Life's Loving Memories

  CRUISING         "If you don't move your body, your brain thinks your dead. Movement of the body will not only clean out the 'Sludge' but will also give you more 'energy'."                                                                                                --Sylvia Brown There is something very spiritual about standing on the back of a cruise ship at midnight, and staring out into the wake of the boat. The vastness of the ocean makes you realize how infinitesimal you are compared to the ocean. My husband Gary and I love to cruise, although the Corona Virus gave us a setback and we missed our 2020 cruise through the Panama Canal. What I like most about cruising are the people we meet, and the countries we vi...

  RETIRING OR REWIRING? "We have a great deal more kindness than is ever spoken."       --Ralph Waldo Emerson In my life I have retired two times, once after teaching high school for Twenty-six years, and once from ministry after eighteen years.   Now I am rewiring to write more books. Currently I am writing a series of children’s books that follow Sam, a young girl who, after a recent, move is learning how to fit into the school she attends. The second time I retired, the Pandemic showed its face. Boy, did that bring changes--but it did support my writing.  I learned all the many things I could do while staying close to home. I think it was also a great way to remember that I am truly blessed by family and friends. Life has an amazing way of opening paths to different vocations and experiences in life. "Happiness can only be found in the present moment, not at some imaginary place in the future."              ...

  COLLEGE, NOT IF BUT WHERE "If we live truly, we shall see truly."            --- Ralph Waldo Emerson My family might not have had a surplus of money while I was growing up, but what we lacked in finances was made up for in love. My parents valued education and we grew up not wondering if we would be going to college, but where.   Four children in the family and we all graduated with college degrees. My father graduated with degrees in mechanical engineering, metallurgy, as well as one in music.   My mother did a two-year college study after high school, and then, later is life, went on to earn her certificate in interior design. Kids need either a parent who cares about them or a caring teacher or other influential adult to whet their interest in continuing their education.   You may not think you make a difference in anyone else’s life, but to at least one person, you make a world of difference.   "You have to be true to yourse...

  ERNIE THE COCKATIL "We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing."                    George Bernard Shaw When we first moved to Kennewick, Washington, and I began my ministry, my husband was an IT consultant. That made it easy for us to make the move, because he could work from anywhere that had an airport.   Sunday afternoons he would fly out to wherever his current job was, and on Thursday evenings he would fly home to our house.   His being gone so much left me a little lonely, So I decided to buy a bird. I decided on a Cockatiel and named him early.   He quickly decided he would grace me by climbing on my finger. Every morning we would go around the house and open all the blinds, and I would sing, “This Little Light of Mine” to him. After a few weeks of singing to him, he learned to sing it by himself.   When I was home, the cage door was open, and he would fly out to si...

  DREAM TEAM "It is what it is, it is what you make it."   --James Durbin In my first eight years of teaching high school, I was blessed with so many wonderful students. I had come to a school whose drama program was just starting again after a lull of about five years.   I began a drama program and speech team from scratch. Perhaps it was because I was in my thirties, perhaps it was the students I had, or because of the desire we all had to build something new. We built the flats needed for scenery, collected a wardrobe of costumes, and the students took their acting seriously.   In speech it took a few years to build the team; but having students who memorized lines for a two-hour play, made it easy for them to memorize ten-minute speeches. The faith was there, and it fed the desire. And just think, all of this happened before I discovered my New Thought philosophy. Actually, I think the seed had been planted early on in life and finding the Religious Science T...

  CAR CONSCIOUSNESS "Your good is not postponed or delayed. Your mind senses the spiritual activities within it within it and cooperates fully. You watch new ideas happen in your mind and new events take place in your experience."      Ernest Holmes, The Power is within You Growing up, my brother and my dad always worked on the car when it had its little breakdowns.   It might take a day or two to fix, but more than likely it lasted a week or more. From that early experience came a fear of what would happen next as far as breakdowns were concerned. I worried about my tires going flat and life listened to me, I had more than my fair share of leaky tires.   New thought teaches us that what you think about comes about, and my worry about what would go wrong next, lead to a myriad of repair bills. Then I met my second husband, Gary.   He always believed his cars would last, even after the speed-o-meter turned over one hundred thousand miles. He believed...

  DISCOVERING THE SCIENCE OF MIND "Truth is unchangeable. This is self-evident since there is nothing for the Truth to change," Ernest Holmes Shortly before my divorce in 1997, I discovered the Science of Mind.  I was looking for something that matched my spiritual beliefs, and I found it in the same building that my Toastmasters group had been meeting it for three years. One Saturday morning I picked up the flyer that had been in the room since I first started attending.  I vowed that I would attend the next Sunday. The Saturday before the meeting, I found a book by Louise Hay, The Power is Within You, at Costco.  I read the book at loved it. The next day I went to the Bonita Center for Joyful Living.  I discovered that it was just what Louise had spoken about in her book.   I learned that Spirit's power was within me, and that I was walking a new path. I decided to look at the divorce as my discovery of a new teaching. All of my decisions in life have...