15 August 2025 – Ferragosto in Italia
Whatever we claim,
unless we encompass Love,
Peace will refuse us.
Categories
Through the Ages
Tag: silence
Categories
Blank Truths
Lily, fragrant white,
captures the promise of day,
not to be defined.
Categories
Blending Well
20 July 2025
I often remember the sweeping backyard garden that my grandparents tended. It covered much of the cleared quarter-acre area before untouched woodland. Those early years left me with a respect and love of Nature that has carried me through these older years of change, moving, turbulence, and gratitude.
Today, even though the periphery garden in a tiny backyard is of no match to my grandparents’ bounty, the attempt to recall the second-nature backyard farming of the past with the conveniences of the present seem to set a particular stage, especially in these times.
I may be misguided, but these days seem fraught with information that is less than reliable. Recalls dot the news as people sometimes opt for quick, cheap products…as marketers’ profits increase in both price and risk. And then there’s the tariffs on the global economy, in which All of God’s creation, of whom “we” are truly just a part, has Her stake.
My grandmother tended a frilly deep green plant with fuzzy leaves and bright blue flowers in her section of the garden. In her Italian, I remember it was borragine, in English, borage.
As a bit of basic available research shows, borage flowers [https://www.nutrition-and-you.com/borage.html] contain an incredible amount of nutrients: Vitamins A, C, GLA – an essential fatty acid containing iron (41% of RDA), calcium, potassium, manganese, copper, zinc, and magnesium. This, apparently was understood by “a nonna” who reached almost 90 years of age, still tending her garden.
Often, the wisdom of the past can collaborate with the ease and advantages of the future, but we still have to be humanly wise, engage, and balance the two into the points of human life, trust, knowledge and work that are within our access today.
Without the noise of the television I reject lately for my own search of thoughts, words, digging deep into past flashes of experiences, and the people who messaged the meanings then, I silently fold socks in the hours of just waking.Three baskets of clothes finally washed and dried after 10pm last night wait until before daybreak for their proper folds.
All the sportswear shirts I fold and stack one on top of the other, similar to the way store clerks make displays look uniform, somewhat neat – inviting a buyer to stop and think about a purchase. Then the pants, smoothing the material, making the cuffs aligned and even, and when I find a sock, I just pile them together until all the other clothes are finished, stacked, and folded.
Picking out matching socks is usually easy, except for the faded, worn ones from a convenience package of maybe four pair or more. You spot colors, styles, patterns, marks, writing or brand, degree of use, and other elements to make an adequate match if not the exact one every time.
Once almost finished, I spot a sock with writing – a saying my mother used to always use as an admonition – No Nonsense. I wonder what she would say today with a world covered in grime, crime, alternative facts, and deliberate malice towards many if not all…all under a relabeling of “freedom”…
My slow smile breaks as I envision her presence then, remember her principle, and that expression very often suggesting when actions were on the verge of crossing a line. It was her way of giving advanced warning – a sign. And at this moment on a silent morning in July 2025, the meaning of messages through signs seems so transparent, so clean a wash waiting to be ordered, folded, presented. And then the song from the past, Signs – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeT5otk2R1g
Where there’s gratitude, like Signs, we become miraculously able to perceive them through the veils of our everyday lives…as they remain forever present.
Categories
Bees on the Buttonbush
June 29, 2025
Insanity reigns
while moral compass ruptures,
as bees gift us hope.
Categories
Recognizing The Answer
If the circumstance does not align with the mantras we have grown to repeat from over 2000 years ago, (i.e.: Do Unto Others…), but not feel from a place of Spirit, it is not The Answer. In fact, it is quite the opposite. Rather than the 1980 Peace Through Strength mantra, in word and indeed, if we are truly followers of The Chosen One, it should be Strength Through Peace, as the spiritual alignment of 12/29/24 manifested. Signals are always visible for those who choose to see.
Categories
Just Let Go…
June 10, 2025
Approximately two years ago, I learned about the wispy anemone flower, the “Grecian windflower” and purchased a mixture of bulbs, unsure about their colors. I recall planting them in a large, gray container and despite some green leaves, there was nothing noticeable…until this year.
Maybe it’s the coolness of this 2025 spring, or the gentle rain again today as the Heavens weep for human ignorance, arrogance minus repentance…yet.
Yesterday morning, already late, I locked the front door and moved towards the car…a butter-yellow flash interrupted my rush. Moving towards the planter, I found three full, forgotten anemone blooms who seemed to greet me with smiles and project a message.
Their butter-yellow color suggests cheer, optimism, good fortune while the mythology reflects the long love of Aphrodite and Adonis, who was killed by a wild boar during a hunt. With several explanations for the meaningful story, Adonis dying in Aphrodite’s arms, covered with her tears, is said to represent death & rebirth. To echo Thomas Berry, Earth is a communion of subjects, not a collection of objects, and exists, survives only in Her integral functioning. Earth must be the primary concern of every human institution, profession, program and activity. In economics, for instance, the first law of economics must be the preservation of the Earth economy. A rising Gross National Product with a declining Gross Earth Product reveals the absurdity of our present economy. It should be clear, in the medical profession, that we cannot have healthy people on a sick planet. (Thomas Berry, The Dream of the Earth)
This messaging has been given consistently over mammoth stretches of time and throughout all cultures. Take a moment to stop from the rush, the noise and negativity to select your moment of letting go of predictable schedules. Impose an intentional silence and let your attention drift to listening well, feeling a moment, discerning communication, connecting with mutual appreciation and comprehending the messages transforming into your consequential action. This is how Spirit speaks.
(Find the symbolism & meaning through Nature or traditions of all cultures – https://padrepioministry.org/prayers-information/surrender-novena/ – access is infinite.)
Categories
Seeking Trust at Dawn
18 May 2024
Walking in the backyard predawn silence of this suburb, I hear the cooing of a mourning dove before any other sound. This year, after several others of seasonal instabilities, the purple clematis bursts grand with a determined hue of strength – this, despite the cool spring temperatures, clouds, rain…
The flowers’ brilliance widens across its trellis, faithful blooms this May in an overshadowed portion of an otherwise unremarkable periphery garden bed.
This moment of color and sound helps me find hope and gratitude in the extensions of a life of questioning, facing this void alone, always seeking to trust. And I’m deeply grateful for the wisdom, kindness, light, and friendship that may pass to me each day, keenly aware of all it means as my arms and heart remain open.
Categories
Everywhere
14 April 2024
For some reason, last night was rough – the cold wind, spring trying to break through, daughter’s birthday, questions of where life will be going with this crumbling all around, at home, abroad..Lives in the Balance.
Then I turn on TV in the evening and feel the news that Iran strikes Israel at 4am their time. Escalation? Some retaliation? Thoughts of children and their images imprint on what’s left of my imprisoned mind bring me to supplication and prayers of tears for what’s left of this humanity lost.
Still grateful for a night of almost sleep and quasi rest, I remember 2003 and the public ridicule for warning against war..this…by colleagues and self-defined ‘friends’.
Choosing Nonviolence is a lonely, parched road on forsaken grounds, those of a humanity refusing to see beyond its own reflection. Difficult, oftentimes excruciating, yet, one that assures the spiritual Highground from which we all rise and recede.
Categories
Nothing By Chance
23 March 2024
As I waited for an arrival home tonight, I knew friends were due over for a catch-up visit, so I decided to bake something. After some deliberation I finally settled on something quick, easy, tried and tested. I had a recipe I hadn’t used in years – Tahini oatmeal cookies – 3 ingredients. Tahini, brown sugar, oatmeal and a dash or two of cold water. Mix & bake. I had found the recipe on one return trip from Italy in a flight magazine. They reminded me of yet another coincidence- a kind, soft-demeanored priest who used to preside over an Eastern rite church that I attended many years ago. He baptized family members. When in the midst of dark days, no insurance coverage, teaching layoff without recompense or recognition, and nowhere to turn, he was one of three good Samaritan souls who entered into the swirling fears to be of comfort. As I stirred the batter, my mind recalled my 3 year old daughter pushing the 911 phone buttons to relay information from me to emergency services so that an incapacitating compound fracture could be potentially healed. Without question, this priest arrived and took care of anything that needed to be arranged.
This Middle-Eastern priest helped me through some very dark days. He was shunned in later years from the church. I had heard rumors… But none of that mattered then, and as I reflect, it matters even less now… The kindness and compassion he always gave meant more to me and I am sure to so many others when feeling alone and confused, unloved and lost.
When we care for and about others, a part of their culture is also shared with you. Growing up, I had the gift of learning about differences – ethnicities, cultures, mannerisms, preferences, lifestyles…almost an introduction to an ever-changing universe of transformation. To find the beauty in diversity is to appreciate creation, to be open to Love wherever It is made manifest.
The spontaneity of a tahini cookie recipe brought all those memories of a kind, generous, loving priest willing to care flooding back to me. I pray for him wherever he is, as I am grateful that he and others reach into darkness to bring others Light, Peace, and direction.