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Archive for the ‘Friendship’ Category

 

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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Just a Little Slice of Life
October 19, 2016 by napkinwriter

I had a beautiful photograph of the door on the 2016 blog post, but I am barred from adding photos to my blog recently. Have to check that out with Admin. But the story is still true and current in our feelings. 

We have moved and lived in a lot of houses over the years. Our home in Newton, NC had the prettiest front door we have ever had. It was built by a man, who lived across the street from us, and he and his wife became our good friends, Terry and Judy Rhead. Neighbor friends on our other side of us Lois and Jim, — the six of us were a little neighborhood in our own. Terry and Judy’s back yard looked like an English garden. None of us are in that neighborhood anymore. Jim and Lois moved back to Jim’s home town of Cleveland Ohio where he passed from cancer. Terry and Judy are back in Terry’s homeland of Wales. We hope to visit them there one day. And Lois moved back to her home in Upper State NY where she carries on ministry work and tells the next best joke she knows. What a nice little slice of life that was for us.
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March 14, 2020

Judy just wrote this note.

Sue this is so lovely. I have just found it. Terry sends his love to both. We hope you are both well.
Love and best wishes,
Judy

Napkinwriter   March 14, 2020
I responded:

Judy, how sweet to see this now in the time that travel can’t happen. Yet we know our hearts stay young for special friends at special times in our lives.

 

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“It’s been a long day for you,” the angel said to me. It was only 7:45pm but this angel knew the length of my day was not truly measured in the minutes on the clock. “Yes,” I agreed. “And it is the third long day this week with two more likely ahead of me.”

He listened quietly and nodded his head. This angel was the driver of the hospital shuttle bus that had picked me up to drive me across the street to the parking garage I left at 8:30 am this morning. I was his sole rider going back, just as I was the only one on the morning shuttle, most unusual.

This ride was very short and I was burdened down with two carry bags and my purse. In the course of this short ride, he learned today was my 54th wedding anniversary date, and my husband lay in the hospital, possibly awaiting the insertion of a pacemaker for his tired, slow beating heart. The conversation dribbled on between the two of us – me telling him we came to Lexington the day after we were married for Tom had gotten his first job out of college at the IBM Corporation.

“Oh,” he said. “I wished I would have gone with them. I had a chance, but I stayed in printing a long time.” The only trouble is, he lamented, was that the pay was good, but there was no retirement for him at the end.

Well, I told him, I worked in public relations so I had many interactions with printers.  Our lives took many turns after Tom left IBM, and with Tom’s health challenges and our own financial limitations I hoped God had me somewhere in the Big Picture.

“Oh, that’s certain. You believe he does.”  Yes, I said, I do.

So much in such a short trip. An old man still making his way on earth. Me, still hanging with it. I know I thanked him and told him he was kind as I stepped down the loading ramp of the shuttle.

Afterward at home, I was, sitting tired in my lounge chair, heading for bed, I thought about him again. Either as man or angel, he is why I don’t believe what they are telling us about living in a hateful, spiteful world. I, myself, keep bumping up against kind and thoughtful people like this one encounter with a perfect stranger.

I wished I had said to him, “You are doing a very important job now. Thank you.”

 

 

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I know. We all have mountains to climb. We all have moments when the spirit is willing, but the body is weak. We all have times when fitness means lying down and resting, not doing the next 5K around the corner.

This post is for those moments. When we can count on that indomitable, shining spirit within us, that excels beyond all belief. We are one with our God. And that is good enough!

Here is that spirit, in action! Call upon it today.

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Have you overworked your facial muscles today by smiling too much? There is an axiom that it takes more facial muscles to frown than to smile. I don’t know if that is true or not, but I’m going to error on the safe side and find as many reasons today to smile as I can.

I just finished cleaning one bathroom floor. That’s a reason to smile. I only have one left. Smile again.

I had some writing adventures this week where I started at 6:30 am in the morning and by 5:30 that evening, I had one sentence written. That might be even more than a smile. I might have to laugh to survive. What I did in between all counts as writing…it just doesn’t look like writing.

Today, several days later and many further attempts to put on paper what I was seeing and feeling in my creativity center, I am smiling that I have that section completed to my satisfaction. And I am smiling for all the co-creative creatures, thoughts, and inspirations that got me there.

I smile for the blessing of my family and friends and for the loving companionship and partnership with Tom. We smile and laugh about a lot of things special to us. It’s great to share a smile.

And I miss my friend, Lois, who always had a joke, a twinkle in her eye, and a tale of mischief to tell.

I smile when I think of her.

My face muscles get a pretty good workout on most days.

 

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This was a picture waiting to happen. We were having a wonderful visit with Lois in the woods in her cabin on Lois Lane in upper New York state near the Fingers Lake area.  We had been neighbors for a brief time in Newton, North Carolina. Lois and I walked the street together on occasion and she always came up with charming, if a bit surprising, tidbits to share.

We still keep in touch, particularly around big sports events, where Lois faithfully waves the Notre Dame flag and colors and checks in with us on how the mighty Green and White are doing.

The table above, was placed near her kitchen window, overlooking a wide green expanse to the back of her property. It was very common to see the deer come from the woods into the open space and even play together before retreating. I believe Lois sent Tom and me  on a journey to dump some feed back there for them among the natural foliage.

A healthy start to the new day — coffee, an apple, a pair of specs to read the Good Word.  I am pretty sure she still does this.

 

 

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I believe it was the Dali Lama who said that kindness was his religion. On Sunday, the dismissal hymn was “And they’ll know we are Christian by our love, by our love. And they will know we are Christian by our love.”

Will they? It is up to our and how we choose to share ourselves in the world, a world so much in need of kindness.  Mother Teresa said, “Christ has no hands but ours.” I look to see what my hands are doing.

Pema Chodron is a favorite author and spiritual influence upon this Christian. Her Zen Buddhist way of life and teaching indeed teach me much. I particularly like her book, “When Things Fall Apart.” The title was a shoo-in for me when I ordered it off Amazon.com.  Things were pretty much falling apart for me at that time. I found it and my Christian prayers both to be way-showers for me.

“Be kinder to YOURSELF.  How frequently I need that reminder. For kindness cannot flood into my world when I an unkind toward myself.

“Her ways are ways of gentleness and all her paths are peace.” That continues to be a guiding scripture for me. I am That I am.

 

 

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beautiful-moon

Napkinwriter is wishing my readers, family members and friends NEWNESS in your day……exciting STARTS in creativity, spirituality, kindness and wondrous living in your lives and in our world.   PEACE BE in 2017.

 

“Start Close In”
by David Whyte

Start close in,
don’t take the second step
or the third,
start with the first
thing
close in,
the step you don’t want to take.

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newton-nc-door

 

We have moved and lived in a lot of houses over the years. Our home in Newton, NC had the prettiest front door we have ever had. It was built by a man, who lived across the street from us, and he and his wife became our good friends, Terry and Judy Rhead. Neighbor friends on our other side of us Lois and Jim, — the six of us were a little neighborhood in our own. Terry and Judy’s back yard looked like an English garden. None of us are in that neighborhood anymore. Jim and Lois moved back to Jim’s home town of Cleveland Ohio where he passed from cancer. Terry and Judy are back in Terry’s homeland of Wales. We hope to visit them there one day. And Lois moved back to her home in Upper State NY where she carries on ministry work and tells the next best joke she knows. What a nice little slice of life that was for us.

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lucretias-first-sc

 

Lucretia’s Poem
                     Susan Heffron Hajec

She is the one.

She is one who has traveled
to be with friend.

She is one who opens
to grace in the day.

She is one who lives the grief
of her earthly loss of her love partner
who has traveled on.

She is the one.

She is one whose curiosity awakens
the glory of God in her surroundings
inside and in the landscapes of land and sea.

She is one who hears happiness and remembrance
in songs of long ago that touched her heart and spirit.

She is one whose girlish giggle
fits her womanly presence.

She is one who sight of tulips
brings instant connection to her love.

She is the one.

She is the one who laughs, sees, and
both understands, yet questions

The many mysteries of life and death
love and loss, family ties and

The sacredness of ancestor roots,
and spiritual truths and traditions
passed down through generations.
She is the One.

jude-and-lucretia-wedding

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