Living and Loving
When she would turn her car on, a static radio station would play until she hit the button for her iPod.
She and her dad had been talking about the birthday and “what a year.” She got in her car and instead of the usual static, Stairway to Heaven was playing on the radio.
Her daughter had only lived a few days. That was the song used at her daughter’s memorial service!
These are sacred stories. What does this all mean to you? Do you have as story to share? Send email to debra@scs-matters.com.
My grandson, Brad, and his wife, Christina, spent five wonderFULL days with us on Pine Island. Brad had been working for Charter Media in Murfreesboro (Tennessee) since earning his Master’s Degree three years ago. Recently, though, he declined a large promotion with Charter that would have meant their move to North Carolina. It was not the move itself that was a deciding factor, it was the corporate lifestyle that demands you live to work rather than work to live.
They called their visit “Retirement Training.” He decided the reason they call it retirement is that first you are tired because you are working so hard, then you are retired because you are playing so hard.
They rode bikes, went kayaking with dolphins, watched manatee in the canal, took a pleasure boat ride to lunch at Fort Myers beach, grilled fresh shrimp, participated in music on the island, played shuffleboard, and went to dinner at early-bird schedules. In the early morning, and late in the evening, Brad would work remote as a consultant in data management. It was way beyond great.
After they left, I participated in a World Tapping Summit talk on gratitude with Carol Look. I loved her words, “Expressing gratitude is like planting seeds; many good things will come from it.” She stressed the importance one not do it because you will get something. Do it because it feels good.
But what about those times when it is difficult to catch a whiff of gratitude? The darkest of the dark days? Especially then, it is important to start where you are and cast a net of well-being with the WHAT IF frame: “Even though thus and so, what if there could be a solution I don’t yet know about.”
I also appreciated learning the importance of tapping thank you to the universe or god or whomever/whatever you conceive: “Thank you for brining me a solution to thus and so.”
Finally, Carol says you will benefit by moving through the points just expressing anything and everything you are grateful for. “Nature, family, friends, sunshine, dolphins, manatees, health, freedom, kindness, flowers, trees, birds, bicycles.”
Today, I am tapping thank you for Brad and Christina having been able to visit, and for the wisdom they have at 27 years-old to avoid clamping on golden handcuffs.
(If you are new to it, here is a short instructional video and introduction to EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique), commonly called just “tapping” with Jessica Ortner: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAclBdj20ZU)
It had been one of the toughest days of her life. She had just buried her baby.
Returning home from the funeral, she received a call on her cell phone. When she answered, she heard fiddle music. No message, just fiddle music.
Their dear friend was a fiddle player. He had recently passed.
She knew instantly he was letting them know their precious baby was now safe in heaven with him!
These are sacred stories. What does this all mean to you? Do you have as story to share? Send email to debra@scs-matters.com.
Have you ever seen any of those 3D “magic eye” images? You have to hold the image close to your nose, look through it so it is blurry, and maintain your gaze as you slowly move the image away from you. As your eyes relax, your focus changes, and you can see amazingly beautiful things. This image contains two giraffes.
Just like those hidden images, you have undoubtedly been able to see the way an unusual event will bring something else into view. Like seeing not one, not two, but three gopher tortoises one day during a bike ride. Or catching not one, not two, but three stingrays one day fishing off the dock.
The odd thing about catching the rays while fishing off the dock is that the people right next door who have fished from the dock for years have never ever caught one stingray here. Let alone three in one day.
So, I looked up the symbolism of stingray.
Stingrays represent your emotions and how you may be hiding them from others. If it’s calm, stingray suggests maneuvering a challenge in your life with ease and grace. If the ray is aggressive; it means you may be reacting to your emotions, rather than using careful deliberation in your approach, which could be costly.
Oh, my goodness. The first and largest of the three rays fought very hard. For the longest time. Taking the line way out. Darting away from the dock. Digging down in the mud. This first and largest one was about the size of a garbage can lid. In case you are wondering, the ray was able to be safely released.
The guy who managed to wrestle with and land that big old ray on an ultralight rod and reel currently has two younger brothers navigating cancer treatment. One of his brothers was having his right kidney removed at that time! Another of his brothers has been dealing with the side-effects of radiation and chemotherapy treatment for lung cancer. His platelet count was too low for him to receive chemo at that time! While the fisherman has been snow-birding in Florida this winter, he has begun saying he is bored with being here and thinks he might go home early.
Stingrays may be telling you to not overreact to your emotions, to calm down and wait before reacting. Stingrays maneuver themselves quite well despite their size and shape and they tell us to also carefully maneuver the complex emotional waters of our inner world.
This week, I am participating in the World Tapping Summit. I especially enjoyed the interview with Dr. Paul Sheele, “Feeling Abundant: Attract More Wealth and Prosperity Into Your Life!”. Sheele made the distinction between abundance and prosperity. The universe is abundant. Prosperity is the degree to which we are aware of and participating in the true state of the universe.
I am thinking about all of this in relationship to catching the rays, and those magic eye photos. I am going to think about it this way: well-being (like abundance) is there even while going through all those challenges, hidden right there just out of view.
On her way in to the restaurant for a business meeting, she noticed a sign advertising “psychic readings.”
While in the restaurant, a woman caught her attention.
Her meeting finished a bit early, leaving her a few extra minutes, so she decided to go for a reading.
When she entered the office, the psychic was the patron who had previously caught her eye at the restaurant!
These are sacred stories. What does this all mean to you? Do you have as story to share? Send email to debra@scs-matters.com.
So many sweet friends and family members are going through major STUFF right now. One of the dynamics is how stuff comes out of the blue.
That reminds me of the Captain Ron movie. Kurt Russell, who plays Captain Ron, says, “It’s just a little squall. They come on you fast, and they leave you fast.” Hear this message in a gravely, pirate-style, voice and you will get the picture.
I enjoyed my daughter, Stacey, belting that out several times while we were at Cayo Costa. We went for a beach day. It was sunny when we got dropped off at the dock, and sunny when we started walking along the beach on a shelling adventure.
Off in the distance was an amazing cloud formation—what at home we call a “front”.
As we shelled, that front drifted right over our heads. Before we got back to where we had left our chairs and cooler, the sky overhead was very dark, the wind was quite cool, and the mist that was blowing our way was definitely more than sea spray.
This week, a good friend ended up in ER with chest discomfort and high blood pressure. Her heart checked out fine, but they spotted two lung nodules. She will be having a lung biopsy.
Captain Ron’s words popped into my mind. “It’s just a little squall. They come on you fast, and they leave you fast.”
Over the years, I have been privileged to witness so many folks weather storms in their lives.
From Presence, Kindness, and Freedom: Aaron’s Teachings on Living from an Open Heart by Barbara Brodsky:
Certainly, there are issues that need to be resolved, but you can relate to them in loving ways. First, know that there are no problems, only situations that ask for your loving attention. If you are willing to risk being undefended in a place of pain, as you open your hearts to these difficulties, then there is no “problem,” which implies a negative experience, only a situation that asks for attention. (p. 37)
I am enjoying a poetry group. The group leader, Gail Berreitter shares different poetry forms. The current assignment, Found poems, take existing texts and refashion them, reorder them, and present them as poems. The literary equivalent of a collage, found poetry is often made from newspaper articles, street signs, graffiti, speeches, letters, or even other poems.
A pure found poem consists exclusively of outside texts: the words of the poem remain as they were found, with few additions or omissions. Decisions of form, such as where to break a line, are left to the poet.
As a sort of poetic prayer for loved ones, I took that quotation from Presence, Kindness, and Freedom, and I created a Found poem.
No Problems
by Debra Basham 2/24/2017
Certainly (3)
there are issues (4)
that need to be resolved (5)
you can relate to them in loving ways. (10)
First, know that (3)
there aren’t problems (4)
just situations (5)
asking us for our loving attention. (10)
If you are (3)
willing to risk, (4)
be undefended (5)
in a place of pain and with open hearts (10)
to these (3)
difficulties (4)
there is no “problem“ (5)
nothing negative, just a call for love. (10)
After that squall, the sun came back out. We had a marvelous day.
May all beings relate to the issues that need to be resolved in loving ways. They come on you fast, and they leave you fast.
Google maps on her phone told her to get off I 65. They were south of Louisville.
Never had Google maps just told her to get off. If something was going to cause a delay—an accident or construction, the app had always offered an alternative route, leaving the choice to her.
The “unusual” behavior caught her attention!
She decided to follow the prompt because it was so unusual.
The detour was uneventful, and put them back on I 65 avoiding a complete accident-related shutdown.
These are sacred stories. What does this all mean to you? Do you have as story to share? Send email to debra@scs-matters.com.
Where has the month of February gone? I know one week of it was spent with a friend who was going through a painful time. Without sharing personal details, suffice it to say, it is easy for some people to pretend they are something they are not.
What did “he” think? For sure, he knew he was making promises he would not keep.
This image (from the Brahma Kumaris’ Thought for Today) was accompanied by these words:
From her side, she was honest, open, vulnerable.
One thing I can say for sure: She did not lose anything by being authentic, but it is very likely that he lost a lot by not being…
Her mother passed on November 30.
One week later, thinking about her sister, she looked up her sister’s obituary.
Looking at the obituary, she was stunned to see that she too had passed on Nov 30.
These are sacred stories. What does this all mean to you? Do you have as story to share? Send email to debra@scs-matters.com.
Missing her grandmother, wishing she could have talks about parenting, she and her young son stopped to visit some friends. Asking, “Can he use one of these?” the friend reached into the cupboard and took out a Tupperware sippy cup. It was just like the one her grandmother had.
A little bit later looking for some appropriate toys, the friend produced a couple of refrigerator magnets: an Oreo and a chocolate chip cookie—just like her grandmother had!
“I was really missing my grandma. So glad to know she is right here with us today!”
These are sacred stories. What does this all mean to you? Do you have as story to share? Send email to debra@scs-matters.com.