Dealing with our own garbage

I grew up on our family farm, located out in the boonies of southeastern Washington. We lived far from town or a landfill. So, we had a garbage pit on the farm. It was a large hole in the ground, where we took all the household garbage. Every couple of years, Dad would push dirt over the hole. I cringe to write that bit of my history

On one hand, we were conscious of not creating terrible amounts of garbage, because none of us wanted to live in a bunch of crap.

Anyway time passed and between society getting on board with community landfills and garbage dumps becoming more accessible, we did stop burying our own garbage on the farm.

When I moved off the farm and into town, I put my garbage outside the apartment and a big truck drove by to pick it up and haul it to the local landfill. Wow, to have others deal with my garbage was handy.

But was it so handy that I got slack in dealing with my own garbage? Did I create more garbage than I should have?

Probably.

Thankfully, when recycling became the fad, I was already on board. Recycling keeps me aware.

I also wonder about mental garbage. Anger, resentment, ridiculous expectations, narrow mindedness…

Am I dealing with my own mental garbage, or am I leaving it around for other people to deal with?

I don’t want to live with my own mental garbage. I don’t want to make others deal with my garbage. I can create the least amount of mental garbage possible. I can sort through it and recycle that which can be used again. For example, my ability to develop good habits may have been packaged in narrow mindedness, or focusing, but after my good habit was developed, I could throw the narrow mindedness into a bin to be broken down and re-created as paying strong attention in some other area needing improvement.

If I have resentful thoughts, I don’t need to talk about it and litter other people’s minds. I can throw it out by disliking the evil that brought about the resentment, while still loving persons or places involved.

I want to be aware of frugality and wisdom. I want to be aware of my own garbage and not expect someone else to deal with it.

Radio interview

Click here for radio interview about Christian Science today.

Bonnie Lykes interviewed Cheryl Petersen in New York. Cheryl talks about revising Mary Baker Eddy’s Science and Health.

Cheryl also reads a chapter from the book she is currently writing about her life.

Anger only a wake up call, wisdom motivates

I interviewed a candidate for 19^th District Congress in New York. We talked about the bigger picture, this election year’s uproarious campaigning.

It was noted that some candidates behavior is reckless, but it spotlights an anger in America.

Maybe so.

Even I get disgusted with immoral politicians. But egos, greed, and self-service aren’t new to humanity. Big money people don’t have a monopoly on dishonesty.

Anger does seem to be in the air, however. People are ready for change. We are ready to get out any vicious cycle that demeans the good in humanity.

But unless anger is seen only as an alarm clock to wake up, and not a motivator, that vicious cycle continues.

Anger never provides an inspiring or logical answer or reason to do something, or not.

Anger is only the extreme opposite of passivity, indifference–the habit of repeating the same behavior because that’s the way it’s always been done.

I don’t ignore my disgust, but I know it’s only a warning to wake me up to follow life, truth, and love. I need to get out of the bed of anger or inaction and get up with wisdom.

 “In your anger do not sin: Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry.” Ephesians 4:26, NIV

Quoting from science & religion to God: The manifestations of evil which counterfeit divine justice, conjure the picture of an angry God. “And in anger and wrath I will execute vengeance on the nations that did not obey.”[1] Correctly interpreted, the Bible verse shows that catastrophes, famines, and plagues are the self-destruction of error, not the destruction of God’s children. We have the ability (matter doesn’t) to demonstrate the strength and permanency of Spirit We can witness the brightening light of Truth, harmony, and the entireness of God.

[1] Micah 5:15

Balancing our discoveries

Yesterday, I learned that you can bathe and blow-dry a chicken. No kidding. The act of washing and drying chickens is performed by 4-H members at our county fair for showing.

Aside from the chicken factoid, we are constantly discovering.

Animal sciences professor, Min Du, of Washington State University, says our bodies are equipped with both good and bad types of fat and naturally work together to balance weight and metabolism.

Du’s theory includes, irisin, a newly discovered hormone in the skeletal muscle.

Will we ever know everything about this world? No.

We are constantly discovering and I’m training myself to discover something spiritual also, along with the physical discoveries to bring balance. I don’t want to be weighed down by physical knowledge, but buoyed by spiritual knowledge.

Spiritual discoveries that I strive to experience:

• Patience is unbroken.
• We move in Mind, not body.
• By courageously doing something new and different, we can break vicious cycles.
• Though nothing physical is sacred, we can preserve the story of the sacred by experiencing it.

 

The power of humility or contrition

A friend is writing a book and gave it to me to review. I found it interesting, a real page turner.

At one point in the book, a man and his buddies had done a girl seriously wrong. He carried that knowledge with him for fourteen years before coming across the grown girl. Although he wasn’t confronted about his past behavior, he knew it had hurt her. He took her aside and asked her to turn him into the police. He didn’t ask the woman for forgiveness, he admitted he was wrong and wanted to make it right.

Our society uses the method of punishment or jail as a means of making bad behavior right. It was all he knew.

But the woman, watched him confess and knew he had already punished himself for fourteen years. She told him, “Your contrition has changed you and made you better person.”

This sentence struck me. It paralleled my thoughts on how powerful divine Mind is to transform the human mind. It is the human mind or ego that is the real criminal. Sitting in a jail won’t change a person, although we need jails most of the time because we aren’t so advanced as to know how to help people become changed for the better very well.

Real change happens in mind and involves contrition or humility.

I can think of the times when out in the woods, or with my pets, or watching people help people and I feel a wave of humility or contrition come over me. It does change me for the better.

I can think of the times when I was with a foster child and felt as though the child was equal to perfect innocence and a life of goodness. The child’s background, ethnicity, or skin color was irrelevant, completely vanished as elements of reality. The human personality was gone and the spiritual child was there, is here.

This also shows me how ridiculous it is to argue religious doctrine or church conformity or social standing. They too have no bearing in the realm of reality.

We work with what we have and we humans do have enough understanding to continue to progress mindfully. We can internalize the humility or contrition that changes us, or puts us on the path of love.

Recommended book on Angels

“Angles take different forms when they appear. Some say they seem like ordinary people. Others say they could be mistaken for mighty warriors. But a man named Isaiah described the angels he saw as, well, very strange looking indeed.” Angels in the Bible Storybook, by Allia Zobel Nolan

I got this book for myself in the audio version. I listened to it before falling asleep, and enjoyed its simplicity and honesty. It’s written for adults and children.

I ordered a hardback edition to have at our home. We can read it to our granddaughter when she comes to visit. The Storybook is illustrated nicely by Alida Massari.

My book, from science & religion to God, defines angels as God’s messages to us. They are messages of love, forgiveness, strength, purity and progress. We can feel surrounded by angels.

 

Midlife joy

Vowing not to be those parents who hang onto the family farm with the hope that the children return to continue the tradition, my husband and I put our farm up for sale after our girls were out of college and told us they had no interest in farming. The property sold in five days. Stunned, my husband and I stared at one another and said at the same time, “Now what do we do?”

I believe that question was the beginning of a premature midlife crisis. It led to a year of colossal upheaval. The disruption in our life, however, bashed the typical definition of midlife crisis referred to by the public.

Boston psychologist, Lynn Margolies, PhD, wrote, “A sure sign you may be in a midlife crisis is if you are feeling trapped and very tempted to act out in ways that will blow up your life.” Margolies likened this phenomenon to a rebellious teenager and warned against jolting loved ones or pursuing unrealistic, hurtful goals.

A midlife crisis can be boiled down to a person discovering or rediscovering their identity and self-confidence.

Discovery is not a bad thing when taken by the horns and wrangled to our benefit rather than bane. Four fundamentals to motivating a positive crisis comes to mind when recalling my midlife predicament:

Family can be separated from the job. Family and farming were my identity or so I believed. We raised our children on the farm and fostered children, all of whom thrived, surrounded by nature, animals, and fresh fruits and vegetables. When the day came in which welled up inside me a storm infused wave of desire to escape the farm, I was able to see that I could escape the farm without leaving family.

Realistic goals are priority. My husband and I were unable to retire, financially and mentally. We needed to remember when making decisions that we were unemployed empty-nesters who needed to be practical. To start a new career meant starting at the bottom.

Stuff had to go, but not good memories. With no children in the house, there were less material demands. We also no longer needed a lot of the stuff we had. Getting rid of stuff made it easier to start at the bottom. Because my good memories are not attached to the stuff, I still have them today. This freedom made it easier to discover. It also made it easier to move across the United States, for the fun of it.

Take on a challenge. We decided to move to a whole different community. Mapping out a strategy, we met fears head on and it left me with a feeling of accomplishment. Piling it on, my husband said to me, “Let’s ride our motorcycles from Washington State to New York.” My brain could barely process his comment, but it did sound motivating. I agreed only to almost back out at the last minute. The idea of riding my motorcycle 3,000 miles was daunting, until I realized if I only made it to Montana, fine, I’ll sell the bike and fly in an airplane the rest of the way.

The motorcycle trip across America is indelibly marked in my mental databank as the best two-weeks in the history of trips and vacations. We rode Highway 2, a northern route that took us through Glacier National Park, over the Bitterroot Mountains where Lewis and Clark traversed 200 years previous, on foot.

I learned that I could ride in rain, wind, over snowy roads, and under blasted hot sunshine. I spent $9 to fill my gas tank at the station, while a camper owner at the nearby gas pump spent $232 to fill his tank.

I watched terrain change from desert to woodland. I felt a spiritual parallel as I changed from wishy-washy to “I can do this.” We rode into our new upstate New York hometown on our 25^th wedding anniversary. We’ll be celebrating our thirty-third anniversary in a few weeks.