Poetry Corner – Potential

Hello Dear Ones!

Years ago I bought myself a small spiral notebook and pen to keep in my purse. (BTW: Today, the notebook in my purse is about the 25th such writing journal.) On the very back page of this notebook I began jotting down different topics as they came to me randomly – for use as poems, short stories, or as simple paragraphs that might, someday, find their way into a story. It’s a mere list that looks somewhat like this:

Grandmother
Thunderstorm
Mashed bananas
The scent of a baby
Fresh ground/fresh brewed coffee
Candles
Riding a bicycle
Driving a car
The first pickle in the jar
A hug

My list now has about 350 entries of topics I still might write about – someday. Many have already inspired me to write. Some I have written about and yet I have kept the topic on the list as there are so many ways to express the different facets of that same topic – such as thunderstorms! Each and every storm is unique and pulls emotions from within as varied as the storms themselves!

How do I use this Potential Writings list? Continue Reading →

Marcia’s Meanderings – A Charmed Life

Hello Dear Ones!

Upon awakening this morning, I was uncertain what to write about today. I took a quiet moment to meditate on the potential. Nothing came forward and so I put it out to the Universe to provide me guidance. Before I even got out of bed, the guidance came through. (Don’t you love it? Ask, and it is given!) How did the guidance come? As we always do, Mike and I shared our dreams. My dream is one I’ve been having a great deal lately. The story line is always different. Yet I am living in an amazing reality (a different amazing from the reality I live in my day world) that is starting to show signs of regularity. I know my way around, the people with whom I interact and the things I do. Though I’m not recalling as much as I’d like to in detail (it would make a great novel at some point!) I awake each morning with a sense of satisfaction and happiness. It’s a very nice feeling.

Mike heard what I shared and hopped out of bed to locate one of our favourite books – The Oversoul Seven Trilogy by Jane Roberts. Mike shared with me a section he felt was related to my dream  -  that maybe I was experiencing a dream life in Sumaria. What he shared truly resonated with the feeling I still held from my night’s journeys. Yet, surprisingly, that is not what I’ll be sharing with you today. Maybe I will another week.

What I will be sharing is what Mike next read to me – from the same book. Mike read from Oversoul Seven’s Little Book (found at the end of the second of the three books in this trilogy) entitled The Charmed Life. And, my goodness, it was like I was hearing about my own life both here and in the dreamtime! Continue Reading →

Marcia’s Meanderings – Synchronicity and Inspirational Guidance

Well, dear folks, Sunday’s She Says post on the topic of ‘Destiny or Choice – A Matter of Beliefs?’ got my mind meandering back to past events and to synchronicities in my life. So many to contemplate, yet in addition to the one I shared in that post, the following synchronicity is one I often use when giving an example of the magic of life when one listens to inspirational guidance.

A few years back I was at home doing the much needed laundry and other housekeeping chores. From the start of my morning I had a niggling thought to go downtown to the indoor mall. There was nothing I needed to buy; I just had a sense to go. Now keep in mind that I abhor shopping of any kind. When I have a need to purchase something – groceries, clothes – I head to the store, get what I want and get out. No doddling and certainly no window shopping or browsing. So for me to get a thought to go shopping with no intention is – to say the least – unusual.

I let the thought pass and continued with my housework. The morning passed into afternoon and the thought kept resurfacing with a greater and greater sense of urgency. This was really odd. The kids were away till after dinner and once I had completed the day’s chores I had no reason to ignore the impulse. What would it hurt to go? I could always stop in at the bookstore for a gander at the latest titles.

So off I went to the mall and straight to the bookstore on the lower floor. I stood for a moment in the entranceway of the store glancing at the books on the display stand. Then I had the feeling that there might be something of interest toward the back of the store. I headed there.

It was summer and I was not wearing a coat, so when I approached the woman who was mumbling to herself she likely mistook me for a clerk.

“May I help you?” I asked her.

“I’m looking for a specific book my friend told me I absolutely had to read,” she stated with a very frustrated expression on her unhappy face. “And I can’t remember either the title of the book or even the name of the author,” she added with a very deep sigh.

In the passing of a mere second I stretched out my arm and, with my hand out and palm up, I curled all my fingers, except one, into my palm. I then bent my index finger toward myself a few times motioning her to follow me. She did.

I led her from the back to the front of the store, over to a particular shelf. I then pointed to one specific book and asked her if this was the one she was looking for. She looked amazed that I had found exactly the book she had come to buy!

“How did you know?” she asked with the widest of eyes.

I smiled and said, “Once you’ve finished reading this book, I want you to remember this encounter.”

With those words, I turned around and walked out of the store and headed back home. I knew I could leave as the earlier niggly feeling had been replaced with a sense of successful completion.

This example of synchronicity and inspiration is common in my life. Most often a daily occurrence, though I tend to see expressions of this in simpler ways now. Even in the simplest of synchronicities there is such a sense of awe and delight.

The above story I have told many times through the years and will probably continue to do so when its example is appropriate. Likely so is the woman in the bookstore still telling this tale! If you are reading this, dear lady, let me know! I’d love to hear where your life’s journey has led you!

Oh, by the way, the book she was looking for was The Celestine Prophecy.

In Light and Laughter,

Marcia

He Says, She Says…

Greetings:

Our topic for this week comes from a quote in a book that both Marcia and Mike have recently read.  The book is titled, ‘The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid‘, by Bill Bryson.  On page 10 of the book, he wrote:

“The two teams split the first two games, so it came down to a third, deciding game.  At last the Dodgers appeared to recover their invincibility, taking a comfortable 4 to 1 lead into the ninth inning and needing just three outs to win.  But the Giants scored a late run and put two more runners aboard when Bobby Thomson stepped to the plate.  What Thomson did that afternoon in the gathering dusk of autumn has many times been voted the greatest moment in baseball history.

“Dodger reliever Ralph Branca threw a pitch that made history yesterday,” one of those present wrote.  “Unfortunately it made history for someone else.  Bobby Thomson, the ‘Flying Scotsman’ swatted Branca’s second offering over the left field wall for a game-winning home run so momentous, so startling, that it was greeted with a moment’s stunned silence.

“Then, when the realization of the miracle came, the double-decked stands of the Polo Grounds rocked on their forty-year-old foundations.  The Giants had won the pennant, completing one of the unlikeliest comebacks baseball has ever seen.”

The author of those words was my father – who was abruptly, unexpectedly, present for Thomson’s moment of magesty.  Goodness knows how he had talked the notoriously frugal management of the Register into sending him the 1,132 miles from Des Moines to New York for the crucial deciding game – an act of rash expenditure radically out of keeping with decades of careful precedent – or how he had managed to secure credentials and a place in the press box at such a late hour.

But then he had to be there.  It was part of his fate, too.  I am not exactly suggesting that Bobby Thomson hit that home run because my father was there or implying that he wouldn’t have hit it if my father had not been there.  All I am saying is that my father was there and Bobby Thomson was there and the home run was hit and these things could not have been otherwise.”

So, what then guides the dictates of our lives?  Is it fate?  Is it a Guiding Hand or some supernatural force?  Or are our lives the summaries of our choices?  For this week’s ‘He Says, She Says’ post we thought we’d take on “Destiny or Choice: A Matter of Beliefs?”

Follow these links to read what He Says/She Says: Marcia’s View / Mike’s View

Marcia’s Meanderings – Faith & Hope

Welcome to the New Year of 2010. It certainly is already proving out to be an amazing one for many. May it be so for you as well, dear reader!

At the beginning of each new year I go through my notes from the year previous – reviewing the best of the best and putting sticky arrows on pages worthy of a relook in the coming weeks. It seems 2009 was a record breaker for me with the number of poems written in a single 12 month period. Plus there were several sections of my journals (filled 4 since this time last year) that have what appear to be quality ideas for descriptive phrases I may use in upcoming short stories or my next novel.

However, I don’t want to get too far ahead of myself as I have a current novel – my first – that is in its second draft and that I hope to have in print by June of this year. In addition to my time writing here at M&M’s Musings, my commitment to myself and my Self is this novel’s completion. What a joyous journey it has been and continues to be! I have such faith in the realization of this dream manifesting before 2010 is even half over.

Faith has to do with things not seen, and hope with things not in hand. ~ St. Thomas Aquinas

The topic for today’s meanderings is simple – Faith and Hope. (Notice I left out the Trust? That’s a topic on its own for another day.) I’ve already used both words in the writings above: I hope to have my book in print by June; I have such faith in the realization of this dream. To some it sounds like I’m referring to the same thing, merely phrasing it differently. Yet there is a remarkable difference in the two. The hope is to have the novel in book form in my hand so I and others can read it. The faith is in the unknown factor behind the scenes.

Continue Reading →

Poetry Corner

Poetry Corner:
Each Wednesday of the week Mike & I shall choose a poet to honour, a poem that inspires us or may even share one of our own poetic creations.
Today’s poetry dedication is to one of my very favourite poets – Mattie Stepanek, the young boy who died at the age of 14 having inspired millions of people with his personal Heart Songs – encouraging each of us to find and sing our own. Mattie was one of Oprah’s dearest guests, having appeared on her show several times over the course of his short life.
Today I honour Mattie J.T. Stepanek
Crystal Celebration
ritten in December 1996
Printed in his book
Journey Through Heartsongs
By Mattie J.T.Stepanek
And be sure to check out Jeni Stepanek’s (Mattie’s mother) website: http://www.mattieonline.com/ as she continues her son’s legacy and, in turn, travels her own journey to healing.

Poetry Corner:

Each Wednesday of the week Mike & I shall choose a poet to honour, a poem that inspires us or may even share one of our own poetic creations.

Today’s poetry dedication is to one of my very favourite poets – Mattie Stepanek, the young boy who died at the age of 14 having inspired millions of people with his personal Heart Songs – encouraging each of us to find and sing our own. Mattie was one of Oprah’s dearest guests, having appeared on her show several times over the course of his short life.

Today I honour Mattie J.T. Stepanek with one of his own poems:

Crystal Celebration

Sometimes,
Sunrise is like a heavenly crystal ball.
Everyday,
In the little bit of time between night and day,
The Angels look at the earth
To see how things have been and
To see how things are going and
To see how things will be.
The sky changes from dark
Into Angel-whites and Angel-golds.
The blackness of trees starts to glow with
Pinks and purples and oranges from their hearts.
And during each dawn,
All the Angels gather up and have
A celebration in God’s honor!
And sometimes,
You can even watch
And join them in the celebrating.
Just look out into the sunrise,
Then jump into your own heart,
Float into the air like in a dream,
And pray with love and praise and thank-yous
For your life, for your spirit, for your sunrise…
And for being a part of this heavenly crystal ball!

*******

Written in December 1996

Printed in his book

Journey Through Heartsongs

By Mattie J.T.Stepanek

And be sure to check out Jeni Stepanek’s (Mattie’s mother) website: http://www.mattieonline.com/ as she continues her son’s legacy and, in turn, travels her own journey to healing.

In Light & Laughter & with the deepest appreciation to Mattie,

Marcia