2007.......

OK, this may be long...but a typical family chain of emails. First the characters of this Act I:
My brother Dan: the humanist
My mother: the brief and to the point
My father: the philosophical theologian
Me: the idealist
My sister Andrea: the stubborn
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First email from brother Dan at 9:45 pm Friday December 29th:
Daniel Latorre wrote to our family:

What's your mantra for 2007? Mine is flexibility... and through this site, or via the IM video app, or via iTunes you can get 1 hour of great class instruction free each and every day.

That's my tip. Hope you all ring in the New Year with hope for changes in 2007, for better days ahead.

http://www.yogatoday.com/

-Dan
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Second email, Mothers response to all at 10:50am Monday January 1st:

Happy New Year, beloved ones! Yes, we greet the New Year with hope for good changes and good days ahead.

Last night Ana & Terry came to CR. We went to the nicest restaurant in CR (not a chain), had dinner. Then came back home for some card playing and music. A cava toast rang in the new year. We talked till one thirty or so. They stayed overnight. (Roads were bad...they got 5 or 6 " snow before they drove over here...we got maybe an inch or 2 it looks like. But the 40 degree temp by Wed will hopefully melt it away!) This morning it is brilliantly sunny with bright snow blanketing the ground.

Here is my mantra for the new year:

If you will only let God guide you and hope in him through all your ways,

He'll give you strength whatever happens and take you through the evil or difficult days.

Who trusts in God's unchanging love builds on the rock that cannot move.

Hugs to all....
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Third email, brother Dan's response to all at 12:18pm Monday January 1st:

Metaphors and concepts don't heal sore parts of ourselves, but actually stretching them by methods refined over 5000 years will in fact, ease the pain, this my friends is all very well known....

But other methods, though they may "feel good" to some don't really do much at all... in fact they can hurt more often than help.

http://select.nytimes.com/search/restricted/article?res=FB0C10F935540C728DDDAD0894DE404482

All changes on this planet were only due to people deciding to make a different life, or ill or for good, history shows this over and over. Even down to choosing what to read, how to informonself about the world, or not an just FOLLOW demagogs idealogs, past, or present. Positive changes on the other hand, like Civil, Womens, Voting, Representation rights all happened when we trusted ourselves to find a better way and were determined to make a real change for all those we are together with. But precisely putting faith in others has led so many to allow this neo-dictatorship we currently live in; we have heard talk and demands to live for some "FATHER-land" before and its mixture of leaders real and imaginary; when will we learn than any such talk is a road to extreme life demeaning alienation and death?

Ah, but I'll stop here, facts, history, and considering all the people we are together with don't matter to some,

If only they did.... only then might we have more peace.

Back to yoga and cleaning out toxins, both bodily real and of the dogma variety.

-Dan
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Fourth email, Fathers response to all at 12:31pm Monday January 1st:

Dear family, it is good to wish one another the best in all respects for this year just begun.

Following Daniel's inquisitive mind, my mantra is, (I really prefer: leit motif and allow me to be a bit philosophical here): to seek the truth...and with this, to search for meaning as human beings that are very aware of two main conditions apparently exclusive of each other: First, our awareness of our perishable, material nature and, second, our capacity to love with overwhelming love that seeks eternity. For we only want to live forever if there is love forever. Nothing else!! Perfect Love that transcends matter. If not, forget it!! There is in loving an unnatural thorn that hurts us when we see that love dies with us, as our material nature decomposes under just a few feet of dirt. Yet part of this love remains in those who loved us until they too die. Our tragedy as human beings is that once we know true love, we want to love forever yet we are not able to. For this I find that reason, and even our own intelligence, gives us a misleading turn when man erects his own reason as a god to whom, and only to whom, one can turn for answers. For our reason is part of us, the perishable, and it is neutral to man's quest to love forever. As a matter of fact, no pun intended, reason knows nothing beyond matter. Reason is limited by our own nature, it cannot go beyond our own shadow, as it were. Our intelligence is wonderful in observing and deducing, but explains nothing concerning cause and destination. Even as of lately reasons pretends that there is no cause and no destination. It has discovered also that there are hundreds of false answers and rejects the possibility of one right answer to that man's quest for eternal love. Paradoxically, Love is and will be the downfall of reason because although reason knows love exists, it recognizes it not.

Love be with you forever..

Ernie, husband and dad.
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Fifth email, my response to all at 2:48pm Friday January 5th:

Resolution:

a resolve or determination: to make a firm resolution to do something.

the act of resolving or determining upon an action or course of action, method, procedure, etc.

the mental state or quality of being resolved or resolute; firmness of purpose.

New Years? I just worked both on the eve and day. watched the ball drop live in NYC at 11pm CST and went to bed
a resolution? nothing new. new years is a symbol...a year, a date...time is all relative. when from the blanket of each night's darkness we awake, arise, and are active in our communities and environments we should recognize that we don't need to set or declare resolutions, they should be a way of everyday life...to live healthy, to care about all things living (people, plants, animals, environments), to have find purpose for all things agreed and disagreed on, to realize that the self is nothing without everything else.

So, for the sake of tradition, my "resolution":

live to sustain. understand to maintain.

Joe
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Sixth email, sister Andrea's response to all at 4:41 pm Friday January 5th:

joe, you need to pick a specif goal, not just concepts, otherwise you will never obtain your goal....it will just stay an "ideal" rather than an action. also, to make a change, one needs to make a personal affirmation in the present tense, not future, otherwise the subconsiounse (sp) mind won't believe it...
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Seventh and final email, brother Dan's response to all at 5:03pm Friday January 5th:

There are many correct paths in life, not only one.

"One young man of my acquaintance, who has inherited some acres,
told me that he thought he should live as I did, if he had the
means. I would not have any one adopt my mode of living on any
account; for, beside that before he has fairly learned it I may have
found out another for myself, I desire that there may be as many
different persons in the world as possible; but I would have each
one be very careful to find out and pursue his own way, and not his
father's or his mother's or his neighbor's instead. The youth may
build or plant or sail, only let him not be hindered from doing that
which he tells me he would like to do"

- Henry David Thoreau

"Walden", Chapter 1, "Economy"

Change is the only constant, slowly or suddenly at times in all ways at all times.

-Dan
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I have to say congratulations to those who actually read this. Keep in mind this is just an email....you can probably imagine what we're like in person.... family get-togethers are always an action packed thought provoking event....I love my family!!! :)