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New Year New Habits – Introduction: Sacred Communion with Self

The tradition of making New Year’s Resolutions is a long and often frustrating one.  This year, rather than depending on will power or the ‘no pain, no gain’ philosophy, it may be time to try something new.  Shifting habits by opening to their fullest stories offers a gentle way to begin the process of desired change.  Asking and listening to guidance regarding what positive contributions your habit is making to your life, no matter how technically destructive the habit may be, is one of the most effective ways to approach the possibility of positive change.   When we can view even the most negative habit as a faithful servant to our well being, we begin the magical process of transformation.

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The Winter Solstice

Here in the Northern Hemisphere, on the shortest day and longest night of the year, we are invited to the hearth to reflect on our lives and the larger context in which they unfurl.   The Winter Solstice is a sight poem, one that marks the end of growing darkness and the beginning of growing light.  On the largest scale we know, at least with our physical senses, this moment in time helps us to understand that all the rhythms of our lives conform to the greater rhythm of expansion and contraction we see in the seasonal changes on Earth.

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The Ache of Cultural and Global Transformation

Each of us alive on the planet today is experiencing change brought on by events over which we have little or no control.  One ongoing event we all share, we call climate change.  At a recent gathering called to strengthen and nourish a diverse community of elders in these parts, participants spoke of the perilous state of bees everywhere and of the diminishing populations of bats in the northeastern states.  Fewer butterflies, bees, and bats, interrupted growing seasons, and extreme weather in the form of drought or deluge here and elsewhere signal that our world is changing and that we must respond intelligently to these changes rather than react out of fear.

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Finding our Place Under the Moon

As the days grow shorter and the weather colder up here in the Northeast King/Queendom of Vermont, the archetypal energies of Winter descend, bringing with them the hallowed space for reflecting on our lives.  Some relationships feel absolutely right, some in flux, and some in need of Triage.  Our dominant culture, what Clarissa Pinkola-Estes calls the Over-Culture, often encourages the pumped up “just do it” standard of change.  Pushing through, sucking it up, and soldiering on manifest in news stories, documentaries, TV sitcoms, and real-life dramas. And yet, our wiser selves know the bullying approach to personal and social change seldom brings about the harmonious energies we long for in every aspect of our lives.

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Food, Celebrations, and EFT: Part Two / A Place at the Table

In this time of seasonal feasting, it is inevitable that we remember fondly those stories, many made into films, that take us to a place of reverent nostalgia regarding our own past ritual feasts.  The Christmas Dinner in Little Women is always one of my favourites, along with a modern version of the crazy Christmas togetherness in The Family Stone.  Every time I see Elf I laugh and cry because the naive, child-like part of me wishes every orphan could end up a loved and valued Elf in Santa’s workshop.  Generosity, forgiveness, and love are always on the menu in our favourite stories, as well as a balancing portion of the kind of satire we find in Eating Raoul, Tampopo, and The Hunger Games.   Recent food documentaries A Place at the Table, The Power of Community, and Food, Inc. help us to understand why we are so preoccupied with food in our culture, and the First Nations peoples’ experiences recorded in Standing Silent Nation let us know why we need satirists like Jon Stewart to rival Jonathan Swift and his “A Modest Proposal”.  These films and many others illustrate how food brings us together and separates us but one stands above the rest because, while it is about food, it is also about the spiritual nature of life, even in the midst of great feasting.

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Food, Celebrations, and EFT: Part One

In Ontario, we celebrate Thanksgiving the second Monday in October, a time when harvest is in the air and fall fairs abound.  It is a quiet holiday, sometimes combined with closing up the cottage for those families who have a summer place on one of the beautiful northern lakes.  Most often Thanksgiving in Ontario centres on family; many college students make the journey home from college, often for the only time before the big break in December, and extended family members scattered to the four winds gather at the ruling matriarch’s or patriarch’s home to share celebratory family dishes and catch up on family news.  For those without blood relations nearby, close friends gather on this holiday for potluck dinner parties in which stories are exchanged about the origins of recipes and the transformation of rituals over time.  Food stories often reflect the bitter and the sweet aspects of these gatherings.

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Grace, Depression, and EFT

People define Grace in many ways, often in relation to specific religions.  The definition I like best is an inclusive one that captures the feeling of being in harmony with wherever I am and whatever I may be doing.  For me, feeling a sense of unimpeded energy flow, of easy passage through Scylla and Charybdis should they suddenly appear, and of trust in the deep underlying intelligence and purposefulness of life on Earth puts me in the amazing zone of timeless perfection in which all things fit together in mysteriously beautiful ways.  For me, this state describes bliss, the eternal now, and the peace beyond human understanding.

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Aging, Henry Ford, and EFT

Sooner or later, life presents us with a condition for which we need expert medical attention.  A bone fracture, a bad tooth, cataracts, heart-valve challenges, and cancer diagnoses are examples of circumstances that call for a deepening relationship with the medical practitioners in our lives.  Many of us attend pre-surgery appointments with apprehension and even dread.  Happily, EFT can reduce our anxiety about medical procedures before we have them, and, with frequent, specific use, shorten our recovery time.

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Trusting the Process with EFT

One of the courses I teach for the Community College of Vermont, Prior Learning Assessment (PLA) has as its motto Trust the Process.  Many college courses, especially Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) courses, require very strong left-brain, critical thinking skills.  Theirs is the world of logic and clear measurement.  While PLA and many arts courses require these same critical thinking skills, they also develop right-brain functions such as reflection and intuition, open-ended, often ambiguous processes for which the reminder to “trust the process” is most helpful.

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