Saying Grace
in a Goddess Voice
The Baby is Still in the Oven
Something Yummy
Casting Call: Goddess Wanted
Forget American Idols! Here's An American Hero
Sarah Ban Breathnach says that "Grace is direct Divine
intervention on our behalf that circumvents the laws of nature—time,
space, cause and effect, the availability of parking."
To that list, I would add some other things that seem
unnatural: stressless family get-togethers, feasting for
weight loss, everyday heroes, and babies that arrive on
their due dates.
This week we celebrate Thanksgiving in the US. It's time
to exercise the Goddess Gift of Gratitude and gaze with awe
at the signs of amazing grace in our world!
The Gift of Gratitude
While we’re contemplating all that we have in our lives to be
thankful, let’s not forget about our friends. They are a constant reminder of the Goddess’
presence in the world. The Goddess often sends us her energy through
our friends.
I, for one, am thankful for our Goddess friend, the Rev. Laurie
Sue Brockway, who agreed to share with us . . .
A Thanksgiving Prayer for
Family Grace and Peace
By Rev. Laurie Sue Brockway
Dear God, Goddess, Divine Spirit of all there is,
Thank you for the opportunity
to gather together in one another's company.
We thank you for the light
you bring to this family gathering.
Please grant us the vision to see the highest in one
another,
and grant us the opportunity to continue to be there
for each other
In good times, as well as not-so-great-times.
Give us strength and fortitude to ride the tides of
change,
and empower us always to be nurturing and loving
with one another.
Open our spiritual eyes that we may see one another
for who we truly are...
and love one other in the same spirit.
May sadness, disappointment and anger be minimal.
May happiness, positive thoughts and good
experiences together be bountiful.
May we always cope, and hope, with each other...
with grace.
Amen.
from A Goddess Is A Girl's Best Friend:
A Divine Guide to Finding Love,
Success and
Happiness,
The blessing will serve
as a grace-full antidote to what sometimes happens
when the "close confinement, with large supplies of
alcohol, of blood relations who have had the good sense
to keep far apart for the previous three hundred and
sixty four days" come together at the table. (Description
of family togetherness provided by Reginald Hill,
Death's Jest-Book.)
Whether your 'family' is bound by blood,
marriage, or spirit . . .
whether you
gather around the table or meet in an online community,
take a moment to let your family know that you are grateful for
their presence in your life.
I'm pleased to let you know that it is finally going to
happen! We've gone into the last stages of labor—the book is at the printers. Though it's much later
than we had originally planned,
for this progress I am
exceedingly grateful.
We have great plans for introducing this little goddess to the
world,
but I don't have space to tell you here. Will be back
soon to tell you about all the hoopla that we have planned.
Something Yummy for Your Thanksgiving Treat
One
of you wrote to tell me about this truly delicious site,
and I
can't wait to share it with the rest of you.
Remember last year's
"Create-A-Goddess" contestand how we had
such fun inventing
goddesses for our modern times--goddesses like Entropia (the
goddess of unfinished projects,
Wha (the multifaced goddess of
multi-tasking),
and Volcanus Nocturnus (the crone who oversees our night
sweats)? Well, this wonderful 'find' would have given us some steep
competition indeed!
Talk
about a woman who exercises her imagination!Our Lady of Weight Loss is the wacky creation of Janice
Taylor, a New York artist/humorist who created this "discovered
goddess" to help her lose 50 pounds and keep it off for
over 5 years. Obviously, she is on to something good!
ABC TV is interested in producing a Wife Swap
(reality
show) episode about a woman who practices
Goddess Values or
Goddess Spirituality. If your family is featured
on the show, you will be paid $20,000.00 Want scholarship money
or funds to begin a new, creative project? Or even a
well-deserved vacation for all involved?
Sure, I was a bit taken aback by the idea. Charlene
Proctor of the Goddess Network and author of Let Your Goddess
Grow!, a friend of the casting producer wrote, asking us to pass the message on.
Or as Charlene said in her
email: ". . . this may seem
non-empowering for the Goddess-empowered woman. (Wife
swapping? Trading Husbands? Good heavens and earth!)
However, it's a terrific opportunity to showcase
Goddess Values on prime time television and broaden the
general public's perspective. And who knows? Perhaps our
Divine Mother, no matter what wisdom tradition She may
arrive, will finally straighten out men and women everywhere
about how a Goddess teaches her children to be powerful
while compassionate."
Not being at all familiar
with the show since the Weather Channel is about all that I
watch on TV,
I had to call and ask!
The
answer: ~Only
Married, With Children need apply. ~
I
admit I'm a dunce about TV, but even I have heard about
American Idol. . . a kind of quest for immortality. In Greek
mythology mortals often rose to fame and hero status only after
they had been empowered by the blessings of one of the gods or
goddesses.
The
other day I saw a video that moved me to tears. Months had
passed since I had read the incredible story that inspired this video. Rick Reilly wrote this
moving article in his column in Sports Illustrated about:
Strongest Dad in the World
I try to be a good father. Give
my kids mulligans. Work nights to pay for their text messaging. Take them to swimsuit shoots.
But compared with Dick Hoyt, I suck.
Eighty-five times he's pushed his disabled son, Rick, 26.2
miles in marathons. Eight times he's not only pushed him 26.2 miles in a wheelchair but also towed him 2.4 miles in a dinghy while
swimming and pedaled him 112 miles in a seat on the handlebars--all in the same day.
Dick's also pulled him cross-country skiing, taken him on his
back mountain climbing and once hauled him across the U.S. on a
bike. Makes taking your son bowling look a little lame, right?
And what has Rick done for his father? Not much--except save his life.
This love story began in Winchester, Mass., 43 years ago, when Rick was strangled by the umbilical cord during birth, leaving him brain-damaged and unable to control his limbs.
"He'll be a vegetable the rest of his life;'' Dick says
doctors told him and his wife, Judy, when Rick was nine months old. "Put him in an institution.''
But the Hoyts weren't buying it. They noticed the way Rick's
eyes followed them around the room. When Rick was 11 they took him
to the engineering department at Tufts University and asked if there
was anything to help the boy communicate. "No way,'' Dick says he
was told. "There's nothing going on in his brain.''
"Tell him a joke,'' Dick countered. They did. Rick laughed.
Turns out a lot was going on in his brain.
Rigged up with a computer that allowed him to control the
cursor by touching a switch with the side of his head, Rick was finally
able to communicate. First words? "Go Bruins!'' And after a high
school classmate was paralyzed in an accident and the school organized
a charity run for him, Rick pecked out, "Dad, I want to do
that.''
Yeah, right. How was Dick, a self-described "porker'' who
never ran more than a mile at a time, going to push his son five miles? Still, he tried. "Then it was me who was handicapped,'' Dick says. "I was sore for two weeks.''
That day changed Rick's life. "Dad,'' he typed, "when we were running, it felt like I wasn't disabled anymore!''
And that sentence changed Dick's life. He became obsessed with giving Rick that feeling as often as he could. He got into such hard-belly shape that he and Rick were ready to try the 1979 Boston Marathon .
"No way,'' Dick was told by a race official. The Hoyts weren't quite a single runner, and they weren't quite a wheelchair competitor. For a few years Dick and Rick just joined the
massive field and ran anyway, then they found a way to get into the
race officially: In 1983 they ran another marathon so fast they
made the qualifying time for Boston the following year.
Then somebody said, "Hey, Dick, why not a triathlon?''
How's a guy who never learned to swim and hadn't ridden a bike
since he was six going to haul his 110-pound kid through a triathlon? Still, Dick tried.
Now they've done 212 triathlons, including four grueling
15-hour Ironmans in Hawaii. It must be a buzzkill to be a 25-year-old
stud getting passed by an old guy towing a grown man in a dinghy, don't you think?
Hey, Dick, why not see how you'd do on your own? "No way,'' he says.
Dick does it purely for "the awesome feeling'' he gets seeing Rick with a cantaloupe smile as they run, swim and ride together.
This year, at ages 65 and 43, Dick and Rick finished their 24th Boston Marathon, in 5,083rd place out of more than 20,000
starters. Their best time'? Two hours, 40 minutes in 1992--only 35
minutes off the world record, which, in case you don't keep track of these things, happens to be held by a guy who was not pushing another
man in a wheelchair at the time.
"No question about it,'' Rick types. "My dad is the Father of
the Century.''
And Dick got something else out of all this too. Two years ago
he had a mild heart attack during a race. Doctors found that one
of his arteries was 95% clogged. "If you hadn't been in such
great shape,'' one doctor told him, "you probably would've died 15 years ago.''
So, in a way, Dick and Rick saved each other's life.
Rick, who has his own apartment (he gets home care) and works
in Boston, and Dick, retired from the military and living in Holland, Mass., always find ways to be together. They give speeches
around the country and compete in some backbreaking race every
weekend, including this Father's Day.
That night, Rick will buy his dad dinner, but the thing he
really wants to give him is a gift he can never buy. "The thing I'd most like,''
Rick types, "is that my dad sit
in the chair and I push him once.''
Here is the video. Prepare to be touched and grateful that there
are such heroic people who walk (and run/swim/bike) among us:
Maybe this newsletter isn't as "goddessy" as usual,
but She is there, just look for her. (I
suppose that after spending so much time together during the
writing of the book, the individual goddesses and I were ready for separate
vacations.)
Will
be back in a week or so with something entirely new and exciting that
is currently stewing in the pot. Not if I can only find the
blasted pot! I know I've seen it here somewhere!
In closing,
a reminder to...
Notice things,
make room for grace,
and give thanks
for what is good and healthy in your life.