Light in the Darkness

One of the great joys of December is all the holidays of Light. The nights are becoming longer and longer. There is so much darkness in our days - and then the businesses and the homes start to twinkle like stars in the sky come down to Earth to bless us with what we most need. It's pretty, yes. But it is even more a symbol. Light in the darkness is Hope personified. The only real defeat in life is Despair.

Here is my little town of Ashland, Oregon, in the mountains just 14 miles from the California border, offering up Hope and Joy to the darkness....

Why Celebrate Beethoven by Becoming a "Point of Light"?

Beethoven's Birthday today!

Even if you don't love his music, it is undeniable that the man gave the world a great gift - soaring music in so many different genres, that influenced every generation that came after him.

OK, so the man was a genius.

But we all have gifts. ALL of us. And they need to be savored and relished for our own enjoyment - painting, coloring, writing, building dog houses.

And we need to keep reminding ourselves that some of these gifts need to be shared. The yarn group I started at my local Unitarian church has produced warm shawls and lap robes for Meals on Wheels and the local Senior Center. I have a bag, a la Santa, of 40 hats, gloves, scarves, etc. to share with the Emergency Food Bank. If you are food-insecure, you don't have $ for warmth. And if you can lower in the inner temp because you have sweaters, you can save some more $ to apply to food.

And I offer free classes every term at my local senior college. I do free health talks at the Food Co-Op. I do free work in reiki and other healing work as a percentage of my total work time.

In my parents generation - and among working class and Southerners today, especially - community work was an integral part of life. Everyone, of every income level except the dirt-poor, knew that they had a responsibility [that means, not optional] to give back out of whatever abundance they had - money, time, prayer, or all three.

The shredding of our social safety net - and Republicans going after "benefits" that we working people of America paid for, over a 47 year work life, like Medicare and Social Security - means that we have to band together as never before.

As a Hindu scripture reminds us, "Do not berate or think badly of the poor, because many poor were once prosperous - and you may someday lose your prosperity as well." In other words, we are all in this together.

So inventory what you are good at. Can you cook? (free cooking classes) Can you crochet? (sit over here by me) Can you build things? (Habitat). You get the picture.

Beethoven was a genius, and you and I are not going to have the earth-shattering impact that he had. But consider these words from Middlemarch: : "The growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs."

Every year when I pay my property taxes, I feel like the hero that I am. I am taking care of my community, without fuss or complaint. There are so many unhistoric acts of making our worlds a better place we can take.

Honor the man immortalized into the depths of space..... make your mark on your small corner of the world.

https://www.amazon.com/Red-State-Blue-Heart-Victoria/dp/1974032272/

The Secret Truth Behind the "War on Christmas"

The Truth Behind the “War on Christmas”

Of course, you know there is no war on Christmas and never was. The folks who claim otherwise are the slice of America that bemoans the Most Favored Religion status that Christianity had half a century ago. You know, religious pageants by all the kids at the PUBLIC school (including the kids whose parents were trying to teach them a different religion, or wanted their kids to have only science as their guide to life. The latter is sad, but certainly it is every parent’s right to not have a religion shoved down their children’s throats.). Christian religious decorations all over the schools. Christian religious symbols all over public, paid for by your tax dollars, government buildings, where the whole community needs to enter to receive a dog license, contest an easement or just go to work. Easter (not Spring) Break, which followed a Christian religious holiday.

Eventually, when enough new Justices were added, people who revered the Constitution and its hallowed separation of Church and State, the Supremes decided that it was all too egregiously unconstitutional. Hallelujah, said the vast majority of devout Christians, who could see the dangers to their religion in becoming a de-facto State Faith. Religion is irredeemably damaged when it gets wrapped around political power. Examples abound, both today and in previous centuries. [Email me PRIVATELY for details.]

The reason you can say Merry Christmas to someone and that someone has no idea what you really mean is because Dec 25 is a secular, civil holiday for the entire nation of citizens, as well as a religious holiday for a slice of those citizens, and the word “Christmas” has been appended to BOTH of them. If you say Merry Christmas you could be wishing someone a happy secular, civil holiday – or you could be greeting a co-religionist. You could be greeting a co-religionist and wishing them a happy BOTH holidays. Is this crazy? Ya sure, you betcha.

HOW did we get to this crazy state of affairs? The way we get to most messes: a cabal of people tried to get ascendency by grabbing power, not by earning respect. In this case, a group of Christian lawmakers thought of a clever way to make their religious holiday a national holiday – establishing their religion as the State Faith without being so overt about it that even a conservative Supreme Court couldn’t stomach it. The law establishing Dec 25th as a national, civic – secular! – holiday stated that Christmas was a holiday that was about family (not religion) and as such was embraced by all corners and segments of American society. It wasn’t true then, but the law made it so!

And that, dear devout and religious Christians, is why you can’t “Put Christ in Christmas” unless you are talking about your private religious celebrations, where he’s pretty well entrenched, you’ll have to admit. No, you can’t get Christ into a secular, civil holiday because – establishing your religion is unconstitutional in the USA. The national shopping, eating, visiting-family, commercial holiday with Frosty and Rudolph belongs to We the People. It’s a civic holiday and capitalism and customers can do whatever we like with it. THAT is the result of your co-religionists trying to pull a fast one with the US Constitution a century ago. Let that lesson sink in, really, really deeply. The reason that Christmas is no longer exclusively a day that a religious leader was born is 100% your own damn fault. 100%. You created this mess. It’s all on you. And this is one genie you will never, ever get back into the bottle.

You COULD repeal the designation of Dec 25 as a national holiday and have it return to just being a personal-choice day that religiously-inclined people can ASK their employers for [no guarantees, and it is close to the end of most companies’ fiscal year, so – good luck with that], but neither you nor the rest of us will get a paid holiday. Much less Dec 24th, Dec 26th or any other day prior to New Year’s. Wanna start using your personal vacation time to have a day or two off and skip the whole family travel thing? Hmm? Didn’t think so.

Neither will the rest of the overworked, exhausted 350 million rest of us who look forward to the only long Federally-encouraged family time off from work.

Because of the confusion with both holidays using the same words, people who are not aggressively trying to get back those halcyon days of unconstitutionality – which includes Christians who want to protect their religion as well as those of other, or no, faith tradition – coined the respectful Happy Holidays, to acknowledge that civil holiday, as well as Yule (Wiccans & other Neo-Pagans), Solstice (everyone), Hanukkah (Jews) and Bodhi Day (Buddhists). Respect is the foundation of a law-based, justice-focused democratic society. Respect is good.

And why do I say “Christians who want to protect their religion”? Well, if a holiday is purely religious, you have control of it. If you allow the name and the date to be used as a national secular holiday, then it belongs to all of us, and that includes Madison Avenue, the retail industry, Hollywood and any and all other commercial ideas that the human mind can think up.

you really follow the teachings of that marvelous, inspirational Jewish Palestinian construction worker of two millennia ago, start campaigning for a national, secular Yule Holiday on the 21st, or the 26th or some other late-December day [we need a long holiday close to New Year so we can have that family and rest time], so you can have your religious holiday back. The only thing you can’t have: Your religious ancestors wanted to force everyone to celebrate their religious holiday, as a way of either converting us all, or rubbing our faces in a de-facto theocracy.

Them days are gone for good, no matters what lies a President or politician tries to spin. You can’t slip a theocracy past the Supremes in the 21st Century, even a pack of Republican Justices. But you can put Christ back into a new exclusively-religious holiday. Heck, you could even move it back to when the Messiah was actually born – late March or early April. We’ll still have Christmas, that “family holiday enjoyed by all sectors of American society. “

Deck the halls with boughs of whatever and happy eggnog to us all, every one!

Inspiration: Light in the Darkness

All we need when we are worried or confused is one light in the darkness.  That light is always there, if we are willing to see it.  Not an upending of whatever outcome we don't like, but an amelioration of pain - or any other way to be happy, without the person or outcome that we wanted for all the good reasons that we want things.

And Light never shows off so well in the daylight as it does in the dark night.  Gratitude in the dark times is the graduate degree in wisdom.  To have some peace and contentment when everything goes your way is easy, but gratitude in deep night?  That's the Victoria Cross.... for Valor under the fire of Life.

https://youtu.be/9lo7wtnqPsA

For more resources:

www.soaringdragon.biz

New books:

https://www.amazon.com/Red-State-Blue-Heart-Victoria/dp/1974032272/

Humor, inspiration, thought-provoking essays on how to make American culture healthy and kindly

https://www.amazon.com/Healthy-Meals-Minutes-Less-Transformation/dp/1979815445/
101 Healthy Meals in 5 Minutes or Less

https://www.amazon.com/Busters-Healthy-Longevity-Through-Barriers-ebook/dp/B01MZ4HNRZ

101 Stress Busters

Online classes

5 Tools in 5 Minutes/Day:  Strategic Self Care for Entrepreneurs & Other Busy People
https://blastthruthosebarriers.thinkific.com/courses/106742

Kick Dieting to the Curb
https://blastthruthosebarriers.thinkific.com/courses/76428

http://blastthruthosebarriers.thinkific.com/courses/pain-free-without-drugs

3 Reasons Why You DO Want to Create a Yearly Newsletter (aka Christmas Letter)

 I admit it.  I love to write yearly newsletters.  I even enjoy – for a totally different reason – receiving them.

Yet so many of you don’t – and I completely understand.  I agree that many of them are non-stop brag-fests that can leave you feeling less-than.  If you believe them.  And that’s the key to enjoying them!

If you choose to read newsletters with the expectation of being amused at people’s attempts to convince you (and themselves) that their life is so totally, mermerizingly perfect, they will succeed in entertaining you, minus the comparison-induced depression.

Think about it: you know the reality of your own life and it’s never perfect.  If you compare that reality with the glorious, victorious image projected by others, of COURSE you will think that they are doing so much better in life than you are.

Take a deep breath.  Take another.  Take a third, nice and slow and deep.  Ready for a revelation?  Here it is:  you can read, laugh and throw it in the dustbin.  Laughing is good for your cardiovascular system.

You can also, if you are patient, help guide these misguided souls into more authentic communication with you.  You start by getting off the From Success to Glorious Success treadmill yourself.  

When my husband was facing a devastating layoff, I was matter-of-fact about our worries for the future, and a request for prayers.  I share all the things I’m trying in my business, not just the stuff that worked. 

The big key to why good people (not the jerks of the family) really enjoy our yearly newsletter is that I make it funny.  Sometimes I poke fun at us, like the year I was so frustrated with my boss at the university where I was teaching that I took out my frustrations on the back hedge.  You can understand the depths of my anger when I tell you that I saved us $1000 in hedge trimming services.  You can laugh when I asked for power tools for my birthday and hubby said absolutely not, that he likes having a hedge not a low shrub! Or The Astronomy Widow tells a funny story about hubby’s obsession.  The crazy antics that pet parents get into when one of the darlings is sick and needs a pill.  The Abbott and Costello-esque Victoria-does-home-repair. 

Every issue has a deep point or two. One of us details a profoundly moving experience at a funeral.  We share how we honored the 10^th anniversary of earning a new graduate degree, that put no money in our pocket but enriches our life every day.  A brave mama deer is killed by the local cougar, and her two orphaned fawns are adopted by another mama deer, who successfully raises all four to adulthood. 

If you create a document that shares from the heart, instead of showing off, you might encourage a wiser approach to life among others.  The Grand Canyon grew over millions of year through the constant action of insubstantial water on seemingly solid rock.  You never know what influence you might be having, and you are 100 times more likely to be influential if you stop trying to be! 

As Shakespeare has Hotspur tell Glendower, “Tell the truth and shame the devil!”  If you start creating yearly newsletters that are fun, that are real – though edited for privacy and need-to-know – and that are from the heart, you next task is to not give a damn what any recipient thinks of you, your life and your newsletter.  When you are in that blessed place, you can mail your yearly snippet-of-life out with a joyous heart.  A gift that is given with absolutely no strings attached leaves you joyous and free.  A creation that does not rely on being praised floats high in the sky, free of anyone’s ability to trample it in the dust.

Don’t give up yearly newsletters, grasshopper.  Enjoy the creation.  Set them free to float on the breeze, to whatever new world they may land in. 

3 Steps to Career Success AND Family Joy in Nov/Dec

 So many things culminate in November and December.  At least six major family and religious holidays.  End of year git-er-done deadlines at work.  Everyone’s deepest non-rational needs and craziness being triggered.  Kids enraptured with the magic of lights, desserts and all the decorating at home.  One’s own remembered delights and memories of magic can be ruthlessly tamped down in the service of Reality, but since deep desires can’t really be tamped down, you find them popping up at the most inopportune moment.  Spending more money on gifts and travel than you soberly would choose to allocate from the resources you have. 

Can we really be surprised that so many people, especially parents with full-time jobs, wish they could just fast-forward to January, when they are being honest with themselves?

The good news: there is a way out of the madness!  You need to solve these three problems:

Ø  You’re not paying complete attention to work when you’re at work.

Ø  You’re not paying complete attention to your family and/or your personal needs for joy and magic when you aren’t at work.  Exacerbated by not having enough hours for your non-work life.

Ø  You’re spending too much money.

Let’s take them in turn:

You’re not paying complete attention to work when you’re at work.  Yes, I know that you think you are.  But if you are not giving your children, your spouse and your desire to enjoy this special time of the year its due, those concerns will leak into your work time and you will be constantly fighting distraction.  Or the guilt at your long hours when you know that your family really wants to share this time with you will take up cognitive bandwidth, even when you’re not aware of it.  Or you’re shopping online when you need your cognitive resources 100% focused on the supply-chain problem.  So you can solve this problem by solving problem #2, right?  Let’s do that.

You’re not paying complete attention to your family and/or your personal needs for joy and magic when you aren’t at work.  This is exacerbated by not having enough hours for your non-work life.  Your kids need your undivided attention in order to thrive.  Your spouse needs to know that s/he is undisputed #1 in your life.  Full stop.  If you want to live a long and happy life, have kids who cry buckets at your funeral and a spouse who sustains you for a half century of adult life with his/her unvarnished appreciation and adoration, you need to deserve that.  Full stop.  Kids remember these holidays.  You can’t buy them off with toys and other “stuff,” not in the long run.  They might get all excited about the stuff, but what will keep them away from drugs, early sex and general life stupidity is the strength of their connection to you.  Your spouse needs your help in cutting down the workload, firming placing 90% of the obligations in the No pile.  S/he needs you 100% emotionally present in the evenings, for the joys of decorating the house, making desserts, writing a yearly holiday letter.  S/he needs your 100% emotional presence as you explore a new light show, or visit an ethnic holiday you know nothing about, or do a service project together.  The end of year holidays are about love, about family, about goodness and generosity and caring for others.  They are about joy.  You, my friend, need joy.  You need to sit your kids down and tell them about holidays when you were a child.  You all need a dose of magic, as much as you need to step away from consumerism.

If you are truly present when you’re not working, you can pour it on 100% when you are working., and head home at a reasonable hour.  And by that, I mean no later than 6 PM.  Don’t even think about trying to negotiate this.  If you are 100% focused, you can get a reasonable amount of progress every day toward your organizational goals.  Do it, and then leave, guilt-free.

You’re spending too much money.  There are so many reasons why your spouse deserves your undivided attention during your non-working hours, and one reason is that when your spouse has what s/he needs from the love of their life, they will be more amenable to walking away from the Shoulds that generate too much spending. 

Ø  Gift only children.  Buy them educational toys. No gadgets, unless it’s a group gift from several families.

Ø  Or have a Pick a Name Out of the Hat at Thanksgiving.

Ø  Or create things.  I crochet while I’m relaxing with videos.  You might have talents at baking or crafting or building.  Sometimes I inflict my art on people.  They can throw it out and re-use the frame, I don’t care; having them know that I love them matters.

 

Unless you have more money than the Queen of England, you are probably spending too much.  You need much more money for retirement than you think you do.  Your kids need some seed money for college.  The animal welfare groups need a big donation.  The polar bears are drowning and the planet needs saving.  These things matter.  You can deal with selfish people trying to guilt-trip you into shopping now much more easily than you can deal with an unhappy retired life or kids with crippling education debts. 

Work with your spouse on an announcement to both families about your firm commitment to reserving the holidays for love and service projects.  Write a heartfelt letter about teaching your kids the value of sharing and caring, including creating small and meaningful gifts.  Wrap one or at most two nice educational gifts for your kids under your own tree or other symbolic object.  Whether you are pre-parenting, post-parenting or non-parenting, the same rules apply. 

All the holidays are about Light – the Light of wisdom, the Light of love, and the Light of joy.  They all dispel the darkness.  Focus on wisdom, love and joy, and don’t confuse them with “stuff.” 

So you see the solution!  When you fix the “time-at-home” problem and the spending problem, you automatically resolve the distractions that are keeping you from career success in November and December.  When you fix the “focus on work, then come home” problem, you automatically resolve the deprivation that you are inflicting on yourself, your vulnerable children and your spouse.  Life isn’t linear.  It’s a web, in which the solution to one part of the web relies on progress elsewhere.

You deserve to excel at work this holiday.  And you deserve excellence in your spouse, parent and human being roles as well.  You can do it!  Let the Light shine!