http://www.shadowsandsymbols.org Reviews and Thoughts for the Journey Sat, 14 Aug 2010 01:02:17 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Two "extreme tourists", Guilluame Combot and Enora Nedelec, have recently made the 18-month journey by foot from Capetown to Khartoum, from south to north across sub-Saharan Africa. Surviving on about $2.00 (US) each day and with only two backpacks of supplies, the pair walked each day not knowing where they ... http://www.shadowsandsymbols.org/?p=108 This is a book that I had not known about until Peter at Slow Reads gave it to me as a recent birthday gift. I had not heard about it beforehand and was a bit intimidated by its large number of pages. That being said, I'm really glad that I ... http://www.shadowsandsymbols.org/?p=107 For the last few months, I and some friends been discussing the concepts of spiritual families and spiritual communities. Combining the two words together led us to coin the new word "fammunity". Spiritual families are formed when a spiritual father is connected to spiritual sons. The reemphasis on spiritual families is ... http://www.shadowsandsymbols.org/?p=106 Recently deceased 98-year old Verna Oller of Long Beach, Washington, USA, had quietly amassed a fortune of (U.S.) $4.5 million that almost no one knew about. Ms. Oller's lifestyle betrayed nothing about her wealth. As the ABC News video shows (please see the link below), Ms. Oller was so frugal ... http://www.shadowsandsymbols.org/?p=105 Don't despair. If you're in a place in your life where you're not sure where to go next: first and foremost, don't despair. Perhaps you're at a stage where you know that change needs to come,- but you're not quite sure what to do about it. Yet first of all,- be at ... http://www.shadowsandsymbols.org/?p=104 CNN had a very good article recently about monks: "Monks making money: A business beyond prayer". The article covers the history of Western monasticism and how monks today in the United States earn money to support themselves and their monasteries. As the article points out, monks have some of the same ... http://www.shadowsandsymbols.org/?p=103 For more than 150 years, the insignia of rank for officers in the United States military has consisted of stars, eagles, oak leaves, and bars. Veterans and current service members are well aware of these insignia and their significance as per authority and responsibility. These insignia is also where the ... http://www.shadowsandsymbols.org/?p=102 The newspaper USA Today had a good article recently about the new phenomena called "crop mobs": "Crop Mobs Sprout up on Farms". Wikipedia also has a short article about crop mobs. Evidently, crop mobs are a rural version of flash mobs. With crop mobs, people from suburban or urban regions network ... http://www.shadowsandsymbols.org/?p=101 This Spring is the 65th anniversary of the Battle of Okinawa, which was the last major battle in the American strategy of "island hopping" by capturing successive islands in the western Pacific Ocean from the Japanese Imperial Army. The battle lasted for two and a half months and resulted in ... http://www.shadowsandsymbols.org/?p=99 My apologies for my long absence. It's now time to get back to more shadows and symbols ... There is no question that the words body and house have symbolic significance. The terms "a house divided" and "royal house" come from ages past, and "body politic" and "body of knowledge", "... ... http://www.shadowsandsymbols.org/?p=98