As I briefly mentioned in a message a few weeks ago, Carol and I recently moved into a new home here in Sedona. This house is in the same planned community as our former home, and the floor plan is the same one, too.
There are a few differences, though. One of my office walls is now a half-wall instead of a full wall—opening it up to the living room. The foyer is no longer a raised area. And there is an extra window in our bedroom.
Little did we realize how those differences would affect where we placed some of our furniture and where we hung our art. We assumed that everything would go right back where it was before. But it didn't work out that way. Many times we would put a chest or a painting in the same place it was before, but it just wouldn't "feel right." So we would move it somewhere else, and see how that felt. Often, we had to move something several times until the cabinet or picture or piece of pottery finally found its new and perfect home.
With the onset of the hard-hitting recession, and coming into an age where there is a growing awareness of our environmental issues and integration of more spirituality into our lives, there has been less emphasis on consumerism at Christmastime and more emphasis on improving the lives of others by helping to provide even basic necessities for many of us. One of our December posts on Holistic Future talked about Advent Conspiracy, a Christian organization in which hundreds of churches in at least 17 countries around the world have enlisted to participate in campaigns to spend less on extravagant gifts and instead use some of that money for charitable distribution. For instance, participating churches have donated millions of dollars to dig wells in developing countries through Living Water International and other organizations involved in supporting grassroots projects around the world. Read the rest of this entry »
A new survey found more Americans now integrate their spiritual beliefs from a variety of religions, including Christianity, Eastern religions, and New Age beliefs.
The poll, conducted by Pew Research Center's Forum on Religion & Public Life, found a third of the respondents regularly or occasionally attend religious services at more than one location, and a quarter of them worship outside their own faith. More Americans, over their lifetime, will try out different religions than will stay true to one faith.
S. Scott Bartchy, a professor of the history of religion at UCLA, believes that the Internet plays a part in our mix-and-match religious beliefs, with people going online and becoming more exposed to ideas offered by religions different from their own.
Bartchy said the findings were not surprising, noting the growing cultural diversity of the United States.
Approximately 25 percent of respondents believe in New Age ideas and Eastern religious concepts, such as reincarnation and the existence in ghosts, with many people identifying themselves as being on a "spiritual journey."
And approximately 65 percent of respondents either believe in or have had an experience with supernatural phenomena, such as astrology, contacting spirits on the other side, or psychic abilities.
America spends an average of $450 billion every year on Christmas. Advent Conspiracy proposes that people buy less and give more–of their time and love through relational giving.
In 2006, five pastors decided to create Advent Conspiracy and revolutionize the increasingly commercialized holiday of Christmas by encouraging their congregations to worship fully, spend less, give more, and love all.
Part of the Advent Conspiracy message is a simple suggestion that people buy one less gift, and spend the extra time with people they care about and put the extra money toward projects such as drilling for fresh water wells in India, Liberia, Peru and Sudan. For three years, Advent Conspiracy has partnered with Living Water International to tackle providing clean water to the 1.8 million people who die every year from water-borne illnesses. The $10 billion Advent Conspiracy estimates it would take to solve the world's water woes pales in comparison to the $450 billion Americans spend each year on Christmas.
Advent Conspiracy is a movement that proposes people "spend less, give more."
Some of the cable channels are counting down Christmas every day with holiday movies. How do I know this? Because they're on my mother's television screen every day, all day, and it doesn't matter if she's already seen them. She enjoys these programs since they represent the more meaningful times she experienced as a young mother when her children still lived at home and we had the typical happy Christmas celebrations.
Now that my father is gone my elderly mother rarely lives in the moment. Though I wish for and encourage her to live a more vibrant life, this is how she is consciously choosing happiness. And according to her, all the good that she has to look forward to has already happened in the past.
To relive certain memories is a normal process of aging, especially for those who have lost their lifelong companions. But if you find your present and future life meaningless, foreboding, or uncertain, it might be helpful to consider that your everyday patterns which are stuck in the past — thoughts, behaviors, conversations — are keeping you from experiencing joy in the moment and creating a more purposeful and conscious future. Read the rest of this entry »
9 December 2009 by Ramón Stevens AlexanderMaterial.com
As is the case in many aspects of life, "popular" astrology—with its zodiac signs, houses, cusps and retrograde planets—is a facile, and easily understood, system hinting at a deeper reality. Like religion, it seeks to reduce the infinite and unknowable to a set of simple rules and principles by which humanity might live in harmony with the cosmos. Rather than assembling a pantheon of gods—or a God—to influence human affairs, astrology proposes that planets, stars, and other celestial bodies determine personality traits at birth and sketch the likely events unfolding in the future. Thus popular astrology is imbued with a certain fatalism both as to personal psychology (your birth sign locks you into certain characteristics) and life events (which are foretold by the stars).
Natal Influences
The importance of the moment of birth has been vastly overstated in popular astrology. Since you swim in the cosmic soup from conception to death, choosing one particular moment as the "defining" one which marks you for life is simplistic at best. Still, the moment of conception and the time of birth can be pivotal points at which cosmic influences carry disproportionate effect.
Conception is significant because it is the moment when two cells—egg and sperm—fuse to forge potential new life. Until that moment, gametes are merely cast-off cells within their parent body; "cast-off" in the sense that they play no essential role in maintaining health. Their purpose is to beget the next generation, not to sustain the current one. Read the rest of this entry »
4 December 2009 by Eliza Strickland 80beats Discover Magazine
From an ancient Peruvian civilization comes this warning: Don't chop down all your trees, or there will be hell to pay.
The Nazca people are famous for the enormous earthworks they carved into an arid plateau, in designs that range from simple geometrical forms to representations of animals like hummingbirds, lizards, and monkeys. They were previously known to have disappeared around A.D. 500, when massive floods powered by El Niño ravaged the valley where they made their home. Now, a new study that examined the pollen in buried layers of soil in order to trace the horticultural history of the land may have revealed why those floods were so devastating.
The Ica Valley, about 120 miles south of Lima, is barren today but was once a riverine oasis — a fertile landscape capable of supporting many people. The key to that fertility was a tree called the huarango [Los Angeles Times]. The huarango tree provided wood for building and fuel, and seed pods that can be ground up and used in flour or beer. Its branches caught the water in morning mists, and its roots stabilized the topsoil. Says lead researcher David Beresford-Jones: "These were very special forests…. It is the ecological keystone species in the desert zone enhancing soil fertility and moisture and underpinning the floodplain with one of the deepest root systems of any tree known" [BBC News]. Read the rest of this entry »
