meaning

Grief Bacon—Otherwise Known as Sunday at My House—Reprise

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I stole this from Liz Gilbert because I LOVE words. The odder the better—the only thing I love more are my husband, my dog…and bacon.

Because, come on! Bacon has no calories, it isn’t bad for us and goddamnit, apparently it cures grief!

BLT.

Mac-n-cheese with bacon.

Swiss bacon burger.

Bacon wrapped hot dogs.

Comfort food.
Yeah, I might know something about that. I ate bacon as a Vegan.
Oh, relax! I also had sex before marriage as a Catholic. Clearly I can’t be trusted to follow the rules—anyway—how did this get to be about me and my questionable boundaries?

This is about BACON.

Enjoy some levity on your Sunday and indulge in some Bacon!
xox

What Being Spiritual Mean To Me

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It’s always about the sparkles, isn’t it?

Love you, Carry on,
xox

Do The Books From Our Childhood Carry A One-Two Punch?

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Its come to my attention lately that many of you are re-reading books from your childhood either with your kids or late at night with a flashlight under the covers, only to discover their deep, hidden meaning.

They may have marked us as children but they deliver a whole NEW meaning to us as adults.

Mary Poppins – Believing in Magic– Ditto Harry Potter

The Little Prince — So many people I know were marked as children by this book including my husband.

A Christmas Carol — which is the story behind one of my all time favorite movies, It’s A Wonderful Life

The Velveteen Rabbit — Great lessons in self acceptance.

All the Cat In The Hat books, really anything written by Dr. Seuss is genius and ripe with life lessons.

Just to name a few…

Kinda makes me wonder, was it always the intention behind these books to deliver a sort of one-two punch, by subtlety seeding our dreams with their hidden wisdom as we listened as children at bedtime, only to bestow an even greater, better understood message upon us as we read them to our kids?

Wouldn’t that be something?

Here is a great example of what I’m talking about in a short essay by Pam Grout. Harold And The Purple Crayon.
Take it away Pam!

“World’s best “how-to” book not found in the self-help section

“Your opinion of yourself becomes your reality. If you have all these doubts, no one will believe in you and everything will go wrong. If you think the opposite, the opposite will happen. It’s that simple.”
–50 Cent

“My favorite how-to book will never be found in the self-help section of the bookstore. It was written long before the term self-help was even coined.

It’s a children’s book called Harold and the Purple Crayon and it rivals Oprah when it comes to addressing the possibilities of the human condition.

Written by Crockett Johnson in 1955, this little 65-page masterpiece tells the story of a little boy named Harold who decides to go out for a walk one evening. When there isn’t any moonlight (and, of course, everyone knows a good walk requires moonlight), Harold just takes out his purple crayon and draws the moon.

He also needs a sidewalk (which he draws) that leads to a forest (he only draws one tree because he doesn’t want to get lost) that turns out to be an apple tree (or at least it is after Harold’s crayon gets ahold of it). Unfortunately, the apples aren’t ripe yet, so Harold draws a frightening dragon to guard the tree.

When he falls into the ocean, Harold is able to grab his wits and his purple crayon to draw a boat and set sail for a beach, where he draws a picnic lunch with nine kinds of pie.

The whole book is about Harold’s great adventures scaling a mountain, soaring in a hot-air balloon and touring a city, all created by his ever-faithful purple crayon.

It’s a powerful book because it demonstrates a great spiritual truth—we are the authors of our own lives. We draw every detail—even the dragons and the oceans we “accidentally” fall into.

Harold could have gone on his walk, noticed there was no moon and sat down and pouted. Isn’t that what most of us do? “Damn, no moon. Better call my therapist, hit some pillows.” Or he could have drawn his moon, compared it to El Greco, and said, “I’m a hopeless sham. What was I thinking? Me? An artist?”

Instead, he kept reaching for his purple crayon and drawing every event, every answer, every friend he needed. We all have that power.
Harold was only a kid. He hadn’t yet lost his imagination, his sense of wonder and awe. No one had explained yet that he couldn’t have whatever he wanted. As long as he had his purple crayon, he could ride the universe.

Remember that big box of Crayolas with the 64 awesome colors? With that one small gold and green box you could have absolutely anything-—navy blue carousels with peach prancing ponies, magenta castles with yellow-green drawbridges, puffy white clouds and purple grass although your teacher might have frowned on that kind of thing. “Grass is green, don’t you know.”

Each year of school, the Crayola stash gets smaller. By the time we graduate from high school, we’re wielding nothing but a blue Bic for figuring our checking account.

Let’s go out this week and get some crayons. Let’s create our world the way we want it. And if we happen to fall into an ocean or run into a dragon, we’ll just draw ourselves a lifeboat and head for the beach, where at least one kind of pie will be waiting.”

Pam Grout is the author of 17 books including E-Squared: 9 Do-it-Yourself Energy Experiments that Prove Your Thoughts Create Your Reality and the recently released sequel, E-Cubed, 9 More Experiments that Prove Mirth, Magic and Merriment is your Full-time Gig.
Pamgrout.com

What Do We Mean By Soul?

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I’ve never really defined the soul on these pages.

Not to be confused with God. Or is it?…

The soul is God’s wingman (duh, everybody know that) but like God, Soul can be an emotionally charged word, and I get scared that you’ll get all “no you didn’t” on me, and slam the door on our friendship.

Soooo…I really like this interpretation by Iyanla Vanzant.
I find it insightful and clever.

The soul I believe is the fingerprint of God that becomes a physical body.”

I know what I believe, (I’ll tell you later) but just for shits and giggles, I wanted to see what was out there in the popular landscape.

So here goes:
The top, number one definition in the Urban Dictionary is:

SOUL
Currency to trade with the devil.

WTF? Seriously? Yup.
“I just made a deal with the devil – I sold my soul for a brand new television.”

Let’s all take a moment…Hmmmmmm…Okay.

The second one is more comprehensive, I guess. Well except for number 9, number 9 is a cop-out.

SOUL
The existence of the soul is heavily debated in the first place, and its definition varies greatly from party to party, though everyone believes that everyone else’s definitions are wrong. It is generally agreed to be something possessed by every person, and that’s about all. Therefore, the soul may or may not be any of the following:
1. The human mind, that is, that thinking thing lodged behind your eyes;
2. The essence of humanity;
3. The essence of that which makes a person good and decent;
4. The quality of sentience or human intelligence;
5. All of someone’s personality or what makes them unique;
6. Some mystical version of a person that lives on after the body dies;
7. A spiritual concept, created by God (or the gods if you prefer) or a part of him;
8. The quality of being alive;
9. Anything else you can think of along these lines.

Note that it is also up for debate whether or not non-human animals, or for that matter, plants, have souls; feel free to adjust these answers accordingly.

Strangely, no one seems to suggest that animals have souls and humans lack them.

This third one is the gospel truth. Just kidding, but I love it.

SOUL
The Godson of James Brown and Princess of Aretha Franklin. James Brown, the Godfather of Soul / Aretha Franklin, Queen of Soul.

Number four is pretty deep. It appeals to all the angst-ridden artists, writers and philosophers among us – and contemplators of belly button lint.

SOUL
The only part of you that really matters. You can give it to anyone you want, but its hard to ever get back.

“Until you know that life is interesting – and find it so – you haven’t found your soul.”~ Geoffrey Fisher

“How strange a thing this is! The Priest telleth me that the Soul is worth all the gold in the world, and the merchants say that it is not worth a clipped piece of silver.” ~ Oscar Wilde

“A sensible man will remember that the eyes may be confused in two ways – by a change from light to darkness or from darkness to light; and he will recognize that the same thing happens to the soul.” ~ Plato

Finally, the one I believe, number five.

SOUL
The energy of life existing in all beings. Exists both inside and outside of the beings physical shell as both a fuel for the physical realm and a connection to the universal life force.
The force of mind/body/spirit that has always existed and will always exist.

“While life slipped from my body with each breath, my soul emerged, strong and vital and ready for the next part of the journey.”

But wait! There are more! I especially like number thirty-two.

SOUL
A place that exists for the single purpose of hosting a bird house for the blue canary in the outlet by the light switch to live in. Also, the part of your body that lives on after you die.

“Make a little bird house in your soul…”

I was wondering what that bird house for the blue canary in the outlet by the lights switch was!
(Palm slap to the forehead).

But seriously, the soul can be defined these days in whichever way makes you feel the best, which has become abundantly obvious.
Thank you Urban Dictionary. But I like that. I like that there’s no set-in-stone, my-way-or-the-highway definition.

So, are we still friends?

“A love so big it cannot be contained.” came to me while I was writing this. I probably read that somewhere and can’t remember who said it. But I kinda love that too.

Oh wait; maybe that’s a Soul Mate.
Jeez. Carry on.

You want to share your definition of Soul? Now that you’ve seen all these choices, which one resonates with you?

My soul loves your soul,
Xox

Missing The Target

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I heard an interview the other day on NPR while standing in line at Trader Joe’s. I couldn’t really listen in the car, I was too busy trying to secure a highly unattainable parking space, so I came to it late. I searched for and inserted my earphones in order to avoid the impulse to go postal on the slow bagger in front of me.
I know…OMMMMMM back to a loving place.

It was about Sin. How apropos.

Anywho, the guy being interviewed had studied at a prestigious Divinity school in the UK, and he reported, with great authority, that the Aramaic meaning for the word SIN was to miss the target.
WHAT?!
That implies that you tried to hit the bullseye, you took careful aim, it was your intention…but then you missed.
You didn’t intentionally do something wrong, as I always had been taught as a child. I liked the sound of that except
As a “retired” Catholic, that stopped me in my tracks. That can’t be right; that sounds like it’s saying sin is a – mistake.
Wait.

All those years of shame and guilt. I feel so bamboozled Catholic Church.

Of course the minute I got home I looked it up because that meaning was news to me.

Below is a portion of just one of the MANY articles I found on the meanings of SIN. I love when I learn something new, so I wanted to pass it along-

The Original Hebrew word for “sin” has been wrongly translated… Its true meaning will pleasantly surprise you!

The original word sin means – to miss.
It doesn’t mean to commit something wrong; it simply means to miss, to be absent.

The Hebrew root for the word sin, means to miss the target.(!!!)

That exists in a few English words: misconduct, misbehavior.
To miss means not to be there, doing something without being present there — this is the only sin. And the only virtue: while you are doing something you are fully alert — what Gurdjieff calls selfremembering, what Buddha calls being rightly mindful, what Krishnamurti calls awareness, what Kabir has called SURATI. To be there! — that’s all that is needed, nothing more.
You need not change anything, and even if you try to change you cannot”

The original Hebrew word for sin is very beautiful. By translating it as “sin,” Christians have missed the very message of Jesus. The original Hebrew word for sin is so totally different from your idea of sin that it will be a surprise to you.
The root word means forgetfulness; it has nothing to do with what you are doing.

The whole thing is whether you are doing it with conscious being or out of unconsciousness.

Are you doing it with a self-remembering or have you completely forgotten yourself? (LOVE that)

Any action of unconsciousness is sin.

The action may look virtuous, but it cannot be. You may create a beautiful façade, a character, a certain virtuousness; you may speak the truth, you may avoid lies; you may try to be moral, and so on and so forth. But if all this is coming from unconsciousness, it is all sin.

By OSHO

Now, this is no “get out of jail free” card by any means, but it does open the conversation and it jives so much better with the way I’ve always felt about religion, and words and their meanings.

“Bless me Father for I have sinned”
xox

Hi, I’m Janet

Mentor. Pirate. Dropper of F-bombs.

This is where I write about my version of life. My stories. Told in my own words.

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