Tapping Into Possibilities

Sweat Equity….Literally

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“July has rewritten climate history”, though you probably don’t need the World Meteorological Organization to tell you that July 2019 was the hottest month on record.

I spent most of the month of July, dripping sweat as I worked in our gardens here in the Berkshires.

Sweat Equity per Merriam Webster and dictionary.com  is the “time and effort that people contribute to a project, the unreimbursed labor that results in the increased value of property or that is invested to establish or expand an enterprise.”

 

While I’ve contributed countless hours of Sweat Equity (and I admit most of them have been pulling weeds, it hasn’t been about the increased value of the property, it has been about the transformation, about creating something, about change, about  gratitude for the opportunity to make a difference, even if it’s small.

Think of yourself as the property or the enterprise. What weeds do you want to pull? What do you want to plant? 

 

June 2019

 

 

 

 

Sweat Equity is something we can do for ourselves everyday and reap the fruits of our labor.

 

 

 

 

 

July 2019

Where do you want to create change or beauty or just a WOW?

 

Eastern Tiger Swallowtail, July 2019

 

 

 

 

 

 

Firework

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This song still gives me goose bumps. Not the Katy Perry version (2010) so much, which now has 1.1 billion views on YouTube, but the PS22 version (2011) which back then had 300,000 views and now has 1.1 million.

PS22 is a public elementary school in Staten Island with a music teacher with a vision, with a faith in these kids that should be a lesson for all of us.

It’s not that I don’t like Katy Perry or her version. But somehow her voice doesn’t  give me goose bumps (maybe because it is a performance, maybe because she tried to outshine these kids on Oprah back in 2011). 

Click on the link below and just listen to little Denise belt out

Just own the night like the 4th of July. Cause baby you’re a firework.  Come on show them what you’re worth.

and I hope you’ll know what I’m talking about. 

Watch the faces on these 5th graders and you can’t help but believe in them (and maybe even yourself) and feel something. 

Talk about possibilities…………

Do you ever feel so paper thin, like a house of cards one blow from caving in? Do you know there’s still a chance for you  cause there’s a spark in you….Come on let your colors burst.

And if you have any doubt about your own gifts and talents, your own worth, your own possibilities doubt no more.

I believe that children are our future. Teach them well and let them lead the way. Show them all the beauty they possess inside. Whitney Houston

P.S. I’m still figuring out how to embed videos so bear with me if you can’t open the video. Go to youtube.com and search PS22 Chorus Firework if any problems. Thank you.

Lipstick on a Pig or Transformation?

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Lipstick on a Pig– is a rhetorical expression used to covey the message that making superficial or cosmetic changes is a futile attempt to disguise the true nature of a product or person. (Wikipedia)

Lipstick on a Pig is a relatively new phrase/colloquialism (think Sarah Palin) evolved from a 300 year old phrase, “you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear”.

Transformation– a thorough or dramatic change in form or appearance, metamorphosis, renewal, radical change, shift. (Merriam-Webster)

Our ramshackle, eyesore of a chicken coop was, just that, an eyesore – something that is ugly or unpleasant to look at (MacMillian Dictionary).

First comes thought, then organization of that thought into ideas and plans then transformation of those plans into reality. The beginning, as you will observe, is your imagination. Napoleon Hill

It is amazing what an afternoon and a little elbow grease can accomplish

Transformation isn’t a future event. It is a present day activity. Jillian Michaels

Many may think Lipstick on a Pig but I choose Transformation!

Possibilities………..

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Without leaps of imagination, or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning.  Gloria Steinem

In April, it was hard to imagine that this……

Could become this in May

Could become this in June

Just imagine what’s next………?

Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire; you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will.  George Bernard Shaw, Back to Methuselah

Your Tapping Season

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You know Spring is here, or at least right around the corner, in the Berkshires when the galvanized buckets hanging on the sugar maples (Acer Sacchurum) are gone.

The “sap run” is determined by the freeze/thaw cycle when it’s above 40 in the day and below freezing at night. The maple sugaring season is typically mid- February to early April. 

When the temperature remains above freezing or buds start to form on the trees, it is time to stop collecting sap.

It takes 40 years for a maple tree to grow big enough to tap but if healthy and treated well, the tree can be tapped for decades, even a century!

A single tap on a healthy maple usually produces 10-12 gallons of sap but sap becomes syrup when the water evaporates through boiling and the sugars become concentrated. That 10 gallons of sap becomes only 1 quart of syrup, but it is liquid gold

While the season to tap into the sugar maples is just that, a very short season, the time for you to tap in to your possibilities is anytime, your season is limitless. What are you waiting for? It’s time to move on down the road.

Miracle Shall Follow Miracle

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Today is a day of completion. I give thanks for this perfect day. Miracle shall follow miracle and wonders shall never cease.” Florence Scovel Shinn, New Thought spiritual teacher and metaphysician, The Game of Life and How to Play It (1925) p. 33.

For some, this is the holiest day of the year: Easter.

For some, Resurrection is about rising from the dead.

For others, today is just another day. 

Did you know the word/name Easter doesn’t have it’s roots in Christianity? Easter has its roots as a secular verb meaning “to turn or move to the east.” (from a German word for East which came from a Latin word for Dawn). Some scholars believe the name Easter is derived from the pagan Goddess Eostre or Ostara, the Goddess of Spring who was celebrated at the Vernal Equinox.

And while resurrection is most often referred to (in the Christian belief) as Christ’s rising from the dead with a capital R, it is also defined as a “rising again from decay and disuse, a revival”, and most importantly “a setting of things to right”. 

Resurrection is something all of us frail and flawed humans can believe in. Resurrection is shown to us in small and big ways every moment of every day….if we just look.

Those daffodils blooming when nothing else is, when there’s barely any green poking through the dirt is the hope, the sign that something special is yet to come.

“There are two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” Albert Einstein

Counting Blessings and Counting Crows (or turkeys for that matter)

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Don’t know what you’ve got til its gone. They paved over paradise and put up a parking lot.

I couldn’t help but sing along to the Counting Crows 2002 version of Big Yellow Taxi (Joni Mitchell- 1970) this morning when it came on the radio. 

I also thought this song is about so much more than a lost love or urban sprawl.  

What exactly is paradise? Is it somewhere outside in the world, a place that we just haven’t traveled to yet or something else? 

On the physical level could it be about regretting lost health? Most definitely, and that’s another story for another time. But on a deeper level, is paradise somewhere inside of us and it’s just been paved over and over and over again so that we just don’t see, hear or feel it anymore.

The definitions for paradiseare varied from biblical to sensual. The origins are Greek meaning “an enclosed park”. I personally like a place that is positive, harmonious, timeless, a state of delight and peace.This is a place I’d definitely like to go, to be in, to stay in.

You don’t have to have had some awful stuff happen to you to pave over your paradise, just the everyday normal stresses/worries and hassles will do it. It is so easy to lose/forget who you really are and what’s important. This is why I believe a daily self care practice is so important (whether it be tapping or a sitting, walking or writing meditation).

 If you can’t find 30 minutes, what about 15?.  And if you can’t find 15 minutes, why not? 

The purpose of meditation is to bring you to the present moment without the chatter and distractions from outside or inside the mind. 

This stillness is when you find clarity or peace or contentment, your blessings and yes, your paradise.

Grateful for this view out my window this winter.

Counting my blessings and 8 turkeys as well!

Any One Who Had a Heart….

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America is a country of broken hearts. Since the beginning of the 20thcentury, heart disease has been the number one killer of men and women. A few years ago, it was the cause of one in four deaths, now its one in three and the cost has soared to over $400 billion per year. The American Heart Association reports that more women die from heart disease each year than from all cancers combined.

And only in America do we have a month or a day to celebrate everything from Hug a Ginger Day (a redhead) on February 22 to Valentine’s Day to American Heart Month.  Did you know there is actually a calendar available that lists the day, week or month that we celebrate, or should I say, try to make you aware of, more than 100 diseases/infections/problems, called The 2019 National Health Observances Calendar! Today is National Donor Day, last week it was Congenital Heart Defects and next week it’s National Heart Valve Diesease.

But back to the Heart….

Open Your Heart. Don’t Go Breaking My Heart. Total Eclipse of the Heart.  Unbreak My Heart. My Heart Wasn’t In It. Broken Heart. Heart Attack. Heartless. Faint of Heart.  Anyone Who Had a Heart. The word HEART is used in so many songs, expressions, slogans that we’ve almost become immune to its importance.

We’ve become a country of not just physically broken hearts but of emotionally and spiritually broken hearts.

Since Hearts  are getting lots of attention this month and especially today, I thought it would be appropriate to work on opening my own heart and not just that pulsing, pumping muscle in my chest.

And just how will I do this? With deep listening and with mindful breathing.

The way is not in the sky. The way is in the heart.     Buddha

Thicht Nhat Hanh wrote in True Love, A Practice for Awakening the Heart (1997), Breathing in, I am aware of my heart. Breathing out, I am smiling at my heart. Breathing in, I know that you are there; Breathing out, thank you for being there.

Why Look for Gratitude?

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Can you see the holiness in these things you take for granted – a paved road or a washing machine? If you concentrate on finding whats good in every situation, you will discover that your life will suddenly be filled with gratitude, a feeling that nurtures the soul.                                Rabbi Harold Kushne

Even on my worst days, I find at least five things I’m grateful for and I write them down. On my worst days, I often have to look very, very hard to find those 5 things but I do it and I know my life is better for it.

Today I am grateful for 3 eggs from 8 chickens on a cold day when we are approaching the shortest day of the year – only 9 hours and 13 minutes of light today and yes, chickens do need light to lay!

It doesn’t make any difference whether it’s the first thing you do in the morning or the last thing at night or somewhere in between, just do it, Look for Gratitude.

Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all others.                              Marcus Tillius Cicero, Roman orator and statesman

Let me know what you find.

Thanksgiving Day Every Day

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There have been numerous posts, blogs and articles in recent weeks about Thanksgiving Day and gratitude and even more about food, food, food but I’m thinking bigger, much bigger.

Every day is Thanksgiving or at least it should be.

Thanks: to express gratitude, appreciation or acknowledgement, a grateful feeling.

Giving: to give a gift, to present voluntarily without expecting something in return.

Gratitude: the quality or feeling of being thankful or of appreciation

When someone does or says something nice for you or to you, how does that make you feel?

So if you are still feeling full as I am from the feast last Thursday, consider the following:

Wear gratitude like a cloak and it will feed every corner of your life Rumi

Nothing to be grateful for? Consider what the great American jazz trumpeter and singer Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong (1901-1971) had to say in his 1967 classic What a Wonderful World.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3yCcXgbKrE

Happy thanks giving days to you and to all whom you love.