elefunq

They kept asking me, ‘What does the poem mean? What does the poem mean?’ And it was frustrating me because poems don’t mean. They suggest. They enact. They provoke.

The love expressed between women is particular and powerful because we have had to love in order to live; love has been our survival.

A Head

I know no one who has embraced a love ethic whose life has not become joyous and more fulfilling. The widespread assumption that ethical behaviour takes the fun out of life is false. In actuality, living ethically ensures that relationships in our lives, including encounters with strangers, nurture our spiritual growth. Behaving unethically, with no thought to the consequences of our actions, is a bit like eating tons of junk food. While it may taste good, in the end the body is never really adequately nourished and remains in a constant state of lack and longing. Our souls feel this lack when we act unethically, behaving in ways that diminish our spirits and dehumanise others.

“Attention: deep listening. People are dying in spirit for lack of it. In academic culture, most listening is critical listening. We tend to pay attention only long enough to develop a counterargument; we critique the student’s or the colleague’s ideas; we mentally grade and pigeonhole each other. In society at large, people often listen with an agenda, to sell or petition or seduce. Seldom is there a deep, open-hearted nonjudgmental reception of the other. And so we all talk louder and more stridently and with a terrible desperation. By contrast, if someone truly listens to me, my spirit begins to expand.”

*straight couple* Girl: “Do you have a condom?”

http://ottawa.ctvnews.ca/man-who-wore-threatening-shirt-towards-gay-people-stands-by-it-1.3141729