Suggested Reading at
www.caregivercompanion.com:
Biographical sketch and
photos of caregiver mentor, Albert
Schweitzer
Dear Friends:
In response to your many emails, we are
still here and apologize for the absence of our email magazine. We
have been caught up in many other adventures and unavoidably, placed our
sharing with you at the bottom of our "to do" list.
First of all, we were putting the finishing
touches on our new recording from the Collecting Consort The Earth
Remembers, Meaningful Music for Spring. We always forget the
amount of time and effort required to complete this process.
Secondly, we have been involved in completing an
agreement with a local church to provide a Live Music for Healing and
Transition Ministry for residents of our county.
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Moss phlox
coloring our spring perceptions |
We are technically a little late
for SPRING with
this issue (it really hasn't been
very warm around here anyhow). However, we have still
decided to feature this "birth" season with this
issue.
In this issue, you will find wonderful photos of our land along
with some of our favorite writing.
Look for our new feature, streamed audio files from the
recordings of the
Collecting Consort.
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Because this is a busy time of year for us with all our Collecting Consort
appearances, and our efforts to get the Live Music for Healing and
Transition Ministry underway, we will be sending this email
magazine out only once per month for the near future.
You will also note we are calling this publication an email magazine
rather than a newsletter. We feel that better represents what we are
preparing for you.
Enjoy! and please email us with your comments and
contributions at: share@caregivercompanion.com
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Your own efforts "did
not bring it to pass," only God -- but rejoice if God found a use for
your efforts in His work.
Rejoice if you feel that what
you did was "necessary," but remember, even so, that you
were simply the instrument by means of which He added one tiny
grain to the universe He has created for His own purposes.
Dag Hammerskjold in "Dag
Hammerskjold: The Man and His Faith " |
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The vivid
spring beauty of our flowering quince bush |
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One of Rev. Dave
Wilkinson's email ministry "SOUND BITES". If you would
like to receive inspirational pieces
like this 5 days/wk, email Dave at: SOUNDBITES@firstumcgb.org
with "subscribe" in the subject line. You can also find
more of Dave's pieces and information about his ministry and his family on
our site at 11spirit2wilkinson.htm.
A couple of years ago, my (Gary) life was going through
some major revisions that could best be described as becoming unraveled on
both ends of all its major seams. I would often wake up at 5:00 AM
with 30 gallon trash bags full of devastating thoughts.
Unable to return to the comfort of sleep, I would rise
and explore my creativity while searching for my sanity through my
writing.
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Interestingly, this period was probably the most creative
time of my life so far. My writing of Spring was generated by
one of those early mornings.
Later, Anne and I added Spring to our Meditative
Readings recording with me reading this piece and Anne lightly
embossing it's essence of early dawn with the musical accents of her harp.
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The
simplicity and purity of the trillium |
More information about the other selections on the Meditative
Readings recording is available for your review.
You can read Spring as it is written below or
listen to it here on the Meditative Readings recording via
a new audio streaming service that allows you to play Spring
(click
here) with no down load. Those of you with cable hookups will
hear this with near CD quality. Others will experience some degradation
in the recording.
Please be patient with this
playback. Some of our attempts to access this file as we have
auditioned this system have taken up to two minutes. Please let us
know how well it works for you and if you would like to hear more
Collecting Consort recordings via this system. Email us at share@caregivercompanion.com
with your comments.
You can also listen to Waltzing
Matilda from our new Earth Remembers recording (described
later in this magazine).
Another Collecting Consort recording
available for your listening pleasure is our Biography
of St. Patrick with a wonderful musical background. This
particular file requires downloading before playing.
Spring came to meet me this morning.
I didn't recognize her at the time. It was long before her early
morning light had arrived, and I felt her presence tight within my chest.
Somewhere between being in and out of
sleep, I discovered some resolution as a softness began to occur from
inside my chest. Soon, I felt the essence of warmth from my being
available to all that were within my thoughts.
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As my
awareness moved from internal to external, I found the dampness of
the outside air as it moved through the window and across my
face. It touched my nose with the freshness of spring. I
could also see the gentleness of this air lightly touching the
delicate tamarack outside the window but bypassing the heavier red
pine.
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Delicate pear
blossoms washed by the spring rain |
I knew it had rained during the night, a
needed rain as there had been none since growth had started last
month. I had been awakened several times by God's thunder and
lightning spreading the element of nitrogen through the air, but I was
unaware of what it had stimulated until I walked to the opened bedroom
door that connects us to the outside.
My eyes were immediately drawn to the
extremely heavy beauty of the flowering crab, so laden with its vital
crimson blossoms, its limbs were sure to break. Its beauty was
framed by dark moisture laidened clouds moving gently behind it without a
sound.
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trees, I found so much passing all at the same time. The
plums still had a few petals left of their beauty, and the pears
were at their peak, the blossoms appropriately surrounded by their
freshly grown lime green leaves. |
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The view
from our bedroom |
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Just coming into their prime were
the pink shades of the apple blossom. What an adventure to see so
much all at the same time.
And somewhere off in the background were
the robins and cardinals along with other songs I did not recognize.
Of course, the sentry goose standing guard for his friends on the lake was
also heralding the arrival of this day.
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What does one do with the beauty of such an
experience? Why you have it for breakfast and enjoy each
delicious bite before the flavor fades into the tasks of the
day. |
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The apple
blossom's fruit for tomorrow |
New words for Millennium
BLAMESTORMING: Sitting around
in a group, discussing why a deadline was missed or a project failed, and
who was responsible.
SEAGULL MANAGER: A manager who flies in, makes a lot of noise, does his
"thing" on everything, and then leaves.
CUBE FARM: An office filled with cubicles.
PRAIRIE DOGGING: When someone yells or drops something loudly in a cube
farm, and people's heads pop up over the walls to see what's going on.
MOUSE POTATO: The on-line, wired generation's answer to the couch potato.
SITCOMs: (Single Income, Two Children, Oppressive Mortgage) What yuppies
turn into when they have children and one of them stops working to stay
home with the kids.
STARTER MARRIAGE: A short-lived first marriage that ends in divorce with
no kids, no property and no regrets.
STRESS PUPPY: A person who seems to thrive on being stressed out and
whiny.
SWIPED OUT: An ATM or credit card that has been rendered useless because
the magnetic strip is worn away from extensive use.
XEROX SUBSIDY: Euphemism for swiping free photocopies from one's
workplace.
IRRITAINMENT: Entertainment and media spectacles that are annoying but you
find yourself unable to stop watching them. The O.J. trials were a prime
example. Or "Survivor" perhaps?
PERCUSSIVE MAINTENANCE: The fine art of whacking the heck out of an
electronic device to get it to work again.
VULCAN NERVE PINCH: The taxing hand position required to reach all the
appropriate keys for certain commands. For instance, the arm reboot for a
Mac II computer involves simultaneously pressing the Control Key, the
Command Key, the Return Key, and the Power On key.
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YUPPIE FOOD STAMPS: The
ubiquitous $20 bills spewed out of ATMs everywhere. Often used
when trying to split the bill after a meal, "We each owe $8, but
all anybody's got are yuppie food stamps."
ADMINISPHERE: The rarefied organizational layers beginning just above
the rank and file. Decisions that fall from the adminisphere are often
profoundly inappropriate or irrelevant to the problems they were
designed to solve.
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Leaves
opening on a young hickory tree, sharing their delicate
beauty. |
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404: Someone who's clueless. From the World Wide Web error message
"404 Not Found," meaning that the requested document could not
be located."
GENERICA: Features of the American landscape that are exactly the same no
matter where one is, such as fast food joints, strip malls, subdivisions.
OHNOSECOND: That minuscule fraction of time in which you realize that
you've just made a BIG mistake.
WOOFS: Well Off Older Folks.
Contributed by Caregiver
Companion friend: Rev. Charles Fullmer
Dear Friends:
I find my mind is usually
working overtime, often digging away in an "absent minded"
tunnel. This non-productive rooting around may become quite destructive
at times.
Probably, the major loss
from such myopic mental activity is my lack of awareness of the
"perfect" life that exists around me at that moment.
In my attempts to improve
my ability to remain present, I practice different meditative
approaches. One of these I call "mindful walking".
Simply stated, I do my best to keep my mind focused on my senses as I walk
rather than letting it go "inside" toward those non-productive
mental directions. For me, this is no easy task no matter how often
and how much I practice.
The following is a piece I
wrote two years ago at this time of the year following one of my
mindfulness walks.
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"Mindful
Walking"
5/19/99
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I was practicing
"mindful walking" as I returned from the mailbox via the trail
over the hill. My mind being so full of things, I was
continually needing to pull myself back to my awarenesses of the greens
of the new life, the blue distance of the sky, the warmth of the sun,
the coolness of the air, the smells of the autumn olive and the sounds
of the bumble bees in those blossoms.
With so much occurring
around me to experience, why was I spending so much non-productive time
running around in my head?
Suddenly, my eyes were
drawn to the flattened new grown grass in the bushes beside the trail.
I went inside my mind to assume a deer had bedded there last night, but
something more caught within me, requiring a deeper look than my
assumption. And there it was . . . a miracle . . . as my reward
for exploring "mindfulness".
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It wasn't easy to see
even though it was within an arm's length. All I noticed to start
with, was a length of the color brown that did not quite fit the green
around it. Could it be a dead animal left for decay? My
awareness drawn deeper, I pulled back a branch to realize I was within
the life of a new born fawn. I could see the spots and what I
thought was a small head. But I could see no life, and yet I knew
it was life.
My gift of witnessing it could only be taken for that second, lest I disturb its
perfect setting. I knew that I must quickly leave behind this
moment, taking with me only my memory and the joy of this experience.
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Fiddlehead
fern:
Perfect string section for The Rites of Spring |
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Retreating, I hastily
left with my mind desperately wanting to return for a better perception
of the miracle that had just been given to me.
A few steps further, and
I was again drawn into my awarenesses as a doe, probably the mother,
stepped from the pines. I suspect she wished to attract me toward
her departure and away from her infant as she bounded into the brush
and down the hill.
Now, as I document this
in front of my computer, my mindfulness tells me I must give thanks and
pay homage to that mother, her fawn, and the Spirit of God for giving me
another small piece during the exploration of my
mindfulness.
Thanks be to all of you,
and may your mindfulness provide you with such miracles!
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Nature's
perfect beauty.
Our flowering crab. |
I am not what I ought
to be.
I am not what I want to be.
I am not what I hope to be.
But still,
I am not what I used to be.
And by the Grace of
God,
I am what I am.
The words of John
Newton (1725-1807) the "giver" of Amazing
Grace.
This piece
contributed by Caregiver Companion friend, Lois Ward. You can
receive her SNAIL mail letter of Gleamings to brighten the day
(containing worthwhile pieces like this) 2x/month by emailing her
with your snail mail address at: lhward@acc-net.com
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For many years, we have been sharing our
music in concert settings and via our recordings. Now we are moving
in a new direction.
We have been contracted
locally by the Amble United Methodist Church to provide a Live Music
for Healing and Transition Ministry to the residents of Montcalm
County (N.E. of Grand Rapids, MI). This will be a free service to be
funded by contributions from area churches, organizations and
grants.
We, as Certified Music
Practitioners, will be visiting area residents within their homes and
health care facilities to provide them with therapeutic music.
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These aromatic bushes surrounded my grandparents'
porch. Their aroma still sends me back to that hanging
porch swing. |
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Here are a few of the
possibilities where our music will be utilized:
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Stabilization
of vital signs in emergency, surgery and other acute medical situations.
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Pain
reduction and management.
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Anxiety
reduction.
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Reducing
doses of pharmacological agents used for anesthesia, pain, anxiety, and
other psycho physiological elements.
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Facilitation
of the birthing process.
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Memory
recall and stimulation for dementia patients.
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Transition
for the dying patient.
