MIN MAN

Thaddeus, you are amazing. Thanks for loving me,
just the way I am.
JAG ÄLSKAR DIG

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Happy Easter - Glad Påsk

Hope everyone has a great Easter. Elsa and Kajsa dressed up like witches. It's a Swedish Easter tradition. Look it up ;) They sure were cute little hags. Read more!

Being sick is no fun

Well, we made it a long time without being sick this winter. It must be the longest time we've gone not having a cold. But alas, now the sick God has found us. Elsa was sick last week, she had a little fever and a runny nose. And now the lot has fallen on me. Elsa, Kajsa and I are home together being sick girls. Kajsa is not sick though, she's just keepin us company. Well, that's all.
-Michaela Read more!

Life is great!

I really want to share how happy I feel inside. Sometimes I feel I'm going to explode. I know, sounds silly, but sometimes I just feel so damn happy and peaceful, my body doesn't seem to be able to fit all of it inside. Hope that whomever is reading this (not that a whole lot of people do) will be infected with some of my happiness. Why am I happy I wonder? Who knows? I think it's because I've finally reached a point in my life where I'm ready to be me. Take it or leave it. I'm true to myself and that feels GREAT. Can't wait for tomorrow. I LOVE LIFE!
-Michaela- Read more!

Spirituality

Here's a great quote I got from Richard Packham's website. The quote is attributed to Melissa Hardy.

I think we often look too far away for gods and miracles, and ignore the ones all around us. We want to think that we, as a species, are different, that somehow we are endowed by god(s) to do whatever the hell we please with this world. But the world was not created for us (if it was 'created' at all). It exists FOR ITS OWN SAKE, not as a proving ground for future gods or a stage for a cosmic struggle between good or evil, or a playground that one species is meant to use as its personal possession. It is vaster by far, and wilder, and more beautiful than that. There is an elegance in the life cycle of salamanders, of diatoms, of trees, of beetles. In a growing embryo there is more complexity and beauty and holiness than in ten thousand thousand hymns of praise or prayers for sanctification. If you listen, every organism, every species, every cell has its own song, a hymn of praise and holiness more deep and fierce and beautiful than we can even comprehend.

And, here is the clincher, the priceless gift of the cosmos. WE ARE PART OF IT! We BELONG here....we are not strangers or sojourners, or even "spiritual beings having an earthly experience." We belong HERE, with our siblings, our relatives, our parents -- the birds of the air and the fish of the sea and the plants of the earth. We are they, and they are us. Each atom in our body is on loan to us from the world, and each atom has been part of innumerable organisms, and will be again. We have been the diatoms. We have been the tulips and the polar bears and the lemurs and the ants and the grass. And we will be the deer and the tiger and the wheat and the E. coli and the penguin. We belong to the system, tangled beyond extrication with every other living thing.

Isn't this enough holiness and beauty for all of us? The gods of this earth live in the mitochondria, genes, synaptic gaps of our body. And they live in the grasslands, the deserts, the rivers, the mountains. We are they, and they are us. You are god and gods and parts of gods. We are descended from gods and give birth to gods. They are us, and we are they. We live in a world filled to brimming with gods, and yet we still look beyond the clouds, beyond the stars, beyond ourselves, for a cosmic Easter Bunny who can make all our little dreams come true, when, in reality, we carry the kingdom of heaven within us every moment. It is there, peopled with enzymes and nucleic acids and glycolipids and ionophores. And, although it is within us, we are part of it as well. Heaven is here. The gods are among us.

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An Atheist's Creed

I believe in time,
matter, and energy,
which make up the whole of the world.

I believe in reason, evidence and the human mind,
the only tools we have;
they are the product of natural forces
in a majestic but impersonal universe,
grander and richer than we can imagine,
a source of endless opportunities for discovery.

I believe in the power of doubt;
I do not seek out reassurances,
but embrace the question,
and strive to challenge my own beliefs.

I accept human mortality.

We have but one life,
brief and full of struggle,
leavened with love and community,
learning and exploration,
beauty and the creation of
new life, new art, and new ideas.

I rejoice in this life that I have,
and in the grandeur of a world that preceded me,
and an earth that will abide without me.

It's Amazing!
Amazing that my life has become so meaningful. It has become meaningful through the rejection of what I once believed to be the meaning of life (ironic). In my youth my thinking was done for me, my beliefs were dictated to me, and the conclusions that I had drawn about life... were not really my own.

Then one day the magic wears off. Superstitions and fairy tales lose their glamour as the reasoning mind instills doubt. I don't regret in the slightest that I have chosen to listen to myself. To follow my doubts. To shake off the superstitious, the supernatural, and the mystical. To abandon guilt, self-loathing, and preconceived prejudices. To follow the logic of critical reasoning, logic, and science. Because now...

The world is truly marvelous. Life is truly meaningful. And I, am truly happy.

~Thaddeus Read more!

What it's really like living in Sweden

I just think this is hilarious. Swedish comic Johan Glans giving a realistic portrait of living in Sweden. ~Thaddeus

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