broken miRRor

70,000 plus families are in the blood red flow of a massive recession. Things are MUCH worse overseas. We are a land where we know HOW to bounce back. But maybe that's lost because we as a society expect INSTANT change.

Change that lasts is never instant. Change that lasts never comes sitting on ones hands. And change that sticks and stays means someone made a decision to change forever, for the better--no matter what it takes.

Article: broken miRRor.
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Raindance

The resilience of spirit is far underrated in times of uncertainty and change. Never should any of us forget that we are bigger than our circumstances, and more factual about own own lives than Wall Street and CNN.

To move forward, we have to all continue to believe that we are not equal to the circumstances that surround us. God is not the author of junk nor of castaways. That's humanity's mistake, not God's. We all need to beware of the negative spirits that bring about death of the mind, soul and eventually body from the negative toxins that are created when we are stressed and frustrated. So what is one solution?

Well, you're reading it. They are words. Let them travel through your soul. I pray you find your journey most pleasant, and your destination one that welcomes the positive changes you are soon to discover. Just keep on the right road. Clouds may look loathsome in our lives, but it is the cloud that holds the rain of regeneration.

So let's all join hands, and dance in the rain.

P.S. Words are all around us. But words also have an ultimatum based on the purpose of those who put them out into the hard-copy and wireless universe. Somewhere in the bible there is a passage about the power of the princes of the air.

(Truth is I would look it up but then I'd lose my train of thought to the thief called "short term memory due to sleep deprivation-by-choice, or as I call it, "Muse overload due to massive invasions of inspiration." So I'll just keep on typing. Maybe looking up the passage might help people discover a spiritual truth or two,

God bless y'all. . . that's my rap.

cynth'ya

Surviving The Times

Oh those 1930s! If a family could survive & thrive back there you knew how to recycle your stuff. We didn't need any green commercials or foundations to teach us how to shake out a bread sack and put it over our shoes to keep our feet from getting wet because the boots were out of the budget. My parents, all three of them, were from that era. But what I wish I could have experienced was the resilience to deal with pain and tough times.

"Tough times don't last. Tough people do." Isn't that how the saying goes?

Well my friends, we need to correct ourselves. The times not getting tough. The times ARE tough! But what's that got to do with your success in anything?

Some of the most notable figures grew up in tough times. We read about them in success magazines. Do the names "Robert Kiyosaki" or "Donald Trump" or "Albert Einstein" ring a bell? How about "Oprah Winfrey?" Or "Sarah Breedlove (a.k.a. Madame CJ Walker, who was the first FEMALE millionaire in this country at a time when no one believed a black person living in America was any good for anything than cleaning a mansion and this woman owned TWO of them!

These men and women were not born in ideal situations. They didn't listen to the news around them that until things got better around them that they could not do better for themselves.
But there were born in times when they were taught that if you wanted something, they you have to go after it with a passion.

And if anyone tried to stop you from pursuing your passion with a vengence, or try to discourage you because of their own lack of a spine, then you just had to do what you had to do.

Maybe you are called "unrealistic" for wanting something that the majority of people never think they will ever achieve. Well I got a bit of news for your naysaying friends and family and neighbors.

NAYSAYING NIBBY-NOSE NEGATIVITY NEGOTIATING NON-ACHIEVERS ARE NOT YOUR PROBLEM. If anything, if their lack of belief in you is your kryptonite, then get away from them and surround yourself with people who will give you the Superman or Superwoman cape of protection you need to fly as high in the stratosphere of success as you choose to go.

The sky is not your limit....you 've got an entire galaxy to conquer. And if you don't go after it and discover what it is when everyone else is turning tail and running to hide behind the news, then I'll see you when you get there.

That's MY rap, blessin's 2 ya,
cynth'ya

P.S. Ever stop to ponder--and I could be mistaken--that perhaps the core reason our nation is in the shape it's in right now, exactly 70 years from the first GREAT DEPRESSION is that those values that forged our ancestors of the 1930s were no longer necessary. Everything because instant and automatic. We forgot as a nation how to wait on change. Perhaps we even forgot how to wait on God.

Tears

Current time looking back: Three days.

A period of 72 hours. Period of grace or healing from an outpatient surgical procedure.

In three days I could be a grandmother for the second time as my son's girlfriend of three years (there's that "numero tres" again) gives birth to a little baby boy (grandson number 2) as soon as this coming week.

And three days ago, a tear drop left saline residue on my sleeve.

Flashback: Thursday Oct. 2, 2008
I was turning in my canvas sheets at our local Muncie "Vote For Change-Indiana" office.

COMMERCIAL BREAK: Muncie Indiana USA, a.k.a. Middletown USA, is a place that seems to has 3 kinds of people: 1) Realistic Achievers; 2) Pessimistic Pretenders, and 3) Clueless, yet caring. At least as a result of watching endless MSNBC we sometimes tend to forget that people don't read much and believe everything that the pundits spew on tv in terms of fear peddling to get a vote because no one who has represented an oppressed group of people in a house named after the oppressor: "White." (I guess if I was white I'd have it pretty easy getting along in the world...unless someone called me "white trash." ) But I digress. . . back to the point.

Walking out of headquarters I saw a woman crossing the street in beautiful 4 blocks long downtown Muncie. She came from the direction of the MITS bus station and the county courthouse. We'd parked on the same side of the one-way street (left) and her vehicle was two spots in front of mine.

Then, it happened. Boo-hoo city on a FEMA scale. This young woman just broke down, crossed her arms over her face and laid her head on top of her compact car.

First thing in my mind...."DON'T LET HER DRIVE!" This was too beautiful of an autumn mid-morning to go home only to see on the next day's news that a woman of the description that I'd seen was the victim of a mysterious one-car crash. So I walked up to her and said...."Are you gonna be okay?"

What a dumb question! Obviously all was NOT okay. The tears just kept on coming.

So I did what most women and non-threatening men would have done. . . I gave her a hug.

The hug worked. Took a minute, but it worked.

While the positive energy from the person-to-person-embrace was working its spiritual recipe I noticed my left shoulder sleeve was getting a bit soaked. I never did like being wet while wearing clothing, even a spot of wetness, and in my prime years I'd more than likely be disqualified from being a contestant in a wet tee-shirt contest while my wild college friends would throw caution and bras to the wind. But somehow, this was a spiritual tear.

As I made certain that this young woman (her name, Christa) assured me that she was okay she got on her cell phone.

As a maternal spirit I reminded her soberly, "Make sure you don't start this car until you are completely okay that you can drive it, alright?"

"Alright" she said. Then she proceeded to dial someone who was hopefully a friend on her vivid red cell phone.

As I got into my car, the wet sleeve became even more sensory to me. But not from a standpoint of waiting for my sleeve to dry. I found now that it was me that was unable to drive. I was crying from my soul. And as a result, tears came from my eyes only. My mind reflected.

It reflected as to what was it that tore at this woman's soul, creating the tears. This, I realize, was becoming a very deep homophonic/homographic experience.

(Wordwizard.com) 1 a : HOMOPHONE b : HOMOGRAPH c : one of two or more words spelled and pronounced alike but different in meaning (as the noun quail and the verb quail).

(Hey, did you know "quail" was a verb???) oh well...English, hmmph!)

What happens when one experiences tears in the non-spiritual sense? Well, we might surmise that usually, a sharp object catches a thread of a fabric that is either delicate or in the wrong place at the wrong time; and the sharpness of the edge of whatever the fabric (or skin) catches on creates a split. A rift. Thusly, a "tear." Yet that "tear" can produce a tear from the eye if the thing that was damaged from its original pristine form was of major significance in value, whether materially or psychologically.

Have you experienced a tear in your life lately that lead to the creation of a tear? Did the last 10-14 days, or perhaps the last THREE days of your life did you know anyone who was going thru a particularly tough time because of the economy? (Economy is a funny thing. When it's good, everyone treats each other well. But when the economy is NOT so good, that rips at the soul of everything that a person believes in UNLESS they are spiritually grounded in a faith so deep that nothing and no one can rip the belief from the believer....hence, the dreams of those aforementioned as Realistic Achievers.

But what about the wetness of the tear? Moisture is a symbol of health. Dryness is a symbol of an inability to thrive. We love our moist skin, especially when kissing and making love. When skin is moist, it resists cracking and peeling. And we can't stand it when a steak (if you are a meat-eater) is dry and heaven forbid if we experience a dry throat during a time when we desperately need to speak and be clearly understood.

Moisture, as in tears from the eyes lets us heal our dry spirits. When we undergo times of sorrow we still have to take into account that too much "drowning in our moist sorrows" will cause us to wither in other ways. We become too limp to be able to make sense of things that need executive decisiveness. When people do not like us we can NOT take it personally. To be on the attack is to allow that dryness to enter our souls. We must "refresh."

Things that tear us down, like a family member or friend who refuses to speak to us because they never got the whole story of something they never took time to truly understand; or people close to us who refuse to register to vote out of selfish spite because their vision is so limited for the greater good that they think that decisions don't effect their lives if they pretend issues do not exist; those are the kinds of things that make our spirits cry.

But you know the good thing about crying? . . . we can choose to get over it. We can CHOOSE to be a loner beating our own drum of a different rhythm. We CAN CHOOSE to change even if everyone else thinks we cannot. Sometimes we have to decide to be the only dove of peace when everything else around us wants to tear at us with the talons of a hawk.

I think Prince was right when he contemplated and wrote: "When Doves Cry."

It is up to each one of us individually, to be ready for the healing. For the healing is not a quick fix. The healing takes place so that we may teach others, thru careful listening, and not demanding, how to heal.

Let's look ahead as a community of people in a spirit of change for the better. Let's stop believing those who would terrorize us from wanting something better for ourselves, our families, our nation.

America: Stop looking back allowing yourself to be torn in fear. We are the home of the brave and should be brave to move forward into a brand new future--- TOGETHER.


Change cannot wait. Click the names.

"Duh?"

Near Taylor University in Upland Indiana is an addictive little restaurant called "Ivanhoe's." Their specialty? Embarrassing the daylights out of Baskin Robbin's 31 flavors.

Ivanhoe's offers not just 31 flavors, but (as of last count) over 100 choices of terror for the lactose-intolerant. And they are flavors on that menu that would freeze up a vote in Congress as to "which one gets my vote today?" So for those who are first timer's at Ivanhoe's, you might want to study the choices, and go off of your diet for at least 4 weeks.

At various points in my life I've been akin to the phrase, "When one decides NOT to decide, the decision has already been made." And especially at this point in our electoral history as a snot-nose, barely-crawling nation, dare I say that those of us who pay attention are only lying to ourselves regarding our electoral choices.

It's amazing that most of us as Americans end up knowing the difference between right and wrong, basically. But when it comes to being truly honest with ourselves in matters of this nation and where it is headed, we tend to dummy down our choice. Unfortunately, someone out there will not vote. People are spilling blood overseas for us to vote, but some of us still won't vote. So be it.

Then again, there ARE others who look at war hero records when there are heroes overseas who did not use their daddy's influence to get ahead. They did not use their wife's billions to get ahead. They do not cheat on their spouses as both Republican candidates have done.

They do not research and learn about how Cindy McCain was dating her current husband when he was married to another woman, Carol McCain.

If anyone is undecided I have one question for them: What type of mind needs to think about who is best to bring a nation together? What kind of sordid racial tension in this country has so soiled us that we are too afraid to look at where we will be in the next four years if we put people who think only of their own personal and financial interests in office?

Probably the most critical question is this: Look at YOU right now. (Go on, find a mirror and STARE into it. Then look at your bank account. Look at your bills. Look at the experience of candidates who work with broke folks--i.e. about 90 percent of most American voters.

So now, to help you make your decision, “Where the heck do YOU want to be in the next four years?” You and I make up the country. Who is going to put us first?