Can you Imagine?

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Watch the video first, please. It really is worth it.



Can you imagine...
being in a war and having to leave your baby in a box?

Can you imagine...
being willing to give a lost child a home?

Can you imagine...
What an amazing woman their mom truly is?

Can you imagine...
growing up "different" in a different land/language/culture
AND
still being so vibrant, upbeat and willing to try?

Can you imagine what you could do,
who you could become,
if you were just willing
to imagine?
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Quote for the Day

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Blessed are the peacemakers:
for they shall be called the children of God.

Jesus
Matthew 5:3-10

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Changes and Rearranges

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No, things haven't vanished off my blog - I've just been doing some rearranging. Since my 100 Peace Thimbles were starting to grow bigger than I'd expected I've moved them all (present, past and future) to their own blog, along with copies of of my annual Blogblast for Peace posts.

glitter-graphics.com

You can now find your daily Peace thimbles here at http://peacethimbles.blogspot.com/
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Need Somebody

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Since I can't feel my fingers properly some jobs are tricky to downright impossible. One of them is getting money out of my purse. Usually I shop with hubby and he gets the money out for me, but last week he dashed off to get an item we'd forgotten and the teller wanted my shop card.

So... I had to ask her to get the card out for me. It felt a bit weird and awkward as I explained how I couldn't use my hands properly, but then something surprising happened... somewhere in helping me the till operator changed. She went from being "stranger behind the till doing her job and ignoring all customers" - to - "friendly woman who is helping and really seeing me."

Admittedly our area is VERY friendly and 90% of shop staff, strangers in the street, will chat forever if you have the time. What was different this time was that I had to reach out first, by asking for help. It's not easy asking for help, especially if you're used to being self-sufficient or you're the type who prefers being busy helping others. Then asking for help yourself can feel like you're failing somehow... weaker, but it's not like that at all.

When you're totally healthy and self-sufficient you can also risk becoming totally aloof... cut off. You can't do that when you're disabled or ill in any way. I realised that needing to ask for help forces you to interact with others. For better or worse it reconnects you with other people and... it's actually kind of nice. :-) You get to talk to people you'd probably never talk to otherwise. Best of all - you give others the chance to feel good about themselves, for being the "Good Samaritan" that helped another - you!

We need more of that in our world - more people connecting to help each other.

We need to be needed, but we also need to be open to needing help,
to needing each other.

Maybe there is a secret blessing in this recent recession that we could tap into here? Modern society, cities and governments... they've all become the ultimate in aloof and self-sufficient. Maybe it's only by becoming "ill" and "disabled" that we will reach a stage where we all reach out to each other again. Maybe we need to reach that stage of admitting we need help, that we need each other, so we can make the world a better place?

Wouldn't that be nice? :-)

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Storm Cleaning

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I'm watching the news this morning for a personal reason - friends of mine live in the area of the fires in Texas. I'll be keeping them, and their loved ones, in my prayers and thoughts today.

It feels like a strange "full circle", since it wasn't that long ago I was watching the news and praying for two friends who lived in the path of Japan's Tsunami. Now I see there's been a Typhoon in Japan as well.

Fire and Water... what a year this has been!Nature seems determined to shake things up, with Earthquakes and tsunamis, tornadoes, floods, droughts and fires. It feels as if we're taking part in some huge "spring-cleaning "frenzy... or is that a "Storm Cleaning? With Mother Earth and the Heavens above want to turn us upside down and inside out. Together they're dusting out all the corners, shaking out the cushions and scrubbing us all down to the bones and stones till we're rubbed raw.

I was reading a friend's blog this morning and I started thinking back over the last 12 months... my dad in hospital twice with life-threatening illnesses, my mom-in-law's passing alongside my parents celebrating 50 golden years of marriage the same month. Me with this ongoing unknown illness and so many friends and family facing everything from cancer to eviction. The threat of losing everything looming over so many... is it a cleaning or a cleansing? Maybe both?

Do we sometimes need our souls turned upside down to get all the fusty dust whacked out of them? We can get really fusty and dusty, us humans who like our safe unchanging routines. As a species we don't like change - we prefer going nowhere, even if our lives are boring and pointless.

But it seems as if both the Heavens Above and the Earth Below are determined to change that. From revelations in banking and politics forcing us to really look at how we run this planet to illnesses and the recession forcing us to really look at our personal lives. Change is unavoidable. Is that why we're being shaken about so much this year? It's as if everything is conspiring to force us all to not settle for 'going nowhere' - we have no choice but to change.

It feels like all these "storms" are busy cleaning and cleansing us out as well as the Planet. And if that is true... then what lies waiting for us all beyond this year?

All storms end with a rainbow.

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General Update on Everything :-)

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I can finally update on what's been going on in the "Crow's nest". Why? Because I started a new medication last week and... I have finger use again! I'm so thrilled I could dance around the room.

For last two weeks the pain has been so bad I can only write in short sections. Nights have been even worse. I could only stay asleep 10-15 minutes before I had to sit up in PAIN and wait for the pain to go. Incredible pain... never had anything like this. Feels like I stuck my hands in snow for an hour and then put them in hot water. I'd reached the stage where I couldn't even hold a knife and fork for longer than a few bites, now I can eat a whole meal. My hands are still numb and pins-needles, but no pain. Being able to use them again is just fantastic.

The medication is one used for epilepsy and nerve damage. It's only an interim measure, while I wait to see the specialists so that someone can figure out what this is and how to treat it long term. On the plus side all those blood tests have shown that my liver, heart, kidneys, etc are all good. No sign of arthritis, nothing except a muscle enzyme that keeps zooming off the charts. It's an enzyme that rises if you overdo exercise, like run a marathon kind of thing. First blood tests results, the doctor asked me if I'd done "extreme exercise" the day before. I packed out laughing! I have NEVER done any sport-exercise in the extreme. So very weird.

My dad's doing good. He got his operation test results back - it was cancer, but the surgeon is very pleased as it was early stages and he's confident they cut it all out. He wants to see dad in 6 months time. Mom is still waiting for that hip surgery. She's all packed ready and hoping it'll be sooner rather than later!

Today hubby and I went for a walk. The brambleberries are starting to ripen. Bramble and Apple crumble soon! I'll have to get him to help me with that. He's still helping me with the cooking - chopping veggies with numb fingers? Too dangerous! He still has to help me dress, since I can't feel buttons or clips. He's also the only person who can drive at the moment so he's pretty busy with three sets of doctor's appointments and three sets of shopping demands. He's been brilliant, helping all three of us "sick people" in all sorts of ways.

It was warm and sunny all day here, but the brambleberries and the turning leaves made me realise Autumn is really on the way.

This has been a hard long year for us, and for many of the people I know. I hope, just like Nature, this autumn brings us all a harvest of all sorts of good things, blessings and bounty. ... ..:-).

Scenic Scotland

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Just a note to say that I've moved all my best Blog banner photos of Scotland onto my "Scenic Scotland" page.