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Month: November 2018

Friday Musings: Release and Engage

Friday Musings: Release and Engage

If you read my post this past Tuesday about The Wise Woman’s Stone, you know that I talked about a certain pair of Frye boots that I bought just recently. I am wearing them as I sit here writing this Friday Musing. I have been trying to practice the idea of non-attachment, especially towards them, and I think I am making some progress. I love them still, and I do feel happy when I’m wearing them, but I know that they are a material object and therefore they cannot be

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Music and Cocktails: I Want to Thank You, Thank You…

Music and Cocktails: I Want to Thank You, Thank You…

I have been a Natalie Merchant fan since she was the lead singer for The 10,000 Maniacs. In fact, the post that I wrote back in June about their song “Trouble Me” is one of my all-time favorites. In turning a highly successful career as a member of a band into an equally successful solo act, Merchant was able to accomplish something that has eluded many of her fellow artists. As a musician, her lyrics are well-crafted and profound. She is known to spend hours writing and

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Parable in a Glass: Elevation

Parable in a Glass: Elevation

I find that I often struggle with the idea of non-attachment and how to find a way to practice it in my everyday life. I bought a pair of Frye boots recently that are nothing short of amazing. They are a beautiful oxblood color with a really cool zipper on the side, and they fit me perfectly. And what makes them even more wonderful is that I got them for a fantastic price! This feels like true love, and I’m certain of our future together. Does that mean that I’m attached to them? More

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Friday Musings: With Deeper Thanks (Part 2)

Friday Musings: With Deeper Thanks (Part 2)

I’ve often considered gratitude to be a unique emotion. I thought it was because it was something that we could both perceive and express in the sense that we can feel thankful and we can say thank you. I wrote a post about that very idea, in fact, about 18 months ago and I reprised it back at the beginning of May. But gratitude is not the only emotion that can be both felt and expressed. Pain is that way; after all, we can feel hurt and we can hurt others. And love is certainly that way, so gratitude’s sense of uniqueness for me cannot really be found in the give and take aspect of it. I know that I think about gratitude a lot these days because I have been blessed with so much that is good, especially in the last year, and because I have learned that approaching each day from the perspective of being thankful can truly be life-changing. But what is it that makes me want to know so much more? I decided to do some research and I discovered that gratitude is what experts call a social emotion in that it forces us out of our own heads, even if just momentarily. It almost always involves another human being who has done something wonderful for us. We feel a wave of thankfulness wash over us that can be big enough to almost knock us off our feet. Sometimes we see the wave coming. It’s our birthday and we are enveloped in celebration and we are grateful. Other times it may be something unexpected that happens, like a random act of kindness extended by a stranger, or a sweet gesture from someone who loves us enough to know it was just what we needed. Even when we are thankful for something that is non-human like a house, or a job, or a situation, we express our thanks to some agent of giving outside of ourselves, like fate or God or the universe.

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Poetry in a Glass: The Doorway Into Thanks

Poetry in a Glass: The Doorway Into Thanks

I’ve written about the ideas of mindfulness and gratitude a number of times on this blog, but since we’re a few days away from a national holiday that celebrates being thankful, I thought it wouldn’t hurt to to look at a poem from Mary Oliver that examines both. Oliver is an American poet born in 1935 who has won both the Pulitzer and the National Book Award. She writes in the Romantic style and her poems focus on the natural world as an evocation of what we feel as

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