Velveeta was only the beginning… March 31, 2008

I grew up in a small town in Alaska….when we first moved to Wasilla, the only store was Teelands and they did have Velveeta, as well as jerky (two kinds) and lots of canned food, but not much else.  I didn’t have access to gourmet cheese and food until much later…. So I just want to take a moment to be thankful for Whole Foods and The Milk Pail and Cowgirl Creamery. Good food is serious business, and without it, things can get pretty intense…

From Infamous

Truman (standing in front of a huge Velveeta display): Could this be all the cheese?

Mrs. Dewey: Well how much do you want?

Truman: I mean quality dear, not quantity..

Mrs. Dewey: Oh you mean other types of cheese….Goodness no, not here… What will you and Mrs. Capote do for your Christmas supper?

Truman: If this is the only cheese I find, Mrs. Capote and I might try cyanide.

Easter Messages March 17, 2008

My Easter meditation ~

Père Henri: Do I want to speak of the miracle of our Lord’s divine transformation? Not really, no. I don’t want to talk about his divinity. I’d rather talk about his humanity. I mean, you know, how he lived his life, here on Earth. His *kindness,* his *tolerance.* Listen, here’s what I think. I think that we can’t go around measuring our goodness by what we don’t do; by what we deny ourselves, what we resist, and who we exclude. I think we’ve got to measure goodness by what we *embrace,* what we *create* … and who we *include.* ~ Chocolat

“OK - Yes” March 14, 2008

Acceptance

There’s an Italian man who says “OK - Yes” to almost every situation in Under the Tuscan Sun. When the wall he is working on starts to rumble and crumble and begins to fall down, he runs outside with everyone and says, “OK - Yes.” Now, those may not be the first couple of words you hear yourself saying when things are stressful, or crumbling around you. But, if you can manage to say “OK - Yes” to any situation, it enables you to recover and move on more quickly than if you resist, complain, curse, or punish yourself or others. Eckhart Tolle has a metaphor for this too. He says, if you find your self stuck in the mud, you can curse it and complain about it, try to figure out why the mud is there in the first place, and flail around, but you will still be in stuck in the mud - and you’ll just be a bit dirtier. Instead of resisting the mud, say “OK - Yes, I see that I am stuck in the mud, I don’t like it, and now I’m going to do what it takes to get out.” Coming from a place of acceptance allows you to move forward more constructively, and freer of the psychological pain that comes with being opposed to the present moment. Acceptance allows you to deal with it and move on, while resistance keeps you stuck.

“The best thing one can do when it’s raining is to let it rain.” ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Alignment

Yesterday a friend described how her rowing team works together. She’ll be competing in a world-wide competition, and her coach has taught them that “rowing like a jackass” will not win the race. In rowing, the forward motion of the boat not only depends upon the exertion of the rowers, but also on the alignment of the rowers with the forward movement of the boat. If you’re “rowing like a jackass,” you are not only wasting energy, you are creating negative momentum by pushing your body toward your feet while the boat is moving in the opposite direction. Teams who win are not the ones rowing hardest, but the ones in which each team mate is rowing in alignment with the boat and with her team mates. This seems like a great analogy for living a peaceful life - stop rowing like a jackass, for one. Also, it helps to have good team mates. And finding your sense of alignment, and staying with it, will move you forward.