Friday, August 1, 2014

Editor's Corner

August2014

“The Course in Miracles says a miracle is a shift in perception that removes in me a block between me and my awareness of love's presence.”...Mary Morrissey.

The subject of Love and Miracles is an ongoing one in this late summer issue. The Bible speaks much of Love, (in many different chapters and verses....) and it is the primary subject ventured into by poets the world over. Yet you may never have looked at it quite the way Adam of Bremen spoke through our Merlin of "Merlin Insights." Merlin tells us, "This is a piece I did some while ago now, over a year I think. I used to regularly channel from a very talkative monk named Adam from Bremen in Germany. I did find him on the internet so I know he did exist in that time." Some deep thoughts here.

Judy Kroll aka Featherwind makes a case with a personal example against "Injustice" in her column "On Trek." Peg Jones (Angel Whispers) discusses Joy and suggests ideas for including it in our lives.
Mattie Lennon, (Irish Eyes) spruced up and attended the Miss Ireland pageant and brings us the story of one of the contestants, Susan Jane Dunne, Miss Kilkenny. Thomas F. O'Neill (Introspective) tells a moving story in "Life's Synchronicities."

John I. Blair's column "Always Looking - People Who Made A Difference XX" features the Lady of the Lamp: Florence Nightingale. His two poems for August are "Summer Hawk," and "Healing."
"I Can't Imagine" by Bruce Clifford and "Triumphant ~6-18-2014~ by M. Jay Mansfield aka Fire Eagle are single submissions for August from those two poets. Both of them have had some personal tunnels to get through this year. Bud Lemire presents "At The Band Shell," "Lynn and The Martins," "Within Our Time" and "Competition."

Phillip Hennessy aka Philipo ran across a couple poems he wrote in 2009 not shared by Pencilstubs previously: "Trust" and "A Crushed and Broken Person." Bethany Davies returns with "A Woman's Story."

Special this month is an essay by Susan Diane Lynch aka Spirit 0662 in the articles section: "Life is about Change." It may be exactly what you needed to realize today.

Michael John Fierro is focusing on personal pursuits during this Summer, and will be MIA until further notice. Also absent this issue is Mark Crocker aka Rabbo and his serialized tale about Lexi written from Lexi's perspective, with a busy schedule keeping him from his writing.

As always we thank Mike Craner, our beloved webmaster. His summer has had its peaks and its valleys but yielded many beautiful pictures to preserve memories.

Look for the September issue of Pencil Stubs Online. Note: authors can send in their work for that now.

Click on Mary E. Adair for bio and list of other works published by Pencil Stubs Online.
This issue appears in the ezine at www.pencilstubs.com and also in the blog www.pencilstubs.net with the capability of adding comments at the latter.

 

Irish Eyes

The Pecker's Daughter

On Saturday 19th July, in the Ballsbridge Hotel, Miss Cork, Jessica Hayes, was crowned Miss Ireland. Among her 35 co-finalists one was unique.
Miss Kilkenny, Sarah Jane Dunne, daughter of the famous troubadour Pecker Dunne is the first member of the Travelling community to compete in the Miss Ireland Pageant since its inception 67 years ago. She has an Honours Degree from Trinity College but I asked her where did it all start? What was her path to Miss Kilkenny?
 
“I took part in the Miss University Ireland pageant earlier this year where I represented Trinity College! After doing this I went on to enter 2fm’s Miss Personality competition. This competition was based solely on the entrant’s personality and nobody had a clue as to what we looked like! I was one of 8 finalists and we all used alternative names – mine was ‘Miss Trad’ – so as not to give our identities away, it was all very secretive! The winner of this competition went on to secure a place as a Miss Ireland finalist with the title of Miss Personality.

I didn’t win but I did very well in the competition and went on to compete in the Miss Ireland Semi-finals, where I was selected as ‘Miss Kilkenny’. I was absolutely thrilled to be selected, I really gave it my best shot this year at becoming a Miss Ireland finalist as it is my last year to enter due to age restrictions. I love the whole pageantry thing. I know that there are people out there who really dislike the whole thing but speaking from experience, participating in pageants has really helped give me confidence. I have made so many friends from participating in pageants and I have had so much fun along the way. If you have an interest in modelling, entering pageants like the Miss Ireland, is a great way of networking and gaining experience.”

She is also a talented musician (no surprise there. At what age did she start playing? “I was so young that I actually don't remember! I would say I was around 6 when I started playing the concertina. This was my first instrument and it wasn't until I was 15 that I took up the fiddle.”

Not many Travelers make it to third-level education. What was different here? “My dad always encouraged me to read, from a very young age he had me reading. He was a big reader himself so this had a huge influence on me. He also encouraged me to do well in school and instilled the importance of getting an education. He never pressured me, or any of my siblings, when it came to choosing college or doing exams, he always just encouraged us to do our best and work hard.“

pic shows Sarah Jane with her father

She didn’t feel like an outsider in Trinity but learned that ignorance is everywhere: “It was after finishing a lecture with a group of students from my class in Trinity one morning, and we went to grab a cup of coffee. We were all sitting around, in a group, discussing our teaching practice and how we were finding the course.

I must add that I didn’t really know this group as I had not spent much time with them. One of the girls who was sitting at the table across from me began a tirade about how it annoyed her that ‘traveller children get everything handed to them’. She began a discussion about a traveller girl that was in her class, and how this child was getting help from all angles, and she really seemed upset and disgusted at this.

She went on about the ‘special treatment’ that this child was receiving and how outraged she was at it for a few minutes and when she finished I spoke to her and said, ‘Wow, that is terrible, isn’t it?’, she nodded in agreement, and I went on to state that ‘I am a member of the travelling community and I can assure you that I have never had anything “handed to me”, in fact I have worked extremely hard to get where I am today’. I made my point and expressed my upset at her statement, the whole group sat in discomfort and what had just unfolded! This girls jaw had literally dropped and she made some redundant comment about how she just felt that ‘everyone should be treated equal’! At this point I just got up and left the table. I had made my point and I wasn’t going to sit there and entertain this ignorant girl.”

Sarah Jane at Trinity

And where does the Pecker’s daughter plan to go from here? “I plan to travel, I really want to see the world and now I finally have my degree I can make my plans. Since finishing secondary school I have been putting myself through college and only recently completed my Higher Diploma in Education where I secured an Honours Degree from Trinity College Dublin. I am now a qualified English and Religion secondary school teacher. I am hoping to secure some work so I can save up and go off on my journey.”

The Travelling community is fully behind her; delighted that one of their own has made it. “I have received really positive messages from those who have contacted me since I began receiving media attention. I met two lovely travelling women from Kilkenny on the train back from Dublin recently and they were so proud of me, they praised me for how well-spoken I was on ‘Saturday Night with Miriam’ and gave me some words of encouragement. I have received countless messages on Facebook from members of the Travelling community who have all expressed their happiness at my success. I couldn’t see anyone looking down on me for going to college, and if there are people out there who do then that saddens me, I am sad for them.”

I asked Sarah Jane what she thought of the fact that the trade of Tinsmith is almost dead. “It is sad really, we have a beautiful copper bucket at home in Clare that was given to my dad decades ago by a tinker man. It would be great to see something in place to revive this skill among young travellers.”
It was the first time I asked a Trinity Graduate “are you wide to the gammon?”
 
“I am of course! My dad was a fluent speaker of Cant and I picked up some of it from him. One of my biggest regrets is not learning to speak it like he could before he passed away. It is a lovely language and a huge part of Traveller culture.”

There’s only one way for the Pecker Dunne’s daughter to go, UP.

Click on Mattie Lennon for bio and list of other works published by Pencil Stubs Online.
Below: Sarah Jane Dunne

Always Looking – People Who Made A Difference XX:

Florence Nightingale

Florence Nightingale, 1820-1910, founded Nursing as a respectable trained profession. Born to a wealthy English Unitarian family, Florence was educated by governesses and then by her father. Familiar with Greek, French, German, and Italian, she also studied history, grammar, philosophy, and mathematics.

On February 7, 1837, she said she heard the voice of God telling her that she had a mission in life. It took her some years of searching to identify that mission. This was the first of four occasions when she claimed God spoke to her.

By 1844, she had chosen a different path than the social life and marriage expected of her by her parents, deciding to work in nursing, then not considered a "proper" profession for women. Florence went to Prussia to experience a German training program for nurses. She worked briefly for a Sisters of Mercy hospital near Paris. Her views began to be respected.

In 1853, Florence became superintendent of London’s Institution for the Care of Sick Gentlewomen. When the Crimean War began, reports came back of terrible conditions for wounded and sick soldiers. Florence volunteered to go to Turkey and, at the urging of a family friend, took 38 women as nurses, including 18 Anglican and Roman Catholic nuns. They accompanied her to the war front, leaving England October 21 and entering the military hospital at Scutari, Turkey, November 5, 1854, where Florence headed nursing efforts in English military hospitals until 1856.

Embarkation of Balaklava Soldiers

She established more-sanitary conditions and ordered supplies, beginning with clothing and bedding. She gradually won over cooperation from the military doctors and used significant funds raised by the London Times. Soon she focused more on administration than on actual nursing, but continued to visit the wards and send letters back home from injured and ill soldiers. Her rule that she be the only woman in the wards at night earned her the title “The Lady with the Lamp.” The mortality rate at the hospital fell from 60% at her arrival to 2% six months later.

The Lady of the Lamp

Florence Nightingale applied her interest in mathematics to developing statistical analyses of disease and mortality, inventing the use of the pie chart. She fought both a reluctant military bureaucracy and her own illness with Crimean fever to eventually become general superintendent of the Female Nursing Establishment of the Military Hospitals of the Army (March 16, 1856).

Florence was already a heroine in England when she returned, though she actively worked against public adulation. She helped to establish the Royal Commission on the Health of the Army in 1857, giving evidence to the commission and compiling her own report, published privately in 1858. She also became involved – from London – in advising on sanitation in India.

Florence was quite ill from 1857 until the end of her long life, living in London, mostly as an invalid. Her illness, never identified, may have been organic or psychosomatic – some have even suspected it was intentional, to give her privacy and time to continue her writing. In 1860, she founded the Nightingale School and Home for Nurses in London, using funds contributed by the public to honor her work in the Crimea. In 1861, she helped inspire the Liverpool system of district nursing, which later spread widely.

Elizabeth Blackwell’s plan for opening a Woman’s Medical College (it opened in 1868 and continued for 31 years) was developed in consultation with Florence. The King awarded her the Order of Merit in 1907, making Florence Nightingale the first woman to receive that honor. Florence declined the offer of a national funeral and burial at Westminster Abbey, requesting that her grave be marked simply. Only her initials appear on the family marker in a small cemetery in Hampshire.

Drawn from several sources, including:
    womenshistory.about.com/od/nightingale/p/
    nightingale.htm
    geocities.com/~bread_n_roses/nightin.html
    adelaideinstitute.org/Dissenters1/Muirden/nightingale 1.htm

Click on John I. Blair for bio and list of other works published by Pencil Stubs Online.

 

On Trek

Injustice

-- I have a hard time with injustice! I have seen it, been treated unjustly, and feel it strongly now that I am older. Can I stop it? No. What has it done for me? Looking back I now know that I am stronger because of it. I can write about it, pray about it, send it to the universe to help alleviate it. I know I am not alone in how I feel about it. I see tons of videos and quotes, and pictures on facebook, where people abhor injustice, and it makes me send out more love. More love would be the answer in my humble opinion.

It is easier to say, well they can speak up for themselves. Well maybe they can't because of fear. Fear is very powerful. If I knew that I could stop all injustice with a wave of my arm I would. I know fear and injustice isn't in the heavenly realms. If it can be stopped in the heavenly realms, then why can't it be stopped here on planet earth? We need to learn to stop in within ourselves first. It has to be part of us to not want it, or allow it in our lives. Then, and only then will it ripple thru to other people, and finally be eliminated from Planet earth. We are the problem, then we are the solution.

When I was in school, I watched kids berate other kids. I remember , growing up in Massachusetts, the first black family came to our little hamlet. The little girl walked to school, and boys would come up and call her bad names. I watched this, and felt so bad for that little girl. Since I walked to school, the next day I waited for her.. We walked together into the school. The boys called her bad names, and then ME TOO. Names like creampuff for me. That is the worst they could do I guess. So my dear friend and I endured this for about a week. Then, they left us alone.

We can all take a stand against injustice by not allowing it to be part of us. From the book, The afterlife of Billy Fingers, a true story, of a bad boy who passed, and wrote a book with his sister who is still alive here on the planet. So many Truths stick out in that book, but here is one I will always hold dear to me. "Every single life is valuable in ways you cannot imagine or figure out while you're alive. Every single life is a gift."

EVERY SINGLE ONE.. know that, believe that, and changes will start to take affect in yourself, and will mirror out to the rest of the world.
Hugs
Judith...aka Featherwind

Click on Judith Kroll for bio and list of other works published by Pencil Stubs Online.

Merlin Insights

Given by Adam of Bremen through his connection with Merlin
There is much to say on this subject, equally, a great deal I cannot tell you. This is sad for me as it would put much of the following into perspective. Much of this paper is concerned with love; love, pure and simple. For that is all that we, as spirit, are made of, and so, as the human form of spirit are you, nothing more and nothing less. There is but one state of love, so there is love, or there is absence of love. Absence of love you will recognise as fear.

It is love from which you come, and to which, ultimately you must return. This is the collective energy source, the collective spirit of mankind. It is that from which you come and it is the truth of that which I wish to impart through this paper.

I will pose a question to you at this point. What is love? What is it, of which we all speak so freely? I was a monk and I lived many, many centuries ago; you will find me if you seek. My name was Adam and I came from Bremen. I have spoken through others before and I hope I will get the opportunity to speak again. The medium is foreign to me but the subject is not. I was a monk, and you may well be asking, how could he have known love, a love that could relate to those who live this life today? Oh! I loved!! But I ask you what it is that you are doing in this your life; do you understand what it is that you have come from? When you wish for someone love, do you understand what it is you are wishing for? When you tell someone you love them, do you understand what it is that you are saying. I think not! I ask you again, what is love?

I will ask you to think on this a little longer for it is a very complex subject. It is very deep, and the deeper you go, the deeper you contemplate the subject, the less you realise that you understand of it. It is love, the energy which drives the universe, it is the ultimate energy. When you talk to people and you say to them, I wish you love, it is part of the energy that exists within you that you are offering them, the most private core part of you. At least that is how you perceive it. There are many kinds of love that you will speak of, you will speak about the love you have for your father, for your mother, for your children, for your partner, for the friend with whom you walk through your entire life at their side. All these you speak of in different terms but in reality you have no knowledge of that of which you speak. I ask you again, what is love?

All the types of love of which I have spoken are but one and the same. You may see them as being very different, but they are one and the same. How could this be so? What you are confusing is love the energy and love the emotion. The emotion is meaningless! It does not exist! Love the energy, is that from which the universe is made. It is that which drives the universe. It is that from which you are made. From the mi­nutest part of your very being, it exists, to the largest part of the universe, it exists. It cannot be destroyed, it can be used, it can be abused. But it cannot be destroyed. The form which it takes can be altered, but the energy itself cannot. As the universe has evolved, so we are part of it, you as a spirit are pure energy, you are nothing more. You are pure energy! The universe is the energy from which you have come, the universe is the energy from which you are made and this is love.

You come from an energy source so vast, so powerful, and so enormous in its scope, its power is limitless. And you, you are just the merest part and yet you are all of it. You come from a source so vast where we all are one; we are all from the same. When you give love, you are opening to the source and allowing it to flow through you and it is through this that your energy increases, it builds. The power available to you gets big­ger and bigger, the more you connect to it. Love itself cannot be destroyed. Love is energy; energy cannot be destroyed. You can change it, you could use it, you can dissipate it, but you cannot destroy it.

A wave as it crosses the ocean through the water, it is energy. The water moulds itself to the form and the intensity of the energy. That energy is love! This is a hard concept for you as a human soul, without your contact to the larger force. It is a hard concept for you to grasp. You grasp a little and you lose a little. For those who are prepared to open and to live in this purest of states the rewards are great. Your contact with the higher force remains supreme the more you love the more you can love. The more power you use the more you have to use. But how do you use it? How do you use energy in your world? In your world energy is something you buy; you buy it, you use it, it’s gone! The reality is that it has not gone; it has been dissi­pated, but not gone. This is what bars you from understanding the truth of energy.

Those who choose to open themselves to love, who choose to allow themselves to be part of it, are open, ready to accept, then the love within them grows. In your world you buy energy, you use it, it’s gone. What I bring to you is an inexhaustible supply. The more you use, the more you have. You meet someone in the street and you exchange love, you smile. You have given love and you receive a smile, you have received love. But because of that transaction the amount you received seems equal in many ways to the love you gave. Yet the energy within you, because of this transaction is equal to the sum of the two separate parts. It is an equation that science could not explain. In scientific terms you have one unit, you give one unit and you receive one unit, the result is you still have only one unit but if you give one unit and receive none in return you must be devoid of love. But on the contrary! In what I have explained, you have one unit, you give one unit, you receive one unit, and you have two units. The other soul with whom this transaction took place is now in possession of equal measures to you. From one unit given by you and one unit given by another there are now four units. Four tangible units in existence! This defies all logic and the laws of your physics. The scientist will tell you that it cannot be so, but if you are open to your feeling, you will know that it is so.

So I ask again the question what is love? It is part of the universe. As the universe gets ever bigger, none of it is ever destroyed it changes, it transforms, and it is never destroyed. It is from that which we come and it is upon that which we call, throughout our lives. It is that which we give to another. But when we pass on from this world, our life is not destroyed; the energy which made us so is not destroyed. It is still there! Maybe in this way you can understand a little that the passing from the spirit to the physical requires noth­ing. To pass from the physical to the spirit, loses nothing. If you take a teaspoon full of water; in itself it is complete and significant. But if you pour that teaspoon full of water into the ocean it immediately appears insignificant and yet it is there. It has gone nowhere. It has not disappeared, it is there. Yet you cannot see it, but it is there. So the love from you in this world is significant. Those around you will have great under­standing of the love that you can give, but as you pass you return to the fold from which you came and so the love returns to the ocean.

Those who understood you will remember you; will know that you are there, but to everybody else it will seem as though you have never been, but a part remains.

Click on author's byline for bio and list of other works published by Pencil Stubs Online.