Tag: Halloween

Harvesting

This is a really interesting, reflective time of the year. Yesterday was Halloween that has its roots in an ancient Celtic celebration called Samhain (a Gaelic word which is surprisingly pronounced “Sow-win”) which honored the harvests of the year, and was believed to be a time of a thin veil between the living and the dead. Today starts the Mexican tradition of “Day of the Dead” which is a joyous celebration of fondly remembering our ancestors. So, at this transitional time of year when our plants are shedding leaves and the blooms and harvests of the year are already stored and the plants are dying off and preparing to go into the deep, dark sleep of winter, it brings key questions to mind that can help us to live our lives more intentionally. Here are some of the questions that I am pondering for myself at this time of year. Please add any of your own questions and ponderings that could be insightful and helpful to all of us, in my Comments section.

What are the blessings and the traditions that my ancestors started that are important for me to honor and to carry on, and to instill into my own life and into the life of my family?

What are the “curses” and false beliefs of my ancestry that I need to be strong enough to change and to discontinue and to discourage in my own habits and in the lessons which I give/show/impart to my family as their matriarch?

What did I harvest this year, and what fruits did this harvest bear? Do I want to plant the seeds for the same kind of “harvest” next year, or are there some regular, well worn “crops” that have bore their fruit/lessons and now need to be retired? What are some new seeds that I can plant to bear growth in my life in new ways? How can I keep the soil of my life, fertile and alive?

Do I feel and show my most sincere gratefulness for the harvests of my life to my God/Universe/Lifeforce and to my ancestors who paved the way before me? Do I respectfully seek daily guidance from God/Universe/Lifeforce and from my ancestors and my guides?

Are the crops that I am growing and reaping every year sustainable? Are they harmless, or are they harmful to me and/or to others? Am I generous with what I have reaped?

In recovery circles, or for people dealing with difficult behaviors that they want to change such as eating disorders, or gambling addictions, being intentional and focusing on the future consequences of our actions is a huge part of overcoming problems. Addicts are told to “Think the drink/drug/bet/compulsion/impulse to the end.” Meaning, before you do what you desperately are wanting to do in the moment (or perhaps even avoiding doing a “good thing”), honestly consider the consequences of what may happen/what is likely to happen/best and worst case scenarios, etc. and ask yourself if you can live with these consequences. What feels good for a brief moment, could easily end up being life destroying in the end. In short, are your actions taking you towards your goals, or are they taking you away on dangerous, wayward paths?

Taking the time to ponder what went right this year, what went wrong this year, what could have been better this year, and to honestly consider and to own what part we, as individuals, played in any of these events and what came out of these events, is living intentionally. Considering the overall ramifications of things that we choose to do or to say before we do them, is living intentionally. Living intentionally makes us powerful farmers of our own harvests. Before the crazy hubbub of the holidays starts to really kick in, give yourself an early holiday gift. Give yourself the gift of reflective intentionality. Write your intentions down so that you can refer to them, when you get busy planting your seeds in the new year. Make sure that you are growing in the direction of your own choosing. Wrap what you thoughtfully considered and desire in the new year, and tie it up in a proverbial bow. Know that this is the best, most thoughtful and useful and probably priceless gift that you will receive all holiday season. You deserve this gift from yourself. You will use it daily, and all year long. And next year at this time, you will have a beautiful harvest to show for it.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

October’s Final Day

Credit: @woofknight, X

Happy Halloween!! On our past trip, I overheard the story of a little kid asking for a grilled cheese, “but without the cheese, please.” This brought a smile to my face. That’s what I love about Halloween – the vicarious thrill I feel and the automatic smiles that come with that thrill, when I see the joy on the little ones’ faces. The children literally become the super heroes, the princesses, the sports heroes, the pilots, the witches, etc. and they get rewarded for their pure audaciousness and creativity and mischief.

In a dangerous world where the much-too-easy-to-do wrong click on a computer’s website can show a child what real horror looks like, in real live children’s faces, all over this planet, thank goodness that many children can have a night of escape into make-believe and fun and sweets galore. For at least one night, the children can believe that magic is real and that they, themselves have great power in commanding a simple spell – “Trick or Treat.”

Our children need more lightness and fun. Our children need to see more smiles and acts of kindness, everywhere that they look. Our children need us to believe in them and their futures, by us boldly taking the reins and owning our own mistakes, and steering our ships to better, safer, clearer routes, so that when our children embark onto the harbor of their own adult lives, the real horror won’t be so easy to be found. And the magic will be everywhere.

“A person should always choose a costume which is in direct contrast to her own personality.” –Lucy Van Pelt, It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown

“Magic is really very simple, all you’ve got to do is want something and then let yourself have it.” –Aggie Cromwell, Halloweentown

“Just because I cannot see it, doesn’t mean I can’t believe it!” –Jack Skellington, The Nightmare Before Christmas

“The farther we’ve gotten from the magic and mystery of our past, the more we’ve come to need Halloween.” –Paula Guran

“There is a child in every one of us who is still a trick-or-treater looking for a brightly-lit front porch.” –Robert Brault

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Wicked, Part 4

****See previous Octobers for all of the other parts of Wicked . . . .

Hilda: Zelda, what in bat’s hell is going on with you? Did I accidentally turn you into a frog or are you on Ozempic?

Zelda: Oh, Hilda! You kill me! Say, who’s the new guy?

Hilda: His name is Merlin. Seems like an airhead to me. He’s got nothing between the ears.

Zelda: Oh Hilda, you just don’t get it. Try, try, try to understand, he’s a magic man.

Zelda: Hey, hey, hey Merlin, do you have a ghoulfriend? Do you want to hear a wizard joke?? Who did the wizard call from the witch hotel?

Hilda: Ugh!! Zelda, how corny can you be?

Zelda: He called Broom Service!!! (cackle cackle cackle) One more! One more! What was the Wizard’s favorite Beach Boys Song?

Zelda: Help Me Wand-A!

Hilda: Help me . . . anybody.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

The Potato House

I was going through some writer’s block this morning and then I saw this meme above. Isn’t this a fun idea? It’s not like these people are only offering potatoes to trick-or-treaters. Kids get to choose between another piece of the same old/same old candy, or they get to brag and tell the crazy story at school about getting a potato for Halloween.

Don’t we all need a random potato in a pile of the usual candy? There is something wonderful about being oddly surprised. When something unusual happens (and not a “bad” unusual), it spawns a little bit of delight in us, doesn’t it? So much of our every days are made up of our rote habits and routines. Even our holidays become so “traditional” that we rarely shake things up. We put the wreath and the tree in the usual spots, barely even thinking about what we are doing.

Let’s all add a potato into today’s basket of candy. Got to a grocery store you never go to, to see what they are offering up. If you’re “doom scrolling”, try a different news website than you usually check out, to scare yourself silly. Make breakfast for dinner. (the last time I did this, my family thought it was the best meal they had eaten in a long while) Listen to a song in a foreign language. (I found this song the other day and I can’t stop playing it.) It’s wonderful!

I like to watch animals in nature, or even our own dogs. They never cease to surprise me. The other day, Trip, our Boykin spaniel was violently barking and snarling at some enterprising young men my husband had hired to wash our windows. We all wanted Trip to “hush up” in a big way but none of our scolding was stopping him from his angry rant. In fact, our scolding was giving his tantrum explosive fuel. Then, Ralphie, our Labrador retriever disappeared. He came back with Trip’s favorite blue spiky ball and he placed it at Trip’s feet. Trip can never resist this ball. He picked it up in his mouth. Problem solved! Hot potato! Our dog has more sense than we do.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

F.E.A.R.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

This quote is a good one to remember during Halloween’s “scary season.” I always tell my kids to always ask for what they want, go after what they want, look for every possibility to get what they want, because what is the worst place that anyone will end up in, if you don’t get what you want? You’ll be in the same place and position, where you are sitting at right now. You really have nothing to lose. Face everything and rise.

A Dear Abby column written decades ago has always stuck with me. A writer asked Abby about his situation where he was in his thirties and he realized that he wanted to switch careers. He realized that he wanted to become a doctor, but looking at everything that this would entail, it would probably take ten years, and he probably wouldn’t even start practicing medicine until he was 45. She asked him a simple question, “How old will you be in ten years if you don’t go to medical school?” This point was made real for me when I belonged to a book club many years ago. The woman who started the book club said that her father was a doctor when they were small children, and then one day, he sat his family down, and he said that their lifestyle might change for a bit, because he had decided to follow his biggest dream to become an airline pilot. Her father retired as a very content and happy airline pilot, who also had a medical degree.

Face your fears. Face your dreams. Face your callings. Don’t run. Rise. The choice is ripe for the taking. The choice is yours.

Monday-Funday (Wicked, Part 3)

Hilda: Zelda, I have told you time and time again to stay away from those Boos Cruises. They dish out some potent potions.

Zelda (muffled): Silly Hildy, I’m just playing “hide and ghost seek.” Cackle Cackle Cackle

Hilda:

Zelda (muffled): Hildy, one more, one more, “What do you call a witch who is pretty and friendly??”

Hilda: A failure.

Zelda: How did you know that one?

Hilda: (flatly) A lucky guess. Zelda, I have a confession. I accidentally sat on your pet owl.

Zelda: Oh, Screech will be alright. We just need to puff up his feathers. Hildy, that reminds me of another joke. What you get if you cross an owl with a witch??

Zelda: A bird that doesn’t give a hoot!!! Cackle Cackle Cackle

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Fleeting

Good morning! Happy First Day of Fall! I had a little gut punch earlier this week. I walked into the Fresh Market and they had their cinnamon brooms up front. Every year since my daughter was probably in middle school, I would buy her one of those brooms for her room because she loves the smell of them. She would hang it on her ceiling fan and I would whack my head on it, more times than I can count, but I loved that the aromatic broom made her happy. I am not sure that her college roommate would love the strong scent of cinnamon as much as she does, but I’ll have to check in, to see if we should keep the tradition alive.

The Fresh Market also had their pumpkins in full display, right at the store’s entrance. Every year since middle school, my daughter had a tradition with a friend to meet at our home to carve pumpkins before Halloween. They always had elaborate and difficult designs in mind, but at the end of all, the girls usually got giggly and settled for simpler, conventional jack-o-lantern faces, along with good conversation and fancy coffees from Starbucks. This friend of my daughter’s wasn’t in her tightest circle. They never had classes together, and her friend was busy with the swim team, while my daughter was entrenched in the tennis team. Still, they always made time to get together to carve pumpkins, every single year.

Both of these young ladies now go to separate colleges far from each other. The carving tradition will no longer be possible to be kept. My daughter and her friend may see each other in passing, during future holiday outings – those occasional times when kids who went to high school together often reconnect. The friendship has changed, as all relationships do. Still, the memories will remain happy ones, for all of us.

I read an article over the weekend by Pema Chödrön, the proflic writer and Buddhist nun. She says this:

“Realizing the fleeting nature of everything and the freshness of every moment is equivalent to realizing that we’re always in a state of transition, an in-between state . . . Like a shooting star, a visual fault, a candle flame, an illusion, a dewdrop, a water bubble, a dream, lightning, a cloud . . . “

Chödrön teaches the importance of understanding that all phenomena is the same in our lives. Everything that we experience has a beginning, and then immediately starts the continuous process of changing, and at a certain point, will inevitably end. The nature of life is its “fleeting quality.” In other words, “change is the only constant.”

I don’t think that it’s in our human nature to gracefully accept life’s fleeting quality. The things which we love, we don’t want to be fleeting. And the things which we hate, we struggle against, and we resist, and then we try to force the fleeting to go faster. We have so much trouble letting go of control, and just being and experiencing. It’s the dual nature of our analytical minds. It’s the underbelly of being able to think and reason.

Right now, I am enjoying a peaceful morning, my dogs at my feet, as I write this post on my beloved blog. It is a still, calm, sun-filled morning here. I smile to myself, remembering the waft of cinnamon sticks, every past autumn day when I would wander into my daughter’s room. I smile at the memory of the crooked smiles of jolly jack-o-lanterns made by two young ladies who enjoyed each other’s company enough to make a point of inventing this tradition of “crafting” together every Halloween. This morning is well on its way of passing. It’s been a good morning. This morning is in the process of phasing into hopefully, an enjoyable, peaceful afternoon, and then at sunset, the day will draw to its inevitable close. This morning, this afternoon, this whole day will transform into a memory, as all things do. And that is the way of the fleeting nature of life and all things in it. But beautifully, the memories stay alive.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Monday-Funday

Image

Credit: Rex Masters, Twitter

We didn’t get many trick-or-treaters last night. My husband read that only 16% of parents planned to take their kids out trick-or-treating this year, as compared to 12% last year. COVID does not want us to have any fun. At least the percentages are going up, slowly but surely.

Have a great week, friends!!! Happy November!!!

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.