Archive for the ‘Talk Back!’ Category
Christmas Ritual Miracle
Monday, December 23rd, 2019
Arguing. It seemed to happen every year on Christmas Day when I was growing up. A few of my aunts, and most of my uncles who were not off fighting in World War II or Korea, participated.
As usual, the Byzantine Catholic Christmas celebration on January 7 was at our house because Daddy had his own business and we could afford to feed relatives who were as poor as church mice and as reproductive as rabbits. Plus, we had an indoor toilet.
My grandparents never owned a car so my father would drive to Kaska, PA, to pick up Baba and Yidda and other car-less relatives and deliver them to our house in Pottsville. Auntie Helen’s husband would drive the rest who couldn’t squeeze into Daddy’s Model A Ford.
When they arrived, they tumbled out like circus clowns, implausibly defying the capacity of each car. Then loud, raucous laughter. Squealing kids. Squalling babies. Hugs all around. Babble of Slovak and English.
Later, arguing.
Experts say that irritating comments from friends are usually allowed to dissipate, but those same kind of obnoxious comments from family members can fester into emotional wounds that erupt into screaming matches at holiday gatherings. Research also shows that Christmas get togethers are especially stressful because we feel obliged to be jolly and cheerful, even though at least one relative drives us nuts.
For my family back then though, when the quarreling reached its deafening fever pitch signaling that tears were ready to flow and pies might be smashed into faces, my father would put two fingers in his mouth and let out an ear-piercing whistle, stunning everyone into silence.
Then he’d calmly say, “Baba is ready for the blessing.”
Everyone would take a seat, tempers spent, and a quiet peace would settle in. We’d all hold back our hair from our foreheads and wait our turn for the blessing.
Baba would stand, pick up a peeled clove of garlic and a tiny dish of honey from the table and begin with the person next to her. She would mark the sign of the cross on their forehead with the garlic, while saying, “May you be strong all year,” and then dip her finger in the honey and use it to make another cross on their forehead, saying, “May you be sweet all year.” Everyone was silent until the last person had been blessed.
That little ritual was like a miracle each year: after Baba finished, hugs would make their way through the whole gang, and goodwill and benevolence would reign once again for the rest of the visit.
Since she was the eldest of 13, my mother became the blessing giver after Baba died and today, I’m the one who has that honor.
Times have changed: we celebrate Christmas on December 25 now and there are no arguments at my house in Questa, even though more than 20 of us gather here on that day. Lots of laughs, yes! And hugs galore, but love and kindness rule the roost before and after the ritual.
Some of my friends have adopted this garlic/honey blessing for their own Christmas gatherings. Perhaps you might want to also.
Merry Christmas, Feliz Navidad! May you be strong all year and may you be sweet all year.
Love and Blessings,
Ellen
How old am I?
Sunday, November 18th, 2018
Today I am celebrating 82 years on earth.
Is my body slowing down? Sure. I don’t run up and down the stairs as fast as I used to, but I’m very agile and healthy and I don’t have any chronic aches or pains. I attribute that to my “grow younger” mind/body/spirit practices, especially meditation and the ancient physical movements, The Five Tibetan Rites of Rejuvenation.
Is my skin sagging and wrinkled? Yep. A face lift helped with that when I was younger but it’s not appropriate now.
My memory? A hundred times better than when I was in my mid-60s experiencing early Alzheimer’s symptoms, but it does take a bit longer this year than last to find the right word or remember what I had for dinner two nights ago. I still walk purposefully into a room and then forget when I went in there for, but that’s happened all my life. For me it’s focus, not old age.
Am I having fun living? Yes! But it’s a different phase now. I’m more mindful that death can come knocking any day. Of course, that could have happened at any age, like it did earlier this year to my young friend Brett, but the finish line looms large and I’m preparing now for how I go out.
My mind/body/spirit daily practices are front and center: I don’t want to whimper on my deathbed that I didn’t have enough time to be nice to people or pray, or that I was unable to meditate every day or respond rather than react to stressful situations. (Gulp. I failed that just yesterday when I got my 8th telemarketing call, but at least I was aware that I was failing while it happened).
Awareness is my primary job – being present in each moment. Noticing how blessed I am. Marveling at the sunsets. Feeling in my bones that these bones are only temporary but my soul will continue.
So would I say that I am now “growing old gracefully”? Good heavens, no! The words “growing old” associate aging with progressive deterioration of mind and body, and what we say and think programs our biology. Neuroscientists, cell biologists and other experts in the field of Epigenetics have proven that human consciousness affects what happens in all our cells. Disintegrating to dust will happen anyway, but at a slower pace if we don’t give our cells instructions to pack it in – out loud or silently as thoughts.
At a few days from 82, I may be tying up loose ends, putting my affairs in order, simplifying my life, donating tons of “stuff” to Artesano’s Thrift Shop, but I’m also ready at a moment’s notice to go dancing or stay up all night writing when my muse is on a roll.
Love and Blessings,
Ellen
You are what you think and feel
Thursday, November 1st, 2018
(I’m back. I’m healthy. I’m loving life. I’m incredibly busy with new projects. Thanks for hanging in there with me during this roller coaster ride.)
The Law of Attraction is one of the Universal Laws that has governed the entire cosmos since the beginning of creation. Today, new scientific discoveries are revealing what many wise teachers and healers have taught for centuries: our thoughts and beliefs create our reality.
Like gravity, the Law of Attraction works whether we believe in it or not, and whether we use it knowingly or not. This cosmic law says that our minds are very powerful and what we focus on, with emotion, becomes our reality.
In a nutshell: You are what you think.
Quantum physicists have found, to their complete surprise, that matter is affected by thought, a discovery that rocked the boat for the scientific community.
Scientists have since peered into the life of our trillions of cells and found that they are actually responding to our thoughts and beliefs. What we say to ourselves about who we are and how we age does matter!
As the science of epigenetics shows, our fate is not controlled by our genes. Instead, non-genetic factors over which we can have control send signals to our genes to express themselves differently. More specifically, our beliefs and behaviors including diet, exercise, attitude, prayer, and our thoughts about and responses to life strongly influence the expression of our genes.
This is good news, my friend! For me it means the Alzheimer’s gene I have inherited has the opportunity to remain in the off position. I spent five years accepting the symptoms of Alzheimer’s as my fate. Then, fourteen years ago, I made a conscious choice to reverse early Alzheimer’s with a program of practices and it worked. Now Alzheimer’s is just an unexpressed potential in my life.
Science and metaphysics agree that vibration is the core, the elemental essence, of everything. The Law of Attraction is about vibration. All energy possesses a unique vibrational signature. And for over a century scientists have known that all matter, too, is formed of energy vibrating at specific frequencies.
The Law of Attraction means like attracts like: packets of energy vibrating at a particular frequency attract other packets of energy vibrating at the same frequency.
You are a living magnet. The Law of Attraction says the energy of your thoughts attracts the energy of other thoughts that are similar. And each thought, emotion and action resonates with whatever has the same vibrational frequency.
Everything that comes to you, you are attracting whether it’s something you want or not. What is now solid matter began as a thought, and every day we think approximately twelve thousand to fifty thousand thoughts. The fleeting, random thoughts have little effect on us, but the ones we repeat to ourselves over and over – the ones we invest with emotion, be it love or fear – have a powerful effect on our health and well-being. They determine what comes to us.
With practice, you can use the Law of Attraction to tune yourself to a particular vibrational frequency in order to attract the people, situations and circumstances that will help manifest your desires.
WHY YOU HAVEN’T HEARD FROM ME
Sunday, July 22nd, 2018
No, not because I’ve been living on the roof of my house : )
First, I am very grateful to all of you who cared about me and wrote to ask if I was all right, since you hadn’t heard from me in many months.
What has been occupying my attention is remodeling my house to make the first floor into a vacation rental. You can see it on www.thestarhousenewmexico.com
I am also doing some special work on my books which I’ll tell you about another time.
For now I just want to send blessings and love to each of you.
Ellen
Frantic Christmas? Not for me.
Saturday, December 23rd, 2017
Christmas is the least miserable day of the year. That’s the conclusion of a blogger who compiled data on searches for the words: depression, anxiety, pain, stress, fatigue. His study showed that fewer people searched for those words on Christmas Day than any other day. True – many people feel jolly and happy on Christmas Day, but no doubt there are lots of other people who are too frenzied – or too blue – or too frenzied and too blue, to bother going on the computer to search for solutions on Christmas Day.
It seems to me there’s a combination of physiological and social reasons for the winter blues. For one thing, there’s less light this time of year. Days are short and animals are holing up – hunkering down for a long winter’s nap. Trees, bushes and plants drop their leaves and withdraw into hibernation.
We, on the other hand, don’t stop working at dusk; we just keep going like the energizer bunny. In fact, we increase our social activity this time of year, when the natural response is to be more muted in winter.
Summer is the time for outward expression; in winter the natural cycle is inward reflection but our culture runs counter to that cycle. We created a different response to winter. Instead of slowing down, meditating, contemplating and inwardly reflecting, we devised a mania of external activity, trying to recreate the expansive cycle of summer.
Marketers helped by inventing a day for us to stampede our way into large stores heaving with people, metal baskets crashing, “Jingle Bells” jangling in the background, fingers grabbing and stabbing, frenetic, frenzied, freaked out consumers vying to get the best bargains for gifts to give on Christmas Day. They call it Black Friday.
We plan a Christmas gathering of family and friends and we get up before dawn cracks and frantically cook and bake and set the table – juniper boughs for the middle cut from trees sleeping out back – and hope Uncle Albert won’t tell his sexist jokes. And the wine flows and the kids giggle and the gabbing gets louder and by the time everyone leaves, we’re exhausted. Sometime in between we remembered it’s the birth of Jesus that we’re celebrating and we bring Him out from behind the manger on the windowsill where the Three Wise Guys are waiting for their Epiphany on January 6.
Well, I have to tell you – even though I can imagine all that, that’s not how my Christmas Day goes. Yep, kids and grandkids and one great-grandkid and a dear friend are coming to my house next Monday, 17 of them this year, but they do all the cooking and baking and finding enough chairs and picking up the wrappings and ribbons after our Secret Santa time. That wonderful tradition means we each buy only one gift and it’s a hoot! Nobody really cares about the gift they get – it’s such fun seeing who’s going to get the most coveted one.
This year, as usual on Christmas morn, I’ll sleep late, meditate and spend a little time by myself inwardly reflecting and counting my blessings. And oh, do I have blessings! I gently encourage you to do the same. Merry Christmas!
