Sighted on the Travel Channel

I had to take public transit today instead of driving. Bad idea. I hurt so much I couldn't sleep. So I started watching the Travel Channel. Weird, I know. It was about ghosts, though, so I was hooked. http://whaleyhouse.org/haunted.htm Hauntings at the Whaley House. The show claims the haunting is certified by the U.S. Commerce Department. We have government certified hauntings now? Arrrggh!!! What next? What ticks me off though is that the show didn't say: "Don't try this at home." I guess ghosts are entertainment now. Which makes them what? Less scarey, less dangerous, less, less, less? Ghost Snooping like this may not harm a person on first exposure or second or third perhaps but dabbling with hauntings is like being covered in cobwebs one strand at a time. A little is fine but by the time it gets too heavy there is no easy escape. So in the spirit of safety...May all beings wherever and whenever they are be blessed tonight and all time.

Was You Ever Bit By A Dead Bee?

So this thing I have about death...I have been doing some thinking about it. I realize now that I am no where ready to deal in an acceptance way with all the losses in the family. Call it lack of acceptance, call it a need to control, call it whatever you want. I didn't really get the picture of how unready I was until I was walking along and found a dead bee. It was/is a beautiful creature. Just lying forgotten in an alleyway in the City. There are many tales that come from the City and this is just one of them that caught my heart and made me think. I don't have an aversion to dying for myself. I have an aversion to dying and leaving things left undone for my survivors. It is just silly to want to have a grave picked out, a funeral home contract paid for, all my bills up to date and my clothes in order before I die. Who has a death date calendared into their daytimer? So I just realized all I need to do is to give myself permission to be incomplete when I die. After all, it is just another permission slip to fill out. You'd think I'd have realized that earlier.
Sheesh. Until then
Namaste

Middle Life Education

It has been a year of shock and awe healthwise in the family. If wishes were fishes, I'd have the whole year swim backwards to save/retrieve/rewrite the script somehow. But it isn't fantasy. It is life in the awful, awkward middle years where people get ill, deathly ill, and death visits far more often than Elijah at Passover. Death drops down like an owl on a mouse, quietly, whooshing up the soul before we know there is danger. Damn, damn, damn. No course in Humanities, no course in history, no course in college ever prepared me for this. Not ever....

Exterminators and Rare Diseases

Well, folks, diseases are back again. In the close family, again. I declare, they are worse than the german cockroaches I had in my place when I first moved in. Just when I thought I'd sprayed enough, the bugs would come back -- goosestepping across the couch. And it is just the same way with these rare jawbreaker named illnesses. More bugs. More uncontrollable trouble. More composing myself for whatever comes. More, More, More. Exterminators helped with the cockroaches. I pray doctors will fill in the same role of exterminating this newest plague. And while I wait? I'll pray.

Letting Go

Death and Dying -- Elisabeth Kubler-Ross. I read this book years ago. I need to re-read it given some of my recent experiences and insights from them. What I remember most is that she discusses the stages of grief. There are five of them. Here is a link for those who never trust authors and want to get right to the facts. I know who you are because I am just like you too. Stages of Grief I just wish there was a better sort of manual for how one goes on about life after loss, whether through great change like leaving home, through the loss of a beloved partner, through separation, through divorce, through kids going to college. As I let go of who I was, I find I still need to be that person sometimes. There are often so many resonances of the old personna that intrude. After all, when a marriage breaks up there are usually kids, custody, and continuing conversations of how to deal with one kid or another. It is a confusing split view on reality. I haven't found the books that address this issue directly. So, for now, I guess the best I can do it just go on. And eventually I will find I haven't lost a life, I have gained a greater and fuller perspective.

Living On

http://www.nanzan-u.ac.jp/SHUBUNKEN/publications/jjrs/pdf/135.pdf
This is a page about a very sweet practice that Japanese Buddhists have to celebrate the life of those kids who didn't live or didn't live for long. Somehow, researching this ceremony made sense in this week of tremendous loss. Here is a blog that has photos of statues with knitted caps on them. It is beyond evocative...it is sweetness itself.
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.dsphotographic.com/g2/10489-3/Okunoin%2B-%2B006.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.dsphotographic.com/g2/japan/koyasan/okunoin/&h=141&w=94&sz=4&hl=en&start=30&sig2=fW8NfFo_3vItdwBOJgTl9g&um=1&tbnid=9noDcJPuUzQ20M:&tbnh=94&tbnw=63&ei=WYApRtWWNIOmhQS0laWcDw&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dgraveyard%2Bstatues%2Bwith%2Bcaps%2Bbuddhist%26start%3D18%26gbv%3D2%26ndsp%3D18%26svnum%3D10%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN

Daily Wisdom: 365 Buddhist Inspirations

On Death
In order to train in the path that would allow us to transform death, the intermediate state, and rebirth, we have to practice on three occasions: during the waking state, during the sleeping state, and during the process of death.
-His Holiness The Dalai Lama, "Sleeping, Dreaming and Dying"
Copyright Wisdom Publications 2001. Reprinted from "Daily Wisdom: 365 Buddhist Inspirations," edited by Josh Bartok, with permission of Wisdom Publications, 199 Elm St., Somerville MA 02144 U.S.A, www.wisdompubs.org.

Music in General

I have always been obsessed about music and spirituality. Music is so close to the spirit. I started learning to read music when I was 5 years old. I started singing in the church choir the next year. By 12, I played the violin, mandolin, wooden recorder, piano and french horn. So, yeah, music is cool. The music the Virginia Tech band played yesterday was very sweet, quiet, evocative ... I used to play music like that at graduations. So unexpected to hear it accompanying the convocation. So Sad.

Death remains eternal...life optional

Death got another soul. Another someone I didn't have time to get to know but am blessed to have known them the short time I did. Truly, Moments That Take Your Breath Away says it all.
"Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away. falling leaf -- author unknown ... "

The Sand Shifting beneath our Collective Feet

Virginia Tech could have been any college, any state, any country. The tragedy is that it happened at all -- anywhere. The bigger tragedy is that this kind of death happens throughout the world -- in Darfur, in Gaza, in Israel, in Africa, in Iraq -- all the time. And there really are only a few news agencies that cover these losses. Now there is a killing in South America of 19 individuals. And the beat just keeps going on and on and on. As a sometime animal rescuer, I find this lack of concern for humans disturbing. It is deplorable to ignore animals. It is worse to ignore humans.

Oblivion and Final Journeys

Oblivion. Each of us chooses how to block out senselessness in our lives. I choose to rescue animals and write. Sadly, in avoiding what makes me sad, I avoid people I wanted to get to know better. I should be seeking the grace of their presence to bless my own life.

Virginia Tech Observation

I was glued to the computer today watching the convocation from Virginia Tech. Confronted with the senselessness of these murders, the strudents' bravery and grace is inspiring. I only hope we don't expect too much from them. Politicians trying to make political hay from their hardship of loss. As a society and as humans we all want to help and to understand. But most of all, we need to allow the students and hokies the space to heal.

CaringBridge

This is a bad year for survivability so far. From my brother-in-law to friends of my daughter and now to news reports of 30+ dead at Virginia Tech. Life is unpredictable. I can't blame this year on my horoscope. I wish I could. I can't blame it on sunspots. I wish I could do that. I can't even blame it on politicians who are full of hot air. I wish I knew who I could blame so I could say a brocha for them. If you are Jewish, you know the kind: "God bless and keep ____ far away from me." But I don't know. I am grateful I found this organization http://www.caringbridge.org/ though just in case the worst happens and I need to keep the family informed. It seems to be a reasonable website.

Lights when Dark

Light on a gloomy night. Mostly when I am glum, I need to light more than just my computer screen. I need to actually turn on lights to fight the gloom.

Electromagnetic Sensitivity and Ghosts

Bumpkum, I hear you blurt. Personally, I agree with you. The Science Channel had a show on this morning discrediting paranormal sightings. If you believe them, these hauntings are caused by houses being in the wrong location. Granite absorbs energy and under the right circumstances releases electromagnetic fields which cause humans living in the house to see things and for things in the house to move about independently. The investigators of the show even went so far as to accuse a man who lives in a haunted house of doing the haunting himself. Here is the program description: MegaScience Ghosthunters TV-PG, CC Do you believe in ghosts? To those who claim to have seen them, there's no question ghosts are alive and active in our everyday lives. Others flat out deny their very existence. Now scientists say there may be an alternative explanation.
Humph!!! Alternative explanation!!! I lived in a haunted house. I've got personally experienced stories. Not hearsay. Direct contact. My house was nowhere close to granite, power lines, or other things. Grrrr. And we had those incidents until my mom had the back porch where two spinsters hung themselves torn off the house. Grrrr. It just irritates the hell out of me when scientists try to say this stuff doesn't exist.

For an interesting website that is about ghosts try the shadowlands. http://theshadowlands.net/places/

Journeys' End

The end to life's journey is usually in a cemetery. Being an amalgam, I am not at all sure where I will be comfortable. Cre-mains, re-mains, cemeteries - jewish or public, buddhist collumbariums, no clue. So today the first step on that journey meant picking up the phone to find out whether I would qualify for a cemetery near me that is old and downtown and quaint. And then I found a website called www.GraveSolutions.com which gives prices for graves. And thought of the phrase: Birth to Berth.

Berth — Infoplease.com
Berth
He has tumbled into a nice berth. A nice situation or fortune. The place in which a ship is anchored is called its berth, and the sailors call it a good or bad berth as they think it favourable or otherwise. The space also allotted to a seaman for his hammock is called his berth. (Norman, berth, a cradle.) Dictionary of Phrase and Fable , E. Cobham Brewer, 1894 .

Hungry Spirits called Death

Death is a hungry spirit. Just when I think someone is inexhaustible and will forever go on, they become deathly ill. Today it is my mother-in-law. Last week it was my brother. The week before that it was my brother-in-law and death took him away entirely. Pagans had their sacrifices to keep the gods satisfied. But that is not an option for me. Be well out there. Pull those you love close to you. Tell them you love them (if, indeed, you do). Because only this instant is life. Only this instant can you choose to feel serenity, anger, pain, love, joy or whatever emotion you care to experience. Only this instant is life. Use it wisely but enjoy it deeply.
Namaste