Good things in the midst of…

Argh! miss a single dose of migraine medicine, and I can’t catch a break :) So, living with a migraine since Friday. Still, there are lots of good things to be found, really the key to living in the world happily I think. Here’s my list for this weekend:

Finding the ability to get my work done Friday, and complete a scheduled mediation Saturday, so that I can still feel responsible and productive. Somehow, this goes a long way toward making it all OK.

A friend I spent the weekend with who shares this philosophy, with whom I greatly enjoyed the weekend in spite not being at my best. A weekend filled with comfort, good food, art, and conversation.

When I finally decided I should go to urgent care and get it taken care of, the excellent medical care I received there. A doctor who, in spite of how very busy they were with a wide variety of problems, spent a lot of time with me, checked my neurological status, carefully reviewed my medications, and made sure I wasn’t looking for narcotics. And checked in on me later even though they were in the midst of a genuine emergency.

The dream I had last night, in which a reiki master healed me. I could hear his voice, feel the energy flowing, smell the herbs burning, see the images. Between that and the medicine I received last night, being able to enjoy the sunny day today and write to all of you.

My purring cat, who despite her feisty nature and determined desire to walk all over me most nights, lay peacefully at my side and purred all night, allowing me to get a good night’s rest.

Life really is full of small pleasures. And now I hope to be all recovered for my trip to Phoenix tomorrow for a conflict resolution conference!

Fundamental goodness

Now and then I make it my business to try to find the good in things - or people - that I usually don’t agree with or appreciate. Like searching for good news in the doom and gloom media… or noticing the one area in which I can really appreciate President Bush’s ideas (his views on immigration reform).

The world is complex, and the more we objectify “the other”, the more we get ourselves into situations like partisan bickering, or in its ultimate expression, sectarian wars. But people, and even institutions, don’t really fit our rigid views of them, and we forget this at our peril.

So… this week it’s Christian fundamentalists. Not a group I usually have much in common with, being the agnostic liberal that I am. But here are some things I’ve seen in the news lately that I find heartening and truly in line with the Christian values I was taught as a child:

Foster care - Lately, there’s been a movement among fundamentalists to adopt and/or foster more children. All I can say is Hallelujah. There are so many kids in this world that need parents, it has always struck me as odd and even a little selfish to bring more into the world without taking care of the ones we have. Especially for those who don’t believe in birth control, there is a collective responsibility on all of our parts to take care of these children. I worry that the world has too many children to be sustainable (all the more reason to adopt!), which leads directly into the second topic…

Environment - There is an increasingly strong contingent of fundamentalists who believe that protecting and preserving the earth is man’s God-given responsibility. I couldn’t agree more - it doesn’t matter to me if you believe God created the Earth in seven days or if it was formed over millenia after the Big Bang. It IS our responsibility to care for the Earth, as well as the plant, animal, and human populations that live on it, and all that wish to do so are welcome in my heart.

And lastly, a bit of humor, seen on a church sign in my neighborhood:

“What did Noah do with all the woodpeckers??”

Small pleasantries

The things I am happy for this week -

This may sound funny, but the honking of geese :) We have a wetland behind our houses here, and the geese migrate back and forth in the morning and evening, quite low to the ground. The flock rather loudly and musically honks at each other as they fly over and it always makes me smile.

The incredibly gorgeous beautiful green that is bursting out all over in the forest behind my house. I may have to even take the screen off the upstairs window so I can take a picture of it. I love that time of year when the trees and shrubs are all finally filling in with their particular shades of new green, and it all sparkles in the alternating rain and sunlight.

The little zipping noise that lets me know that the brilliant red hummingbird is back and drinking out of my waterfall again. I’m not even going to try to take a picture of him (with my slow digital camera shutter speed). But he’s fun to watch :)

Making a difference

Recently I’ve found two web sites that seem especially helpful in making a real difference - in one’s own life and in other people’s lives. I just wanted to highlight these in case they can help you too, or you’d like to join in. The first has to do with microlending, and the second with personal goal-setting and achievement.

Microlending is a really cool practice that allows people in developing countries to obtain small loans to grow their farming or business, usually repaid within a year or two. Repayment rates are exceptionally high, typically above 95%. Kiva is a microlending website that allows you to personally view each candidate recipient and choose to whom and what kinds of projects you want to lend money. You can also see who else is lending to them, and combine your donations to fund larger loans. Then you get updates as the loan is repaid, and eventually get your money back to keep or loan to another person.

I’ve been wanting to be part of this for a while, so yesterday I contributed the money I made from tarot readings this week to four entrepreneurs at the site. Among my “portfolio” are:

- A woman farming and selling vegetables in Samoa
- A woman who has been working as a street vendor in Merida, Mexico, and is now working on setting up a little shop for food and household goods
- A woman selling vegetables in Kenya
- A man selling shoes in Kenya

All are supporting families and some are working to pay school fees for their children (a particularly worthy goal for girls in Africa). If we’re lucky we’ll get updates on the businesses from the aid organizations or the recipients, but either way we know people are getting the help they need at 0% overhead (Kiva requests additional voluntary donations to cover rent and overhead).

The second site is one that uses the power of the Internet to help people define and achieve personal goals. It’s very simply called 43 Things. On this site you can define up to 43 goals that you have for life, though most people start with many less and fill them in as they go along - I currently have 6.

Instantly, you are hooked up with others that share your goals, and you can read about their progress, their struggles, and their ideas for succeeding. You can also read journal entries from those who have done what you’re hoping to do, what it was like for them and how they did it. You can even use the geographic features to hook up with others and form local groups for whatever you want to do - go walking, practice Spanish, exercise more, whatever.

As you go along, you can create journal entries for your goals to keep track of how you’re doing. The site sends you reminders “from your past self to your future self” on intervals you pre-determine (or not, if you choose). For those who need or want it, you can even set up specific milestones with timetables and consequences :) Others can read your journal entries and cheer you on if they like what you’re doing. Once you’ve accomplished a goal, you can click on “I’ve Done It” and take it off your list - yay!

All in all, it seems more motivational than anything else I’ve seen. It combines the power of a blog with a networking site and tracking features to make it all work together - it can even link to your external blog if you want to - once I figure that out you may be seeing a new “Goals” category on this site :)

Signs of Spring

One of the interesting things about a home that’s relatively new to you is seeing what comes up in the garden that you didn’t plant :) And when you have a forest behind your house, there are always new discoveries to make. The daffodils and other little bulbs are pushing their way up through the leaves, and this heather has been blooming for almost a month now (!) ever since we got just a little bit of warm weather.

Here’s something I did plant - a flowering currant which is just starting to leaf out beautifully (never mind all the dry leaves I STILL haven’t raked up yet!)

And really my favorite sign of spring, other than the birds singing, is the flowering of this native plant, the Osoberry, or Indian Plum. It flowers before it leafs out, and you can see the little leaves sprouting at the top of each flower. One sex has green flowers and the other white, and I can never remember which is which. It flowers way before any of the other stick-like vegetation out back (dogwoods, salmonberry, etc.) so it’s a very welcome sight in the spring.

In praise of macaroni and cheese

I felt moved to write about macaroni and cheese today, for no apparent reason :) Maybe I’m just craving it, which as you’ll read, is not unusual. Once upon a time in our childhood, my brother and I loved to play imaginative games (actually, every kind of game - and we still do). I remember the day we were trying to imagine weird things like, if we could only eat one kind of food for the rest of our lives, what would it be? Oddly enough, we both had the same answer - macaroni & cheese!

When my Mom would go out for New Year’s Eve, she would let us stay up and watch movies until she got home, and have as much of one kind of food as we wanted. You’d think we’d pick chocolate, or popcorn, or something like that. Noooo - macaroni & cheese! (I think we did have popcorn one year - but it wasn’t as good). Mac & cheese has a kind of iconic status in my life, as many times in later years I actually did have to live on it.

Later I had moved out and was living with my boyfriend in high school. We were really, really broke, having something like $5 left over after paying rent and utilities for the month. We used to buy macaroni & cheese in bulk and just eat that - back then you could get 5 boxes for a dollar, and I swear there was more in a box - seems like boxes now are pretty skimpy. He would eat one box for dinner at night and I’d eat at school, and that’s the way it was.

Then I got to college and it was pretty much the same deal. I just about lived on mac & cheese and I never got tired of it. The only problem was affording the milk and butter to make it with. We quickly determined you could make it with milk and not butter - but not the other way around (ewww). I also made a very weird version in college which was mac & cheese mixed with a can of corned beef hash, and fried. Strange and looked really, well, never mind - but tasted good and was very filling. Talk about broke college food!

Finally I emerged from poor studenthood, and amazingly enough, I still love it. Now I might make it with chopped fresh tomatoes and basil, with several kinds of freshly grated cheese and a bit of sour cream for the sauce.

Though it’s truly hard to resist the bright orange Kraft variety, childhood memories and all. Still there are other boxed choices for the discriminating diner-in-a-hurry, including new white cheddar and alfredo varieties, Safeway O (organic) versions that look and taste just like Kraft but are cheaper and better for you and the environment, and Annie’s organic varieties, of which there is even a whole grain pasta version now - not to mention the ever-wonderful psychedelic peace pasta :)

Such riches! The ultimate comfort food - I believe I’ll be eating macaroni & cheese ’til the end of my days :)

Let tarot remind you of the good things in life…

I just had a client ask me for a very refreshing reading - she wanted to know what blessings might be coming her way early in 2007, and also what changes she could make to improve her life. All positive thoughts - a good way to start out a New Year. As I thought about it, I realized that none of my clients had ever asked me for a reading in just that way. I’ve done a lot of thinking over the last few years on how to stay positive and see the best in life no matter what is happening in your life, and this seems to me like a very good way.

Being me and reading with reversals, I had to decide what uprights and reversals would mean for this reading. I decided that uprights would be good things that might just flow to her from the Universe without a lot of action on her part, and reversed cards would indicate areas where she could make active improvements in her life with some effort.

Just thought I might share this idea in case anyone needs a dose of optimism for the coming year.