A Loving Reminder of What Matters to You

 

GUEST Blog Betty Lue Lieber .

Napkinwriter Note:  It is so easy to forget. To forget what we know. To forget where we are. To forget who we are. I am grateful for reminders when I am confused about any of these things. Betty Lue has been writing Loving Reminders, early each morning in silent stream of consciousness space. I am grateful to receive her reminders. They are such a great spiritual check-up for me. Thank you Betty Lue.

Loving Reminders 6/7/2020

Affirmations:
I choose the best I know.
I am grateful for having choice.
I choose what matters to me with joy.
I respect the thoughts, words and activities I choose.

June 7, 2020 Loving Reminders – What Matters?

What Matters to You?

“If you don’t mind, it won’t matter.”
Where you judge matters.
What you choose matters.
How you live matters.
When you speak matters.
Who you love matters.
What you give time and energy to matters.
How your life works matters.
What you do with money matters.
What you think about matters.

You are giving your life energy to what matters to you.
Whether you know it or not, your life is telling on you.
You have what matters to you.
What you care about matters to you.

To simplify your foci for attention, choose 5 qualities or experiences that matter most to you.
Begin to live as though these areas matter most and watch them thrive and expand with success.
Observe everyday how what you think and do and say support what matters most to you.
Focus positive proactive energy on what matters to you.

If money matters most, then give it conscious attention and consideration everyday.
When friends matter most to you, give them attention with positive thoughts, words and activities.
When your health matters most to you, make sure all that you ingest and do support your health.
When your home matters most to you, make sure it is clean, organized and harmonious daily.

Life is a canvas on which we are creating what matters to us.
When we don’t like what we see, it is because we have put it there unconsciously.
To change what we see and experience, we must erase and delete and choose again for what matters to us.
Life requires us to consciously choose what we want to see and experience because it matters to us.

When we find ourselves in trouble, we can focus on the trouble or be grateful for the peace.
When we find ourselves in sickness, we can worry about lack of health or we can enjoy being alive.
When we feel like victims of our situation, we can succumb to the pain or rise up in faith.
When we are lost in financial struggle, we can be angry and resentful or appreciate how much we have.

When we realize our focus creates our experience, we learn to focus solely on what we choose.
When we validate our thoughts and words create, we clear the unconscious thoughts with consciousness.
When we recognize we are here to learn to create our reality, we give up allowing others to create for us.
When we step away, forgive what is NOT and choose what IS, we can see we can stand up for ourselves.

Life is best played with full consciousness and conscience, responsibility and respect, for what it.
Be grateful it is so.
Forgive mistakes as opportunities to learn.
Choose again quickly and easily for what you really want to be.

You matter to me.
These Loving Reminders matter.
Your health and happiness matters.
All I give makes a difference, because we all matter.

Loving us all,
Betty Lue

The only mistake we ever make is when we forget to Love.
Betty Lue

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#We’re All in This Together

These images are Process Journey Images – 24 Days to Solstice with Cat Caracelo. The Name of My Journey is To Live in Grace. This is Day 6. This private journey inward takes place with the existing circumstances of Covid-19, changing our way of life and another killing in our black community by a law officer. No Justice – No Peace is where we live today.

My 24 Day Art Journey will also take place in the NOW — within and without. This is a very real time where we all have a chance for a break-through; there is enough compassion, there is enough desire, there is, above all, enough NEED for each of us to have the courage to change what needs to change.

There are many of us who are struggling for more ways to connect, to make meaningful a life lived from soul desire to make a difference — a big difference. And the light from those willing to do the things that hurt, do the things that help, employ the grace of the Holy Spirit for the fire-y guidance that shows forth upon all humans to live as they are created, children of God in all races and creeds. Pray that we do that. Pray that we learn. Pray that we are willing. Pray that we listen. Pray that we care and in that compassion add a little light to a world darkened by hate, violence, and bigotry.

Pray that we admit it HAS to change. We must find our way from chaos to community. We must find more and wonderful ways we can connect. There are enough people in the world that truly want this to happen. Pray that this happens so very soon.

 

Our DNA brings us to this point and in this chaos, we must find the peaceful and just way of moving forward. #We’re in this TOGETHER. There are not many paths, there is ONE path – TOGETHER….but how many WAYS can we find TOGETHER? We all must try.

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Our Family Soul

 

During this time of Covid-19 and our attempt to begin both to return to our working world and our social and cultural pastimes, we are reminded often to pay attention to “safety” for ourselves and others. In fact, not only to pay attention to this safety but to feel our responsibility to be faithful to safe practices, like mask-wearing and social distancing. We hear often, and it is reinforced in commercial ads that “We are in this together.”  And “We will get through this together.

While there is some dissention about  clinging to our individual rights and freedoms, the larger picture and message is one of concern and even some fear of the unknown and left-over effects of both the Pandemic and our individual actions.

There is an upturn of care and thoughts of our family and neighbors; our health care workers; our first-responders; our grocery personnel; our food supply chain truckers who have kept food on our tables. Things could already be so much worse without the bravery and commitment of these people who work daily among the invisible enemy of this disease.

In my soon to be published memoir, Journey Girl; Steps in Secrets and Sanctuary, I reveal how an invisible birth mother, who was never fully explained to me, nor honored in my home growing up, affected me to the point I had to “complete her” in my adult years and make the truth of her a present part of my ancestry and my children’s and grandchildren’s lives going forward. While there was no ill-intent in the secrecy, it was bound and complete, until I could figure out who I could question and where I could search for answers. She was part of my Family Soul. Just as we are now gaining more insight on: We are all part of the Human Family Soul. The call is for each of us to build that up in the way for us most open to do it.

Journey Girl

From: Chapter Eleven,  — Island of Silence:  “Remembering Your Birthright

Science recognizes that we have a family soul. It is evident in our reliance upon DNA. It is required that we give our family medical histories in all new patient interviews. This gives the medical professionals pertinent information they may use to compile a profile of who we are based partially on what was present in our mother and father. They can then use this information to help them determine a satisfactory physical profile of their patients and make medical decisions of treatment with an awareness of possible threats to their physical wellness that arise from history. Science and soul are not at odds.

The fields of psychiatry and neurology and writings in classic literature suggest a longstanding belief that we are more than what we think we are—and this points to our relationship with who came before us in more than a nostalgic sense. Noted psychiatrist Carl Jung said “our souls, as well as our bodies, are composed of individual elements which were already present in the ranks of our ancestors.” This is a partial description of what I mean by a family soul. We often read that the eyes are the mirror to the soul in religious text. Author Ralph Waldo Emerson sounded his agreement by writing, “the eyes indicate the antiquity of the soul.”

Jung also advised, “Learn your theories as well as you can, but put them aside when you touch the miracle of the living soul.” Maybe our whole human being-ness is a theory that evolves along with the miracle of the soul. You sound or look like your mother (only I did not). You notice he stands just like his father or you see your own likeness in a newly discovered photo of your grandmother. Through spirituality, psychology, and science, the miracle of the soul is full of new discoveries.

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Stepping Stones

 

Stepping Stones
                Susan Heffron Hajec

By the water’s edge, she sheds her shoes
and steps toward the stone path
winding just off shore.

With no turning back I mind, she releases
the safety of ground beneath her feet
and any doubt that holds her back.

Moving forward is what she intends.
Turning the old version of herself into
the new vision of dreams, ripe and ready
through the soil of her new springtime.

Just as the seedling engages with the soil,
sunshine and rain spins its path
to the light of day.

She mixes risk with courage to bring her plant
to bloom in a world hungry for the sweetness
of flowers and green promise of hope.

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It’s Heart Time on the Planet

 

Couple jumping dolphins, blue sea and sky, white clouds, bright sun

 

 

“The full potential of the heart and its intelligence has is yet to be fully unfolded and understood. Much like the electricity changed the outer world, learning to harness the power and intelligence of the heart can change our inner world.”  

During this time of rapid and massive changes, due to the presence of the world-wide Corona virus, Covid-19, we all have a chance to look outward into our external world and inward to our soul, heart and value system. Many people from different backgrounds are experiencing an impetus for positive change in ways they never had before. Other people are desperately sick with the virus itself and very near their last breath. Many families are encased in a private grief of lost dear ones and distanced from others who could give them physical comfort.

These are enormous changes — over a time span of which we do not yet know.. What do we do with this rapidly changing world in our food and goods delivery systems, our at-odds and feisty political parties, our religious worship practices, our education and health systems, our jobs and financial structures? All of these things touch us daily and will be changed forever even when the virus is gone.

One of the most important aspects of the changes taking place is a rediscovery of what’s been hidden in plain sight all along…its the heart. Along with the chaos, there is a new emergence of heart-based awareness and intelligence. I studied some of this in 2012 with Barbara Marx Hubbard, an evolutionary visionary and with the HeartMath Institute.

A unified message is emerging in public service announcements because of the gigantic way of delivering help, services, and companionship.  “We’re all in this together,” and never has it been more clear how inter-connected we are to one another throughout the world. There is a human presence of using the vast internet programs and platforms to build up the human and the human spirit from its loss of many things including free mobility by air, sea, or car. There is a recognition of the sacrifices and struggles of all of the world health care systems, and the nurses and doctors closest to death on a daily basis.

There is singing. There are thank you’s.. There are pep talks, “We will get through this, together.”  There is a remembrance of forgotten populations of our society, the poor, the sick, the elderly and individual efforts to give where it is needed. The commercials from the banking systems, retail, personal services all point toward, “we’ll be back” but in the meantime , “take good care of yourself.”

All of this points to a fundamental fact. Goodness and health is based in the heart. And the heart knows what is best in both our actions and our thoughts. I have signed up for a short course summary of the HeartMath Experience. It will be a good precursor for my cardiac evaluation coming up this summer. I intend to put some of the summary reminders on Napkinwriter so my readers can attune their hearts to wholesome practices and communication. Good nutrition is a great baseline, but there is so much more your heart is asking for.

 

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Drawing isn’t the Problem

It is fun to draw because it really does affect how you see. We often draw on paper what we think something looks like. But we are seeing with our brain, not our eyes. When we stop to draw what we are observing, we make an entirely different image…it might be an exact representation or it may be subtle hints and shapes of the object that help the viewer also see the object more clearly.

Not much in our world is clear these days, judging by the large picture. New memes seem to be forming and staying that cloud our perspective that good and kindness and wisdom still exist. Too much constant shouting, too much “me too”ism’s, too much random violence wrought upon the innocent. Everyday in every way, we are witness to what we wish would not be. Just when did human communication focus and grow upon harmful, hateful expressions. Words have power. Words are real. Hateful words are sticks and stones and they do hurt others.

But there it is. How do we see clearly? How do we see beyond the appearance? How do we stay balanced? How do we define the world we live in right now? Officials speak about not letting violent outbursts and killings “define us”. Yet when it does occur it has devastating realities that run through the victims’ family and community far into the future, long after the cameras and newscasts have left. They leave behind their observations “that this community is beginning the healing”…yet they are still in shock before the real, lifelong journey of healing actually begins with each painful day of loss that didn’t have to be.

Most often, in pain and sorrow, even beyond the pain and sorrow that may hang suspended for s long time, most seek some kind of genuine love to express. It seems so huge, this hole of hurt cast upon them. And while everything hurts, they find the energy to move step by step into each new day, redirecting their purpose to live their own life in a genuine way, not covering up this horror they have been asked to bear.

Those of us untouched by what we see has touched others redirect as well. I hunker down and practice more acts of kindness, find more ways of listening intentionally, and remember that  “I and “they” are dear ones, treating them as such.

“Dear one, I am here for you”

 

 

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After the Fact

AP photo credits

 

 

I don’t seem to write of tragic happenings at the time they occur. Words and feelings bulk up inside of me for a time before they are released upon the paper or the computer file.

April 15 is always a day that refers to United States Tax Day and whether or not you have filed on time. April 15, 2019 now lives in infamy as the Notre Dame Cathedral burned as we all watched via computer, or television, or hand-held device, or in person, standing on the streets and bridges of the Seine river in Paris.

 

 

GOD BLESS the heroic firefighters. At 11:23pm when the fire chief announced the rest of the structure of fire-stricken Notre Dame Cathedral was saved, it was within 30 minutes of total collapse. The roof’s irreplaceable ancient wooden beams cut from trees that were alive a millennium ago were gone, The iconic spire fell at 7:40. As darkness poured over the city, 20 firefighters at great risk to their own lives climbed into the two towers to fight the fire from the inside out. By 9:49 pm, fire officials didn’t know if their best would be good enough. But it was. And the world is grateful to them for what they saved. I think of my cousin firefighter Theresa Hajec in Fenton Michigan and say special prayers for her and her fire crew for God’s love and safety to surround them on their daily job.

 

 

It is Holy Week on the Church calendar. People around the world are turned inward in reflection upon what meaning and purpose their practice of Christianity holds in their lives. It is the season of Resurrection and Mary is the way through which all graces flow.

A silence overtakes us now, just as it did for the apostles immediately following Christ’s crucifixion What stood in our midst is no longer there and we grieve the hole it leaves in our hearts and in our lives for it’s pure magnificence touched even ones who could not be in it’s presence.

But in the air is felt a strong current of Resurrection. Yes, there is faith and beyond that a whole certainty that Notre Dame shall rise again. Somehow providing us with a noble link to the past, a firm acceptance of the present, and a way shower to future times.

Ave Maria. Gratia plena. Ora pro nobis.

 

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To Women Who…

To those who bake the bread, tend the hearth, love the children, care for the sick, honor the elders, pave the way, live in truth, serve with compassion, find the joy, soften the heart…to woman filled with grace, light the way, embrace humble boldness, protect their dreams, honor their path….to woman holder of sanctity, filled by Divine Spark, dedicated teacher, keeper of the keys, container of change, womb of new life, be blessed, be joyful, be…

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I Got a Reminder Today

 

I got a reminder today and I need reminders. This reminder came on my email from BettyLue Lieber. She sends them out often and writes them in little booklets. Today’s came just in time, as more violence and nasty words flood the media and actions are horrid to behold. I refocus on what is mine to do. The Reiki Principles I practice help to center me: Just for today, I release all worry. Just for today, I release all anger. Just for today, I shall live my purpose and do my work with integrity. Just for Today, I shall honor every living thing. Just for today, I shall show gratitude for all my many blessings.

October 29, 2018 Loving Reminders – Live Well!  from Betty Lue

Affirmations:
I learn my life lessons quickly.
I listen and receive healing messages easily.
I give my gifts joyfully.
I do my work gratefully.

Are You Getting the Message?

We all have lessons to learn.
We all have messages to receive.
We all have gifts to give.
We all have work to do.

What will it take to get the message?
Is it coming through to you?
Are you listening to what you hear and feel inside?
Are you watching your life show you what is not working?

Feeling sorry for yourself puts you to sleep.
When you eyes are closed you cannot see.
When you are tuned out, you cannot hear.
When you are numb, addicted or in a trance, you cannot understand.

Life wakes us up.
Pain is an alarm.
Upsets are wakeup calls.
Problems are tests.

I choose to be awake to notice, see and hear and feel.
I prefer to address my life as the teaching it offers.
I trust that what is mine is mine to heal and handle.
I enjoy the rewards of responding with love.

Begin to write whenever you are upset for any reason!
“The real reason I am upset is:………………….”
Write every response you hear in your mind.
Continue writing “ The real reason I am upset ……” until you are empty.

After perhaps pages of thoughts, feelings, excuses, defenses and justifications, you will be clear.
Whatever is left after you cross off what you know is not true, you will find what is “bugging” you.
There will be one or two beliefs that you need to face or erase.
The splinter will fester until you clean it out of your thought process.

Most of what needs to be healed will be your limiting beliefs, lack of confidence and judging yourself.

Ten Keys to a Good Life:

Be Responsible for the entirety of your life.

Be Open to learn from everything and everyone.

Be Forgiving of all mistakes, yours and others.

Be Truly helpful by thinking, speaking and giving your best.

Be Impeccable in caring for your body, relationships, home, work, finances.

Be Willing to live with moderation in all things.

Be Aware of the Gift of Love and the Call for Love.

Be Exact with your thoughts and words; they create your life.

Be Hard-working with wisdom, gratitude and joy.

Be Good. See Good. Think Good. Speak Good. Give Good.

I am loving us all.
It is love that prevails in all things, large and small.
Above all, let us simply remember to love.
Betty Lue

Sue & Napkinwriter respond:
Yes, yes, yes. No matter where we are, who we are, we are bombarded with the impulse to respond in fear. It was so painful and it took me so long to cast out fear and replace with love, that I am so recognizing that the people with the mics on the world stage today want our decisions to be fear-based. Instead, I see their real purpose is to help me reaffirm more deeply and respond with love. While it may be hard to love, and not with a Pollyanna love but with the love Christ said casts out all fear, I realign each day, practice Hono’ponopono for myself and others and try to live my purpose, centered in the Five Reiki .  I am so grateful for the lessons that brought me so much pain but also so much sight, clear-eyed seeing, with no addictions, no excuses. Bless you Betty Lou and Robert too.

 

Just for today, I release all worry.
Just for today, I release all anger.
Just for today I live my purpose and do my work with integrity.
Just for today I honor every living thing.
Just for today, I show gratitude for all my many blessings.

Thank you, God, for all my blessings.

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The Sound and Sight of the Wind

 

It is Monday morning, September 11, 2017 and Hurricane Irma, with devastating power, has torn across the Carribbean  islands, leaving wide wreckage in its path, then winding northward between Cuba and the Bahamas now has made landfall in seven different places on the Florida coast.

The sounds and force of the blowing plus one hundred miles per hour winds and the sights of the surge out to sea and back in again play across the television screens of all of those not knocked out of electrical power in the effected areas.

Hurricane Irma cuts a wide path of destruction across the entire peninsula as her Cat 5 rating lowers to a 2 and then as a 1. Then the tropical storm heads into the Southeastern states with plenty of wind and rain left to cause havoc to residents along the way.

The sounds and images of this traveling disaster that are imprinted upon me, one who resides outside the danger area, are the human sounds and sights of help and consideration. Everywhere in the physical areas awaiting the storm, officials took charge and put their Disaster Plan into effect and kept their number 1 priority the safety of its citizens. Even with warnings that went ignored by some at their own peril, their directives were largely heeded by the majority of Floridians.

Individuals and families prepared their physical properties as well as they could and followed the evacuation orders or shelter in place so as to save life and limb. Gas and oil companies, so often maligned, did everything they could to keep gas flowing for those travelers who had to leave precious belongings behind but take the only thing that really mattered out of harm’s way — their own lives.

People out of the danger areas offered up space in their own homes so the journey would not be so far for those with homes in flood zones. Out of State friends and family of Florida residents, if they could do no other, kept the highest good for their beloved ones in the top of their minds and hearts and offered what they could in support by prayer, monetary and durable goods to “flood” into the area that would have great needs over the next few weeks.

THESE ARE GOOD SIGHTS AND SOUNDS IN THE FACE OF HIGH IMMINENT DANGER.

This is humanity choosing to move forward each day, confident that somewhere within themselves they have the RESOURCES  and ABILITY to express life, love, wisdom and even the seed of divinity.

“This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.” Ps. 118:24  Well, maybe we don’t rejoice IN the day that brings hardship, sorrow and trouble, but we reside IN the day with a spirit that is summed up in the Serenity Prayer:

Grant me the Serenity
to accept the things I cannot change.
To change the things I can
and the Wisdom to know the difference.

There were many people in Florida embodying that short statement and still are.

And all God’s creatures.

 

And one mayor said,  “How can you help us?…Prayer is not the last thing, it is the FIRST!”

A friend told me this morning that she was recently in NYC and had seen and been deeply affected by the 9/11 Memorial. Today is sixteen years after the unspeakable horror of the attack on 9/11/2001.  She wrote this interesting observation:

“I’m guessing all of us remember were we were when we heard about these events of that day and how that morning turned quickly from the everyday, common tasks to grief and fear and so many other emotions. Why is it that we don’t realize the significance and beauty of ordinary things until those things are threatened or taken away?”

I ask myself that same question, realizing how the ordinary can blind us to its beauty and truth.

I learned in my childhood faith that a man who knew himself as Divine — Jesus — told us in many different ways, “I came so that you may have life, and have it more abundantly.”

I still believe that today, as a well-travelled spiritual seeker of truth, peace and love and elder  citizen.  Only I recognize that I don’t always know or acknowledge what and where my true abundance is.

I think the it is, for some reason, more visible in a time of danger and need. Can we carry this truth, peace and love on into our ordinary days ahead, once we have been restored to the normal in our lives and the disarray of our political system.

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