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oxymoron

oxymoron's Journal
oxymoron's Journal
January 14, 2012

Call Me by My True Names

Call Me by My True Names

Do not say that I'll depart tomorrow
because even today I still arrive.

Look deeply: I arrive in every second
to be a bud on a spring branch,
to be a tiny bird, with wings still fragile,
learning to sing in my new nest,
to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower,
to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone.

I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry,
in order to fear and to hope.
The rhythm of my heart is the birth and
death of all that are alive.

I am the mayfly metamorphosing on the surface of the river,
and I am the bird which, when spring comes, arrives in time
to eat the mayfly.

I am the frog swimming happily in the clear pond,
and I am also the grass-snake who, approaching in silence,
feeds itself on the frog.

I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones,
my legs as thin as bamboo sticks,
and I am the arms merchant, selling deadly weapons to
Uganda.

I am the twelve-year-old girl, refugee on a small boat,
who throws herself into the ocean after being raped by a sea
pirate,
and I am the pirate, my heart not yet capable of seeing and
loving.

I am a member of the politburo, with plenty of power in my
hands,
and I am the man who has to pay his "debt of blood" to, my
people,
dying slowly in a forced labor camp.

My joy is like spring, so warm it makes flowers bloom in all
walks of life.
My pain if like a river of tears, so full it fills the four oceans.

Please call me by my true names,
so I can hear all my cries and laughs at once,
so I can see that my joy and pain are one.

Please call me by my true names,
so I can wake up,
and so the door of my heart can be left open,
the door of compassion.

Thich Nhat Hanh

January 14, 2012

Transgendered Sea Anemone Denounced As 'Abomination' By Clergy

HUNTSVILLE, AL—A coalition of Baptist clergymen spoke out Monday against the Telia felina, a transgendered sea anemone they are decrying as "base and depraved."

Enlarge Image

The dually gendered <I>Telia felina</I> sea anemone, which Baptist leaders are denouncing as "base and depraved."

"This filthy anemone, which exhibits both male and female characteristics, is turning our oceans' intertidal zones into dens of sin and perversion," said Rev. William Chester, spokesman for the Save Our Seas Coalition, a Huntsville-based activist group dedicated to "the preservation of aquatic decency and morality." "For God knows how long, this twisted sea creature has been running rampant in our oceans, spreading its unnatural, bisexual lifestyle. And it's high time somebody took a stand."

The controversial anemone, common to warm-water reefs and basins worldwide, has been practicing its alternative sexual lifestyle at least as far back as 1859, when Charles Darwin first catalogued its phylum and species. Since then, over 40 subspecies of Telia felina have been identified as dually gendered.

The Baptist group also strongly denounced the anemone's reproductive habits and family structure.

http://www.theonion.com/articles/transgendered-sea-anemone-denounced-as-abomination,646/

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