wisdom for aging with vibrancy, beauty, tears, and grace – click on any picture below to read the blog associated with that image.
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
600 people reached the top of Mt. Everest in 2012. This blog got about 8,800 views in 2012. If every person who reached the top of Mt. Everest viewed this blog, it would have taken 15 years to get that many views.
2012 was an unusual and awesome year in our lives.
Thank you for being part of it through wellsofwellness.org.
Our new year’s blessing for you continues the theme of this webpage:
May 2013 be for you, a year of vibrancy, beauty, tears, and grace.
VIBRANCY
In today’s paper, Frank Bruni’s editorial, “This New Year, seek peace with your body, avoid promises,” included his final paragraph:
We’re so much more than these wretched vessels that we sprint or swagger or lurch or limp around in, some of them sturdy, some of them not, some of them objects of ardor, some of them magnets for pity. We should make peace with them and remain conscious of that, especially at this particular hinge of the calendar, when we compose a litany of promises about the better selves ahead, foolishly defining those selves in terms of what’s measurable from the outside, instead of what glimmers within.”
May your vibrancy be enhanced as you make peace with your body and define yourself by what glimmers within.
Our St. Andrew Church sign today reads:
2013, May it be a year of Light.
May it be so.
BEAUTY
May the work born of Christmas come alive in you.
This ancient critter of God’s love was captured via iPhoto today at Twin Lakes Park in Sarasota.
She/he was just there.
Not moving.
Attentive to my presence.
Yet, still.
Listening.
Watching.
Waiting.
Must be Advent.
Anyway, the Thursday Study group at St. Andrew is reading James Hillman’s book, The Force of Character & The Lasting Life. I am loving his wisdom and recommend the book to any reading this blog.
Tomorrow, we will be talking about chapter 3, titled very simply, Old. The title for this blog is from that chapter. What follows are several quotes from the nine pages of his text. You’ll have to read on and on to find the relationship to the picture from Twin Lakes.
It will be worth your time . . .
Continue reading “‘”Old’ & ‘soul’ cannot do without each other.””
Aging with vibrancy, beauty, tears, and grace involves a commitment to hospitable, just, and compassionate community. This affirmation led me to submit the following letter to the editors of the Sarasota Herald Tribune this morning.
On a recent trip home to Sarasota, I turned south from Interstate 4 onto Interstate 75. There it was, the looming shadow, size of a semi-trailer, waving in the breeze; Mr. Lambert’s Confederate Flag.
The flag, according to Mr. Lambert, in a quote within the pages of this paper, represents “the valor of Southern men in their lost cause during the Civil War.” For Mr. Lambert it evokes pride. For me it evokes the shudder of racism.
The wish to have the Confederate Flag represent the valor of veterans is laudable. No woman or child or man should die from the bullets of divisive hatred within a nation. All those who died, all of them, deserve to be honored.
However, the Civil War is over.
Please put the flag away.
In his Thanksgiving day editorial, Jack Levine suggests that we use our “volunteer investments to build community” as a way to give thanks.
The flag at 4&75 is anything but that. It does not build community. It is an aggressively malicious, imperfect representation of who we are as a nation.
Please, take down the Confederate Flag at 4 & 75.
Here is the meditation video we promised in our vision;
Whoever you are, wherever you are on life’s journey, this is a great meditation for you.
Who we are includes our bodily selves. . .
and our reflections . . .
and shadow . . .
oh yes it does:
Today is election day in the United States.
Many of you have already voted.
Those of us who haven’t yet, will go to the poles today.
Jennifer’s friend, Jennifer Yocum, wrote these words:
“The character of our nation will be far less determined by Tuesday’s vote than it will be by the acts of compassion, generosity and peace that every voter and non-voter performs on Wednesday and every day following.”
I agree.
Do vote.
It matters immeasurably.
Then . . .
today and tomorrow and next week and next month and next year . . .
may we be
the nation of character, compassion, generosity and peace we are capable of being.
It matters immeasurably.
We ran the north end of Siesta this morning.
Afterward we made a labyrinth not far from a group who were doing beach yoga, closer to the parking lot side of the beach than the water, at the entrance to the public beach nearest to the green life guard station. As I walked I prayed for calming of Sandy’s fury.
Later on we went back to the beach, maybe around 4:00 pm, and by then the wind had blown the sand enough 
so the labyrinth is a bare outline of itself.
wells-of-wellness 