Today was a challenging day so a friend sent me a funny YouTube. We can all use a little humor in our lives so I’m passing it along. The comedian is Jeanne Robertson who has a great sense of humor and good, clean jokes. Jeanne loves humorous stories and so when her friends hear a funny story they call her. She said I’d much rather they do that than call me when they heard some good gossip.
We all benefit from laughing everyday so hear are some good stories. Enjoy!
Bungee Jumping in Canada. Left Brain is her husband.
In Minnesota spring is a big event. After looking at bare trees for over six months I am always delighted to see bright colors. Some of the first flowers out are tulips. At the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum they always plant thousands of tulips. This year they had a wonderful display using the theme of orange and purple flowers. Enjoy the beauty of their rich display.
In the spring when the snow is still on the ground, my husband and I like to make maple syrup. This year spring was late, and we made maple syrup until the end of April.
There was a spring snow storm when we were tapping.
Frost on the trees.
First we drill holes in our maple trees, put a spigot in and hang bags. Then we dump the sap out of the bags into a stainless steel pan and boil it on an outside grill. Next we take the sap inside and cook it down more on a wood stove. It takes 30 to 40 gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup. Our sap is higher in sugar content than most, so it takes less sap to make maple syrup.
From time to time we are asked the question: “What if this was your last day?” Instead I was wondering: “What you would do if you knew you were going to live to be 100?” How would you live differently? Would you still retire at 62 or 65 or even 70? What interests would you pursue if you knew you had another 35 or 40 year to pursue them in after retirement? What ways would you contribute to the world during those 35 to 40 years?
Recently I was sent a delightful YouTube of 101-year-old Bel Kaufman. She said that retiring is like retiring from life and is quoted to have said, “I’m too busy to get old.” At 100 she taught a college class on Jewish humor at Hunter College. Even she seemed impressed by being asked to teach a class at her age. She still has a sharp mind and a great sense of humor, as you will see on this YouTube on fascinating elders.
Bel Kaufman was born in 1911 in Berlin, Germany where her father was studying medicine, but her native language was Russian. She was raised in Odessa and Kiev (present-day Republic of Ukraine) until she was twelve and her family immigrated to the US.
Bel is best know for having written a best selling 1965 novel Up the Down Staircase that was turned into a movie. The book was based on some of her experiences as a high school teacher. Her grandfather who wrote the stories that were developed into Fiddler on the Roof and who corresponded with other Russian authors such as Leo Tolstoy influenced her.
Here is a talk she gave at Iona College. It well worth listening to the YouTube. Bel talks about humor, her novel, and her experience of having her novel being made into a movie.
“What you would do if you knew you were going to live to be 100?” Did these YouTubes change your idea of what it is like to be old. I hesitate to say senior since Bel said being called a senior reminded her of senior prom.
A friend sent me a link to a Ted Talk about Ronny Edry, an Israeli graphic designer. In March of 2012 he shared a poster on Facebook of himself and his daughter with a message “Iranians we will never bomb your country. We love you.” Ronny said that the war between Israel and Iran has seemed imminent for the last decade and the people in Israel live in fear. He posted the poster on facebook and people both in Israel and Iran responded with positive comments. He made another poster with his wife and child, and then he made more posters of Israeli people with the same message. Ronny said that people see images and he wanted them to see that it wasn’t just one man with this message but many Israelis.
The people from Iran responded with their own posters that said, “Iranians we will never bomb your country. We love you.”
An Iranian girl said she’d been taught to hate the Israeli flag, but now she loved the the blue color and the star.
“Something happening,” Ronny said. “Good news.”
One of the people commenting on the Ted show said, “I believe these brothers and sisters have stopped a war by showing unconditional love for all. Let’s spread that around the world!!!”
It’s wonderful to see what one man can do to make the world a better place.
Here is a link to this inspiring show. It brought tears to my eyes; maybe it will move you as well.
Last week I went to hear Allen Anderson speak at a book signing on his new book A Dog Named Leaf. The book signing was at Common Good Books owned by Garrison Keillor. Keillor came into the store during the talk and Allen had his photo taken with him. The photo is on Allen’s website: Angelanimals.net.
Due to my friend’s malfunctioning GPS, I missed Garrison Keillor, but I was there to share the joy of the event. Allen and his wife Linda started a special network called Angels Animals. They have since published a series of books that are collections of people’s stories that convey uplifting messages about the relationships between people and animals. Angel Animals was their first book. They’ve published books about dogs, cats, horses, children and animals, and a book about saving animals from disasters.
This new book is different from the rest. It is Allen’s personal story about his dog Leaf and the healing he received from him.
Allen’s beloved dog had died and he wasn’t ready for a new dog, but one day he and his wife Linda were at the humane society and saw a black cocker spaniel. They were drawn to the dog and decided to adopt him. The dog turned out to have lots of problems like abandonment issues from being dropped off at the humane society. Allen worked hard to help the dog heal, including getting up with him three times at night and sleeping in a chair with the dog on his lap.
Not long after adopting Leaf, Allen received a diagnosis from his doctor that he had an unruptured brain aneurysm. Allen’s father had had a massive stroke and Allen had seen the terrible effects his father had to endure. He dreaded the thought of becoming an invalid. The story is about Allen and the dog’s healing process and how they helped each other. In the Epilogue Allen writes about his and Leaf’s relationship, “We are two souls who entered each other’s lives when we most needed the healing power of a human-animal friendship.” p. 209.
The quote from the back cover reads:
“The inspiring true story of a man and a dog coming together at just the right moment for miracles to occur.”
If you love animals like I do and consider them a part of the family, you’ll enjoy reading this heartfelt, honest book about the love between a man and his dog.
This month I read a recently published book called Proof of Heaven by Dr. Eben Alexander about his near death experience (NDE). This book is getting a lot of media attention including being the cover story in Newsweek Oct 15, 2012 issue. Dr. Alexander’s NDE is getting attention partly because he is a respected academic neurosurgeon, teaching at Harvard Medical School and other universities. His NDE was unusual in that while he was in another dimension his cortex was completely shut down and he was under medical observation the whole time. The fact that his higher order brain functions were totally offline is significant because it meant that his NDE couldn’t be the result of his brain making up the experience.
Dr. Alexander understood the brain and how it works. He had always believed there were good scientific explanations for the strange stories people told who had under gone severe trauma. But once he’d had his own experience, he knew they were real experiences. He now intends to spend the rest of his life investigating the nature of consciousness. He knows for certain that we are more than our physical brain.
Dr. Alexander’s NDE is also unusual in that unlike most people, who remember who they are in the physical and are met by a loved one, he had no remembrance of who he was in his physical body and he never met anyone that he knew.
The book is an enjoyable read. Dr. Alexander goes back and forth between his inner spiritual journey and what his family experienced while he is in a coma. His illness started when he woke up in terrible pain. His wife called 911 after he lost consciousness and he was rushed to the hospital. The medical staff didn’t know what was wrong with him at first, but after running tests discovered he had bacterial meningitis. This is a rare and deadly disease especially in adults. Dr. Alexander describes in detail what was happening to his body and how the doctors were treating his illness. His chances of survival beyond a vegetative state were low when he was admitted to the hospital and went down the longer he was in a coma.
While in a coma Dr. Alexander went to a world where there was no sense of time as we experience it. “Then I heard a new sound: a living sound, like the richest, most complex, most beautiful piece of music you’ve ever heard. Growing in volume as a pure white light descended.” p. 39. He found himself in a beautiful new world where he flew over a lush, green countryside. He describes the world as an incredible dream. Only it wasn’t a dream. “This place I’d found myself in was completely real.” p. 39.
For much of his journey he was with a young woman. They rode together on the wing of a butterfly. Without using words the woman communicated with him. Her message was: “You are loved and cherished, dearly, forever. You have nothing to fear. There is nothing you can do wrong.” Dr. Alexander said, “The message flooded me with a vast and crazy sensation of relief. It was like being handed the rules to a game I’d been playing all my life without ever fully understanding it.” p. 41. He was also told he’d be shown many things but that eventually he’d go back. He didn’t know where he was to go back to since he didn’t remember his physical life.
Later he goes to a place of clouds where some kind of advanced beings were. He writes, “I continued forward and found myself entering an immense void, completely dark, infinite in size, yet also infinitely comforting. Pitch black as it was, it was also brimming over with light.” p. 46–47. He felt this was God, the Creator, the Source who was responsible for making the universe. “Through the Orb, Om told me that there is not one universe but many–in fact, more than I could conceive–but that love lay at the center of them all. . . Evil was necessary because without it free will was impossible, and without free will there could be no growth–no forward movement, no chance for us to become what God longed for us to be.” p. 49.
On Dr. Alexander’s seventh day in the coma, as the doctors were considering discontinuing treatment, he returned to his body. When he was back home he told his son about his NDE and his son told him to write it down before he read about other people’s NDEs so they wouldn’t influence him. He did as his son suggested.
As a result of his NDE he understood that death is not the end of consciousness but a part of a positive journey. He writes, “God is present in us at all times. Omniscient, omnipotent, personal–and loving us without conditions. We are connected as One through our divine link with God.” p. 161.
I highly recommend Dr. Alexander’s book for those interested in what lies beyond this physical world.
Dr. Alexander has established a nonprofit charity to help create a better future for earth and its inhabitants and to advance research and education concerning spiritually transformative experiences. You may want to visit www.Eternea.org. It is a great source of materials on NDE, past lives, and mystical experiences.
If you’d like to hear more about Dr. Alexander’s experience here is a YouTube of an interview he did with Steve Paulson at the 2012 Bioethics Forum entitled “Research on Near Death & The Experience Of Dying”.
I was talking to my friend Doug about Anita Moorjani’s near death experience, which I wrote about in a recent blog. Anita had cancer and went into a coma. While she was in the coma, she had an amazing NDE. She returned from her experience in the inner realms cured of cancer.
Doug replied that years ago he’d heard about another man, Mellen-Thomas Benedict who also had cancer and a NDE. Like Anita he came back cured of cancer.
Doug emailed me a link to the story about Benedict.
Mellen’s story is as amazing as Anita’s. Anita felt her cancer was caused by her fear. Mellen, who had a NDE in 1982, said that, “I had been an information freak in the 1970’s, and I had become increasingly despondent over the nuclear crisis, the ecology crisis, and so forth. So, since I did not have a spiritual basis, I began to believe that nature had made a mistake, and that we were probably a cancerous organism on the planet. I saw no way that we could get out from all the problems we had created for ourselves and the planet. I perceived all humans as cancer, and that is what I got. That is what killed me. Be careful what your world view is. It can feed back on you, especially if it is a negative world view. I had a seriously negative one. That is what led me into my death. I tried all sorts of alternative healing methods, but nothing helped.”
Mellen came to see that, “At any level, high or low, in whatever shape you are in, you are the most beautiful creation, you are.
“I was astonished to find that there was no evil in any soul.
“I said, ‘How can this be?’
“The answer was that no soul was inherently evil. The terrible things that happened to people might make them do evil things, but their souls were not evil. What all people seek, what sustains them, is love, the light told me. What distorts people is a lack of love.”
Both quotes are taken from the above-mentioned story.
It’s fascinating to ponder why we get sick and if indeed some illnesses are caused by our thoughts and emotions. If we can figure out what created our illness, then we might have some insight how to heal from our illness.
I also find it interesting to read about the experiences people have in the inner realms. People who have died and come back all share that there is life after death. Knowing that we are Soul and immortal can take the fear out of dying and ease our suffering when a loved one dies.
Do you think we can create disease with our thoughts, emotions, and attitudes?
I was emailed this incredible YouTube of a large boat rescue after the attack on 9/11. At first I didn’t know if I wanted to see another 9/11 video, but I’m glad I decided to. It greatly moved me to see all these people working together to help people get off of Manhattan after the planes flew into the Twin towers of the World Trade Center. At the time no one knew if the island was being bombed or what exacting was happening.
It’s easy to see the dark side of life when you watch the news. A video like this reminds us how good most people basically are and many heroes came out of 9/11. 500,000 people were evacuated off Manhattan in less than nine hours. It was the biggest water evacuation in history.
Today was a challenging day so a friend sent me a funny YouTube. We can all use a little humor in our lives so I’m passing it along. The comedian is Jeanne Robertson who has a great sense of humor and good, clean jokes. Jeanne loves humorous stories and so when her friends hear a funny story they call her. She said I’d much rather they do that than call me when they heard some good gossip.
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