Daily Reminder # 72

A few (well 17, actually) years ago, I wrote a series of fables. I thought maybe I'd share this one tonight. It's not one of my favorites, but I don't think I've shared it before, so... Alas, there have been no miracles in the back yard, so my pictures are from last August and the August before that.

ANGEL WINGS

by

Katherine E. Rabenau

The miracle happened at the intersection of Forty-ninth Street and Fifth Avenue. Invisible as breathing, soft as a snowfall, sitting in her wheelchair Mary Dillon, poster child for the March of Dimes, felt a breeze so small it was a whisper (could it be angel wings?) and then, as clear and precise as it was inconceivable, one soft kiss on each of her steel-bound legs. And she knew, impossible as it was, silly as it sounded, that she, who had never taken an unaided step in her eight years of life, could now walk - and even dance - with the best of them. She could hardly believe it.

Luckily, at age eight, she had not lost her belief in magic, and she smiled a secret smile to herself. She could walk! What would it feel like, she wondered, to jump and run and dance? Could she really do such things? It was so wonderful, but so odd, like imagining that she could go into the TV screen and talk to the characters she saw there. Walking was an alien universe, and though she was eager to enter, it did not feel real, did not feel solid.

But it was real! She could feel her legs, strangely solid and strong inside the confining braces, flowing with new life and eager to be released into freedom. "I can walk!" she whispered softly to herself, and the sound hovered in the air around her and kissed her cheek. "I can walk! I can walk! I can walk!" she sang quietly to herself and laughed. Just wait 'til everyone saw! Wouldn't it be awesome! "Look at me!" she would shout, leaping from her chair, braces falling away. And she would dance and spin and run in circles and fall laughing to the ground. She would play tag and Ring-Around-the-Rosie and Hide and Seek. She would go on swings and slide down slides, and maybe even climb a tree. And she would laugh and laugh and laugh with joy, and everyone would laugh with her. She sighed contentedly. She could hardly wait.

Around her, things looked vibrantly alive and clear, and at the same time very far away. She shook her head to clear it. She had been kissed by an angel and her legs were fixed. What made the angel do it? Did angels kiss people all the time and she just hadn't heard about it? Was it because she was a poster child? No, that didn't make sense. Maybe it wasn't for her. Maybe it was for her parents, who, though they smiled and laughed a lot in her presence, often seemed sad and tired, and not really quite happy. Maybe now the laughter would be in their eyes too. That was good.

But she didn't really think it was for her parents, though she did think it would make them happy. No, it was for her, and it was a puzzle. Why her? Why not somebody else? And then the truth went through her like a shudder. Angels did kiss people all the time! Every day, every hour, every minute, even, and people didn't notice. She had just been paying attention at the right moment and the miracle had taken. It was that simple. Life was full of miracles. It was just a matter of keeping your and ears open and accepting the gift.

"Thank you, Angel. Thank you. Thank you for my legs and for all the miracles. I promise to tell everyone and to keep watch for you always. "I love you," she whispered. And sweet on the breeze, like the pure, soft tone of a bell, she heard the angel smile.

THE END

Some things I'm grateful for today:

• movies
• fans
• water - for drinking and bathing
• laughter
• angels
• miracles
• reiki

HAVE A MIRACULOUS DAY!

Daily Reminder # 71

Except for the fact that I never got around to taking my shower, today was a pretty nice day. The sun was out, the temperatures were in the 70s and there was a nice breeze. I got phone calls from two friends I was concerned about and hadn't heard from for a while. Did some reading. The back yard offered nothing, despite the beautiful weather, which was really disappointing... I mean it was so quiet you would have thought there was an electrified fence keeping birds out. Hate it wan that happens, especially when the light is good and the sky is blue. But such is life.

I don't have much in the way of thoughts in my had except political ones about racism and how creepy I think Republicans are and that's not really the stuff of inspiration, so.... maybe just a poem today that follows up a little on yesterday's reminder.

I am not in my body

It is filled instead with fear

And voices, many voices

They are angry with me

And I don’t know why

They are angry about that too

“Stupid girl,” they say,

“How could you not know?”

My body is big – very big

It is like a costume I wear

So people won’t see how small I feel

So people won’t see my fear...

Or maybe that’s why

I’m not really sure

It doesn’t work, of course

And now the voices scold about that too

“Stupid, ugly, fat girl,” they say,

Have you no shame?

Ironic they should ask that

Since it seems I am made of shame

Shame and fat and fear and nothing else

Katherine E. Rabenau

Some things I'm grateful for today:

• phone calls from friends
• good books
• cool air
• beauty
• teeth
• taste buds
• pizza

HAVE A GREAT DAY!

Daily Reminder # 70

If something doesn't feel good, stop doing it. But if you can't, forgive yourself for being human and see if you can find the wound that needs tending.

This reminder is purely for me. It's advice I have been unable to follow in my life, particularly as relates to food. There are foods that I know are bad for me. I don't even enjoy eating them. My body at 63 doesn't tolerate them as well as it used to and it never really liked them. BUT... I crave them. I don't think my body craves them, but something deep inside me craves them and overrides good sense, my wallet, my actual cravings and all reason. I'm not as bad as I used to be. I don't - as I once did - sit and eat a pint of ice cream at a go.

Still, when Margaret comes every other week to go shopping for me... no matter what I tell myself I should do, I almost always wind up getting Fritos or cookies or cake or root beer or .... and I always eat them. Compulsively. There's something I call the "make it go away" syndrome. I know these issues go back to my mother, who made eating a crime I was committing, not something I could enjoy. I don't know why I continue to eat things that I don't enjoy - and that I KNOW I won't enjoy - but I do. No matter what my brain tells me, some little infant or wounded child inside me screams louder than all the reason in the world. And even though I know the root beer will make me feel bloated and unhappy and the Fritos make me sick. I open the bag and start eating. And keep eating.

In short I spend money I don't have buying things I don't enjoy that make me feel both physically and emotionally awful. Go figure. I'd like to change. I'd also like to forgive myself for doing this. Stop being my mother and start being me.

I don't think I've found the uplifting part here. Just the suggestion.

Some things I'm grateful for:

• woodchucks
• food
• mail
• coffee
• my camera
• yogurt
• TV
• my body
• junk food (ok... I also wish it didn't exist, but ...)

HAVE A GREAT DAY!

Daily Reminder # 69

(Please scroll down for the Weekly Wordzzle Challenge.)

I googled for some inspiration tonight and came up with the following joke at a website called Inspireme.com. Since a big theme of the daily reminders is gratitude, I thought this was both pertinent and good for a giggle. I'm pretty good at receiving gifts from the universe (and it's human minions) these days, but I do occasionally catch myself second-guessing gifts given. Why not more food stamps? Why no increase in my stipend? Why... well, you get the point.

I thought this joke was a good reminder of how we sometimes do that:

A man worked in a post office. His job was to process all mail that had illegible addresses. One day a letter came to his desk, addressed in shaky handwriting to God. He thought, "I better open this one and see what it's all about." So he opened it and it read: "Dear God, I am a 83 year old widow living on a very small pension. Yesterday someone stole my purse. It had a hundred dollars in it which was all the money I had until my next pension check."

"Next Sunday is Mother's Day, and I had invited my last two friends over for dinner. Without that money, I have nothing to buy food with." "I have no family to turn to, and you are my only hope. Can you please help me?" The postal worker was touched, and went around showing the letter to all the others. Each of them dug into his wallet and came up with a few dollars. By the time he made the rounds, he had collected 96 dollars, which they put into an envelope and sent over to her.

The rest of the day, all the workers felt a warm glow thinking of the nice thing they had done. Mother's Day came and went, and a few days later came another letter from the old lady to God. All the workers gathered around while the letter was opened. It read, "Dear God, How can I ever thank you enough for what you did for me?" "Because of your generosity, I was able to fix a lovely dinner for my friends. We had a very nice day, and I told my friends of your wonderful gift. " "By the way, there was 4 dollars missing. It was no doubt those thieving bastards at the post office!!!!!!

One area where I catch myself being ungrateful sometimes is the back yard. It was quiet today (at least while I was looking) except for a couple of robins and a little vireo type bird I don't know the name of. The tiny one, of course, always sits WAAAAY back in the yard barely visible even with the zoom lens. How ungenerous of the universe to only give me a couple of funny robins and a cute little bird, a back yard, sunshine, blue skies... Well, you get the idea. Those damned bastards at the...

Some things I'm grateful for today:

• life
• hope
• robins
• ears to hear
• wordzzles
• words
• the SciFi channel
• laughter/humor

HAVE A GREAT DAY!

MAY NONE OF YOUR GIFTS BE SHORT $4!

Weekly Wordzzle Challenge Week 121

It's week 121 of the Weekly Wordzzle Challenge. Struggling. And really struggling to come up with words/phrases so I put in a plea - even if you only have a few suggestions, pass them along. I fear I tend to get in a rut sometimes, so a few creative ideas couldn't hurt. Not too thrilled with what I have done this week. But at least I got them written. It was touch and go for a while.

Words for this week's 10-word challenge were:

swiss cheese, operation, frantic, quizzical, control, shallow, wedding, paranoid, orange, marginal

And for the mini: pepper, island, quintuplets, organic, treaty

My mini :

The Angermeister quintuplets decided to name their place Treaty Island Farm because it had taken them at least 6 months to agree on which organic vegetables they would grow there. In the end they had each chosen one item. Timothy opted for tomatoes. Charles chose carrots. Peter selected pepper, Steven squash and after much debate, Clarence took cucumbers.

My 10-word:

To say that Margaret - a control freak if ever there was one - was frantic about her wedding preparations would be a decided understatement. Above and beyond the normal bride's nerves, she had a paranoid streak that was marginally pathological. Therefore she had instituted Operation Shallow Waters and had her cousin Emily nagging every vendor involved and triple checking all arrangements. Why she had chosen Em was a mystery to most other members of the family since Emily was reputed to have swiss cheese for brains and was generally inept at most things. When family members gave Margaret quizzical, looks about her choice, she simply gave them a kind of vague Mona Lisa smile. Little did they know that Operation Shallow Waters was to keep her dim-witted, drop-dead gorgeous and highly flirtatious cousin as far away from the groom as possible. Not that she didn't trust Max, but she hoped exhaustion and the orange bride's maid dress (Em was a "summer" and orange was not her color) would dim Em's natural charm and keep all eyes (the groom's included) on the bride and not her slutty cousin.

The mega:

There were many quizzical looks on the faces of people passing by the as they saw what seemed to be the same bride pass by in 5 different wedding dresses. Little did they know that the Treaty Avenue Cathedral was hosting the wedding of the famous Pepper Island quintuplets. Each bride had chosen to wear a different gown and each carried a unique bouquet of different colored roses - yellow, orange, pink, red. Janie, the youngest - whose organic creativity and imagination often made the others feel shallow and "lesser" despite their identical faces - insisted on a mixture of the others' colors for her bouquet. Janie had no idea the effect she had on the others but sometimes felt a little paranoid or like the others marginalized her from their unique 5-sister community. In the frantic planning for their multiple wedding - they had named it Operation Swiss Cheese (an inside joke) - her feelings of loss were almost out of control. She felt lost with her sisters and lost without them - and until the ceremony was over she could not even find solace in her fiance's arms. The thing about quintuplets, though, is that they sense each other's feelings and slowly over the course of the morning, the others had felt Janie's pain and realized their own folly. Each in turn had gone to her and they had all spent the last hour before the profound shift that was about to happen in each and all of their lives, they had sat together, hands clasped, alternately laughing and crying, united in love , happy memories and dreams for the future.

****************************

Words for next week's 10-word challenge are: summer time blues, glasses, google, pregnant pause, integrated, suit and tie, parallel parking, shimmering, post card, slam dunk

And for the mini: gradual, eagle's nest, martyrdom, pizza, pugelist

Thank you for playing! Newcomers can check here for some guidelines (and they are only guidelines, not rules) to make the process more fun.

Enjoy! See you next week!

Don't forget to add

your name to Mr. Linky!

Daily Reminder # 68

The weather here was awful today. Really hot and humid and disgusting. So... I'm stealing today.... going to share Neal Donald Walsh's "I Believe God Wants You to Know" email from yesterday because I have nothing inspired of my own and I thought it was a really good one.

Before I do that, though, I have to share my disappointment about today's photos. I came to the back door late to find the a fair collection of birds flitting around behaving kind of oddly. I don't want to spread rumors, but I think they might have been a bit tipsy. Unfortunately, I had a really hard time getting the camera to focus right and only discovered when the light was almost gone that the little knob had gotten moved to the wrong setting. So the birds were being all weird and cute and my pictures suck. The blue jays were kind of hopping up in the air and hanging out together. There was a young cardinal who (no pictures unfortunately) who kept not quite getting off the ground.

Most interesting was the wood pecker who kept flying back and forth between two big trees in this kind of loopy flight pattern. Maybe that's standard, but I've never seen it before. Unfortunately my pictures aren't very good and don't really capture the whole fascinating scene, but... birds make much more interesting drunks than humans do. I'm just guessing they were drunk, but it has been so hot and the berries are aging. I suspect some have fermented.

OK... here's the words of wisdom I borrowed from Neal Donald Walsh and God:

On this day of your life, dear friend, I believe God wants you to know...

..that moaning and groaning about things changes nothing,

and never does anyone any good.

If you don't want to do anything to change it, stop

complaining about it. If you can't do anything to change

it no matter how much you want to, then accept it for now

and simply resolve to create a different tomorrow -- but

don't let today be ruined while you are waiting.

Does that make any sense? It does to me.

I have to admit that this is not the easiest advice for me to follow. I struggle against a deep commitment to whining and self pity. Complaining can be sort of entertaining in a perverse sort of way. My daily gratitude and the Thank You for Everything mantra are both good tools that help move me away from the woe is me place. Some days it's easier than others, though. Fears about money is where I kind of get mired in the swamp. I'm getting mired in it right now as I write this - just thinking about it - so I think I'll just stop and sign off until tomorrow reminding myself that I may not have enough to knock my debts out but I have enough to pay my bills this month. That's more than a lot of people can say.

Some things I'm grateful for today:

• witch hazel
• computer games
• movies
• coffee
• my cats
• tipsy birds
• my camera
• money to pay my bills

HAVE A WONDERFUL DAY!

Daily Reminder # 67

Good things do happen.

Two days in a row, hate has been defeated by love. The anti-gay marriage provision in California has been declared unconstitutional by a judge. It will have to move further through the court system and to the Supreme Court before it hopefully becomes true law of the land, but it is a sign of hope that the bad guys don't always win. Maybe this is a sign that the pendulum of hate has peaked and is beginning to lose its momentum. I hope so.

Just a couple of poems tonight, I think. Scrolling back to make sure I hadn't posted them already, I noticed that despite efforts not to repeat myself, I have posted a couple of poems more than once. My apologies for that. Don't think I've done this one since I started the daily reminders. If I have I apologize again. Hope this doesn't mean I'm getting senile. That would not be good. It isn't the plan. "The Plan" is to die in my sleep, 15 or 20 years from now with all my mental faculties in tact.

To spread out

Unfold

As the eagle expands his wings

Releasing his weight into the wind

Hanging still on the air

Above rough mountains

To echo

Like wind

Through mountain canyons

Hum among tall trees

To radiate the stillness of a star's

too-distant motion

Then hang beneath the light

In waiting for another darkness

To mingle with the earth

And send deep roots within

All of this

Would still not be enough to set me free.

- Katherine E. Rabenau

EAGLE

Such flight must surely be magnificent

Must loose the soul to higher worlds

It is too beautiful to be merely practical

Look how he dances, glides and swoops

Within the endless depth of sky

So certain of his power

So easy on the wind

Look how the heavens carry him about

Above the rugged spires of a dying world.

- Katherine E. Rabenau

Some things I'm grateful for today:

• birds
• fans
• vitacost.com
• the overturning of Prop 8
• friends and family
• my microwave oven

May Your Hopes and Dreams Take Flight

and May Your Day Be Rich in Beauty

Daily Reminder # 66

Living up to our principals is a beautiful thing.

The City of New York - my former home - stood up to bigotry today, stood up to hate and fear mongers like Sarah Palin, and cleared the way for a mosque and educational center to be built a few blocks from the site of the World Trade Center bombings. They didn't let hate win. They stood by the principles that make this nation wonderful, that too often get drowned out by ugly voices these days.

This is what makes me proud to be an American. I think I'll let the video speak for itself.

Monday morning. Almost forgot:

Some things I'm grateful for today:

honorable people

reconciliation

coffee

hope

Tara Grace playing

Angel sleeping

life

May the spirit of love and Democracy

hold hate in its arms and soothe its fears.

May we all open our hearts to each other,

to tolerance over fear, peace over war,

and love over hate.

I Love Mountains

(Please scroll down for the Daily Reminder)

For those of us who don't think about how our electricity comes to us, or the price others pay for our well being, these 4 videos and others at I Love Mountains.com are a good reminder about what we are doing to our earth and our fellow Americans.

What if it was YOUR back yard? In a way, it really is....

Daily Reminder # 65

OK.... I've got nothing original tonight, so I thought I'd call on Emmanuel's Book once again. Much of the book is responses to questions, in this case:

What is enlightenment?

Everything and nothing

Let me see if I can find another way to put this.

If I say to you: "Enlightenment is all-knowing,"

then I limit enlightenment.

If I say, "enlightenment is all-loving,"

I limit love.

There can be no beginning and no end

and your human vocabulary is rife with limitation.

So let us say enlightenment

is being in the moment through eternity

without the intellect

but with the consciousness of all things.

It is absolute peace

without the awareness of non-peace.

It is absolute love

without the awareness of hate.

It is all things without end

having forgotten the illusion of ending.

All things are of God

and all consciousness

eventually knows

its oneness with God

The natural flow of consciousness

is towards Light

The only resistance to Oneness

is within your own consciousness.

Here is the struggle.

As awareness expands, it cannot contract.

It can be distorted, but it cannot contract.

Once one has known a human consciousness

there would be little use

in being a blad of grass again,

for the karmic structure of the human being

is far more complex and aware.

Experiences manifested in your life

by the resistance you still possess

are there in the interest of both truth and Light.

They show you the pain of these obstructions

so you will move through them.

In the faith of knowing that all things

are moving towards God

the obstructions take on

a different meaning and form.

They are there at the human level

to obstruct

but at the ultimate level

to instruct.

Whether temporal or infinite,

all things are beautiful

Some of you want to see

only what is already lighted,

hoping to avoid

what is still in darkness in your world.

Life does not have to be white-washed

in order to be beautiful.

If you were to dissect a human being

and break him up into all his components

there would be no need to apologize

for any of the parts.

Some things I'm grateful for today:

• Netflix
• Punny Monday
• Isabel Allende
• my back yard
• paper towels
• my therapist
• the ability to change
• Emmanuel's Book

HAVE AN INSPIRED DAY

MAY ALL YOUR SHADOWS REVEAL THEIR SECRETS

Daily Reminder # 64

It's important to allow yourself to play.

Doesn't matter what you do, really, just that you find a way to bring some fun into your life and let your inner child - who holds much of your creativity - have a good time once in a while. Go bowling, play golf, build sand castles, or if you aren't able to do those things, draw pictures or play board games or... something that lets the child part of you out for a few minutes.

I will grant you that what I have done to my photos using paint shop pro is pretty awful, by and large, but I had a good time doing it. That's the point.

I used to love having sing-alongs, or playing board games like Clue and Trivial Pursuit. These things offer a special way of connecting with people that I find particularly enjoyable. When I was still a church-goer, we used to gather regularly and play games or sing. They were family. The loss and betrayal behind that story is long and too complicated to go into. It was profound, though, by people who had become like family to me.

When I started therapy and searching for my own spiritual path, I gained much in the process, but the one thing I became painfully aware of was that - for whatever reason - everyone I met in that process was so painfully earnest that there wasn't much room for play that was just play.

I think that's sad.

Some things I'm grateful for today:

• play
• Paint Shop Pro
• memories
• hot and cold running water
• ice cream
• cheese
• the color green

Have a Wonderful Fun-filled Day!

Daily Reminder # 63

The Bible says that "The love of money is the root of all evil," though I found a translation that is probably more accurate - or at least that I find it easier to agree with. This site claims that a more accurate translation is that "the love of money is the root of ALL KINDS of evil." That seems much more sensible. Maybe this is rationalization on my part, because I really love money. I'd like to have a whole lot more of it than I do. Really. I'm waiting for Publisher's Clearinghouse to stop giving my ten million to other people. I think money is wonderful and can be great fun to have; it can be used to do great good.

BUT... the consuming, self-absorbed, totally amoral quest for money that led to the recent financial collapse in this country and elsewhere truly is evil. That kind of greed baffles me. People who will sell their souls and the well-being of millions of other people for a big profit that they can't possible spend in their life-times is both obscene and evil.

What prompted me to write about this today is something that has been bugging me since I watched Michael Moore's Capitolism: A Love Story. One of the things he talks about in the movie is a practice by many big corporations - places like Walmart, AT&T to name just two big ones - of buying life insurance on their employees. This isn't insurance FOR the employee or his/her family. It is insurance so that if you kick the bucket while working for them, they make a million dollars or three million or five million. How obscene is that? And you know what it's called? Dead Peasant insurance. That's evil. Creepy and evil.

But back to the love of money. I was raised to feel guilty about having anything, about wanting anything. My mother, who had grown up desperately poor, resented th fact that her children - at least this one - had as much as we did. As a consequence, purchasing anything for myself is often a struggle between desire, shame, guilt and common sense. For a long time, if I got something for myself, I felt compelled to buy something for my friends... and if I couldn't or didn't, I felt guilty. When I bought my first TV, my first stereo (that tells you how old I am), I felt like I had committed a crime. I still struggle with this. Since I am poor, living on disability, getting food stamps, do I have a right to buy myself a book? Did I have a right to buy myself my birthday lamps? Who do I think I am? If I get a package from UPS, I project jealousy and anger onto the neighbors. It's insane. I'm not as bad as I used to be, but I still struggle with it.

Despite the fact that I believe it's an abundant Universe and we are meant - every one of us - to share in its bounty. I love the Abraham Hicks teachings. They are wise and gentle and practical and loving. I highly recommend their book ASK AND IT IS GIVEN. Last year, after Delaware Opportunities finished lavishing the wonder of a new bathroom, kitchen and front ramp on me, I found a piece of paper with an exercise from that book. I had done the exercise and forgotten about it. Of 15 things I had written down, I think 10 had come to pass. Not bad.

I'm way better at receiving than I used to be.

Why would God create such a beautiful abundant world, if he didn't want those of us who live in it to share it and be happy and healthy. I truly believe that there is enough in this world for everyone to have abundance. That's what I wish for us. Not the have and have-not world we are currently living in, not the I get a hundred million at the expense of starving families world. Our species really is better than that. At least we have it in us to be better than that. We just have to remember who we really are.

I guess that's it for me. It's late and I'm not going to read over what I've written, just post it and hope it makes some sense. The subject of money still freaks me out. But I declare here that whatever the Bible says, I, Katherine (aka Raven) LOVE money. I wish we all had tons of it and shared it joyfully with one another. What a grand and glorious world it would be if we did.

Some things I'm grateful for today:

• visiting kitties and woodchucks
• money to pay my bills
• bananas
• more cool weather
• movies
• International Delight

HAVE A WONDERFUL DAY!

MAY YOU BE SHOWERED WITH ABUNDANCE

IN ALL ITS FORMS!