Picture Perfect - Celebrating 2012

Celebrating the First Moon for 2012

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No celebratory photos from me this New Year - bit boring but was my choice for 2012. A quiet relaxed escape from work was my ideal New Year this year - No celebration just a normal night with the following day of doing as little as possible - just things I wanted to do like photographing the moon and a bit of a play in the garden. It was a stunning sunny and perfectly clear day as the moon celebrated the New year out in the blueness of the afternoon sky.

For the rules of the competition 

http://fotofriday.multiply.com/

To enter the competition
http://fotofriday.multiply.com/journal/item/489/Picture_Perfect_Celebrating_2012

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The Galah

It is best to view this album in the slideshow mode to get its full effect!

Galahs are a pink and grey coloured cockatoo found in most areas of Australia. Galahs have the reputation of being somewhat of a pest or nuisance. But Galahs are actually a highly intelligent, social and highly adaptable animal. Galahs are one of the few animals that have benefited from the arrival of European settlers to Australia. The clearing of land and planting of cereal crops have really suited galahs. This led to the increase in galah populations, and the galahs expansion into every corner of Australia (helped also by the escape of pet galahs, especially in Tasmania).

Galahs were originally found to live only in the semi-arid areas of Australia. Originally galahs were recorded to live on the East Coast or Tasmania.

Backyard Photograhy - A Birds View

Man in the Moon



"I don't know it there are men on the moon, but if there are they must be using the earth as their lunatic asylum'

George Bernard Shaw

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Backyard Photograhy - latest

If Only!

You forget that the fruits belong to all and that the land belongs to no one.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712 - 1778)



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While I was looking for the link above on Rousseau, I read this reflection, below, which I thought to share with you all.

But if there is a state where the soul can find a resting-place secure enough to establish itself and concentrate its entire being there, with no need to remember the past or reach into the future, where time is nothing to it, where the present runs on indefinitely but this duration goes unnoticed, with no sign of the passing of time, and no other feeling of deprivation or enjoyment, pleasure or pain, desire or fear than the simple feeling of existence, a feeling that fills our soul entirely, as long as this state lasts, we can call ourselves happy, not with a poor, incomplete and relative happiness such as we find in the pleasures of life, but with a sufficient, complete and perfect happiness which leaves no emptiness to be filled in the soul. Such is the state which I often experienced on the Island Of Saint-Pierre in my solitary reveries, whether I lay in a boat and drifted where the water carried me, or sat by the shores of the stormy lake, or elsewhere, on the banks of a lovely river or a stream murmuring over the stones.

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Quote for today

 

"Faith based on certainty isn't faith at all"

........ “Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head.”
 Matt 8:20

Men and Intimacy!!

From a blog by one of my favourite Christian teachers - Fr Richard Ruhr

I think that many of us men, celibate men even more, are very afraid of intimacy. I would define intimacy as the ability to mutually share one’s needs, one’s wounds, or one’s weaknesses with another person. The sharing of our inner or interior world (“intimus” in Latin) is always a risk, usually a fear of rejection, and thus many of us never go there. It might change our self image. But I am going to make a rather absolute statement: people who risk intimacy are invariably happier and much more real people. They feel like they have lots of “handles” that allow others to hold on to them, and that allow them to hold onto themselves! People who avoid intimacy are always, and I mean always, imprisoned in a small and circular world. One good thing about celibacy is that it can tell us that an awful lot of sex is not intimacy at all. The good thing about sexuality is that it creates an obvious and ideal container for true intimacy, at least now and then. I really wonder how one would know how to be iintimate with God, if you have never practiced risky self disclosure with at least one other human being (Is this the real meaning of “nakedness”?). I sincerely doubt the possibility. Both healthy celibacy and sexual encounter demand deep and true intimacy, and both can be the most effective avoidance of it. (Written after almost 50 years in a celibate community of men, and after lots of counseling in a “strangely” sexualized world.)

link to the original http://richardrohr.wordpress.com/

Clergymen clash at birthplace of Jesus

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Crazy Stuff!!!!

from a Yahoo 7 News story! - http://au.news.yahoo.com/world/a/-/world/12466942/clergymen-clash-at-birthplace-of-jesus/

The annual cleaning of one of Christianity's holiest churches has deteriorated into a brawl between rival clergy, as dozens of monks feuding over sacred space at the Church of the Nativity battled each other with brooms until police intervened.

The ancient church, built over the traditional site of Jesus's birth in Bethlehem, is shared by three Christian denominations - Roman Catholics, Armenians and Greek Orthodox.

Wednesday's fight erupted between Greek and Armenian clergy, with both sides accusing each other of encroaching on parts of the church to which they lay claim.

The monks were tidying up the church ahead of Orthodox Christmas celebrations in early January, following celebrations by Western Christians on December 25. The fight erupted between monks along the border of their respective areas. Some shouted and hurled brooms.

Palestinian security forces rushed in to break up the melee, and no serious injuries were reported.

A fragile status quo governs relations among the denominations at the ancient church, and to repair or clean a part of the structure is to own it, according to accepted practice. That means that letting other sects clean part of the church could allow one to gain ground at another's expense. Similar fights have taken place during the same late-December cleaning effort in the past.

Armenian and Greek Orthodox clergymen scuffle inside the Church of Nativity. Photo: AAP

Tensions between rival clergy at the church have been a fact of life there for centuries and have often been caught up in international politics.

In the 1800s, friction between the denominations at the church - each backed by foreign powers - became so fraught that Russian Czar Nicholas I deployed troops along the Danube to threaten a Turkish sultan who had been favouring the Catholics over the Orthodox.

Those disagreements threaten the integrity of the church itself, which was originally built 1500 years ago and parts of which have fallen into disrepair. Although the roof has needed urgent work for decades, and leaking rainwater has ruined much of the priceless artwork inside, a renovation has been delayed all these years by disagreements among the denominations over who would pay.

Only recently, the Palestinian Authority brokered an agreement to move ahead with replacing the roof, and officials hope work will begin in 2012.