Features from the Latest issue
Winter Holidays to Perk You Up
By Ann Ulrich Miller
Winter is here in full force, that’s for sure. Here in Colorado, we have heaps of snow
after the big storm that swept through the week of Christmas. Cold and snow are inevitable in the Rocky Mountains, but without it, we wouldn’t have the needed water for irrigation and recreation in the warmer months.
With Christmas and New Year’s behind us, we are all faced with cold wintry days and long dark nights in which most of us stay cooped up inside for weeks. It can be depressing, so it’s important to get excited about life and create special days of cheer.
Some of us enjoy the national football games, or basketball or hockey ... armchair sports, for sure, but following a favorite team or two keeps you involved and elated when they win (or disgusted when they don’t). It all culminates in Super Bowl Sunday, which is usually early in February.
Ground Hog Day, Feb. 2nd, is celebrated in our family for a couple of reasons... it happens to be my daughter-in-law’s birthday (Happy Birthday, Woohye!) ... and it also happens to be the mid-point of winter. I’ll never forget the first Ground Hog Day that Doug and I spent together, in 2010. He invited me over to his house for a party to celebrate Ground Hog Day, and at the time I thought, Really? Why should anyone celebrate the Ground Hog, an animal also known as a marmot and considered a rodent?
But I had so much fun. When he told me we were celebrating the fact that it was the turning point of winter, with spring just six weeks ahead, it cheered me up. We put on rock music, danced on the bricks, had a little wine ... and I hadn’t had that much fun since I was a teenager. So now, I treat Ground Hog Day with respect and am glad I now have a family member who was born on that day.
(As a side note, the YA novel I am now writing is called “The Ground Hog Mystery” and will be sixth in the Annette Vetter adventure series.)
Then there is Valentine’s Day, celebrated on Feb. 14, which has been commercialized to the point of anguish, but the special day celebrating LOVE (in all its forms) is one I cherish year after year. The world can certainly use a big heaping tablespoon of love right now. If you’re alone without a partner, you can treat yourself on Valentine’s Day, or extend a small gesture of kindness to someone who could use a dose of it. The best thing we can do on Valentine’s Day is send out Love to the Universe, especially to those we don’t really like very much (a few political figures come to my mind...). Instead of dissing them, which is always easy to do ... why not, for just a minute or two, put yourself in their shoes and pretend they actually have feelings like you? Feel some compassion, and then notice how that calms you for some strange reason. I’ve always believed “Love is the Answer,” but like everyone else, I don’t always walk the talk.
St. Patrick’s Day is another winter holiday people celebrate, whether you have Irish blood or not. My ancestors were German and English immigrants, but I’ve always appreciated the color green, leprechauns and four-leaf clovers. Some of Doug’s ancestors were Irish, so we observe St. Patty’s Day in our house. Even if you don’t have any Irish blood, it’s good to have one more winter holiday to see us through until March 20, the Spring Equinox — and that will be a day to celebrate in 2016!
Ann Ulrich Miller is the editor and publisher of WISP and The Star Beacon. Her latest novel is In the Shadow of the Tower (written under the name Ann Carol Ulrich, available from Earth Star Publications.) Visit her Author page at AnnUlrichMiller.com
National Happiness Week by T Stokes
“Blow blow, thou winter wind, thou art not so cold as man’s ingratitude,” said Shakespeare.
My postbag from around the globe was very gloomy this past month. The news that a professional clown has won more than twice the number of votes than his nearest rival, to take the San Paulo state in Brazil’s presidential and congressional election, has made worldwide news.
Francisco Everado Oliveira Silva, known as Tiririca or “Grumpy,” trounced his rivals, and admitted he knew little about politics, but was an honest man.
To find an honest man in politics is more of a shock than finding a clown, which is now quite common. The USA complained that he was not a real politician, but I seem to remember a “peanut farmer,” a bad “B movie actor,” a depraved “serial lecher” and a “hope and change” clown ... all in the top office, with several other very odd contenders, such as an ex-witch, a boring war-obsessed ex-POW, and an “all things for all people” candidate in the form of an unstable ex-president’s wife.
So “Grumpy the Clown” may have hit the jackpot. Could he do any worse than the political professionals? This clown may give us some much needed mirth, and if you think the USA is bad for corrupt politicians, well ... Britain and Europe are probably worse.
In Britain, we recently had “Happiness Week,” where you were supposed to smile at homeless people now living in the street. People who had been mugged by the banks of everything they own were seen as being in need of a kind word or a smile. As a road worker said to me, “You can’t eat a smile or pay a bill with it.”
And yet, amid the economic horror, there were genuine smiles and heart-warming handshakes with strangers, and yes, some laughter too.
The words of Mark Twain seem apt: “Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand.”
The power of laughter is a great assister to community health and well-being.
The Royal College of Psychiatrists have said last month that depression and despondency is at an all time high, but people across the board are refusing the anti-depressants dished out by Big Pharma as several studies have said many are little more than placebos. But wasn’t that what they said about homeopathy?
And, in fact, some drugs such as Seroxat and Prozac can be downright dangerous to take, and the colossal demand now for various talk-through therapies as in C.B.T. has gone through the roof.
Last year a scientific boffin put depression into a recognizable equation, in a kind of simplified Beck’s depression inventory, and it runs like this:
The activation event for the depression = A
The reactions to the event = C
But often missed out is = B or the “Beliefs” which led to = C.
The lesson is that we can actually change the beliefs that led to “C” in identifying the past experiences in insecurity and morose, self-defeating beliefs, and replacing them with different, more adaptive and positive but realistic beliefs, and change the results of “C.”
The difficult and often disabling childhood hurts and harsh statements about us, known as dated tapes, can rerun for the rest of our lives. In some cases, many aged people will still hear adult mocking voices saying, “You are no good,” “You will never amount to anything” from their youth.
And “D” is the new assessment of the same. The way forward is to learn to change these thoughts, and “E” is the conversion of hot to cold feelings, before the final letting go.
Maybe all countries should have a “Grumpy” as presidential leader, as an honest man would be a change for sure.
“Now is the winter of our discontent,” said Shakespeare, and surely this is now so true.
And may I leave you with this poem by the early Christian mystic, Julian of Norwich:
Ring out the bells of Norwich,
And let the winter come and go,
And all will be well again I know,
All will be well again I am telling you,
Let the winter come and go,
And all will be well again this I do know.
Please remember in these difficulties to make time to check on those neighbors, both elderly and young, family and friends.
Shakespeare again: “Be to yourself as you would to a friend.”
T Stokes was Britain’s first lecturer in paraspiritual and eschatological studies, and has taught psychology and philosophy, and combines divinatory practice with much scholarship. He reads palms and much more by post or e-mail. Contact him at www.tstokes.co.uk. He is the author of 50 Case Studies in Modern Palmistry, published by Earth Star Publications.
