The Caring Catalyst

Who Cares - What Matters

THE MEN WHO TAKE ME PLACES

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I have shared some other Ben Rector songs on this blog post before, maybe the most recent was back around Thanksgiving, literally called the THANKSGIVING SONG.         .       .but this one, like so many other YouTube videos found me recently even though it was recorded over 6 years ago, but the message.          .          .THIS MESSAGE
is a truly timeless one that hopefully will allow you to do more than tap your toe or bob your head as you listen way past the message a tune can bring in a lyrical moment.              .           .h o p e f u l l y

It just might remove a few questions about the
WHY’S
HOW COME’S
WHAT FOR’S
in your heart that’ll let it beat a little easier
as you become a better Caring Catalyst 
just by allowing others to make you
S    O

MY BOD

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WE ARE NOT ALWAYS THAT PROUD OF OUR BODIES
ESPECIALLY AS WE GROW OLDER
so we have a way of
on purpose
covering up
as much as possible
and maybe even making fun of it
in ways that makes others look away from
THE OBVIOUS
like some grand Vegas Strip Magician.         .        .

Which has made me understand the most profound of all statements uttered by sick and the not so sick alike:
THE WORST BETRAYAL OF ALL IS WHEN OUR BODY’S BETRAY US

I seldom BLOG two book reviews per week and wasn’t planning on doing this but I had just gotten done intermittently reading this book when Richard Rohr wrote about this in his daily devotion this past Tuesday.          .          .and I don’t let CHANCE MOMENTS pass; when they speak to me, I make sure I above whisper them along to others:

Knowing and Loving Our Bodies

After being diagnosed with Stage IV cancer, theologian and author Kate Bowler worked intensively to know and love her body and its ways of both serving and failing her. As part of her spiritual practice, she wrote this letter:  

Dear Body,

Sometimes, I hate you. You ache. You get tired sooner than I’d like to admit. You wake me in the night for no good reason. Your cells duplicate at unpredictable rates. New gray hairs and fine lines and silver stretch marks show up out of nowhere. You let me down just when I need you the most. . . .

Sometimes, I want a break from living with you. I’d prefer to trade you in for a newer model. A model that isn’t in constant pain, that fits better in that pair of jeans, that has more energy. With you, I am limited—bound by skin and bone and thinning hair.

With you, I am fragile. . . .

But God knows what it’s like to live in flesh. . . . If God too lived in a body, then God knows the ache of growing pains and the feeling of goosebumps on a brisk day and the comfort of a warm embrace. He felt the gurgle of a hungry stomach and the annoying prick of a splinter after a day of hard work. He wept over the death of a friend. Ours is a God who sneezed and rubbed His eyes when He was sleepy. Ours is a God who knew longing, heartbreak, excitement, frustration—the full range of what it means to be human . . . [and] live in a body.

So when my own body drags me down, when my muscles ache, when my worries keep me up at night, when my fear for the future leaves me motionless, when I feel lonely and exhausted and burdened, I do not worship a God who is far off.

This is a God who knows my humanity inside and out. God has counted every hair on my head (Matthew 10:30) and bottled up every tear I have shed (Psalm 56:8). Not simply because the Word formed us (Genesis 1:27), knit us together in our mothers’ wombs (Psalm 139:13), was there from the very beginning . . . but because God wore our skin.

By embracing the wisdom of the incarnation, Bowler learned to listen to her body’s messages and be kind to herself:

Dear, dear body, I get it. Or at least I am starting to. You do not have an unlimited supply. You run out, and I need to listen. Maybe I really should go to bed a little earlier or let you off the hook for craving those extra salty chips. I need to sense when you are struggling, and gently acknowledge that you are actually changing. That time and love and grief and life have worn themselves into my skin. Day by day. This is the beautiful, terrible evidence that we have lived.

Kate Bowler and Jessica Richie, Good Enough: 40ish Devotionals for a Life of Imperfection (Colorado Springs, CO: Convergent Books, 2022), 156, 157–158.
Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
what we often do
TO NOT SEE THE OBVIOUS
and maybe now know that’s it so much more than
a glimpse worth spying.           .            .

AMBIENT STRESS

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Feeling Off? It Could Be ‘Ambient’ Stress

Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaat.     .     .?

Jamie Ducharme, a reporter for Time Magazine tells us that Americans’ mental health tanked during the first year of the pandemic. More than 36% of U.S. adults experienced symptoms of anxiety or depression in August 2020, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. By January 2021, the number was above 40%.

It’s not hard to see why. A novel and scary virus was spreading without vaccines to slow it. Cities and states were in various degrees of lockdown for much of 2020, with many people forgoing special occasions and visits with friends and family. Isolation and fear were widespread, and people had every reason to feel acutely stressed.

But even as lockdowns lifted, people got vaccinated, and life resumed more of its normal rhythms, many people continued to feel…off. In an American Psychological Association survey published in October 2021, 75% of people said they’d recently experienced consequences of stress, including headaches, sleep issues, fatigue, and feeling overwhelmed.

Now, more than two years into the pandemic, many people still haven’t bounced back. One reason could be “ambient stress”—or “stress that’s running in the background, below the level of consciousness,” says New York-based clinical psychologist Laurie Ferguson, who is director of education development at the Global Healthy Living Foundation, a nonprofit that supports people with chronic illnesses.

“There’s something amiss, but we’re not registering it all the time,” Ferguson says. “We’re always just a little bit off balance. We kind of function at a level like everything’s fine and things are normal, when in fact, they’re not.”

In a 1983 article published in the journal Environment and Behavior, researcher Joan Campbell described ambient stressors as those that are chronic and negative, cannot be substantively changed by an individual, usually do not cause immediate threats to life (but can be damaging over time), and are perceptible but often unnoticed. “Over the long run,” Campbell wrote, these stressors could affect “motivation, emotions, attention, [physical] health, and behavior.”

Campbell cited examples like pollution and traffic noise, but it’s also an apt description of this stage of the pandemic. In March 2020, the pandemic was an in-your-face stressor—one that, at least for many people, felt urgent and all-consuming. Two years later, most people have adapted, to some degree. Most people are vaccinated, the news isn’t broadcasting the latest case counts 24/7, and life looks closer to 2019 than 2020. But, whether we’re conscious of it or not, we’re still bearing the psychic toll of two years of death, disease, upheaval, and uncertainty, as well as smaller disruptions like changes to our social or work lives, Ferguson says.

Even ambient stress can have health consequences, as Campbell pointed out. Humans evolved to deal with short-term stressors, but we’re not as good at coping with chronic stress, explains Laura Grafe, an assistant professor of psychology at Bryn Mawr College. Chronic stress has been linked to conditions including high blood pressure, diabetes, sleep issues, and mental health and cognitive disorders.

Constant stress can also compound the effects of other stressors. “Everything else just seems worse with the chronic stress of the pandemic going on in the background,” Grafe says.

Ambient stress doesn’t have to zap all the joy from your life, though. In a 2021 study, Grafe and her co-authors examined how pandemic stress and coping strategies affected sleep. Her team found that a person’s sleep quality wasn’t necessarily dictated by their overall level of pandemic-related stress, but rather by how well they coped with that stress. That suggests stress, itself, isn’t necessarily the problem—it’s unmanaged stress.

When stress becomes so routine that we stop acknowledging it, we’re less likely to manage it effectively. As Cambell wrote in 1983, “coping is most likely to occur when the stressor is still novel.” Halfway through 2022, many people have abandoned soothing hobbies like bread-baking, yoga, and knitting that they adopted in spring 2020.

That’s why it’s important to develop sustainable coping strategies, says Niccole Nelson, a postdoctoral research associate in the University of Notre Dame’s psychology department who has also studied pandemic stress. “There’s no single coping strategy that is inherently good or bad,” Nelson says, but it’s often helpful to mentally reframe a stressor as less threatening. That’s difficult to do with something as serious as the pandemic, but Nelson suggests trying it on a smaller scale: finding ways to appreciate the positive aspects of working from home, for example. (Grafe suggests mindfulness exercises and cognitive behavioral therapy to cope with stress.)

Giving your brain new stimuli can also help during a prolonged period of stress, Ferguson says. Even small changes, like eating something new for breakfast or taking a different route for your daily walk, can introduce some healthy novelty. Physical activity is also a tried-and-true stress reduction tactic, she adds.

Simply noticing and naming your ambient stress can also go a long way, Ferguson says. “Even people who have gone ‘back to normal’ still have that ambient stress running, and they may not realize they’re a little more short-tempered, or they’re a little less hopeful,” she says. “It’s subtle, in many ways, and harder to notice” than full-blown pandemic stress, but just as important to manage.
Have you noticed maybe what you haven’t always recognized.          .           .          ?
Maybe the best way to see the
Ambient Stress
in yourself
is just to
S  P  O  T
it in
A N O T H E R.          .           .

 

WOODSWIMMER

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WoodSwimmer is a film collaboration between genius animator Brett Foxwell and Conor Grebel (Bedtimes). The footage was taken through a laborious stop motion process of capturing sections of wood as they are thinly shaved away by a milling machine. For more info on the video visit: http://www.bfophoto.com/ Director: Brett Foxwell Music / Editing: Bedtimes (Conor Grebel)

BIG WHOOP, Right.          .          .

What are you going to show us next Monday on your film-clip Monday Blog Post, Chuck.          .          .          ?

You know.          .          .it kind of really is a big deal
especially if you’re a lot like me and continually have to
LEARN
TO SEE 
WHAT I AM LOOKING AT.          .          .

anonymous person with binoculars looking through stacked books

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels.com

10 seconds
just take a minimum of
10 seconds
unless you’re really gutsy and what to add another
50 seconds
to do nothing
not one single thing
e          x          e          p          t
to focus
to look
to see
a plant
a tree
or any other natural object
around you
that you regularly see
but rarely notice.         .          .
D  A  R  E
to notice something
you failed to recognize
before.          .          .
Go ahead, I’ll wait
or better still,
GO WOODSWIMMING

A HOPELESSLY DEVOTED CARING CATALYST

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I was in college and trying to pay my way through as best as I could when of all things my grandmother, Vi got me a job that no one knew the implications.  It was working at a Pipe/Tobacco store where I sold expensive Meerschaum pipes down to ones that look like Popeye would toke on in between downing cans of spinach.

The real behind the scenes stuff was the great stuff.          .          .I would cover for Charlie my boss, who was either out cheating on his wife or playing poker with the boys when his wife would call and he’d look the other way when I took REESES CUPS and SNICKERS for dinner; it was a good deal made better when the Pipe shop would close and I would go a half of a block down the street to his retail store where he sold a host of mostly unnecessary plastic objects and a few vinyl records.  It was there that I sold hundreds of Olivia Newton-John’s records:

I never tagged her as Country-Western but that’s the section Charlie wanted to peg her under and I spent a lot of time hitting the cash register tune of glorious sales for him and her.

THIS is hardly what anyone would remember about Olivia Newton-John after hearing of her death earlier this week.  WHAT IS BEING REMEMBERED AND CELEBRATED is just what a ferocious Caring Catalyst she has always been.  Having been diagnosed with Breast Cancer well over 30 years ago, she never took the “WHY ME?” stance or the “I WILL NEVER DIE” denial position; Olivia made sure that something way past her last song would not just be remembered but used her platform to become an advocate, a Caring Catalyst for all cancers–spending tons of time, energy, and money building research organizations, clinics, and more.

Craig Marshall is a guy I met through National Speakers Association who often tells the story:

There’s still Olivia Newton-John…. When I was a monk, I had an coaching session with a man that told me the saddest story I ever heard. He’d been in a car accident, which killed several of his children. His wife was in a coma for months and then died. He lost his job and his dog died. It was sad beyond words. But when he ended telling me his litany of loss, he paused and looked at me and whist-fully said, “But you know what? There’s still Olivia Newton-John!” Years went by, and I found myself sitting at an outdoor restaurant table in Malibu, designing a book cover with my good friend Fred Segal.

 After discussing some graphic possibilities, Freddie said, “We’re guys. We need some different input,” and he yelled over to two ladies sitting at a nearby table, “Come over here please.” They came over, sat down, and Fred started asking them about what they thought his book cover should look like. After awhile, for whatever, reason, everyone at the table got up and began talking to friends who’d entered the restaurant, leaving me alone with this poised blonde lady with an English/Australian accent. It suddenly hit me, and I said, “Are you Olivia Newton-John?” and she said yes. I told her, “I’m so glad to meet you because I want to share with you a story of a man who lost almost everything in life, but clung to you as his only inspiration.”

 Olivia was always charming, and I ended up hosting several workshops at her home. She was always thoughtful, genuine and just lovely.

 I don’t know why people hope their departing loved ones “rest in peace”. I wish for Olivia great music, great fun, and great friends. Her smile is what I’ll remember. It was so dazzling that she never needed to wink. Like that guy, I also believe that there will always be Olivia Newton-John.

ONE OUT OF ONE OF US DIES
is one of the harshest realities ”
any of us with a pulse
will ever wrestle
B          U          T
there’s something that
goes beyond the Life
we live here
and that’s the
L               I               F               E
and that’s the
E  X  I  S  T  E  N  C  E
we inspire
in others
even make possible
way after we are gone
.          .          .that’s a huge part of what it means to be a Caring Catalyst
to begin in others
what will outlast us and even them
but never goes into extinction
as long as we keep sharing our very Best
for the Best of everyone else.          .          .
Yes, there’s still Olivia Newton-John
a Hopelessly Devoted Caring Catalyst

HOROSCOPED

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B     I     R     T     H     D     A     Y     S
they come and go
and the older we get the
faster they get here and the quicker they are gone
but what remains are
those ominous words that
predict
warn
pretell
just what kind of a day and a year ahead might entail.              .              .
(or not)
PICK ONE:

LEO HOROSCOPE

AUGUST 06, 2022

An impulsive mood can guide you toward opportunities as well as mishaps today if you trust that your path is the right one. The spontaneity you exhibit at work and at home can be a boon to you as you may find yourself in situations where the options before you are confusing. If you give yourself permission to surrender to the flow of the universe today — whether that means acting impulsively or following an uncertain avenue — you can release your cares into the ether. The confidence you will likely feel will no doubt be a result of your no longer having to worry that you are on the wrong track.

We lose the troubles and care that might otherwise have compelled us to give up our dreams when we dedicate ourselves to the focused flow of the universe. We may feel that we have come unmoored, yet later we see clearly that our fates were mapped out in ways we could not yet comprehend. The universal flow will nearly always speed us toward those forms of accomplishment that will prove rewarding as its current is just another aspect of the plan put in place for us before our birth. Unlike when we fight against the tide or attempt to outrun it, we are carried forward and can feel at ease as we contemplate the richness that is to come. Today your spontaneity and your desires will be defined by a directness that proves beyond a doubt that you are following a path laid out for you in time immemorial.

O  R
O   R
O    R
Maybe the best Horoscope of all isn’t found in the papered news or from some fancy website or anywhere remotely in or out of the stars and the stratosphere but somewhere snuggled not all that deep within that reminds you it’s not so much seemingly wise words that come to us from some cosmic zodiac sign but our relationships that make our days and years worth living and celebrating.   .   .
So before this Birthday Boy’s Wish Filled candle is blown out as I begin another trip around the sun, I’m grateful for not all who remember and wish me the best on ‘my day,’ so much as how severely grateful I am for all of threads that have intentionally interwoven themselves into my tapestry and let me know that my darkest threads have taken on a richer color when next to those golden threads that never lose their shine as they brighten mine.
I humbly thank each of you for your immensely kind thoughts and warmest wishes. I don’t do good with compliments and gifts. I’m not a good “GETTER”. All the more reason for you all to know how much you enchant my life and inspire me to live larger; to bless as I have severely been blessed.
I’m most grateful for each of you for making me Better
t  h a  n  k
   y  o  u

WHEN I’M 67

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L       I       F       E   

isn’t   about   a   number   of    Candles

on   a   quick-to-go-stale

Birthday  Cake.       .       . 

.       .       .Maybe the best part of old age for anyone is that they can actually

A   T   T   A   I   N            I    T

There are Givens:

Death   is   the   Number   One   Killer   in   the   World.       .       .

Life   is   Sexually Transmitted and it’s
T E R M I N A L . . .

and   it   ENDS.         .         .

usually
just not as well as we’d like.       .       .

Great Health,
it turns out,
is merely the slowest possible rate
at which anyone can ever die.      .      .

But.         .         .

After some 804 months

3495 weeks and five days

24,472 Days on this spinning blue ball

587,328 hours

35,239,680 minutes

268,202,880 seconds,

I’ve learned a few lessons.         .         .

and the biggest one:

There’s    just    a    few    more    lessons    to    learn.       .       .

There was a recent survey taken in the UK that said the biggest fears men have growing older are:

94% fear going bald

89% fear becoming impotent

75% are worried about going grey

64% are scared of getting fat

61% fear losing their teeth

45% dread needing  ‘jam jar’ glasses

31% are scared of going deaf

24% are frightened of getting bad breath

100% of me is concerned that I wasted time.        .        .

that somehow,

I didn’t become all of  
M  E 

I regret little of what I’ve ever done.      .      .

even the not-so-good-kind-of-horrific-things

because they’ve all made up the tapestry of my life–
especially the dark, ugly colors;

It’s the strands of threads
that I didn’t allow to become a part of the mosaic.        .        .

to expand it

that taunts me;

It’s not the two-self published books,

it’s the yet-to-be published two novels,

five Children’s books,

three non-fiction books

four books of poetry

and the yet to be written ones

that fill stacks of notebooks and overflowing file folders.      .      .      .

I have no interest in spewing out the  
6 7
greatest things I’ve learned in my

 6 7   years.    .    .

I do believe that

R   e   l   a   t   i   o   n   s   h   i   p   s,   

not technology or medical advances,

Heals  me.      .      .

I do believe that  
 L O V I N G
is the greatest force in and out of this World

and when applied frequently and liberally
 Y O U
 not only Change.      .      .

The Universe does, too.          .          .

I do believe that the secret to long life is
simply never to let your heart stop beating    
or never passing up the opportunity
of making Another’s beat better.      .      .

I do believe that

Life is not counted by pages on a calendar
or minutes/seconds on a clock
or candles on a cake.      .      .
but  in

M      O      M      E      N      T      S

that can never be counted,
calculated,
measured
or
harnessed.       .       .

o n l y    r e m e m b e r e d

way past a pulse,
a heart beat,
a breath

or any other means of defining Life
that can’t be definite.      .      .      .

B          I          R          T          H          D          A          Y          S
are never what they’re cranked up to be
no matter how many you continue to collect
none of them mean a thing
until you make everyday between them mean
 E     V     E     R     Y     T     H     I     N     G

So.       .       .
about that cake.       .       .

I’ll pass.          .           .

but  WOW.       .       .

that piece of Pecan Pie
is looking mighty, mighty

f   i   n   e !

Join me.       .       .
we’ll call it a

Party.        .          .
a never-ending Celebration

.         .         .Candles are optional

The   Light   
is   Blinding

But, at my age
I’m not much thinking about Blinking
. . .I don’t want to miss a thing
and I can’t wait to see
not so much how many more
strands I can add to this
growing-by-the-second-older-
t a p e s t r y
so much as
the different
colors
textures
that’ll get me ever closer to being
c o m p l e t e d
. . .now 
ALL-WAYS
NOW
it’s time again 
to bring 
f           l           a           m           e
to
w     i     c     k

The TUDE of GRATITUDE

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THE DATA-BASED EVIDENCE
is undeniable
and seems to be adding up
Study by Study
G R A T I T U D E
IS
GOOD FOR
Y      O      U
and apparently for others
t  o  o

Does Practicing Gratitude Help Your Immune System?

New research suggests that gratitude plays an indirect role in improving our health.          .          .

JILL SUTTIE, did some investigating for us and is showing us what’s not all that surprising giving the abundance of studies that echos what she shares.  Jill is Greater Good’s former book review editor and now serves as a staff writer and contributing editor for the magazine. She received her doctorate of psychology from the University of San Francisco in 1998 and was a psychologist in private practice before coming to Greater Good. 

Being grateful seems to have a lot of positive effects on our lives. In fact, grateful people may have better sleep, healthier hearts, and fewer aches and pains.   .   .

 

 

 

 

 

 

But what is going on in our bodies when we’re grateful, that might help us be healthier? A couple of recent studies aimed to find out.

In the first study, 61 healthy women between the ages of 35 and 50 were randomly assigned to either a six-week online gratitude activity or a writing activity (as a comparison). Once a week, the gratitude group were given a writing prompt that asked them to write about someone they were grateful for (for example, “Think of someone in your life who you feel like you have never fully or properly thanked for something meaningful or important that they did for you”). The control group wrote about neutral topics (“Think about the longest distance that you walked today”).

Before and after the six weeks, the participants reported on how much they tended to offer support or receive support from other people and provided a blood sample, which was used to check for the presence of inflammatory cytokines (interleukin 6 and tumor necrosis factor-α). Inflammatory cytokines are linked to chronic diseases of aging, like diabetes, atherosclerosis, and even cancer.

After analyzing the data, the researchers found that women assigned to the gratitude condition did engage in more supportive care, which is consistent with the idea that gratitude may inspire people to “pay it forward” and help others. But they didn’t find any significant drop in cytokine levels—meaning, no improved immune function. Naomi Eisenberger, director of the Social and Affective Neuroscience Lab at UCLA and a coauthor on the study, was a little surprised by this.

“You read all the news stories about gratitude and you assume you’re going to see these magical beneficial effects. We didn’t see that,” she said. “The effects were actually harder to see than we thought; they were subtler.”

To get at what might be going on, she and her colleagues looked women’s supportiveness, whether or not they’d participated in the gratitude activity. Here they did see an effect: Women who engaged in more supportive care had lower levels of interleukin 6, suggesting that supportive care (and not gratitude, per se) might improve immune function. Gratitude could affect inflammation, perhaps, but only if it leads to more support for others.

“When people feel grateful, one of the first things they want to do is give back,” she says. “Maybe that doesn’t lead straight to better immune function. But it does lead to more support-giving, and that’s interesting.”

Is gratitude good for our brains?

These findings still left an open question for the researchers: Could experiencing gratitude affect people’s brains in a way that promotes better health? To find out, Eisenberger and her colleagues did a second studylooking at how gratitude affected brain centers associated with support-giving and responding to distress, both of which are tied to better health.

Drawing from the same participants, they used MRI scans to monitor brain activity while the women were shown names of people they felt grateful for and asked to either think about why they felt grateful to the person or to describe the person’s physical appearance. Occasionally, an image of a threatening face was flashed on the screen to startle participants and induce a threat response.

Participants experiencing gratitude didn’t have more neural activity in the caregiving centers of the brain than the control group. But those who’d reported high levels of support-giving had a healthier response to the threatening imagery (decreased amygdala activity) after focusing on gratitude. In other words, for highly supportive people, feeling momentary gratitude seemed to play a role in soothing their stress response—a possible pathway to better health.

“There seems to be something about people engaging in more support-giving over time that makes them less threat-sensitive when primed with gratitude,” says Eisenberger.

This finding mirrors previous work showing that volunteering or giving to others improves health, says Eisenberger. On the other hand, it contrasts with some people’s views that feeling gratitude in and of itself is key to better health, she adds.

“Our study brings up an interesting question of what contributes to better health: Is it the emotion of gratitude, or is it actually engaging in behaviors that help somebody else?” she says. “I don’t know for sure, but maybe it’s tied to behaviors more than to feelings.”

She also mentions that some of the people in her studies reported having trouble feeling grateful. That could be a barrier when it comes to promoting gratitude for improving health.

“These effects didn’t seem to happen for individuals who were higher in things like depression and stress,” she says. “So, I think for those individuals, a gratitude intervention can sometimes backfire.”

Though Eisenberger believes much more research needs to be done to know for sure, her work shows that the effects of gratitude on health may be more nuanced than past research suggests. It doesn’t mean gratitude doesn’t play a role—after all, it seems to encourage more kind and helpful behavior. But it may only play an indirect role.

“If we’re trying to take care of our own health, maybe the best way to do that is helping take care of others,” says Eisenberger. “One way to getting to helping other people could be through experiences of gratitude. But it’s not necessarily the only way to get there, either.”

 

The STUDIES
are irrefutable
and they mean
absolutely nothing at all
u          n          l          e          s          s
they are utilized
i m p l e m e n t e d
s h a r e d
to
repeat
and
repeat
again
and
again.        .       .
The studies may prove it
but if you want to
make it a
VERB
go and ahead
and
TUDE
your
G R A T I T U D E
to another.             .            .
JUST LIKE A SMILE
if Someone doesn’t have one
GIVE THEM YOURS
.          .          .BE THE REASON
A N O T H E R
IS
GRATEFUL

 

 

WE ARE A GENTLE, ANGRY PEOPLE

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There are many different covers of this song but I like this version because it reminds me what we know, what we know we know, what we’d bet our lives that we know but for the LIFE OF US never act like we know.          .           .


WE ARE ALL INSTRUMENTS IN THE SYMPHONY OF THIS UNIVERSE 
and the WE ARE AT OUR BESTS when we not only play in unison and harmony but when we just merely play together.          .          .
WE NEED TO BE THE CHORUS we already long have been and need to be now, UNMUTED, UNDILUTED, PURE, UNADULTERATED, UNFILTERINGLY US.     .     .

The video starts quietly but builds. I love how the singers end the song.  ENJOY!

(My sincerest gratitude and appreciation to GALA Choruses.)

AGE(LESS)

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In the past couple of days I have been reminded
YOUR BIRTHDAY IS COMING UP
and
MAN, YOU’RE GETTING OLD.          .       .
Luckily
I’ve never been much about
(PERSONAL–MY OWN) Birthdays
and even less about
GETTING OLD
albeit I’m not all that crazy
feeling/seeing/experiencing
the many different ways
the body sneakingly
betrays
when
out of nowhere came
T  H  I  S:

“I asked an elderly man once what it was like to be old and to know the majority of his life was behind him. He told me that he has been the same age his entire life. He said the voice inside of his head had never aged. He has always just been the same boy. His mother’s son. He had always wondered when he would grow up and be an old man. He said he watched his body age and his faculties dull but the person he is inside never got tired. Never aged. Never changed.
Our spirits are eternal. Our souls are forever. The next time you encounter an elderly person, look at them and know they are still a child, just as you are still a child and children will always need love, attention and purpose.”

~ Author unknown & Photography by Rita French
A CALENDAR 
WILL NEVER MAKE YOU OLDER
only your
FRAMED IN MIND
can do that.            .            .
One of the greatest things
hospice has taught me
c o n t i n u o u s l y
since I began
waaaaaaay back a few calendar pages ago in
1994
is out of all the things
L I F E
can take from you
as it
e x t r a c t s
from you
EVEN ON A DEATH BED
my love
and my ability to kindly share it
(especially to share IT)
T H I S
is what it means
not to get older
but become more
much more than an
AGE(LESS)
So I’m just not looking forward to having a few more
Birthday Candles lit
but blowing a few more
o    u    t.     .     .

 

Professional Speaker, Author, Assurance Man