Christmas wasn't quite what I was expecting yet every cloud has a silver lining.  Having spent a week travelling to and from Exeter Hospital to visit my husband we were grateful to be able to celebrate the New Year together back at home.  We opened the last of our Christmas presents on New Year's Day!

I have been deeply touched by the love, care, concern and support demonstrated by friends and family, particularly my daughter, Elizabeth, who travelled all the way from Surrey to Devon to be with me for fewer than 24 hours.  What a tonic that visit was!  We went for a wonderful walk in the wind and rain; we exchanged presents;  we visited the Christmas lights locally, and we talked and hugged.  I felt heaps better afterwards.

So I have been reminded yet again how blessed we are and how important relationships are.  Graham and I therefore intend to invest time and energy once again this year in feeding those relationships, and not least our own marriage.

May 2012 bring you joy, happiness, and connection with your family and friends and may you have blessings heaped upon you!

When I switched on the TV this morning before going to the gym I was horrified to see the pictures of the M5 crash.  The fact that it was near Taunton somehow made it even worse, for I use that section of the motorway regularly, as do many of my friends, colleagues and acquaintances.

My heart goes out to all those affected by this awful event.  I can hardly imagine what it must be like . . . 

We may never know what caused the accident to happen.  I just hope that it brings home to everyone how potentially dangerous driving can be.  I am disappointed how often I pass a driver who is using his mobile phone, particularly when he's driving at 60 - 70 mph . . .

Life is so precious . . .

We certainly do appear to be living in "interesting times".  Having visited my family in Croydon last week and driven past the burnt-out remains where Reeves store had previously stood for over 100 years, I have, like many others, being trying to make sense of the rioting and unrest that has erupted in so many major cities in England.

Whenever things go wrong it is tempting to point the finger and seek someone or something to blame.  There's certainly been plenty of that going on!  I've listened to hours of radio broadcasts where politicians, experts, and members of the public, have suggested reasons for the antisocial, criminal, and even murderous behaviour, that manifested last week.  Clearly a wide range of complex issues have been weaving a tangled tapestry over time and attempts at separating individual threads may result in a distortion of the overall picture.

What cannot be denied is that those involved in rioting and looting are products of our society today.  Collectively we have contributed towards and produced our culture, by electing our politicians, spending our money, supporting organisations, keeping quiet, speaking up, taking action, passing the buck, making choices, and going about our daily lives.  It's easy to blame the media, social networking, immigration, celebrity culture, the government, education, poverty, gang-culture, poor parenting, spiritual bankruptcy, consumerism, and so forth.  For sure, these and many other influences have all played their part.  The task before us is enormous.

Anger is appropriate if it spurs us into creating a different kind of society.  It is unhelpful if we talk about locking up children and throwing away the key.

We all need to believe in something or someone, to have faith, hope, and charity.  When these are at a low ebb, or even absent, then little wonder that respect and decent behaviour go out of the window.  Yet there's nothing quite like adversity to bring communities together, to create a different perspective, to sound a wake-up call.  As long as we accept that we are all in this together then the prospect of a new order shines more brightly.

“Compassion is the basis of all morality.”
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788 - 1860)
Philosopher

“Each man takes care that his neighbour shall not cheat him.  But a day comes when he begins to care that he does not cheat his neighbour.  Then all goes well - he has changed his market-cart into a chariot of the sun.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882)
Essayist and poet

“The test of the morality of a society is what it does for its children.”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906 - 1945)Protestant theologian & anti-Nazi activist (1906 - 1945)

• Take a 10-30 minute walk every day and while you walk, smile
• Sit in silence for at least 10 minutes each day
• Sleep for seven hours
• Live with the three Es:  Energy, Enthusiasm, and Empathy
• Play more games
• Read more books than you did last year
• Drink plenty of water
• Eat more foods that grow on trees and plants and eat less food that is manufactured in plants
• Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and dinner like a pauper
• Make time to practise meditation and prayer:  they provide us with daily fuel for our busy lives
• Dream more while you are awake
• Smile and laugh a lot
• Don't waste your precious energy on gossip
• Don't have negative thoughts about things you can't control:  instead invest your energy in the positive present moment
• Spend time with people over the age of 70 and under the age of 6
• Life is too short to waste time hating anyone
• Don't take yourself too seriously:  no-one else does!
• Don't compare your life with that of others:  you have no idea what their journey is about
• Make peace with your past so it won't spoil the present
• The best is yet to come

You may have spotted a recent post I created on twitter which said, "You don't have to do it all on your own - ask for help and prepare to be amazed".  This elicited some interesting interrogation from one follower who asked me a number of questions including, "Amazed by what?"   I love it when people ask me to be specific.  We are bombarded daily with generalisations ('everybody', 'no-one', 'always', 'never', 'most people', etc, etc,) and it can be extremely useful (if somewhat challenging) to get specific.

So what did I mean?  If only it were quick and easy to explain!

There are a number of factors that come into play here - it's rather like a tapestry of different coloured threads that individually seem insignificant yet when viewed from a distance create a complex and colourful picture.

On the surface it may simply be about asking someone in particular for help.  This may be a straightforward case of swallowing pride, admitting you don't know, or daring to speak out.  There are risks involved, of course, because your request may be rejected or ignored, you may be labelled as stupid, inadequate, pathetic, or even a trouble-maker.

When I talked about being prepared to be amazed I had a different kind of plea for help in mind - the sort that isn't addressed to a specific person but which is formulated in the heart and mind and directed 'out there'.  This may be in the form of a prayer, a hope, a silent plea, an exasperated cry, an angry scream, or something more vague.   Once again, the more specific you can be about precisely what you want to have happen, the better.  The challenge is to let go of HOW it will happen and to trust that it WILL happen.

That's how the Law of Attraction works - you get what you focus on.  So if you focus on how dreadful you think the day will be and how everything is going to go wrong, guess what - it will!   When you focus on how you want things to work out you are much more likely to be pleasantly surprised.  Answers to problems turn up from the most unexpected quarters sometimes - things you would never have considered suddenly pop into the equation.

The flipside of this is that "what you resist persists".   You see, sometimes the help we are given isn't actually very much to our liking and lessons are not always served up in a sweet sauce!  When we can embrace aspects which are challenging and bless those who hurt us;  when we can become clear about what we really do want and focus on that;  when we do our best to operate for the greater good;  that's when miracles really do happen.

I know it's easier said than done.  That doesn't mean it can't be done.

"I think these difficult times have helped me to understand better than before how infinitely rich and beautiful life is in every way and that so many things one goes around worrying about are of no importance whatsoever."
Isak Dinesen (1885 – 1962)
Danish writer

"When we stop to count our blessings rather than focusing on our predicament, our attitude will be able to help us cope with our situation more productively."
Kevin Eikenberry
Author and speaker

"We turn to God for help when our foundations are shaking: only to learn that it is God who is shaking them."
Charles West