Poetry Corner – Opening of the Soul

Hello Dear Ones!

For those of you following me regularly, you’ll know that I am doing a daily journaling under the guidance of a book that arrived in my life with inspiration and laughter. The book is by Iyanla Vanzant and is called “One Day My Soul Just Opened Up“. At the time of this writing I am on Day 13 of a 40 day journey into Self. Such an amazing journey it is!

When I first encountered this book I was enthralled with the poem presented at the beginning – an honouring and dedication of Vanzant’s book to her daughter Gemmia. It is Gemmia’s poem that I am offering to you here for both your enjoyment and for whatever wise gems and enlightenment might arise for you from this young woman’s insight. Continue Reading →

Marcia’s Meanderings – Food: a Love/Hate Relationship

Hello Dear Ones!

My weeks are always so full of adventures and learnings, joy and creativity! This week past was no exception: mountain hiking to view the amazing wildflowers in our area; extensive work on the 4th draft of my upcoming novel; copious micro & haiku poems written (check them out here: Poetry Corner); and my daily journaling as guided by Iyanla Vanzant‘s book: ‘One Day My Soul Just Opened Up’.

There is one more thing that has begun to occupy my time and focus the past two weeks. I mentioned in last week’s post Trusting the Divine to having had a love/hate relationship with food over the course of my lifetime. My weight has fluctuated and varied over the years with the comings and goings of happy, sad and stressful times. I have been as slim as a size 5 and as stout as a 22 1/2. Recently I’ve been registering in at a modest size 15/16, and yet … this is still not a satisfactory comfort zone for me. Continue Reading →

He Says, She Says…

Hello, Dear Reader:

Both of us receive the daily inspirational quotes from Abraham-Hicks, and on April 6 the quote that arrived in our respective Inboxes was:

“”Do I have a responsibility to make the whole world beat to my drum?” No, nor could you. You beat your drum, and the Universe will respond to the drum that you are beating… There are as many different worlds being lived by as many different perceivers of the world as there are perceivers of the worlds.”

Excerpted from the workshop in Phoenix, AZ on Saturday, March 19th, 2005 #401

Using that as inspiration, we wanted to devote this week’s ‘He Says, She Says…‘ post to ‘The Beat of My Drum’.

Have a great week!

Hugs,
M&M

Follow these links to read what He Says/She Says: Marcia’s View / Mike’s View

What is Dying to be Born?

Hi Folks:

I came across the following recently.  It’s an e-book compiled by Lianne Raymond who, like us, lives on Vancouver Island.  Sometimes the threads that connect us are tiny.  As Lianne said, it’s a project she started because it’s a book she wanted to read.  The  stories and poems, drawings and photographs in the book were created by thirty different women, one page each, and celebrate the feminine and the feminine connection to the divine.  In Lianne’s words:

“I am beyond excited to share with you today a juicy project that I have been working on all year!  Though I didn’t write this book, I did compile it because it was a book I really wanted to read.  I’m guessing most of you will feel the same way when you dig into this collection of wisdom, poetry and art from these intelligent, open hearted women. This was a labour of love for me and all the women involved. It is a celebration of the imagination and vision of women.  The ideas in this book are important and my dream is that they will be shared widely and freely, with love, so that they can make a difference.”

I picked one of the works to share with you, not entirely at random (it’s one of my favourites), but it will give you a hint of what the rest of the book is about.  It’s definitely a book worth reading.  You can find the e-book here: “What is Dying to be Born?

Hugs,
Mike.

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Being Green – Update

Hi Folks:

T.G.I.F. !!

I received two wonderful comments from last Friday’s ‘Being Green‘ post, one from Olivia Khalili in response to my link to a post she had written, and the second from Doug Makaroff, as I had also mentioned his Living Forest Communities project, Elkington Forest.  In his comment Doug said, “I would love to find out more about you and your blog.” and I thought, ‘That’s a fair question.’  Now, if you wander around our blog you’ll find that we write about many different things – food, photography, stories, poetry, spirituality and other things.  I’m not going to get into those but restrict my comments to the ‘Being Green’ category.  So, who am I and why do I do this?  Better yet, why should you bother to read what I write? Continue Reading →

Poetry Corner – Poems and Dragonflies

Hello Dear Ones!

Seems that micropoetry (#micropoetry in the Twitter world!) is happily becoming a new past time for me. Short poems, haiku and senryu are all the rage with the folks I follow and who follow me. I wrote about this topic two weeks ago. If you missed that post you might want to take a moment to read it: here.

Just today I discovered (thanks to a new twitter friend) a fabulous website/blog where archives of some of the best twitter poetry are pulled together in the most appealing fashion. Please check out The Dragonfly Collection ~ haiku from Twitter ~ http://dragonflyarchives.wordpress.com/ The site is restful, spiritually nourishing, educational and inspiring! A site definitely worth your time. I’ve now bookmarked them for a daily journey into relaxation and soulful pleasure. Continue Reading →

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom – Playing with Presets

Hi Folks:

Update, April 16, 2015: The comment below reminded me of this post. I had forgotten about it because I subsequently wrote a series of five blog posts on the different ways to use presets in the nine Lr modules. If you’re interested, you can find the first one here: The Many Faces of Lightroom Presets: The Import and Library Modules.

This is going to be a relatively short post – for me anyway.  One of the (many) wonderful things about Adobe Photoshop Lightroom is the ability to use presets to speed up your workflow.  There are presets for everything from importing to exporting, for slideshows, prints and web galleries (although those are called templates), but for most people, I imagine presets refer to the Develop module presets.  Even in the Develop module there are presets for the sliders in the right-side panel and there are separate presets for the adjustment brush/ graduated filter, presets for the Crop tool (specific dimensions) and also for the Camera Calibration tools. Continue Reading →

Marcia’s Meanderings – Trusting the Divine

Hello Dear Ones!

What a whirlwind Easter weekend! Fun, occasionally emotional and deeply enlightening. AHA moments all over the place. Check out one of them in my She Says – The Sandbox post.

The other major AHA moment is the one I’ve chosen for this post. Yes, the subject line – Trusting the Divine – tells you the potential intensity of the topic. Intense, yet powerfully uplifting!

It was my Day 3 of the 40 day and 40 night guided inner journey with Iyanla Vanzant’s book: One Day My Soul Just Opened Up that set all of this expansion into action. It is my writings from that particular exercise that I wish to share with you. That and the unique happenings that arose the next morning. Continue Reading →

He Says, She Says…

Hello, Dear Reader:

Welcome to our He Says, She Says post!

Both of us have been undergoing some interesting transformations of late, and this generated some discussion between us late last night.  A part of that was an idea that arose yesterday afternoon, and so we thought we’d address that today.  If you’ve read our He Says, She Says… posts before, you’ll know that we choose a topic together but neither of us reads the other’s post until we’ve both written what we have to say.  This way we don’t influence each other’s thought processes.

So, without further ado, this week we’re going to explore our ideas on ‘The Sandbox’.

Have a great week!

Hugs,
M&M

Follow these links to read what He Says/She Says: Marcia’s View / Mike’s View

Being Green – Intentional Communities

Hi Folks:

I was going to talk about intentional communities last week but life got in the way.  Actually, last Friday night Marcia and I were at an open meeting to discuss Victoria’s Official Community Plan.  In a way this fits in as sustainability, green building, water and energy are key issues for any OCP.  Vancouver has recently gone through a similar process, as are other cities around the world.

A topic like ‘intentional communities’ is vast, certainly more than can be contained in one writing (even if that writing was a book), and the idea of an intentional community means many different things to many different people.  However, since I’m writing this I get to define some of the parameters at least, and others are most welcome to continue the discussion in the comments below.  Let’s break this down into its components: intention and community. Continue Reading →