Well, I don’t consider myself unnaturally materialistic – but then, who does?  Nor have I really spent that much on myself this past year (certainly a lot less than usual) and I don’t actually subscribe to the idea of unncessary acquistion.  In fact, I rather think that the overt commercialisation of the winter holidays massively detracts from the spirit of goodwill, festive celebration and charity that I think they should really be all about.

Having said all that, this time of year is still often about giving AND receiving.  I really love a surprise, but I know some members of my extended family like to ask what to get everyone…so this year I put out a few pre-holiday suggestions into the ether.

Then I read a blogpost (which I would love to share with you – but alas, we have had MAJOR computer problems in the past 24hrs and all my links are gone – booo) on the subject of greed/wishlists etc and I thought… well, I don’t think that greed IS a good thing and I don’t need any of these things to turn up in my life in the near future.  In fact, I realised that after nearly a year with Kazuo my priorities have already shifted so considerably that when I think of having even a small amount of disposable cash, I think of things I could get for him, not me.  I am becoming that woman who eeks out her make up and perfumes for years (ugh, kinda unhygenic I know).  But if you pushed me, these are the things that would cause me great delight right now:

• Some Fabric from Cushla’s (Preferably the Black Ponga and the Large Green Paua).

• Some Paua Buttons.

• A teething necklace.

• Amanda Soule’s book on handmade projects.

• A double twist Paua & Bone pendant.

• A Pounamu Heart or Twist or Teardrop pendant.

• This recipe book.

• A nice soft white shirt like the longsleeved one in the Zara collections.

• A sturdy, long shoulder bag, like this one though perhaps in leather if such a thing can be found.

• A winter scarf in black or dark red, something long I can wrap around, or a pashmina type thing.

• Some black photo frames for pics of our darling boy.

• Some unusual cooking ingredients, like Kelp Salt, Sambal Oelek, Seaweeds, Dried Fruits (eg Apricots, Cranberries etc), Plain Organic Dark Chocolate, Kalamata Olives, Rosewater – things one would not ordinarily buy, but might make for some really tasty winter treats.

I guess it is really a reflection of what our lifestyle is like right now and the things that are influencing me.  I am grateful that when I reflected on this list again, I realised that I needed NONE of these things, that I was happy with things as they were…a contented and happy place to be.

Today, I am grateful for all of the traveling that I have been able to do so far in my life. One of my goals is to travel around the world. Here are some photos from my travels.

The Sphinx/Pyramids at Giza, Egypt, July 1987

Jersalem, Israel, 1989

The Parthenon, Athens, Greece, 1991

Big Ben, London, England, November 1994

Sacre Coeur, Paris, France, March 1997

Dunn’s River Falls, Jamaica, 1998

Opera House, Sydney, Australia, April 2000

Blarney Castle, Cork, Ireland, 2003

The Colesseum, Rome, Italy, July 2004

Wishing Well at Phaistos, Crete, November 2005. Here is where I wished that I would meet my significant other. I ended up meeting him in May 2006. We married in July 2007. Not bad!

Panama Canal, Panama City, Panama, July 2007

Here are just a few of my favorite photos from my travels. I didn’t even put any of my Costa Rica photos because that would probably take several pages.

I hope you enjoyed them.

What are you grateful for today?

I had the day off yesterday. Well, from when I left my house just after eleven in the morning, until I got back home around six thirty. No diaper bag, no sippy cup, no matchbox cars or teddy bears. Shane was home with my husband, and I had the afternoon and evening off.

I was meeting up with two of my forever friends, who also managed to get the afternoon off. There’s five of us who have stayed close in the years since high school. Carrie now lives in the UK, and Tanya was visiting family out-of-state, so neither of them were able to join us this time around. However, since Shay was home from Connecticut, visiting her in-laws for the holiday, and Jen had the afternoon free, we had to take advantage of this and get together. Opportunities to see each other are few and far between, and we cherish each and every chance we get! I picked her up at her in-laws, and we headed over to Jen’s house. The plan was to head out for lunch, followed by ice-skating after.

Lunch was wonderful — we laughed, vented, and caught up on each other’s lives. We talked about the wonderful aspects of staying home with our children…and the more mundane, or hair-pulling parts of it as well. We gossiped about those we remembered from high school, and what they’re up to now (three cheers for Facebook!). We shared pregnancy and childbirth stories, again (that never gets old!). We talked about past struggles and hopes for the future. We sat at our table until our coffee mugs and tea cups were dry, until the waitress began dropping progressively heavier hints that we’d over-stayed our welcome.

Ice skating was probably the most strenuous — and side-splittingly hysterical –exercise I’ve done in an incredibly long time. The last time I stepped out on that ice was about fifteen years ago. We’d met up at that rink for public skating on countless weekends during the winter months. While I was never a figure skater, I once could get around that rink without breaking myself. Yesterday I was terrified that as soon as I stepped out on the ice, my feet would fly up from under me and I’d land in a fractured heap. We were all like Bambi on ice — legs stiff, arms flailing out to the sides, and hunched over. Usually hunched over in a pathetic attempt to keep our balance, but also because we were clutching our stomachs from out-of-control-laughter!

The rink was crowded with miniature hockey players. Preschoolers in snow pants, clutching their parent’s hands. A couple skating around together, holding hands. And teenagers in groups — laughing together, standing by the wall gossiping, boys and girls flirting and joking with each other. We skated by them several times, and I’d look over and remember how that used to be us. Younger, thinner, with the best part of our lives still ahead of us.

As a fifteen year old, I couldn’t imagine what my future would bring. College, career, a family of my own…those were all too far in the future. I was more focused on the here and now. One thing I just took for granted would be that my closest friends, those who I met at the skating rink so many Saturdays, would always be a part of my life.

My fifteen-year-old self would be relieved to know that I was skating around that rink beside two of those friends yesterday. We may be older, less agile, and not-as-thin as we were back then, and we may not be able to get together as often as we used to, but the friendships that I cherished, even back then, have endured.

As I walked out the garage door, and looked to my right. I could see the Waxing Gibbous moon, nearly full, glowing white in the still, blue sky. It was dusk and the sun had slipped to the horizon and was quickly disappearing. Last night the sky was streaked with fury red. Tonight it was a pale defused orange color.  

Uriah and I walked towards the front pond, instead of on the back path. The path was still under an inch of water, and slippery. With the sun going down, I was afraid I would fall into the pitch black mud. Not my idea of a fun night.

 Staring into the blue sky, I found it hard to differentiate between the summer sky at dusk and this sky. There was only one cloud, possibly Cirrus, splattered over head looking very much like a flattened out tornado. Its bottom point aimed at the setting sun, while the large cone top swirled above my head.

Uriah came over and leaned against my leg. He was still nervous from the gun fire all afternoon. I have a neighbor who loves to target shot. For hours… 

“Its okay,” I whispered, as I rubbed his face. “He isn’t shooting anymore.”

At that moment, shots rang out; to be precise, six times the gun, sounded like a 22. Uriah stood up, then sat down and sighed heavily.  

“Come on, boy.” I patted my leg as I walked away from Uriah.  “At least he’s not shooting the big stuff.”

 I really have to learn how to be quiet. Two shots rang out, with an intense deep, BOOM! BOOM! Those shots vibrated through the ground.

I called Uriah to walk around the pond, and gave him a Milkbone dog biscuit, which made him happy. While the there was still light he needed his exercise. I was relieved, when he decided to trotted on ahead.

 A waft of warm barbeque air disturbed the cold, damp wood smell, but only in small pockets. Odd!  I took four steps and I walked into a cold, damp woody smell. Then, I moved forward two more steps, into warm air smelling like hot dogs and summer. It had to do with the lack of a breeze. The air was extremely still.

 All, this was making me hungry.

An angry Cardinal clicked high in the trees; another one closer towards the house answered the first. I wondered if they were upset with me, or whoever had a fire going? More than likely it was the shooting that went on all afternoon.

I turned as I reached the driveway. Now I was facing towards the house. The moon hung in the sky above the roof like the star of Bethlehem.

 The shooting stopped. The birds were still talking in the trees, and the light was fading fast.

My pace picked up as I followed Uriah to the house. I have a piece of pumpkin pie left. I just hope my husband can see my name is written on it…

Just for Today
Do not Anger

Just for Today
Do not Worry

Honor Your Parents
Teachers and Elders

Earn Your Living Honestly

Show Gratitude
To Every Living Thing

In Everything Give Thanks

In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you. (1Thess 5:18 KJV)

Give thanks in everything?

Yes: in everything.

It sounds odd, doesn’t it?

Not all things are pleasant. Are we to give thanks then?

Yes, we are to give thanks in the unpleasant times.

Consider Joseph. He certainly had no apparent reason to be grateful, as he was sold into slavery by his brothers, and for a while things only went downhill from there. Four decades later, however, Joseph told his brothers it was something that was intended by God for the purpose of accomplishing good (See Genesis 50:20).

So it is in our own lives. There is the superintending hand of Divine Providence upon the lives of Christians everywhere. That hand is working to accomplish good things for those Christians (See Romans 8:28). Thus it is that we can give thanks.

An odd thing caused me to remember this truth. About six months ago a member of one of the churches that I pastor drove up (thinking that he was doing me a favor) and dropped off this wreck of a lawnmower. It was junk. When my own lawnmower broke down during the summer, I did manage to start that one, but found that it needed four new tires! I couldn’t even use it for a spare! How irritating that has been to me! Fast forward to today. My parents were over, and my dad and I were walking around outside. I commented to him that I was going to have to haul that piece of junk lawnmower to the landfill. It just so happened that he needed a new engine for his mower, and that particular engine would cost $1,600 new. He was able to take that junked out lawnmower for the engine that was on it, thus saving money that he, like so many of us, just didn’t have in his wallet, sock drawer, or Mason jar in the back yard.

In other words, my irritation has turned out to be a blessing of Sovereign Providence.

Who knows what your nerve-wracking irritation may be? Who knows what the next not-so-good situation may be? Just know that it will be used of God in some way to accomplish some form of good, so give thanks for it.

While I am a big fan of finding something to be grateful for every day, this is the time of year when we are free to go a little hog wild with our gratitude. So here goes.

I am thankful that:

~ I long ago figured out it was a choice – an obligation even — to use my writing gift every single day and I do.

~ Unlike so many Americans, my affordable health care plan with a reputable carrier and no prescription coverage works just fine. Much to the utter amazement, I might add, of the two women at the next chair over in my hair salon whose conversation went from animated to a whisper when I said that I had only needed three prescriptions in the last seven years. And, no, the massively over-prescribed Xanax, Vicodin and Percocet were not among them.

~ Back in the 1980s, when I went to college, it was possible to pay for it myself with almost no student loan assistance. Today’s students are saddled with a kind of debt I couldn’t imagine in the name of getting a basic degree.

~ My idea of a tea party, regardless of what the term now conjures up, is still a cup of English Breakfast and a coconut cupcake from a little place called Sweet in Hoboken.

~ Occasionally I get mail that makes me laugh out loud. This year’s winner: a Chippendales calendar with this headline on the accompanying press release – The Number One Male Revue in the World to Release the “Ultimate Stimulus Package.”

~ I “succumbed” to peer pressure and entered the world of BlackBerry and social media, which has brought another layer of ease, efficiency and connectedness into my life.

~ My experience with a layoff in 2002 led to a wonderful new career in life coaching and that my clients know I identify with so many of their issues because of it.

~ I have surrounded myself with so many marvelous people who are spiritually and creatively open. You know who you are.

~ The benefit of living in a very politically polarized United States is the opportunity to dig deep, reflect and define or reinforce our values and priorities as individuals and, by extension, as teachers, activists, parents and all the other roles we play that give our lives meaning and dimension.

~ I love where I live with all its urban noise and bustle and a dazzling view of the Manhattan skyline.

~ A former client sent this just last week: “… it is amazing how I look back to where I was when I first met you. I had no direction, no confidence and no clue that life is completely in my hands. Slowly but surely, I’ve realized this. I still look back on my list of goals that I made with you — and interestingly enough, all those goals are slowly coming to fruition without me even forcing them. Basically you helped me to start even thinking about what I WANT — not what I’ll settle for.”

I am so, so thankful.

Nancy Colasurdo is a practicing life coach and freelance writer. Her Web site is www.nancola.com. Please direct all questions/comments to FOXGamePlan@gmail.com.

Now that the holidays are officially here, I notice that  friends and people who contact me about my book “Forget Your Troubles” feel more stressed than ever! They are taking on a burden of making the season glitter and sparkle, even when they don’t really feel like celebrating as much as they might have in past years.

The first thing I always do is write out a gratitude list, and take an honest look at all the abundance in my life. It’s much easier to get sucked into the negative of comparing your situation to other people’s better finances or the position you were in before. But when we perceive lack and bad luck, we tend to overlook all the gifts that we do have.

Would you like some quick stress relief? Get a free digital gift from me now, called “Give Me a Break” at http://www.ForgetYourTroublesBook.com

get the book at amazon

And keep on smiling.

Evelyn

I love the lyrics of this song. So peaceful and reassuring are the words of John Michael Talbot. A couple of days ago our friend Paul Kelly passed from this life to the next. Death need not be what we have made it and as a Franciscan I am comforted by St. Francis’ own welcome of Sister Death as he called her. Death is after all a part of life and without it we could not go on. We will all miss Paul with his wit and wisdom which he shared with us all. Today I took a drive along the Allegany River as it winds its way along Interstate 86 in New York’s southern tier. The gray mists that shrouded the mountain tops to the south provided an ethereal backdrop and in the silence I looked up those valleys along the south bank of the river. Traveling through the towns of Allegany, Vandalia, Limestone and then south to Bradford, PA I thought of my friend Paul and our many trips along this same route.

More than anything else today I felt grateful. The excitement of Thanksgiving and the reunion with family along with Paul’s death provided peak moments. Today there was peace and memories. I love this song and its lyrics. I hope you enjoy it too.

while doing my spanish homework, i caught a great episode of ‘what not to wear’, one of my favorite shows.

stacy and clinton and their cohorts work sheer magic, people.

as i was watching, it made me think about things i’m really thankful for..aside from a fairly decent fashion sense and clothes that i am able to afford and wear on a daily basis.

i’m a very lucky person. i’m a very blessed person.

i have so so so many absolutely wonderful friends that i have on call to talk to about anything and everything whenever, wherever. my family is awesome. i am able to go to school at the school of my choice (go to hell duke!). my support system is stronger that i could have ever imagined.

God continues to prove faithful.

1 corinthians 15:57 — “but thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ!”

this is a pretty short little post. but i don’t think that there are any other words necessary to express my gratitude for how blessed my life is. thank God and all of my family and friends for making my life what it is, for without you all, my life would be rather bland and pointless.

This being Thanksgiving weekend, I started to think about all the things I’m thankful for:

I’m thankful that my family is well and happy (most of the time).

I’m thankful for garage door openers and TV remote controls.

I’m thankful that my youngest son who was born blind is able to see clearly.

I’m thankful that it’s not 110 degrees out anymore.

I’m thankful for antibiotics.

I’m thankful for Sprouts, Fresh N Easy, and Trader Joes.

I’m thankful my kids love each other (most of the time).

I’m thankful McDonalds is an annual treat for my kids and not a daily destination. (and I’m thankful that my kids are afraid to venture into those germy ball pit areas).

I’m thankful to be doing rewarding work.

I’m thankful on no homework nights.

I’m thankful my kids love and respect their teachers.

I’m thankful shoulder pads haven’t come back in yet. (Remeber Norma Kamali?)

I’m thankful my husband takes an equal role in child rearing (most of the time).

I’m thankful that we have a solid roof over our heads and clothes on our backs.

I’m thankful for a glass of wine every now and again when my children’s whining gets to be too much for me.

I’m thankful for Mr. Clean eraser sponges (Are they amazing or what?)

I’m thankful that my children are out of diapers, done with bottles, and can make their own lunches.

I’m thankful for itunes.

I’m thankful for my mother-in-law (most of the time).

I’m thankful for my laptop which keeps me productive during hours of carpool waiting.

I’m thankful for Facebook which has allowed me to catch up with friends from my youth.

I’m thankful for “Love and Logic” CDs which are teaching me better parenting techniques.

I’m thankful for resale shops.

I’m thankful for no-pudge fudge, Weight Watcher 2 point brownies, and mint Skinny Cows.

I’m thankful that we have family in town (most of the time).

It might sound silly or corny or way too Oprah, but sit down once and a while and ask yourself, “what am I truly grateful for?” You might surprise yourself.
Happy Thanksgiving,
Debra

Miguel brought me flowers for my birthday. Tanner took pictures.

That’s all.

I had a really nice birthday. I am 1 year away from being 40. Ha ha!

Tanner told me the other day, “Mom, you are almost half a century.”

It sounds pretty old when you say it like that.

I don’t care, I feel good and that’s what counts! I have so much in my life to be thankful for, and I am in a great place in my life right now.

Happy Holidays everyone!

Country Music. I am grateful for country music. I did not grow up with it and really was closed off to exploring the sound and the lyrics in college when a dear friend of mine from western VA tried to share it with me. Now, I cannot get enough. The melodies. The stories the songs tell. The joy and fun I see in the performances- heck the fun and joy I feel singing at the top of my lungs in my apartment.

I have always loved to sing. Country music has reignited that passion for me over the past few years. Probably no coincidence that over those same “past few years” I have had some amazingly difficult challenges come into my life. I have found strength in listening to my new friends like Carrie, Faith, Miranda, Reba, Martina, Taylor, Darius and Jennifer sing about life because that IS what happens. Life. You can try to go around it but the best way I have found is to just plow through it and find the gratitude in the small things. Country music is soulful and so am I.

Early yesterday morning, I glanced out the window to check on Uriah. He was sitting in the bright morning sunshine; his head cocked to one side his ears up and forwards watching something near the line of trees.

Blinking I tried to focus on what caught his attention.  I looked at the burn pile where green and beige grass stood up in uneven tuffs, dried branches and a pile of cuttings from the vegetable garden flopped over haphazardly.

I could see nothing out of the ordinary.

I looked back at Uriah. He was still staring; his head at a tilted angle, with his left ear pointing at the ground.

I tried again to focus, again. This time past the burn pile along the tree line. Fifty feet away there was a fuzzy grey squirrel, he was laying along the ground with his front paws on an acorn squash. I could see bright yellow splotches on the dark, dark green squash.

 I blinked, then rubbed my eyes as the squirrel stood up off the ground, stood on the squash and jumped up, his downward pounce had the acorn squash roll slightly and he fell off.

The squirrel stood for a moment, staring at the squash.  Positioned himself on the side towards the house, reached out slowly and put his front paws on the squash and pushed. 

The squash rolled forward. He fell on his face, prone on the ground, back legs stretched out behind him front paws still touching the vegetable.  Then, that squirrel jumped up, landed on top the squash and held on with his nails, as it rolled, very slowly, away from the burn pile, with the squirrel attached so he fell on the opposite side.

At this point I noticed I had tilted my head like Uriah, in a, what the..!!, stance.

I watched for a few more moments as that fuzzy grey squirrel circled the squash, with his tail flipping, analyzing the situation.

I called Uriah, he looked up at me, then back at the squirrel. He eyes rolled up towards me, then back at the squirrel. Like he was saying, “Can you believe this? 

I decided I needed coffee I was hallucinating.

True healing can come in many forms, including those we do not want or expect. On Thanksgiving Eve, I attended a church service where the minister spoke about gratitude. What was different about his sermon was that he said he was much more interested in situations where gratitude did not naturally arise in us — that is, where we receive something, or experience something, that we do not want. It is easy to be grateful, he told us, . . . when we get what we want, but not when we don’t. How can you be grateful for something you don’t like and don’t want?

The minister mentioned a serious loss as one example, one that immediately touched my fresh wound of losing my wife in September that meant I would now be spending my first Thanksgiving without her in the world. He said that life events that really jolt us, like the death of a loved one, almost always give us a major pause or space in our lives. That pause, in turn, gives us the opportunity to think and perceive differently. And in that opportunity to see, to perceive and think, differently about our circumstances and our lives, we often are given the gift to live differently.

He talked about a man who had to have surgery to remove an arm so that he could live. At first the man was depressed and bitter; he felt like a victim whose mantra is “why me?” But by the time the day came for the man to have his amputation, he had managed to get to a place where he realized that he had the opportunity to experience life in a completely different way that would compel him to learn how to do some things differently, to pay more attention because he could no longer take for granted the fact that he had two arms. And, though the man never would have wished to lose an arm, he knew that he nevertheless would gain a new life as a result. In this way, losing an arm not only prevented him from losing his life but it gave him a new life or a new way of living that he realized had true value, that would change him. And he felt gratitude for that.

The minister told other stories to illustrate his point. But I already was moving forward into my healing of gratitude. I realized at that moment that the changes I already had begun to make in my life since losing my wife — my right arm, so to speak — were starting to give me new hope and even a since of enthusiasm about the future. Her passing had created the widest and deepest “pause” in my life, a chasm so large that I initially thought that it would swallow me up.

But the next day, on Thanksgiving, a curious thing happened. I spoke to a friend who told me that my wife’s spirit had spoken to her the night before, the same night I attended the service. My wife told my friend that, even though I had all of this new space in my life that had been occupied previously by my life with her, my focus should not be on the past and what I had lost. My challenge now, she said, was to create even more space that could hold new ideas, new awareness, new experiences, and new people.

It sounded counter-intuitive. And yet, I realized then that it was my gratitude — for my life with her, for the love we had shared in our life together and would continue to share in a different form — that was key to creating that new space she was talking about that would allow me to meet new people, perceive in new ways, find new opportunities, and step through new doors. I see now that healing the grief of my loss is important, but the real gift and the larger healing is using gratitude to open up space in me for a new life with new possibilities.

Main Garden, snuggled under a blanket of leaves for the winter

We continually find words and phrases used commonly in today’s culture, but which had roots in our earlier lives as a people who grew their own food.

This year Thanksgiving was nearly upon us when we completed the process of putting the gardens to bed. Then it dawned on me. A hoedown originally meant just that:  it was the time we put our hoes down for the winter, and that is definitely cause for great celebration.

That root meaning has all but disappeared from our dictionaries;  hoedown now refers to a particularly lively country jig, often experienced at a barn dance.  It makes sense, though, as putting farming tools down for a few months is a good excuse for dancing madly.  I wonder if that first Thanksgiving included a hoedown dance or two, for exactly the same reason.

At our house we celebrate times of completion and change. In March it’s sugaring off (the end of gathering and processing maple sap), and right now we are enjoying the delight of hoedown. We sing and dance and give thanks for another year of rich harvest and for the promise of winter rest.

Even if you’re not a farmer of any stripe, it is good to remember that somewhere, someone is putting a hoe down after working all summer so you’ll be able to eat all winter. So sing and dance and celebrate with your farmer, wherever s/he may be!

Ours is not the stereotypical Norman Rockwell Thanksgiving, but we made it our own with our own unique spin and traditions.  Crystal and Kevin arrive early to have our breakfast of pie and settle in to watch the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.  We have three different kinds of pie with Apple Crumb and Pumpkin being mainstays and the third changing. This year it was Three Berry.

Settled in with our pie and eggnog we oohhed and ahhed over the balloons and floats in the parade. My five favorites from the parade were:

• Ocean Spray Woodland Holiday Float
• Washington DC Majestic Knights Marching Band
• Mickey Mouse Balloon
• Stage Door Kids group
• Santa in his new sleigh

After the parade I get us together for a family picture. That’s always entertaining hehe.  My wonderful son-in-law indulges me, Matt is come on just do it and Crystal and I have to go over the picture carefully to make sure we look ‘right’. Thank goodness there’s only four of us, of excuse me Oliver..five. Then we headed down the road to dinner at Whately Inn.  A beautiful Early American Inn and Restaurant it’s a warm and welcoming spot for dinner. With a large dining room downstairs as well as an upstairs dining room we were seated upstairs this year. One of the best things about their menu is everything is included, unless you want an al a carte appetizer, you have your appetizer, salad, meal with sides and dessert with coffee or tea. We perused the menu making our choices then started with the relish bowl and rolls.  The night before I’d called Crystal and Kevin as well as Matt at work and asked them to give some thought to something different from our usual ‘what are you thankful for this year?“. Regular readers know we faced some challenges this year and so I thought it would be good to think about the things that made us happy. I told them to think outside the box, we’re always grateful/happy for each other but let’s think of some of the other things that brought us joy this year. 

We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures. ~Thornton Wilder

We started going around each taking a turn with one of the items on our list while we enjoyed the relish bowl, soup(lobster bisque for me)and salad. My five things were:

• Going to Northampton on Presidents Day for lunch at Evolution then wandering around downtown taking pictures. It really jazzed me up to just take pictures of things that caught my eye and reach more.
• When Kim visited in May we spent some fun time together but a moment that really made me happy was she and I trying to get a joint ‘jump shot’. We’d gotten individual ones but the joint stymied us. The trying though had us laughing so hard I thought we’d pee our pants.
• Going to Old Deerfield Village and discovering the sheep at the farm there was a happy time. Seeing the lambs in the spring was a special moment.
• One day this summer the gym at work held an outdoor Yoga class. It was amazing to experience the level of peace you get in yoga in such surroundings with a bed of grass beneath you and the sky above.
• I documented a walk on Sugarloaf here. The moment I stopped and listened as well as felt the wind blowing through the trees and let myself just be in the moment was wonderful.

It was great to share each other’s special moments from the year.  Our main course arrived and we all enjoyed our wonderful meals, not a turkey among them. Dessert followed and fully saited we had another happy memory for the year. We headed home and relaxed together watching “Ghost Hunters”. Matt and I have a turkey breast for our Sunday dinner so we’ll have those wonderful holiday leftovers as well as his amazing sausage stuffing.

It was just the three of us for Thanksgiving this year, and I cooked up the entire feast myself.  P isn’t American, so he has no fond Thanksgiving memories for me to live up to.  And Bean is only 3, so she pretty much just wants peanut butter and jelly and some pie.  So the big feast is really just for me.

I have the fond Thanksgiving memories to live up to.  My mom was fabulous in the kitchen, as her mother was before her.  I chose to learn nothing about cooking, thinking I would have plenty of time to do that sort of thing when I was all grown up.  My mother used to ask me to join her in the kitchen, because I would need to know this stuff.

When my mother died just before I turned 24, I realized that there were a million things I hadn’t taken the time to learn yet.  That was a hard lesson.

I’ll talk about my cooking adventures in another post, because I don’t want to get too far from my point here.  This Thanksgiving, my pie crust was less than perfect.  My pumpkin pie came out looking a bit overdone, but it was actually perfect.  I tried a new recipe for a pecan pie, and I don’t think I’ll ever make it again, but we’re totally eating it.  I tried a new, lighter recipe for sweet potato casserole, and the mushy sweet potato bit is a keeper but those marshmallows have to go.  (That said, Bean only wants the crispy-melty marshmallow bits, so it’s a win-win.)  The turkey looked beautiful, but we discovered the little paper bag of giblets as we disassembled the bird after dinner.  (I was pleased to learn that the very same thing happened to my friend S.)

Dinner ran late.  P and I were both tired after a late night because of the cat fiasco the day before.  I realized as we sat down to dinner that I hadn’t even brushed Bean’s hair.  But I did put out the special Thanksgiving placemats!

It wasn’t a picture-perfect Thanksgiving, not by a long shot.  But I am thankful for low standards, because we completely enjoyed the yummy imperfect food and the imperfect company.  And Bean devoured her pumpkin pie.

Low standards make for a fantastic holiday.

Assyrian tablet depicting Phoenix rising from its own ashes

Nobody wants to be bogged down by deadlines, traffic jams, daily pressures which business imposes on our lives, but they are a reality. The gift is not to allow those pressures to impinge on our conscious-ness ALL of the time: to set aside some moment, daily, for what’s going on INSIDE, not outside in our lives. The trick to maintaining a healthy mind within a body that’s built to withstand some stresses is simple: it’s called switching off.

Everyone needs to switch off, to become unglued, to take a Holiday. That’s why Thanksgiving is such a huge celebration in the American continent: the international home of Big Bizness. This time of gratitude covers every race, creed, religious sect and subgroup: everybody celebrates. A timeout that takes us away from the increasing world pressure to ‘take care of business’. It gives us an overview of life; if only for one weekend in the year.

With a feeling of joy for what we are grateful for in our lives comes a per-spective on how our lives have turned out; from where we started. We look at the last year and give thanks: for our home, our family and our friends. Sometimes we give thanks for a lot of years: and see how our past has become our present.

They say it’s not good to dwell in the past. However there are some lessons from the past that we, with the miracle of technology, may use. They teach us to hold an overview.

Yes. Crop circles, among others, point the way.

Over the last decade we’ve been treated to a deluge of them: now more than a mere curiosity: they are perhaps showing us how to ‘be’.

Using techniques as diverse as pictograms, mathematics, animal and nature symbolism and digital ‘language’, these crop glyphs have become increasingly sophisticated and, like our own society and consciousness, their influence is expanding.

Last summer alone brought eye-witness reports from unbiased observers who believe personally and irrevocably in their ‘power’ to convert. Visitors to crop circles have experienced a ‘transformation’, feeling of ‘oneness’, a change in conscious-ness, a sensation of love for their fellow beings. These human emotions are backed up by changes and fluctuations in on-the-ground readings monitored by digital and electronic equipment used to measure the electromagnetic flow.

Even for those of us not conversant in the language of mathematics, the evidence has already brought the scientific community on board. Carl Sagan, astrophysicist and author of ‘Cosmos’, said before he died in 1996 at the age of 62: ‘Mathematics is the Rosetta Stone of the Universe’. This interpretive Rosetta Stone is evident in enough crop circles to satisfy the most skeptic mathematician.

Euclidean sacred geometry in pyramid crop circle July 2009

Optical Pyramid at Chesterton, Harbury Warwickshire July 2009

Take another form of Kornkreis symbolism: images depicting birds, insects: the dragonfly, the human butterfly, the honeybee and bumblebee; swallows: all symbolic of flying, reaching beyond ourselves into the stratosphere of consciousness, beyond our mortal coil: suggesting our need to connect with our higher selves, superconscious, looking perhaps to encourage Mankind to connect as one, as a collective conscioiusness; holy, whole.

Hummingbird crop circle of July 2009 at Milk Hill, Wiltshire

Nazca line Hummingbird, created between AD300-600 in Peruvian High Desert

Stretching for hundreds of miles through the Altiplano Peruvian high desert, the lines form geoglyphs cleared in the land surface. Made by Nazca laborers, they follow riverbeds that flow from the Andes. This high desert terrain stretches for over 1400 miles along the Pacific coast and the Pampa Colorada, or Red Plain of deep red sandstone where Nazca art was created, runs 15 miles inland and for 37 miles alongside the Andes. Nazca workers cleared the surface of stones, revealing lines of lighter clay underneath. Because of its dry climate (humidity quotient almost zero), these imprints have remained in the landscape for the last millennium and a half.

Nazca Monkey line drawing in the Peruvian Altiplano AD300-600

Because of our programming as a society, taught for millennia to believe what we see in our three-dimensional world, it has taken us all of the last hundred years even to agree with Einstein that the possibility of a fourth dimension is conceivable. Only now are we beginning to realize that the suggestion, taught for centuries by esoteric spiritual disciplines, that we are part of an even-greater Whole of seven, nay, twelve, perhaps infinite dimensional realities, may have validity: that we may indeed be sending ourselves messages to trigger our soul memory that it is time to wake up and become the spiritual beings we were intended to be.

We Are The Ones We Have Been Waiting For. It has a ring to it.

Yatesbury Phoenix appeared June 2009

Looking to and from the stars: are we indeed beginning to see the stellar perspective?