Poetry Corner – Remember Father on Mother’s Day

Hello Dear Ones!

As long as I can remember, every Mother’s Day – without exception – my Dad would be heard to say, at some point to anyone and everyone within ear shot: “Don’t forget Father on Mother’s Day!” Though we lavished Mom with gifts and flowers, cards and, usually, a meal out, we always remembered Dad in some fashion.

Though my Mother has left this world physically, she is with us in our hearts and memories. It is to our memories of her and our hearts’ yearning for her that I dedicate this post in advance of the Mother’s Day weekend. MoM, wherever you are and whatever celestial mischief you are getting into today … Happy Mother’s Day!

(BTW Dear Reader: if you hear thunder and see lightening on Sunday, May 9th, 2010 … that’s my Mother telling us ‘kids’ that she’s thinking of us! How do I know? Well, that’s a story for another day …) Continue Reading →

Being Green – ‘Pulchraphilia’

Hi Folks:

Friday once again!  The topic for this week’s ‘Being Green‘ post is ‘pulchraphilia’.  If you’ve never heard the word ‘pulchraphilia’ before, don’t be surprised.  I’d not heard of it myself until recently.  In truth it’s a made-up word.  Then again, all words have to begin somewhere…  I have no claim to it; the word was invented (as best I can tell) by Jason F. McLennan, CEO of the Cascadia Region Green Building Council, and the creator of the ‘Living Building Challenge’.  The word has two Latin words as its base: ‘pulchra’, meaning ‘beauty’, and ‘philia’, meaning ‘love of’.  Roughly translated then, pulchraphilia would be a love of beauty, just as biophilia is a love of life.  It comes from an article in the Spring 2010 issue of Trim Tab, the e-zine put out by Cascadia. Continue Reading →

He Says, She Says…

Hello, Dear Reader:

Serendipity is a word that defines what some call a ‘happy accident’ or an unexpected and fortunate discovery.  It’s an onomatopoeic word, and has a lovely sound to it. It’s right up there with some of our other favourite ‘S’ words, like spontaneity and synchronicity.

Serendipity is also the title of a 2001 movie, a romantic comedy starring John Cusack and Kate Beckinsale.  It was on TV again recently and remains one of our ‘love to watch’ movies.

If you haven’t seen it we don’t want to spoil it for you, so we’ll put a ‘Spoiler Alert!‘ in here.  If you’d rather not know, skip down a couple of paragraphs. Continue Reading →

He Says, She Says…

Greetings, Dear Reader!

Thanks so much for stopping by!!

If you’ve read these posts before, you’ll know that every Sunday Marcia and Mike pick a common topic and write about it individually.  Neither reads the other’s posts until both are finished.  The title for this week’s talk, ‘The Elephant in the Room‘, comes from a post written by journalist Robert Scoble during his time at the 2010 TED Conference in Long Beach, CA.  You can read his article here: The elephants in the room at TED.  The ‘elephant’ in this case is money.  Those having taken a vow of poverty aside, money is often among the most challenging of ideas held by many if not most people.   It doesn’t matter if you are a street person, a corporate executive or a subsistence farmer, or whether the currency is dollars, pounds, rubles, kroner, baht, pesos, rand or yen.  Both Marcia and Mike have been included in this, at least at times.

The title of this week’s post came from Robert Scoble, but the inspiration for this week’s post came from our wise and wondrous friend, Samantha Standish and a series of blog posts she has written recently on her ‘I Am Pollyana‘ blog.  Our thanks to her and to the many, many people who have been and continue to be our guides, our teachers and our friends.

Hugs,
M&M

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

He Says, She Says…

Hello, dear reader!

“Beliefs are neither good nor bad – true or false.
The beliefs we explore are simply empowering or
disempowering in relation to our intending.”

John Hawkins, Consciousness coach

Our topic this week is about beliefs – old ones and new ones.  We’re talking about beliefs from the perspective  of Seth, channeled by Jane Roberts and recorded by her husband Robert Butts.  Seth spoke a lot about how we use our beliefs as the basis for the events and experiences of our lives; one example is here:

“Events are not things that happen to you. They are materialized experiences formed by you, according to your expectations and beliefs.”

“If you are in poor health, you can remedy it. If your personal relationships are unsatisfactory, you can change them for the better. If you are in poverty, you can instead find yourself surrounded by abundance…”

“This does not mean that effort is not required, and determination. It does mean that you are not powerless to change events; and that each of you, regardless of your position, status, circumstances or physical condition, is in control of your own personal experience.”

“If you do not like your experience, then you must change the nature of your conscious thoughts and expectations.”

“You need to learn the power of thought and emotion… Once you realize that your thoughts form reality, then you are no longer a slave to events. You simply have to learn the methods.” (from the 1/5/71 Class Session)

So, without further ado, read on to discover Marcia’s and Mike’s thoughts on “Beliefs … old and new”.

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

He Says, She Says…

Greetings, dear reader!

We watched ‘Harry Potter and the Philospher’s Stone‘ again on TV last night, and although we’ve seen it (several times) before, what always intrigues us is Harry’s transformation from the world of the mundane to the world of the magical, and even more that these two worlds co-exist.  Both Marcia and Mike have had many ‘magical’ experiences in their lives, and so this week we thought we’d talk about living a ‘magical life’.

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

He Says, She Says…

Hi Folks:

In Elizabeth Gilbert’s (wonderful) book, ‘Eat Pray Love‘ she has a conversation with her friend Giulio about why Rome is a beautiful city, but it’s not ‘her’ city.  Giulio says that each city and each person has a word to describe them, and if your word and the city’s word don’t match, you’ll never be comfortable there.  It’s easier to type out the conversation than to try to explain it, so we’re including that section here (pp. 102-104): Continue Reading →

He Says, She Says…

Greetings:

A long time ago Marcia and Mike lived in a world where they both believed there were positive and negative forces in the Universe.  In that world it was common to practice (and to teach others) than when doing any meditative or astral work one should create a bubble of white light around him or herself in order to protect the meditator from those dark forces.  This idea came into focus for them one night at a talk given by a very interesting gentleman.  His talk had all of the right words, but the underlying energy behind them was really not good.  Mike’s response to this was to create a circle of loving energy surrounding all those present; although he had his eyes closed at the time, Marcia saw the speaker’s response to this was to step outside of the circle, remove some herbs from his bag, and with  few words…well, you get the idea.  When Marcia and Mike went home that night everything was fine, but the next day Mike woke up with a high fever, delerious.  He couldn’t walk, could barely stand, and he spent the next few days in bed while Marcia ministered to him.

It was shortly after this event that Marcia and Mike received some teaching on a New Way of Being.  Rather than surrounding themselves with a loving white light, or drawing it in from above or below as others had suggested, they were told simply to imagine a candle in the center of their bodies.  They were to simply allow the light of this candle to flow out from them, gently, in all directions.  They were then to allow this loving light to grow and spread until they literally ‘became’ the candle, and this loving light was flowing out from their entire being.  A candle doesn’t reach out to touch others with its light, it simply is itself, and in being itself its light spreads and illuminates.  In this way the light comes from within, not from without, and rather than being a bubble of protection to keep away those dark energies, it simply transforms them into that same loving light.  As the saying goes, “All of the darkness in the world cannot extinguish the light of one small candle.”

Well, time went by, their knowledge grew and their understandings of the nature of All That Is changed, and they began to see the world and the universe in which they lived as much bigger, more open and more dynamic than they had once imagined.  As a part of this process they were able both to see the role they had once played in the event above and how their own beliefs had created it.  Furthermore they were able to surrender their beliefs in those negative forces.  As such, the idea of ‘being the candle’ no longer held the same significance for them.

Until one day, several years later, they came up with a different idea about ‘Being the Candle’.

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

Monthaversaries

Hi Folks:  Very, very early on in our relationship Marcia and I decided that Anniversaries are too far apart, and so while we celebrate every day together, every month we honour our Monthaversaries as well.  A couple of months ago we celebrated the 200th Monthaversary of the day we met, on a wintery hillside very early one morning.  But that’s another story.  We generally have four Monthaversaries every month – the day we first met, the day we became a couple, the day Marcia proposed to me, and the day we were married.  If you want another reason to celebrate the gift of love with those who are close to you, we recommend Monthaversaries very highly!

Love,
Us.

P.S.  I made this for Marcia today, and I wanted you all to be the first to see it:
Forever and For Always

Now go ahead and make your own!!