This festival appears rich with meaning and points both back to Israel's wandering in the desert and forward to Jesus return and establishing His kingdom on earth and the millennial reign.  It is the festival celebrating the final harvest. 

     The festival emphasizes temporary shelters which points to the temporariness of this life.  It points to far better things ahead. The festival is also one the requires a pilgrimage to Jerusalem.  This requirement is a reminder that this world is not our home, and there is greater things ahead. 

      Now according to several articles, the most likely time of Jesus birth was during Sukkot.  So in essence, the biblical festival of Sukkot is also the true celebration of the birth of Yeshua as well as the culmination of the second coming when the final harvest occurs and the marriage with the Bride occurs.  Those of us who have missed in learning and celebrating Sukkot and the other Biblical festivals miss out on a lot that God has designated to point to what is ahead as well as what he has done.  Another interesting not is that Jesus referring to himself being the living water and the light of the world points to ceremonies involved in Sukkot.

      Sukkot is also marked by the performance of seventy sacrifices. Articles point  out that seventy is the number of existing nations at the time of the foundation of Israel.  It is to point to people from all nations and tribes being part of the final harvest and entering into the Kingdom of God.

     There are many, many things to learn from Sukkot. The articles I have examined have been interesting.   Ultimately, we all should be celebrating God's provision, our redemption, and the coming kingdom of God.  A study of Sukkot make very clear that any who preach the Church needing to take dominion before the return of Yeshua is preaching a different gospel because such a concept does not fit with the imagery God set forth in the Sukkot festival. 

     Also in examining this and the other fall festivals, it is clear that in the modern church with our Celebration of Christmas and Easter and ignorance of the Biblical festivals truly miss out on what God has for us. In this case, Sukkot is essentially a week long party celebrating what God has, is, and will do.

Reference articles:

http://www.bridgesforpeace.com/pics/_TeachSukkot.pdf

http://www.ourfathersfestival.net/about_the_festival

http://followingtheancientpaths.wordpress.com/2006/10/06/sukkot-aka-feast-of-tabernacles/

http://www.messianic.ws/sukkot.htm

http://www.tikkunministries.org/newsletters/mm-oct08.asp

http://www.localaccess.com/Pari/sukkot.htm

http://www.thewatchman.org/en/sukkot.php

http://www.bethhillel.com/sukkot.htm

Sticky & Sweet - Do You think Madonna's been having her own "Honey Party"?

In today's edition of The Honey Party Madonna is playing in the background.  You've gotta love the tenacity, professionalism, creativity, chutzpah, strength, endurance and beauty of this woman.  What a trailblazer!  Madonna has epitomized the strong, powerful, expressive successful woman for several generations of women now.

Never one to hide her light she has re-defined the role that a woman can play in the world in so many ways.  Not shy about who she is, what she stands for, or how she expresses herself, this incredible gift to the world has also managed to produce some of the worlds most upbeat, spectacular and groovy dance music in addition to producing music that is socially relevant and a poignant commentary on our evolutionary times.  Get some Madonna playing in the background and you can't help but feel the healing and uplifting energies that she emits!

Speaking of music and dance - I do want to share a little about the power of Music and Sound to heal and to bring balance and harmony within as well how it can weave a common thread that unites and concentrates the energy of a gathering of people.  Sound therapy is one of the most powerful tools that we can access to shift energy and create unity.  We can use music and sound to "soundscape" our environment.  What you choose to listen to can really determine what kind of a mood you are in and what energy you are aligning your electromagnetic field with.  Dissonant music and sound will actually create the environment for dis-ease either mentally, emotionally or physically (sometimes in all three areas). 

Dance and movement is another FANTASTIC way to shift our energy bodies.  Every morning I have a "yoga date" with Rodney Yee -  I spend 20 minutes or so on the floor doing AM Stretch.  I love my morning date with Rodney - he gets me into my body and helps me to be grounded throughout the day.  Speaking of Yoga - my friend the Faerie of Fun - Darlene Pina - has her own yoga business and does private sessions here in NH and in northern Mass.  If you have ever wondered about the benefits of yoga - check her out.  I think we might go dancing this weekend!! Maybe DJ Alkemi is hosting a MetroWest Boogie or something.... Shake that groove thang, get off your butt and move your body - you'll lighten up automatically! 

Interested in Sound and Sound Healing?  Looking to "soundscape" your environment?  I'm offering phone and in person sound healing sessions (if you book a phone session you get a recording and save on fuel!) and my new CD Divine Union is available for sale on my site and it's also available in downloadable format from Amazon.com  and ITunes.Com   (the cool thing about these two sites is you can download just one or two songs if you don't want to buy the whole album - although in it's entirety the album is pretty powerful!)

Celebration released their second album The Modern Tribe about a year ago to the day. The parallels with TV on the Radio are obvious - this is probably in no small part due to the fact that Dave Sitek of TVOTR produced the album - but there is also a hint of Blond Redhead about Katrina Ford's vocals. Still, to hone in on what seems like fairly obvious influences to other bands doesn't do justice to the rage and scope of sounds mustered by Celebration on The Modern Tribe.

Evergreen

(Low Quality D/L)

[Audio http://ear4music.wordpress.com/files/2008/10/01-evergreen.mp3]

(High Quality Stream)

Website | MySpace | iTunes

She's a doll.....

Come join the Runway Kidz this weekend and partake in our labor of love, the big RK:1 Celebration! It's the anniversary of the founding of the Runway Kidz group by Summer Deadlight and we're celebrating in a big way with six fashion shows and three parties over three days' time, October 17th, 18th, and 19th!

On Thursday, October 16th at 4pm SLT, there will be a Press Conference at the Runway Kidz Runway, open to all media and those who hunger for more information about what we're doing and why we're doing it! The following is a list of the show times and parties over the weekend so that you can plan ahead and attend what most fits your schedule. :)

Friday, October 17th, 2008

Street & Urban Fashion Show - 2pm slt (DJ/Hostess Isabelle Santos)
New Fashion Designers Show - 5pm slt
Runway Kidz Private Party with DJ Kromus Korobose at Costa Rica Airport
7 - 10 pm slt
ΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞ

Saturday, October 18th, 2008

Goth & Neko Fashion Show - 2pm slt
Skin & Hair Fashion Show - 5pm slt

Runway Kidz Public Party at Tempura Island Ballroom
7 - 9 pm slt - DJ Azufr3 Catteneo
9-11pm slt - Djane Dahni Ella
11-1am slt - DJane Summer Deadlight

ΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞ

Sunday, October 19th, 2008

Classic SL Fashion Designers Show - 2pm slt
Couture Fashion Designers Show - 5pm slt

Formal Ball - 7 - 10pm slt at the Red Room on Casablanca
DJ Summer Deadlight

Come join the Runway Kidz this weekend and partake in our labor of love, the big RK:1 Celebration! It's the anniversary of the founding of the Runway Kidz group by Summer Deadlight and we're celebrating in a big way with six fashion shows and three parties over three days' time, October 17th, 18th, and 19th!

On Thursday, October 16th at 4pm SLT, there will be a Press Conference at the Runway Kidz Runway, open to all media and those who hunger for more information about what we're doing and why we're doing it! The following is a list of the show times and parties over the weekend so that you can plan ahead and attend what most fits your schedule. :)

Friday, October 17th, 2008

Street & Urban Fashion Show - 2pm slt (DJ/Hostess Isabelle Santos)
New Fashion Designers Show - 5pm slt
Runway Kidz Private Party with DJ Kromus Korobose at Costa Rica Airport
7 - 10 pm slt
ΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞ

Saturday, October 18th, 2008

Goth & Neko Fashion Show - 2pm slt
Skin & Hair Fashion Show - 5pm slt

Runway Kidz Public Party at Tempura Island Ballroom
7 - 9 pm slt - DJ Azufr3 Catteneo
9-11pm slt - Djane Dahni Ella
11-1am slt - DJane Summer Deadlight

ΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞΞ

Sunday, October 19th, 2008

Classic SL Fashion Designers Show - 2pm slt
Couture Fashion Designers Show - 5pm slt

Formal Ball - 7 - 10pm slt at the Red Room on Casablanca
DJ Summer Deadlight

Joseph Cardinale

...with special thanks to Alive on All Channels for sharing this source:  Gods and False Gods 

In the autumn after my wife vanished I enrolled in an undergraduate course in Astronomy. The course met at the eastern campus of the Community College I had gone to before I got older. This was our first meeting. After taking attendance and explaining that tonight the class would go outside to learn where the constellations were and what they stood for the Instructor led the line of us out of the Lecture Center and through the parking lot and onto a baseball field bordered by trees. No one spoke. We found our seats in the path between second and first and for a long time the Instructor moved around the pitcher’s mound unpacking a telescope from out of a case and putting the parts together. When the telescope was one, he began his lecture. At the time I thought of the stars as clues to the whereabouts of my wife and so I listened to him very closely at first, taking notes that I have since lost, but which I seem to remember more visually—the written words—than anything else that went on that night. He began by admitting that he was not really an astronomer. His wife was. He was a carpenter, or had been. When his wife died, he said, seven years ago, he had lost the will to work anymore. There was nothing worth building. He had abandoned carpentry and returned to our town to become what he called a Destructionist. This meant quite literally that he took things apart. His plan, he said, was to deconstruct every object that he had ever built, starting with his house. But he stressed—he was at pains to stress—that taking something apart is in fact far more difficult than putting something together. The hard part, he said, was figuring out where one object ends and the other begins. You have to know where to stop. And to illustrate this point he took a pocketknife out of his coat and brought the blade to his wrist. Imagine I cut my hand off, he said, and moved the blade back and forth like the bow of a violin. And imagine now, he said, that after the wound heals I replace the old hand with a metal one. The metal hand is mine for a long time, and at some point (suspend your disbelief) I forget all about the flesh and blood that was there to begin with. I forget that I was once complete and come to believe that the metal hand is the realest and most original part of me. I come in fact to feel that not only the other hand but also the rest of the body I was born with is somehow counterfeit—somehow inconsistent with the rest of me. And so I decide to do away with it. One at a time I take away all the original parts and replace them with metal ones that match the make of the hand. I perform another operation every day and eventually I am completely metal; not a trace of flesh remains. Now the question I want you to think about, he said, is whether I am the same person now as I was before. If not then I want you to locate the exact instant when I was born and the previous version of me disappeared. He did not go on but lowered his eyes and looked through the telescope at whatever was in the sky. Finished, he left the lens focused downward and—I noticed this much later—directly at me. The truth, he said, walking away from the telescope, was that there was no way of telling one part from another. Change is constant. So we must conclude that in fact I was never the same person—not even before I turned to metal. I am always someone else. And this truth (he went on) was what eventually derailed his plan to become a destructionist. He had discovered one day after taking the legs off his kitchen table and placing them next to one another on the floor that to destroy anything—to truly reduce any one object into an essential and everlasting essence—is impossible. There is no essence. The table that had once been one was now something else, true. But the legs were still their own. Even if he were to saw them in two or three or four more halves he would never get to the end. Even an atom can split open. And though another mind might have taken comfort in this discovery, said the Instructor, he could not. He was terrified. He had been working at an unblinking pace for an entire summer, he said, and now as he looked around the kitchen he wondered for the first time what he had meant to accomplish. There was almost nothing left of the house that he had built in the months before his marriage—nothing except the walls and the floor and a few more pieces of furniture that he had set aside for later. The table was on the floor below him and he remembered picking up one of the legs and running the flame from a lighter along the length of the wood, thinking that he might burn the house down and breathe the smoke to death. But the fire never caught. It blackened the wood and went out when he brought the flame back. And somehow that was what had saddened the Instructor the most—the black that appeared on the wood where the fire had been. That was what he was looking at when he began to feel an enormous distance from everything, as though the earth were flattening out and away from him. To move from one place to another would take too long. He stood completely still, not letting go of the leg of the table, which seemed, he said, to become heavier and heavier in his hands, so that he felt—he remembered the fact more than the feeling—that he was sinking into the floor of the kitchen. He must have fainted. When he waked he was lying on his back. The stars were over him and he was staring and staring at the spaces between them. The word stare, he said, comes from the Flengarian verb stareo, which means to eye with the detention of thought, or to contemplate. But stareo itself derives from another Flengarian word, starus, meaning star. Stareo starum, reads the first line of a poem by Selenus—poem number 111—and scholars have argued for centuries about how to translate these words. I stare at the star, runs the conservative translation. And yet this translation ignores the potential that we might read the noun, starum, as an objective form of the verb, stareo, in which case the translation would go something like: I stare at the act of staring, or, I contemplate contemplation. The matter becomes further complicated in light of other and less literal interpretations, such as that the poet might have been writing from the perspective of the star, or that the word starus was often used during the first century after the birth of Christ (and the death of Selenus) as slang for infinity. And so we find that from one line of poetry written more than two thousand years ago a seemingly endless line of potential meanings emerge: 

           1. I star the star.
           2. I contemplate infinity.
           3. I am a star, staring at myself.
           4. I can’t stop staring.
           5. I am infinitely stared at.
           6. The star lasts as long as I stare at it.
           7. I stare forever.
           8. I immortalize the star.

To insist that one translation is right and the rest are wrong is of course to miss the point, said the Instructor. The point is simply that the line between what you are and what you’re observing is erasable—that if you stare at an object all the way and without limitation you are no longer anything else. You’re everything. That was what the Instructor had realized when he waked on the floor of the kitchen. He realized that he was not separate from the stars. And nor (the implication was obvious) was he separate from his wife. Destroying his house had been an attempt to do away with her. He knew that now. But the truth was she had never left. The truth was he could bring her back whenever he wanted to. And not merely as metaphor or memory or photograph in his mind: more than that. More than just remembrance: he could make the memory actual and touchable and intimate as the act of prayer. He could in fact become his wife. He already was, he said. What he meant by that he went no further to explain, he refused, for he felt that his meaning planed so far ahead of words that we would be better off (if we really hoped to understand) forgetting everything he had told us and starting over from square one. Forget I’m even here, he said. Forget that you’re here. Just stare at the stars and imagine that the line between the two of you—the line that conveys the train of your thoughts—is straight and infinite and indestructible. You’re that line, said the Instructor. In the silence that went after this assignment I watched the Instructor peer through the telescope and a number of students walk away from the field and disappear forever into the forest. I watched the few that were left gaze at the stars with expressions that must have reminded me—I remember writing the comparison in my notes, though I can no longer summon the visual image of anyone in that class—of a painting called The Gates of Paradise, a print of which my wife had scotch-taped to the wall of our bedroom, and which displayed a small black circle (about the size of an eyeball) at the center of an oversized and otherwise blank canvas. I tried to look along but nothing was there. Nothing was a fact I found wherever I looked. Perhaps that was the point. But I had thought the same word before—I had thought: Nothing—and no matter how many times I multiplied and translated and twisted after the end of this thought, I always arrived at the same locked door, the same anxious sense of idling and needing to do something fast—to go swimming or plant a tree or found a city or learn another language so thoroughly that I forget how to speak the one I was born with. And I couldn’t do that now. I was supposed to sit still. That was what my wife would have wanted, I kept telling myself, and this refrain convinced me, if not to commune with the stars, then at least to stare at them, and more importantly, to stare at everyone else, and to search their faces for evidence of sincerity, of an authentic connection with something immortal and timeless and unconditional. I didn’t find it. Most of the students just looked bored; the rest were trying too hard. I felt, watching them, the way I remember feeling in church after the body of Christ was passed out and everyone knelt at the pews and prayed. Not envy—I never wanted to talk to God directly. What the worshipers were thinking about never interested me. I was interested in what God was thinking, and though the concept of prayer—or anyway, of applying the name prayer to a certain sequence of thoughts, and presuming that the rest of our thoughts are something other than and separate from prayers—always struck me as innately and self-evidently absurd, I believed, as I looked around the church, as a child, and now, as I looked around the baseball field, that God was listening to each of us, closely, and that He was horrified. He was thinking: Stop! You’re going about this all wrong! He was—at least, I believed that He was—an unceasingly sad animal, God, and His sadness, I thought, was rooted in an escalating sense of physical and emotional exhaustion, an awareness that the race of humans, which He had intended to one day become His helpers, and perhaps His partners in the profession of supervising the universe, would never learn to leave Him alone, never stop asking Him to explain and justify and adjudicate their presence on earth, and that, worst of all, He could not abandon or even blame us for acting the way we did. He was at fault. He was our father. In this regard, I realized, and I wrote this realization in my notes, thinking that I had, at last, found an important clue, God reminded me somewhat of my wife, whose frequent complaints that I wasn’t what she wanted, that I was selfish, that I was always asking and never giving, were invariably followed by periods of profound repentance, during which, after retiring to her bedroom, and locking the door, so that I had to go outside and climb through the window in order to get back to her, she apologized over and over, and assured me that she was wrong, she was selfish, she should stop trying to change me into something I wasn’t. She loved me. She did. And yet, she said, she only wished that I would empathize with her once in a while, really empathize, rather than just thinking the word empathy and claiming it for myself. She wanted to know that I was part of her, that when she felt sad, for instance, I did too, and that our sadness was something we bore together and at the same time. And since this was what I had always thought God wanted, since God’s greatest hope, I thought, was for someone to feel what He felt, to share the awful responsibility of omniscience, I understood, sitting in the field, that the act of love was not so far removed from that of religious faith, and I even scribbled, on a separate page of my notes, and in letters large enough that the Instructor—who had, without my noticing, walked to where I was sitting, and was standing right in front of me—must have been able to make them out, an equation that I no longer consider complete:
 

WM(stars) + EX (2) = GOD - I/infinity 

The Instructor said nothing direct about this equation. But the long way he looked at me after I had closed the notebook suggested that he had seen what I had written and that he thought I was on to something. Have you read Genesis, he asked. I had. Then you must know, he said, that whereas Eve eats the fruit out of kindness, because she doesn’t want to disappoint the serpent, Adam’s sin is that he loves his wife more than God. Adam eats the fruit out of fear that when Eve leaves, he will be alone. Without her, he thinks, said the Instructor, even Eden seems unbearable. He stared at me. His stare was softer than that of the students at the stars, and staring back at him, I began to sense that the space between us was no longer there, and that he was reading the words that were passing through my mind. Probably this was paranoia. I realize that. But the thought that he might indeed know what I was thinking struck me at the time as so disturbing that without deciding to I began thinking the word no over and over again, so that there was nothing else for him to hear. After another moment he returned to the pitcher’s mound and resumed his lecture, pointing out the constellations with the blade of the pocketknife. As I reclined in the grass, watching this man, and wondering whether I knew him, and from where, I began to lose consciousness, and this sense of slowness, of dreamulous languor, as the phrase appeared to me at the time, endured for the duration of the lecture, despite my efforts to come out of it. I still remember the weight of my thoughts—the gravity—as I gazed up at that sky, at Carina, Cassiopeia, Kepler, Hydrus, Infiniti, Atari, Atavon, Microscopium, and more, more constellations until at last, unable to tell one figure from the next, and starting to suspect that the Instructor was no longer naming actual patterns, but simply inventing new ones as he went along, I gave up listening and let close my eyes, waiting for sleep to pass through me. Even as the lecture drew to an end I remained in this position, prostrate, hearing as if from inside another room my classmates gathering up and into the silence, apparently having forgotten all about my existence, as I had in some sense forgotten myself. Yet I was not completely asleep—not yet. I had the weird sensation of watching the world through my eyelids, and what I saw after the class was dismissed was the Instructor standing at the pitcher’s mound and training the telescope directly at my face, which he studied closely, pausing at times to jot notes in the margins of a large book that I believed to be a dictionary. It was some time before I waked. The grass was wet and the sight of the fog advancing over the field, so thick that I could no longer make out the outline of the outfield fence, convinced me for the spasm of several seconds that I was perhaps in heaven—a conviction that grew stronger when I remembered the dream I had just come up from under. In the dream I had been sitting alone inside a small railroad coach that was stationed along a narrow track. After embarking from under the backstop of the baseball field, the train had accelerated through the forest and out across the plains, past farm after farm of corn and cows and wheat and wildflowers, traveling at the astonishing speed of something between sound and sight toward the end of an earth that I believed, as some of the sailors on the Santa Maria are said to have believed, despite copious evidence to the contrary, and despite the repeated assurances of Columbus, to be flat, and more to the point, finite. Stop the train, I shouted, shutting my eyes, and fearing that at any moment we might tumble headlong over the edge of the universe. But I could not make myself understood, and when at last I opened my eyes I saw that I was sitting across from a man I recognized as the reincarnation of the astronomer Nicholaus Copernicus, whose De revolutionibus orbium coelestium, published in 1543, was the first written proposal of the heretical hypothesis that the universe was without a center. Your wife has gone a long way off, said the man, shaking his head. Tonight she’s really gone a long way, he said, and it’s no use looking for her anymore. And everyone, he went on after a long while, looking out the window, is your wife. Everyone you talk to, everyone you ride with and look at stars with is someone you used to love. You must, he said, have learned some astronomy in school. You know that the earth isn’t the center of the universe. Everyone accepts that without question now because the scientists proved it. But in the old days the church said the earth was the center, and there were constant debates about which side was correct. Just as everyone who ever lived, said Copernicus, believes their god is the true God. Then we argue about whether we’re apes or angels, and no one can clearly define the difference between the two. But if we look very closely, and if we learn how to separate the true beliefs from the false ones, then perhaps, he said, faith can become synonymous with science. At this point Copernicus lowered his head and, praying, pronounced what I later learned were the last words of another famous stargazer, Tycho Brahe, whose death, according to the report written by his doctor, Johann Jessensius Jessen, was occasioned by the bursting of his bladder, eleven days after a banquet with the Bohemian Count of Rosenberg, during which the astronomer had been too courteous to obey the call of nature. Brahe’s Assistant, Johannes Kepler, who in 1596, at the age of twenty-four, had published the first and most forceful defense of the Copernican model, and whose reputation would eventually eclipse that of his mentor, observed Brahe’s long and unspeakably painful descent into delirium, and recorded at sometime between 9:00 and 10:00 in the morning of October 24, 1601, his dying sentence, which we can only assume was addressed to God, and which was spoken, according to Kepler, in a state of feverish and dreamlike anguish:
 

Ne frusta vixisse vidar. 

May I not seem to have lived in vain, was how I translated this sentence, and what struck me even in sleep, and even more so when I waked, was the indecision implicit in the word seem—as though after years of patient and contemplative research, Brahe was less certain than ever about what was happening to him and even whether he had lived at all. After repeating this phrase several times, Brahe had closed his eyes and let go of life peacefully, having realized, Kepler writes, that death is nothing more than another dream, and that everyone is always someone else. And indeed, it was not until I had come to a similar conclusion and resigned myself to the fate of falling endlessly and effortlessly through the indefinite expanse of space and time that the train slowed to a stop, opening its doors on a vast green field which the waking Copernicus, waving his arms, claimed to be the Kingdom of Christ, the Kingdom of Christ! This was the last moment of the dream that I could recall and the memory merged with what I was looking at now. The students were gone. There were no stars left. The only factual evidence corroborating the night before was the telescope, which the Instructor had left standing on the pitcher’s mound, and the notebook, which had somehow traveled out of my pocket during the night and lay open on the ground beneath the telescope. How this had happened I had no clue. But I would not have been surprised to learn that I was responsible. What I remember most unimpeachably is the sense of loss that overcame me in the moment after I walked to the mound and turned the notebook to the page the equation was on.
 

WM(stars) + EX (2) = GOD - I/infinity 

I no longer understood it! Whatever revelation I had been about to uncover had dissolved, as dreams will, and what remained on the page appeared (and still appears, despite the fact that I can decipher the symbols, and that I can precisely recall the sequence of thoughts that led me to compose them) completely nonsensical. Pocketing the notebook, I walked to the mound and trained the telescope at the night. Through the eyepiece I saw something in outer space—something between two of the stars and brighter than both of them, completely still. At first it was nothing more than a point of light:

But as I watched the light began to elongate. Soon the original point was the end—or the start—of a line that stretched for what must have been more than a million light years across the dome of the Milky Way.

This point grew progressively smaller. Not until the light had vanished completely did I step back from the telescope and remember where I was. The fog had lifted. The earth was flat. I heard the birds in the branches and the distant sound of a train getting longer and longer and longer.

I wonder how they decided that October 15th was the right day for this important activity.

Coming soon, Rubber Glove Appreciation Day and Barf like a Pirate with Norovirus Day.

These are pictures from two years ago ... Ethan was Pablo from Backyardigans and Emma was Mulan. Last year they were Darth Vader and Princess Leia.

Then my Emma wrote "How to Carve a Pumpkin" in first grade.  It went something like this: "First, cut the pumpkin. Mom did that. Then, pull out the goo. Mom did that. Then cut the face. Mom did that." You get the picture.

Needless to say, I felt pretty bad and determined that my kids would do their own pumpkins this year.

So on pumpkin day at the Wilhite house, I pulled out the paints and got the kids started. This is when everything started to unravel. Emma was very disappointed to find out that the paint wasn't thick enough to keep the green of the pumpkin from showing through. It was going to take at least three coats of paint. Then I decided things were going well enough to do a few dishes about three feet away from the table. About 30 seconds later, Ethan announced that he needed more paint. Not believing my ears I turned around to see that he had dipped both hands in the paint and had proceeded to touch everything within reach. It took me 45 minutes to clean everything up. So, I wasn't exactly excited to start Round 2 today. So I hunted up these awesome Mr Potato Head type things to push into pumpkins. Life saver!!  We may never paint or carve again!

Any more successful family fun ideas for Halloween?

At Mehregan Celebration

I want goal setting to be a big part of my sessions - and my life! - so I was excited to learn more about this topic. The reading was great in so far that it brought up (a) having each goal be a S.M.A.R.T. (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Time bound) goal (b) tying your goals into your values and (c) creating a step-by-step process of documenting goals. I'm really going to be make sure I use all of these techniques with my clients, as it will greatly help them not only figure out which race to run, but how to cross the finish line!

What I really took away from this class were all the things that should have been put into practice when you failed on a goal you set-up for yourself. What you have still failed if you:

* were accountable?

* had supportive people around you (aka kick-the-naysayers-to-the-curb)?

* had been realistic in your goals?

* were in line with your values and not the values or ideas of others?

* had prioritized your goal with the other goals/commitments in your life?

* had replaced the word "could" with the word "will"?

* had set-up reminders for yourself about your goal?

* had created a vision board?

* didn't cloud your focus with outside commitments?

* taken it one goal at a time?

* had celebrated the milestones?

* considered the obstacles?

I know it's a lot to digest, but look at everything that can stand in your way! It makes me look back and realize that a goal is something that needs to be considered, and commited to, and cultivated. It's a lot of freaking work! The next time I start to get a hankering for a goal, or am helping a client nail one down, I'll keep this post handy and make sure that nothing is falling through the cracks.

Pam has many pictures of this outrageousness. Pictures of NYPD kneeling in prayer with Jihadis. Pictures of the American Flag with the stars replaced with the crescent and the moon. What is moon god going to do for you? Not a thing. He is an idol of the lost who do not know God. She also has many pictures just awful behavior.

It is awful to me. If you disagree, I don't care. This is my site. Go away. Pray to satan. He is your god. In the end all he will offer you is eternal death and damnation. If you would like to avoid this, you can. Leave me a comment with your e-mail address, and I will share with you how. Otherwise, everyone have a nice day.

Source: Atlas Shrugs.

Cross-posted @ The Talon and Rosemary's Thoughts.

Trackback URL for Rosemary's Thoughts.

1.  I'm taking Punkin' Pie out of school on Thursday so she can come with me to a school-group screening of Beyond Belief.  I'm not wild about keeping my kids out of school for anything, but I think that this is an important film with an important message.  The film is being shown to several groups of high school students, and I know for sure that my kid can keep up with the conversation with the filmmaker (and, if I'm not mistaken, at least one of the widows) afterward.  I wrote an email to her teachers this morning letting them know about the absence, and making sure they know that SHE is responsible for getting caught up on the work she'll miss that day.

2.  I have a bunch of ideas for blog posts for nearly all of my sites, but I have almost no time to sit down and compose them.  I'm hoping to knock one out today, and I'll just have to start writing drafts for the others.

3.  I finished The Stand the other day.  Kizz, did you say that the ending disappointed you?  It did me, too, a little, but I very much enjoyed the novel.  I'm now about a third of the way through Twilight and I have to say that I heartily DISagree with the woman who told me it was on par with Outlander.  I know Outlander, and Twilight is no Outlander.

4. I wasn't the only one to give student essays back last Friday.  As I walked out of my building on Friday morning, a student (who wasn't mine) was heard saying "he gave me a letter grade lower than I was expecting for everything!"  This made me smile.  Welcome to college, my dears.

5.  Beanie inspired me to poetry this morning as she played on the tree swing while we waited for the bus:

She swings joyfully in the early morning light,

the branch sways and creaks through the arc of her path,

and  golden leaves shower her flight.

6.  As I was driving home yesterday, The Writer's Almanac was on NPR (does anyone else think that Garrison Keillor is creepy?).  It seems that yesterday was Margaret Thatcher's birthday, and the quote that Keillor used to commemorate the occasion was this one, which I love:

"Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren't."

7.  I have one more student essay to evaluate and I'm DONE!  Of course, I still have a bunch of response papers and in-class writings to look over, but after this afternoon, the heavy-lifting of the first round of essays is in the proverbial can!

8.  It turns out that I should add "grammar" to my list of things that are touchy topics to discuss in public.  Someone latched on to a Grammar Wednesday post I wrote a while ago in response to a request from California Teacher Guy, and is not letting go.  This person insists, in a way that feels very confrontational and polemic to me, that the phrase "to go missing" is wrong, wrong, WRONG, and seems entirely unwilling to consider another point of view.  I'm going to agree to disagree with this person and leave it at that.  Enthusiasm is one thing, but even *I* have edges....

9.  I really wish that I was willing to post pictures of my children's faces on this site.  I took a gorgeous shot of Punkin' Pie last weekend, and I am astounded by how utterly beautiful this child is.  Holy crap.

10.  The possibility, though slim, does exist that Mr. Chili might not be home for Thanksgiving this year.  He's involved in a launch that's happening in the deserts of New Mexico that may or may not spill over the holiday.  This is going to be a stressful thing - if it happens - for many reasons.  First of all, we're going to hate - HATE, I say! - being away from him for that long.  Second, Thanksgiving is being held at his mother's house this year (as opposed to his aunt and uncle's place), and Mother Chili will be some kind of unhappy if her only local child won't be in attendance.  We'll handle whatever comes, but the idea that my husband might not be home for Thanksgiving prompted me to stop at the grocery store on my way home from work this afternoon to purchase the ingredients for a mini Thanksgiving dinner.  I've got a turkey breast, some sweet potatoes, some stuffing and cranberry sauce, and I've put together a batch of creamed onions.  Trust me, you wish you lived at MY house tonight.  Mmmmm!

Happy Monday TUESDAY, Everyone!

(thanks for catching that, Gerry.  Since Monday was a holiday around here, Tuesday felt like Monday.  Sorry....)

And as always, i was assigned family stylist by noneother then myself. I'm glad i could help everyone be their best on that special day. You can see me in action helping my mom out with her makeup. I also helped her with her hair. I'm getting the hang of using velcro rollers now. I also helped my mom trim her hair so that she's have more layers to it which would really help bring out the curls on different layers. As a result she looked beautifull. My younger bro looked polished with his purple shirt which he and myself went looking for it high and low. I was very particular in looking for that exact colour and when we finnally found it, we were so pleased to know it was on sale. So basically our efforts paid off really well. As for dad i wanted him to try a sleek striped shirt which would complement my moms outfit. As for the cople of the day, i'll lets the pictures speak for themselves. Just so you know i had nothing to do with their outfits for the day!

The food that night was not bad. It was a mix of Itallian, Western,Chinese, Japanese, and Thai cuisines. That's a lot right? Well it was a good mix i have to say. There were pasta with seafood marinara sauce, teriyaki chicken, roasted lamb with brown sauce, soft shell crab with chicken floss, japanese tofu cooked in a thai style gravy, chinese style veggies and some seafood starters with salads. All in all, it was a great night as i had a chance to see my parent on the dance floor in action for the first time.

Simple, innocent "trick-or-treat" days are gone forever from many neighborhoods. What was once a fun-loving, family-participating event has turned into dark occultic activities opposite from the Light-giving God we serve. So, as a Christian, how do you respond? Turn on the lights? Turn off the lights? What to DO??

Talk to 100 Christians and you may have 100 shades of opinion about the celebration of Halloween. Some Christians turn on their porch lights and welcome trick-or-treaters with candy--and a specially prepared Halloween evangelism tract. Others turn off their lights and go to their churches for a Harvest festival. Some churches plan an alternate "Bible Hero" costume party; some teens do evangelism presentations.

I don't pretend to have all the answers--I am providing Christian links at Peggie's Place so you can make up your own mind....and the bottom line? Jesus Christ is Lord--and we celebrate HIM every day! However you choose to celebrate or not to celebrate, may HE be the honoring factor in every decision!

Enjoy the links, both pro and con the celebration of this holiday: Halloween: A Christian Perspective. As for us, we're turning on our porch lights and hope to share a big Christian smile and lots of candy with our neighborhood kids. God loves them - and so do we!

The arrangement showcases eucalyptus beads, hydrangea, roses, dahlias, hypernicum berries, pears, and cockscomb celosia.  It was a magical evening for the beautiful bride and groom.