Debra Basham

Living and Loving

Tag: Pine Island

  • Milton’s Mayhem and Message

    Last evening we had dinner with two long-time friends. One friend lost her winter home on Pine Island two years ago to Hurricane Ian. As Hurricane Milton is crossing the Gulf of Mexico right now barrelling toward Florida we have friends who are year-round on the island. It felt good for us to gather here in our tiny house and enjoy hearty soup and savory salads. And fresh-baked bread.

    The other friend and I will be attending a residential retreat all of next week. She said the retreat comes at an ideal time for her as she is so wrapped up in the political stuff and global conditions.

    This morning I sent both of them the opening words of our Florida meditation group who meets online each Tuesday afternoon at 1:00 pm EST. The leader hosted this gathering in her home on Pine Island for several decades until she moved into a senior living center on the mainland. At the time of yesterday’s Zoom gathering, she was there in her apartment.

    Her opening words were salve…. “It is a different feeling when I feel that if I don’t like what’s going on right now, I can change it. But the reality is that all I can do about that is change my attitude about it. I can’t necessarily change what’s actually happening. So it’s sort of humbling to sit here in this same space, but it looks much differently because, you know, all the windows are covered up, the doors are covered up. You can’t see out. There isn’t anybody out there to see anyway. So it’s quite a different reality.”

    Three of us online with her sat in our homes here in Michigan.

    One other friend online with us told us she was staying on Pine Island in the home of friends. The same home and the same friends with whom this friend survived Hurricane Ian two years ago. This friend’s home had been destroyed in Matlacha.

    This morning I wake to a text message from another friend who had spent a day with us on Pine Island before Hurricane Ian. He was sending a photo and this message, “With all that is going on in Florida sending you one of my guardian orbs.”


    Perfectly round orbs appearing in photos are often interpreted as signs of harmony and purity, believed to represent balanced energy and the presence of a peaceful spirit. Some see them as guardians or guides. They are thought to be evidence of the presence of our departed loved ones who are watching over us.

    A while later this morning as I opened email the loving messages continued.

      The world is a creation of our mind. Everything we experience happens in the mind. So there is no need to look outside. Everything is happening right here in our own minds. ~ The Daily Tejaniya

      Gain and loss, pleasure and pain, joy and sorrow, light and dark—these are seeming opposites. But nothing is truly an opposite but always part of everything else. What would joy be without sorrow? How would you recognize joy? How would you recognize the light if there were no sense of darkness? How would you know spaciousness if there were never contraction? But we must recognize the distinction between ultimate reality and those mundane objects that arise from conditions and pass away. Reflect on the beauty of light and love as ultimate realities, and how darkness and contraction arise out of conditions and pass away. ~ Aaron

    The opening words for our meditation time continued: “And although I know that this particular building, as you know, I’m on the sixth floor, which is the top floor, it’s poured concrete. So all the floors are concrete that’s twelve inches thick, and the walls are not quite that thick, but the outside walls are. Maybe it’s eight inches on the walls. And so it would have to be a really tremendous storm to take any of it out. And I just know that that’s not forthcoming. I don’t think we’ll really even know that it happened. And it will happen between tomorrow, between bedtime and midnight. So they say. I was talking to a friend yesterday, and I said, you know, you and I have had a nice long association in this lifetime, and if you never hear from me again, just know that I love you. And it threw her a bit for me to say that. And I was very conscious of what I was saying, because that’s always true. It’s not just because there’s a storm. It’s true for all of us today, right now. However, our lives usually are focused in a different direction. Thank goodness.”

    And as we settled into the stillness, these assurances were spoken: “Yes, this is comforting, and all of you are comforting. And I know that there are many others that are also. And hopefully they have found a place where they can express their own comfort. So if everyone is ready, shall we go into our meditation? So taking a couple of deep breaths, and just feel the breath as it fills our lungs. And exhale. And then with the next breath, fill the lungs as much as they were, and then add a little bit more. And I ask Spirit to be with us, the higher selves of each of us, to guide and protect us, acknowledging that that’s what they are doing all the time. And then as we take that deep breath, and a little more, know that every time we do this, we are a little more of who we are. I don’t know that it’s possible, well, let me put it some other way. I accept the possibility that when we take all we can that we are, and then we add a little more, that there will always be a little more. In the evolution of humanity, of life on this planet, I can imagine there’s always a little more. And it’s not necessarily definable, not something that we can describe. And yet there’s a sense within each of us that knows there’s a little more. So as we go into the silence today, into the uncertainty of how nature will conclude this day, we set an intention to be a little more.”

    May all beings find an end to stress and suffering. May all beings know peace.

  • Indian Tree Giving

    Because the collective is shifting so rapidly, we are doubling back for upgrades to things we have long-known. Yesterday for me was “The Rule of Six.” Simply put, any thought or belief that I recognize has the slightest tinge of lack, I can allow six alternate ways of experiencing it. This teaches the mind instantaneous flexibility so we don’t clamp down on our thoughts or beliefs and cause ourselves pain.

    Monday was another powerfully heart opening experience post-Ian. Linda cooked while I organized many boxes of household items. We had storage space for these items at our seasonal rental on Bounty Lane, but that precious home was damaged by the hurricane and is still in the tear-down-to-build-up phase, so we have used stuff here in Port Charlotte this winter but we are heading home in about ten days.

    I filled the van with creatively displayed boxes. We drove to many friends on the island where they could select from the Basham Bazaar Buggy (the back of my van). At our first stop Nancy made her selections and said, “I want to go with you on the rest of your stops….”

    The first was at the Winn Dixie grocery store for Linda to buy ice cream for the family we were taking a meal to. Our friend went into the store with me as Linda waited in the van. Our friend told me she wanted to buy some additional things for the family. She selected two boxes of Entenmann’s Minis Fudge Iced Golden Cakes, a large bottle of apple juice and some pink lemonade mix. I could feel how important it was for her to be part of the giving role.

    Our next stop was at the home of friends that took on water up to her armpits. Connie and her husband have worked tirelessly for over five months and say now their home is almost back to pre-hurricane condition. This friend is actually the sister of a very close Michigan friend, named Pam.

    Soon after I bought a whole box (almost an entire set) of these Indian Tree patterned dishes for $5 (from the estate sale of a woman coincidentally named Pam), Pam told me this pattern was their mother’s good china, and she had the set!

    I confess I have a dish fetish. I have loved these dishes. I would invite Connie for tea every season so she could sip from “her mother’s” tea cups. When Covid kept us from meeting face-to-face I gifted Connie one tea cup and one saucer, saying we could drink from her mother’s dishes and feel our connections across time and distance.

    I know these vintage dishes are rather expensive — online I saw one square sandwich plate for $40, one cereal bowl for $20, and a partial set listed for over $550. I had no idea.

    I do not have room for them in Michigan.

    It broke my heart to give them up, until I realized I am not giving them up, I am giving them back.

    I also gave Connie the beautiful plaid napkins I found that coordinate beautifully. And a little red butter dish with a matching red knife.

    The next day Nancy sent a photo of the dishes she selected from Basham Bazaar Buggy mindfully placed in the cupboard of her recently purchased duplex near center island after her house was a total loss.

    Her text message read, “A beginning! So grateful!

    Tears fall easily here….

  • Invite to Arise and Allow to Dissolve

    The days feel a bit otherworldly since hurricane Ian paid a visit to our seasonal paradise in St. James City on Pine Island, Florida. Devastation is the best descriptor. The island has been deemed “uninhabitable” for the unforeseeable future with no power, water, sewer, or emergency services.

    The sense of loss comes in concentric circles. The smallest circle is the interruption to our coveted winter life-style. Then to the homeowners, and finally to those whose only home is (was) there. The island is also home to so much wildlife that must be shocked as well. Bald Eagle, the Gopher Tortoise, the Pileated Woodpecker, the Great Blue Heron, to name just a few.

    We received a video after our homeowner made it to ground zero yesterday. The damage is overwhelming. So many of our friends are affected. John’s shuffleboard buddy called to say they are not coming back. “We are too old, and I am too tired,” Richie said. Again, those circles.

    We view the damage from a safe distance within the comfort of our tiny house here in Michigan.

    Our grandson, Brad, drove to Florida from Tennessee with donated supplies to assist his dad in Englewood, who lost a roof. It is estimated that 90-95 percent of homes in that community were damaged. Brad’s paternal grandparent’s home was a total loss, like so many others we know and love.

    I realized it feels like going through the grand letting go that happens for us all at the time of death, but we are going through it now without leaving our bodies.

    I appreciate that a friend sent a passage from Eckhart Tolle’s Stillness Speaks: “Death is not the opposite of life. Life has no opposite. The opposite of death is birth. Life is eternal.” (p. 103)

    Betty Lue Lieber (my beloved teacher and friend who founded the interfaith ordination program of Reunion I was ordained through) sent the Daily Quote from Abraham Hicks:

      You cannot be less than you are now. You cannot achieve a vibration that is less than the vibration that you have achieved. That’s why when someone achieves an empire and then something happens where it is lost or destroyed, they still have the vibration that they’ve achieved, and the empire will come back again—you see it all the time—because it is the vibrational status that the Universe is responding to, not the financial status.

      Excerpted from Philadelphia, PA on 5/7/03

      Our Love
      Esther (Abraham and Jerry)

    This morning when my sister, Janis, and I turned over our 2022 Magic Eye Calendar to October we saw myriad animals — including buffalo, bear, deer, eagle, and feather. It is a very BUSY image. Key words that came to mind are Native American; Mother Earth; and Nature.

    The underneath (3D image) is simply two sets of human hands coming down on to two drums. We both thought: Heart beat of the earth.

    There is soooooo much going on on the surface, but underneath we can feel hopeful. First Janis said it felt hopeful, but then the word ENCOURAGING came to mind.

    Reading on in Stillness Speaks:

      People tend to be uncomfortable with endings, because every ending is a little death. That’s why in many languages, the word for “good-bye” means “see you again.”

      Whenever an experience comes to an end — a gathering of friends, a vacation, your children leaving home — you die a little death. A “form” that appeared in y9ur consciousness as that experience dissolves. Often this leaves behind a feeling of emptiness that most people try hard not to face.

      If you can learn to accept and even welcome the endings in your life, you may find that the feeling of emptiness that initially felt uncomfortable turns into a sense of inner spaciousness that is deeply peaceful.

      By learning to die daily in this way, you open yourself to Life. (p. 106-107)

    Two experiences from my past come to mind. The first was when the entire lower level at Holistic Alliance was flooded with grey water. That was a total BEING of awareness that what would be would be. Like Doris Day’s singing Qué será, será, whatever will be, will be; the future’s not ours to see; Qué será, será.

    The second was the night I unknowingly ate food containing shellfish while I was in Thailand and I became violently ill. I was alone with no way to get any help. After the vomiting and diarrhea slowed to where I could crawl to the bedroom and lie down, I turned on my Everlasting Peace CD fully aware whatever will be, will be. If I was going to die, I wanted to live until then in everlasting peace.

    This morning, Aaron’s words point to a new way of navigating this feeling of emptiness.

    There is nothing to create; there is nothing to destroy. There is only the power that is inherent in your essence, which is the essence of All That Is, the power of love that is able to fully invite that which is wholesome and release that which is unwholesome. To create and to destroy are 3rd density concepts; invite to arise and allow to dissolve are 4th density concepts. Are you ready for it? ~ Aaron

  • Fingers on Fur

    Preparations are underway to head to Smyrna tomorrow. We never say or think we are leaving Pine Island after enjoying “the season” here—we are going to see the grandkids!

    Recently my brother-in-law experienced the death of the woman he had cared for the past five years. He was committed to her. They married in November, so he could insure her wishes could be carried out. She wanted to stay in her home, and she did. I sent him a snapshot of the empty cupboard here on Bounty Lane saying, “Reminding both of us an empty space sits in the field of Infinite Possibilities.”

    Last week I rode my bike to the auto repair shop near here where a resident cat I like to visit lives. His name is Sonny.



    When I came through the door, helmet on my head, Sonny was up on the counter being petted by a customer while the owner of the shop did the paperwork. Sonny made eye contact with me and I said to him, in my high-pitched kitty-loving voice, “Yes, you’re the one I came to see.”

    Sonny shot down off that counter, right out from from under the customer’s hands, and ran over to me. The customer said to the shop owner, “Well, he obviously knows her!”

    It was my first visit this season and I had such a feeling of nostalgia wondering why I had waited so long to do something I love so much. I wrote this poem. Many of you will relate.

    Meow Musings

    Don’t get your dander up
    Sonny’s just a pussy
    not at all a push-over
    even rather fussy

    He fancies petting
    and so do I
    rubbing him the right way
    produces a sigh

    It’s not all pretense
    this is genuine love
    any time kitty time
    is a cut above

    Feline fancier
    that I am
    that cat got me
    out of a jam

    Sour mood, bad food
    whatever ails you
    fingers on fur
    chases the blues

    Debra Basham 3/24/2018

    Amidst it all, we must make time (we will never find time) to do the things that bless our hearts and minds. I will go to meditation today while John goes to play music. He is at shuffleboard this morning. Everything will get done.

    And Deep Spring Center’s Thought for Today:
    “Try as hard as you will, you cannot hold the world from changing. You cannot hold other people or yourself from changing. To try to do that with yourself so as to please another is unloving to yourself, asking yourself not to be true to yourself and your experience. It’s also an unloving to another because it gives them a false hope that you are as they may try to make you to be. The greatest gift you can give is the willingness to have enough love and respect for another not to live your life around their fear.”

  • Tapping into Gratitude

    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)