Shadow Shot Sunday

Decided to participate in Shadow Shot Sunday again this week, though I don't have that many shots - and I didn't want to bore everyone with more pictures of tree shadows on my neighbor's front lawn. Gets pretty repetitive after a while. I did include one from a different part of the yard that's a bit different, I hope. Shadow Shot Sunday hosted over at Hey Harriet's blog and if you like shadows (as I do), check out all the wonderful posts featuring shadows of all kinds. Here's what I came up with for this week.

Not sure this icicle really counts as having shadows or
is just kind of made of light and shadow, but I like the
reflectionsin the drop... You can see my little house.

Different spot in my neighbor's yard...

Angel and Tara Grace graciously made shadows for me
behind the curtains.

I contemplated saving this one for Ruby Tuesday but... these are my new prayer flags.
Hopefully, I can get someone to hang them for me in the near future.

That's it for me. May all your shadows be beautiful.

Curmudgeon Lite

(Please scroll down for the Saturday Wordzzle Challenge.)

Well, this isn't really curmudgeony (I don't think), but it is the second half of what I was going to talk about on Tuesday. It's a difficult subject for me because it's something profoundly important to me and the fact that other people don't feel the same as I do is really my problem and not theirs, but... it makes me sad. So here goes...

Most of you who visit here with any regularity know that I'm a reiki master and that reiki (more here and here) is a big part of my life and who I am. I don't think there's anyone who holds this against me, but I know that large numbers of people - in life and in the blogosphere - just go kind of quiet when the subject comes up and sort of tip toe quietly out of the room hoping that I won't hear the silence. I understand that. I really do. We are not a naturally airy-fairy society. We are taught to believe in science and the "provable." There are also people who feel that the idea of reiki is "un-Christian." That one puzzles me because I think the opposite is true. Jesus performed and talked about everyone being able to do healing and always stated clearly that healing had much to do with the faith to receive it.... But I'm getting ahead of myself.

I have to admit that I thought reiki was a lot of hooey when I first encountered the idea of offering healing touch to anybody. This was at a workshop. "Oh, Lord," I thought. "These people are goofy." Then we started doing some experiments. First we took dowsing rods and started exploring people's energy fields. My eyes were rolling at first but then the dowsing rods started responding as people expanded and contracted their "energy," myself included. Different people could impact the rods from different distances. Hmmm. Imagination? Manipulation? If would have been hard to manipulate. There were about 40 of us, all having similar but unique experiences. This was before I had even heard of reiki. At this workshop we experimented with sending loving energy to each other. I later made some home-made dowsing rods and got my mathematician/actuary father - the ultimate skeptic - to experiment with me. He couldn't explain the rods or rationalize them away, though he tried. Then we got my mother, who was already fairly deep into the throes of dementia, to get onto a make-shift table. After I worked on her, she was more coherent than she had been in a long time and that lasted for several days. My father let me work on him too and then rationalized away his own experiences... and my mother's. But at least he pried the door of his mind open for an hour. I give him that. It just bothered him that he couldn't find a logial explanation, so he dismissed his experience. I see that often. How sad. And how unscientific. Worse still are those who won't even try reiki but simply dismiss it as bull****. I find it very illogical and unscientific to simply dismiss reiki without trying it. My nephew - another skeptic - got on my table to humor me and had the pain in his wrists and elbows (he was studying martial arts) go away. It bothered him that he couldn't explain what happened, but he didn't deny his experience. He sent a friend to me who had gone through doctors, chiropractors, medications and even surgery for a shoulder injury with no success. Reiki helped him when nothing else did. It baffles me why reiki works. It is an act of faith both to offer it and to receive it. It's a mystery... and a wonderful one.

I experimented with the concept of energy in another context when I was attending Seminary. Our thoughts and energy have much more power than we traditionally acknowledge. One of the more interesting courses I took at General Seminary was something called "Vision and Audition in the Bible." The professor was a priest who had been a scientist and not put much stock in things like dreams or intuition until he himself had a profound personal experience that changed his life. He then became deeply enmeshed in the idea of dreams and energy. At one point he had each of us hook ourselves up to a machine that monitors alpha and delta waves. Alpha is supposed to be our waking/thinking state. Delta is associated with dreaming and with deep meditation. The idea of this machine was to use it to bring yourself into a delta state. It would start buzzing when you got to a delta state. According to the machine, I live in a delta state as it went off immediately. I kept thinking I was doing it wrong, but I double and triple checked and I consistently set it off just plugging it in. Maybe that has something to do with me being empathic. I don't know. It would be interesting to do a study on that. Do empaths and people who work with the healing arts operate from a different energetic place naturally? I know some of you out there don't believe in empaths either, but you haven't lived in my body so don't dismiss what you don't understand. One of the reasons I got interested in learning reiki was because it is supposed to help protect you from taking other peoples feelings into your own body. Sounded good to me.

But I have way digressed from what I wanted to talk about. Whew. This subject is so huge for me and so impossible to explain in a way that makes sense to people. My main point was that I don't understand total resistance to something like reiki. I understand skepticism. I think that's healthy. Dismissal bugs me. It's like turning away angels because they might be mythical. Or maybe a smarter parallel might be refusing water when you are thirsty because you like orange juice better. Or maybe there is no analogy.

Reiki is no more fool-proof than allopathic medicine, which works differently for different people and which sometimes heals and sometimes doesn't.. I don't think I'm Jesus. Reiki practitioners don't make promises. What happens is between you and the energy. We are channels through which it comes. That said, sometimes my own and the recipient's expectations are disappointed. When I'm doing it right - truly remembering that I'm just a channel and not a "doer," I avoid expectation and disappointment. I'm not really quite so wise that I can do that completely but I'm better at it than I used to be. Ever time I send reiki is always different because each human and each day are different. Sometimes I feel nothing and the recipient feels a great deal. Sometimes I feel things and the person at the other end doesn't. Sometimes - this is when it's most fun - we have matching experiences. I used to reiki a freind of mine while we talked on the phone. She could always tell me where on the teddy bear surrogate my hands were. That was great fun. Animals are fun to do. They way too smart to second guess a gift. With few exceptions, they soak the reiki energy in gladly. They don't question whether it's logical or possible. They just know it feels good. Humans are more prone to doubt and resistence.

Still, it makes me sad that there are people suffering who could suffer less, that there are gifted people like Dennis Puffett out there offering a great gift and asking nothing in return and people tip-toe out of the room as though they have overheard something wicked being discussed. I don't get not exploring something so potentially wonderful. The worst that can happen is that it doesn't work. But there's always the possiblity that you might feel better.

So this isn't a criticism or really curmudgeonyness. It's puzzlement and sadness because I love reiki and I love to share those things that are precious to me. When I offer reiki, when I talk about it, I am opening my heart. I am stepping out of my own comfort zone in some ways because I know not everyone believes in it and some even have judgements about it. I won't say that rejection of something so important to me doesn't make me a touch sad, but even worse than rejection for me, is silence.

Thanks for listening to me here. I hope I have made a little bit of sense.

Saturday Wordzzle Challenge: Week 45

Yippee! Wordzzles are back! This is week 45 of the Saturday Wordzzle challenge. Anyone new to the process can refer back here to find out how it works.

The words for this week's ten word challenge were: We were born on the same day in the same hospital, Weeping willow, two for one sale, Highway robbery, Burial ground, roll of paper towels, gospel singer, gallows, weirdo, volcano Mini Challenge: Symbiosis, Sagging breasts, Navaho blanket, Frogmen, Who says I got no heart?

Here's my ten-word offering for this week:

Strange but true. We met standing on line at Macy’s which was running an incredible two for one sale on everything from rolls of paper towels to flat screen TVs of all things. As it turned out, prices were still highway robbery. At first I thought he was some kind of weirdo, but somehow we started talking anyway and I discovered that we were almost twins – well, sort of… We were born on the same day in the same hospital. Really. I kid you not. I had just gotten the leading role in a play called Weeping Willow. I was playing the part of a white woman raised by Indians. Our campground was at the foot of a volcano for some reason – I think the volcano was supposed to be symbolic of the social and emotional turmoil or something like that. Much of the story was set at the tribe’s burial grounds where I was burying my native father who had been wrongly hanged on the gallows for allegedly murdering a white man. The real killer had turned out to be my birth father. It was a strange play. Turns out Zach – that was his name – was a gospel singer – and really good, too. Weeping Willow had one uncast role – for a singing shaman. He got the part and – unlike me – got rave reviews. It was the start of his career and the end of mine – at least my acting career. Lucky for me we fell in love and I got the role of a life-time. Mother to sweet baby Louie and his sister Samanatha. The TVs may have been overpriced, but that day at Macy’s was the best shopping day of my life.

And here's my mini challenge:

Who says I got no heart? My ancient and sadly sagging breasts have no sex appeal left in them. Nor do I. Now that I don’t have to worry about sex any more, I have achieved a kind of uneasy truce – a symbiosis of sorts – with my body. I know it seems odd to call it a symbiosis since that implies that my body is an other and not me – but that is how it always felt – like my enemy or something. I was raised to be ashamed if it and it took old age and isolation to get me past that. Maybe I’m not past it and only pretending. Works out just the same. I wrap myself in my big floaty Navaho blanket with the frog-men woven into it and am reasonably at peace. Still, I cry a sometimes for all that I have missed in this life. I don’t know if my heart is broken, but it is surely there.

And for the mega challenge:

Marty and I, we were born on the same day in the same hospital, and we were friends for our whole lives. We were like brothers and our parents used to joke that we were like getting a two for one sale on kids. We considered ourselves really lucky because it was like we each had two families. We both loved music, though our tastes were a bit different. Marty was a gospel singer and I was more into folk and rock and roll. Because we were so close we couldn’t think of not performing together and our friendship created a kind of symbiosis of our different styles that turned out to be magical. You may have heard of us – we called ourselves Eagle and the Frogman. We never told anybody who was which. We were both weirdos so maybe we were both each role depending on the day, if you know what I mean. Our first album was called Burial Ground and it even had a hit single called Weeping Willow. We made two hit albums – Voice of the Volcano and Highway Robbery – after that and we stayed friends until he met Veronica. I admit it. I was jealous. She took my place and I didn’t understand it... well not until I met my wife, Mary, and then we all got close again and THEY joked about how they had gotten a two for one sale on husbands and friends. So here I am waking up from my heart transplant and my wife and two best friends are there with flowers and gifts and lots of laughter. Mary, is there with her obligatory roll of paper towels cleaning and polishing. It’s how she copes with emotion. She cleans. They’ve all brought flowers and music and my favorite Navaho blanket that I got when Marty and I were on the road. My favorite thing, though, was this gallows humor t-shirt, which they had also made into a poster. It’s got this little old man with sort of sagging breasts and big scar between them and in big letters it says WHO SAYS I GOT NO HEART? That just cracks me up every time I see it. They say humor is the best medicine and it must be true because my new heart is just bursting with love and joy. I’m a lucky man.

~~~~~~~~~~

This week’s vanity wordzzle: tiger, false, camera, obsolete, velvet, novelty, timeless, contract, mellifluous, sandalwood, perfection, xylophone, topography

I don't know whether I fell in love with it's mellifluous, velvety sound, or with the novelty of finding a tiger-shaped xylophone carved out of rich smelling sandalwood, but I was a woman obsessed. It was perfection, not one false line or curve to be found! It spoke to all my senses at once - touch, smell, sound, sight. It was so rich, so timeless in its artistry that I had to have it. The shop was a bit like walking into a fairy tale. Know what I mean? The owner was this weird little man named Sven Zen - or that's what he told me. I kind of think he must have made that name up, because Sven Zen had quite an imagination. I always thought he looked a bit like a gnome, you know, being so short like he was and wearing those funny clothes. I mean his outfits weren't just out of style, they were obsolete. Besides the xylophone, his shop was just filled with the most wonderful and unusual items. There was this funny camera that Sven Zen said took pictures of people's true nature. He took my picture and then showed me what he claimed were photos of other customers. They were really strange. This one woman's face came out all sickly green and twisted. Ugh. And then he showed me one of a man who looked all glowy, sort of like you'd imagine an angel would look. Mine was all pink and green and golden light and there were flowers in my hair and I kind of looked like I was singing. It was really cool. I asked him if I could have it, but he said no, he liked to keep a record of his customers. Then there was the topography book that when you opened it up, the maps seemed to really have mountains and valleys and you could almost see the grass and trees and flowers and hear the birds singing. You looked at those maps and you actually felt like you'd been to the places they depicted. The book must have been pretty old, because I never even heard of some of the places that book had maps of. It was just a wonderful shop. I could go on and on, because everything there seemed to be one of a kind and there was a sort of enchantment about the place. I couldn't stay away. There were half a dozen items that I wouldn't have minded taking home, but the xylophone just had my heart. I knew I had to have it. Once Sven Zen took my picture and called me a customer, I kind of knew he was gonna let me have the xylophone. I guess he knew I couldn't really afford it, because he offered to draw up a contract in which I would barter some services for the xylophone. I was a little nervous at first. 'Cause he was kind of strange, you know, and for some reason I kept thinking of Rumplestiltskin, but it turned out ok, I think. The deal is I have to take my Tiger-phone, as I like to call it, and make music for children and old people. And I have to write a book of poems and, if it's published, share the profits with Sven Zen. At least he didn't want my first-born child.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Next Week's Ten Word Challenge will be: tuna on rye, ghost hunters, I'm as corny as Kansas in August, sympathetic ear, science fiction, muffler, cavernous, giraffes, prospecting, paraphenalia

Mini Challenge: Key Lime Pie, porcupine, Library of Congress, fingernails, spell-bound

Thanks for playing. For those who are new, here are some guidelines to make the process more fun.

Enjoy! See you next week.

DON'T FORGET TO ADD YOUR NAME TO MR. LINKY!!!!!

Curmudgeon Stuff: I Hate Awards

There are so many really important things I could write about today. I could write about world peace and the insanity being perpetrated by both sides in Gaza. I could write about political ambition over common sense and the nonsense that still seems to be rampant in my government. I could write about... well lots of things. But instead I have decided to grumble a bit.

I kind of hesitate to write what I'm about to say. It seems ungracious, though I don't mean it to be ungracious. I am always thrilled when anybody visits my little blog, especially when you say nice things to me. I thrive on kind words. I post something and I wait eagerly for someone to comment. Thank you to each and every person who has ever commented here.

Ok... here comes the curmudgeon part. I also appreciate the thought behind awards. But I hate awards. I really hate them. Give me a good comment any day but please don't ever give me an award, even a wonderful, beautiful one. I hate them. Even when they are pretty. Even when I love the sentiment behind them. I just hate them. To me they are like those gooey emails that I'm supposed to pass along to ten or twenty people. I hate those too, even when they are clever and beautiful. I especially hate the ones that say if I'm really your friend I'll send it back to you. If you were really my friend you wouldn't ask. (That's my inner curmudgeon speaking. I know that people send things on for many reasons and true friends have sent me those emails and I still love them just as much even though I HATE the emails.) But back to awards. They feel a lot like those emails to me. I feel very mean spirited saying this. I mean how ungracious can I be? But I can't help it. I've tried to hint about it... what I've said in the past is true - getting awards freaks me out and I do have a hard time receiving them above and beyond the fact that I just HATE them. I think I kind of hate awards in general. I seldom watch things like the Academy awards except maybe to see movie clips. I'm no opposed to praise and compliments. Praise and compliments are cool. I guess I'm not opposed to awards exactly... for anybody who likes getting them. For myself, though, I feel more like I'm being punished than giving a gift. For that reason, I guess, I don't much like giving them either. (How curmudgeony is THAT!?) I love praising people. I love giving gifts, but I really hate giving awards. I mean, how meaningful is it if I'm required by it's rules to give it to x number of other people? How sincere is the passing along? And I know that's an unfair question. On those occasions when I've passed awards along, I've passed them to people I truly and sincerely admire. So anyway, please don't ever give me an award again even if you think I'm wonderful and deserving.... because... need I repeat it again.... I really, really, really hate awards. What a mean-spirited, grouchy old curmudgeon I am!

I was going to add a second part to this - not curmudgeony really but something that I want to talk about. I think I'll wait and make it a separate post tomorrow. Meanwhile, here are some pictures to hopefully atone for my bad manners posting this. I really do appreciate the thought behind those of you who have given me awards but I just hate awards. I'm sorry. I just do.

Ruby Tuesday

Ruby Tuesday - hosted by Mary/the Teach at Work of the Poet - is here again. This week Mary suggested that that we find "signs" with red in them. Since I don't leave the house, she offered me the leeway of sign-like thing such as packaging. I did dig into my archives for a couple of real signs. These are from before I had my nice new camera. The first is from my nightmarish (but scenic) apartment in Lake Huntington, NY and the second is near another pretty awful apartment (in the cute little white house up the hill) in a pretty town on the Delaware River called Narrowsburg, NY. The last three pictures are current and are from inside my house. I had to/chose to redden Dr. Bronner's packaging a little bit. That's it from me this week. Not terribly excited about these. Please drop by Mary's and check out all the wonderful ruby shots from all around the world.


The past...



Here and now...

HAPPY RUBY TUESDAY!!

Shadow Shot Sunday

I had a lot fun with Shadow Shot Sunday last week and the sun came out a few times this week so I thought I'd give it another try. Shadow Shot Sunday hosted over at Hey Harriet's blog and if you like shadows (as I do), check out all the wonderful posts featuring shadows of all kinds. Here's what I came up with for this week.

Just a Reminder

There seemed to be some confusion, so I just wanted to let everyone know that the Saturday Wordzzle Challenge will return next week. Hope to see you all then.

Just a reminder so you don't have to bother searching... here are the words for the next challenge.

Next Week's Ten Word Challenge will be: We were born on the same day in the same hospital, Weeping willow, Two for one sale, Highway robbery, Burial ground, roll of paper towels, gospel singer, gallows, weirdo, volcano

Mini Challenge: Symbiosis, Sagging breasts, Navaho blanket, Frogmen, Who says I got no heart?

Skywatch Friday

It's Skywatch Friday (Thursday, actually) again. Haven't participated for a few weeks so I have a are gazillion shots and no self control about posting a lot. Please check out all the other skywatchers at the link above and you'll see lots of glorious sunsets and sunrises and clouds and other wonderful sky scenes. We haven't had much sun this month, but we did have a few days when the sky was something other than gray.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!