Debra Basham

Living and Loving

Tag: DebraBasham.com

  • Shipshewana Card Fest with Ray

    My renewed interest in collecting and trading sports cards began when I woke up one morning with the thought that I must go look through my old cards. I messaged my mom asking if she could put them on the porch where I could grab them. She immediately called me saying, “I looked at the cards when I was going down the stairs this morning, but actually really looked at them, and remembered how much you enjoyed collecting them.”

    As she said this, I looked down at my feet and saw a small sticker pineapple. This pineapple was given to me at my grandpa’s funeral for being a pallbearer. I had placed this pineapple on the back of my phone as a symbol of my grandpa. Through my work with construction and factory work, the pineapple fell off. I had not seen that pineapple for more than 6 months before it fell at my feet that morning!

    I ended up getting the cards that day and began going through them. It was quite an experience handling the cards I bought when I was 9 years old. It was something my grandpa and I had done together. He showed me how to organize and categorize the cards to complete the set.

    I reached out to my grandma, telling her about my experience and how I had nice memories going through the cards. She told me about his collection and invited me to come out and look through them with her. It was nice getting to talk with her and have the opportunity to see how much thought he put into collecting. She let me take the BOXES of cards home so I could go through them.

    As I was bringing the cards into the house my neighbors and I crossed paths. I shared my story with them and asked if they knew anyone in the hobby. “My dad has been a collector for 50 years!” one of them said. I asked him to put me in touch with him.

    Later that day as I went through the cards (some dating back to 1980!) I thought it was so cool they are almost double my age and that my grandpa was flipping through them that long ago. It was just neat to picture that. I was wondering what he was thinking of at that time as he was going through them.

    After making it through one of the 23 boxes I found myself overwhelmed! I knew I wanted to connect with someone in the hobby, so I reached out to some community pages on Facebook. A guy named Ray commented on my post saying he’d be willing to help me. I began messaging with Ray, along with a couple other people, including my neighbor’s dad.

    Ray and my neighbor’s dad turned out to be the same guy!!! There are no coincidences. Ray helped me go through the cards, letting me know what’s valuable from each brand and era. He told me he was going to a show the following week and asked me if I wanted to go.


    Ray and his son and I went to the Shipshewana Card Fest today. It was a very enjoyable experience. There were so many people and cards!!! I ended up making a trade with a guy for a couple of his cards and I bought quite a few. In November I plan to go with Ray to Chicago to the next show. I am excited to see what comes next….

    I’m glad I listened to the signs from the Universe. The Universe is always speaking to us. It has helped me reconnect with my grandpa, with the joy of card collecting, and with the my younger child-self.

  • Memorable Memorial Day Message

    About 8:30 this morning she saw a post on a friend’s Facebook page. It was a beautiful image with this saying:

    “And it will be our love,
    not our anger,
    that heals the world.”

    The words and image were attributed to Lauren Fortenberry, writer.

    She posted Lauren’s words and image on her own Facebook page.

    Early this afternoon, she opened an email from another friend who shares daily inspirations from a twelve-step program and read this corresponding message to Fortenberry’s words:

    “Soldiers fight not for the hatred
    of the enemy in front of them,
    but for the love
    of the men behind them.”

    These powerful words were attributed to Don E., U.S. Army, 1967–1970.

    A memorable Memorial Day message worth mentioning.

  • Lord, Help Us

    Themes seem to emerge into awareness while I am doing things other than looking for themes. Like peeling potatoes for potato salad for today’s Memorial Day meal to be shared with my sister, Janis, and my brother-in-love, Larry. Or while I was out riding my bike and meeting a breed of dog that looks a lot like a hyena (Korean Jindu). Sometimes when I stop doing and put my feet up.

    Of course, everything is connected so last evening’s phone conversation with a Dharma Sister was already active in awareness. My friend had just attended a 10-day retreat where they were working with mindfulness of breathing. “Know the long and short breath.” She said it was not about the length of the breath but about what you think is a long breath or short breath. She went on to say that we are to know the whole breath body. You need to pay attention to the beginning, the middle, and the ending. They were also contemplating impermanence.

    It seems impermanence is perhaps the only true constant!

    This morning’s awareness was also shaped by my having listened to Tara Brach after the call with my friend. Tara was speaking about Inner Fire, what she also referred to as Spiritual Aspiration.

    I noticed (and after number 2 I kept count) my friend’s repetitive use of a 3-word phrase: LORD, HELP US.

    It seemed significant so I mentioned to her that she had used that phrase five times during our conversation. She had not been conscious of using it even once. I asked what the phrase means to her. She had no sense of connection to it.

    Make sure you know this blog post is not a criticism of her, or even a comment about her personally. It likely is, however, vital to her and to all of us.

    So, immediately following that conversation, it really caught my attention when Tara Brach (about 5 minutes into the talk) told of a man who was searching for something important and began to pray, “Lord, help me,” saying he would dedicate his life to service, he would be faithful, clear, true, strong – if God would answer his prayer. Moments later, the man found the item and quickly prayed again, “Never mind, God, I’ve found it.”


    A search for the phrase “God, help us” produced an interesting post by Collins Dictionary: If you say God help us, you mean that you have negative feelings about the person or situation you are talking about.

    Other ingredients in this mental stew include a draft I am working on for my next Insights article. The working title is “As a Child” and encourages looking at how experiences humans have while growing up shape beliefs that continue to operate long after they would not hold up to the light of day at an adult stage of our development.

    I did find a reference online clarifying that “Lord” in the Old Testament merely refers to someone of a higher rank. Further down the Yellow Brick Road we may look more closely at that nuance.

    Looking for an image of the phrase “Lord, Help Us” lead me to a sermon. Listening to part of the sermon, I heard how we sometimes wait a long time before we ask for help, staying in a problem that could have been been taken care of sooner, had we asked for help.

    There may not be rock solid answers provided in this post, but these ideas touch me deeply today. Lord, help us may be an invitation for all of us to benefit from greater awareness.

  • Red Flowers and Strength

    She was visiting her friend in the hospital as the beautiful red vase of cut flowers from the church secretary arrived. Moments later the friend was to be taken for an emergency surgery and then to ICU, where no flowers could follow. As hospital transport stood waiting to take her friend, the friend was sending an email about getting the flowers to the church so the secretary could enjoy them.

    When her friend was stable following that surgery, she gathered the flowers, but delivery was not made because of church office hours. The secretary called the following day saying she should keep and enjoy the flowers rather than worrying about getting them to the church. The arrangement still looked beautiful when her friend was back in a room where she could have them, so she was taken them back to her friend.

    She got onto the elevator with two hospital staff. The woman said, “Those flowers are beautiful.”

    “Bringing flowers to a friend?” the man asked.

    “Well, actually I am bringing them BACK to my friend,” she said. “They were delivered a couple of days ago just as my friend was being taken to ICU where she could not have them. She is back on the 4th floor now.”

    As the elevator door opened to let the man and woman off at the 3rd floor, the man turned and looked at her, “I hope your friend has a very good day today.” As the door closed — touched deeply by his caring comment — a few tears formed just behind her eyes. Her friend has been through so much, and the latest was a collapsed lung, complication from the insertion of a pacemaker.

    When the pulmonologist entered her friend’s room a bit later the woman and man from the elevator were part of her friend’s “lung team.”

    And it was the man from the elevator who came to tell them the team had been successful inserting a chest tube to reinflate her friend’s lung. As they walked together out of the waiting room the man said, “Your friend is strong. She is going to get through this just like she has gotten through everything else she has been through.”

    The symbolism of red flowers is said to include passion, love, desire, romance, beauty, respect, admiration, courage, and STRENGTH….

  • Anxious Feelings – Power of Presence

    I was awake a few times during the night. My friend is in the hospital. She just got home from Florida on Tuesday about dinner time and when I took “Welcome Home” cookies to her about noon on Wednesday, it was obvious she was not in tip-top-shape. This friend had MAJOR back surgery while in Florida, and her history of heart issues resulted in a longer-than-expected stay in the hospital with MANY complications. We were so looking forward to her being home and healthy.

    A call to her cardiologist office resulted in her going to ER. Sparing significant details, suffice it to say, she is in the hospital now. It seems she is having pauses between beats. She has called these “spells.” Feeling like she was going to faint, but not actually losing consciousness. The pauses have been getting longer and the plan is for her to receive a pacemaker. If you have a practice of prayers, please pass along some for her.

    I had seen this post on Facebook from “Fabulous Lovers of Weird Everything” about ten days ago, and I knew this post was coming, even before the situation with my friend and before Mother’s Day.

      “Piglet?” said Pooh.
      “Yes?” said Piglet.
      “I’m scared,” said Pooh.
      For a moment, there was silence.
      “Would you like to talk about it?” asked Piglet, when Pooh didn’t appear to be saying anything further.
      “I’m just so scared,” blurted out Pooh.
      “So anxious. Because I don’t feel like things are getting any better. If anything, I feel like they might be getting worse. People are angry, because they’re so scared, and they’re turning on one another, and there seems to be no clear plan out of here, and I worry about my friends and the people I love, and I wish SO much that I could give them all a hug, and oh, Piglet! I am so scared, and I cannot tell you how much I wish it wasn’t so.”
      Piglet was thoughtful, as he looked out at the blue of the skies, peeping between the branches of the trees in the Hundred Acre Wood, and listened to his friend.
      “I’m here,” he said, simply. “I hear you, Pooh. And I’m here.”
      For a moment, Pooh was perplexed.
      “But… aren’t you going to tell me not to be so silly? That I should stop getting myself into a state and pull myself together? That it’s hard for everyone right now?”
      “No,” said Piglet, quite decisively. “No, I am very much not going to do any of those things.”
      “But – ” said Pooh.
      “I can’t change the world right now,” continued Piglet. “And I am not going to patronise you with platitudes about how everything will be okay, because I don’t know that.
      “What I can do, though, Pooh, is that I can make sure that you know that I am here. And that I will always be here, to listen; and to support you; and for you to know that you are heard.
      “I can’t make those Anxious Feelings go away, not really.
      “But I can promise you that, all the time I have breath left in my body…you won’t ever need to feel those Anxious Feelings alone.”
      And it was a strange thing, because even as Piglet said that, Pooh could feel some of those Anxious Feelings start to loosen their grip on him and could feel one or two of them start to slither away into the forest, cowed by his friend, who sat there stolidly next to him.
      Pooh thought he had never been more grateful to have Piglet in his life.

      ~ Thinushi Jayarangi

    When I got to the hospital on Friday, my friend had experienced an adverse reaction to an IV medication. Her heart rate and pulse had plummeted. The nurse and doctor were still there with her…. and my friend kept telling me how wonderful the nurse had been through the event, “She just stayed here with me and she kept calling me back….”

    Perhaps today is the perfect day to share this story because it is Mother’s Day. I just sent a text message to a friend saying that not every woman (and not one man) gives birth to another human, but we all share in that universal love called MOTHER. That friend lost her mother recently and today is the first Mother’s Day with her mother in spirit.


    Even when our physical mothers are not here in bodies we are receiving a Mother’s Love. Calling the planet we live on “Mother Earth” seems perfect. Every moment we are in these bodies we are being nurtured and held and sustained, especially when we are navigating challenging conditions and have anxious feelings.

    Women and men are doing that for one another. The Holy Spirit is doing that for each of us. Our ancestors, our deities, our partners, our pets…. this is the Power of Presence.

  • From All Sides

    I have been working with a habitual habit energy. I’ve been at that place in the process where I could see clearly it was habit energy but I was not yet able to see what was driving it. You cannot see it until you can see it, and you cannot release it until you can see what is fueling the pattern from all sides..

    This past Sunday Barbara Brodsky, (as The Mother), spoke to me about resistance. I was encouraged to just note it gently so the resistance can inform me about the places where I still hold something separate from myself. She reminded me that it is subtle, and cautioned me to not try to fix anything. Just be present with whatever is happening in the mind and body. Be aware of the overlap of that with the essence which is so open and broad and filled with love.

    This reminds me of the holy experience of fully experiencing both the grief and the relief with loss. This morning it was the loss of a friend as navigated with her kitty. Eddie, an indoor-only de-clawed cat, got out and has been missing since Saturday. On Wednesday she was resolved to accept Eddie’s was the shriek she heard in the night on Saturday, rather than a rabbit being eaten by a coyote (as her neighbor and kittie-sitter wants to believe). Of course, neither of them has proof. (Please see update at the bottom of this page.)

    Related to the habit energy I have been navigating, I am now able to observe how underneath the resistance has been sadness and fear. I am more aware of the sadness. This reminds me of the question: If a lion roars in front of a mirror, do you think the mirror roars? The mirror does nothing, it simply reflects.

    The opening of a retreat with Barbara Brodsky includes taking The Five Basic Precepts, derived from the Tiep Hien Precepts. The second seems relevant to my having seen what has been fueling this habit energy pattern from all sides.

      Possess nothing that should belong to others. Respect the property of others. Prevent others from enriching themselves from the suffering of humans or other beings.

      In what ways do I take that which is not mine? Do I take more than my share? Can I become more mindful of when, why and how this happens?

      I undertake the precept to refrain from taking that which is not freely given.

    This is not the first time I have written about this habit energy. (See: It’s So Simple Isn’t It)
    What I am able to see now is a time in the past when the shoe was on the other foot. What I have been experiencing as both recurring and painful I once was doing to another. I know harm was not intentionally inflicted, but I see clearly now that I was inflicting harm nonetheless.

    A memory just popped in from years ago when I had seen some trash on the beach and a judgment about “someone who would litter” arose. Moments later as a receipt on my passenger seat was sucked out when I opened the car window on the drive home.

    A stressful event occurred when the woman I was traveling in Europe with changed her mind about some directions she had given me without communicating that change. She was frustrated, angry, and lashed out. As she was admonishing me for not doing what she now wanted me to do, I had lucid awareness (time and place) of my having done that to another.

    If someone calls us a fool and we
    get angry, we think that this person
    made us angry. But we don’t see the
    subtle thought process that goes on:
    the identification with self; the pride
    that doesn’t want to be called a fool;
    and all of that. That’s what makes
    the mind angry, not anyone
    calling you a fool.
    ~ The DailyTejaniya

    In both of these past situations — and thankfully also with this current habit pattern — release comes when you see the pattern from all sides.

    Update: Eddie is safely back home! Interestingly, the same family that saw his post on Nextdoor and sent a photo of another cat yesterday was successful in assisting Eddie’s safe return this evening…. So grateful for all.

  • Hair Experiences

    I almost did not go for an out-of-doors bike ride today because of a threat of rain and a fairly stiff wind, but the newborn leaves making their debut on the trees outside my window moved me. About 7 miles in, and very near home, the three walkers looked a rather odd trio from behind, and I spontaneously called out, “A rather unusual looking group of walkers!” They repeated my words and let their laughter speak agreement.

    Then I saw her from the front. She had one of those BRILLIANT streaks of color on one side only of her longish hair. Suddenly I had the judgment, “I am pretty mundane when it comes to hair.” My sister, Janis, has had light hair/dark hair; short hair to almost no hair; normal-colored and not-so-normal colored hair. Sometimes she has had more than two of these in the same day!

    In some traditions, hair is considered a metaphor for spirit and uncut hair the symbol of interconnectedness of all life. To cut one’s hair was thought to diminish strength or wisdom, while long hair represented a connection to the natural elements, including the spirit world and ancestors.

    I have an album of photos on my iPhone titled: Hair. I have selected three. One is my photo from the year I was Number One in Sales at Creative Galleries. The dark hair phase photo shows me giving a tiny grandson, Adam, a massage as he smiles a sleepy slur saying, “Every peoples ought to have a massage.” The back shot is of my post-Covid hair taken by my brother-in-love, Larry Britton, shortly before I donated it to Wigs for Kids.

    Last Friday evening we went to a “reunion” of The Dunns, a benefit concert of a Southern gospel band that Michael Springer, our music friend, toured with for many years. In addition to some old familiar gospel tunes, I heard some lyrics new to me that still linger, like the words to When I Get Carried Away © 2024 Heritage Singers.

    It is interesting that I had unknowingly changed the words of that song ever-so-slightly from when to ’til:

    I’m gonna have the time of my life ’til the time of my life is over; I’m gonna get carried away ’til I get carried away.

    Perhaps my hair experiences have not been as mundane as I first thought.

  • The Coupon Queen

    It was the first Easter after his mother had passed. He was wondering how he was going to make it through Easter without her. On the week leading up to that first Easter without his mother, he was in the grocery store on a very long check out line. Someone tapped him on the shoulder. He turned around and it was an elderly woman handing him a coupon as she said to him, “Young man, I noticed the cereal you are buying. I have a coupon for it.”

    No one had ever done that for him in all of his years of grocery shopping. And when he reached out to get the coupon from her, he looked into her eyes. He really felt like his mother was present. The woman did not look like his mother, but he felt his mother’s presence. It was so real, so palpable, so undeniable….

    His mother was a child of Italian immigrants from the Great Depression, so she really loved saving money. Every Sunday she would take the newspaper and she would cut all of the coupons. She would even cut coupons for items she herself did not buy. She would leave them on the grocery store shelves next to the items for other people to find and to use.

    His mother was not a reader, she did not do puzzles, she did not knit. What his mother did for fun was cut coupons. She was the coupon queen!

  • Red-Shouldered Hawk – A Close Encounter

    On Sunday, she received this wonderful blessing from a spiritual teacher who goes by the name Mother.

    I am with you and I will climb on the back of your bike and enjoy the outings with you. If you go past something that catches your eye, just tap me on the shoulder and say to me, “Mother, did you see that?”

    Or I’ll tap you on the shoulder and say, “Did you see this???”

    Monday morning she was out riding her bike when she saw a Red-shouldered Hawk on a power line. Hawks are often skittish, appearing to be almost “camera” shy. Speaking to the hawk, she stopped her bike and began slowly walking closer. The hawk watched her as she took some photos and then flew up, landing in the yard across the street. Still speaking softly to the bird, she was able to stand within about three feet! She was even able to get a video of some ground behavior she had never seen before. An online search said this seems to be a hawk hunting technique: rooting around the dry grass like a chicken.

    When the hawk flew to the edge of the garage, she stood directly below as the hawk looked down, making direct eye contact.

    She felt the Mother’s energy and imagined her saying, “Did you see this!!!”

    It is thought that hawks represent focus, clarity, determination, and intelligence.

    “Thank you, Hawk, and thank you, Mother,” she breathed.

    Hawks symbolize spiritual awareness because these are all traits you need to be more spiritually aware.

  • Help Buying a New Van

    She and her husband had the sense they were to explore trading in their car for a new one. Their sense about this grew stronger the more they laughed about how silly it was to think about a new car since theirs was only a year old. And, further, they had just had a hitch installed on their car before traveling to Florida for the winter so they could bring their bicycles. How would they possibly get a hitch installed on a new car in just a couple days? None of it seemed feasible! Yet for several days they felt as though several close family members, no longer in body, were sending them messages in dreams that it was important to explore doing this.

    The final message came from her mother who had died several years earlier. When she was in body she often exclaimed, “This will be fun, fun, fun, or great, great, great!” Her presence in the dream was one of this enthusiasm. In the dream, her mother told her, “Just wait until you hear the name of the person who waits on you at the car dealership!” So, off they went to the car dealership in Florida, 3 days before they were to leave to travel back to their home in the north. They had learned to trust the messages that find a way to get through to them from their loved ones on the other side, yet they felt a bit skeptical and even a bit ridiculous, trading in a car that only had 17,000 miles on it!

    When they walked into the dealership and asked to talk to a salesperson, they were introduced to Liam. One of her mother’s great grandson’s was named Liam. When he was born, her mother thought it was a unique and fun name and told all of her friends at the retirement community where she lived how excited she was with having a new grandson with the name Liam! She thought it was a “great, great, great name!”

    She and her husband enjoyed getting to know their sales person, Liam, and found him to be very friendly and helpful. He was able to get them exactly what they wanted and most importantly, was able to make the numbers work out so it was feasible, and, the car came with a hitch!

    Liam is a boy’s given name of Irish origin. It is a diminutive of the British name William, meaning “helmet of will” or “protection.” She and her husband looked at each other with amazement and knew they had an army of angels helping them!