FORBEARANCE: THE GREATEST OF ALL SPIRITUAL QUALITIES

 

From Linda Lee Greene, Author/Artist

It is impossible for me to assemble the ingredients and make sense of them that my mother died thirty years ago. How have I managed to get through those years without her? Somehow, and despite my many blunders and scrapes and chronic anxiety, I have trudged along—bruised and scarred and startled. It is said that forbearance (defined as patient self-control, restraint, and tolerance) is the greatest of all spiritual qualities, and without it no other spiritual quality is worth a damn. I bagged tolerance early on, but patient self-control and restraint had a long long wait: they finally showed up alongside my first Social Security check…and then only because I was so worn out by the incessant “stitching and unstitching” that I just gave up—or gave in.

 

Maybe giving up or giving in is the “yellow brick road” to any spiritual quality. Our stewing minds and churning stomachs and fluttering hearts don’t get us there very often or very well. My mother looked for them in her Bible. I really don’t know if she found them there. There was plenty of time to talk with her about such things in the six months between her terminal diagnosis and her passing. But we didn’t talk about them. It was ground too scary to tread, at least for me, because to do so would have naturally slipped into a revelation of her feelings, and mine, regarding her imminent death. “Death” was a word she and I did not utter.

 

I am pretty sure my mother believed in the concept of an afterlife following the demise of the body. The thing I do not know and regret not knowing is if she found courage and comfort in the belief during her final days.

 

I hope not to leave my loved ones with such questions and regrets about me. But with death at my door, I might indulge my consciousness in denial and refuse to talk about death at all. I might soothe my consciousness in beautiful memories of life instead of speculations about afterlife. Maybe that was my mother’s way of dealing with her end days. And why should she not have pacified herself with the known rather than with the unknown? Another idea about my mother occurs to me. Is it possible that she had attained the spiritual quality of forbearance in its full bloom and thereby needed little to nothing more? That notion comforts me.

 

My questions remain and probably always will remain, so my alternative is to turn to things I do know about my mother. In that vein, I am prompted by Deepak Chopra in his “THE BOOK OF SECRETS” to acknowledge the five qualities for which my mother would most like to be remembered. While others who knew and loved her might submit additional responses, with the greatest love, appreciation, and admiration of her, my reply is that she was a good daughter; a good wife; a good mother. She was her children’s best friend. She was a good caretaker of her earthly home.©

 

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TEENS STRUGGLING WITH CAREER GOALS SHOULD TRY A GAP YEAR

 

It’s that time of year again, a time of attending graduations and graduation parties. i look back on the way i felt when i graduated from high school, and truth to tell, i felt lost…author anne montgomery offers up some sage advice on the subject on my blog today. –linda lee greene

From Anne Montgomery, author

Young people need to have an idea of what they want to do in the future before going to college.

It’s almost time for the graduation season, and, in that regard, I want to mention an idea with which I wholeheartedly agree. And yet, just a few years ago I would have been completely against the idea.

In Abby Fawk’s USA Today Article “College can wait, but finding your life purpose can’t,” Fawk opines that American teens facing that jump to a postsecondary education are often unsure what they want their future to look like, so heading straight to college is a mistake.

As a former high school teacher of 20 years, I know Fawk is correct. I have faced hundreds of children across my desk, and when I asked what they thought their lives might look like in ten years, I was—more often than not— faced with blank stares. I would then go into my, What do you want to be when you grow up? spiel. I’d ask: What do you like to do? What are you good at? What will someone pay you to do? And again, I often received no reply.

Then the children graduated, most without any idea regarding what might make them happy in their business lives. We teachers have hammered into them that the next stop must be college. (Note that when I say college, I’m referring to any form of post-high school education.  Wanting to be a carpenter, an electrician, or an airplane mechanic are equally fine choices as wanting to be a doctor or a neurophysicist.)

What isn’t fine is having no idea what you want to study and then plowing ahead to your college of choice.

That college education is expensive, so before you go, have a plan.

“College is the single biggest investment we can make in a young person’s life,” Hawk said. “Four years at a flagship state school can now cost $100,000 and private college can run three to four times that figure. Yet the vast majority of students arrive unprepared to make the most of the experience.”

Fawk believes that it’s time for students to revisit the idea of a gap year. As I said earlier, I did my best to dissuade kids who wanted to take a year off before getting additional education, because statistics showed that once young people start earning money, they are less likely to give up that cash flow and return to school.

But Fawk explained that a gap year, if done right, is not about losing forward momentum and can be a rewarding launch pad to a bright future.

“It’s to gather experiences and insights that inform everything that comes next,” she said.

Fawk is the founder and CEO of Global Citizen Year, a program devoted to giving young people the chance to immerse themselves in other cultures, to stretch their comfort zones, and to forge relationships with people who are different than they are. If this sounds a bit like the Peace Corps, it is. The idea is to take the year following high school graduation and expand one’s horizons. To learn more about yourself by living alongside others in a completely different environment.

 

 A gap year can include volunteer activities like working with Habitat for Humanity.

But the GCY project is not the only way students can accomplish these goals. A stint in the military, the Peace Corps, or volunteering can also help young people find out who they are and what they want in life.

Studies show that American teens are growing up more slowly than the generations that proceeded them. Young people struggle with basic skills like time management, problem-solving, and navigating relationships. Why then do we shoehorn them into making decisions that will impact the rest of their lives when many are clearly not ready?

The idea is to give new high-school graduates a little breathing room before they make that leap. A well-thought-out gap year just might be the answer.

The past and present collide when a tenacious reporter seeks information on an eleventh century magician…and uncovers more than she bargained for.

WOLF CATCHER

Anne Montgomery

Historical Fiction/Suspense

TouchPoint Press

 

In 1939, archeologists uncovered a tomb at the Northern Arizona site called Ridge Ruin. The man, bedecked in fine turquoise jewelry and intricate bead work, was surrounded by wooden swords with handles carved into animal hooves and human hands. The Hopi workers stepped back from the grave, knowing what the Moochiwimi sticks meant. This man, buried nine hundred years earlier, was a magician.

Former television journalist Kate Butler hangs on to her investigative reporting career by writing freelance magazine articles. Her research on The Magician shows he bore some European facial characteristics and physical qualities that made him different from the people who buried him. Her quest to discover The Magician’s origin carries her back to a time when the high desert world was shattered by the birth of a volcano and into the present-day dangers of archeological looting where black market sales of antiquities can lead to murder.

REVIEW COPIES OF WOLF CATCHER AVAILABLE UPON REQUEST

Review/interview requests: media@touchpointpress.com

Get your copy where you buy books.

POLTERGEISTS, PHANTOMS AND PARANORMAL PRESENCES!

Spring shifts the mind to recreation, and if ghost-hunting gets your heart pumping, head out to Southwestern Ohio. Just in time, writing duo C.D. Hersh has put together a travelogue of spooky places there that you might want to check out…

POLTERGEISTS, PHANTOMS AND PARANORMAL PRESENCES!

From C.D. Hersh

Annually May 3 is Paranormal Day, a day to talk about scary things like ghosts, vampires and other undead creatures that go bump in the night, and sometimes in broad daylight.

Where we live, in Southwestern Ohio, one of the most haunted cities in the area is Cincinnati, Ohio. Here’s a sampling of some haunted spots in that fair city.

Music Hall, in downtown Cincinnati, built on top of a pauper’s grave, is rumored to be haunted and was selected as one of the Travel Channel's Most Terrifying Places in America.

 

Union Terminal, or the Cincinnati Museum Center as it’s known now, is said to be haunted by the ghost of a security guard named Shirley, who was murdered there.

 

At the Cincinnati Art Museum a seven foot specter rises from a mummy sarcophagus.

Kings Island Amusement Park employees have reported sightings of a little girl in a period 1900s blue dress believed to come from the graveyard adjacent to the park.

Mother of Mercy High School has a nun, Sister Mary Carlos, who haunts the auditorium, which is named after her. The Sister interferes with performances unless she is asked for permission to use the space and is invited to the performance.

At the Cincinnati Zoo not all the animals are caged. A ghostly lioness prowls the park at night.

We haven’t seen any of these apparitions, and don’t plan on going ghost hunting to find them, but Catherine has lived in a few places her family believed to be haunted.

As a young girl she lived in an old house that had been subdivided into apartments, and her parents believed the apartment they lived in was haunted. Pictures and items would be moved to different places when they came home; a cousin saw a man standing at the foot of her bed one night; and when the neighbor’s children would call at the door for Catherine and her sister to come out and play, a man’s voice would answer saying, “They aren’t home.” Funny thing was, no one was home when kids came calling … except the ghost.

In another home where Catherine lived a murder had taken place years before. Her folks kept the scary information a secret from the children. While she lived in the house, Catherine had a recurring dream of a woman who appeared at her bedroom door and urged her to climb out the second story bedroom. Catherine would always awaken before she made it out the window. When the family moved, she mentioned her dream to her mother, who told her about the murdered woman. She had died at the top of the steps by the door to Catherine’s bedroom. Her mother believed the ghost of the woman was trying to kill Catherine and that if she had ever gone fully out the window she would have died. That dream, no matter how hard she tried to replicate it, has never occurred in any other home where Catherine has lived.

                                                                                  

Catherine’s sister Carolyn lived in an apartment in the basement of Westwood Town Hall, in Cincinnati, Ohio, another reported hot spot for spooks. The town hall is reported to be haunted by the ghost of a former security guard who hung himself in the building after he was fired. Some resources say the ghost is known as Willy, others say his name is Wesley. There are many reports of stage sets, costumes and orderly things found in disarray. Water faucets turn on by themselves and locked doors are unlocked, lights turn off and on and children have reported seeing a man on the ground and in the building.

Carolyn and her husband were caretakers for the hall around 1971. “We had to clean the buildings,” Carolyn said, “and we would hear whispers around us.” Carolyn believes there is more than one ghost because of the multiple voices they heard. They would be in bed in their basement apartment of the town hall and could hear racket going on and what sounded like people bumping into the walls when they knew no one was there. “On one occasion we had to clean a room on the upper floor where a train group met. We could hear voices in the room and the door wouldn’t unlock. When we finally got the door open, there was no one inside.”

After Catherine’s sister learned the building was haunted she wouldn’t go into the main area by herself.

Can’t say that I blame her!

Now that I’ve thoroughly frightened myself by writing about all this spooky stuff at night, I think I’ll go double check the dead bolts, flip on all the lights, and look up some paranormal ghost busters … just in case.

Happy Haunting!

Have you ever had any spooky, paranormal encounters?

While you think about that here’s an excerpt from the first book in our Turning Stone Series, The Promised One.

The woman stared at him, blood seeping from the corner of her mouth. “Return the ring, or you’ll be sorry.”

With a short laugh he stood. “Big words for someone bleeding to death.” After dropping the ring into his pocket, he gathered the scattered contents of her purse, and started to leave.

“Wait.” The words sounded thick and slurred . . . two octaves deeper . . . with a Scottish lilt.

Shaw frowned and spun back toward her. The pounding in his chest increased. On the ground, where the woman had fallen, lay a man.

He wore the same slinky blue dress she had—the seams ripped, the dress top collapsed over hard chest muscles, instead of smoothed over soft, rounded curves. The hem skimmed across a pair of hairy, thick thighs. Muscled male thighs. Spiked heels hung at an odd angle, toes jutting through the shoe straps. The same shoes she’d been wearing.

The alley tipped. Shaw leaned against the dumpster to steady himself. He shook his head to clear the vision, then slowly moved his gaze over the body.

A pair of steel-blue eyes stared out of a chiseled face edged with a trim salt-and-pepper beard. Shaw whirled around scanning the alley.

Where was the woman? And who the hell was this guy?

Terrified, Shaw fled.

The dying man called out, “You’re cursed. Forever.”

 

When your “goose bumps” disappear perhaps you might be interested in the links for our books:

Our Amazon Author Page

 

C.D. Hersh–Two hearts creating everlasting love stories.

Putting words and stories on paper is second nature to co-authors C.D. Hersh. They’ve written separately since they were teenagers and discovered their unique, collaborative abilities in the mid-90s. As high school sweethearts and husband and wife, Catherine and Donald believe in true love and happily ever after.

They have a short Christmas story, Kissing Santa, in a Christmas anthology titled Sizzle in the Snow: Soul Mate Christmas Collection, with seven other authors. Plus their paranormal series titled, The Turning Stone Chronicles.

They are looking forward to many years of co-authoring and book sales, and a lifetime of happily-ever-after endings on the page and in real life.

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