Last Minute Gifts

The only poverty is poverty of the heart. ~Mother Teresa

I like creative and caring gifts. Years ago I learned about The Heifer Project from a woman who donated part of a cow on my behalf. Cool! It's an organization that teaches people to fish instead of handing them a fish--except fish isn't in the catalog. That's kind of ironical, innit? $10 will buy one rabbit, or you can buy the whole trio for $30. That's less than a cup a coffee a day. Well, unless it's Starbucks, but you know what I mean.

Heifer Project Poem for the Day
Goats and chicks
and geese and cows
End hunger on earth
this is how
If you're veggie
buy some bees
If you're vegan
buy some trees
Sheep and goats
llamas and pigs
all sort of choices
for Christmas gifts.

Gifts

God plants the seeds of desire in our hearts. Manifesting those desires is our gift back to God. There is a saying that God doesn't have hands so He uses ours. What are your hands doing?

I have had a year of self-reflection, asking myself all sorts of questions. I'm in the middle part of my life, and I'm wanting to be conscious about how I live the rest of it. Part of it is taking inventory: What have I lived with that I want to let go of now? This can be anything from unexamined beliefs or behavioural patterns, to the mundane of a bookcase of books that I've not opened in 10+ years. What are you holding onto that needs to go? A clasped hand holding onto something, can't possibly be open to receive anything new. A house full of clutter with every square space filled, can't possibly welcome anything else. There needs to be

S P A C E

It is like a tree that needs to be pruned; getting rid of the dead branches, trimming back the ones that have gone wild. It may feel like loss, but it is actually a letting go of what prevents the bearing of greater fruits.

Which brings me back to gifts. It takes energy to maintain all this STUFF. How much energy does that leave for sharing your gifts with the world? XM Radio Guy likes to say, "If I've learned nothing else, E-bay has taught me that nothing is irreplaceable." What are the THINGS that hurricane evacuees leave their homes with? Start there.