The Ancient Light… a poem
Month: February 2019
About hope
Hope…something to cling to when there is nothing else. Suzanne Boyd
There are times when there seems to be no way forward. We can’t see ahead at all. Everything around us tells us that there is nothing that can be done. But somehow, we have hope. Hope allows us to get up in the morning. It helps us to sleep peacefully at night.
Some situations truly do seem hopeless. Someone is dying and there is nothing to do. What we can’t see may be that death is not the worst thing that can happen. In death itself there is hope. We will grieve. Sadness will rise up and swamp us often. But we are alive and will find hope in the rising sun. Each day will help us to see a future that is different. It may not be the one we planned but it is there. There are joys to be had and people to love.
The situation may seem hopeless but beyond it is a new beginning. We may have to change our hope to something different but it is there. Hope may seem lost but it is just waiting to be reclaimed.
Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul – and sings the tunes without the words – and never stops at all. Emily Dickinson
Love is worth it
Today I did another mediation. It is always interesting to see what it is about. Sometimes it is someone owing someone else money. Sometimes it is member of a family arguing about something minor. Usually with families the problem is not what they have brought to us but lost in their past history. With cases like this it is usually not possible to resolve anything. There is too much water under the bridge.
Too often we see families divided over long standing hurts and disagreements. Families are not perfect but it makes me so sad to see them totally divided. We have so few people in life who love us unconditionally. What leaps to mind is my dogs. It seems we humans have more trouble understanding each other. We are so ready to let good relationships fall away.
Keeping a family together is hard work just as keeping a marriage together. Feelings get hurt, people behave badly, things go wrong. Sometimes parents have tried their hardest to do the right things and sometimes the parents are damaged themselves and can’t parent well. No matter what happens having a loving family to support you in life is one of life’s greatest blessings.
Unconditional love is not easy but we do have to try. Sometimes is it impossible and we have to move on. When that happens my hope is that a new relationship can be formed using the lessons learned from the past. Being loved and loving is worth the effort.
The Mighty Oak….a poem
The Mighty Oak
My life must be a shadow
Standing beside the mighty oak
Towering toward the sky
What has he seen of life
Passing beneath outspread branches
Green with fern
Resting in the shade
Deer, squirrel, possum,
Raccoons, and rabbits wait
They hide when men with
Feathered headdress and
Quiet steps wander by
Mighty ships tall with sails
Have brought others
To sit below the ancient boughs
Strange machines have moved
Pine neighbors
And dwellings rose
The oak reached further
Growing older
Stretching out
Resurrections ferns
Adorn branches
And green with rain
No loss of leaves in winter
but when new leaves form
in spring old pushed aside fall
My life but a shadow
Of time for Him
Gone in an instant
He sees each change
As in a dream
Of centuries gone
From the neonatal nurse…sadness
This is my rant and objections about the Vermont State law in process. You are free not to read. It frightens me that this may be politics at its worst.
I worry so much about our country. What I see happening is the decline of our ethical standards. Another state, Vermont, has changed their abortion law. So there is no misunderstanding of what it says here is the link to the bill itself.
Click to access H-0057%20As%20Introduced.pdf
The applicable part is below.
2 § 9493. INDIVIDUAL REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS
13 (a) Every individual has the fundamental right to choose or refuse
14 contraception or sterilization.
15 (b) Every individual who becomes pregnant has the fundamental right to
16 choose to carry a pregnancy to term, give birth to a child, or to have an
17 abortion.
The bill sounds pretty comparable to the laws of some other states until you get to part (C)
(c) A fertilized egg, embryo, or fetus shall not have independent rights
under Vermont law
Even though I am a nurse and understand what the word fetus means I looked for a definition.
fe·tus
Dictionary result for fetus
/ˈfēdəs/
noun
-
an unborn offspring of a mammal, in particular an unborn human baby more than eight weeks after conception.
synonyms: embryo, fertilized egg, unborn baby, unborn child “antibodies are passed via the placenta to the fetus”
Notice that no definition of that word is present in the bill. It is deliberately ambiguous for most people. We don’t usually hear it applied to full term, viable, infants. However, it does apply to them. I find this reprehensible. Naturally they did not use the word “baby” as that would have been a trigger.
I have talked about how we can’t spend our life in “what if’s” but it is time where we must look ahead. Is aborting a full term baby murder? If it isn’t we have just allowed murder. Now the “fetus” has no rights at all. I guess I have seen so many babies born and fight to live and I have loved and cared for them I am in tears at the thought of this.
“What if” a teen gets pregnant and is able to hide it to full term and disposes of the baby in a trash can. Is this murder? Maybe not under that law. She can claim that she was aborting it. This is not pie in the sky. I have cared for infants found this way and still alive.
My hope is that most women would not carry to full term and then choose to “abort.”I hope that most women will make a decision about this early on and that only exigent circumstance will cause this to be an issue. I hope no one is willing to do it to test the law but I can’t be sure of that.
I have seen babies die and have always felt the sorrow of that loss of life. Life is precious. I would like for the people who have drafted and passed this bill and those who will do so in the next house be present when such a late term abortion of a perfectly normal baby is carried out. It seems that is the least they could do. I certainly could never be present at the MURDER of a BABY.
Disappointment
Disappointment. Today I was disappointed. I have been handling a my best friend’s will and am just about finished with it. There was some stock that had to be cashed out. We thought it was around $900 but the final check was only for $54. I was hoping to give some more significant money to the family and I am disappointed. I know that the money has nothing to do with me but I am still sad about it.
This has been a long time getting to the end. We now have to divide up some personal items and I am not looking forward to that. The two heirs have a difficult past and don’t really speak to each other. They will be fine during this last task out of deference to me but I still will be glad to get it done. They are both nice people who have gone through some stuff growing up.
I have been sad for them through this whole circumstance. It is so sad that with very few relatives they can’t even have each other. Families are complicated. Things happen and lives are damaged. Children are so vulnerable and parents are the ones who have the most influence whether they mean to hurt or not.
What happens to us as children travels with us until the day we die. Hopefully, if hurt, we will be able to get help and learn coping skills but it can be difficult. Parenting is the most crucial role that anyone can have. Whether the child is ours by birth, adoption or any other way our role can make all the difference in the entire life of someone.
I am disappointed about this situation and will help where I can but the past is present in their lives.
Turn your back on anger
Have you had somebody or something make you angry recently. There are some things that can really get me going. Rude people come to mind first. Some people are so angry themselves that they seem to want to rub it off on you. They appear to be angry at everything. The anger just seeps out of them.
That is a sad way to be. I used to get angry more than I do now. That may be because I was in situations where it was easy to get mad about something. Now that I am retired and can just stay away from things that bother me I am much better off.
Frequently anger masks some deeper emotion. If something hurts us we often respond in anger. It masks the hurt and allows us to hide it. Showing the hurt makes us vulnerable. People who go around angry all the time usually have a lifetime of hurt behind them and their current behavior sets them up for more hurt.
There may be times when anger helps us to get past a bad situation but holding on to anger does nothing but hurt us. Our anger may not even affect the person or situation that caused it. The person it hurts is us.
Think about how you feel when you are angry. Your heart rate increases. Your blood pressure rises. You can feel your body gearing up to fight. This decreases your immunity, takes oxygen and moves it where it will be needed for quick response. All these responses can cause lasting problems. Just writing about it can cause me to feel some of those reactions.
It is not worth it to hold onto anger. Maybe the best response is to not show anger. My father used to say when someone pushes your buttons the thing that will cause them the most angst is to not respond in the same way. They will be frustrated by your lack of response. It is more aggravating to them than anything else can be. You not only save yourself from the results of anger and one of two things will happen… Your “turning the other cheek” will either calm the situation or escalate their anger. Either way you come out ahead.
Are we willing to wait?
I like to bake bread. This week I decided that I wanted some sourdough bread but had no starter. It takes time to make starter. You have to let it sit for at least several days to sort of ferment. The starter did beautifully and I used a recipe for the bread that said let it rise for 12 to 24 hours. I left it for one afternoon and it rose out of the bowl. Needless to say the starter works. (it is what makes sourdough bread rise)
The process to make this bread takes time and patience. Today most of us don’t want to wait. We don’t want to do anything that takes time. We have little patience. Yet patience pays. Look what happened when I was willing to take some time. The bread not only rose but rose way up. Time can yield results if we allow it.
We have to learn to be willing to wait. Good things can come of it.
We are connected to the earth
In coastal Georgia, where I live, we have 7-8 ft tides. There is nowhere else along the southern coast where there is such a fluctuation. It is because of the westward dip in the coast. Today we had extremely high tides. I have not heard how high but such tides cause some coastal flooding on roads that are extremely low. It is not unusual for this to happen on a full moon and at this time of the year.
When the tide is so high that we can only see a little marsh grass peeking out across Turner’s Creek we know it is well above normal.
Tide has an ebb and flow. It is related to motion of the earth. As human beings we also have an ebb and flow. The fluids within the cells in our bodies actually respond to the cycles of the moon and the motion of the tides.
Years ago my youngest daughter wrote a paper about the moon, tides and the increase/decrease of episodes of crisis in those with mental illness. She studied the admissions to psychiatric units and correlated it with moon and tide phases. it was a small study and not really enough to prove the relationship but there was an increase in admissions related to certain moon phases.
Nurses have forever said that hospital admissions, births and accidents have that same relationship although statistically it never shows up that way. As a neonatal nurse we usually saw more babies with problems at a full moon.
I do wonder if we kept track of the times we ourselves have difficulty with mental health flare ups we would see some correlation. It would be interesting to know. It would help us to better understand the cycles of crisis and plan to be ahead of the curve.
Simple
This is so perfect. It tells us how to live a simple life in a simple way. I need to print this and tack it on my wall. I don’t think anything else needs to be said.
worry-less-journey 