Last Day of 2006

1 Sharaf 163 B.E. - December 31, 2006

Today is the last day of 2006. This morning the sun rose behind clouds giving a pastel red cast to the morning sky. There is an old saying that goes

Red sky at morning,

Sailors take warning,
Red sky at night,
Sailors delight.

I’m not sure how accurate that is to predict today’s weather, because at this moment there aren’t very many clouds in the sky. There are a few, but they don’t appear any threat, they look like there just suspended in the sky going no where.

I’m going to go to the store this afternoon, still need to get more stuff for New Years Day. I went to the store Friday for a package of black-eyed peas. My Grandmother always fixed black-eyed peas on New Year’s Day. She said it brought good luck for the coming year. I’m not sure about the good luck part, but I do like to keep some of the traditions Grandma practiced. So tomorrow, we’ll have black-eyed peas with smoked ham hocks and jalapeño peppers. Grandma never put jalapeño in her black-eyed peas, but Mom and I like them that way. Grandma didn’t used smoked ham hocks either, she used the fresh or froze ham hocks that weren’t smoked. I’ve never had black-eyed peas with smoked ham hocks so it should be a tasty change in the recipe, if it is I’ll just make black-eyed peas that way from now on.

Used All My Gift Cards

18 Masa’il 163 B.E. - December 29, 2006

I’ve used all my gift cards this year. Not that I had all that many, I used two at the Red Lobster. Mom and I got the seafood stuffed sole for lunch. It came with baked potato (there were other choices) and a salad. The Red Lobster lunch was my birthday celebration. My birthday is December 24, but I avoid going out on Christmas Eve because of the last minute Christmas shoppers. So we went out to eat today and used the two gift cards I had to that restaurant.

The other gift card was a to Border’s Books. I went into the store, rather than ordering online. I enjoy going into bookstores and prefer to shop for my reading material in a brick and mortar store. The books I got were Sixty Things To Do When You Turn Sixty edited by Ronnie Sellers and The One Year Great Songs of Faith: 365 Devotions Based on Popular Hymns Compiled and edited by Robert K. Brown and Mark R. Norton with Devotions written by William J. Petersen and Randy Petersen. The Great Songs of Faith give the words to the hymns and gives information about their writing.

Oklahoma Memories

3 Masa’il 163 B.E. - December 14, 2006

I was born and raised in Oklahoma, so I have many fond and not very good memories of the state and the towns of that state. I think the two types of memories go hand-in-hand. My favorite Oklahoma Memories are of winter. The nights were especially beautiful. You could see the stars clear and bright and make out the constellations. Most of the highways between the towns and cities were two lane blacktop or dirt roads. In the cities and towns there were streetlights, but on the highways and roads in between none.

One winter memory is of snow. We lived in Blackwell and my Grandparents lived in a house across from the airport. When it snowed the ground and road between my Grandparents house and the horizon was completely white. I could look out their front room window see an unbroken field of snow until the city snowplows came to clear the road. The snowplows would drive down the street pushing the snow out of the way and then the road would be clear all day. At night, it would snow again and the next morning the city would have to clear the road again. Thinking back it seems like such a waste of time and energy to clear all that snow, when the plow would have to do it again the next morning.

However, this reflects certain aspects of my life. The concepts and fears I’ve carried from childhood are the snow that falls covering the joy and new ideas that I’ve acquired in adulthood. The meditation and prayer are the snowplows clearing the road of those old concepts. We have to continue clearing out the old to make way for the new, if we don’t then the old just piles up and up until the road is block altogether.

Since my birthday is approaching, I’ve been attempting to clear out some of the old, outdated and self-defeating concepts. It seems a never-ending job, but I know that if I keep trying eventually I’ll get the job done.

The photo was taken when I was in high school.

My Favorite Birthday Present

2 Masa’il 163 B.E. - December 13, 2006

My favorite birthday present wasn’t meant to be a birthday present. It occurred on a visit to my Grandma Darbe’s house. The visit occurred during a Christmas holiday, when we were traveling from Blackwell to Shawnee. My Grandma Darbe lived in Burbank, Oklahoma. We detoured from the direct trip back to Shawnee, drove to Burbank and stayed with Grandma for several days.

I remember setting in Grandma’s kitchen watching her make bread. Grandma still had the old wood burning iron stove, I remember her cooking on all her life. She still made her own bread and chopped her own wood. She still wore the same old apron she’d wore all her life. It was made from a cloth flour sake. I think she had several aprons, because she always had a clean one every day and I don’t remember her doing laundry.

That visit was the last time I saw Grandma, she lived for several years but we never got back to see her again. I still miss Grandma Darbe, she was a wonder woman. The picture posted today is one taken at the time of the visit.

A Question of Age

1 Masa’il 163 B.E. - December 12, 2006

After thinking about my upcoming birthday for a while, I have decided that I am looking forward to my mature years. Therefore, I am not going to have a reoccurring sixtieth birthday party or celebration every year. I know several people who are in their late seventies and early eighties, who get along well and are having a ball.

I still haven’t decided how I’m going to celebrate this year. Maybe I’ll just stay home and review stories and poems on writing.com. I could just as easily go out, but if I do that I have to drive on Christmas Eve and I prefer not to celebrate my birthday by driving in the Last Minute Christmas Shopping Traffic. In addition, I enjoy reviewing poetry, stories and articles that posted on writing.com.

I don’t know why I’m spending so much time deciding what to do. Normally I just stay home and either read or go online and surf the web. My brothers and sisters live in other towns and won’t get around at that time. They will call and we’ll talk a little while.

I suspect that the idea of turning sixty is encouraging me. There was a time when I didn’t want anyone to know my age, but it doesn’t matter any more. Age is just a state of mind. If one feels old then that person is old. I don’t feel old, I feel excited and looking forward to the future; looking forward to traveling and seeing the Baha’i Holy places. ‘Abdu’l-Baha was in his seventies when he visited America in the early 1900s. Travel then was difficult, instead of taking a plane; he traveled on an ocean liner and not a luxury liner like those of today.

The photo I’m posting with this entry is of myself as a very small child. I’m not sure how old I was when the photo was take, but not very old.

Zee

19 Qawl 163 B.E. - December 10, 2006 at 11:25:38 PM PST

Zee is the end of the alphabet, 19 Qawl is the end of the month of Speech (Qawl), December is the end of the Gregorian year and this is the end of the alphabetical entries in this blog. I’ll start a different theme group of entries beginning on 1 Masa’il, which means I’ll either make the entry on the evening of December 11 when I get back from the Feast of Masa’il (Questions) or on the morning of December 12.

Since my birthday is on December 24, which is 13 Masa’il I’m thinking of doing a birthday series. A celebration of my first annual sixtieth birthday, that’s right I said my first annual sixtieth birthday. A poet I know has celebrated his fiftieth birthday for the past four or five years. Every year he has a birthday party at a poetry reading to commemorate his “annual fiftieth” birthday.

I think sixty is a good age to stop having birthdays. Although, my mother is eighty-five and she celebrates every year by adding one to her age. So maybe getting beyond sixty isn’t so bad after all. My mother writes poetry; in fact she didn’t start composing poetry until she was eighty-one or eighty-two. Not only that, but she shill worked in the public until the age of eighty-three. She’s still doing pretty good, still going strong and taking Ruhi study classes.

As I said, this is the end of the Alphabetical title series and I start a different title theme tomorrow. This time I’m going to post photos and pictures with the series. Maybe start with photos of myself when I was younger or other items that mean something and I can scan.

Yuletide

18 Qawl 163 B.E. - December 9, 2006 at 5:00:24 PM PST

Well it’s that time of year again. Christmas music, people saying “Merry Christmas”, “Happy Holidays”, “Happy New Year”, etc. Merchants have decorated their display windows with candy canes, snowmen, presents, etc. The bakeries make snowmen cookies, Santa Clause cookies, Christmas tree cookies, etc. People are decorating their yards and trees with blinking and flashing electric lights. They are decorating their yards with giant inflatable Santa Clauses’, snowmen, teddy bears, etc. It’s cold and snowing somewhere in America.

The T.V. news anchors are warning people to be aware of their surroundings, even when they leave grocery stores. Apparently, robbers are knocking people down outside of grocery stores and taking what is in their shopping carts. In parking lots, you need to lock your car and put your gifts in the trunk, because if you leave the present where they can be see, someone will break into you car and take the gifts, not to mention the car. If you’re not careful someone will even steal the yard decorations right out of your front yard.

T.V. commercials are suggesting that for Christmas you buy the one you love Royals Royce’s, Merced’s Benzes, diamond watches, diamond earrings, diamond nickels, etc. What happened to homemade gifts look cookies and food. OK, this entry is getting depressive, my only excuse is that I was born on December 24 and I have Christmas issues, or at least I used to have. Anymore I find Christmas and the other holidays that occur in December quite interesting.

I enjoy seeing the way people celebrate the different December holidays. It’s refreshing to go into stores and have someone wish you something else besides a “Nice day”. I don’t care whether someone wishes me a Merry Christmas or a Happy Holiday, either greeting is fine. It’s good to see people talk to a stranger rather than glare. Oh, there is the occasional “Bah Humbug” but that’s rare, especially when you go into a store to buy something. The clerks probably think you’re there to buy Christmas presents or something similar.

I don’t go into stores to buy presents, I usually go in to buy groceries or something else. If I were going to buy a present, it would be a birthday present. The most I do this time of year is sent relatives and friends’ cards commemorating whatever December holiday they celebrate, if they celebrate a December holiday.

X-The Unknown

17 Qawl 163 B.E. - December 8, 2006 at 11:19:38 PM PST

There used to be a T.V. show that talked about the Unknown and referred to it as X. I’m not sure, but I think the T.V. show was the Twilight Zone. Of course, that was a long time ago, I was younger than and I could have my T.V. shows confused. Anyway, this entry isn’t about the Twilight Zone (although that was one of my favorite shows). What the entry is about is how little we know about ourselves and about the universe around us.

All the great spiritual leaders and prophets of the past and the present tell us to learn about ourselves. Encourage us to know ourselves. Yet how many of us take those words to heart and seek to learn about what makes us tick. Knowledge of self is scary. If we know ourselves, we know why we do the things we do, we know why we don’t do the things we should do, we learn about our authentic selves. If we know ourselves, we have to make changes to bring ourselves into alignment with our authentic selves.

I’m attempting to learn about myself. To learn what divine attributes I need to develop. It’s difficult to overcome fear of knowledge. However, it is possible with work. In learning about myself, I’ve found myself doing some extremely interesting things lately. For instance, today I threw caution to the wind (which was a bit difficult since the wind wasn’t blowing at the time) and went to Starbuck. My mother and I got a coffee, just a regular coffee not the fancy kind with chocolate or peppermint in it, and snowman cookies. We sit in the shop, eat our cookies, and drink our coffee. I didn’t worry about how much it was costing or, the fact, that I could probably use the money for gas.

That’s not the only intriguing thing I’ve done lately. A couple of days ago, when we went to Wal-Mart, in addition to the wet cat food (for the cats), the butter and non-dairy whipped topping, I bought a box of crayons. I bought the box of fancy crayons, the kind with 96 different colors and a built in sharpener. Now, one may ask, what is a 59 almost 60-year-old woman going to do with a box of crayons? I’m going to color pictures, of course.

No, I’m not going through my second childhood. At the moment, I’m irritating my inner critic and fighting a case of writer’s block. True I have written some stuff lately, class assignments for my Masters’ course, but not a lot of poetry or new stories. What I’m trying to do is get out of my box, out of my rut and heal my inner child of some old fears. I am having fun learning about myself and giving my muse something to write about.

Writing

16 Qawl 163 B.E. – December 8, 2006

Writing is therapeutic! Getting both the bad of the past down on paper helps me heal. Writing helps, me let go of the emotions and accept the blessings of survival. When I write about a situation, I let go of the obsession, of the worry and the fear that it caused in my life. I learn to forgive. Writing allows me to put down on paper what I remember. It’s amazing that when I start writing about a situation, I find small details that I would miss other wise.

Writing poetry and short stories if my way of finding my authentic self and helps me find the self that traumatic experiences concealed beneath layers of wounds and scar tissue. The occurrence of a painful event wounds the soul. Writing about the event, no matter what form that writing takes helps the healing process and helps me to let go of the event and heal the wound.

Victory

16 Qawl 163 B.E. – December 8, 2006

Victory is finding your authentic self; finding the core, the secret self, capable of reflecting the Creator’s attributes. Each human being has two natures, material and spiritual. The authentic self is the spiritual nature; the inner reality, the part that can reflect the attribute’s of God.

Each day is a chance for victory over the lower nature. Tests and difficulties assist the individual to clean the soul’s mirror. The more one turns to God and prayer in times of tests the more the authentic self comes through and the better chance one has of revealing it to the world.

Urgent

15 Qawl 163 B.E. – December 7, 2006

At the moment the urgent item in my life is dry cat food. We normally get it at the Vets, but we ordered it several days ago and it hasn’t come in yet. I called the offices yesterday and the woman at the desk said either this week or next week. The problem is the cats are out of dry food. They have wet food, because on Wednesday we went to Wal-Mart and got a case of 24 cans of it. However, Spot doesn’t like wet food, he would eat dry food exclusively, and only eats it if there is nothing else. The rest don’t care whether the cat food is wet or dry, they will eat which ever I’ve go without complaining. Spot, on the other hand, complains.

One of the cats is one a special diet, he gets control die, so I normally get the dry food at the Vets, but it’s getting difficult because it takes so long to get it in and I don’t seem to think about ordering it before we’re about out. Sunday or Monday, I’ll check at the pet stores and see what they have in the dry food. In the mean time they are going to have to be satisfied with what I’ve got. Which means Spot is probably going to start complaining either Saturday or Sunday night.

The way he complains is that he goes through the house meowing. You call his name and he doesn’t come as he normally would. Instead it sits down in whatever room he’s in and meows until I or my mother goes to find him. Sometimes he does it during the day, but most of the time he pulls this little trick at night after I’ve gone to bed.

Trust

14 Qawl 163 B.E. – December 5, 2006 at 10:05:54 PM Pacific Standard Time

I’ve been thinking lately about the prayers revealed by Baha’u’llah. I’ve read a lot of them and have memorized some of them. One of the prayers that I’ve memorized is this one.

He who puts his trust in God, God will suffice him.
He who fears God, God will send him relief.
Prayer by Baha’u’llah
quoted by H.M. Balyuzi
in Baha’u’llah – The King of Glory, p. 138

This is a short prayer and one that I memorized relatively quickly. I like memorizing especially the prayers of Baha’u’llah, the Bab and ‘Abdu’l-Baha. The interesting thing about memorization is that for the young its usually easy, but as we get older it gets a little more difficult.

My experience is that the prayers I’ve memorized as an adult, which are all from the sacred scriptures of the Baha’i Faith mean a great deal more to me than the ones I memorized as a child. Of course, I didn’t memorize more than two or three when I was growing up. Now I memorize them because I want to, not because someone has told me I must memorize them. While I don’t have any specific prayers that are my favorites. Some I do say more than others, the one quoted in this entry is one of those. This prayer brings me comfort and joy when I recite it.

If I’m stress than saying this prayer calms me, if I’m depressed then it brings me joy, if I’m sluggish and uninspired then it energizes me. It’s amazing that one prayer of two short lines can do all that, but it does at least for me.

Stars

13 Qawl 163 B.E. – December 5, 2006

Star bright, star light,
First star I see to night,
I wish I may, I wish I might,
Have the wish I wish tonight.

I wonder how many people learned that as a child. Nursery rhymes are so much fun. Other rhymes stand out in my mind, like stars in the midnight sky. One of the first prayers I learn, when I was a child rhymed.

Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep,
If I should die before I wake,
I pray the Lord my soul to take.

OK, so some of the rhymes we (those of us over the age of 50) learned as children probably weren’t age appropriate. I doubt that I would teach that prayer to a child of mine, at least not in that form. I’d probably rewrite it, but it is understandable why parent’s taught prayers like that to children in ages past. It was a different time, parents wanted to protect their children, but they wanted them to understand the fact of life, as well. Prayers and nursery rhymes helped them teach their children that.

To many of us, when we were growing up our parents and grandparents were stars, heroes, people we looked up to and held in high esteem. Our parents tried to do the right thing, they did the best they could with what they knew and when they found out better, then they did better.

My Grandpa Newland was my father figure, my star, my hero. I remember more about my Grandfather than I remember about my Father. Grandpa was the one who took my out of a refrigerator I got in during a game of hide-and-seek. Grandpa Newland was my guardian angel. I always think of Grandpa in that way.

What brought on this bit of nostalgia? It’s December, it’s the month I was born. My birthday is on the 24th. Yes, I was a Christmas Eve baby. Not only that, but I’m looking forward to my birthday this year. The best thing about December is the night sky, the winter stars. I like going outside the city and looking at the stars it seems to take longer to get away from the light pollution now than in the past.

I haven’t decided how I’m going to celebrate. I’ve thought of several ways, but none of them seem to appeal to me. I’m not going to drive outside Las Vegas and look at the stars. At least, not until I get the heater in my car fixed and a new tire, so whatever I do will have to be in the city. I’ll post the way I celebrate my birthday on that day, in the mean time I’ve got to figure out how to celebrate.

Ruhi

12 Qawl 163 B.E. - December 3, 2006 at 8:23:46 PM PST

I think I’ve mentioned this before, but my mother and I are taking two different Ruhi classes right now. One is Book 4: The Twin Manifestations and it takes place every other Saturday morning from 9:00 a.m. to 12:00 noon. Although for December there will be a slight change to that schedule, we won’t meet again until December 30. The other is Book 6: Teaching the Cause and it meets every Sunday from 1 to 5 p.m. There are slight changes to the December schedule for this as well, we will still be meeting every week, it’s just that two of those weeks the days will change.

This weekend we received homework in both the classes. In the Book 4 class we’re supposed to do some an art project either write a poem or do a picture. I haven’t asked Mom what she is going to do, my mother is 85 years old and she composes poems as well as does some other art.

I started the poem today. It’s going to be about the events that occurred in the Siyah-Chal (The Black Pit), but I don’t know what I’m going to call it yet. I haven’t even given it a working title, which is unusual because normally I give any poem a working title the first thing. However, if I don’t that usually means that the title I do give it is the one that will stay with the poem.

The homework for Book 6 is to create a personal teaching plan. I have four pages of questions to answer. There are just nine questions, but I have to write the answers in and take it back to the meeting in two week. That’s time enough to read the questions through, then pray and meditate about the answers. This is going to be fun, I’ve tried coming up with a personal teaching plan before, but this is the first time that I’ve attempted to go about it systematically. Looking at the paper for the personal teaching plan, I think I’ll answer the questions on the page and then copy them into Writing My Spiritual Journey Journal.

Quirky

11 Qawl 163 B.E. - December 3, 2006

I’ve been feeling a little quirky lately, maybe it has something to do with the cold temperatures here in Las Vegas. Thursday and Friday, we go down to freezing for the first time this year. Or it could be that it’s now December and my birth month. My birthday is the 24th and, for once in a year or two, I’m looking forward to that day. This year I will be sixty years old, that’s right the big 6 0.

I’m considering ways to celebrate. Maybe have my first annual 60th birthday party or something like that. Although, considering that it’s December, it’s probably too late to get the invitations out and expect them to be delivered before the 24th, besides if I made a cake it would have to be in the microwave oven. I’m also considering actually going out on the 24th and celebrate in a restaurant. Normally I don’t like to drive on Christmas Eve, too many last minute shoppers going from mall to mall looking for the perfect Christmas gift. I’m not considering going to a mall, I don’t mind crowds as long as I’m having fun, but I stop having fun in a crowded mall.

The only thing that appeals to me is the birthday celebration, but there is only my mother and me. And I can’t think of anything but a small party or celebration of some type. I’d really like to do something different, maybe ride in a hot air balloon or perhaps the Las Vegas monorail. I haven’t ridden the monorail yet. What else haven’t I done that appeals to me? I’m not sure just yet. Maybe I’ll think of something interesting soon.