"Not only is your body a temple, but your mind is an architect, busy transforming the ideas and inspirations you feed it." -- Herbert Benson, MD
Hello Dear Friends!
I was talking with Jesus a week ago after a restless night and apologizing for being so weak and weary of the battle for life. Before I could even finish He reminded me that even He fell down under the weight of the cross.
After an exhausting night of no sleep and horrendous beatings, He was weary and unable to stand. Somebody came along to help. The devil often tries to do us in with beating our minds that causes us to focus on our circumstances and not Christ.
But we can ask Jesus to help when we are weak. He is our strength, our refuge. He will do more for us than we deserve because we don't deserve anything, but by grace we have been given everything, if we will only allow ourselves to receive it. Many times our self-worth makes us feel unworthy and we don't connect with God on that receiving level.
Remember that God valued us enough to give up all of Heaven to come to the Earth and live as a man. The Bible tells us that He was tempted ... to be tempted it means you have the ability to sin. I wonder how many times He had to make that choice in His lifetime of growing up and during His ministry time. He chose to lie down on that Cross, He chose to spread His arms and to keep them spread until He died. He did it all for us because of His great love for us.
If there had been only a few people on earth, He still would've come to do this because He loved His creation and wanted relationship restored between us. Think of all the beautiful things He created just for us to enjoy. How awesome it is that we can now walk and talk with Him because He dwells in us. We are now the Temple of God. How incredible.
Although Louie Schwartzberg's reasons may be different than mine his greatest satisfaction is creating works that can have a positive effect on the future of the planet. He states,
“I hope my films inspire and open people’s hearts. Beauty is nature’s tool for survival – you protect what you love. If I can move enough people on an emotional level, I hope we can achieve the shift in consciousness we need to sustain and celebrate life.”
His film
Wings of Life, narrated by Meryl Streep, was released by Disneynature in April 2013, and his most recent film,
Mysteries of the Unseen World, is a National Geographic 3D Imax that journeys into invisible worlds that are too slow, too fast, too small and too vast for the human eye to see. It's a beautiful presentation that shows the detail of God's creativity and amazing expanse of diversity.
View the 7-minute preview presentation at Ted.com.
Speaking of viewing something on an electronic gadget makes me remember that we are all aware of how magnetized people are to their electronic devices. We see it happening all the time. People walking around looking at their phones, speaking in their phones, texting from their phones. Then you get to the iPads. Have you ever sat in a restaurant and looked around to find couples spending more time on their devices than talking with each other? A group of friends that are eating together but seem to each be in their own digital world? It's becoming a serious problem.
Nomophobia is the term created by British researchers in 2008 to identify people who experience anxiety when they have no access to mobile technology. While certainly not as debilitating as other chemical based addictions, nomophobia has its first recovery center in southern California.
There is a great look at social media on a YouTube video about this problem.
View video and get a few ideas on doing something about it.
The numbers get really interesting when you look at specific demographics ... the younger age groups have higher numbers of people that would feel distress of being without their mobile phone. In the 18-24 age group, 77% revealed nomophobia. In the 25-34 group, that number drops marginally to 68%. What may come as a surprise is that the third-most nomophobic group was the age-55 and over group. (
Read article: Cell Phone Addiction Has a Name & Treatment]
I was glad to hear that two big box pet stores are finally waking up to public outcry on pet treats from China. The side story is why is PetSmart waiting till March 2015 to get all the treats off their shelves? When asked why it's taking so long, spokeswoman Michelle Friedman said,
"We don't want to leave pet parents high and dry." You're kidding me! So we pet parents would rather have a toxic treat that can kill than no treat at all? I don't think they're in touch with the consumer's mindset. You can read the entire story here:
PetSmart Joins Petco, Stops Selling Pet Treats From China
Friends, this is why we have been selling
Life's Abundance has pet foods, treats and supplements. Life's Abundance has NEVER HAD A RECALL.
About five years ago we planted some Siberian Irises that a friend gave us. They were supposed to be a dark purple and my favorite color is purple so that fit just right. However we never saw them bloom. I guess they may be one of the things that enjoyed our severe winter because this Spring they showed themselves.
They're really not in good areas since they like full sun and we have a lot of shade with the woods around us, but we were delighted to get quite a few blooms and I enjoyed them tremendously.
Although we don't get too far with composting since our fruit and veggie scraps get tossed out for the wild critters, we use our fallen oak leaves for mulch / compost since we have so many of them. They've been making our garden soils black and rich with earthworms.
If anybody has been interested in getting started with composting and don't know where to begin, this article (
The Ultimate Guide to Composting For Beginners) is a great place to begin learning. It's actually a long page of specific links on getting started with composting, things you can and can't add to compost, green items vs brown item specifics, common composting problems, and a section of an advanced guide to composting.
If you were growing up in the 60's you'll remember that we had school air raid drills and government warnings of a possible Soviet nuclear attack. In that era, there was a "fallout shelter craze" that caused people to build fallout shelters in their backyards. It would be very interesting to know what one would put in a fallout shelter. What about electricity, ventilation, heat, food, water, plumbing and sleeping quarters?
A family in Wisconsin cleared bushes and brush to access on that had been built there by a previous owner, a surgeon. It's been estimated that it cost around $1200, or that would be $15,000 today, to excavate, build and equip it in 1960 when it was built. Interested in taking a look inside? Here's a
New York Daily News article on this 1960 fallout shelter. Very interesting. It was fun getting to see some food labels from my childhood.
I've heard a lot of people give Blue Jays a condescending report on behavior. We've not had a problem here in our habitat. They are not pushy or aggressive and are actually a blessing since they can send out alarm calls quickly when they see a hawk.
The other day I saw the scene in the photograph where the Red-bellied Woodpecker was feeding at the feeder and the Blue Jay came in to the bird feeder pole and waited his turn for some suet. I thought that was really sweet. We like having our property maintain peace.
I love to hear good news reports on wildlife. I was on a website that had a sidebar with wildlife news and noticed an option for a video about a Sea Turtle that was badly injured from fishing nets being given a new lease on life with prosthetic fins from the design of a Lockheed-Martin F-22 fighter jet design.
View the 2-minute video of the Sea Turtle.
Our good news from Bluebird Cove (name we chose for our habitat) is that we're getting to see some baby birds. It was not looking good since we had cold temperatures till the end of May and mamas couldn't keep the eggs warm enough to hatch or the babies were born and died because it was too cold while parents were gone to find food ... which in itself was a challenge since there aren't many bugs around when temperatures are in the low 40's.
I've seen finches (only two) and cardinal (only one) so far and I've been seeing the Gray Catbird busily feeding. Last year we had babies birds everywhere. This morning I was sitting on the screened porch and saw a larger bird fly by that had a buff belly so I got the binoculars to see what it was. I was surprised to see a Yellow-billed Cuckoo. Not because we don't have them. We have had them but the only time I see them is when the hawk chases them into our window (
View Photo of One Recovering From Shock - It later flew away). They are beautiful birds (
View More Photos of Yellow-billed Cuckoo).
When I was in Costa Rica I was able to see the Squirrel Cuckoo. They are so named because they can be mistaken for squirrels as they run along tree branches or hop from branch to branch, and with their bright rufous coloration, they are the same color as most of the squirrels that we saw in Costa Rica. However some of them are brightly colored with a mix of bright red, raspberry, gray and white tail spots underneath. Our Yellow-billed Cuckoo spends the winter in South America and some in the
most southern portions of Florida. (View Photos of Squirrel Cuckoo in Costa Rica)
We've been seeing lots of ladybugs in pupa stage. They remain in this stage as they go through a metamorphosis into a ladybug. Many people don't know there are different stages of ladybugs and so many are killed as "bugs" just because they're a bug. Although ladybugs have earned a great reputation as aphid eaters, the larvae eat the aphids up rapidly.
We always have aphids on our Anthony Waterer Spireas and the first year I discovered them I saw a couple of ladybugs on the bushes which truly excited me. Getting to see the diversity and balance of nature is awesome to me! Now we have all stages on those bushes because the mama knows to lay her eggs where there will be a good supply of food when the babies (larvae) come out of the eggs. We are blessed!
Make sure you know what the various stages look like so you can preserve the ladybugs that are trying to help you to balance out nature in your habitat garden.
Read Article: The Life Cycle of a Ladybug. On the same website there is a link for
more photos of the ladybug stages. These are easier to see than the ones in the actual article.
It's May 31st and I've got two layers of clothing on since it's so cold. My hubby is back in his long-sleeved flannel shirts and we've been turning the heat on at 65 degrees. Days' forecasts say in the 70's but it doesn't seem to get there until afternoon and only stays there a few hours and then it heads back down. I feel like we have totally missed Spring. I'm sure it's not just our area. Weather is wacky all over the place. One of the signs of the end times ... but then who knows the mind of God when it comes to time tables? A thousand years is as a day. That's one of those things the mind cannot grasp.
The seesaw of life. Ups and downs. All the beauty around us and for us ... all the pain the devil dishes out. The seesaw (also known as a teeter-totter or teeter board) in my childhood was a long narrow board pivoted in the middle on a bar so that, as one end goes up, the other goes down. Now there are all kinds of unique designs, but you know, I kinda like the simple one. How I loved to push and get back up to the top. How my Daddy loved to tease me and say he was going to drop me. But he never fooled me. I would always just laugh harder.
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Ben and Randal at Joe Wheeler State Park |
The devil likes to kick us back down to the ground with circumstances but through Christ we can rise above it all by kicking back. Christ has already won the war. The victory is ours, we just need to enforce it. Christ dwells in us and His power can overcome anything. Circumstances, negative emotions, and addictions. We have to renew our minds to what the Bible says about us and all of its Truth and believe in that and not what we see. It takes faith ...
Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen (Heb. 11:1).
Faith has substance. Although our minds tell us what the physical world is showing us through our senses, we have to stay focused on Jesus and His Word which is Spirit and it has substance and the power to change things.
For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit ... (Heb. 4:12).
The Word will divide your soul (mind, will and emotions) from your spirit if you meditate on it. We have to get our own senses and dissection of the issues out of the way and rest in what God says we have in our spirits to access. The devil's whole focus is to keep you thinking that God isn't providing, God isn't listening, God isn't for you. It was his Garden of Eden temptation and they fell for it. Don't YOU fall for it! God's Word is Truth. You are who HE says you are!
Much Peace and Many Blessings to YOU!
Donna
P.S. Anything in here that might help somebody you know?
Here's a link to the online version of this newsletter:
www.thenatureinus.com/2014/06/newsletter-6114.html
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written by Donna
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