too overwhelming?

Climate change can seem like such an overwhelming issue, and it’s easy to throw your arms up and believe that you can’t do anything about it.  It’s just so big.

Let’s begin then at the other end, with our relationship with nature.  Climate change is a result of our complete disconnection from the natural world.  But what, if not nature, is it that nourishes us and supports our life here on earth?  If our planet earth turned into a desert, into a swamp, into a flooded ocean, or the skies turned murky and gray with pollution, we would perish.  If, on the other hand, our soils are rich, the weather temperate and somewhat predictable, the air and our water are clean, then we can live a beautiful life.  And that has everything to do with each one of us.  With you!

Just refraining from throwing a paper cup out of the car window onto the road, just refraining from carelessly accepting a plastic straw and discarding it after one use, just refraining from idling your car while you bring out the trash or sit on the parking lot waiting for someone, just refraining from buying water in throw-away plastic bottles, just refraining from accepting another single use plastic bag  – makes a difference.  That tiny difference sends a signal that you care.  And maybe next time you’ll care a bit more, and then a bit more yet.  And that’s how you make a difference, and that’s how every movement begins.  When someone cares. 

We can all do something about working towards a more sacred relationship with nature, a relationship that honors and respects it. That’s where healing climate change begins.

so powerful, so freeing

Wesley became paralyzed from the waist down as a result of a shooting seven years ago.  Yet, today he comes across as joyful, with a sense of purpose and a sparkle in his eyes, and he has founded two organizations to empower people with disabilities.  No grudges, no blaming his attacker.

You can watch his story on the Netflix series Queer Eye S4E2, where the high point comes when he actually meets the guy who shot him.  Not only do they both admit their role in the episode, they both forgive each other and are freed of the trauma that has accompanied them for seven years.  Moreover, and amazingly, Wesley thanks his attacker for turning his life around.  Wow! Now that is karmic redemption at its most profound.  

Sometimes your deepest trauma can also carry your biggest message of wisdom  – of forgiveness or otherwise.  Here a previous post on forgiveness.

our holographic existence

“Supernormal aspects of human consciousness are far too important to be marginalized, derided, deliberately misinterpreted, attacked unfairly, or dismissed out of hand,” writes British physicist, author, cosmologist and visionary Jude Currivan in her most recent book The Cosmic Hologram.  

For too long science got the better of us and we shoved the whole invisible aspect of our existence basically under the rug.  But it’s making a comeback – indigenous people never lost it, and prior to the 1700s we had it as well.  Ultimately our unseen reality is so much more important than we realize.   Whether you are interested in meditation, creative visualization, energy healing, telepathy, your own emotional life and psychology, or actually the new physics, we begin to open up to the idea that we are so much more than a body with a brain.  As a matter of fact, scientists still can’t find the spirit in the brain.  Phenomena such as distance healing, spontaneous remission, synchronicity, premonitions, near death experiences all create a scientific headache because they can’t be explained within the rigid parameters we have set for science, nor can they be researched and tested with conventional Newtonian methods.

Shakti Gawain’s New Age classic Creative Visualization from 1978 was probably the first bestselling book on how to conjure up what you want to manifest in your life.   Meanwhile, so many newer authors are all writing about the same thing, whether Rhonda Byrne ( The Secret), Mike Dooley (Infinite Possibilities) , Jennifer Grace (Directing Your Destiny) and many others.

Dr. Currivan’s book ends with the statement that “consciousness isn’t something we have, but that it’s something we and the whole world are,”  while French philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin said that we are spiritual beings in a physical body.  Once we remove the wool from over our eyes and make this shift in our minds that thought creates matter, the possibilities become endless.  See a previous related post here. 

eating clean?

Clean Eating?  As we become more interested in how we eat, and the implications on our body and health, we also begin to understand that

·     Food that is not made for immediate consumption, whether canned, packaged, frozen, or processed in some way or another, has to be treated and made differently from food that is made fresh from scratch in order to last and be tasty.  

·     Restaurant and take-out foods are also prepared differently from homemade food.  We seem to expect more intense flavors, hence more salt, sugar and fat are often used, and sometimes even MSG as a flavor enhancer. Recently a restaurant and take-out place opened in NYC that advertised offering “Clean Chinese,” inferring that Chinese food in general may be sugary and MSG laced.  Sure enough, Chinese restaurateurs were in uproar over the generalized inference.  

Clean eating has become a term for unadulterated food made without stabilizers, preservatives, flavor enhancers, added vitamins, food coloring, or other additives – food without side effects. If you don’t buy processed foods to use in your home cooking (remember the recipes from the 60s that called for canned mushroom soup as a casserole ingredient?)  you eat clean by default.   Clean eating is easier on your body and the liver, our filter, in particular.  Clean eating assures a better distribution between calories and actual nutritional value since many ingredients in processed foods of any kind have no intrinsic nutritional value (such as minerals, trace elements, vitamins, chlorophyll, or fiber) but are there to create flavor and maintain shelf life.  Clean eating provides a more authentic and direct taste simply with the primary ingredients of a dish. Is it surprising that clean eating is more colorful as well?

In short, clean eating gives you more bang, meaning health, for the buck.  

empty nesting testing

Our son went off to college four years ago, our daughter just flew off for a 3-week vacation, and we are now practicing empty nesting ahead of next month when she leaves for college as well.

Prior to retirement from the corporate world some companies offer retirement rehearsal and practice retirement.   While we are a long way from retirement, this is a bit similar in that we will have more time for our own activities, whether business, personal or relationship wise. And now, while our daughter is away for the next three weeks we get to rehearse empty nesting. No more making school breakfasts and school lunches, no more school concerts, college info sessions or visits, or any of the other activities that went with having high schoolers at home. No more wondering whether they’ll be here for dinner or not, and if the cats have been fed and their litter boxes cleaned (I get to do that part now).   Less laundry and less food shopping.  Less silly texting with my daughter, and less nerve ringing when the text tone chimes, wondering what’s going on now.  Freeeeeeeeeee…………. to do other stuff. 

I hope to change my morning routine to incorporate a short meditation practice before getting ready for work.  I hope to have a bit more mid-week fun, as we did before children when we regularly had people over, went out with friends right after work, or did a free museum night.  And I already know that I will appreciate the children even more when I see them again after a longer absence. 

summertiiiiiime…..

.…and the livin’ is easy, goes the first line of Gershwin’s famous song from Porgy and Bess.  After a cool and rainy spring, and a slow start to the summer (all fine for my Northern constitution) real summer is finally here.

Summer energy is so different from the other seasonal energies, and I am so glad to be living in a place where I get to experience these four distinct energies every year again.  Summer energy is light.  Summer energy is carefree.  Summer energy is joyful.  Summer energy is abundant.  Summer energy is vibrant.  Whether swimming and being at the beach, whether wearing bright and light colors, whether enjoying lighter foods and drinks, or nature’s abundance in flowers and produce, there is something exuberant about summer energy.

May you feel it, may it pervade your life, may you enjoy it to the fullest for the next two months.

Since summer invites a lesser workload, this will also serve as an abbreviated substitute newsletter to let you know that July and August food workshops are up on my website in case you need a joyful infusion of creative cooking and food inspiration in the next two months.