Health & Vitality - My Ongoing Search

Well, here I am, on the last day of my 365 day blog challenge.  It's a bitter sweet feeling, rather like the last day of school for somebody who loved going to school.  However, there were no final exams and no report cards involved.  It was a project of my own choosing and my own design.  It required commitment, discipline and resolve, and I'm pleased that I found the inner and outer resources to complete it. I now have great empathy for anyone who writes to meet a deadline on a regular basis.  I can't begin to imagine, for example, what it must be like to be a newspaper or website writer who has to submit a column every single day on something of substance. Writing is a solitary and sometimes lonely endeavor.  For the most part, it has just been me, my books, notebooks, pens and computer, sitting and puzzling over what to come up with each day. Some of what was on the Wisdom card I pulled this morning seems relevant.  In part it said:  'Yo...

Today we are looking after the little dog who belongs to our son's girlfriend.  When I took her out this morning to do her business, I noticed someone else had not picked up after their dog.  Generally, people here are pretty good about it.  I didn't have enough bags with me to take care of it this morning and hoped nobody would step in it before the next time I came out. This afternoon I took her out again.  On our way back in, I stopped to clean up the mess I had noticed this morning. It must have been from last night and due to rain from yesterday turned out to be a messy cleanup.  I was carefully pulling up grass around it to contain it, not paying enough attention to the bag.  Suddenly it was oozing onto my fingers!  Yuck! I'm holding a dog on a leash with one hand.  Thankfully, she is tiny.  With my other hand I'm trying to deal with the mess and tie up the bag.  So much for being a good citizen!  Though disgusting, I mana...

It's one of those cold, drizzly days here, which is a typical type of fall day.  Often we get warm spells until after our Thanksgiving, but maybe that's not going to happen this year.  It usually takes weather like this for me to start a gradual shift into more earthy tones of color accents around the apartment, as well as a more serious look at meal plan changes.  Oh, and I still haven't done the seasonal closet clothing juggle either, so that's still on the mental to do list as well. Just over a year ago, one of my early posts was about food for Thanksgiving.  That's less than two weeks away, and I'm seriously considering not even cooking a whole turkey this year.  There won't be a big family gathering and I'm leaning towards keeping it simple and relaxing, as much as I like the idea of having a big batch of bone broth and turkey soup.  I'll have to decide tomorrow, because my turkey order would need to be made this weekend. Conversations with ...

To paraphrase from a special guided meditation that I've been using recently:  "The body is sacred;  the mind is essential;  the heart is vital and the soul is our Divine compass."  That kind of sums up my ideal for integrating the experience of living. What also comes to mind is the notion of an expansive energy, probably universal in nature, what you might call God or Spirit, from which the source of our lives as humans on this earth comes.  There is an ongoing connection in the form of flowing energy, which we can access via focus and intentions, or may simply receive as an experience of grace. How do we tap into that source energy?  That's where practices like meditation, prayer, contemplation, reflection, rituals, and intention setting come in. I've had a full day today and was not able to fit in my usual meditation time.  However, I did still have some time early this morning to give myself a mini chakra balancing Reiki treatment before get...

Over this past year there have been many posts about the body, the mind and the inextricable connection between the two.  By taking the time to learn more and write about this, I have shifted my attitude somewhat towards my own body. To be honest, most of my adult life I have thought of my body as a machine that I needed to keep tuned up, or to fix when things break down.  I have often felt disdain about and disappointment with my body when it has not cooperated with my strategies. Since the body is such a crucial component in experiencing health and vitality in my senior years, I'm having to come to terms with the aspects of inevitable wearing out and decline which will occur to some degree, despite best efforts to fend them off.  Along with that will come the necessity of sometimes asking for and then accepting more assistance from outside myself, which is to me, an undesirable challenge to my sense of independence. What will be even more upsetting to me, at least w...