2009 gratitude

2009 was a good year for me.

i finished my training as a master practitioner of NLP. it's a fabulous body of work variously described as Now Let's Play, a super-duper set of people skills, and the structure of experience. i learned so much, it would be hard to describe. have had one client since then and am open to more. it's very gratifying to guide someone whose energy about a past event has been dragging them down and holding them back toward shedding their own light on that situation, totally changing their perception of the event into one of expansion and lightness, so they can move on. all i do is guide them.

thank you, tom and bobbi best of Best Resources/Texas Institute of NLP. tom, watching you teach a new class of beginners has revealed even more of your mastery as a teacher/storyteller/shaman. bobbi, your suggestion about working with kids (anchoring happy states) is just one example of the brilliance with which you walk around every day, just like an ordinary person. to a long association!

i also began participating in keith fail's advanced study groups for NLP practitioners. good company, good teacher, much to look forward to in 2010, when i will study strategies (and much more, i'm sure).

thank you, keith, for being such an awesome teacher and being such a fount of knowledge of NLP, and having so much practical experience working with individuals and organizations. there is no internship with NLP coaching unless you find a mentor. you are mine, for which i'm grateful. also, thank you for being a pennywhistle buddy and a friend who really sees me.

and thank you, katie raver (keith's wife and my friend), for helping keith teach and for being your awesome loving self with so much presence. indeed you are the instigator of love, teacher of love, being of love! i'm looking forward to our first Peripheral Walking meetup tomorrow and doing this with you all year, and being your friend on into the future.

in the fall, i began assisting my yoga teacher at her monday class that includes beginners. i love doing this. it reminds me of how far i've come, and that each person can only really absorb what they're ready for. yoga is a practice of developing awareness, strength, and flexibility. we work in small chunks--from cow pose to urdhva dhanurasana--upward bow or wheel pose, aka backbend--and over time i see someone become more capable of doing a pose because their bodymind "gets it". yo!

i've said this before, and i'll say it again. yoga works on the meridians. now i don't know when or if those ancient chinese who invented acupuncture and those ancient indians who invented yoga got together and shared notes and then went their separate ways, but they were both onto the same thing--energy flows through our bodies, and both asana and needles can be used to free, balance, and strengthen our energies.

thank you, eleanor harris, yoga teacher extraordinaire, for being my yoga teacher and for allowing me the honor of assisting you and learning at the same time. you are so devoted to your students and a very gentle teacher, yet you have taken me a long, long way in the past five years. while being aware of my limitations, you know just what to say (and where to touch) to move me into a place of righteousness in an asana. namaste.

and thank you, patrice sullivan, acupuncturist and woman-of-all-trades. you are a pioneer, a role model, a wise woman, a genius, and definitely one of the free-est, happiest, and most competent people i know. thank you for your friendship, needles, partnership, teaching, questioning, guiding, rolfing, yoga and exercise coaching, your music, your lightness and fun, and that thing you do with your hands when i'm on the table covered in needles with my eyes closed. somehow i went into your energy once, felt what you feel, saw your color. mm mm mm wow. let's do it again. (i want to learn to read pulses in 2010.) yes-sayer!

i've already posted about my wonderful cranio-sacral therapist, nina davis, and her incredibly wizardry. you are such a healer, and a role model, and a teacher. you are leading me into greater awareness of my body and self-healing. i suspect too that just being in the same room with you brings my energy a little more up to your level. for all of this, i thank you deeply, nina.

i am so lucky to have found good teachers, tom, bobbi, keith, katie, eleanor, patrice, nina...

in 2010, i am adding a couple of new ones from the appamada zendo--a meditation coach, peg syverson, and a teacher, flint sparks, whose paths i crossed in late 2009. i've already had a couple of encounters with them and look forward to our journeys together.

local giving

Before I got involved with Truth Be Told, my charitable giving was erratic. A few dollars here and there, all of course to great organizations doing good work, such as Sierra Club, NRDC, Planned Parenthood, and so on.

Since I first attended a Truth Be Told fundraiser 5 years ago, I have become a regular donor to TBT, giving monthly from my paycheck.

I like getting the statement each January of what I donated the previous years, which I use in filing my taxes. It adds up.

But what really makes me feel great is giving locally. My money stays in the community. Truth Be Told has one paid position, that of executive director, and it's a part-time position. All of the facilitators and facilitator trainees donate their time. The website and newsletter are maintained by volunteers. A volunteer coach works with the ED and founders as a labor of love. A volunteer provided the wonderful logo, and others have volunteered their services such as strategic planning.

My money goes to pay for the ED' salary, gas for their travel to the Lockhart prison and the Travis County State Jail, materials such as journals and pens for the inmates to use in the classes, postage, a phone line, P.O. box, graduation certificates, and so on. All these expenses add up, and I'm glad I can make a difference.

Best of all is that I get to meet the women who have graduated from Truth Be Told's classes at graduations in Lockhart (just went to my fourth last Friday), and those who have been released from prison who stay connected.

Each month TBT invites people to attend a talk, Behind and Beyond Bars, about their work, and a released graduate usually comes. Next one is this Tuesday--see their website (www.truth-be-told.org) for time and location.

And quite a few graduates will be attending the luncheon on October 7, sharing their stories of what TBT has meant to them. Some will use their gifts to perform. For them, TBT was a lifeline. And others will be on a video of a graduation that will be shown.

I hope you will consider attending.

Truth Be Told, part 3

As I mentioned in part 1, I fell in love with local nonprofit Truth Be Told when I attended a graduation of incarcerated women telling their stories in the Lockhart prison. In part 2, I wrote about how I volunteered and served on the board of directors for a couple of years and helped the organization gain stability and traction as a nonprofit.

Now I am listing several upcoming opportunities that Truth Be Told is offering--ways to witness the work, ask questions and learn more, and offer your support.

1. If you are interested in attending a graduation at the Lockhart prison, there are 4 openings left as of right now for the graduation on Friday, September 25. These 4 spots will go quickly. (I'll be there!) TDCJ limits attendance to 20 people. This is for graduates of Truth Be Told's entry-level classes.

If you are interested in attending, please email shannon_holtzendorf@yahoo.com or call 670-5354 ASAP!

If September 25 won't work, another graduation is scheduled for Friday, November 20. There are only 4 opportunities to attend a graduation per year. (Also, just letting you know, TDCJ requires your DL# and SS#. I haven't heard of any problems with sharing this data with TBT and TDCJ--it should be safe.)

2. An informational meeting, Behind and Beyond Bars, is scheduled for Wednesday, September 30. This is from 6-7 pm. You can meet founders, teachers, key players, including a graduate, and ask questions. I will post location info when I get it. Anyone can attend; RSVPs appreciated--email office@truth-be-told.org or call Shannon at 670-5354.

If you plan to go to the graduation or the fundraiser, attending this is recommended, because you may not have a chance at the more structured events to get to know the people involved and ask questions.

3. Truth Be Told's annual fundraiser luncheon, Light of a New Day, is scheduled for Wednesday, October 7, 12-1, at the Region XII Education Service Center, 5701 Springdale Road. This is definitely an RSVP event; if you are interested, please RSVP to me, and you can join me at my table!

This is a free luncheon. You will be asked to consider making a contribution, but it is not required and there's no minimum or maximum gift--Truth Be Told's job is to inspire you to want to give! You'll hear from the founders, graduates, board members, be entertained and moved, meet new people, watch a video from a graduation, and you WILL be inspired!

I'd love to see you there! You may bring friends and family, anyone you think would be interested--and we do need a head count, so RSVP for them too please.


I consider this one of the most worthwhile groups to which I am connected. It's local and therefore personal. TBT has a great and positive impact on the lives of incarcerated women behind and beyond bars, and that ripples out into the community and into the future, literally making the world a better place. I'd be honored to have you join me with you support in any way you are able.

Website: http://www.truth-be-told.org/

Truth Be Told, part 2

The ceremony made a deep impression because it seemed to me that what they were doing was REAL work, meaningful work, work that really mattered, that made a difference in the lives of the incarcerated women with whom they worked, giving them an opportunity and the social and emotional support to examine and change the direction of their lives. And THAT would then ripple out to their families, their communities, and the world.

Changing the world, one small group of incarcerated women at a time.

This was my understanding after I attended a graduation in the Lockhart prison of women who had completed Truth Be Told's beginning classes. It moved me so much, I was on fire to become part of Truth Be Told.

Continuing from part 1 of this post (on FB, go to my wall and view earlier notes to find it--I sent it Aug. 20).

I could relate to the imprisoned women. Who among us has not wondered how we got into some less-than-lovely circumstance? Who has not encountered a prison of their own making, even if it didn't have bars? Who has not yearned for the support and courage and guidance to really change their lives for the better? Who has not made mistakes?

So I volunteered. Since I worked days and the prison classes were on workdays, I found another way to participate. I was a liaison between Story Circle Network (women's writing circles) and the Truth Be Told students who wished to submit their stories to Story Circle Network's publications.

And while doing this, I noticed that organizationally, Truth Be Told was having growing pains. Started by three women who volunteered in the prison, the demand for their classes was surging. The warden had asked them to start another program for inmates who were nearing release, called Short-Timing. Many people who had attended a graduation or otherwise learned about their work wanted to help, and this up took a lot of their time.

Truth Be Told had gotten 501(3)c nonprofit status around the time I got connected, but it was mostly a piece of paper and a promise. Organizationally it was shaky. There was a board of directors, but no clear shared vision, just a consensus that it was a good thing.

I wanted to be on the board to help guide Truth Be Told to stability and success. And I was, for 2 years. It was demanding of me, and it's very satisfying in hindsight to look back at what I/we accomplished.

It was not a smooth road at all. Right after I came onto the board, one founder resigned. A wealthy donor had paid for six people to get expensive training in nonprofit fundraising, and all but one of those people left before we even had our first annual fundraiser! The turnover of board members was a churn. For a while, I was one of only three. Bobby, Keith, and me.

And I tell you, I am an unlikely member of anyone's board of directors. True, I do have a responsible job with the Legislative Budget Board, but when I retire in three years, I fully intend to become a free spirit--I'll be wearing yoga clothes every day, teaching yoga. I'll get some more tattoos, and I may even try dreadlocks with my long gray hair. And yet there I was, a board member with men in suits!

My vision was that Truth Be Told SHOULD be a nonprofit instead of a mission under the wing of a church. As a mission, the work would be labeled religious, whereas I saw it as more spiritual. Nonprofit status had more potential for expansion, and so I pushed for that.

My mission was to help Truth Be Told become a stable nonprofit. I saw what needed to happen: regular communication to supporters, a way to raise funds to support the work, and a clear vision.

I used the skills I had to develop and edit a quarterly newsletter, with columns by the founders, stories from the women, information about upcoming events, a wish list, and so on. This was a labor of love. If you can do something that's public on a regular basis over time, you create stability. The perception of stability is reassuring to prospective donors and volunteers. And Truth Be Told is now celebrating 5 years as a nonprofit, so I/we succeeded in that.

The other thing I did was develop a database of donors, supporters, and volunteers for Truth Be Told. I literally typed contact information from multiple Excel files into the database, so that we could do mass mailings and emailings, track donations, send out year-end IRS letters, and so on.

It was a lot of work, and I did it because it needed to be done. TBT couldn't afford to wait for the right person to come along and do these things, and so I became "the right person". And I eventually even had a volunteer to help with database entry work. Thanks, Judy Edwards!

After two years, I realized that my work as a board member was complete. We had had a successful fundraiser that allowed Truth Be Told to hire a much-needed part-time administrator (although truth be told, there is always a need for more financial support--the work demands more time than the admin gets paid for, and a paid volunteer coordinator would be awesome).

The database was and is continuing to grow, indicating new supporters are learning about it and wanting to help.

The founders and board had attended strategic planning meetings that resulted in clear directions for Truth Be Told to grow: to provide more support for the women after release and to be able to expand the programs and train others to take them into other prisons.

New board members came on board--young, energetic--and I was exhausted and needed to pull my resources back in and take care of myself, so I resigned.

Next: Truth Be Told part 3 (look for it tomorrow)!

Truth Be Told, part 1

Have you ever been part of something that made a difference in the lives of many? I have, and here's my story.

In 2002, my then-new friend Suzanne Armistead, whom I met through InterPlay, was talking about her volunteer work with women at the state prison in Lockhart. It sounded interesting, and when she invited me to come to the prison and witness a graduation ceremony, I signed up and went.

What I saw was probably one of the most heart-opening events I've ever had the grace to witness. Woman after woman, dressed in drab prison garb, came up and told her story to those of us who came to witness, about how she came to be in prison. Each one was so vulnerable, so authentic, and so brave, publicly coming to terms with their pasts to total strangers, pasts that were often full of a lack of resources, lack of good judgment, lack of support, lack of love. So much lack.

And yet, here they were, now part of a program that teaches public speaking, respectful listening, writing, movement, and creative skills to incarcerated women, a support that continues after their release from prison and back into society.

And the way they told their stories was as if they were not victims or perpetrators, but vulnerable AND strong! Strong, capable women who owned themselves and who were telling their pasts and claiming their own futures right in front of our eyes.

I don't believe there was a dry eye among the witnesses. The energy filling the prison gym was totally amazing and unexpected. We witnessed the human soul laid bare, struggling with pain and shame and suffering, and yet also present was hope for the future, amazing talent, beautiful smiles, shy giggles, rockin' hair styles, motivation, determination, and a very warm welcome for us visitors in one of the most sterile, unfriendly environments you can imagine.

Come out from the shadow of your family tree!

Come out from the shadow of your family tree!

This Family Constellation Workshop cuts to the heart of generational issues,
shifting inner images from what is to what’s possible, transforming obstacles
into more health and well-being. Based on the work of Bert Hellinger, this workshop
offers a rare opportunity to uncover hidden patterns, healing past, present, and future generations.

Led by Judy Smith, who facilitates workshops and training in S. Africa and the U.S.
http://www.emotionalgenetics.com/index.html

Sat., July 18, 10-5 pm
Sun., July 19, 10-4 pm
NiaSpace
3212 S. Congress
Austin, TX

Cost: $325
$100 deposit
(or pay in full July 18)

Mail deposit to:
Mary Ann Reynolds
905 E. 2nd St.
Austin, TX 78702
512-507-4184
mareynolds@grandecom.net

CEUs available for MSWs, LPCs, and MFCs

Suggested preparation: Research your family going back three generations,
noting significant and traumatic events. Also you may read Berthold Ulsamer's
Healing Power of the Past, available on Amazon.com.

Questions? Call Judy at (903) 534-6263 or email her at info@emotionalgenetics.com.

experience

Today I was making a list of the various modalities I have at least some experience with for health, energy, awareness, personal growth, relating, and changework. I was shocked at how long it was!

I have either worked with trained practitioners, received training myself, attended classes/workshops/practice groups, read books or watched videos, or taught these modalities.

I'm going to start with the body-based and energy modalities. I excluded Pilates, snorkeling, kayaking, hiking, etc--practices that are for fitness and recreation only. This list is about healing, increasing awareness, improving energy. These practices can also affect mental/emotional state profoundly, since everything is connected:
massage (Swedish, Shiatsu, Thai)
traditional chiropractic
NUCCA chiropractic
cranio-sacral therapy
rolfing
acupuncture
osteopathy
zero balancing
Feldenkrais--one on one, Awareness Through Movement classes
Alexander Technique
physiosynthesis
yoga--mostly Iyengar, also at least one class in Sivananda, Integral, Anusara, Vinyasa Flow, Kundalini
breathwork
chakra work
Z-health
EFT
hands-on healing
Brain Gym

These are primarily dance-related:
5 rhythms
trance dance
contact improv

These involve food and nutrition and absorption:
candida clearing
diet--food sensitivities, pH, doshas
organ cleansing--colon, liver, gallbladder
fasting

These modalities are more about shifting state and changing patterns:
NLP (waaaayyy too much to list under this umbrella)
hypnosis/trancework
shamanic practices (journeying, Ha prayer, energy cleansing, yana chaqui, pico pico breathing, and more)
12 states of attention
nightwalking/peripheral walking
holographic repatterning
meditation
japalm/mantra
deeksha

These are therapeutic types of experiences:
therapy for PTSD/Waking the Tiger
re-evaluation counseling/co-counseling

These are systems for understanding types of people:
Enneagram
Myers-Briggs Type Indicator
Life Prints fingerprint analysis

And these are miscellaneous:
InterPlay
Tarot
astrology
journaling
dreamwork
hanging upside down
using a spine aligner
toning

There are probably more that I can't think of now.

I have spent a great deal of time and money obtaining most of these experiences. They have all been of benefit and a joy to experience. Some have become life practices. Some have been specific for a given situation. Some are occasional treats.

I'd like to put this life experience to good use. If you have a question about any of these or want a referral in Austin (a few in Dallas), please feel free to contact me.

family constellation workshop, july 18-19, 2009

FAMILY CONSTELLATION WORKSHOP with Judy Smith
July 18-19, 2009
Austin, TX (place and time TBA)
$375 ($100 nonrefundable deposit)

In this workshop we explore family generational patterns, hidden dynamics, and subconscious patterns, and heal the souls of our families, restoring the natural order of familial love. Family constellation work brings long-standing unresolved family issues to light and facilitates healthy resolutions, dissolves entanglements, and removes blocks.

Healing occurs on a deeply felt, energetic level, along with accessing a bigger picture of life situations. In this way, we positively enhance our own presence and that of future generations.

CEUs for MFTs, LPCs, and LCSWs available.

For information or to register, contact Mary Ann Reynolds at 512-507-4184 or email mareynolds@grandecom.net.

Samantha's birthday

My cat turned 20 last week. We don't know when her actual birthday is since we got her from the animal shelter. They said she was about 7 months old, so Lela and I counted back and decided we'd celebrate Feb. 12th as her birthday. Since it's also Lincoln's birthday, we named her Samantha Lincoln.

It's fantastic to realize that Samantha has lived with me for 20 years. That's longer than my child lived with me, longer than I lived with my parents.

Samantha holds the record for living with me. Twenty years.

Hannah made her a "cake" out of catfood and cat treats, and we gave her her gifts: a cushy fleecy round cat bed with a collapsible half-dome hood and a zipper underneath in which to place a bag of catnip.

I put this in front of her favorite window, where she can bathe in sunbeams and also see outside. She seems to love it.

I also got her a cardboard cat scratcher and sprinkled it with catnip. She likes it.

She isn't interested in the fishing toy with a feathery doodad on the end of the line. She practically sniffed and turned up her nose at it. She's no silly kitten any more.

All in all, a very good day in our life, and I was glad Hannah, who is animal-crazy, got to help me celebrate this milestone.

happy birthday to me, to you, and the world

i'm getting my february blog posts started off right, with poetry. i've had in mind for days to post the two poems i just posted, and finally have a few moments to do just that...

this past weekend i celebrated my 56th birthday with friends. we stayed in cabins at buescher state park. linda decorated our cabin beautifully with colorful pareos, an altar, a lamp brought from home. she brought her new macbook. i gave her CDs to expand her music and spoken poetry collection with; we had a lot of fun with the built-in camera and photo software, making some cool photos of ourselves, such as the four goddesses, janus, holding the earth in her hands, burning man, etc. thank you linda!

katie made me a gluten-free birthday cake! this is the first time in years that i've had birthday cake. it's not quite the texture of wheat flour cake, but still very appreciated. katie gave me a gift of a new way of practicing states of attention, with an expansion of kinesthetic states. she gave me a card with bamboo on the cover and a rumi poem inside, which i'll post separately. she also brought a rumi book and read aloud from it. we passed the book around, taking turns reading aloud. when rumi comes to your birthday party, you know it's gonna be wonderful! also when katie comes, because she brought rumi. thank you katie!

keith brought both his accordion and his pennywhistle. we played together on our pennywhistles. he's much more experienced than i, and he's such a good teacher. i feel inspired to learn more, especially the plaintive songs that i love. keith also gave me the most exquisite card of a doorway, an apocheta as we call it, an opening, with a david whyte poem inside. i will post that poem separately. it deserves its own space. keith is a wonderful storyteller. he brought a book of native american stories and read one aloud from the native hawaiians, apt since so many of us have been to maui together. thank you keith!

kathleen came out saturday evening, surprising me, because i thought she wasn't coming. she regaled us with stories of pursuing her path and shared her clear presence with us. she and i laid on the deck on sleeping bags sunday morning and caught up with each other. thank you kathleen!

these paragraphs and my thanks can hardly convey the depths of my experience of sharing the weekend with these friends in a setting of trees, lake, sky, bare branches, as we talked story, laughed, cooked, ate, walked, hugged.

i am blessed.

vulnerability and boundaries

sally kempton's wisdom column in the february 2009 issue yoga journal (now on newsstands) is once again a masterpiece of insight, with wisdom we can all use.

she writes of an acquaintance, a surgeon, who began meditating and doing yoga to control stress. he's noticed a new tenderness toward people on the operating table, a feeling of softness and rawness, that he was unaccustomed to.

kempton says these feelings of vulnerability are not optional but part of the process.

she says the most open person she ever met was her teacher, a swami. when you looked into his eyes, there were no barriers; he would meet you at the deepest place you could go. at the same time, he had incredibly strong boundaries and a take-no-prisoners attitude toward challenging situations.

oh, okay, so this is what a swami is like!

what made me want to share this is this paragraph:

"the spiritual journey often looks like a dance between the two distinct poles of vulnerability and boundaries. it's a continuing dialogue between the impulse to soften and open and the impulse to contain and protect. the two apparent opposites turn out to be equal partners in the process of embodying spirit and heart."

in my NLP training, my teacher, tom best, has several times mentioned the idea that all our wants can be classified as either a drive toward security or a drive toward freedom. tom attributes that to someone else, i forget who--tom or NLPers, help me out here.

sally kempton's understanding of the paradoxical poles of vulnerability and boundaries is a similar way of understanding ourselves, more subjective, more feeling and behavior oriented. there is not one without the other.

ultimately, kempton says, entering your vulnerability and connecting with the source is key to recognizing your own spaciousness, which is invulnerable.

go get a february yoga journal to read the whole article, including the meditation practices kempton provides.

stop being stupid

click the title to read the opinion from bob herbert, who says it better than i could: it's time for americans to stop being stupid. about the economy, the future, industry, jobs, wars, regulation, credit, mortgages, college tuition, globalization, government spending, debt, investment, paying now versus later, infrastructure, education, the environment, health care, and consumption.

i would add another policy area that needs overhaul, where the government can stop being stupid NOW with a great long-term payoff: the farm bill. it has a huge effect on the food that's available to us and the cost of this food.

processed food (the packaged stuff that is stripped of nutrients--sometimes added back in as chemicals!--that can sit on a grocery shelf for months and has been shipped from who-knows-where) is cheap and available everywhere because the government subsidizes it.

in other words, the u.s. government is taking our tax money and paying it to farmers to grow monocultures of wheat, corn, soybeans, spraying them with pesticides, using chemical fertilizers. it's paying for research programs at universities to come up with better ways of processing these "components" and turning them into cheap, unnutrious food with long shelf-lives.

if america is to get smarter, focusing on high quality, nutritious food (and clean water) that is available and affordable to everyone is a great place to start.

after all, how are we going to get smarter? what do you think builds the brain?

family christmas

my family, even though we all live in austin, doesn't gather together very often, but christmas eve is one of those times.

yesterday afternoon we gathered at my brother frank and sister-in-law kathy's home. they always host because they have a house that's big enough for us all.

i look forward to these gatherings. i love seeing everyone and spending a few hours together and catching up. the length of time we spend together feels just about right (many of us are introverts), and at the same time, i wish we did it more often. last year, for the first time, i didn't attend, because i was in maui. this year i was really looking forward to it.

this year my grand-daughter hannah wasn't present. she's spending this christmas with her father's family and was especially looking forward to spending time with both her half-sisters, an uncommon occurrence. i look forward very much to her presence at our gathering next year.

my daughter's boyfriend, bruce, joined us for the first time this year. welcome, bruce.

we've been planning our gathering for weeks. instead of a big fancy meal with a turkey or ham, we decided on mexican food for our christmas eve dinner this year. more informal, casual, something different.

kathy made enchiladas. grace, her and frank's 11-year-old daughter made nachos. frank offered traditional pork tamales.

my brother will's wife helen brought a puerto rican rice dish. helen's mother is korean, father puerto rican. this dish is one her mother learned to make early in their marriage. it's kind of like spanish rice but has pigeon peas in it. they're kind of like lentils. it was very good.

i brought guacamole i made using a highly rated recipe i found on google.

lela and bruce brought vegetarian pinto bean tamales and apple cinnamon tamales from mr. natural. (my request. i like tamales, but lard doesn't appeal.) thanks, lela and bruce. i'm eating steamed apple cinnamon tamales as i write this, and they are delicious.

after everyone arrived and got settled in, we put food on the table and gathered to eat. we (brothers frank and will, and i) said the traditional family blessing, which we call "the baruch". it goes "baruch ata, adonai elohainu, melech ha olam, hamotsi lechem, menha aritz." (the "ch" is pronounced like "kh".)

while bruce, i'm sure, was wondering what the heck was going on (these people are praying in a foreign language!), frank explained. it's the jewish blessing of the bread. our father spent time in israel studying hebrew and brought this blessing back with him. "blessed art thou, o lord our god, king of the universe, for bringing forth bread from the earth."

we ate too much. and then there was tres leches cake, which kathy made, apple cinnamon tamales, and brownie. i could only eat a small slice of cake and one tamale. then i was really full.

(even though i enjoy the festivities of special occasions, I'm always glad after such feasts to get back to my plain, ordinary fruit- and veggie-laden diet. i must be a peasant at heart, because rich food is not something i can indulge in very often and feel well.)

nephew sam, age 8, will and helen's son, ate pizza, having a limited palate. helen tells me he's getting better. will, who was also a picky eater as a child, is working with him to expand his range. helen says that because she has lupus, that's made her sensitive to the connection between what she eats and how she feels. i have come to have much more sensitivity about that connection myself, having sensitivities to certain foods.

after dinner, bruce and sammie played nine-ball on grace's wii. we stood around and watched as bruce sank the last ball and then gathered in the living room to open gifts. grace was the gift distributor this year and did a great job.

at christmas, we give christmas gifts to the children and birthday gifts to the adults. i know that sounds strange, but it's easier that way. the children usually have birthday parties and get their birthday gifts then. birthdays aren't that big a deal for adults. we are often working on each other's birthdays, so coordinating is difficult, and we give each other birthday gifts at christmas. a year's worth of birthdays, taken care of in one day. (we usually call or email on or around actual birthdays. we don't just ignore them)

everyone seemed happy with their gifts. we had sent wish lists to each other via email in the weeks before christmas, so everyone got something they wanted. helen got baffle gab, a game. frank got obama books and a multimeter. i gave bruce some cds on his amazon.com wish list, which lela had pointed me too. cutting edge stuff. i felt very sophisticated in waterloo records!

bruce gave me a nicely framed photo of hannah, dancing naked on a beach in tulum, mexico, in her fully expressed goddess mode of "all out," which she would prefer to live in all the time, but unfortunately doesn't mesh with the usual expectations of an 8-year-old girl. she's beautiful.

and after regular gifts, we had a white elephant gift exchange. nicely done, y'all! i ended up with pedestrian turn signals. you put them on your ears!

i'm pleased that i got to have a conversation with each of the adults there. will really likes his new job at the radisson, and we get a family discount.

frank referred me to a couple of divorce lawyers he knows for a friend who asked, and we talked about a mutual acquaintance who's very smart.

kathy told me how things were in her office and that she'll be eligible to retire in about 3 years.

helen talked about sam's schooling and food preferences, and her upbringing as a multicultural military child, at home with many cuisines.

bruce talked about going on tour with jason mraz and getting to see new parts of the world. he and kathy were both raised in austin. he seemed to connect with everyone well.

sam, an aspergian, let me hug him and seemed comfortable with the wii and a little hand-held game he'd brought.

grace sparkled in her peace symbol necklace and showed us some dance she and her friends made up. the hot dog, the lawn mower, and so forth.

we all missed hannah's lively presence.

no children cried or otherwise had meltdowns. a true blessing! and frank took a couple of group photos with a timer, so he could be included. he'll email them later.

i am deeply grateful to have a family, and to have this family in particular. our time together felt really sweet, and was fleeting enough to look forward to gathering again next year. family, i love you all!

the true meaning of christmas: radiance

i hope that whatever your plans are for christmas, that you take some time to experience and appreciate your own and others' and the world's radiance. that has come to be the true meaning of christmas to me. it's about radiance, of which the christ child is a symbol. the energy of solstichristmakwanzukahh is that of radiance.

one dear friend told me that she wasn't looking forward to the usual family dysfunction (old stories, old roles, old rules) and all that contraction when they gather for christmas. with a prompt from magician bobbi, she determined to perceive each family member as having the beautiful, powerful, pure, trusting, innocent radiance of newborn babies. instant expansion!

people respond to radiance. that state, for me, is associated with beginner's mind, presence, clarity, focus, openness, unconditional love, innocence. it is most vulnerable and yet paradoxically, it's incredibly powerful.

when someone looks at you with radiance, accept it in your heart and bask in its glow. let your radiance shine to others too. fill their hearts and fill yours too--both at the same time.

it is especially meaningful in this season of short days and long nights when we become more social, tribal, communal. let your light shine!

two ways to change the world

the dalai lama says that western women will save the world.

i want to write about two organizations through which we can really make a difference in the quality of life of an individual.

my dear friend peggy lamb is working with an organization called women for women international: helping women survivors of war rebuild their lives.

you donate $27 per month, or $324 per year, to support one woman for one year, and you can send it to a specific country: afghanistan, bosnia and herzegovina, democratic republic of the congo, iraq, kosovo, nigeria, rwanda, sudan, or wherever the need is greatest.

women for women matches you with a woman in the country you choose.

besides financial support, you correspond with the woman you're matched with by writing to her monthly. she may respond. peggy got a letter written for her sponsee (who doesn't read or write) in rwanda, thanking her and letting her know her generosity means a lot.

imagine what it would be like to suffer the devastations of war, often losing home, family, community, and livelihood, witnessing violence (some of it perpetrated by the american government) or being a victim of "ethnic cleansing," and to receive help like this from an individual american woman.

WFW spends 11.7% on administrative costs.

http://www.womenforwomen.org/


another dear friend, fantasia london, works with an organization called kiva. kiva is a person-to-person microlending institution. you donate $25 or more online, and 100% of your money is sent to an entrepreneur you choose through a microlender in the entrepreneur's community/region. you can choose entrepreneurs by gender, business sector, and region of the world.

if their need is greater than what you can afford, your donation is pooled with others' donations.

you can view updates of your lendee's status and repayment online, and once the loan is repaid (usually in months), you can choose another entrepreneur to lend to. you can also have multiple loans going at once.

kiva loans go to buy tools, equipment, seeds, livestock, raw materials, and so forth.

with kiva, 100% of what you donate goes to the entrepreneur. they ask that you donate an additional 10% to help them cover their administrative costs, but it's not required. (apparently microsoft and other big donors support them too.) you get an email receipt for your tax deductions.

i wanted to check it out, and i found someone who only needed $25 to complete her loan. her name is isadora gomez de aquina. she lives in peru and is my age. she requested $825 to be repaid in 4 months to purchase a calf to raise and sell. 22 people contributed to her loan, mostly from the U.S. but also from france, australia, spain, and sweden.

you get a page on kiva.org where you can see your loans and repayment status, and the entrepreneurs you lend to also have profile pages.

after you donate, you can even send a feed to your facebook profile! i did, but it hasn't appeared, so there's probably some setting on facebook i don't know about...

it's a one-time donation that you can repeat, and you aren't obligated if your circumstances change. you can even get your money back!

http://www.kiva.org/

gratitude

i am so grateful for so much. for my dreams and for all the uncertainty that precedes the significant ones that represent shifts. for my 19-year-old cat, sitting next to my computer as i type this. she often visits me when i go to sleep and when i wake. i am grateful for her long years of companionship.

i am deeply grateful for my daughter lela and my granddaughter hannah. words just cannot express how much i love and care about and enjoy them.

i am grateful that i am able to choose good food and to recognize when i eat something not so good for my body, like the yummy strawberry cheesecake i had today for dmitry's birthday.

i am grateful for co-workers willing to swap being on call on weekends so that i can work this weekend and have the following weekend, the weekend of nightwalking, off.

i am grateful for naropa university for existing. looking through their graduate programs is like christmas morning.

i am grateful for my brothers and their wives and children, frank, bill, kathy, helen, grace, and sam. i think about all of them often with much affection.

i'm grateful for my friends, for kathleen, fantasia, peggy, colleen, linda, sarah, marco, keith and katie, jaime and kathleen, my NLP community, my shamanic community. and i'm grateful for all the friends i haven't met yet or befriended yet.

i'm even grateful for some of the rougher parts in my life--the loss of my sister, my father's asperger syndrome. they have been part of this experience, and i savor the contrast of when life and relationships are going well. they also keep me humble.

i'm grateful i have a good job with a good salary, a good hybrid car, a house that's homey, a yard with a garden and now a firepit.

i'm grateful for my health, awareness, heart, mind, body. i'm grateful that eleanor stretches me in yoga and that i have improved so much over the last 3 years, able to do poses i wouldn't have imagined i could do.

i'm grateful for patrice and all her experience, knowledge, and wisdom. and for active life chiropractic and for nina davis, my cranio-sacral therapist. together we are getting me healthy, in a way i wouldn't have believed possible a few years ago.

i'm very grateful for this incredible planet--its sky, winds, weather, soil, rock, rivers, oceans, islands, mountains, its incredible range of geography and beauty, for sunrises and sunsets, plants, animals, cities, deserts, poles.

meerkats

i took my granddaughter hannah, age 8, to wheatsville co-op wednesday to pick up a few things. i pick her up on wednesdays when lela has her intro to nursing lab.

there's a very small toy section there. she picked out a small stuffed animal, a tawny meerkat with huge eyes and a long tail that hooked at the end.

hannah told me that meerkats have such tails so they can hang on things and look into meers.

it doesn't matter what it's about

last night i climbed into bed to read a little before sleep came.

i noticed tension in my chest. not even muscle tension really, but some kind of energetic contraction centering around my heart chakra. the closest emotion i could relate it to was mild fear.

it was fairly subtle, but i picked up on it. it was not a pleasant sensation. it didn't seem connected to anything occurring in the here and now.

i didn't like it. i wanted it to go away.

as soon as those thoughts came into my mind, the unpleasant sensation left. it dissolved, released, vanished.

i felt relaxed and peaceful.

who knows where it came from? i imagine it's old armor, an old defense pattern, unconscious habit. something that no longer serves me.

who knows what triggered it? i didn't notice it start, what was happening then, how long it had been there.

the point is, you don't have to know anything about it, just that it's there, you don't like it, and you want it to go away!

with my thoughts, i intended it away. the intending was a cooperation between auditory internal narrow and kinesthetic internal narrow. once it left, i felt peaceful, which was kinesthetic internal broad.

i read for a bit and went to sleep!

the earth does not belong to us. we belong to the earth.

“The Schumann resonance is a unique electromagnetic phenomenon created by the sum of lightning activity around the world. Electromagnetic pulses from lightning travel around the earth, bouncing back and forth between the ionosphere and the earth’s surface. At any given point on the earth, the Schumann resonance shows up as electrical and magnetic micropulsations in the range of 1-40 Hz.” (Oschman, 99)

There is evidence (though controversial) that geomagnetic rhythms serve as a cue for physiological rhythms. “There is evidence that geomagnetic pulsations strongly entrain brain waves during meditation and other practices in which one ‘quiets the mind’ to allow the ‘free-run’ periods to be dominated by geophysical rhythms.” (Oschman, 102)

Oschman hypothesizes that “if the therapist relaxes into the state of consciousness typical of those who practice meditation, therapeutic touch and QiGong… it is likely that his or her brain waves will, from time to time, become entrained with the micropulsations of the earth’s field. If the patient is also relaxed, both therapist and patient may become entrained with the earth’s field.” (Oschman, 107)

click the title of this post to go to a website on energy medicine. fascinating.

congratulations, lela!

i want to congratulate my daughter lela for being accepted into nursing school at ACC. she's worked long and hard for this, taking a lot of rigorous courses like biology, anatomy, physiology, chemistry, etc., all while working and mothering hannah, taking care of their needs, paying her bills, and managing to have fun and maintain a relationship.

she's quite a woman for managing all that.

she will start in the spring.

she plans to focus for the next two years on her nursing studies. she'll get a 3-year RN degree, which she can later turn into a BS in nursing at UT/Austin if she chooses.

lela, i'm so proud of you!