Even if you’re not a football fan, it was glorious to watch a city in serious need of a celebration revel in a world-class victory.

The Saints, indeed, came marching in!

Perspective is everything. It’s so easy to get spun out on our own endless, constant thoughts. Today, come up with some creative ways to be present, quickly and simply.

A friend of mine swears by this:

“When I feel like I’m stuck in my own head, I just look up at the sky for a minute. Well, more than look at it - I take it in. I realize the space, the openness. Sometimes just a few seconds is enough to derail the buzz going on in my head.”

What way can you become more present? Maybe it’s a bath, a breath, a song, a laugh, a stretch, a walk, a talk, a yell, a smell, a dog, a plunge into cold water…

This week’s quotes focus on the topic of relief. We all know it when we feel it. And sometimes we work too hard to get some. Or look for it in all the wrong places. Here’s some quotes intended to lift the weight off of your shoulders:

“Under certain circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer.” - Mark Twain

“Sorrow comes to all…Perfect relief is not possible, except with time. You cannot now realize that you will ever feel better and yet you are sure to be happy again.”- Abraham Lincoln

“Imaginary obstacles are insurmountable. Real ones aren’t. But you can’t tell the difference when you have no real information. Fear can create even more imaginary obstacles than ignorance can. That’s why the smallest step away from speculation and into reality can be an amazing relief. The Reality Solution means: Do it before you’re ready.” - Barbara Sher

For fast-acting relief try slowing down.
Lily Tomlin

It is such a relief to be told the truth.
Katherine Anne Porter

Laughter is the tonic, the relief, the surcease for pain.
Charlie Chaplin

There is a great relief in experiencing the worst vicariously.
Fiona Shaw

When I cleaned up some 17 odd years ago, I felt terrible for about six months. The only thing that gave me any real relief was strenuous physical activity.
James Taylor

Give up the feeling of responsibility, let go your hold, resign the care of your destiny to higher powers, be genuinely indifferent as to what becomes of it all and you will find not only that you gain a perfect inward relief, but often also, in addition, the particular goods you sincerely thought you were renouncing.” -  William James

Did you ever feel stranded, left out at sea, with little to no hope in the word? We’ve all had our moments. But sometimes, an outside force comes in and saves the day:

THE luckiest dog alive has been rescued from an iceberg floating 32km from land in the Baltic Sea.

Sailors plucked the animal to safety after it got trapped on ice on Poland’s Vistula river and drifted for more than 122km, the Daily Mail reports.

Rescuer Adam Buczynski said: “He didn’t even squeal. There was just fear in his big eyes.”

It’s thought Baltic’s problems began when he got trapped on ice on the Vistula River near Torun on Friday.

A day later he was spotted in Grudziadz, 64km upstream, where fireman tried to reach the German shepherd-type mongrel.

But thick ice made it too risky to launch a rescue craft despite Baltic floating just a few yards from the river bank.

Another bid to save the stranded mutt was made at Kwidzyn, 22 miles further on towards Poland’s coast.

After sightings dried up it was assumed the dog had perished.

But incredibly Baltic had traveled a further 35km to the river mouth before heading out to the ocean where finally his luck turned when scientists on a research boat spotted something odd moving amid the broken ice.

Natalia Drgas, of the Institute of Meteorology and Water Management, said: “One of the sailors thought they had seen another seal but then he noticed it had legs, ears and a tail.”

However the men onboard the Baltica soon found saving the stranded dog was by no means plain sailing.

First they tried to catch the dog in a net on a pole but when that failed they had to drop a pontoon with crewmen.

Seaman Adam Buczynski said: “We tried to sail as close as possible but as we approached the boat pushed the ice and the dog was sliding off.

“The dog didn’t even yelp but you could see the fear in his eyes.”

With darkness falling and time running out Baltic was finally hauled on board in sub zero temperatures late on Monday.

Captain Jan Jachim said if his ship had passed that way a few moments later the dog would never have been spotted amid the gloom.

He said: “We were just at the right place at the right time.”

And he added that few boats chart those waters at that time of year.

“Baltic was drifting with the current further and further out to the open sea. He would have gone further if we hadn’t seen him.”

But Captain Jachim may not have seen the last of the Baltic, the salty seadog. If no-one claims him, the lucky hound will be adopted as the ship’s mascot.

Source: Herald Sun (watch incredible video here)

This last year, we’ve talked about the power of solar cookers in numerous countries in need. And nowhere has that become more evident as of late than in Haiti.

Food is cooked with solar energy in solar cookers (or solar ovens). They are an ideal addition wherever there are predictable hours of sun many days of the year. Solar cooking and baking are easy and safe around children. Solar cookers are clean, convenient, non-polluting and easy on the environment. And, for millions of people living in arid, fuel-scarce regions of the world, solar cookers can literally save lives

Solar Cookers International is just one organization that is making sure the Haitians get some quick and immediate relief. Here’s some basic information, if you want to help or learn more:

In response to the devastating earthquake in Haiti, Solar Cookers International (SCI) has received numerous calls from donors and friends wishing to make contributions or otherwise support relief efforts in Haiti, particularly with the hopes of sending solar cookers and water pasteurization indicators (WAPIs) to the quake’s victims. We are inspired and encouraged that so many of you have recognized the vital role solar cooking and solar water pasteurization can play in these relief efforts.

SCI is now working with Sun Ovens International, Friends of Haiti Organization, and local NGO partners to bring much-needed solar cookers and WAPIs to the people of Haiti as the country begins its long road to recovery. Please contribute to this effort and help us bring simple, life-saving skills and technologies to a country suffering not only from a massive earthquake, but from never-ending poverty and lack of cooking fuel due to extreme levels of deforestation.

A $40 gift pays for a solar cooker, cooking pot, and WAPI for a Haitian family.

Even amidst the rubble, the pain, the hopelessness, hope still exists in Haiti. And no better exemplified than this story in Gimundo:

More than two weeks after the earthquake in Haiti that destroyed hundreds of thousands of lives and homes, search-and-rescue operations had seized. Rescuers had given up hope for those trapped in the earthquake rubble, instead focusing their efforts on helping the quake’s survivors, many of whom were injured and had little access to food or water.

But yesterday, while walking past the rubble of a home in Port-au-Prince, someone heard a weak voice calling out beneath the gravel. French rescue teams were alerted, and immediately set to work lifting the debris to find the person who had cried for help.

Soon, they had dug a hole to uncover

Darlene Etienne, a 17-year-old student at the nearby St. Gerard University, whose home had collapsed on top of her during the quake. Though rescuers held little hope of survivors staying alive in rubble for more than a few days, Etienne had lasted over two weeks, and was still conscious when the authorities pulled her out of the wreckage.

Authorities believe that Etienne was able to survive for so long because she may have had access to water from the home’s bathroom, and had a small amount of soda with her. Nonetheless, she wouldn’t have lasted much longer.

“She was in very bad shape,” rescuer Claude Fuilla told ABC News. “We had to rehydrate her for 15 minutes.”

Etienne was quickly flown to a hospital, and thanks to the rescuers’ assistance, it looks like she will be able to recover from her long ordeal.

“Now, her condition is stabilized,” said Fuilla. “She ate. She is speaking … She is not very lucid, but she is OK.”

We all now the dangers of clinging on too tightly or feeling the need to control others. It feels like an addiction, where we turn our focus away from ourselves and onto something or someone else, for which we have no control. If you’ve been there (and haven’t we all?) here are some quotes to lead you back to yourself:

As I started to picture the trees in the storm, the answer began to dawn on me. The trees in the storm don’t try to stand up straight and tall and erect. They allow themselves to bend and be blown with the wind. They understand the power of letting go. Those trees and those branches that try too hard to stand up strong and straight are the ones that break. Now is not the time for you to be strong, Julia, or you, too, will break.
– Julia Butterfly Hill



Breathe. Let go. And remind yourself that this very moment is the only one you know you have for sure.
– Oprah Winfrey


By letting it go it all gets done. The world is won by those who let it go. But when you try and try. The world is beyond the winning.
– Lao Tzu


Courage is the power to let go of the familiar.
– Raymond Lindquist


Creativity can be described as letting go of certainties.
– Gail Sheehy


Getting over a painful experience is much like crossing monkey bars. You have to let go at some point in order to move forward.
– Author Unknown


Hanging onto resentment is letting someone you despise live rent-free in your head.
– Ann Landers


Inner peace can be reached only when we practice forgiveness. Forgiveness is letting go of the past, and is therefore the means for correcting our misperceptions.
– Gerald Jampolsky


Let go. Why do you cling to pain? There is nothing you can do about the wrongs of yesterday. It is not yours to judge. Why hold on to the very thing which keeps you from hope and love?
– Leo Buscaglia

Letting go doesn’t mean giving up, but rather accepting that there are things that cannot be.
– Anon

Loving someone is setting them free, letting them go.
– Kate Winslet


People have a hard time letting go of their suffering. Out of a fear of the unknown, they prefer suffering that is familiar.
– Thich Nhat Hanh


Some think it’s holding on that makes one strong; sometimes it’s letting go.
– Sylvia Robinson

There is a time for silence. A time to let go and allow people to hurl themselves into their own destiny. And a time to prepare to pick up the pieces when it’s all over.
– Gloria Naylor


Stand up and walk out of your history.
– Phil McGraw

The harder you fight to hold on to specific assumptions, the more likely there’s gold in letting go of them. — John Seely Brown

True love doesn’t have a happy ending, because true love never ends. Letting go is one way of saying I love you.
– Author Unknown

Truly loving another means letting go of all expectations. It means full acceptance, even celebration of another’s personhood.


– Karen Casey

There are things that we never want to let go of, people we never want to leave behind. But keep in mind that letting go isn’t the end of the world, it’s the beginning of a new life.
– Author Unknown

We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the life that is waiting for us.
– Joseph Campbell

Source: Great Inspirational Quotes

If we take a moment each day to examine the natural world, undoubtedly there is some beautiful and profound lessons to be learned. This pioneering architect has found a way to observe nature and utilize aspects of its design to build sustainable buildings, readymade for our future:

Michael Pawlyn is a pioneer in the field of biomimetic architecture, responsible for some of the world’s most intriguing designs. He was a core part of the team behind the design of the Eden Project’s giant greenhouse biomes, for which it is famous. The idea for the structures came from analysing dragonflies’ wings. By mimicking the blueprint of this small but highly significant creature, the result is a building lighter than the air it contains.

In 2007, Michael founded Exploration Architecture to focus exclusively on sustainable design inspired by the natural world. Respecting nature as our Elder, whom we turn to for solutions, can, he believes, reduce our impact on the earth and slow the effects of climate change. “Nature has an amazing storehouse of ideas,” he says, “and it has had a long research and development period – 3.8 billion years in fact, so most of its faulty products have already been withdrawn from the market place.”

In recent projects, Michael has looked to the Namibian fog-basking beetle for answers. An ingenious creature, it thrives in the heat of the desert by harvesting water from air. At dawn, when fog rolls in from the cold Atlantic Sea, it turns to the wind and performs a kind of hand-stand. Microscopic troughs in the beetle’s back, catch the tiny fog droplets, which drip down into its mouth.

When Michael became involved in the design for the Las Palmas Water Theatre, in Gran Canaria, he was inspired by this resourceful fog-harvesting process. The open-air structure takes full advantage of its proximity to sea water, prominent winds and abundant sunshine. So, while serving as a grand amphitheatre for local entertainment, it doubles up as a wind-facing desalination plant – providing the town with green energy and clean water.

Currently, Michael is working on the Community Ecology Centre, inspired by Amsterdam’s De Kas restaurant. At the heart of the complex, a greenhouse will grow fruit and vegetables for the guests. Food waste will go to feed a wormery. The worms are fed to Tilapia fish, and the fish are then served fresh to diners.

Micro-organisms will break down the centre’s rubbish in an anaerobic digester, producing biogas to heat the greenhouse and generate electricity for the site. Meanwhile, a ‘living machine’ will mimic the filtration process that occurs in natural wetlands to turn sewage into clean water.

“By accommodating all these activities in one building, it’s possible to get the benefit of a closed-loop design that mimics the remarkable efficiencies of ecosystems,” Michael explains.
“Although there are some worrying times ahead in terms of climate change and so on,” he adds, “for every problem that we face, whether it’s creating energy, finding fresh water, or manufacturing in a benign way, there’ll be examples from nature that we can follow – and I bet you, that all those examples will be closed-loop, solar powered and non polluting.”

Website: www.exploration-architecture.com

Source: Positive News from Around the World

This New York Times excerpt tells an amazing story of perseverance and hope amidst the Haitian crisis and intense bureacracy:

Gov. Edward G. Rendell of Pennsylvania played an instrumental role in bringing the first planeload of children out of Haiti, and the bureaucratic difficulties his team faced underscore the legal and moral complexities of transferring hundreds of children to a new country in the middle of a catastrophe that has crippled the Haitian government.

“There were many times we thought we were coming back with no one,” Mr. Rendell said Tuesday in Pittsburgh.

After an all-night journey on two planes, the children — some wrapped in blankets, some carried by nurses and doctors, some walking and waving — came off a donated jet at Pittsburgh International Airport just after 9 a.m. and were taken by bus to the Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh of U.P.M.C. with a police escort.

Some of their adoptive parents waited anxiously while doctors examined the children, most of whom are under the age of 4.

“We just kept expecting the worst-case scenario, that they wouldn’t survive, that they’d be looted, that they’d run out of water,” said Jill Lear of Watertown, S.D., who arrived with her husband, Bruce, to wait for two children they were to adopt.

Mr. Rendell and Representative Jason Altmire flew Monday to Haiti on a chartered plane carrying medical supplies and 20 doctors and nurses. The plan was to drop off the supplies and pick up children from an orphanage run by two sisters, Jamie and Alison McMutrie from a Pittsburgh suburb, Ben Avon, Pa..

The orphanage was so badly damaged that the McMutrie sisters and the children were living in a courtyard. With a borrowed cellphone, they sent out appeals for help, saying they had only enough provisions for a few days.

Having lobbied the White House for several days, the Pennsylvania delegation had obtained United States visas for the children and had expected to be on the ground one hour.

But Haitian officials would let only 28 of the 54 orphans the sisters had brought to the airport to leave; the rest had not cleared all the hurdles for adoption. Seven had yet to be matched with adoptive parents, the Haitians said.

Then the sisters dug in their heels. “They just said no, they wouldn’t leave without all of them,” Mr. Altmire said.

For five hours, the delegation worked furiously to get the Haitian government to agree to let all the children go. The governor’s wife, Judge Marjorie O. Rendell of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, went to Port-au-Prince to meet with American diplomats. Mr. Rendell and Mr. Altmire lobbied the White House, which pressured Haitian officials.

The chartered plane was forced to return to Miami before a deal was reached, Mr. Rendell said, but the delegation stayed in Haiti. But at 11 p.m., the Haitian officials relented and the children were evacuated on a United States military cargo plane to Orlando, Fla., where they transferred to the jet to Pennsylvania. One child was found to be missing at the last minute in Haiti, and Jamie McMutrie stayed behind to find her. They were expected to arrive here Wednesday.

James C. McKinley Jr. reported from Miami, and Sean D. Hamill from Pittsburgh.

I found these sage words of advice on a page for people recovering from alcoholism. Whether you are dealing with an addiction or just need to let go of some dead weight that’s been holding you back for a long time, these words apply. Resentment can be a needless burden we carry around for years, decades…even a lifetime.

Isn’t it time to get your life back?

1. Approach resentment as the addictive state of mind it is.

2. Realize that you are using resentment to replicate your family drama and maintain a connection with those dramas, a necessary acknowledgment before you can let them go.

3. Examine how your resentment may come from mentally confusing people in your present life with people in your past.

4. Acknowledge that you cannot control those who have rejected you.

5. Recognize that your resentment give you only illusions of strength. Instead, highlight and validate your real strength and power.

6. Learn to identify the signals that provoke resentment.

7. Practice cognitive behavioral techniques to stop indulging in resentment. Put a thought between your feelings of resentment and indulging in ruminating about them.

8. Acknowledge your part in allowing the abuse to occur, forgive yourself for that, and make a decision to not let it occur again.

9. Declare an amnesty - with your family and with yourself.

10. Forgive when you can, and practice willful and deliberate forgetfulness when you cannot, keeping in mind that these acts are gifts to yourself rather than capitulation to those whom you resent.

Source: The Sober Recovery Network