Monthly Archives: February 2016

Wild Harbinger of Spring

Welcome, wild harbinger of spring!  1st blossom in garden

To this small nook of earth;

Feeling and fancy fondly cling

‘Round thoughts which owe their birth

To thee, and to the humble spot

Where chance has fixed thy lowly lot.

 

Bernard Barton, “To a Crocus”

 

The crocus flower marks the dying of winter and the promise of spring. This past week, nearly nine months after Tristan overdosed on heroin, the first blossom appeared in his memorial garden. Nine months—the period of human gestation in darkness before birth.

The crocus proved a perfect symbol. Early stories about the flower include a young man named Crocus who was a friend of the Greek god Hermes (Mercury), messenger of the gods. One day the two were playing catch with a disc. The disc accidently hit Crocus in the head and he fell to the ground. Hermes, distraught with grief about the fatal wound, turned Crocus into a flower to honor him.

The crocus continues to honor others. Tristan received a crocus bulb about ten years ago when his Cub Scout den leader, Mike, passed from cancer that consumed his brain.

And a few years ago, like Crocus, my son Tristan was wounded in the head with the disease of addiction, a brain disorder that robs people of the ability to make healthy choices. Now his hard, dark night of addiction is over. I believe he resides on the Other Side, resurrected, at peace.

Last fall, Rebecca Woods came over with a bag of crocus bulbs and helped me plant them, and Mike’s crocus bulb, in my son’s memorial garden. The first crocus to spring up is the color of amethyst, a stone noted for healing properties.

As for my son, and my own grief, there is new life beyond the cold of winter. The crocus heralds the dawning of our spring.

Thriver Soup Ingredient

Plant some crocus bulbs next fall and watch for them during the winter. They can be a wonderful surprise, even in the dead of winter.

Sources

Hoyt & Roberts, comps. Hoyt’s New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations. 1922. Retrieved Feb. 25, 2016, from http://www.bartleby.com/78/197.html

Galenus, De constitutione artis medicae, 9. 4. (Corpus medicorum Graecorum, 13. p. 269)  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crocus_(mythology)

http://www.greek-gods.info/greek-gods/hermes/myths/hermes-crocus/

HeArty Art Auction

The remembrance of Thee is a healing medicine to the hearts of such as have drawn nigh unto Thy court.

Prayers and Meditations, by Baha’u’llah, trans. by Shoghi Effendi

 

heart auction horse 1 webWhile the Divine provides healing medicine to our hearts, cancer patients still often need the healing medicine of basic scientific research and clinical trials to heal the rest of their bodies. These cost huge amounts of money.

Now we can bring the healing medicine of our hearts to the heArt of healing. An organization for a rare type of uterine cancer is conducting an art auction to raise funds for medical research.

Research done in the past literally saved my life by discovering a few chemotherapies that can slow the growth of uterine sarcomas. Yet after three types of combined chemotherapies for two years, I was sent home to get my affairs in order… because there were no more medical options available to me. Had I not healed my life during those two years, and been so supported by others, I would be long gone by now.

Hundreds of uterine sarcoma patients live on the edge with this aggressive disease. They need new options to keep going.

To assist with funding research, I have donated a golden Bright Spirit Horse with hearts in sacred geometrical designs to the heart-themed art auction. The organization conducting the event is LMSdr, which stands for Leiomyosarcoma Direct Research. While I did not have a leiomyosarcoma, I received the treatments used for those who have leiomyosarcomas. Their healing medicine gave me time for my heart-healing medicine to take effect and save my life.

 

Thriver Soup Ingredient:

To view and bid on heart art, please visit http://lmsconference.myevent.com/3/auction.htm

Place your bid by April 9. The art will be shipped to the winning bidders directly from Leiomyosarcoma Direct Research Foundation, (LMSdr). Please take a look and share with your friends. Simply click the email icon on the auction page and send a note to a friend about the art auction, or click on the Facebook icon or just like the  Facebook page:

https://www.facebook.com/LMSDRARTAUCTION/

With your help we can all make a difference. Thank you!

 

Source:

Prayers and Meditations, by Baha’u’llah, trans. by Shoghi Effendi. Baha’i Publishing Trust, Wilmette, Ill, ninth printing, 1996, LV, p. 58.

 

A Return to Exercise

… (Krishna) drove that best of chariots to a point between the two armies, in front of Bhishma, Drona, and all the rulers of the earth, and then said: “See, Partha (Arjuna), this gathering of all the Kurus!”

The Bhagavad Gita, 1:24-25

 

The Hindu god Krishna drove the best of chariots into battle. The chariot can be a metaphor for one’s body. If one’s chariot, or body, is not in the best condition, it can seriously hamper every aspect of one’s life.

I had let my chariot lose some of its fitness recently. My exercise life had succumbed to the excuses of grief after losing my son and the move into my new home. Later I listened to my guided visualization CD, “A Conversation with Dis-ease,” and received the message that it was time to let go of regularly walking for exercise due to a lifetime of issues with my toe joints.

Yes, they were excuses. My psychotherapist called me on it, then encouraged me, once again, to exercise regularly—preferably 150 minutes per week. I was only doing about 60. Time to ramp it up.

choco truffle webAfter I got home, I felt nudged to get my exercise for the day by walking to a nearby grocery store to pick up more onions. While in the store, I took a look at the clearance shelves in the back. I was shocked to find my all-time favorite chocolate-hazelnut truffles there at one third the usual price—expensive chocolates I had only ever seen in two other distant stores in town.

Was that nudge from my son to make sure I had these special Italian chocolates for celebrating Valentine’s Day? I’d like to think so.

I took home two bags of the sweet treats.

What a wonderful gift for following through and doing my part to get my chariot back in shape. Just in time to enjoy some luscious truffles for Valentine’s Day.

 

Thriver Soup Ingredient:

Exercise is important for numerous reasons. A common recommendation is 30 minutes of exercise five times each week. Some people use pedometers or download exercise apps on their phones. Some tips for getting started include parking at the far ends of parking lots, taking stairs if and when you can, or simply tensing and loosing muscles while lying in bed if that is what you can do.

 

What is your favorite form of exercise?

What is your favorite kind of chocolate?

World Cancer Day

Those who are devoted to the perfection of wisdom should expect therefrom many advantages here and now…. Those devotees will not die an untimely death, nor from poison, or sword, or fire, or water, or staff, or violence.

The Perfection of Wisdom, trans. Edward Conze

 

One advantage of the perfection of wisdom in an individual is an alertness to bodily changes that are sending a signal: something is amiss. That could easily include cancer. And cancer needs to be dealt with immediately.

A friend just sent me an email because three people in her life are now dealing with cancer—including a young man at the prime of life with the disease spread to distant organs. It’s terrifying and overwhelming.

How I wish we could stop—even prevent—this terrible disease.

WCD2016_WeCan_Poster_510x510Cancer is a scourge. Currently, 8.2 million people pass from cancer worldwide every year, according to http://www.worldcancerday.org/.

My friend’s note arrived on the eve of World Cancer Day, an annual global event created on Feb. 4, 2000, to “unite the world’s population in the fight against cancer… to get as many people as possible around the globe to talk about cancer on 4 February.”

The event aims to raise awareness and educate people about cancer.

Please. Inspire yourself to do all you can to prevent cancer. Perfect your wisdom, in part, by keeping alert for symptoms. And if it strikes, do all you can to regain your health. You are worth it, and it will save others from the devastation of losing you.

 

Thriver Soup Ingredient

The American Cancer Society lists signs and symptoms of cancer at http://www.cancer.org/cancer/cancerbasics/signs-and-symptoms-of-cancer

 

Sources:

Conze, Edward, trans. The Perfection of Wisdom and Eight Thousand Lines and Its Verse Summary. Bolinas, California: Four Seasons Foundation, 1975, pages 109-110.

Image: http://www.worldcancerday.org/