teacher
Shared Wisdom: Latest Quotations
So while I collect my thoughts and get ready write on some specific topics that have come up for me over the past couple of months, let me share some words of wisdom from others. I think if I had lots of money I would have a house with a huge library that would house not only lots of books, but collections of all the words that I have read over the years that have impacted me deeply or influenced me in some way. Here are a few more of those precious words.
“Everything that I think, feel,say, and do belongs to me, and everything that you think, feel, say, and do belongs to you.” (Paul Ferrini)
“I cannot think myself into a new way of living; I have to live myself into a new way of thinking.” (AnShin Thomas)
“Know that making a commitment to your happiness, to your health, to your fitness, to your family, to your abundance, to your career, to your mission in life, to your love, to your friends, to your community, to your creativity, to your spiritual life, is all the same thing. It is all a commitment to growth, to wholeness, to being your best, to living life fully and gratefully starting from where you are right now!” (Jinjee)
“Making amends without forgiveness leads to dishonesty and lies.” (Anon)
“Everyone who’s human deserves to be treated with some dignity – whether they’ve done good things or bad things, they have to be given hope.”
(Elton John)
“When you stop resenting what anther person can’t give you, you begin to appreciate what they have to offer.” (Anon)
“There are some people who live in a dream world, and there are some who face reality; and then there are those who turn one into the other.”
(Douglas Everett)
“Forgiveness is the fragrance the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.” (Mark Twain)
“The fact that Christianity is a religion of love makes every evangelizer the teller of a love story, the singer of a love song. By example as well as by words evangelizers must be teachers of love.” (from John Paul II and the New Evangelization)
“The power of a man’s virtue should not be measured by his special efforts, but by his ordinary doing.” (Blaise Pascal)
“When people envy me I think, Oh God, don’t envy me, I have my own pains.” (Barbra Streisand)
“He paints the lily of the field, perfumes each lily bell; if He so loves the little flowers, I know He loves me well.” (Maria Strauss)
“Go out into the world today and love the people you meet. Let your presence light new light in the hearts f people.” (Mother Teresa)
“He that cannot forgive others breaks the bridge over which he must pass himself; for every man has need to be forgiven.” (Thomas Fuller)
Happy reading!
Going Raw: Part One
(My Life-Long Love Affair With Food)
I don’t normally put sub-titles to my postings, but I felt this one deserved one. There is no way I can share my “adventure” at going raw without giving some background as to my relationship with food. And it is a love affair.
I have had an intimate relationship with food ever since I can remember. Some of my earliest memories of food are:
– sitting under the dining room table in the middle of the night eating rice paper (don’t even ask!!)
– sitting for what seemed like hours on the garden gate or at the front room window waiting for Aunty Polly to arrive with ice cream and candy
– going to Aunty Peggy’s to have wonderful four course dinners that included incredible appetizers, cheese and crackers, dessert with coffee (like in a “grown
up’s” restaurant)
– going down to the kid’s secret den to eat as many candies as I had been able to take from the pantry without it looking as though someone had taken them
(I’m sure my mother realized!)
– finger-swiping the frosting off a freshly baked “chocolate horror” cake (bliss!)
– sneaking teaspoonful’s of Fry’s chocolate spread (pure paradise!!)
– biting into the crusty heel of a fresh loaf of country bread slathered in real butter
– English cheddar cheese and crunchy pickled onions
So as you can see I was pretty much addicted to food from an early age. I could describe in detail, and still can, the sensations of different foods hitting the different taste buds in the various areas of my mouth just the way someone can describe the details in a picture. I think God proved that He really, really loved us when he gave us taste buds.
I discovered “ethnic” restaurants in my mid to upper teens and a whole new world of tastes and flavors opened up to me. English food is usually so bland and much of it, particularly vegetables, is simply boiled into oblivion and mush. Indian curry and crisp Chinese vegetables were like heaven, and the awesome blend of herbs in authentic, freshly cooked, Italian cuisine can still send me into a swoon today. I think you get the picture.
Moving to Sardinia, Italy in 1979 was a dream come true for this foodaholic. The Sardinian cuisine is unique and is as beautiful as the island itself. Home-made pasta was the norm in a Sardinian home in those days and if you have never eaten fresh home-made pasta you need to before you die. Roast lamb, kid, and pig are nothing like anything over here. I have eaten some of the best bar-b-q pork since coming to the States but nothing touches a succulent roast-in-the-ground pig in Sardinia.
From Sardinia I returned to London in 1978. It was mainly a “big mistake” but forms part of my life journey so it was important. During the five years I remained in the UK back then the only time that I ate well was when I cooked Italian pasta or I ate ethnic. I missed Italy badly, not just the food but the whole culture. So it was with a happy heart that I returned in 1983 to live in Naples, Italy.
Naples, rather like Sicily, gets a bad rap in some tourist books, but I fell in love with Naples very quickly. There’s an Italian saying that goes, “see Naples and die”. There’s a Neapolitan saying that goes, “Napoli ti prende per la gola” – Naples grabs you by the throat. The people are warm-hearted and friendly and the food, well I’m not sure anything I could say about Neapolitan food would do it justice. There are amazing pasta dishes with incredible sauces and fresh seafood cooked in the simplest but most divinely-tasting ways. “Dolce” (cakes) are out of this world and the pizza, oh the pizza!!!!! You have not eaten real pizza until you eat pizza prepared and baked in Naples. Not even the pizza in other parts of Italy is as sublime as Neapolitan pizza.
And then there’s REAL mozzarella cheese freshly dripping in its own liquid. This is an absolute delicacy that is only made in Naples, Italy. There is only one place over here that I know of where you can find real, fresh Mozzarella cheese and that is at the Fratelli La Buffala restaurant in the beaches area of Miami. They have it flown in fresh from Naples two or three times per week.
So, with all this love of marvelously prepared and served food, how do I get to going raw? With great difficulty let me tell you! I guess with age comes some sort of wisdom, and my brain began to tell my body that two hundred pounds on a five foot four inch frame was not so healthy. And, as usually happens with the fat accumulation, my blood pressure had risen and my cholesterol was fast following it.
Thankfully, when the student is ready, the teacher appears. Back in 2005, about eighteen months after getting to Jacksonville, Florida, my church hosted a series of classes on the vegetarian diet. I was interested not only because I thought it would help me lose weight, combat the BP and cholesterol issue, and improve my overall wellness, but also because the classes were offered by the Cancer Society as a way to help people prevent cancer or live cancer free once they were in remission. Because there is a history of cancer in my family I decided it was time to take the bull by the horns.
I’ll leave the “vegetarian experiment” for my next posting in this series.
Musings: Sliding Into Autumn
I am a spring-into-summer person. I love the awakening of the land; the buds on the trees and bushes, the early daffodils and tulips, the birds and the bees awakening from a winter lethargy, and the sun rising higher in the sky and giving more warmth. I am not a fan of the arrival of autumn, even though I think autumn itself is a very beautiful season. I simply don’t like the fact that it heralds the coming winter and the cooler temperatures and the presence of grey days.
Our local streets have filled with more traffic than there has been for the past couple of months. Yes, school is back in session, the beginning of another scholastic year. I have no little ones at home any more, so the only way I am aware of the school year is through the wax and wane of traffic volume and the occasional comment from teacher friends as they gear up or gear down for the start or close of the school year.
However, as all the children go back to school and the traffic somehow seems to double on the roads, I get that first hint that summer is over. I fight the arrival of autumn with everything in me. I have friends who talk about not wearing, or accessorizing with, white after the first of September. Why ever not? The sun is usually still as hot and bright as it was on thirty one August. So, rebellious as ever, I wear white until it gets grey and rainy or just too cold to seem appropriate anymore.
It seems like the first of September, or at least the Labor Day weekend, heralds the beginning of “we can’t do that any more” season. Despite the act that we are blessed with extended summer weather here in Florida, people seem to stop doing everything overnight. No more picnics and bar-b-q’s, no more going to the beach, no more back yard parties, and everyone pulls their boat out of the water.
The two things that Floridians do hang onto, however, are shorts and flip-flops. Year round, those two articles seem to have become the unofficial state symbol of the State of Florida. Even on a cold and rainy day, which fortunately we get relatively few of, there are those die-hard southern guys and gals who staunchly wear these two items as proudly as if they were the State flag.
But back to autumn. The Fall season always brings a feeling of melancholy to my heart and soul. I know that all the seasons are God-given and I appreciate them as such. Perhaps in the bigger scheme of things the yearly passing of the seasons reminds me of the seasons of my life. Although I have enjoyed them all, some more than others, I am well aware that I am in my own personal autumn. This means that winter is just around the corner.
I am well prepared for this, at least as well prepared as any human can be. Because of the Christian faith values that I hold and adhere to, I do not fear the winter years because I know they will culminate in a new life. It’s just that I still have a lot of living that I’d like to do and many more things that I want to accomplish. But, like everyone else on the planet, my time will come when it’s meant to and I have little control over that.
So in the meantime, I’ll wear white until it’s too cold, I’ll go to the beach as often as possible after Labor Day and, although I don’t own a boat, I’ll imagine floating out on the sea with my hand trailing in warm waters. I also have my beloved lanai at home and as usual will spend as much time as possible out there doing my writing, reading, or just enjoying the incredible gifts of nature that surround me.