Alef.

The uniform hangs there. An Olive ghost. It has hung there all day Saturday, a cruel reminder that tomorrow it will be possessed again, no longer lifeless. It is clean and perfectly pressed, a glimmering pin and light blue ribbons on the sleeves softens the harshness of the Army tone. He stands in front of it and stares, hoping maybe he can scare it into submission and it will tuck itself away back in the closet. But it's Sunday, the cruelest day for soldiers, and the uniform will not be defeated. So, slowly he puts it on.

Pants. Belt. Tourniquet in the pocket. Shirt. Beret. Gun.

And he says goodybe to his family. The elevator takes us down to the street where we walk quietly to the stop. And we go separate ways and wait until the next time when the ghost returns.

Creating Sustainable Culture

This isn't about the trendy "going green". It's called "permaculture" and the meaning is revolutionary. You don't have to be a hippy (ahem, all of you hippy haters..) and even if you think that global warming is a farce, you can't ignore the fact that we have a responsibility to protect the environment and to be conscious of the implications of our daily actions. This is more than environmental change, its social change, relational change..
Reform Judaism Magazine - Earthcare: An Ethical Culture Designed to Save Our Planet & Ourselves
This article talks with members of Kibbutz Lotan Center for Creative Ecology in the Negev of Israel who teach and practice permaculture.

"In the 1970s, Bill Mollison, an Australian ecologist,and one of his students, David Holmgren, developed the concept- a contraction of "permanent agriculture" (or sustainable agriculture) that soon turned into "permanent culture" (or sustainable culture). Permaculture is a culture, philosophy, and design method that teaches us to look at a whole system or problem, to observe how the parts relate, and to mend what needs fixing by applying time-tested substainable practices. For example, when we're about to purchase an item at the store, such as a bottle of milk, rather than think only of its immediate usuage, which is only a small part of the system, we consider the whole picture: Do I really need it, where was it produced, what materials is it made of,and always, what happens after its used, how will it be disposed of? To guide us in our decision-making, permaculture has a simple reference we call "the three ethics"
1) Care of the earth, including all living things-plants, animals, land, water and air
2) Care of people, promoting access to resources, self reliance, community responsibility and
3) Fare Share, placing limits on consumption to assure that the planets limited resources are used wisely and equitably. Now before we make our milk purchase, we can ask: "Care of the earth" questions: were the animals who gave the milk treated well? Were they fed sprayed food which might affect milk quality as well as the earth the food was grown in? Is the dairy farm local, avoiding pollution that would be generated from the milk's transport? We ask "Care of the people" questions: Does the farmer properly manage the manure so as not to pollute the local drinking water? Will the milk sale generate income for a neighborhood farm, increasing the liklihood that money will be resused efficiently within the local area? And we ask "Fare Share" questions too: Are part of the cow pastures and woodlands kept"wild" for wildlife? Can the milk bottle be reused or recycled easily or will disposing of it contribute to the landfill? Once we truly understand that we only have one planet Earth and her resources are limited, we appreciate that we are invested with the power to change Earth, for better or worse, in any decision we make. -Mike Kaplin, co creater, director and head permaculture teacher, Center for Creative Ecology

Not the settling down type...

When I was in 4th grade I wanted to go live with gorillas in the jungles of South America. I would go to the library and sit next to the shelf that held the wildlife books and visit my favorite book on the shelf.. an autobiography by Jane Goodall. She was amazing to me. I tried hard to imagine what it would be like to live in the jungle, away from comforts, to be accepted by a group of animals as family.

My daydreaming continued, it swayed from living in the jungles to moving to England and being a great writer, to joining the Air Force and being a pilot. My dreams never placed me in one place. I was never the girl who planned her wedding and acted it out with Ken and Barbie. I was on my karaoke machine broadcasting news to the world..

The other day I asked the guy I am dating what some of his dreams were and he didn't have much to say, "I always just pictured myself getting married, having kids, enjoying grandkids". Fantastic. What else?..

He then asked me, and ten minutes later after I rambled about every possible thing there is to do in the world, he says "You don't seem like the settling down type.."

Although I do want the goodness that is marriage and children I don't want it at the cost of living a routine/normal/boring life. And I know it's possible but you have to find the right way to do it. In motion. Out of the box. Maybe in the jungle..

Bringing light..

On Chanukah, the Almighty wants us to remember that we have the ability today to bring pure light into our lives. He wants us to remember all the times when we weren’t afraid to face the darkness. He wants us to believe in what is best and pure inside of us, no matter how small that spark of sincerity may be.

And then He takes each of our tiny sparks and fills our lives with light. That is the miracle.

We see this all the time in our lives. You keep one hour of Shabbos, but you keep that hour with a full heart. And God eventually helps you to keep an entire Shabbos. You learn one sentence of Torah a day with the untainted openness to receive wisdom, and the Almighty teaches you more than you could have ever imagined . You say one prayer with pure intentions, and He preserves the echo of that prayer for generations to come.

At the beginning of time, God created a special light that stretched from one end of the world to the other. Under that light, nothing died and nothing rotted. It was a beautiful, healing, infinite light. But it only lasted 36 hours because God saw that the light wasn’t fitting for this world where we need some darkness in order to have free will. So He hid the light away and allows it to shine only in the World to Come where there is no pain and no concealment.

But once a year, on Chanukah, God gives us access to this hidden light that resides in the deepest recesses of our souls. There are 36 candles lit during Chanukah, each candle representing an hour that this hidden light was revealed to the world.
Each candle that we light removes another layer of the curtain that blocks the hidden, precious light of our souls.

Each candle surrounds us with the purity of that little jar of oil that always has one drop left.

Because all we need is one pure thing. One pure image. One pure moment. One pure story.
And like fire giving to fire, light giving to light, soul giving to soul -- that one pure moment gives to the next pure moment. Candle to candle. Until the darkness disappears.

http://www.aish.com/h/c/t/sg/78053147.html