Living and Loving
They had both been born in the Philippines, but they met through a dating app in Los Angles, where they currently lived.
Soon they discovered a powerful coincidence: They had attended the same preschool!
The incidence might not seem like a big deal unless you know the Philippines consist of over 7,600 islands and over 2,000 of those are inhabited.
Needless to say, they got happily married….
Barbara’s Spur of the Moment:
Steve, my new neighbor, and I discovered a mutual acquaintance named Bob.
Sadly, neither of us had seen Bob for many years and had no contact info.
Months later Christmas came and I received an email greeting from Irene, a friend in Australia. Lo and behold Bob’s email info was included in the mailing!
From Denver, Colorado through an Australian connection I was able to reach out to Bob in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, for a happy reunion email chat and help reconnect Steve and Bob long after their acquaintance in Hartford, Connecticut.
God is good.
“You do not need to know precisely what is happening, or exactly where it is all going. What you need is to recognize the possibilities and challenges offered by the present moment, and to embrace them with courage, faith and hope.” ~ Thomas Merton
Last night after a rousing game of Hand and Foot, John announced that there was a LOT of water under the kitchen sink. Larry and I sprung into action. I got things mopped up and he was able to finger tighten the elbow joints on the drain that had come completely disconnected. We had a leak previously and insisted the homeowner get a repairman to tend to it. This morning I was writing in my journal:
D: What would you have me know about this house?
V: We know you are feeling that the owner has been rather dismissive and you are wondering about whether or not you want to come back here next season.
D: Yes… these things cross my mind.
V: If you did one of Linda’s spread sheets what might you notice?
D: There are some pros and some cons, and a subtle contraction of not having a place or having something EVEN worse. A fear of loss.
V: It is a heavy feeling in your sacral chakra, and a sinking feeling in your gut?
D: Yes.
V: And can you feel it in your friend who is awaiting results on Wednesday of a breast biopsy she had done on Monday?
D: Yes.
V: Can you feel it in your dear friend who is now on hospice care, or in his beloved wife?
D: No. Not any more.
V: That feeling is impermanent. That feeling is a part of a process.
D: Yes.
V: Read some of the poems your friend, Janice, shared with you on your birthday.
OMG… I begin to read from A Hundred Falling Veils: There’s a Poem in Every Day, by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer.
we are made of—
more energy than matter,
more nothing than something,
more everything than we ever dreamed.
from “Everything is Changed”
January 11, 2023
…everything is possible, sweetheart, everything.
Moments later, I open to these words from Neale Donald Walsch for today and read …its not only possible, it is indeed the truth!
“Our inner lives are every bit as astonishing,
baffling, and mysterious
as the infinite vastness of the cosmos.”
~ Adyashanti
Adyashanti’s words speak volumes to me as I am in the pondering process related to culling everything SCS-Matters in preparation for a new DebraBasham.com website. What to keep, what to save. What to repackage or repurpose. What to give away, what to sell; what to forget and what to savor. Timely for my birthday today.
I wake up this morning having turned 73. While some dread aging, I experience each day of aging as grace. It seems having had birth trauma, and medical trauma at age 5, and a near-death experience at age 12 prepared me for LIFE.
Again today a mocking bird was sitting on the fence directly outside of the kitchen window of the house we are sharing with Linda and Larry this winter. The title of To Kill a Mockingbird has very little literal connection to the plot, but it carries a great deal of symbolic weight in the book. In this story of innocents destroyed by evil, the “mockingbird” comes to represent the idea of innocence. Some of the key characteristics and attributes of Mockingbird Animal Spirit include inventiveness, keen-mindedness, happiness, playfulness, protection, thankfulness, security, and, most of all, communication.
For sure, the Imagine Healing process is something I want to have available to the world. It is such gift to see in every surgery or injury or experience myriad opportunities. Why just go through whatever it is on the surface level. Let that bruise be an evidence procedure of healing of memories, beliefs, behaviors, or attitudes that lessen the amazement of living. Every moment of every day we are meeting life on infinite levels and awareness provides a HUGE happening from the most mundane. I don’t even just brush my teeth!!!
When Joel Bowman and I were actively training folks in the Imagine Healing process we always did mock surgery as a role-play and students experienced an ectomy (removal of something they and others in the world would be better off without) and implant (something beneficial they and others in the world had not been able to have previously). Imagine a fear ectomy and a joy implant….
January 22 is a birthday I share with my friend Wayne Kaiser. This is the first year since we have been friends that I am in body and Wayne is in spirit. I do not think of Wayne as dead. In fact, I cannot comprehend death as different from birth, and this week I listened to an amazing account of Rabbi Stephen Robbins (who has had 8 near-death-experiences!!!) and, as my birthday ritual, will share some of his beautiful comments about life.
“Every soul is formed to do one of three things. One is to take something out of the world which no longer belongs — either a treatment or a system of genetics which don’t belong in the world anymore or a spiritual quality that can be stopped. The other is to bring something new into the world of knowledge or experience — an insight that has not been there before. And the third is to synergize both of them so that what comes in is the sense of what it means to live a life for service and for purpose rather than for our own gain.”
“So that in our leaving this world and realizing there is no death, we change the genetic out-pour that will stop the repetition of the destructiveness like drug addiction, child abuse, violent acquisition — and at the same time will add a sense of insight and understanding which will lead beyond living with a sense of the limitation in this life.” (Rabbi Stephen Robbins 8 Near Death Experiences)
If in our daily life we can smile, if we can be peaceful and happy, not only we, but everyone will profit from it. This is the most basic kind of peace work. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh
Yesterday Linda and I spent our day busy in the kitchen. She roasted a turkey and we have made a dinner for friends out on Pine Island that are living in (while doing rehab) after Hurricane Ian filled their manufactured home with four feet of floodwater. Four months later they do not yet have a stove. Mind you, theirs is a three-generational family including their adult daughter and their 4-year old grandson. Today we will deliver turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, carrots, two-corn casserole, and brownies. These can be warmed in the microwave oven they do have. I told Linda that this is my best birthday dinner ever.
After the delivery, we will attend a matinee of “The Sound of Music” at the Cultural Park Theater in Cape Coral, before meeting Nancy Green for dinner at Miceli’s in Matlacha. In 2013 John and I went there for my birthday dinner and discovered they give you a free entree plus desert ON YOUR BIRTHDAY. We have gone back every year since. It is bittersweet to go this year after soooo much of what was familiar and special about our beloved Florida community was damaged, devastated, or destroyed.
Even in the midst of loss there is gift….
I am young no more
Neither am I old
I am timeless like the wind
I do change a lot
No longer the same
I’m here and there however
Here and there am I
Not one single place
Ever moving, always free
Happy Birthday, Wayne Kaiser. Happy Birthday, Debra Basham.
And many happy returns.
He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart. – Ecclesiastes 3:11
Don’t Go Back to Sleep
by Rumi
The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don’t go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want.
Don’t go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth
across the doorsill
where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.
Don’t go back to sleep.
I almost remember where my fingers fit on this keyboard…. I was logged on to my laptop last at Stacey’s in Tennessee on Saturday, December 17, 2022. The last time was last year! I could not get it to boot up at all once we arrived here in Florida. For the rest of the story about this, see the link at the end of this post.
John and I drove to Florida on Sunday, December 18 and spent a couple of nights with John’s brother, Jack, in Largo (near Tampa). On Tuesday morning, December 20, we arrived at our rental in Port Charlotte. Many of you have already heard that the house needed a LOT of detailing for me to get comfortable here. It was a VERY busy few days before Linda and Larry arrived late Friday afternoon.
Steven Covey spoke of effective life management as our putting in the big rocks first, then the small rocks, then the pebbles, then the sand. That way our life has room for EVERYTHING. As I was beginning this Yellow Brick Road post, I came across a thoughtful post about a flaw in that lesson. (Steven Covey’s Big Rocks First Strategy is Wrong; November 15, 2017 | Renée Fishman) Her essential message is what you leave out is space: space to breathe, space to relax, space to be.
For example, the big rocks of deep cleaning the kitchen had to be done before I was comfortable to cook and eat what was cooked! I am sooooo grateful John and I share a regular yoga practice and for my multiple “commitments” to meditation and mindfulness; and glad to have eased back into that regular practice now that the cleaning is done.
I have no way of knowing how much of the cleaning that was needed to be done was hurricane related. Obviously not all of it was, but some likely was. The windows were VERY dirty, including overspray from a probable recent painting, plus obvious hurricane contribution of vegetation and shards of plastic and glass jammed in the sills. Having lived with Johnny on the Spot Window Cleaning Service for decades, the condition of the windows was a big deal to both John and me. These would have been called “a full-scrape, inside and out” plus the windows are French style. LOTS of corners to clean. VERY labor intensive.
As I spent MANY hours cleaning these windows, I found myself slipping into subtle judgment of the condition of the house. It is quite an expensive rental (thus the need for our two households to combine for this season). I could send you photos of the condition of the kitchen, but that seems unkind. I am sharing only because the lessons learned here are significant for us all.
Noticing my mind whirring about the unacceptability of the lack of cleanliness, the voice inside my head says, “Cleaning up your own messes does not clear karma.”
The voice went on, “And cleaning up messes that you did not make does not clear karma if you are doing it with resentment or frustration in your heart.”
And finally, “In fact, the resentment or frustration in your heart is generating negative karma for you….”
Wow.
And then came the greatest insight.
“You chose to come to this area, and you brought your window cleaning supplies, because you wanted to be of service to those who were impacted by the hurricane. This is your first person to serve….”
I was inside the house cleaning the dining room windows when the guy came to mow the lawn. He looked at me quite oddly and I said, “I know it is a bit unusual to see someone cleaning windows in a rental.”
He quickly responded, “I thought to myself that you must be related to Chris.”
Chris is the homeowner.
My heart was so opened by this comment. I could feel his effort to care for this home. The linens are good grade. The dishes are nicely appointed. There was obvious care in the choosing. I had appreciation for the home being made available flood in. I knew the concern and the expense and myriad other emotions around owning a home you plan to live in when you retire and needing to generate rental income to make all of that happen. The vulnerability of having someone in your home, using your stuff, doing God-knows-what settled in.
I am grateful Linda and Larry did not arrive until after the biggest rocks of detailing “our” home-away-from-home were done, but I am also grateful they were here to see the before-and-after of the window cleaning.
Window cleaning that has definitely let way more light in — far beyond the physical!
P.S. You can see the rest of the story about my computer repair and why the last time I posted a Yellow Brick Road was last year in the Sacred Story: Tarpon Technology Solutions.
When they arrived at their destination in Hawaii, there was an error in their booking dates (December 22 and 24).
Then as they were preparing to fly back to Canada, all the flights were cancelled….
“If you are unable to get out, just come back, you can stay here. I will leave a key for you,” they were told.
They enjoyed two extra days in the sun and warm.
That “booking error” was looking like a blessing!
Having been displaced in her snowbird home by Hurricane Ian, she spent almost a month with family on her way to a home-away-from her normal away-from home. She had some laptop computer challenges earlier while staying with their daughter in Tennessee, but when she got to Florida her laptop would not boot up.
She logged onto Zoom with her iPhone to be with her Florida meditation group and overheard some conversation. “Have you heard anything from Adam since the hurricane?”
“No, I have not,” the teacher replied.
So many she knows have been affected, her compassion was right at the surface. Then the conversation took an interesting turn as the student continued, “Adam is the only person I would trust my computer to….”
Excitedly excusing herself for intruding, she said she needed to have Adam’s contact information because she had been unable to log on to her computer since she had left Tennessee!
It will come to pass that before they call,
I will answer;
and while they are still speaking,
I will hear.
~ Isaiah 65:24
~ Eugene Ionesco
Tuesday evening as our group met on Zoom, physically located all over the globe, we were fully present with one anothers’ questions. “How do you know if you are awake?”
“I can feel that still center. I can tell when I am not there as well.”
“How do you know you are receiving guidance or listening to your higher self?”
“I am less impatient. I am more able to sit in the unknowing.”
I mentioned an experience I had a few years ago when Writing Down Your Soul: How to Activate and Listen to the Extraordinary Voice Within, a book written by Janet Conner, appeared on my co-author’s Kindle.
My co-author did not purchase the book, and although I share access to his Kindle, nor did I. That this book just ‘appeared’ caught my attention. When I synced his Kindle, my attention was held as I read Conner’s words: “After all, it is no accident that this book has come to you. In the big scheme of things there are no accidents, only divine appointments.”
Conner’s outer life had fallen apart. Her husband abused alcohol, threatened suicide, and put their son in harm’s way. Her dog dragged a copy of Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way down the hallway from her bedroom to where she was seated in a stupor of sadness and despair. Picking up a pen and paper and opening to the power of writing in a journal changed her life. Along the way, she wrote out her covenant:
A few minutes ago when my son-in-law came home to take an important phone call. My daughter said, “Do we need to pray about it?”
Without even thinking, I replied, “Are we not already praying?”
My soul seems to have integrated these high hopes written so succinctly in Janet’s Covenant because I do not use prayer as something I “do.” Prayer is truly a wonderful sense of being continually in the Presence of the Divine.
When others ask me for prayer, and I say, “Praying,” my experience is that I am moving my attention into a stream of well-being that is already flowing toward that person or situation. My prayer is not a request for an intervention so much as it is an acknowledgment of an omnipresence of grace and love available to all at all times.
“And it shall come to pass that before they call, I will answer; and while they are yet speaking, I will hear.” (Isaiah 65:24)
Buddhist “prayer” activities, such as the recitation of sutras or mantras, are about connecting with our own inner capacity to develop constructive emotions such as compassion, enthusiasm, patience.
The motivation to prayer is to engage in constructive actions of helping … for the benefit of all.
May your heart soar as you read the Great Spirit Prayer translated by Lakota Sioux Chief Yellow Lark in 1887:
Oh, Great Spirit,
Whose voice I hear in the winds
and whose breath gives life to all the world.
Hear me! I need your strength and wisdom.
Let me walk in beauty, and make my eyes
ever hold the red and purple sunset.
Make my hands respect the things you have made
and my ears sharp to hear your voice.
Make me wise so that I may understand
the things you have taught my people.
Let me learn the lessons you have hidden
in every leaf and rock.
Help me remain calm and strong in the
face of all that comes towards me.
Help me find compassion without
empathy overwhelming me.
I seek strength, not to be greater than my brother,
but to fight my greatest enemy: myself.
Make me always ready to come to you
with clean hands and straight eyes.
So when life fades, as the fading sunset,
my spirit may come to you without shame.
Whatever your questions, be willing to ask them. The very asking is an expression of your soul’s willingness to be one who knows.
Questions enlighten….
My face is clear and I have completed two of the five prescription protocols. Three continue for the balance of the 14 days. I am very thankful my face is no longer swollen and burning and itchy.
It is quite interesting how big the little things feel.
It has been a wonderFULL time here in Tennessee. I have been busy with “projects” for Stacey (the greatest of which was organizing, arranging, and detailing her at-home-office). Here she is, working from there right at this very moment.
On Friday, Stacey and John and I took Doug’s truck to Franklin (just under an hour drive) to pick up a futon for the office. We were on a tight schedule because Stacey wanted to get back for her Barre class. Good thing she changed into her exercise clothes before we left home….
We had that futon loaded in record time. We felt the white-hot, sinking-feeling as we realized the keys (and our phones!) were locked in the truck. Stacey called Doug to come let us in. The wind was a bit brisk, so the three of us were semi-huddled on the seller’s porch when I said, “Perhaps this experience has multiple opportunities. I wonder if I am to get to know who she is.”
At that moment, Amber Westerman (singer-songwriter) came out to offer us water and ask if we needed anything. Amber had studied sustainable farming in Hawaii. Our grandson Brad had an interest in that during college. She studied Ayurvedic Medicine in Iowa, along with meditation practices.
OKAY, I get it…. likely not everyone picking up a futon would even know what Ayurveda is…. needless to say we had a very nice connection.
And Stacey made her Barre class!
Check out amberwestermanmusic.com or search her name. It was fun to see some videos of her original music. I still have a strong sense there may be something else calling our paths to cross in the future.
Stacey had purchased the furniture for her office. She had gotten her computer set up and had been working some in the space for a while. Settling in had definitely been derailed when our great-grandson, Jackson, had seizures and subsequent hospital stays.
We like to think we are planning our life and living our plan, but Life, with a capital “L” takes president over our plan, with a lower case “p.”
This morning, I opened Neale Donald Walsch’s message and read, “… what your heart thinks is great, is great. The soul’s emphasis is always right. Ralph Waldo Emerson said that, and he was correct.”
Walsch continued, “The mind is the last part of yourself to listen to. It thinks of everything you can lose. The heart thinks of everything you can give, and the soul thinks of everything you are.”
This comes at such a significant time. Results from Jackson’s genetic testing are due on Thursday afternoon’s follow-up with the pediatric neurologist at Vanderbilt. John and I are very grateful we will be here with them all for that.
Usually, I am one who likes bare windows to let light in but when I hung the pretty little sheers on Stacey’s office window a transformative softness immediately fell over the space.
