Welcome home! Please contact lincoln@icrontic.com if you have any difficulty logging in or using the site. New registrations must be manually approved which may take several days. Can't log in? Try clearing your browser's cookies.
Merry Christmas
BonsaiDoug
Simply, on the path. Veteran
To people of all faiths I wish you joy. May your spiritual path help you overcome suffering.
Have a very, merry Christmas.
Have a very, merry Christmas.
6
Comments
Peace and Joy. What a concept. I'll have what Baby Jesus is having . . . :clap:
I think that's the first time we've had snow ON Christmas eve in about 20 years!
I wish we had awakened to at least a foot of snow on the ground this morning... but no, just cold, (low 20's F.) breezy but sunny. Darn it.
:eek:
Where are you located, MaryAnne? Like what state and part?
Here's a thing. I went to Midnight Mass with my Mum last night. Thought I wouldn't go up for communion - I took refuge a couple of years since and so I'd feel a bit of a fraud. But I could see it was important to my Mum and I got to thinking about belief. Believing in Christ as a redemptive saviour for sin is a valid practice. You could practice that, with Christ as a Boddhisattva, without actually believing in God. And, actually, believing in a non material God could be a mind practice too. Then I thought about real beings and in what sense belief in Christ was any different to belief in Bodhisaatvas. Round and round. Then I thought all this thinking about it was a distraction from practicing anything at all - just stop trying to rationalise it and just be a part of what was going on. So I went up - came back and felt one of those short upswells that make you laugh at yourself.
So, yes, Merry Christmas.
Bodhisattva Jesus Christ, Son of Amitaba, have mercy on me, the practitioner
:clap:
I'm in New Jersey, along the shore, about an hour north of Atlantic City.
New Jersey has cold, cold winters most years. Snowfall totals, however, can vary greatly from year to year AND from area to area even in a state as relatively small as NJ.
The Northern part of NJ gets way more snow than the southern half - most of the time.
Sometimes, when the jet stream dips low enough, and warm air coming up the coastline meet in winter months, the lower half/shore area gets more snow than the upper western (more mountainous) areas of NJ.
This -usually- doesn't happen more than once or twice in a winter season. BUT the last 3-4 winters have been really unusual in a few ways; lots more snow in each snowfall & more snowfalls along the shore instead of inland.
Makes me a believer in climate change! :-D
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013 ... l?emc=eta1
OK, just in case the festivities continue here are some of my memories . . .
A parcel with incredible butterfly stamps and stickers arrived. So big I could get in the box. All the way from my Swiss Grossmutter and Kleine Grossmutter, my Grandmother and Great Grandmother. Chocolate and gingerbread, salami and golden coins of chocolate. So many fruity sweets, bars, tins and packages of strange flavours.
One of my fondest memories is of Christmas. My parents had moved into their own house. It was a palace of lights and tinsel. We were in gold and red shiny Santa magic. We had coal fires and a wonderous paraffin heater, that was so mysterious, fed by pink liquid and then it blue flamed and became red and warm as a hug.
Grandmother 'no. 3' came with traditional food. Gran would be in a box soon but when you are four, such things are whispers only amongst adults.
Very briefly and quite dangerously, little fluted wax candles, lit into the shining Scandinavian tree and its flammable needles. The warmth and gleaming radiance glows from Christmas past. Oh the yellow toy car was vroom but relatives and just little boy wonder memories, well they shimmer . . .
I moved to Toms River (From North Jersey) with my family in 1965. (I was 9).
With the exception of a year here and a couple years there, I stayed in the Toms River / Beachwood area. My kids grew up in Beachwood and went to TR schools. I graduated from Toms River North, you know, back in the stone-age. :-)
How old are you now, Steve?
they turned out to be a blast! Once one person got the hang
of it, it was on! hahaha. Everyone running around with little
paper king hats and fun trinkets...I will definitely get them
again! Good times .......
I don't remember exit numbers any more, but I remember the joke.
I was born in '56. I went to Toms River schools including Walnut Street School and TRIS. We moved to Boonton in '69. I have very, very fond memories of the Shore. We went to Shelter Cove all summer, with occasional trips to Seaside Heights. We bought milk at Be a Lea Farm. We lived on Savannah Street, and the whole big area behind our house was abandoned chicken coops, which we kids used to play in. I looked on Google Earth and it's all houses now, of course.