Likes and Dislikes

The following piece comes from a vision between being asleep and awake.  

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Many of you say prayers everyday.  You ask for this and for that.  You ask that someone change what they dislike to something that you like.  You ask to be right!  In the greatest designs, the likes and dislikes are choices that you are able to make that will help your Spirit move in a certain path.  Indeed, you follow a blue print laid out long, long before your birth.  You have agreed to step forward on the path.

Your likes and dislikes make you unique, the way different paint colours on the wall make a house unique.  It gives you definition.  It is neither wrong nor right.  It allows you to see how others accept the situation or environment.  What you like begins with what is in your DNA.  It also is influenced by what you see and what you hear.  These two senses will influence how something tastes for you.

Let these differences be celebrated!

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Blessings,

Judy

Pacing Yourself

The life lesson that I am having difficulty learning is how to pace myself both to get things done and to give time required for healing my tendons in my leg.  You see, I want to do everything on my list immediately so that it is done.  This need to get things done has been an undoing for my healing process because I do “things” too quickly and too forcefully.  I put strain on my body.

I am learning that you can still do everything if you do them slowly and easily, and allow for short breaks between tasks.  Even dog walking had to change so that my pace is slower and my strides shorter.  The doc put a limit on the distance that I can walk at one time. 

Change about pace is a challenge.  Relearning what the balance is to provide both exercise and healing is quite eye-opening.  Our bodies are self healing. In my case, I was interfering with my healing. 

Blessings,

Judy
 

Harvest and Zucchini Muffin Recipe

 

As we move into FALL, many of us with gardens in our back yards, or where ever, are looking at food preparation.  Our Ancestors canned fruit, vegetables, and even chicken, beef, and ham.  

We have come to rely on large factories to do our canning for us.  We get additives in “store bought” food that we would not add on our own.  

Good food feeds our body and our soul.  Clean food keeps us young. Canning is good to support our Free Will.

This year seems to be a bumper year for zucchini.  Everyone in our neighbourhood has loads of zucchini and everyone has recipes to share.

Zucchini Muffins

  

• 3 cups all purpose flour (I use gluten free flour and add Xanthum Gum) 
• 1 cup sugar 
• 2 tsp baking soda 
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon 
• ½ tsp nutmeg (optional) 
• ½ tsp salt 
• 2 eggs, lightly beaten 
• 1 cup vegetable/canola oil 
• ½ cup milk 
• 2 Tbsp lemon juice 
• 1½ tsp vanilla extract 
• 2 cups shredded zucchini, thawed if frozen 
• Optional: 1 cup chocolate chips and/or ½ cup chopped walnuts and/or pineapple or banana

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit. Line a 12-cup muffin tin with paper liners or spray with baking spray. 
2. In large bowl, combine flour, sugar, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt. 
3. In separate large bowl, whisk eggs, oil, milk, lemon juice, vanilla and zucchini. 
4. Pour wet ingredients into dry and stir just until completely combined (it's best to do this by hand to avoid over-mixing, which results in tough muffins). 
5. Fold in chocolate chips and/or walnuts if using. 
6. Divide batter over 12 muffin cups - they will be full! Bake for 22-26 minutes, until tops are golden and toothpick comes out clean from centers. Let sit in pan 3-5 minutes before removing to rack to cool completely. 
7. Best served fresh, or freeze extras, well wrapped or in an airtight container, and thaw or reheat as needed.

Blessings,

Judy

Welcome September 1 2023

Fall is one of my favourite times of the year.  For me, it is almost as though the smells change on September 1 and the weather changes at the same time.

I think of September more than March or April as the month of change.  It seems that most of my life, my career changes have happened in the fall, usually, sometime in September or early October.  

When I think of September, I think of abundance.  This is the time of pickling, and canning, and freezing all of the produce of the summer. 

I picture Mother Nature getting all of her charges in the Northern Hemisphere ready for bed.  Winter comes early in Alberta.  Already, there are new skiffs of snow up on the mountains.

The contradiction of autumn is that while we are finishing things off on one hand, it is a time of seeking renewal and many of us start new things – craft clubs, fitness programs, bowling, curling, hockey, and the list goes on.  

A resting time!  I see that, often, we use the fall to plan a rest from the activity of summer, and to get ready to vegetate through the coldest of the winter. 

I see the Elementals, the energy spirits in the park, change their behaviour from wild to more gentle as they prepare the park for winter.  

I think that the fall is a time of healing for nature and for humans.  I see us all come closer to that peacefulness of Oneness.  For, all of us are matter, and all of us are of the Earth.  

For me, September is a time of contemplating what will happen next.  I love the surprises that it brings.

Blessings,

Judy

Humour and Love

In my meditation this morning, the two words of the day are LOVE and HUMOUR.  At first, I had a difficult time putting the two thoughts together.  I don’t normally think of Love as funny.  Yet, on reflection, I realize that my three days with my sister and her family were filled with lots of love and much laughter (humour), because we found everything funny.  We were together and we felt that hint of invincibility that comes from being one family.  

I then thought back to the the last group meditation that we did several months ago and realized that the same feeling was there – Humour and Love  -  because we all enjoyed one another so much and we had the same, off beat, view of life.  We talked and laughed and shared.  

I bow to Creator/Great Spirit for once again being able to teach a wonderful lesson to me through the use of two words.  

This was a very healing lesson.

Blessings,

Judy

What Do You Do With Your Days?

 

“Every day that we wake up is a good day. Every breath that we take is filled with hope for a better day. Every word that we speak is a chance to change what is bad into something good.”
Walter Mosley

“Every day is different, and some days are better than others, but no matter how challenging the day, I get up and live it.”
Muhammad Ali

 Your imagination is your preview of life's coming attractions. --Albert Einstein

We have our days generally planned out for the week.  We want to make our days matter and we want to make sure that certain tasks get done.  Since we love the mountains, we go as often as we can because the mountains inspire us, heal us, and show us animals and trees and birds in new ways.

Each of us gets to choose how we spend our time.  How are you choosing to spend your day?

Blessings,

Judy

You Are A Guest!

 

This being human is a guest house. 
Every morning a new arrival. 

A joy, a depression, a meanness, 
some momentary awareness comes 
as an unexpected visitor. 

Welcome and entertain them all! 
                                      —Rumi 

Last night, I could not sleep!  I would close my eyes and get different thoughts and visions.  All of them were filled with information and insights.  The vision that stayed with me though, because it was so profound, was one that I call – You Are A Guest.

In this vision or dream, a beautiful lady is sitting across from me in a setting similar to a living room.  She is in a big chair and I am on a sofa, and a coffee table – round and about three feet across – sits between us.

She is telling me that she is disappointed in me.  She asked me to look after her house, and she comes home to find that it is completely messy.  She tells me that there are holes in the carpet, burn marks on the furniture and the floors, and that her water is not running full force.

I am stunned!  I have no recollection of house sitting.  I don’t believe that I have met her before, although she is lovely, and I don’t recognize the house.

She asks me if I would allow guests to behave like that in my home.  I reply that we don’t allow smoking in our house, and that none of our guests would behave like that anyway.  

She then asks me why I have not cleaned up before she returned home.  

I am sputtering for an answer when she says, “Never mind! I won’t ask you to do this again!”

Now I am really confused because I don’t remember her asking me in the first place. 

I decide that I must defend myself.  I begin saying that I have not been asked to look after her house, and then the scene changes.

She takes me by the hand and walks me through charred forests and meadows.  She then walks me through deserts and drought land.  I see animals and people starving, dying, and dead.  We then move to places where water flows over the land, down streets and through houses.  And, we walk over mountain tops where the snow caps are clearly receding, based on the marks of where snow lay earlier.  The next stop is different places where open pit mining is happening – huge great holes in the earth.

The scene changes again, and I am back in the living room, sitting in a big, comfy chair, with a hot cup of tea in my hand.

The lady tells me that humans have been thoughtless guests in her home – the planet.  She asks me what she should do.  I tell her that most often, the landlord evicts abusive tenants.  They seldom get a second chance.  

She smiles and says that she has served her eviction notice.

I wake up, and wonder what is next for all of us.

Many blessings,

Judy