WELL. . .
Is THIS what you needed this morning. . .
Is THIS what someone you know might need. . .
IS IT TRUE?
Sometimes it nots what we can do….that’s simple
it’s what we are will to do. . .
S U M M E R I N G
I am not the only one who
THINKS
or most certainly
F E E L S
I T. . .
But I keep looking for the rest of Summer
as soon as the last sparkler loses its sparkle
on the 4th of July
which got me to thinking about things
a little beyond Summer
and this one Summer of 2025
being the last one any of us will
ever live. . .
h e n c e:
100 Summers
100 Summers from now
I’ll be gone
and so will everyone
I know and love
(and you too, dear reader)
My name won’t be
remembered or spoken
The Okay-ness
of this is that after
100 Summers gone
is there’ll be as many
Falls, Winters and Springs
taking their places as
100 Seasons before
without much explanation
(recently written for a 15 poems in 10 day challenge for local gems)
Uhhhhhhhhh
days gone by
are never really days
g o n e. . . .
JUST A MOMENT: MERRY CHRISTMAS IN JULY
Some things need no explanation at all. The fact is, it’s kind of absurd almost kind of offensive that every year for many years now we celebrate Christmas in July; come on it’s ludicrous. It’s almost offensive and obscene, but it does make sales go a little bit easier. it’s a great transition from the Fourth of July to the back of the school sales and yeah, come on, who’s not looking for a bargain, right?
Some things need no explanation whatsoever and yet I think some of the best explanations are the ones that don’t need them but are still completely understood without them.
Christmas in July. . .come on who doesn’t need a little bit of Christmas right now, especially if you little candle Of Hope? Seems like the wick is long gone and never can be reignited. Maybe it’s now, maybe it’s always and not just for a season that we need a little Christmas right this very moment. So how about with no explanations necessary we are the explanation of everything that season holds and promises and shares with without the music or the parties or the goodies or all the carols but still contains all of the feels~~yeah be that in just a moment it’s more than just Christmas in July or even in December.
THE YEAR OF NO GRUDGES
I never met Andrea Gibson, but when I first heard of her, literally in this poem a little over a year ago, I YouTube’d her and read everything she’s written and yes, sadly followed her tragic battle with cancer. A week ago on Monday, July 14, there was something that died and escaped from me, but not her words. . .
The following is a post from August 26, 2024 as a way of remembering, honoring and celebrating Andrea:
I love this slap you in the face, gut punch, knee to the crotch, raw poem. I couldn’t find the written words to this poem so that you could read it, but it makes you listen a little bit more intently as the words of this poem appear as they are read and more importantly defined in you; seen through your lenses.
So what’s your favorite line? Which one resembles you the most? Do you need to listen to it again, feel it in another way, with the lights on or off, or with or without sound canceling headphones? How do you finish this poem that is now begun in you? These are not questions I’m asking you so that you can gain some kind of special insight. I am asking these questions because you’ve asked yourself so many times before and the answers are there and here’s the best part about those answers: They change with time; they take on different meanings under different circumstances with different people. So how do you answer them now or 20 years ago or next year or 20 years in the future, or now in this moment. How do you answer them?
“THE YEAR OF NO GRUDGES” was written as a love letter to a friend Andrea was furious at. Several months ago, in the thick of anger, she reluctantly began writing down what she most appreciated about her friend. By the time she stopped typing she was so overwhelmed by gratitude she had no room in my heart for a single grudge against him. So this past week, again, quite by accident when I wasn’t even searching this came in my INBOX from another poet/writer, Phyllis Cole-Dai who was moved enough to move it my way, i.e. ONE BEGGAR SHOWING ANOTHER BEGGAR WHERE THEY GOT THE FOOD. So Miss Andrea is sharing this poem now as a writing/feeling prompt for all of us, and for herself, in hopes that we move through our days vigilantly awake to the fact that none of us are ever promised a tomorrow. Whatever needs healing, today is the perfect day. (Music by Chris Pureka)
NEEDING TO BE MORE OF AN ATHEIST
Y E S
I’ve been ordained for 45 years and
Y E S
I do believe in God and all of the allusions referring to G. U. S.
G reat U niversal S pirit
and then I have this story come to me again
after being buried in the great
Somewhere
for
Sometime:
A rabbi was asked by one of his students “Why did God create atheists?” After a long pause, the rabbi finally responded with a soft but sincere voice. “God created atheists” he said, “to teach us the most important lesson of them all – the lesson of true compassion. You see, when an atheist performs an act of charity, visits someone who is sick, helps someone in need, and cares for the world, he is not doing so because of some religious teaching. He does not believe that God commanded him to perform this act. In fact, he does not believe in God at all, so his actions are based on his sense of morality. Look at the kindness he bestows on others simply because he feels it to be right. When someone reaches out to you for help. You should never say ‘I’ll pray that God will help you.’ Instead, for that moment, you should become an atheist – imagine there is no God who could help, and say ‘I will help you’.”
– Martin Buber
So as a hopefully kind Caring Catalyst, I have to ask,
SHOULD I BE MORE OF AN ATHEIST?
SHOULD ANY OF US?
Can Anyone’s hands
ever be too
C L E A N
IN JUST A MOMENT: FROM NO TO GO
It’s amazing in just a moment, everything we can come to know. Sometimes the amazing thing about that, IN JUST A MOMENT it’s not what we come to it is what comes to us and teaches us what we need to know for THE MOMENT in just a moment and here’s a perfect example:
We can go from NO to SLOW to FLOW and most ultimately to GO and then we realize we’re more unlimited than we ever have imagined and in just a moment, we become even more so. . . .
PLAYING YOUR DREAMS
87-year-old Diana moved the mentors and Newcastle station audience with her performance of ‘Dreams,’ an original composition. The Piano has a fresh new face! Jon Batiste joins Claudia Winkleman and MIKA as they return for a brand-new series of The Piano in search to unearth more of the UK’s most exciting amateur pianists.
Some people Dream DREAMS all of their lives
Some people make their Dreams come true
Some people, Miss Diana actually plays her DREAM
and something in us gets DREAMED
just like that. . .
THE BEST DREAMS HAPPEN
WHEN YOU’RE AWAKE. . .
Ahhhhhhhhhh. . .
A DREAM CHASER
A DREAM CATCHER
A DREAM MAKER
. . .WE ARE
Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. . .LISTEN AGAIN. . with another version. . .
More Than A LISTENING
Viktor Frankl, one of the great psychiatrists of the twentieth century, survived the death camps of Nazi Germany. His little book, Man’s Search for Meaning, is one of those life-changing books that everyone should read, SEVERAL TIMES
Frankl once told the story of a woman who called him in the middle of the night to calmly inform him she was about to commit suicide. Frankl kept her on the phone and talked her through her depression, giving her reason after reason to carry on living. Finally she promised she would not take her life, and she kept her word.
When they later met, Frankl asked which reason had persuaded her to live?
“None of them”, she told him.
What then influenced her to go on living, he pressed?
Her answer was simple, it was Frankl’s willingness to listen to her in the middle of the night. A world in which there was someone ready to listen to another’s pain seemed to her a world in which it was worthwhile to live.
Often, it is not the brilliant argument that makes the difference. Sometimes the small act of listening is the greatest gift we can give.
WHEN YOU HOLD SOMEONE’S SPACE; when you unconditionally accept, listen, hear, validate, affirm, you just don’t hold their space, you hold something even more sacred: THEIR SOUL. . .
THEY have trusted you with their whole, wounded, vulnerable Soul for the price of your offering to A LISTENING they never before had but desperately needed. . .
JUST A MOMENT: WHEN SPENT TAKES ON A NEW MEANING
In just a moment, so many things can take place; like in just a moment you can feel like you’ve really been spent or or discarded or unnoticed or actually walked over and yes, sometimes even walked on and yet you could take that same experience and you have a totally different feeling. You know what the difference is, what you take or what you receive or what you give.
The next time you feel totally spent, I mean discarded, walked on or over, flip it over make that new one just by GIVING; even if it’s giving a new perspective. . .
BE the message. Someone desperately needs to find or stumble on today. Let them find YOU where they least expect it and most need it.
YOU have that power
CARING CATALYST COST’S
No doubt there’s
N O T H I N G
Like it,
but being
A C A R I N G C A T A L Y S T
C O S T S
Here we are once again on the Fourth of July
where millions across the Country will celebrate
Independence Day. . .
It might well go largely unnoticed
that FREEDOM
isn’t F R E E
In this world
S O M E O N E ‘ S
truly pay the price
for people to be free. . .
Doubt it?
Go back to the very signers of
The Declaration of Independence
ALL 56 of them
paid with what you can’t cash in a Check
I F
they won the war with the British
there would still be years of hardship as a struggling nation. . .
If they lost
they would have faced a hangman’s noose. . .
and yet there it is where it says,
“WE HEREWITH PLEDGE OUR LIVES, OUR FORTUNES, AND OUR SACRED HONOR.”
They signed it. . .
but do you know what price was paid for those very signatures?
The late, great Paul Harvey
in his broadcast on July 4, 1974 reminded us
That Carter Braxton, a wealthy planter and trader, after signing saw his ships swept from the seas to pay his debts. . .He lost his home and all of his property. He died in rags
* * *
That Thomas McKean of Delaware was so harassed by the enemy that he was forced to move his family five times in five months. . He served in Congress without pay–his family in poverty and in hiding
* * *
That Thomas Nelson, Jr of Virginia raised $2 Million on his own signature for provision for our allies, the French Fleet. . .After the War he personally paid back the loans which wiped out his estate; he was never reimbursed by the government and he died bankrupt
* * *
That John Hart was driven from his wife’s bedside while she was dying; his 13 children fled in all directions for their lives. . His fields and gristmill were laid waste and for more than a year he lived in forests and caves to only return home from the War to find his wife, dead, his children, gone, his properties, gone only himself to die a few weeks later of exhaustion and a broken heart
* * *
Of all the 56 Signers of the Declaration of Independence
few were long to survive. . .
Five were captured by the British
and severely tortured before dying. . .
Twelve had their homes
from Rhode Island to Charleston
sacked and looted
occupied by the enemy
or burned. . .
Two of them
lost their sons in the Army
One had two sons captured. . .
Nine of the 56 died in the War
from its hardships or merciful bullets. . .
They had learned that liberty is so much more important
than security. . .
For T H A T they pledged their lives
their fortunes
their sacred honor. . .
They fulfilled their pledge
They paid the price
AND FREEDOM WAS BORN
T R U T H :
I most likely will not give that much thought
with the second helping of potato salad
the extra piece of apple pie
the barbecue
and certainly not during
The Fireworks
b u t w h y. . .
why not think
give a second or even a third or Fourth thought
that being a Caring Catalyst
especially then
or even at the very moment
doesn’t come with a cost. . .
that needs
P A Y I N G
which leads to the ultimate question
On the Fourth or the quickly oncoming
Fifth of July
or E V E R:
Are You Willing To Pay IT?
They did. . .
D O Y O U ?
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