Friendship - Khalil Gibran

And a youth said,
- Speak to us of Friendship!
And he answered, saying:

Your friend is your needs answered. He is your field which you sow with love
and reap with thanksgiving.

And he is your board and your fireside. For you come to him with your hunger,
and you seek him for peace.

When your friend speaks his mind you fear not the "nay" in your own mind,
nor do you withhold the "ay".

And when he is silent your heart ceases not to listen to his heart;

For without words, in friendship, all thoughts,all desires, all expectations are born and shared,with joy that is unacclaimed.

When you part from your friend, you grieve not; For that which you love mostin him may be clearer in his absence,
as the mountain to the climberis clearer from the plain.

And let there be no purpose in friendshipsave the deepening of the spirit.

For love that seeks aught but the disclosureof its own mystery is not love but a net cast forth:
and only the unprofitable is caught.

And let your best be for your friendthat you should seek him with hours to kill?Seek him always with hours to live. For it is his to fill your need,
but not your emptiness. And in the sweetness of friendship
let there be laughter, and sharing of pleasures.

For in the dew of little thingsthe heart finds its morning and is refreshed.

Looking For Your Face - Rumi

Looking For Your Face
--Rumi

From the beginning of my life
I have been looking for your face
but today I have seen it.

Today I have seenthe charm, the beauty,
the unfathomable grace
of the face
that I was looking for.

Today I have found you
and those that laughed
and scorned me yesterday
are sorry that they were not looking
as I did.

I am bewildered by the magnificence
of your beauty
and wish to see you with a hundred eyes.

My heart has burned with passion
and has searched forever
for this wondrous beauty
that I now behold.

I am ashamed to call this love human
and afraid of God
to call it divine.

Your fragrant breath
like the morning breeze
has come to the stillness of the garden

You have breathed new life into me
I have become your sunshine
and also your shadow.

My soul is screaming in ecstasy
Every fiber of my beingis in love with you
Your effulgencehas lit a fire in my heart
and you have made radiantfor me
the earth and sky.

My arrow of love
has arrived at the target
I am in the house of mercy
and my heart
is a place of prayer.

Millennium Development Goals

What they are

At the Millennium Summit in September 2000 the largest gathering of world leaders in history adopted the UN Millennium Declaration, committing their nations to a new global partnership to reduce extreme poverty and setting out a series of time-bound targets, with a deadline of 2015, that have become known as the Millennium Development Goals.

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are the world's time-bound and quantified targets for addressing extreme poverty in its many dimensions-income poverty, hunger, disease, lack of adequate shelter, and exclusion-while promoting gender equality, education, and environmental sustainability. They are also basic human rights-the rights of each person on the planet to health, education, shelter, and security.

The world has made significant progress in achieving many of the Goals. Between 1990 and 2002 average overall incomes increased by approximately 21 percent. The number of people in extreme poverty declined by an estimated 130 million 1. Child mortality rates fell from 103 deaths per 1,000 live births a year to 88. Life expectancy rose from 63 years to nearly 65 years. An additional 8 percent of the developing world's people received access to water. And an additional 15 percent acquired access to improved sanitation services.

But progress has been far from uniform across the world-or across the Goals. There are huge disparities across and within countries. Within countries, poverty is greatest for rural areas, though urban poverty is also extensive, growing, and underreported by traditional indicators.

Sub-Saharan Africa is the epicenter of crisis, with continuing food insecurity, a rise of extreme poverty, stunningly high child and maternal mortality, and large numbers of people living in slums, and a widespread shortfall for most of the MDGs. Asia is the region with the fastest progress, but even there hundreds of millions of people remain in extreme poverty, and even fast-growing countries fail to achieve some of the non-income Goals. Other regions have mixed records, notably Latin America, the transition economies, and the Middle East and North Africa, often with slow or no progress on some of the Goals and persistent inequalities undermining progress on others.