Please watch these videos……they so make sense about what we as responsible societies should be doing.

Are you sick of the lies and corruption in society, of the greed and power of the few? Do you want to end poverty? Do you want to find peace inside?

My Journey – reflecting….

Following on from my last post about “Becoming a Quaker” I have started the online course, and I have several things to do – mainly reflection of why I want to commit to be a Quaker, who am I and what is my faith.

Where have you come from on your spiritual journey?

I don’t know how to answer this at the moment.

Most of my life I have believed in “God”, “the IS” or whatever name one calls it. However, I am currently having a crisis in my faith. I’m not sure what I believe in anymore. I feel that I am almost starting my search from scratch.

What treasures do you bring with you?

A questioning mind. A love of learning, a compassionate heart (i’m too flippin soft!), and a passion for equality, respect and truth.

What do you want to give up or leave behind from previous faith experiences?
Nothing

What brings you to Quakers?
The Community of like minded people who hold similar values. And the belief to see that of God in EVERYTHING.

Short answers I know. Much thought though.

And not just anything, obviously. Committing to something spiritual is for me as important a decision to be fully aligned with as getting married would be.

So I have decided to explore become a Friend, to see if it is right for me and I am right for “it”

I love the silence in which we “worship.” I love the sense of waiting in anticipation and the stillness that comes over a meeting. I’m fully aligned with Quakers beliefs…. like honesty in all things and seeking the divine in everything…. person, moment……… everything.

It will be interesting exploring “becoming a friend” and I am delighted that there is an online course which I can study in my own time. I think I have found my “thing” to blog about!! My Journey into Quakerism or to becoming a Quaker, if that is what happens.

My particular meeting is Alston. in Cumbria.  It is a tiny meeting of about half a dozen people.

The Meeting House has been in Alston for a few centuries. It is a lovely little building set in its own grounds. Often, while I am sitting in the silence I love to think of all the people who have sat there before me…..What were their worries, their cares, life, loves and passions? I love that there is nothing to believe in if you don’t want to. Or as you choose – other religious models are completely acceptable too.

Traditionally Quakers have believed in Jesus and all that, but over the last 50 or so years, (I think that about how long) Quakes have been embracing other religions and spiritual expression as well as Christianity. Christianity was the only spiritual model that was available to the founding Quakers.

If you want to know more about Quakes, take a look at this video.

In anticipation of stillness……

Thank you to the Friends who made this video and the person that took the photo.

Ok, so today I found a new app for my iPad called Blogsy. It seems to be a very easy way to use an iPad to blog and to add pictures or videos to the blog. So I’m giving it a test run. Well at least it has given me something to blog about!!

Umm and adding pictures seems to have eluded me for the minute, but video might work!!

I love this place. I love the community here, the nearness of the town, the oldness of the buildings and cobbles and the sense of just being home.

I was worried about coming back as far as the weather is concerned, but so far this year it has been great. We had loads of snow around last Christmas and then since then it has really been quite ok. We have even had days of sun and it’s only April!

Interestingly though, I think that we have had good weather, because one of the assets to the current house I am living in is that it has a sunroom. And it is a well placed sunroom. It gets the sun from early morning to late afternoon. And even if it is windy and a little drizzly, the sunroom warms up quickly and is a lovely place to work on my computer.

I have just planted a tomato plant in here, and basil, parsley and coriander. I hope my gardening skills are up to it.

Location:Alston, Cumbria

However, actually, despite there being a “better” version since buying this one, I am really really pleased with it.

Good points about it……

- It fits in my bag
- it is much easier to type on it both more accurately and quickly than on any device or computer that I have had before – ever!
- the screen gives a great “look” to everything
- there are some great apps for the iPad
………. Dragon Dictate – dictation software which ass long as you are connected to the Internet it works really well and is very accurate.
………. Flipboard – which is a news app for all your news – rss feed, facebook, the beeb, tech news – or any “news” that you would like to configure

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Home

I found MacSpeech Dictate quite difficult to use, and although I persevered it became easier to actually type what I thought rather than use a voice recognition programme. I was very disappointed. As a dyslexic, I was thrilled with the idea of just being able to speak into my laptop. It was not as easy as that. And I gave up.

I have heard that Nuance – Dragon Dictate were buying MacSpeech Dictate, so although I was looking forward to trying it, I was already put off with the programme I had been using. I was also not impressed with the price that I have had to pay for both iListen and MacSpeech Dictate – a commercial price for beta software. Coupled with expensive upgrades, I was very fed up.

I long for the day, that I am easily able to put my thoughts into a format that people can take in easily, gets something out of and enjoy the process!

So, it was with utter delight, that I discovered Dragon Dictate for the iPhone. And, wonder upon wonder, it was free! Of course I downloaded it immediately. And it worked immediately. I did not need to train it, speak extensively into it, to read to it in any way. It just worked! I now had an easy way to transcribe my words to text.

It was of course, no surprise that an e-mail came from Dragon Dictate saying that they had taken over MacSpeech Dictate. Dragon Dictate has integrated their technology into the now new Dragon dictate for the Mac. And, guess what, another hefty price even from an upgrade–£39.99.

I wrote to the sales director who had written the correspondence to me (a mass e-mailing). And to date I have had no response. Even though I cheekily corresponded with him over Facebook as well!

It was with great reluctance but some excitement as I decided to bite the bullet once again and pay the price of yet another upgrade. I paid my money and started to download the new product. It was 1.2 gigs! And my time counter informed me that it would take 15 days to download! (I admit I am on a slow connection, but even so!)

The download actually only took 23 hours. I have never downloaded anything so big. And I was extremely worried that my connection would go down in the middle. However, when I woke this morning then it was ready to install in my applications folder.

What do I think? You tell me!

It will be fun finding out what else DD can do.

PS. I used DD to enter the text into this post too. I had to redo a few typos and wrongly understood words, but overall it worked well. 85% happy so far!!