It’s “Connect with Nature” Week at Heartspoken.com.

The fourth week of each month this year will focus on ways to strengthen your connection with nature and the natural world around you. Whether you live in the country or in a high rise apartment, there are ways to become more aware and more connected to your natural surroundings.

Anytime is a good time to start a nature journal!

January is a time for beginnings, but no matter when you’re reading this, starting a nature journal will begin a journey of discovery, fun, and learning that will enrich your life immeasurably. Here’s a baker’s dozen of great reasons to start one. I’ll include some suggestions about what to put in your journal and discuss some different types of journals. Find one that calls to you and get started today!

1. You’ll preserve fond memories of things you’ve seen and create a future source of pleasure. When you peruse your old journal entries, you’ll remember what inspired them.
2. You’ll become more observant and more open to discovery.
3. You’ll become more appreciative of nature’s beauty and complexity.
4. You’ll spot trends that you might not have noticed otherwise (e.g., when the first robins appear in the spring, changes in high and low temperature ranges, changes in rainfall, frequency of the appearance of certain birds or animals).
5. You’ll begin to see patterns in behaviors, colors, sounds, and smells.
6. You’ll be able to talk to your nature-savvy friends more intelligently.
7. You’ll be inspired to look things up to expand your understanding and appreciation for what you’ve observed.
8. You will deepen your relationship with the earth and begin to care even more deeply for it than you do now.
9. You will more fully appreciate others who observe and write about nature and better understand their enthusiasms for nature and concerns about environmental issues.
10. You’ll increase your sense of connection with all living things.
11. You’ll find your spiritual life is enhanced through an increased appreciation for God’s creations and a shift from egocentric thinking to realizing we are part of a wonderful whole.
12. Strengthening your connection with nature through a nature journal is both restful and restorative.
13. You’ll learn more about yourself by noticing what things you find especially beautiful, interesting, or inspiring.

What do I put in a nature journal?

Include anything about your day-to-day encounters with the natural world! Some people make notes. Others write sentences and narrative descriptions. Still others only sketch or use some combination of writing and sketching. If you’re a photographer, you may prefer to use annotated photos.

• Jot down observations about what’s in bloom in your yard or your walk to work.
• Start a master list of birds, animals and plants commonly found in your area.
• Record seasonal changes such as which trees start to show green leaves first in the spring or which ones turn colors first in the fall.
• Make a note when you get a glimpse of that family of foxes under your garage.
• Chronicle the visit from a hungry bear to your bird feeder.
• Preserve for posterity the day you saw the bald eagle overhead.
• Write about the day you took your grandchild on her first fishing trip.
• If you’re a gardener (even a container gardener on an apartment balcony), make notes about what you plant, when you plant it, and how well it grows.
• Jot down questions in your journal. Visit your regional arboretum or local garden center with your journal in hand and get answers from the naturalists who work there.
• When you travel, keep a list of bird and animal species you see and note which ones are different than you have at home.

I’ll have future posts with tips to maximize your nature journaling experience. Use the sidebar search box to find all entries for “nature journal.”

What kind of journal should I use?

You want something that’s easy to carry, somewhat durable, and appeals to the naturalist in you. Some folks are content with a spiral notebook or an all-purpose journal like these:

Others take their notes on plain paper or index cards and bring them home to file in a box, folder, or spiral notebook. My father used to use a small desk calendar/date book and make his entries about weather, temperature, and wildlife observations on the appropriate day. Here are some lovely desktop and pocket calendars for 2012:

I  prefer a journal designed to be a nature journal with ideas and prompts. Here’s one I love to use, designed by naturalist/artist Clare Walker Leslie:
…and its companion book:

Where can I get more ideas?

Read the writings of other nature writers for inspiration, and you’ll begin to see the kinds of things they noticed and wrote about. The best include: Edward Abbey, Diane Ackerman, Mary Austin, William Bartram, John Burroughs, Rachel Carson, Annie Dillard, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Meriwether Lewis, Barry Lopez, Bill McKibben, John Muir, John Wesley Powell, Gary Snyder, and Henry David Thoreau.

What are you waiting for?

Order one of the journals above today and start your nature journal. Don’t wait until it arrives to start noticing the amazing natural world around you. I want to hear from you this time next year and see how you’re enjoying your stronger connection with nature.

Photo credit: “Young Woman in Woods” by PT Images via BigStockPhoto.com

BOOK REVIEW

Finding Your Way in a Wild New World: Reclaiming Your True Nature 

by Martha Beck

New Release December 27, 2011

“When the student is ready, the teacher will appear” is a truth that will manifest itself over and over as this exciting new book is read and shared and read again.  The number of markers and underlines and margin notes in my preview copy are testaments to the fact I was ready. I devoured it and now am going back to start practicing the many exercises. The book’s purpose is to help you more clearly identify “what you should be doing with your one wild and precious life.”

The author, Martha Beck, has outstanding educational and life experience credentials for writing this book. It is both a sharing of her own life journey as well as a manifesto for anyone ready to embrace their own best life. With a B.A. in East Asian Studies and master’s and Ph.D. degrees in sociology from Harvard University, Beck is a trained observer and analyst. Her coaching specialty is helping people design satisfying and meaningful life experiences. She first got on my radar screen as a columnist for Oprah Magazine, where I am regularly impressed with her no-nonsense, delightfully humorous approach to issues about life’s questions, fears, and psychological roadblocks.

I recently read Beck’s bestselling book Expecting Adam, the story of her 1987-88 pregnancy and giving birth to a Downs syndrome child (new edition in 2011). Its subtitle is “A True Story of Birth, Rebirth, and Everyday Magic.” The unabashed revelation of her own fears, neuroses, and personal/professional challenges at the time was both heart-wrenching and inspiring. Martha has known and overcome tragedy, sadness, and self-limiting thoughts. She is an excellent guide for empowering others to overcome their own life issues. Finding Your Way in a Wild New World is her ultimate guidebook, the best of her teaching and philosophy in one zinger of a book.

Finding Your Way in a Wild New World is not going to resonate with everyone. Some will dismiss it as just another pop cultural self-help book. Others will use terms like “woo-woo” and “New Age nonsense.” They’d be selling it short. I am a devout Christian with an insatiable curiosity and open mind about spirituality and human potential. This book was filled with research-based findings on the power of our connectedness with each other and with all living things in nature (flora and fauna), and I believe people of any faith will find it enriches, rather than contradicts, their core beliefs.

Beck includes many practical exercises for each section of her book, all designed to exercise the parts of our brain that we don’t use enough, to train ourselves to focus our attention, and to tap into the energy that is mostly likely to allow us to find and cultivate our own best selves. They’re designed to get us out of our mental ruts!

Here are some hints that this book might be perfect for you right now:

• If you feel a yearning that you can’t identify or suppress.
• If you feel the need for clarity and purpose in your life.
• If you’re afraid to do things that you think you’d love to do.
• If wild success and abysmal failure both scare you.
• If you feel fragmented with no clear focus in your life.
• If your wild fantasies seem impossible but won’t let you go.
• If you feel you’re about to explode with possibilities and potential but can’t grab on to that one thing that feels just right.
• If you suspect your self-talk is holding you back.
• If you feel like you’re bumping your head against one obstacle after another but you’re certain there’s something better on the other side.
• If you feel the world is changing so fast you can’t keep up.
• If you feel stuck and unproductive.
• If you feel in need of emotional healing before you can move on to your real purpose of healing others.
• If you desperately want to make a difference with the rest of your life but don’t know what on earth you that might “look like.”

If any one of these rings true, you owe it to yourself to read this book. There is a generous excerpt available for free on Amazon. If it doesn’t grab you by the time you finish reading those pages, either the book is not for you or the timing is not right in your life.

If the timing is right for you, you’ll gain clarity, focus, and powerful tools for living abundantly in the best sense of the word.

Dr. Martha Beck

Connect with Martha Beck on Facebook or Twitter.

What books have helped YOU identify your true calling in life? Please share in the comments below or join the conversation on Heartspoken’s Facebook Page.

Part of the joy of writing personal notes is the enticing array of beautiful handmade papers available from artists and stationers. In my writing, I’ve explored connection from lots of angles, but a recent online acquaintance has helped me connect with the earliest history of paper. I “met” John Gaudet on Google+. I happened to see and comment on a post he made about the history of paper. John is so unusual, I created a whole new Google+ Circle to put him in called “Interesting People.” Here’s John’s bio from Field of Reeds:

“Fulbright Scholar to both India and Malaya, John Gaudet is a writer and practicing ecologist. His research on the ancient aquatic plant, papyrus, [which was] funded in part by the National Geographic Society, took him to Uganda, Kenya, Sudan, Ethiopia, and many other places in Africa where papyrus grows. He is a trained ecologist with a Ph.D. from University of California at Berkeley and is the author of many scientific papers on the ecology and development of papyrus swamps. His work has been discussed in Nature, and by Peter Moore on the BBC show Science Now, and in an article by Alan Cowell in the New York Times.”

 My conversation with John on Google+ below illustrates the fun connections I’ve made with interesting people online. In this case, John posted an image (see below) titled “The History of Paper.” The image shows a photo of a woman reading an ancient papyrus scroll across her lap and unrolled onto the floor at her feet. Other pictures show a papyrus paper fragment of Plato’s Republic dating back to ancient Egypt; and still another shows a piece of Japanese scroll made with Chinese paper from pulp dating back to 1193.

My conversation with John:

Elizabeth Cottrell: “Amazing to realize what trouble people went to in ancient times to write a letter. Now, when it’s so easy, we can’t get folks to put pen to paper.  I’m trying to change that, but it’s an uphill climb…”

John Gaudet: “Papyrus paper did not go unacknowledged, Cassiodorus in 530AD wrote a letter in praise of it.  “…For does a crop grow in any field to equal this [papyrus], on which the thoughts of the wise and the ideas of our ancestors are preserved. Discourse is stored in safety, to be heard forever with consistency. Papyrus paper which can be spread out to such a vast extent, and yet folded up into such a little space…”   He also referred to papyrus as the enemy of oblivion!”

Elizabeth Cottrell: “‘the enemy of oblivion’…what a delightful term. What does that make email, I wonder?”

John Gaudet: “Oblivion unchained I would think – given the number of email messages that pass into the time-space continuum every day.  Also scary to think so many depend on a trail of emails to record their own immortality.  What happens if someone pulls the plug?”

Elizabeth Cottrell: ” Yes, that’s exactly what I was thinking…historians are losing a precious resource when so few people write personal letters.”

On John’s website, Field of Reeds, I took a fascinating journey to a papyrus swamp in the Jordan Valley where his video shows papyrus (“The plant that ruled the world”) being harvested and used to make mats. I learned how it dominated the world for two thousand years, between 1100 BC and 900 AD, and about its first uses by the Egyptians in making cradles, roof thatching, baskets, and boats large enough to cross oceans (proven by Thor Heyerdahl).

Papyrus was the basis for the hundreds of thousands of books in the Royal Library in Alexandria and the fifty-eight public libraries in Rome—virtually all of the Western world’s literature and sacred texts. “The world’s first and second bestsellers were written on it,” according to the“Papyrus” page on the Field of Reeds website.

I learned how papyrus dominated the economies of many countries in much the same way “King Cotton” dominated the economy of the South for generations. The site illustrates the steps for making paper out of papyrus.

I’m worried that the story of papyrus will not have a happy ending. Today papyrus swamps and wetlands serve as a natural filter for sewage and a habitat for birds, yet they are fast disappearing—the victims of water being siphoned off for energy supplies, competing use of swamps by the flower export market, and other development.

John Gaudet, PhD. Photo courtesy of Pete Dadds.

John Gaudet makes many speaking appearances at clubs, universities, and libraries to talk about his research, his work, and his conservation efforts. You can find him on Linkedin and Twitter (@BwanaPapyrus).

My note-writing life is greatly enriched by learning a bit more about the remarkable history of papyrus, its early use as a means for preserving the written word, and its earned reputation as “the enemy of oblivion.”

Have you ever made paper and used it in your correspondence? Please share your comments below or join the conversation on Heartspoken’s Facebook Page.

Top Photo credit: “Papyrus” by Thad Zajdowicz, M.D., Rockville, MD, USA. John Gaudet’s collage includes photos courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Guest post by Julie Burner Gochenour, published originally in the August/September 1998 issue of Shenandoah Seasons: A Country Kitchen Journal (out of print). 

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There’s goldenrod on my morning walks now, along with the Queen Anne’s lace and sky blue chicory that’s peppered the road banks all summer, and tell-tale clumps here and there, while still green, promise more to come. A yellow school bus, the first I’ve seen since June, rolls down the road and later, on my way to the clothesline, I glimpse gold again. Looking up, temporarily distracted from the clean damp sheets heaped high in the laundry, I track the slow downward spiral of a single gold leaf originating somewhere high in the gnarled black walnut tree above. There are lots of green walnuts, I note, plenty to be raked up later this fall unless the squirrels work overtime.

Here in the Shenandoah Valley, whether we’re ready or not, late summer and early fall are when the year seems to grow up before our very eyes. One week the world is green and growing, the next – surely just a few short days later – the fields and fencerows have become tinged and splattered with random bits of gold. Nights are slightly cooler and just a bit longer, and crickets join the sound of cicadas and the short whirring flights of grasshoppers. It’s still summer, of course, but summer with a difference. There’s a new purposefulness and air of maturity about the year that cannot be dismissed. Without warning, the rhythm of the growing season shifts – as if the world has somehow turned a corner and is bearing down toward seedtime and harvest.

For some reason, this green to gold passage of time always catches me off guard, never fails to take me by surprise. The corn on the cob we have for supper, the dish of sliced tomatoes and cucumbers, ordinary fare for months now and unthinkingly forked onto our plates with the reckless abandon born of plenty, suddenly seem precious again.

Like every human being, I resist the loss in this, mourn summer’s passage and, as with all good things, would keep it longer, am reluctant to let it go. Yet, embedded in my regret is also a sense of acceptance…and even anticipation. Looking backwards, I can cherish the gifts that this summer has brought, the growth and bounty it’s given me, and give thanks that I still have a few radiant remaining weeks in which to receive the same. Looking ahead…well, looking ahead, I see gold.

I asked (and received) Julie’s permission to occasionally use some of her seasonal reflections, because they demonstrate a connection with Nature that I want to encourage others to cultivate too. When you begin to notice and recognize the natural things around you — learning their names, their features, and their life cycles — they become as dear to you as friends, and your life will be richer for it. 

What’s growing on your daily walk to work…to the mailbox…to meet the children’s school bus? If you see something lovely and don’t know its name, take a snapshot and ask your friends. Let us know what you discover in the comments below or join the conversation at Heartspoken’s Facebook Page. 

Julie Burner Gochenour is an award-winning, published writer and journalist living in the Shenandoah Valley. She is currently an Instructor in the School of Communications Studies at James Madison University. She holds an M.A. R. degree in Religion/Written Communication from Eastern Mennonite University and  is a PhD candidate in Interdisciplinary Studies at Union Institute and University.

Photo credit: “Goldenrod Plant” by Dr. Elena Elisseeva, Toronto, ON, Canada via iStockPhoto

Connections with Nature…Connections with Others

I am constantly thrilled and fascinated that even connections are connected! Jackie Catterton’s charming notecards bring the natural beauty of the Shenandoah Valley straight to your writing desk. These images never fail to brighten my mood and whisk me outdoors in my mind. I love sharing them by writing personal notes and letting someone special know I’m thinking of them.

In an earlier post, I gave Jackie’s fall show schedule, in case any of you can see her work in person. In the mean time, order some of these cards for yourself and get a couple more packs for the perfect gift.

Don’t miss Jackie’s Floral Notecards too!

0004 Set of 4 Cardinal Notes by Jackie Catterton

Behold the birds of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet Jackie’s cardinals, an exquisite touch of color in any season, remind us to put aside our worries and revel in God’s gifts all around us. This is a set of four folded notecards (4″ x 5″ after folding), blank inside, and additional writing room on the back. Each note comes with a matching white envelope.

Winter in Virginia

$9.75 each set of 4 with matching envelopes ($1.00 shipping per set). One of each design. Email me at eliz…@heartspoken.com if you want all the same design.

Perfect Timing (Cardinal)

Morning Snow

Lady Cardinal in Mountain Ash

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0006 Set of 4 Country Landscape Notes by Jackie Catterton

The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere where they can be quiet, alone with the heavens, nature and God. Because only then does one feel that all is as it should be and that God wishes to see people happy, amidst the simple beauty of nature. I firmly believe that nature brings solace in all troubles. – Anne Frank

Jackie’s country and landscape scenes, most from Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, are a simple way to bring Nature’s beauty indoors.   Set of four folded notecards (4″ x 5″ after folding), blank inside, and additional writing room on the back. Each note comes with a matching white envelope.

 

Change of Times

 

$9.75 each set of 4 with matching envelopes ($1.00 shipping per set). One of each design. Email me at eliz…@heartspoken.com if you want all the same design.

Country Barn

The Mountain Top

Everlasting

Jackie Catterton, Watercolorist

Jackie’s Personal Appearances & Art Displays

My friend Jackie Catterton (who is also a Heartspoken Connection Messenger, because her art connects us with Nature and with God’s creation) will be displaying her beautiful watercolors and notecards at several upcoming events in the Shenandoah Valley and northern Virginia, and I’m posting her schedule below.

New pricing in time for holiday gift-giving and personal note-writing

Here are links to her notecards that you can buy in Heartspoken’s store. We’ve just slashed the pricing on these as well as the shipping (Set of 4 with matching envelopes now only $10), so stock up for personal note-writing that will make you happy every time you pull out one of these beautiful cards:

Bird and Landscape notecards

Floral notecards

Jackie's Bouquet

Change of Times

Special Occasion

Visit Jackie in person this fall:

Sept 17th Sat. Skyline Resort Applebutter Festival, 10-5 (Skyline Drive)

Sept 24th Sat. Brew/Blues Festival - Front Royal, 1-8 pm

Oct. 7-8-9    Waterford Homes Tour and Crafts Exhibit, Red Barn Art Mart- Waterford Va.

Oct. 8th  Sat. Festival of the Leaves- Front Royal, 9-6pm

These are all wonderful events with much to see and do. Get out and enjoy this beautiful part of the world. And if you see Jackie, tell her “Heartspoken sent me!”

“Is what you’re holding onto holding you back?”

Introducing Connection Messenger Debbie Bowie, Certified Professional Organizer®

It was my remarkable good fortune, while attending my 40th college reunion at Randolph College in Lynchburg, VA  (formerly Randolph-Macon Woman’s College), to sit in on a lecture by fellow alumna Debbie Bowie entitled, “Using Feng Shui to Clear Your Clutter and Create Prosperity.”  The appeal of her topic was demonstrated by the packed room of both men and women. I imagine I was not the only person in the room who felt she was speaking directly to them.

The high points of her message — and the message in her excellent little book called Rock Scissors Paper: Understanding How Environment Affects Your Performance on a Daily Basis – were these:

• Everything has energy (chi), positive or negative.
• Energy talks to you.
• Everything is connected (so any small part of your life in disorder can disrupt other parts of your life).
• Like attracts like (so if you surround yourself with broken, ugly, or negative things, you’ll attract more of these into your life).
• You should surround yourself only with things that you love or that you use: “Love it, Use it, or Lose it!”
• Her definition of clutter is “chaos in physical form” and she suggests that it is a manifestation of stress – certainly it can cause stress.
• She quoted Barbara Hemphill who said, “Clutter is postponed decisions.”
• Feng Shui (Feng – “wind” and Shui = “water”), in its simplest form, is the practice of learning to balance energies of a space to assure the health and good fortune of those inhabiting that space.

Perhaps the most powerful testimony to the impact of Debbie’s presentation is what happened when I got home. I sat quietly in my home office — the space where I was finding myself more and more unhappy — yet a space I need to do my work. I thought for awhile about what was absolutely necessary or absolutely treasured in that space. Then, I went on a rampage. I proceeded to rearrange and purge, removing the things I had piled in front of the windows that blocked the light, getting rid of anything that wasn’t being used or enjoyed. I took boxes to our local thrift shop and my sweet husband hauled nine black lawn and leaf bags to the dump. I brought in plants that reminded me of special people and places and found that bringing Nature into my workspace brought me calm and joy. I removed an old, faded rug and brought in a smaller one with colors that I found energizing and appealing.

Now when I enter my office, I find it welcoming and attractive. I am more productive and inspired while I’m here. I no longer feel the need to drag my laptop to another part of the house to avoid the messiness of my old office. The result is that there is less of my work scattered throughout the house, and when I leave the office, I can relax more in other parts of the house, because I have left my work behind. I’ve got a whole new room without paying either a remodeler or a decorator!

I have been so impressed with the results of Debbie’s message that I’ve invited her to become a Heartspoken Connection Messenger, and she has graciously contributed a guest post this week. Her teaching offers ways to strengthen two essential life connections: Connection with Self and Connection with Nature. Implementing her ideas will be a productive excavation towards finding what most makes your heart sing. She espouses connecting with Nature as an important part of creating healthy, happy spaces.

As you’re doing your own decluttering, remember that clutter can be both physical and psychological. Make a clean sweep of those things that separate you from your best self — those things that block your creativity and your happiness. Please share your successes and tips that you learn along the way.

Happy housecleaning!

Debbie Bowie is a veteran speaker, Certified Professional Organizer®, feng shui practitioner and author of Rock Scissors Paper: Understanding How Environment Affects Your Performance on a Daily Basis. She is the owner of the Rock Scissors Paper Institute, formerly Simply Organized, a company she formed in 1998. Debbie practices feng shui organizing, an approach to organizing that combines organizing principles with the wisdom of feng shui to help clients clear a path to getting more of what they really want from life. I recommend buying her book and, if you live in the Richmond, Virginia, area, you can retain her for consulting or to speak at your next event. 

The following is a guest blog post by Connection Messenger Debbie Bowie, a professional organizer and feng shui practitioner whose lecture and book have helped me completely revamp my home office space from one I hated to enter into one that is warm, inviting, less cluttered, and productive. I’ve written in greater detail HERE about how the principles she teaches helped me strengthen my connection with both Nature and with my own best self.

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A simple formula for stress reduction is to add Nature and reduce paper. Spend more time outside, weather permitting, or bring more elements of nature into your home or work space, and you’ll feed yourself with positive energy. By ridding yourself of all paper except that which you absolutely need, and keeping the important papers stored for easy access and retrieval, you will eliminate a major source of stress in your life.

A friend of mine commented that she had not expected to find that I had so much stuff in my house. That really alarmed me, because I work very hard to keep my home clutter-free, organized and feeling good. As I usually do when I receive a negative comment, I checked out the space, trying to see it through the eyes of a guest. Upon inspection I realized because I live in a small space, it is easier to be more acutely aware of everything in the space. I also have many high energy things: live plants, silk plants, pictures of plants, rocks and shells, a bubbling fountain. Nature is everywhere! I had unconsciously created a garden, with all the busyness of a garden.  I didn’t set out to create a garden.  I just kept bringing in things that I loved, that felt right in the space.  I created a space that is a nurturing retreat, away from the stress of the rest of the world.

What you will also find in my home is that paper only resides in three locations:  the kitchen counter, my office and my husband’s office.  I keep the quantities of paper down to a minimum in all three areas with paper going out every day.  I know if I am pitching paper I am reducing stress and empowering myself.  I am winning the war against paper.

Reduce stress and empower yourself today by pitching as much paper as you can (don’t worry, they don’t put you in jail for not having a piece of paper you might need!), and either spending time in nature or bringing nature into your home.  By the way, if you can’t keep plants alive, photographs and prints of nature and silk plants work well too!

Debbie Bowie

About Debbie:

Is what you’re holding onto holding you back? That is the mantra of Debbie Bowie, veteran speaker, Certified Professional Organizer®, feng shui practitioner and author of Rock Scissors Paper: Understanding How Environment Affects Your Performance on a Daily Basis. She is the owner of the Rock Scissors Paper Institute, formerly Simply Organized, a company she formed in 1998. Debbie practices feng shui organizing, an approach to organizing that combines organizing principles with the wisdom of feng shui to help clients clear a path to getting more of what they really want from life.

Blog photo credit: “Calm and Relaxation 2″ by Jamie Brelsford via stock.xchng, Cheshire, United Kingdom (www.bannerprintingandroid.co.uk)

My husband and I  have just experienced an incredible drive up the coast of California between Los Angeles and San Francisco, as well as visits to Point Reyes National Seashore north of San Francisco and Muir Woods. We enjoyed breathtaking vistas of rugged coastline and walked a trail gazing up at immense redwood trees. The experiences have been thrilling and even spiritual. Two songs kept coming to mind: “This Land is Your Land” and “How Great Thou Art.” This trip was the perfect backdrop for reflecting this July Fourth on the wonderful country I call home.

Jerry Large

A piece in today’s paper by Seattle Times staff columnist Jerry Large called “Remember What We Should Be Celebrating” resonated with me.

People will casually say this is a country built on a set of ideals rather than a nation bound by a shared ethnicity, race or religion. But what that means is that we can’t just celebrate an event that took place in 1776; we have to work constantly to keep what began then alive.

Never in our country’s history has the fragility of connection between its citizens been challenged so much, as fear and ignorance give rise to prejudice and misunderstanding. As Mr. Large said, “We still have descendants of immigrants who despise new immigrants,” and that’s such a contradiction with the principles on which our country was founded. Hard times, such as our current economic situation, can bring out the worst — or the best — in us, and diversity can challenge our feelings of connection.

As I reflect on America’s amazing flexibility and resilience, and on the times such as the Civil War when we almost tore ourselves apart, I say a fervent prayer for this country and its potential for a future of opportunity and prosperity for all. As Jerry Large ends his column,

We ought to look down the road and ask what kind of country we want to leave to our grandchildren. Enlightened or ignorant, we all get to choose.

He is so right.

What choices can you make today to help ensure America’s future?

Photo credit: “Colors” by Billy Alexander (via http://www.sxc.hu), Charlotte, NC, http://www.dreamstime.com/Billyruth03_portfolio_pg1

I’m participating with a wonderful group of women from around the world in a “Play in May” program (coordinated by our Heartspoken Connection Messenger Cyndi Briggs of The Sophia Project), and we’re exploring ways to increase playfulness in our lives. Sandy Phocas (www.co-creativeevolution.com) shared this amazing four minute video. Watch it, think about it, and LIVE IT!

Here’s to your happiness!

Please share in a comment what makes YOU happy…