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Experiencing Writer Incontinence

  Yesterday morning started with shopping at the downtown Phoenix Farmer’s Market. Individual tables with tented fabric overhead are set around a funky coffee shop that serves farm fresh breakfast and sells few grocery items that are regionally unique. I begin at the Pichuberry booth, my favorite fruit, now for a few years. The table has a clear clam shell container with samples, so I peel back a thin skin, hold the bottom bud and pop the bright yellow-orange firm fruit into my mouth. My Saturday morning ritual has begun. The next table is by Grindz, a local Scottsdale company that specializes in raw chocolate. I buy their raw zesty lemon bars for my upcoming week’s breakfast. Onto produce tents where I nosh a few samples — this week’s special is melon — honeydew, watermelon, and something yellow I don’t recognize but love, then I pick up my grass fed eggs. I walk by the street musician who is playing an electric guitar singing original songs. I can’t help myself, I...

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Surrendering with Singer Songwriter Larisa Stow

Surrender is the mac-daddy of spiritual practices. It requires us to Trust the Unknown and the Invisible (Love, Grace, Compassion, Right Action, Presence) so deeply we are willing to relinquish our mental prowess to enter into an experience which is beyond the mind. and then act from that place.  The Bible would call this “listening to the still small voice.”  For me, I learned to trust control (the antithesis of surrender)  in order to maintain safety.  Trusting The Invisible and leaning into it has been a long and gradual process. My writing partner and I get together regularly to review and comment on each other’s work.  As a former reporter, she is always telling me to add more sources to my writing, to include more voices into my work.  I have taken her suggestion and in addition to source references throughout my book-in-process, I have taken to interviewing individuals who embody the theme for which I’m writing.  Larisa Stow embodies surrender. She actually embodies Love.  Yet the Love emanating through...

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Feed a Cold; Starve a Fever

Today is day four of a nasty cold.  Up until this visitation I had been happily writing a book on the Soul and feeling terrific about my discipline.  I would pat myself on the back at the end of each day and smile with a warm sense of completion.  Then, on a 108 degree day in Phoenix a cold got me.  “How can this happen?”  I am shouting aloud in my house.  Then, the shouting stops as  my throat begins to swell.  I don’t know who is winning the race, running faster, my nose or eyes.  My ears begin plugging up and my head is out of commission.  The first day I love and embrace the whole thing.  I give thanks to God for creating a bit of spaciousness for myself after writing about the value of it.  I go to sleep clogged up and grateful.  Day two, not so joyful.  Despite application of multiple essential oils and cleansing routines, I tend to be getting worse.  I take to reading, and...

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