Sunday Sunshine: Experience the Wonder

When you think back to your childhood, do you remember how you viewed the world? I would dare say that everything felt new to you back then. It was easier to see things through the eyes of wonder and amazement. Each moment was precious. It was all you knew.

There was only Now to think about. Just Now.

As you found yourself growing older, however, your so-called adult priorities likely found a way to creep in. Perhaps those grown-up priorities clouded your childlike vision. 

As the years pile up, there's an easy tendency to pile up your worries, fears, plans and stresses, as well. Often, you have so much on your mind that the precious moments in front of you go ignored. 'Now' gets lost in the midst of reflections about yesterday and plans for tomorrow.

Take a moment to pause this holiday week and drop the scales from your adult eyes. Allow yourself to be a bit of a child again. That little person is still inside of you and has lessons to teach you. Return to seeing the world with wonder. See the beauty in each precious moment. Be in a place of Now -- not yesterday, not tomorrow, but today.

Today, this week: Draw from the child inside of you to view the world. See each experience through the eyes of wonder, adventure and amazement.

Sunday Sunshine: Cast Your Bright Starlight

Where are you being called to serve? 

Listen carefully for the answer. You have many gifts and talents to make the world a better place.

Do you have time -- just a little bit of time -- to give to something greater than yourself, a cause that resonates with your interests and values, something that could use your abundant talents? If you say yes, you will feel the richness of the experience, and others will benefit from your generosity

So, cast your bright starlight out to your family, your neighborhood, your community and beyond. Be the light of goodness that will attract others to their goodness.

Today, this week: Where are you being called to serve?

Sunday Sunshine: Embrace Impermanence

Things are constantly changing and evolving. They may seem to remain constant, but they’re not. Change can happen so slowly that we scarcely recognize it, but change is there all the same.

When we understand that change is happening around us and inside of us all of the time, we can more easily come to a place of acceptance and even anticipation for it. Change can appear more exciting and fun. Change can present new adventures, new perspectives and new ways of being.

When we accept impermanence in our lives, we start to see that now -- this very moment -- is what we have. Each day is filled with “now” moments worthy of our attention.

Rather than being afraid of change, fully embrace it. See the beauty and potential growth in it. Change can be a gift and an opportunity, rather than a crisis to be feared. It’s all in how we choose to see it.

Today, this week: Embrace impermanence and live in the moment.

Sunday Sunshine: Dry a Tear

As the holidays approach, you have so much to give. Your gift, however, doesn't have to be purchased in a store or wrapped with an elaborate bow. It doesn't have to be the latest fad or break your piggy bank. 

Your gift is invaluable when it is your caring heart.

This season, what if you made it a practice for your gift to be that of kindness? How badly our world needs kindness! Every day, we encounter people who are hurting, who are injured by the circumstances of life, whose way is rough and who could use some compassion. 

Open your heart to others. Offer a word of encouragement. Dry a tear.

This holiday season, give love. Give compassion. Give kindness. Give patience. Give respect. Give your undivided self.

You don't have to buy a present. Instead, be present.

Today, this week, this holiday season: Be a gift to others by being kind and spreading compassion.

Sunday Sunshine: Let Your Light Shine!

There are days when I've felt as if nothing I've done is right. No matter how hard I tried, some things just didn't work out. 

My efforts have been ignored or at least not acknowledged. Others have received accolades for work I've done.

It's easy to grow disheartened if your efforts don't appear to be appreciated or those you do make still don't seem to be enough or don't turn out the way you intended for them.

Take heart. Don't become discouraged. Don't be hard on yourself. Let your hurts, your self-doubts and your discouragements roll off your back. 

Keep persevering. Do your best. Be positive. Let your light shine! You have it in YOU to do great things!

As you build confidence and give it your best, you'll release the hurt and self-doubt you carry. 

Soon, circumstances will have an amazing, unanticipated way of working themselves out. New doors will open, new relationships will be formed, new ways of seeing yourself will be revealed, and new opportunities will present themselves.

Today, this week: Do your best! Be confident! Let your light shine! 

Fresh Thoughts for Your Monday: Give Joy!

If you could package up something lovely to give to another person (or for yourself), what might it be? 

Many of us exchange gifts at this time of year. It’s the season of gift giving after all: A good book, a new tie, some warm socks, the latest toy. 

But what about those intangible gifts, those gifts that you can’t quite put a bow on?

What if your gift-giving ideas included giving joy, peace and love—not just to those on your list, but to as many people as you possibly can?

The holidays are joyful for many people, but for many others, they’re a reminder of losses, tense relationships, loneliness, a shortage of cash, a difficult health diagnosis.

Today, this week: Give the gifts of joy, peace and love wherever you go.

Fresh Thoughts for Your Monday: It's a New Day!

You have just received a gift—a beautiful, big gift wrapped in the finest of paper and tied with an elegant bow. That gift is this new day!

We may think that our days will go on and on forever and ever, but we know (especially as we grow older and are forced to confront the realities of life) that those days have always been numbered. We will receive only so many of them.

Therefore, what will you do to honor the gift of this day?

Today, this week, show your gratitude for the day’s gifts and blessings.

Fresh Thoughts for Your Monday: Appreciate the Gift

You have just been given a most marvelous present. It’s wrapped in tissue paper and gently placed in a beautifully wrapped box, tied with a bow.

What is that gift? It’s a new day!

Don’t allow the shadows of yesterday to affect the possibilities of today. Focus on what you can do with this precious gift, this beautifully wrapped present.

Today, this week: Make the very most of the day!

A Recipe for Happy Memories

     Have you ever smelled a particular scent, heard a particular song or tasted a particular food and, as a result, a flood of memories fills your head and heart? So it is at this time of year when I smell the scent of evergreens and cinnamon sticks, sing Christmas carols, hear church bells on a winter night and taste Christmas cookies, candies and treats. 
     So it is, also, when I pull out my late mom's recipe box filled with cookie recipes from Christmases of days gone by. The memories hidden inside that unassuming, yet precious box envelop me like a warm comforter.

     As I reminisced over Mom's recipe box this year, I found myself carefully lifting out recipe cards that are faded and stained from years of use. I read recipes for Aunt Mae's sugar cookies, our good friend Betty's biscotti, Aunt Alice's date macaroons, our dear friend Barb's seven-layer cookies, Grandma Carrie's fruit cookies, Aunt Ellie's sugar cookies and Mom's dream bars. Each recipe was written carefully in the baker's penmanship on a plain, lined 3" x 5" index card. 

     I got swept away just thinking of these special women in my life.

     Soon, my memories took me back to Christmas days of my childhood, when my parents and I would drive the three hours across the state to Grandma and Grandpa's home. We'd enter their home through the kitchen where I'd immediately spy a huge stack of large coffee cans in the corner. Each can would be filled with a different variety of Christmas cookie. They might be peanut crunches, gum drop cookies, lemon snowballs, pinwheel cookies or bourbon balls. They would all be delicious because Grandma was a wonderful baker, but my favorites were always the Russian tea cakes -- a shortbread-type of cookie made primarily of butter, powdered sugar, vanilla, flour, salt and chopped nuts, rolled into balls or crescents and then smothered, while still warm, in another round of powdered sugar.

     If I was a lucky girl, I'd receive new pajamas for Christmas from Grandpa and Grandma. If I was a really lucky girl, I'd get a small container of my very own Russian tea cakes, too.

     I'm admittedly not the baker I once was. We rarely eat very much refined sugar anymore. But I can't part with that recipe box. It sits idle in the kitchen drawer for most of the year, but when December rolls around, I feel urged to look inside at its precious contents, holding each recipe card, studying the ingredients and directions through faded handwriting and cooking stains, and thinking back to Christmases past when coffee cans of cookies was one of the most spectacular holiday sights for a little girl.

Note: Check back here on January 1, 2018 when something new for the new year will be unveiled at "Time to Be"!

Priceless Gifts

This is the season of gift-giving. So much time and energy are spent considering just the right gifts for those on our lists that I sometimes wonder how much we contemplate the everyday gifts that may not carry a price tag but have the greatest and most lasting value, gifts such as love, time, presence, patience, kindness, joy and friendship. I have been recovering from surgery for the past several weeks. I have spent a fair amount of time considering each of those so-called everyday gifts and just how much they mean to me: the calls, cards, emails and visits from family, friends and neighbors, a prayer shawl and a lap quilt made by loving hands for my healing naps, flowers to provide me cheer, delicious meals and food gifts to nourish our bodies, the presence and kindness of my husband who has assumed nearly all of our household duties and served as my chauffeur, the joy of fresh air after being cooped up inside, and the laughter, fun and good energy that come from being with others. These are the truly priceless gifts that have come into my life as of late, in addition to the amazing, but often overlooked gift of health. As I return to work this month and assume a few of the normal goings-on of the hectic holiday season, I have an ever-present appreciation for the many priceless gifts that have come to me this fall and for the many gifts that come to me every single day. Just as others have been gifts to me, I am looking at ways to turn my gratitude into action and share whatever gifts I may have with others. It's not so much a season of consumption or even questioning consumption for me so much as it is a season of experiencing and counting my blessings, seeing and appreciating miracles every day. 

The White Elephant in the Room

It seems only fitting living in a city that prides itself for its circus heritage that Larry and I would partake in a white elephant gift exchange last evening.  We joined colleagues from my workplace for a potluck appetizer dinner, followed by the gift exchange.  More of a burden than a boon, white elephant gifts are sometimes extravagant, often silly, perhaps even strange and barely useful things that most people would not put on their gotta-have gift list.  Larry and I selected our contributions to the game at our favorite thrift store, with one gift being a bristly little bunny figure with a metal rod growing out of its head to hold a place card or recipe or reminder note and a small, narrow ceramic vase decorated with a thermometer and the phrase, "When you're hot, your hot." It was fun to watch as the recipients accepted their gifts, with one person trading for another, so-called better gift. With these gifts, it wasn't so much the thought that counted, but the laughs that were generated.  In the end, there was nothing to be gained with our white elephant gift exchange except for some unwanted items, but we were certainly entertained.

Unexpected Gifts

Two Fridays in a row, I have ended my work week in unexpected and appreciated ways.  Both times, I've visited a local storekeeper who has showered me with a hug one week and a bonus item in my bag the next.  Although to the shopkeeper, the gestures may have been small, to me they were huge expressions of grace and caring.  It got me to thinking about how I might provide such unexpected gifts to others.  When we give of ourselves, even in the smallest of ways, the difference can be immeasurable to the receiving party.  The generous, compassionate storeowner has given me more than a hug and a bonus item.  The shopkeeper's gift has given me every reason to pay it forward.

Sharing Talents

Sometimes, it takes a small child to deliver a big message.  Our church's children and youth presented a musical one recent Sunday with the message that we all have the capacity to do even the smallest things in order to make big change. At about the same time, I learned of three people I thought I knew fairly well who had what I would call hidden talents.  One surprised me by accompanying a children's tone chime and vocal choir on the piano at church.  Another person recently signed up to volunteer at our local nursing home where he will give of his time as an organist, providing much appreciated dinner music for the residents during their lunchtime.  And another person showed me a lovely eyeglass case she had created.  I also learned of two not-for-profit organizations that are doing tremendous work. I'd never realized the extent to which their missions were so far-reaching.  I also had a conversation with a gentleman who is affiliated with another noble local cause, who compared his group's work to Biblical Scripture about sharing our talents for the greater good.  These encounters made me start thinking about their common theme of talents. We all have gifts of one kind or another that contribute to our own joy, but may also have the capacity to contribute to the greater good.  What talents might we each have that could make a difference for someone else, no matter how small or insignificant we might think those gifts to be?