Knotty Musings

Ideas, philosophies, and evil plots to take over the world through love hatched here.


I Am Enough

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?

Actually, who are you not to be?
You are a child of God.
Your playing small does not serve the world.

There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people
won't feel insecure around you.
We are all meant to shine, as children do.

We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.
It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone.
And as we let our own light shine,

we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically
liberates others." ~ Marianne Williamson


Remove the Nots

Remove the Nots

Saturday, February 20, 2010

Doing Some Good - Paulissa Update


Hello friends,

I have written here for awhile so I think an update is long overdue.

The Lenten and Passover season are upon us so things are busy with spiritual reflection, renewal, and tradition. Always a beautiful time of year and fun too since the Midwest tradition of church fish fries began last Friday.

For the unfamiliar, fish fries are usually done by the men in the Catholic church and are used as a fundraiser during the church year. Everyone seems to have their favorite church for these things, but the tradition involves standing in line with a few hundred of your neighbors, coolers full of your favorite beverage, free beer (if you're so inclined) with your dinner, usually a few prominent people sightings, bingo and a great sense of community. One of our personal favorites is St. Pius X, which has a pasta feed instead of a fish fry and beer cheese sauce!

The quarter ends this week and I have successfully completed another class, despite a few challenges. Mostly, the challenges involved plagiarism on the part of the professor and I turned her in for it. She was doing a horrible disservice to the students and possibly costing them their financial aid. All's well that ends well and she liked my paper "Do You Mind" which dealt with the positivity movement and its cookie cutter approach to affirmations, etc.

The nonprofit now has a registered tradename, Persons Becoming and the logo appears above. I've always been touched by the Heart in Hand icon symbol used by the Shakers. It is purported to mean charity, given from the heart. I have been comparing the needs that foster care alumni say they had upon ageout and making up a chart that shows which programs meet those needs, etc so that I can see where the gaps exist and begin crafting a response. I have been asked by the Foster Care Alumni of America to help craft research guidelines so that when someone makes a research request, the intention of the request is clear and doesn't cause emotional harm to alumni.

I've been sitting on the Empowerment Network foundation, which responds to the challenges facing our city by having law enforcement, elected officials, educational officials, hospitals, drs., gang interventionists, prison officials, etc work together to influence legislation and city ordinances. Right now, our city is facing very high rates of gang violence. I'm trying to make a difference. Very interesting stuff.

David is still very busy with his Masonic activities and will be even more so shortly since he sits on the maintainence committee (fundraising arm) of the Omaha Home For Boys.

So. . .that's what trouble we've been getting into. How about yourselves??

4 comments:

  1. Hi Paulissa!!

    Just wanted to tell you that you have received the Sunshine Blog Award. Please stop by my blog and pick up your award. You will find it at: http://musings-by-melani.blogspot.com/

    ReplyDelete
  2. Wow Paulissa, you are so active in so many worthwhile things. I admire you, that's for sure.

    Fish fry's at church that sounds good and also fun.

    Do you ever go over to Spark Healthy Exchanges team? I haven't been there in ever so long. I lurk once in a great while but haven't posted.

    Our house still isn't finished and it is driving me right up the wall. At least the bedrooms and bathrooms are done.

    We have been having more rain than usual and I love it so much, it just makes me feel very peaceful.

    I see from the comment above that you received an award. Congratulations! The Sunshine award is perfect for you as you are so positive and quite inspiring to me and I am sure to many others.

    I have been crocheting some, and babysitting the great grand kids a little more than usual. That's whats been going on in my world.
    what about you, do you have the time to crochet anymore?

    Well I have talked your head off. I think of you often and always mean to get over here to see if you have posted but get busy and forget to many times.

    Hugs
    Iris

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  3. Hello Iris,

    I really am not nearly as active as I should be on the Healthy Exchanges team. It seems that downtime is busy time most days, though that will ease up after this Thursday when the quarter ends. That will give me 2 weeks before the quarter begins again.

    We just get snow after snow after snow; I've lived here all my life and I've never seen so much snow in one winter.

    I make the time to crochet at least an hour before bedtime since it helps my mind switch gears which is much needed.

    Thank you so much for your kind words. I'm trying to make a difference and only time will tell whether I have.

    ReplyDelete