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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SHOWING UP FOR LIFE

Today, Napkinwriter posts a guest piece written for DAILY OM on line by Madisyn Taylor. I check in on her writing often because she talks about things that make a difference to me or give me a new way of looking at an old routine. Today is about SHOWING UP for life, and very fitting while we all are on some type of temporary hold in our life patterns because of COVID-19. If we are not on hold, we are either fast-tracked into a day full of urgent needs by the first responders and health care personnel who are overwhelmed by the instant demands of their day, and emotionally bonded to the human loss of life and separation from loved ones as they succumb to the disease despite all of their efforts.

Then the greatest number of us are in a “hold” pattern until we get into the staged re-entry of our lives as they were in January and February, knowing that even then we will be entering into a “new normal” before normal ever appears in our life.

Yet, we still have to show up in our life which means new routines and creations to keep physical and mental and emotional areas healthy. We have to move forward in some way that is meaningful to us. And so, most of us do just that. I offer you a few thoughts on that.

Showing Up For Life

BY MADISYN TAYLOR
If you show up for yourself in your life, the universe will show up for you.

The way we walk into a room says a lot about the way we live our lives. When we walk into a room curious about what’s happening, willing to engage, and perceiving ourselves as an active participant with something to offer, then we have really shown up to the party. When we walk into a room with our eyes down, or nervously smiling, we are holding ourselves back for one reason or another. We may be hurting inside and in need of healing, or we may lack the confidence required to really be present in the room. Still, just noticing that we’re not really showing up, and having a vision of what it will look and feel like when we do, can give us the inspiration we need to recover ourselves.

Even if we are suffering, we can show up to that experience ready to fully engage in it and learn what it has to offer. When we show up for our life, we are actively participating in being a happy person, achieving our goals, and generally living the life our soul really wants. If we need healing, we begin the process of seeking out those who can help us heal. If we need experience, we find the places and opportunities that can give us the experience we need in order to do the work we want to do in the world. Whatever we need, we look for it, and when we find it, we engage in the process of letting ourselves have it. When we do this kind of work, we become lively, confident, and passionate individuals.

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Grandma Knows What to Do

 

 

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Acknowledging What Came Before…Suzy Baum Banks

GUEST BLOG 

Dark Journal 
writing.ritual & art making

Suzy Banks Baum

There is not a day that passes without me doing this:

I set out to bring the veg scraps to the compost. I pass the majestic oak. I pass the ancient maple stump that was 250 years old when the rest of its tree self fell 20 years ago. I walk on the mossy grass and murmur prayers of thanksgiving to all the spirits who hold this land. I send prayers of honor to the people who inhabited this place before me. Before the people who built our house in 1898. Before the white settlers came to this area and called it Great Barrington in 1726.

The traditional Native inhabitants of this area were Mohican. Stockbridge Mohican, as I learned from my friend Jimmy, who is a member of that tribe. Long displaced to Wisconsin, the tribe has a presence here in Berkshire County, no matter how many years have passed since they hunted, traded, and lived here. Just to the north of where I sit, stands Monument Mountain, a sacred place for Mohicans. My children went to high school in its craggy shadow. We have hiked it more times than I can recall. A few miles east is the confluence of the Umpachene and Konkapot Rivers. That land was a special meeting place for the Indigenous inhabitants of this territory. We go to those waterfalls for sanctuary in every season.

By my estimation, that Sugar Maple stood while the Mohicans still populated what is now called Berkshire County. This fact alone causes me to stop and say thank you for the shelter that tree provided then, and for what it gives to my family now.

How does the land you walk on nourish your day? How can you give thanks and acknowledge those who came before you? How does the act of breathing, step by step, connect you to yourself and help prepare for the coming winter season?

If you find yourself edgy and twitching from seasonal sensory overload, here is a small gift. It comes to you without cost, for it is the freshest and most readily accessed gift we can find every moment.
It is breath.

Place your right hand on your belly.
Place your left hand on your heart.
Begin to breathe so that you lift the belly hand slightly with your inhale, while your heart hand stays still.
Continue to breathe in this pattern, slowly. Inhale, move the belly hand. Exhale feel your belly fall toward your spine.

Continue in this breathing pattern for at least ten rounds of breath. If you feel lightheaded, please stop and try it again later.

This practice quiets my nervous system. I awoke this morning worrying about my daughter. I put my hands on belly and heart and breathed slowly for ten rounds. As I did, I saw her with plenty of strong solutions to the snag she is in right now. I saw her swimming forward in her life with strong brave strokes. I continued breathing and noticed how my mind, so quick to enter the day agitated, instead relaxed.

I hope you will consider joining me for Advent Dark Journal, a nourishing 6-week self-paced guided experience with writing, art, and ritual prompts delivered to your email every Saturday morning.

You can read all about it here.

Or go ahead and register here.
With love from my heart to yours,
Suzi

Copyright © 2019 Suzi Banks Baum, All rights reserved.
Via SuziBanksBaum.com, or at LaundryLineDivine.com
Our mailing address is:
Suzi Banks Baum
Post Office Box 224
Great Barrington, MA 01230

Add us to your address book

TO Suzi from Napkinwriter:

I needed this in this exact agitated moment, dear Suzi. I will share on Napkinwriter. Hearts and blessings to you, dear friend. I am breath…
Sue
aka Journey GIrl

 

 

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An Invitation from Andrew Norton

You are invited in this guest blog to come, stand before the dawn and be still…without words…and wait….   What would that be like for you?

The invitation
By Andrew Norton

Come with me and stand before the dawn,
let us be still,
without words
and wait,
wrapped in the blanket of darkness
within and without.

Watch with me
as sun splinters break into our worlds,
to see and to be seen,
never giving ourselves in total to the light,
but residing in the threshold of shadows
to protect this precious gift.

The invitation of this day comes
through the mist across the vast sea
ensuring the mystery of our adventure,
the known and the unknown,
consummated through our eyes,
a revelation, a constant re-veiling,
for to see fully would be not to see at all
as it is in the familiar of things that we lose our sight.

From this dawning may we awaken
tired eyes blinded by the ordinary

 

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We All Need a Loving Reminder

Watercolor Waterfall by Susan Heffron Hajec

I received this reminder to love today from my favorite reminder person, who has given us these reminders on a daily basis for a very long time now. Betty Lue — these words definitely help me today.

 

Betty Lue Lieber – Loving Reminders
Affirmations:
I love well and live well.
My life works well because I love!
I forgive myself for withholding love.
I easily and freely love all the Good I have.

August 14, 2019 Loving Reminders- Love Well and Live Well!

Love Well and Live Well!

How you love, you will be living.
It is by our consciousness of love that we choose to remember to love others.
It is with love for others that we begin to recognize how well love works.
It is with love for ourselves that we realize how fun, safe and easy to live well.
Take time to pause and enjoy your life right now and right here.
Say “thanks” to each one who comes to show you the way.
Some show you how to love and some show how not to love.
Everyone has a gift to give and receive.

When we are learning to love, we know we can do better.
We listen to what each person or child needs or wants to receive.
We watch what works and doesn’t work.
We can easily see the call for love with those who need to experience love from us.
Loving well requires that we have love for ourselves.
Loving well asks that we access the love within us.
Loving well invites us to choose to love no matter what.
Loving well shows us how to love with words, thoughts and behaviors.

When you lack in love, surround yourself with people that are loving.
When you need love and affirmation, join groups, read books and listen to music that inspires love.
When you forget to love, give yourself daily reminders of how to love yourself and others.
When you deny or withhold love, practice regular forgiveness of limiting love.

Life truly is a gift of love, when you are open and receptive.
Life teaches us to be love, when we are ready to learn the lessons;
Life is an experimental laboratory, we have not believed in love.
Life is a clear reflection of the effectiveness of loving and living well.

Enjoy the life you have and love it well.
Appreciate the love you have and live it well.
I love and appreciate YOU,
Betty Lue

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Living the Resurrection

Living the Days of Resurrection

 

Guest Blog from Christine Valters Paintner
Galway, Ireland

 

A love note from your online Abbess

Take My Hand

Please don’t plant me
neat rows of rosebushes
and tulips at attention,
no manicured gardens
or crystal vases of cut stems.

Instead, take my hand,
lead me onto
rain-softened grass
which undulates like a boat
on a summer lake,

lie down with me
in a quilt of sunlight and shadows
among yellow petals, violet trumpets,
a feast for hares and bees,
let’s linger and forget ourselves

until even the tiled sky above
is cracked open by stars
and all that is restless and wild
within us can roam the heavens
howling the moon aloft.

—Christine Valters Paintner

Dearest monks, artists, and pilgrims,

After the six weeks of Lent and our disciplines of letting go of distractions and listening more deeply to the sacred call in our daily lives we arrive to the Feast of Easter which initiates a 50-day season of practicing resurrection. I love this sense of invitation into what it means to live resurrection in the midst of the ordinary routines of life.

I wrote this poem a couple of years ago while up in Donegal on a writing weekend. It was being held at this lovely manor house with a large grassy area out front leading down to a lake. During one of the writing sessions, the instructor invited us to go outside for fifteen minutes and see what was inspired. I wandered out hungrily, so glad for time to move outside into the summer sun, sit under a broad tree offering shade.

For me it is a poem about the longing for wildness in my life. I am aware how having everything in order and well planned can be so seductive, but the divine presence is not a God of neat rows and lining everything up just so. Certainly the Easter story many of us celebrate today reveals a divine wildness which erupts into the world beyond our expectations. Practicing resurrection in part means opening to what happens when we release our ideas of how things should unfold.

There have been times in my life when I have embraced this sense of wildness with more vigor than others. Certainly selling everything we owned and leaving Seattle for an adventure living in Europe was one of those seasons. Now living in Galway for the last almost seven years, I have a lovely and sweet life that I adore and am grateful for each day. It involves certain sacred rhythms and times of silence to listen deeply. What is most nourishing to me is a wander down by the sea, to feel the roughness of wind, taste the salt on my skin, to shake loose all the things that have become too determined, too set in expectation.

I invite you to enter this poem as a form of lectio divina. Read it through slowly and notice what words or phrases are shimmering for you. Let those unfold in your heart and listen for the sense of invitation arising. Then watch the video below and see what new layers the visuals offer to you. It is a poem of direct address to someone – a loved one perhaps or a prayer to the sacred source. What is your prayer of resurrection as we enter into this season ahead?

……to shake loose all the things that have become too determined…

 

Art by Shh

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Nan Rae Delights in Serendipity

art by Nan Rae

My journey and joy in learning Sumi-e brush painting has acquainted me with some website instruction on YouTube with Nan Rae. I find her invigorating, gracious, and owning every bit of her serendipitous journey into this art. Here is a glance.

 

DELIGHT IN SERENDIPITY!

Nan Rae – Her Journey in Sumi-e Chinese Brush Painting

In her own words: Everyone has a journey that is unique to them and it’s best followed by listening to the promptings of our heart. For me this involves saying yes to everything that presents itself and fortunately that ‘everything’ has always turned out to be something wonderful. Perhaps not visibly wonderful at the beginning but always becoming something amazing.

Of course this does require more faith in life than in following a predictable course but again, this seems to work for me. An early example of this would be when Ralph Tepedino contacted me years ago and asked if I would like to do the California Gift Show. Honestly, I didn’t even know what the Gift Show was but in my usually naive manner I said a resounding “YES”. At that time I was to share a 10 X 10 foot space with two other artists, one who sold her photographic images on greeting cards and the other a gal in England who pressed flowers and placed them on pillows, in frames and all manner of products.

Nan Rae

There I was with one small wall to display my line of greeting cards. If I cut to the chase I will tell you that within three years we were not only doing the Gift Show having three booths featuring only Nan Rae cards but the New York Stationary Show. From these two venues Trader Joe’s found me along with Ling Design in England and so many wonderful gift stores and museums that there isn’t room or time to name them. All serendipity!

Nan Rae

Every licensing contract has come to me just that way. Every commission, including the New York Philharmonic asking permission to use my artwork for their historic trip to Korea and China. I am always as amazed by this as you must be reading these stories but again, it’s my journey and it’s what works for me. A friend once told me she suits up and shows up and perhaps that is the key. We have to work hard and be fully prepared when opportunities present themselves and then be brave enough to say a resounding yes!
Find her and her beautiful paintings and classes at: http://www.nanraestudio.com

 

Nan Rae

Nan Rae explains on her website:

“An expert in Brush Painting, her works,
from her Paris experience,
sing with the joy of Impressionism.”
Nan Rae’s brush painting combines the grace of the Literati style
with an impressionist approach to color.
The Literati style seeks to transcend the mere representation,
of a subject to capture its ch’i, or life force, by using a
minimum of brush strokes for maximum effect.
No sketches are prepared and no models are used.
The artist paints with rapid, intuitive movements of the brush
that convey a “mind image” of the subject.
Sumi-e, Japanese Ink painting,
came from the influence of Chinese Brush;
the techniques and brushes are the same.

Her motto is, Live Joyfully watching her instruct it is easy to see this joy — this ch’i — surrounds and embodies her. She is joy personified.

She encourages me to “get my ch’i on!” and to watch for it in my own brush paintings.

Find her at: http://www.nanraestudio.com

 

Napkinwriter’s journey with Sumi-e is a slow, winding one filled with wonder with what is achieved in this tradition of brush painting. According to the Mustard Seed Garden book, which is considered the bible of this method, there are bunches of rules and regulations for the brush and the artist to produce a calming image filled with ch’i that the observer falls in love with. I have only mastered a few. They also list faults and I am familiar with many of them, even now in my beginning stages. I will watch and learn and enjoy.

by Sue

 

by Sue

by Sue

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Lent 2019

Today, I didn’t have my napkin in my purse to write upon, when I was at the 8 am children’s Mass on Ash Wednesday at Christ the King Cathedral. So many blessings entered my soul from the readings, to the music, to the homily and the children filling most of the cathedral. “Bless the Lord, Oh my soul.”

And of course, I can’t remember most of what I wanted to. I need napkins more than ever these days to remember, oh my remember. I know the first message I soaked up like a sponge was “Return to me with all your heart.” It is such a blessing to be involved in anything in our life where we are in it whole-heartedly.  Another scripture at another time warns us to be a full Yes or a No — anything in between  is not “of the Spirit.”

I am so grateful to be living whole-hearted in each day, maybe with a few aches and pains, various trials here and there, some inconveniences, but in the over-all appraisal, I feel grateful and whole hearted for the life I have.

Today, I share my SoulCollage image I made for Lent maybe over five years ago. I add to it the magnificent blog post of Jan Richardson, and thus I am complete. It is all here.

 

Readings for Ash Wednesday: Joel 2:1-2, 12-17; Psalm 51:1-17;
2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10; Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21

From Jan Richardson:

We are entering the season that begins with a smudge. That smudge is a testimony to what survives. It is a witness to what abides when everything seems lost. It is a sign that what we know and love may, for a time, be reduced to dust, but it does not disappear. We belong to the God who well knows what to do with dust, who sees the dust as a place to dream anew, who creates from it again and again.
—Jan Richardson, from Ash Wednesday: What God Can Do with Dust
The Painted Prayerbook, February 2018

Friends, as we enter into Lent, I want to share this Ash Wednesday blessing again. It’s been six years since I first wrote it, during what would turn out to be my last Lent with Gary. I have found that the question the blessing holds—”Did you not know what the Holy One can do with dust?”—is a good one to ask myself anew each time Ash Wednesday comes around. And I can say now: I know what God can do with dust. And I am learning still.

As this season begins, what blessing do you need to claim from the ashes?

Blessing the Dust
For Ash Wednesday

All those days
you felt like dust,
like dirt,
as if all you had to do
was turn your face
toward the wind
and be scattered
to the four corners
or swept away
by the smallest breath
as insubstantial—
did you not know
what the Holy One
can do with dust?
This is the day
we freely say
we are scorched.
This is the hour
we are marked
by what has made it
through the burning.
This is the moment
we ask for the blessing
that lives within
the ancient ashes,
that makes its home
inside the soil of
this sacred earth.
So let us be marked
not for sorrow.
And let us be marked
not for shame.
Let us be marked
not for false humility
or for thinking
we are less
than we are
but for claiming
what God can do
within the dust,
within the dirt,
within the stuff
of which the world
is made
and the stars that blaze
in our bones
and the galaxies that spiral
inside the smudge
we bear.
—Jan Richardson
from Circle of Grace: A Book of Blessings for the Seasons

NAPKINWRITER so highly recommended this beautiful, inspiring book. Buy it now!

 

Please include this info in a credit line: “© Jan Richardson. janrichardson.com.”

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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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