Reflections on Easters Past and Present -- and Earth, Quakes and All!

As I sat down to write here, I was alerted to the news as there was a significant earthquake in the Baja peninsula near where the US/California border is with Mexico.  For the magnitude and depth that has now been updated, it's surprising there appears to be limited serious implications for life and limb.  Many covering the news were off for Easter celebrations, causing the news channels to be a bit struggling for coverage I heard one report. 

It is a funny coincidence of timing, as I was going to write about what has been striking me over and over recently, which is so much illness around me.  I was fortunate to have an old friend come to town to visit this weekend and as we caught up on the highlights of our lives which at our age includes aging parents, she appeared moved talking about her friend who has cancer.  I told her that last year I spent Easter evening over at the Hospice of Western Colorado, which was a brand new building a year ago and I was so grateful it was there for my friend who was needing it that day.  This past week I met with someone who had a significant role in that building coming to be and got to pass along thanks from another friend whose husband died about a month ago, as she knows I talk with people who are instrumental in these things and she wanted to express her appreciation. 

On my fiftieth birthday I was blessed to spend the evening with a friend and her son whose brother and uncle had died in the past month as well -- all of them from cancer.  It's unusual for me to hear of cancer so much all at once.  It's just part of what I'm noticing as things that are 'pinging' as warnings to me. That I have had the time since I was his age until now at 50 to create something like Lumigrate has been something to be so very honored to feel on your fiftieth birthday.   And the way that friend and I got to be friends is a story for another time and place, but it's unique and indicates to me it was 'meant to be'. 

As I talk with my friends and family and the people on Lumigrate who are both all rolled up, I see the effects of what all we have going on with our health which is so multi faceted.  It has to do with all the elements in Christopher Lepisto's free 20 minute video (download if you want!) on Chronic Illness: Full Barrel Syndrome -- toxins on the body, mind, and spirit.  The interconnectedness of what goes on with the Earth and it's dirt and air and what we later consume, which then goes back into the environment of the Earth again.  Could it be that what is going on in our bodies is having a deep influence on the Earth and vice versa?  It just seems that way to me.  

On this particularly spiritual day of Easter and in the Passover season, I want to continue to remind people of the outstretched and open hands and hearts of Lumigrate and encourage people to keep thinking of this as a place to come to share and provide solutions together to these issues.  With honesty, integrity and I hope the sincerity that I am told is evident in this 'sophisticated' website, I encourage people to continue to think about what their priorities are.  How are you spending their resources of time, energy, and money?  Are you thinking of your health and that of the people and places around you that you have an impact on as something you have significant ability to change?  I hope you are, and if not, I hope you consider structuring your budget for your resources as you want by thinking and feeling it through rather than 'habit'. 

I'd like to refer you to read Alice's latest piece in the Life is Good with Alice Forum in the Spirituality Forum about her experience with Lent, which she just completed.  It's lovely.  I'm grateful to have Alice writing -- we had to wait for her to get her health on a better track to get started and now she is there, wiser and better, for her husband at a key time in his.  Many of our writers for Lumigrate are lingering in getting added because of health issues of them selves and family.