat started out helping 50 mothers per year have a safe place to birth their baby. In 2007, the number of births jumped to 600, and projections are 750 to 800 births in 2008 with the same number of staff and facilities.  Based on the numbers of women that come for prenatal visits every week, 2008 has already stressed the facilities at Bumi Sehat beyond maximum capacity, causing the Indonesian Department of Health to threaten to close the clinic because it is over capacity. Additionall, the Balinese equivallent of "Medicare" has been discontinued in Bali, and people simply have no resouce for care. Bumi Sehat is a FREE Clinic, giving care to mothers in need and now Bumi Sehat is in need. The Solution is as simple as one dollar!  If each mother who hears or reads this story gives $1.00, then passes it on to all the mothers they know, and THEY each give $1.00 then those pass it along to all the mothers THEY know, you begin to get the picture!  Bumi Sehat could receive the gift of A Million Mothers, together making a miracle, one dollar and mother at a time. This gift will fund the construction of the desperately needed new birth clinic for women and their families in Bali, Indonesia. 100% Goes Directly To New Bumi Sehat Clinic, Bali 100% of every dollar sent, will directly go to funing the purchase of land, and of new clinic, and buying a much needed ambulance. There are two ways to donate: Put one dollar, or a check payable to Sakthi Foundation (a tax exempt 501(c) 3 U.S. charitable organization), and mail to: Katherine Bramhall , 25 Colby St, Barre, VT 05641 USA (preferred method). Please note on check, dedonation to "Bumi Sehat." Make a donation by credit card or Paypal by going to http://www.sakthifoundation.org/mother.htm  and follow instructions for designating the donation to Yayasan Bumi Sehat. (Specify that this goes directly to the clinic fund.) **NOTE: Paypal costs $.30 or 3% of your donation. So sending a check is preferrable when sending $1.00. Join my heart and turn it into A Million Mothers hearts, manifesting safe, and proper care for mothers and babies in Bali! One Million Mothers can create a miracle! Contact me directly, if you can help me spread this word to a million more mothers! Thanks A Million! Katherine Bramhall Katherine@Gentlelanding.com

 

 

 

Marking the passage of time day-by-day, scratching days off the calendar, filling-up the months that calculate a year and measure everything from age to rates of return, is an addiction I for one can’t seem to shake any more than our society can shake it’s addiction to oil. I’ve resolved in the past to get clean-and-sober but each time I attempt to live as if time were indeed illusion, and this moment were my only opportunity to fully live, the calendar seduces me down from the wagon, like a charismatic politician promising radical change, and before I know it I’m buying a nice new calendar, upgrading computer software, and chanting passionately, “VIVA La Planning–VIVA La Organization!”

Like each New Year before nothing has changed. I’m pacing like a twitching junkie, sweaty palms and all, with each pass of my office door jonsin’ to organize, and beat time at its game this year!

I consulted with my Inner Sponsor before loading the new software on my hard drive, and like Queen Latifa-come-Martha Stewart, she goes: “step away from the computer, and throw a dinner party”.

I checked my obsessive-compulsive desire to organize for the moment, and invited a small group of beloved friends to dinner. Like nothing else can, my friends and loved ones remind me of what matters most: how to play, love, and pray. With these dear faces gathered around me at a table screaming abundance while so many people go without, my year-end manic need to “get-my-game-on” was bitch slapped by gratitude with a capital G. Each of their faces represents to me a fantastic story marked by colossal talent, heroic practice, sensational successes, fabulous failures, heartbreaking losses and sweet forgiveness. Our shared humanity is like a healing balm on the wounds of my road-warrior life, a suffocating need in me to be perfect and for the moment, strengthens my resolve to face whatever lies ahead in the New Year with authenticity, and not some whompped-up should or shouldn’t my mind habitually asserts this time of year.

As for my New Years resolution: I resolve to remember to remember my resolve to:

• Eat even more probiotics and probotic foods every day.
• Maintain a sugar-free–coffee free diet without being irritatingly militant.
• Remember gratitude.
• Play more.
• Breathe when I feel the urge to smack someone like President Bush for example.
• Pray more.
• Honor my teachers through a life of practicing what they teach

Cheers!
Tarini

P.S.
Check out the link on Blueprint Magazines’ 50 best reasons to make & break resolutions. Note #28: New Chapter Every Woman, oganic probiotic nutrients! VIVA La Probiotics!

Holidays are loaded for me for a number of reason, but one reason is that they come on the heals of a twelve-month triathalon. I imagine myself arriving at the finish line on December 31st, after doing the Iron Man; sweaty, exhausted, doubled-over and heaving, my body naturally want's to collapes or vomit (or both), and promptly take a trip to Figi. I wish I did'nt feel like this cus the feeling triggers the reminder; the New Year is here, and it is drumming it's fingers waiting for me to get with it. "Alright!, I'm coming- give me a chance to guzzle this disgusting elecorlite energy drink, and change these tread-bear jogging shoes wudd-ya.Gall!" Figi prompltly gets put on the "to do" list, along with the laundry. So much of our life is measured in time increments; four measly weeks turn into a month, and a month only happens twelve times-a-year. And, before I know it, I am compartmentalizing my life in these illusory chunks, skipping magical, potential-filled, singular moments of clear seeing with every chunk. This "New Year" I'm resolved to do nothing heroic or waisteline related (although even uttering this feels sacreligious), but rather, to simply observe the nature of mind more, and well-do a little more yoga too. Oh, yeah, easy for me to say! I took my dilema to a dear friend, asking of him any words of wisdom on the subject of what I might want to remember this year, "...read the book, What Makes You Not a Buddhist," he replied. I've started the book, and while its narrow binding would give one the impression of nothing-much-to-it, it offers a big bang for the buck. Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse, a Buddhist monk, and fimmaker, delivers a clear, and simple message, one of remembeing all our beleifs, conclusions, dogma's, fierce oppinions, rights & wrongs, shoulds & shouldn'ts, meanings, are just constructs; constructs that we built, and can (and will) be de-constructed in time. Beliefs of made-up-stuff we build a "me" around, and over time, solidify as we put more weight into these assembled conclusions, and we conveniently forget every-thing comes, and goes, and "I" am part this ever-shifting tide of changing phenomenon. My New Year mantra: Be present. Have mercy on myself when I am not. Kindness is timeless. Intend to remember no-thing is permanent, including me, my wasteline, and time. Cheers! Tarini

The following letter from Coleman Barks written to President Bush back in 2003, urging him to consider "another way" besides war as the best practice for "installing democracy" in Iraq, is ever-more timely a plea today three years later, and quite possibly some of the best ideas I've heard lately! Leave it to Coleman Barks to say-it-like-it-is, with words that invite Mr. Bush to return to intrisic dignity, and nobility: qualities true of all human beings, yet we lose sight of these in our self-obsession, greed, and need for power. Not one of us is exempt from these less-than-noble human behaviors, and so it is with this humbling recognition that I post this letter, not as a finger pointed in blame (as I am want to do), but as a reminder of how I would desire to behave when the "angels of my lesser nature," as Abraham Lincoln once said, have taken wing in me. Thanks mom for sending this, and thank you Coleman Barks for your ever-real "translation:" your words conjur images that bypass the intelect, and speak a language known only to the heart. With the media serving a steady diet of fear, and images of terror, I am thrilled to hold Mr. Barks images which remind me magic lives in every moment, at any intersection. What better time than the New Year to change the channel, remember our dignity, and nobility, and return to the heart! Happy New Year! Tarini From Coleman Barks, the translator of Rumi, to President Bush: Just This Once President Bush, before you order air strikes, imagine the first cruise missile as a direct hit on your closest friend. That might be Laura. Then twenty-five other family and friends. There are no survivors. Now imagine some other way to do it. Quadruple the inspectors, or put a thousand and one U.N. people in. Then call for peace activists to volunteer to go to Iraq for two weeks each. Flood that country with well-meaning tourists, people curious about the land that produced the great saints, Gilani, Hallaj, and Rabia. Set up hostels near those tombs. Encourage peace people to spend a bunch of money in shops, to bring rugs home and samovars by the bushel. Send an Arabic translator with every four peace activists. The U.S. government will pay for the translators and for building and staffing the hostels, one hostel for every twenty activists and five translators. The hostels are state of the art, and they belong to the Iraqis at the end of this experiment. Jimmy Carter, Nelson Mandela, and my friend, Jonathan Granoff at the U.N., will be the core organization team. No one knows what might come of this. Maybe nothing, or maybe it would convince some Iraqis and some of the world that we really do not wish to kill anybody, and that we truly are not out to appropriate oil reserves. We're working on building a hydrogen vehicle as fast as we can, aren't we? Put no limit on the number of activists from all over who might want to hang out and explore Iraq for two weeks. Is anything left of Babylon? There could be informal courses for college credit and pickup soccer games every evening at five. Long leisurely suppers. The U. S. government furnishes air transportation, that is, hires airliners from the country of origin and back for each peace tourist, who must carry and spend the equivalent of $1001 US inside Iraq. Keep part of the invasion force nearby as police, but let those who claim to deeply detest war try something else just this once, for one year. Call our bluff. If this madman Saddam's WMD threat is not, somehow, eliminated by next February, you can go in with special ops, and do it that way. Medical services, transportation inside Iraq, lots of big colorful buses--let the pilgrims paint them!--along with many other ideas that will be thought of later during the course of this innocently, blatantly, foolish project will all also be funded by the U.S. government. There's a practice known as sama, a deep listening to poetry and music, with sometimes movement involved. We could experiment with whole nights of that, staying up until dawn, sleeping in tents during the day. So instead of war there's a peace period from March 2003 through February 2004. It could be as though war had already happened, as it has, and the healing and rebuilding. Now we're in the celebration afterward. I'll be the first to volunteer for two weeks of wandering winter desert and reading Hallaj, Abdul Qadir Gilani, dear Rabia, and the life-saving 1001 Arabian Nights. I am Coleman Barks, a retired English professor living in Athens, Georgia, and I don't really consider this proposal foolish. Coleman Barks