It is said that we are all one; a part of one another; unique, individual yet the same; like limbs of a tree.

Pondering this thought over the years has taken many twists and turns as with each life experience, I’ve faced gnarls and windbends, whorls and snapping breaks of the branches of my own tree.

It never ceases to amaze me how varied human leaves look, sound, act, react or cease in the storms that this tree of life weathers.

Bending in sweetness to birdsong as a winged one alights in softness on a sturdy shoulder; swinging low with bountiful harvest of luscious ripening of the seasons, holding fast in the face of fierce storms, arms held akimbo reaching for light in the darkness and growing into fantastical shapes with aching, arching of years of survival in all life’s gales and gasps show the simplicity and intricacy of patterning on which one comes to depend for framework. A how-the-world-should-look-and-be in what is named normalcy.

Yet where one might suspect sapling flexibility there may arise oaken solidity unbending; fertile fruit bearing females may fail, male monoliths may moss, and where willows weeping-wend low they may wildly wail warning and warring while weathering the world.

How can it be that if we are all indeed one, there is such diversity, intensity and perversity on the tree of life?

One is tempted to be lulled into a false sense of illusion that leads to expectations of drops of kindness falling gently on leaves being met with kindness of receiving; joy shining in sunshine returning bright, reflective joy; compassion greeted green with whispering breezes empathetically enfolding and satin sadness shaded by the underside of understanding of silver soft leaves.

It is not always so, this vision of how things which seem to have always been will always be.

Therefore questions crop up as behaviors metamorphosis in conditions of global warming, economic explosions and scorched earth wars wreak havoc on the roots of our foresty home. 

Chaos of color collapses into challenge to change beyond accustomed seasonal sensations.

Where green at its worst, was envy, it is now greed. Riotous Autumnal ruby reds are flames of fury; buttery yellows of golden years turn into fears for future and burnt browns and siennas represent shades of balefulness.

How can our roots hold fast while limbs have been arched in agony, twisted beyond recognition and broken in breach of faith while the trunk of our tree of life is interminably tested?

Can we, arms of this essential elm, embrace each other and weave together a tapestry of stronger support so that we all may live long and well enough to see other bebranched beeches benefit; palms together play; willows whisper wonder and gingkos give the gold of memory for hickory heirs yet to spring forth?

Will we want to wake up enough to branch out in saner directions; to bring our best to the borrowed time in which we’ find our firred and furrowed forest and are we willing to look deeply inside the bark of ourselves to become aware of and acknowledge our shortcomings and see the lunatic in limbs gone gaga?

Can we manifest peace and perfection without courage for a good look at our family tree and, in the middle of madness all around us, when found to be outrageously out of control; whacked out in our own wilder-ness, can we honestly own our own behavior, see our common roots in “out of my tree’ behaviors and answer, without shame or blame, with perhaps a shower of light, the tree trimming question, “From what branch of the Crazy Tree did you fall?”

by Florence Ondré

First it was Pluto not being a planet any more and now it’s screwing with time.

Are these the latest stupid human tricks or can we not find something larger to do with our shpielkes?

Can’t that overactive energy be channeled into something more beneficial like creating a better education system which truly motivates organic skills and talents beyond rote and is available for all children in this country?

Can man be still for one moment and appreciate what is without having to jiggle their legs up and down like a plugged in electrical dandling machine going no where fast?

We’ve all seen people sitting down; one leg still moving up and down like a racing engine idling in neutral. Why not go further with that available energy? Better than windmills, what about recycling the idea of people standing at their desks on treadmills? Why hasn’t our government or think tanks thought about hooking them up to power generators? That alone could have corporations making their own power and helping us out with our energy crunches. Of course there’d have to be a little something-something extra in the paycheck or as corporations often do in lieu, a new title might have to be bestowed. Now, that is green usage of alternative energy sources.
But then there would be the tangles of how to market, outsource, monitor and manage the whole ferschlugginer thing. After all waste is a terrible thing to mind.

Is it just me or could our energy and time be put to better use?

Wouldn’t you rather see a cure for cancer, AIDS or a multitude of other diseases which have had people waiting years and lifetimes for a glimpse of help from science and scientists?

Bending time to suit a few humans; downgrading age old planets, yeah, that’s where I want my tax dollars to go for research and lawmaking. Yup. That’s where I want my representatives in government to focus.

Forget trivial things like top quality healthcare, and housing for everyone. Let’s get Congress to declare more paid holidays so we can enjoy that extra daylight they’ve just rearranged for us. War? Well, hey, there’s more daylight to see your enemy in. Oil gouging? Wait a sec. There’ll be less energy usage because you won’t have to put the lights on in your house as much, even though the same amount of SUV’s and trucks will be guzzling gas, lining pockets of oil robber barons and fuming up the atmosphere. Safety on those highways and byways? Material for plugging up the potholes in our roads? Sorry. No new research or materials there. We’re busy with the business of tinkering with time.

Don’t get me wrong. I can certainly smile at humans shifting the light to give everyone more of that commodity. Who of us couldn’t use more light in our lives? I can hear Angels laughing as we “lighten up.”

I do have concerns though.

Halloween is gonna be all messed up. There won’t be enough dark for the trick or treaters now that Congress has put this massive effort and funding into moving minutes around like tiles on a game board. You know how woosie it is to dress up like a vampire with the sun still shining.

I’d just like to see all that energy, science and funding go toward creating peace on this planet one day soon…that is IF Earth still is a planet.

You never do know…..tick tick tick.

by Florence Ondré

The challenge to find a grain of gratitude in the middle of your own personal besetting of travails is daunting and yet doable.

Sitting down to write at least one thing I can find in which to be grateful is a snap on the good days and at times when I take a rare glimpse at the nightly newscast. It’s no biggy to feel grateful for the roof over your head and heat in your home while you see so many without one or the other in the middle of subzero temps and blizzards.

Sure, in the face of cataclysms which dwarf your own ills, it’s a hell of a lot easier to get perspective and toss in the towel of temptation to dismiss your own troubles as smaller or no thing to whine about. “Look, at least I have a walker or crutches,” you can say when you see thousands of people dying in a stadium in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina wiped out the very ground of earth, family and way of life. That’s a first level of gratitude expressed from the “Thank God I at least have___!” form of appreciation of what you do have no matter what your daily struggle may be. That’s getting down to the nitty gritty on the fast train.

What I find as laudable and life sustaining is finding gratitude in myself that, though as tiny as an irritating grain of sand in my shoe, may grow into a pebble or a boulder of being grateful for that which stops me in my tracks, makes me reach down to acknowledge the irritant, get grateful that I can actually feel it and be open to what comes next in the Universe’s lesson of awakening awareness in me in that moment.

As I notice that the sand is rolling around under my foot in my shoe, I can be thankful that I have a foot, a shoe, feeling in my extremities, ability to stop, to choose to empty my shoe, drop off the sand in its next area of residence, look and really see what is around me where I’m stopping. Then get grateful for my abilities in what ever state they are, be glad for eyesight (maybe there are beautiful flowers in a nearby garden or strip of concrete or a car coming at breakneck speed to run a light which might have knocked me out of my Earthsuit), sense of smell (perhaps a wind off the ocean brings a clean aroma of nature to brighten my intake of oxygen or a hint of gas that might be leaking invisibly under the street that needs someone to report it for repair). Experiences which if not for the grain of sand in my shoe and my stopping might have otherwise gone unnoticed.

Sometimes, gratitude shows up like today. I’m hurting in more places than I can remember hurting at one time and I’m about to throw a shoe at God, Angels, Universe, whoever’s out there or up there. I’m tired of finding the good in a boatload of crap and wondering what the Hell I could have done to deserve one more freeking health challenge; one more ounce of unleavened ache.

Yeah, I know that is not the question. But today I don’t much give a shit. It’s freezing outside. The heating bill will be astronomical. After 8 years of disability from a spinal injury, leaving me challenged to stand, walk or sit-especially on my left side -with no let up of pain in sight and no help from the medical field; a weird undiagnosed, unsolved mystery glue contamination on every inch of my body, house and grounds for the last 8 months; a spiky pain which appeared in the middle of one night weeks ago in my left toe, which feels like a sliver of glass is in there but has no outward, discernible cause and a now a fractured right foot, I mostly am embarrassed to even tell anyone there’s another catastrophe. I’m left thinking why bother anymore. Who the heck will want to hear another sob story? Who will believe this woman who touts gratitude as a benefit which greases the wheels of life making things easier, better, more positive, is anything but a sham, a bs-er, a great big advertisement for anything else but gratitude?

Then, after a good cry or yell, I look outside my window to the backyard where the neighborhood cats are ice-skating and the squirrels are running across the utility wires with big snow balls in their mouths to try to tuck them into their nests in the trees. It’s comical. I can’t help but laugh and be grateful I hobbled on my walker, snap crackling and popping from the bubble wrap taped on each hand-hold to try to ease my hands (one of which was fractured years ago and now aches from the daily pressure put on it by having to use crutches or a walker to get around the house). I notice how the dog whips his head up from his bed at the sound of the barrage of tiny explosions of air as the chambers of bubbles burst under my hands. I’ve become my own noisemaker in the party of life.

How could I not notice and laugh at myself, as well as the critters outside? We’re all just doing our best to get through the day, tending to basics. Somehow a bit of humor creeps in to bring a bit of happy to my misery.

And somehow, I feel grateful that I can lighten up. I can have gratitude and griping. The gratitude seems to soften my edges like the laughter lifts my spirit and the cumulative boulders I shoulder become bearable.

Do I want more or wish for things to be different? Yes. When pain is high and I’m caught in a body that finds another way not to work, yes I do with a vengeance of the fibers of my being reaching past shredded limits which scream, “Now! I want my miracle now! Heal me now!” I shriek inside with all manner of negotiating, bargaining about how I’ll do so much good if only I can have back my body that works.

On those days, after embracing my feelings, all of them; messy and unmanageable, I turn my mind to find what I have to be grateful for and treasures emerge around me in lessons of patience with myself, which radiate out as patience with others; a pleasure in accepting the goodness in me which also ripples out; enjoyment of what I can accomplish. Seeing the places where I cannot do for myself becomes dignity for someone else getting to feel good about helping me.

My physical disabilities have brought me the opportunity to meet and interact with angels in the helping professions of western and complementary health care, who stretched their own limits to partner with me in care that was best for me as an individual-not the usual rote. Were it not for my need, I’d never have had the occasion to meet these wonderful caring souls who enriched my path thus far.

Though I want to be healed and healthy again, I’m grateful for those who came into my life in compassion and kindness; who shared their own expertise and skills to enrich my life. They have nourished my being so I can do the same.

They got real with me and acknowledged that what I go through each day is hard and they don’t think I’m Typhoid Mary or a magnet for all that is crummy in life. These wonders offset the people who meet my next calamity or loss of physical ability with, “What did you do now?” or “How could you be so dumb as to…?” or the hand wringers who moan and groan, “Oh, no not again…”

Just for today, I choose to be thankful that I’m not hand wringing even though I feel overwhelmed.

Just for today I will not overtax my immune system or energy field with what ifs, if onlys, and whys? My choice is to look at those cats and squirrels and the sun glinting off the ice field covering our neighborhood, to laugh at my own noisemaking and have a party on my couch with a good movie to watch; an interesting book to read; a stack of crackers with cheese and something cool or warm to drink, my meds if I need them, a good partner who loves me and helps me so much, the energy of unconditional love from the dog who plasters himself right up against the legs of my walker to be close to me; quiet and safety in my home; indoor plumbing; a bed and comfy covers for sleeping; electricity; heat and a bouquet of tulips opening slowly in the vase in my window from my honey; calls, e-mails or check-ins from friends who haven’t gotten tired of the same ol same ol and a mind that can still find the pony in a room full of horse pocky.

Meet you at the table on the other side where we can all look back and share our experiences of the many things we enjoyed and learned while here in Schoolroom Earth.

I’m thinking we’re in the advanced class!

by Florence Ondré

In reading over Esther Warner Dendel’s words, “It takes a certain maturity of mind to accept that nature works as steadily in rust as in rose petals,” it occurs to me that while my mind, which is hooked up to that portion of my training as a human being in this lifetime that tells me that I must be doing something every minute of the day, has a tug of war with the muscles of my body which are saying, “Stay still. Be quiet. Do no thing.”

When things are not seeming to go fast enough for my satisfaction, these are wonderful words which remind me that nature/spirit has a plan and ways of bringing everything to a divine order and fruition. Everything really is in its own right place and right time.

It really is a maturity stage to arrive at and linger upon; loving as much the rust forming and the rose petals unfolding.

It is in the eye of the beholder and the mind of maturation where the loveliness of both can say, “Ahhhhhhh!”

As I sit back and take a breather, I find that I don’t mind this process at all.

by Florence Ondré

When Thomas Paine said, “He who dares not offend cannot be honest,” you could be shot for opening your mouth and laying your truth on the line.

Today, you can just be shot down by people who either don’t get what you’re saying or can’t hear and go selectively deaf when you describe your experience.

Different still gets a whack on the head and sometimes by your nearest and dearest.

In world war II, (Notice I do not capitalize the w’s in the words world and war. I know it was a huge planetary event and I choose not to give murder/war of any kind the dignity of capitalization…call it my little quirky act of peace.) individual voice was squelched to almost annihilation. Millions of people; living, breathing stories on two feet, were snuffed out to sate the rapacity of those who would not hear or abide near anyone who smacked of what is still called the spice of life.

It wasn’t enough that an entire country, and then world, followed madmen bent on power and control into participation, via action or inaction, to descend into a hell which is again happening today in the Middle East and on the continent of Africa.

Slaying for having the guts to say and be who you are is still most shamefully in style.

Even in our own good old U S of A, with all the strides we’ve made in human rights, there is a backward movement afoot to strip citizens of their civil liberties and carom us rearward in time to McCarthism and color barrier days; when speaking your mind, writing or making films about your experiences or feelings and being who you were was judged and categorized in narrow confines.

Today, we’re perilously close to a shhh-don’t-talk-don’t-tell resurgence being urged and sometimes forced on us as a populace by a Christian right wing, my-way-or-the-highway mentality of those in places of power which has no room for differences.

When you can’t stand quietly on the side of the highway with a picket sign whose words question our president without being manhandled off anywhere but where that supposed leader might see you or to the clink; when you get carted off to parts unknown for indefinite periods of time without benefit of trial before judge and jury for having swarthy skin or a last name that sounds Eastern, it is time to gather up your ravelled hem of courage and speak out; to say out loud, “The emperor has no clothes on.”

It is in these moments where the opportunity for individual stories come together to write the chapters in the book of growth and honor.

This is where listening with compassion turns the key in locks marked ‘closed minds’ on doors marked ‘consciousness and opportunity for peaceful coexistance and Highest Good for all.’

Whether you get cut dead, literally or figuratively, for sharing any part of your story the world library of experience is diminished.

It seems to me that we are a bunch of deaf people on this planet. Desensitized by our own inability to listen, we go off in our cement boots, stuck behind our own plastered on masks, down roads rutted with our every day familiar traipsings.

Do we think we’re safer for not allowing ourselves to peek out from behind our heavily constructed barriers against anything new or unfamiliar? Do we think those who are huddled there with us, hunkering down in the haven of common repetition will never turn on us?

Well, I’m here to tell you they can and do. The minute you tell an at odds part of your story, thinking you are with friends who understand and accept you; even those close compatriots in commonality may whiplash you with astonishing, eye-blink judgement and shunning.

Someone I have called friend for years recently went beyond shock when I shared the history of a personal event I’d had where I had to speak up for one person and take an action to stop abusive behavior of another.

My friend who is, shall we say conservative -sometimes to the point of uncomfortability for me- took umbrage against my sharing and could only see me as an agressor against the very perpetrators I was describing. When I asked why he was so upset with my chronicle, he replied, “It’s a matter of perspective.”

Perspective? What perspective? I had just described in detail my real live experience, not a hunch I had or a perception.

I held back my immediate gut reaction of a knee jerk, “What the Hell are you smoking that you didn’t hear what I just told you?” and morphed into basically feeling like I was being judged as one who was making up a fable drawn from imagination instead of sharing a difficult, first person occurance which actually happened to me; which became the flashpoint of my evolution from shy, non-speaking mouse to full height of unafraid, honest verbalizer lioness.

Watching the dropped jaw and pinched, angry face turning away in disgust; spurning me, like I’d just committed some heinous crime right there and then with the opening of my mouth, sent a cold knife through my heart.

There was no expression of compassion for me or the situation I had experienced nor for the child I’d saved. No, “Oh, I’m so sorry you had that experience.” No support for the bravery it took for me to stand up to lies, injustice and tyranny was forthcoming. The shock of what felt like betrayal of our friendship in the lack of listening and really hearing was like an ice berg rising from the gaping, dark North Sea now flooding between us.

My not fitting in with this person’s ideas of right and wrong trumped heart in this house of cards tumbling down around us. I was looked at like a pariah because what I shared triggered cracks in this one’s fear walls.

I got lumped into some pot of awful people who he disapproved of and those in this world who should keep their mouths shut.

It was clear, by his refusal to even look me in the face, that I was now someone who should be walled off in some ghetto of get-in-line-you-big-mouthed-yenta. You don’t act or look like I think you should so I’m lumping you in with those others I don’t like. Get behind shut-up and never open your mouth again until you can act and speak like the rest of us good behavors.

I was told that I did an awful thing and was contemptible for crowing about it and that was insufferable.

I found myself so incensed that I bit my tongue in self control, nearly gagging on the ideal of giving this other person the same right of free expression as I deserved; then tripped over it, justifying a thousand times over why I did or said what I’d done; hoping some understanding and a light of compassion might just break through so he’d remember who I was; who I’d been for years…truth teller, generous spirit, open hearted, fair minded…friend.

That light did not dawn. Entrenchment, close mindedness, fear and anger solidified and sadly, I accepted that friendship wasn’t docked at our table. That ship had sailed.

I took home my hurt and ire at the injustice dealt me by one I’d called friend and while in the shower an hour later, I realized that when our other dinner companion had shared a particularly nasty experience being the victim of the same kind of crime I stood up against, he got a near tears response of sympathy from the very friend who now looked at me like a leper.

It’s hard to imagine how one’s hair can go on fire while under pouring water but I’m here to tell you it happens.

As remembrance of that small piece of the evening’s words hit me, I thought Roman candles were shooting out of my head. I felt so angry that WTF fireworks flew out of the roots of each hair folicle on my cranium.

God! I hate when that happens! Bushwacked. Sideswiped. Run over. Responses delayed. What good are my pithy comebacks if they are all in retrospect?
What good indeed…when the receiver doesn’t want to hear.

I accepted today’s reality in that this is not someone who really wants to hear me and so closeness is not possible. I will allow and bless the space between us.
That leaves room for possible growth for both of us as individuals.

I will continue to be and share who I am, where I’ve been, what I experience and I will continue to disturb dark waters and ‘dare to offend.’

I encourage you to dare in your own way.

You might as well pull up your Thomas Paine grit, be honest and let your narratives fly out into the world. Scatter those around you with the brilliance of shining your light into cobwebbed corners. Air those ghost stories so that they can touch other courageous souls such as yourself. Don’t wait until you’re gone and your ancestors have to dig up clues as to who you were, what you believed, said and did. Hesitate not to heave your heart out in the expressing.

You have plenty of time to try on the cloaks of circumspect and courage and make your own choices which honor the heights of honesty and depth of daring.

It’s your life and you don’t have to tippy toe around your words; hemming and hawing for political correctness or remain caught in fear based conformity. Go on, get messy with feelings and be willing to speak with passion imbued in the paragraphs of you.

Others may identify with the feelings and still have their own uniqueness in their narratives. No one has to agree with you or have your exact encounters, nor do they have the right to judge you, put you down or harm you with words or deeds against you because you speak up.

Your life is a series of the acccounts of your experiences. Tell your stories.
The library of life has shelves waiting for the books of you.

“If I look for the brighter day, I may miss the rays of light which peek out around me in the seeming darkness of this moment. Where there is dark there is light. Therefore I may as well be still where I am and breathe what peace; what good there is here in perceived gloom. Who knows what lesson, blessing, brighter day is present in the now?”
Florence Ondré, writer, poet, singer song writer, photographer

I’ve come to realize that my challenge is to be content where I am; to remember that all things pass in the energy of change; to not miss anything that is happening right now.
I forget that because many experiences are chafing, uncomfortable or distasteful. Yet there is the Rumi saying, “If you are irritated by every rub, how will you be polished?”
Finding my brighter day each day is my inner work because I do know I’m a work of art in progress; that angel in the marble Michelangelo talked about. We all are.
Most of my life when there was pain (and there was plenty of it) I looked to a brighter day. I was told there would be one coming. There always was – even though the time in getting here varied in length, breadth and texture.
The practice of that looking forward widened a river of hope running through me.
Today, I want to fine tune that way of being in the world; always looking, with smile on my face, for some bright to appear – hopefully soon.
The last time I spoke of the latest travail which seemed to be lingering overlong on my timeline, a friend listened patiently and gently. After I ended the saga with my positive spin of, “But I know there’s a brighter day coming,” she asked me a quiet question, “What do you really want and when?”
I was a little taken by surprise and had too stop and think deeper than usual; let the question sink down through my head and heart to my gut.
Taking a deep breath as I felt the question journey within, on the exhale, I knew what my real goal was and that I wanted highest good for myself and others- and I wanted it ‘now!’ Not sooner or later – now – right now!
Old-tape feelings of ‘how selfish and demanding are you, you instant gratification child?’ popped in my brain. I acknowledged them, said,’thanks for visiting. you may leave now. Go into light to become more light’ and realized how silent and invisible these little snippets of preconditioning are; still hanging around, blocking my view.
Realization flooded me. If I had the components of seeking, seeing and summoning, the energy to create within me, why shouldn’t I just shift my wording and wanting into present tense?
I’d read about affirming your good in the now. Not simply saying the words, ‘thanks for my highest good now,’ but really feeling my good evolving as I think of it.
It stood to reason that, if ‘our words are our wands,’ ‘what we conceive, we can achieve,’ and ‘I can’t recognize a stranger,’ then the bright day is already here manifesting.
The only matter yet to consider is when I sense it.
Rumi also said, “When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you; a joy.”
The form is formed now and it is me who is catching up to it.
It is said that in thinking what you want, putting your desire out into the Universe in partnership, trusting that all is well and better than you can imagine at any given moment, manifestation time of our highest good is getting shorter every day.
It’s not a matter of it ‘coming.’
My brighter day is here in the now. As soon as I can recognize it.

As Victor Hugo wrote, “Be like the bird, who halting in his flight / On limb too slight, / Feels it give way beneath him, yet sings / Knowing he has wings.”
…and so it is.

by
Florence Ondré

Last night when I went to bed, I didn’t know if we’d wake up to nuclear war or not wake up at all.
I shrugged and thought, as I performed my evening ablutions, “Well, if we’re facing a boatload of nuclear substances sailing into wackadoo North Korea, it really doesn’t matter if I shave my legs.”
I usually don’t listen to news at night (don’t want to have freakazoidmares) but last night the tube was on at 1 A.M. and I caught the drift of the ‘breaking story’ wherein a very stone faced reporter intoned the impending doom of a ship carrying possible nuclear stuff heading into North Korea. This, following that country’s July test-firing a barrage of missiles and performing a nuclear explosion on October 9th, 2006.
Ah, the stuff of dreams, eh?
I’d heard the news this week of the chief North Korean Walnut refusing to be part of peace talks; ranting threats to the Imperialists (they don’t call that, U.S., for nothing) like a bully in the international schoolyard, “If you put financial sanctions against us, we’re gonna blow you up…” (Notice there’s no thought that the radiation cloud blows right back onto your own people.)
There’s a tired variation on the old, ‘I’m taking my ball home if you don’t play my way.’ We’ve heard untold slants on that theme so often that we’re like weary elders sighing and saying, “You get a time out.” Then we go to bed thinking, ‘Hey, if you’re gonna be a brat, you’re gonna be one. Zap. Poof. There goes your allowance until you quit it.”
And bingo! I do wake up this morning. There still is a world and, lo and behold, President Peanut says, he’s sorry. He’ll talk nicely now. Did his honorable Mother China wash his mouth out with soap? Or was it venerable Father China taking away his spending money so he won’t go out and throw it away on weed or weapons of mass myopathy?
Geepers! If I had a nickel for every time a big bag of wind farts in public, I’d be able to fund safe housing, medical treatment, education and art for the entire world!
Which brings me to our own homegrown Main Macadamian, who I read in the headlines (which are more arselines, due to lack of cerebral portion of the anatomy engagement) announcing that he’s campaigning for ALL his minions of Cashew candidates; including the outed, perverted, pedophile Pecans, to get re-elected to office. (Yeah, that’s what we want. Years more of bad boy B.S.)
Are you as tired of this ignorance and arrogance posturing as leadership as I am?
The assorted salty snacks of in-flight meals are cha-cha-ing out of the can and the cracker factory doors are open wide.
I’m weary just thinking about how much energy it takes to be, or behold, an unsalted schmuck.

I’ll probably have to shave my legs now.
There might be a tomorrow.
Nuts!

by
Florence Ondré

I’m so grateful for the creativity and warm spirit of people around our planet.
In a world which looks so out of control and violent, it’s a challenge to see things otherwise.
The nightly news, broadcasting it’s steady stream of 90 per cent tragedy and 10 per cent (I’m being generous here) positive, uplifting and good, can obscure a greater, less visible or widely reported, reality.
I believe that Anne Frank was accurate. On my most challenging days, in my heart (and there are those days where I have to dig deep), I too believe that all people are good in theirs.
The Free Hugs Campaign, which started with one man- Juan Mann to be specific- in Sydney, Australia. Standing solo in a public place, holding a cardboard sign which announced hugs were available for no fee; no limit, for anyone who wanted one, this lone person started a rash of good energy that spread faster than calamitous contagion around the world.
Now this kind of epidemic we can live with.
Who among us couldn’t use a hug? Just a minute of a Mom-patting, ah-babying, yes-you-are-good, atta-boy, good job, keep on keeping on, good-to-see-you experience of human connection can make you smile, take the world less seriously and send you on your way a bit lighter and happier. Certainly makes my work day go more smoothly.
It’s a gesture of loving energy that anyone can give or receive. Remember the last time you had a disagreement with someone. Didn’t it feel good to make up and have a hug? Just look at dogs. They wag their whole bodies in happiness from receiving a hug.
Hugs for free? Given by a person you don’t know? Wow. A little scary. Might take a moment to let go of distrust and avail yourself of a happy second where two strangers can share a moment like friends. Radical stuff. Chancey. Dicey.
Authorities in Australia had initial doubt about the legality of such a concept.
“Stop that folderol right now, you uniquers!”
The ministry of silly stuff should have been called. “Yup. It’s giggle producing. Here’s your permit.”
It did take the populace banding together, inking 10,000 plus pro hugging signatures to get an official stamp of approval.
Good non violent speaking up and out people. Patience and persistance. Even hugs are a process.
Might have to take down those walls we’ve built up to insulate us from each other. Might have to experience life from a kid point of view.
I’m not saying go hug people in dark alleys. It’s good to be self caring and discerning. We’re talking mall, streets, public areas, daylight.
Take a look at the videos from the many countries where people emulated Juan Mann. Become aware of how you feel looking at all those joy filled people giving and receiving hugs.
I couldn’t stop smiling as I got to share the good contagious energy of hugs in Moscow, Barcelona, Venezuela, Victoria B.C., Kiev, Portugal, Tel Aviv, Mexico, and America. I laughed watching the experiences of tentativeness turn into joy and unity.
It was contagious and I hadn’t even left my chair.
I wanted to get up and go out with my own hand made Free Hugs sign.
Maybe that would be a good way to celebrate holidays, everydays. Talk about your joy to the world. For free yet, already!
With a little creativity and spirit, look what can travel around the globe; making people feel united, peacefilled, elated with natural happiness.
The simplicity of a human act…a hug.
Thanks Juan. Thanks all you good hearted people of all ages, sizes, nationalities, beliefs who dared to be the best human you can be; who dared to smile, to experience peace and a moment of gladness…those who dared to hug.
You inspire us.

I love a president with a healthy sense of humor; whose ego hasn’t outstripped his reason.
(see quote below)

I’m grateful for the opportunity and responsibility to speak up in public forums. One of our most cherished freedoms; the ability to speak our minds clearly and be heard, is what keeps us all growing. And to find in that process, that going hand in hand, no matter whether we agree with one another or not, still keeps us together… if we allow each other honoring space on the journey.
In Light & Love,
Florence