Sunflowerlives

Good Morning from my quiet little home.
This morning, I was invited to join some friends at a restaraunt to chat, catch up… You know how we do with friends that want to meet and be present with one another.
It was going to be a busy day so I pretty much put the invite on my “Maybe I’ll be there” response”. Today came and sure enough I had forgotten, what with walking the dog, going to the gym, and rewarding myself with my usual Starbucks drink. As I was turning out of the Starbucks drive, I suddenly remembered the gathering and said to myself, “I should go.”
So, I park in front of the place and walk in; I look for my friends, and as I am doing that this guy walks up to me and says, “You have a drink purchased somewhere else and we want you to leave, especially because it’s Starbucks.” WOW. I have taken a Starbucks drink into other restaraunts and they have never said a thing about my drink… Just smiled and wished me well. But this place threw me out. Loudly. I asked if I had offended them and he

Have you noticed how easy it is for us to complain these days? We just go to a social media address, log in, and start with the words that best suit how irritated we are.  Doesn’t require thinking, and with very little concern for others, just self.  And, others are not the only ones to do it… I’ve done it too. 

I just caught myself posting an irritating situation where I felt I had been held hostage for money to continue an account that was not supposed to cost a dime.  Who knows if anyone will read it learn anything helpful or find peace… Surely not, since it is basically a rant on my part.  And, maybe I will even take it down from my site. Did it make me feel fullfilled or at peace? No. It did not. Will it change the ramifications of what happened? No. It will not. Will the place of business care or be interested in my disappointment in thier business practice(s)? No. They will not. This is another place where people do not matter but money and somebody else’s income does.

There is only a couple of solutions to this type of issue, in

Merry Christmas!  It is a thing we say to one another, wishing each other the very best during the December Holiday and Celebration of the birth of Christ.  But if you’re like me, everyone is included in these good wishes.  We don’t always know what each other believes but we have love in our hearts so we say to everyone.

Oh I know there are those that want to keep it “pure” but I am not that person.  I don’t have enough info about my fellow Man to know who is who and what is what.  I am only required to have good will in my heart and to be giving as best I can.  So that’s what I do.  I acknowledge and respect that not everyone is me; and I don’t require anything in return, but it’s nice when it comes back.

This year I have been hacked so many times.  This is not a career move I am talking about; these are thieves, robbers, crooks.  But I will still wish them good will (maybe they will stop stealing from me).  And there is this…  one day when each of their lives is over, God will ask them what good they

It didn’t come to me all in one “think” but in bits and pieces. It was a slow sort of melding process. First one ingredient and then another and another. Like this…
I was listening to two of our sons discuss the fighting in the world and the power grabbing… Like many people, they both believed that it fed only the top shelf and everyone else suffered. Then one of them said, “To stop it, we’re going to have to have an enemy from the outside… One that causes the entire world to need each other and forget the differences to survive instead of argue and disagree, sort of like Terminator, the movie.” That sentence was step one; and, I tucked it in the back of my brain.

Then I was reading the Bible one night… Revelations to be exact…. Chapter nine, the part about locusts devouring everything. Now locusts could be really big, I thought; as big as the walking tanks from Star Wars. It might actually happen not as a natural event, but built through technology… Giant locust looking tanks that kill and destroy. That was the second thing I tucked away.
The last thing was the

In March of this year, 2020, illness began to sweep countries, beginning with China.  It was all encompassing.  People dying by the hundreds.  Persons ill by the thousands.  It seemed to come out of nowhere like a flash flood taking souls to God and suffering to everyone.  In my home country of the United States we saw a rush on food stores and pharmacies for supplies; larger cities like New York City had hospitals struggling to find beds for patients as they also brought in doctors to take extra shifts.  Wear a mask became the catch phrase… That, and “Social distance please”, which no one in the USA wants to do… We’re all about hugging.  This, while all along the president of our country tried to tell us that it was no big deal and just chill out.  That was the beginning of it all.  Then, it got worse.  And now?  We all know that many months later, that illness called COVID-19 is still with us with no cure as of yet.

We are living through this while we are experiencing social unrest, economic upset, a particularly uncomfortable national election year; and then there’s all of our individual lives filled with

The primary colors of the spectrum are said to be red, yellow, blue, and green; from there, so many other beautiful colors can be created.  Color … When we combine color with some action that is meant to help others, the result is tumultuously good .  Here is an example of that.

Yesterday as I considered how I could up-lift and encourage, I was also having a bit of cabin fever from this house bound business.  I decided to go to the local Safeway, which happened to still be open.  I thought to myself how hard these employees are working.  True, they are fortunate to still have a job they can go to, but consider the long and exhausting hours they are working as they enforce the many new protocols for safety and cleanliness.  So, I elected to go to the flower center of our local Safeway Store, and purchase bouquets of flowers, then present them to the lady checkers. (What do we do for the guys, buy them a beer?  But I digress… The guys we’ll deal with later.)

I arrived in the flower center and began searching the bouquets and the profusion of color before me.  What was the best

Many people are filled with the news of the pandemic outbreak.  And yes, it’s something to consider and be serious about its outcome and impact on one’s life.  But it is not the bottom line.  The bottom line is what will each do to survive and thrive, not only for self but for the well-being of family, one’s country, and the world?  We must survive and thrive by moving into a New Age.

Let’s start with shock.  Of course we are all surprised that life is changing so dramatically.  One day we’re going to work, making a pay check, and then heading home to relax.  Now, we work from home, worry about whether the paycheck will even show up in our bank account, and have more family than we ever hoped to have because the kids (all ages) are also home going as crazy as you and making it tough to work.  At all.  It’s tough to consider, but this is our new life (at least for the foreseeable future).  It’s time to be the creative people we all are, and find the new ways to thrive.  Americans as well as Europeans and all others are making an effort to find