International Super Moon Meditation for Our World Leaders

Participate in a bold experiment. Can we really influence our world leaders with meditation and prayer?

The full moon’s gravitational pull is a universal joke, but it is truly a powerful time of reflection, as it tends to bring out whatever is lurking in just under the surface of the unconscious. Astronomer and astrologers, scientists and philosophers all, hold the moon with fascination and respect. Each one of us, no matter what country, no matter what religion, no matter what political bent, can see the moon. We all have the moon in common.

This event is a call for each of us, as we gaze in wonder at the Moon, to take a moment, several moments, or even an hour or more to meditate and pray for international peace: that our leaders set aside greed and fear and return to actions of service; that we take courage and sit with our own emotions; and that we all turn to look at each other with a new perspective.

This full moon is the Cold Moon, or the Long Night’s Moon, a super moon as it occurs when the moon is at its closest point to the earth in its orbit. As the moon affects us, we affect each other, too. We contribute to the energy of the times.

Join this event, share, and participate in a bold experiment.

Add any of your positive world thoughts, moon thoughts, and peaceful thoughts below.

Stillness

When it rains, straight down
The simple pleasure of an open window
Offers a sigh of relief
a hit of the heart
a whiff of delight
the satisfaction of allowing
breath
air
... a quiet, undefinable mystery.

BOOKSTORE SHORT! Northwind Books at Finlandia University

As our authors get to know the different bookstores around the country, we are struck by their uniqueness. We thought you'd like to get to know them along with us. Marketing strategist & writer Elisabeth Veltman interviews owners and managers at these unique havens of literature.

Let's chat with store manager, Alana Nolan

North Wind Books is located in Hancock, Michigan, just a few minutes from Lake Superior. Not only is it in the Great White North, North Wind is also an independent bookstore owned by Finlandia University. Finlandia was founded 1896 by the Fins (yes, people from Finland) and is a 4-year liberal arts university that offers courses and degrees in Arts & Sciences, Health Sciences, Art & Design, and Business. The Fins may have started it, but the University welcomes all backgrounds to its academic world set in an outdoor-lover heaven.

I spoke with Alana Nolan, the Bookstore Manager and asked her what made North Wind Books special. She said that they have an array of different things from textbooks to university apparel to an independent section where books with a connection to Michigan are featured. This section contains local history and local authors, as well as books about birds, insects, or rocks that are indigenous to the area. Likewise, they have a children’s room and a Scandinavian room. As she spoke, it sounded like they actually housed local authors in their store along with the birds, rocks, and insects, and that a bunch of kids and Scandinavians were corralled next door. This gave us a chuckle, since obviously she was referring to books on these subjects.

While North Wind is clearly connected to the students, it is also involved in the local community and they choose events that follow through with their brand. So along with book signings by local authors, they do creative events like celebrating the 25th birthday of “Where’s Waldo.” I would bet money that Waldo hiding among the bookshelves watching the festivities and wondering if anyone would notice him.

If you can’t visit North Wind in person, you can order their books and apparel online. Orders over $50 get free shipping, too.

Have you read any Armenian authors? 

“There is a campus read every spring, which is one of the different events on campus for students and the surrounding community.  We just read “The Gendarme by Mark Mustian.”

What’s on the North Wind reading list?

“The Fault in Our Stars"

What Alana is reading right now:

The Sixth Sense
Boys in the Boat

North Wind is located at 437 Quincy Street, Hancock, MI 49930, on U.S. Highway 41.

906-487-7217

888-285-8363.

The Paradoxical Commandments

As universal, personal, and who-knows-what-kind-of forces knock us around this month, I was struck by something called, "The Paradoxical Commandments" in a new way today. I've always loved them. These are usually credited to Mother Theresa, but were apparently written by Kent M. Keith when he was but 19 years old, and a student at Harvard. He wrote them as part of a handbook for student leaders called, "The Silent Revolution: Dynamic Leadership in the Student Council" in 1968.

Powerful words can travel around the world, and so did these. in 1997, Mr. Keith attended a rotary meeting where his own words were read back to him as a poem attributed to Mother Theresa.

The Paradoxical Commandments:

People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered.
Love them anyway.

If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives.
Do good anyway.

If you are successful, you will win false friends and true enemies.
Succeed anyway.

The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow.
Do good anyway.

Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable.
Be honest and frank anyway.

The biggest men and women with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest men and women with the smallest minds.
Think big anyway.

People favor underdogs but follow only top dogs.
Fight for a few underdogs anyway.

What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight.
Build anyway.

People really need help but may attack you if you do help them.
Help people anyway.

Give the world the best you have and you'll get kicked in the teeth.
Give the world the best you have anyway.”
― Kent M. Keith, The Silent Revolution: Dynamic Leadership in the Student Council

I looked up the story of how his words made it to Calcutta. Here is what he said in his own words:

"I went up after the meeting and asked him where he got the poem. He said it was in a book about Mother Teresa, but he couldn't remember the title. So the next night I went to a bookstore and started looking through the shelf of books about the life and works of Mother Teresa. I found it, on the last page before the appendices in Mother Teresa: A Simple Path. The Paradoxical Commandments had been reformatted to look like a poem, and they had been retitled "Anyway." There was no author listed, but at the bottom of the page, it said: "From a sign on the wall of Shishu Bhavan, the children's home in Calcutta."

Mother Teresa thought that the Paradoxical Commandments were important enough to put up on the wall of her children's home. That really hit me. I wanted to laugh, and cry, and shout-and I was getting chills up and down my spine. Perhaps it hit me hard because I had a lot of respect for Mother Teresa, and perhaps because I knew something about children's homes. Whatever the reason, it had a huge impact on me. That was when I decided to speak and write about the Paradoxical Commandments again, thirty years after I first wrote them."

~Kent M. Keith from http://www.paradoxicalcommandments.com/mother-teresa-connection.html

Today, I felt moved to post them to my virtual wall, here on Blue Pearl, and share them with you, humbled by their impact on me. how much more we need these words in our world today, and right now. I've been thinking about how I can live up to them, even in the face of personal struggles. How about you?

Author & Novel About to Launch Kickstarter Campaign

A preview of this book's kickstarter image

One of my designers and I have been working with an author on a new novel.  We've designed the website, and the book cover, helped him find an editing team, and are helping him launch a kickstarter campaign.  Its great fun.  Here is a preview of the image for that kickstarter campaign.  We expect to launch this next week.  Stay tuned!