Marie's Herbary

15 Ways to Bring More Peace into Your Life

{adapted from Cortesia Sanctuary's website}

Sit in meditation and give thanks to Mother Life
Read inspiring literature each day, even if just a quote or paragraph
Find a reason to praise someone instead of criticize them
Spend time alone with Nature
Avoid using chemicals on yourself or other things
Grow an organic garden
Eat a more plant-based diet
Minimize watching television or exposure to the mass media
Donate 1% of your earnings to organizations helping with the environment, animals, social issues, or health
Stop whining and complaining; turn away from an argument; don't worry so much
Hold someone special for a while
Listen to beautiful music
Write loving thoughts and observations in a journal
Develop a reverential code of ethics that you follow
Create a place of sanctuary in or around your home

Medicinal Potential of Plants

Last week I burned my knuckle on the edge of the oven as I tested to see if a cake was ready to take out. I didn't cleanse or dress the wound and forgot about it. Then earlier this week I noticed redness around the wound and, as my grandparents always did, I doused it with hydrogen peroxide. It bubbled furiously as I repeated the application and finally put a bandage on it. The next day showed no healing, so I repeated the course, and again for the next several days.
The red ring began to subside, but the center still looked whitish green and continued to fizz under the peroxide.

Peroxide has never let me down before. But apparently it's the wrong thing to apply to burns (or other wounds) according to the latest theories. I bought a small tube of Neosporin and applied it with a bandage yesterday, and this morning nothing had changed. As I poured more peroxide onto the wound I got into panic mode thinking about cancer or MRSA. So I jumped online and read (again) never to apply peroxide to burns. I also followed links to manuka honey, which apparently heals better than antibiotics, which are failing because of their over-use.

I don't have any manuka honey, so I re-applied Neosporin until I can find a source for the honey. This time I didn't apply a bandage. The truth is, I may have to see a doctor if I can't find manuka honey, and maybe even if I can.

Moving Into Old Age

How old would you be if you didn't know how old you were? ~Satchel Paige

When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it had happened or not; but my faculties are decaying now and soon I shall be so I cannot remember any but the things that never happened. It is sad to go to pieces like this but we all have to do it. ~Mark Twain

The carbon burns hottest the moment before the ash. ~ amaria

Don’t let others define you. Be who you are.

My 62nd birthday is in a week. Sixty-two isn't exactly elderly, but it's no longer middle-aged, either. It's like being a 'tween, but at the other end of life. Here I write out some of my own thoughts about this phase of existence.

Ageism is right up there with sexism, racism, and homophobia. It's a quiet killer in that in Western societies, particularly America, it strips a person of dignity. We lose our mobility, our supple body and use of body parts, become forgetful, and our senses diminish and/or extinguish. Hair and other things grow where they never were and go away from where they once were. Spots, wrinkles, and sags replace clear, smooth, and tight.

In addition, the majority of us elders are either poor or living in borderline poverty. We are swept into the periphery, the corners, the dustbin of life. Yet decades of technology-driven prosperity have removed the remnants of the respect that more traditional cultures paid to those who earned wisdom over a long lifetime.

Resilience Circles

Our unemployment is about to run out. Came across this article about a strategy for coping with unemployment.

Resilience Circles are springing up across the United States.

Here's an older article that focuses on Portland, Oregon

But now that I think of it, with unemployment at just over 9 percent at this writing, I just don't see Americans are desperate enough yet to get into this mode of social networking. And by the time things are at 25 percent unemployment, we've surpassed recession and moved into depression (the number for the Great Depression). I wonder if people will have anything left to barter. I just learned that America has been more than one depression in America. You can read about all of them here.

Shame on NPR

Okay, I try to keep my posts upbeat, but sometimes I just can't hold in my sorrow.

Right now I'm sitting in front of my computer (duh-oh!) with the window open. Somewhere nearby a bird is singing its heart out. I don't know what kind of bird it is -- maybe a warbler of some kind -- but it sounds like paradise to me. And my heart is breaking.

The bird is no longer singing. It may have flown away. I just feel extremely lucky that the air isn't totally silent here. But we all hear stories about massive bird deaths caused by electronic towers. For example, this one from NPR:

Baudette Minnesota sits on the US-Canadian border, about as far north in the continental U.S. as you can get, and is famous for snowy winters and a giant concrete walleye that sits downtown. It's also home to a massive Coast Guard tower, built to guide people across and around the Great Lakes. The tower has long been decommissioned, but it remains an imposing presence — especially for the birds who pass through the area on the way to their northern breeding grounds.

The story isn't complete as written on the link. The real story is about how nearly a thousand birds of many different species fell dead as they struck the tower there in a fog. That's bad enough, but the whole story seemed to exist only to promote a group of women who sing. I think this promotional story at the expense of losing so much wildlife is a disgrace.

Not only am I sitting here whining about the death of nearly a thousand migratory birds, but I own a cell phone and ride in cars and do a million other human things. Every year I see fewer and fewer pollinating insects. Every year I hear fewer birds. I never hear frogs or crickets any more. I wonder how much longer it will be until the first absolutely Silent Spring.

I heard someone say on the radio that humanity has just now begun to wake up. I wonder.

From Death Comes Life

Life is incredibly complex and mysterious and its potential to heal is infinite. Click on this Radiolab link to listen to an amazing story that illustrates this.

Soren Wheeler takes us to Butte Montana--where an open pit copper mine’s demise leads to a toxic lake filled with corrosive runoff. Reporter Barret Golding goes to visit the pit lake, and writer Edwin Dobb tells Soren the story of a pile of dead snow geese who made an ill-fated landing on the water. Soren also talks to husband-and-wife chemists Andrea Stierle and Don Stierle, whose startling discovery reveals the secret life inside a death trap.

(I blogged about this story earlier, too).

Gratitude

Found this in my inbox today:

...The Whale... If you read a recent front page story of the San Francisco Chronicle, you would have read about a female humpback whale who had become entangled in a spiderweb of crab traps and lines. She was weighted down by hundreds of pounds of traps that caused her to struggle to stay afloat. She also had hundreds of yards of line rope wrapped around her body, her tail, her torso and a line tugging in her mouth.

A fisherman spotted her just east of the Farallon Islands (outside the Golden Gate) and radioed an environmental group for help. Within a few hours, the rescue team arrived and determined that she was so bad off, the only way to save her was to dive in and untangle her. They worked for hours with curved knives and eventually freed her.

When she was free, the divers say she swam in what seemed like joyous circles. She then came back to each and every diver, one at a time, and nudged them, pushed them gently around as she was thanking them.

Some said it was the most incredibly beautiful experience of their lives. The guy who cut the rope out of her mouth said her eyes were following him the whole time, and he will never be the same.

May you, and all those you love, be so blessed and fortunate to be surrounded by people who will help you get untangled from the things that are binding you. And, may you always know the joy of giving and receiving gratitude.

I pass this on to you, my friends, in the same spirit.

Life is good.

Dog Lessons For People

Enjoy the simple pleasures of a walk.
Follow your instincts.
Never underestimate the value of a belly rub.
Be loyal and faithful.
Always drink plenty of water.
Sometimes it is best to just sit close and listen.
Be quick to forgive.
Avoid biting when a growl will do.
Keep digging until you find what you want.
Run and play daily.
Accept all of life's treats with gratitude.
Life is short, pet often.
Love unconditionally

Uranus Enters Aries: Volatile and Sudden Disasters All Over the Place

I've been devouring news on Japan, especially since I discovered a more reliable source (than any US commercial hype junk) on NHK from Japan.

Now Astrology isn't a science in these "modern" times, but it once guided the decisions and actions of human endeavor, and it did so with amazing and uncanny accuracy. As they say, the metaphysics of today are the physics of tomorrow. Or something like that. Anyway, since I'm feeling extremely emotional and anxious about the situation in Japan right now, I set out to search online to find out the astrological connection between Uranus and nuclear power. I came across this page, which has some stunning insights.

Those who honor and appreciate such things may already know that Uranus moved out of Pisces and into Aries on Friday, March 11, 2011, the very day of one of the world's worst natural disasters and the beginning of one of the world's worst man-made disasters: The triple-whammy of Japan's earthquake, tsunami, and multiple nuclear reactor meltdown.

Anne Ortelee writes:

We just saw Uranus exit 29 Pisces in a wave of whooshing slam and crash of explosive energy. As Uranus entered Aries to begin a new 84 year journey, the explosive fire of melting down nuclear power plants appeared in our world.

Did you notice that? The phrase "a new 84 year journey"? That means we're in for this for 84 years, folks. But we can take comfort in the fact that,

The good and bad part about Uranus is it is unpredictable. So while we can apply key words, we don’t always know HOW the events will appear. And Uranus always throws a twist in EVEN if you THINK you CAN predict it. Uranus likes the unpredictable! We were able to see with his entry into fire, that we could expect an explosion of fire. And right on cue, Uranus brought a partial meltdown and explosion of nuclear power plants affected by the tsunami and earthquake. Uranus rules earthquakes. Here in New York, 14 people were decapitated on I-95 in a bus crash ~ Uranus rules severing and Aries rules the head ~ where the bus tipped over and slid sideways into a sign pole that sliced through the bus at “head” level, slicing off the passenger heads and top of the bus. Uranus has a crooked rotation, rotating sideways through the heavens and the bus slid sideways. You can’t make this stuff up! And if you did, no one would believe you! At times like this, I am totally in awe of astrology and its symbolic representation of what we are experiencing here on earth. As above, so below, as without, so within.

Well of course. Uranus (explosions, nuclear power, earthquakes, unpredictability) enters Aries (the Martian fire sign of war, stunning violence, and beginnings...beginnings). I live on the "ring of fire" in the Pacific Northwest, a hive of earthquake activity and a magnet for tsunamis, quite overdue for our own "big one."

Freedom in Prison

A recent NPR segment highlighted what, of all places, a maximum security prison outside Birmingham in Bible-Belt Alabama is doing to transform its lifer inmates and the prison itself. A program dedicated to the practice of Vipassana meditation is changing the lives of those who made mistakes and are paying for them behind bars.

The William E. Donaldson Correctional Facility's Vipassana teacher Carl Franz says, "Everyone's mind is kind of Pandora's box, and when you have 33 rather serious convicts facing their past and their own minds, their memories, their regrets, rough childhood, whatever, their crimes, lots of stuff comes up."

You don't have to be in a physical prison to experience that Pandora's box, either. A lot of "stuff" comes up at first, no matter who you are or what you've done.

Click on the icon for the full story which includes a 7min 15 second audio file.