FOR SUPERIOR HEALTH, GREATER PERSPECT IVE , AND PEACEFUL L IV ING Vol. 3

Pioneer of Possibility

LORI DESCHENE

Heads-Up

WHY SMART PEOPLE HURT

Knocking on Heaven’s Door

The God Theory

only better

Dear Reader,

In the latest volume of You Only Better, we’ve got an interesting mix of ideas to help make your lives better.

In Heads-Up, Eric Maisel considers the brain as a high-performance engine as he delves into the logic of mania in smart people. In Knocking on Heaven’s Door, former seminarian and retired NASA astrophysicist Bernard Haisch answers fundamental questions about our true human nature in the light of modern science.

For our Ignite the Light column are two features on Celtic mythology; an essay about the magical qualities of the bard and an exercise from Courtney Weber to heal your heart through Brigid, without question the most popular and beloved Celtic goddess.

Our Pioneer of Possibility is Lori Deschene, creator of TinyBuddha.com. She’s also a dreamer, writer, daughter, adventurer, sister, fiancé, and a good deal more. She packs a great deal of inspi-ration into her Tiny Buddha books.

The Dalai Lama’s guidance and wisdom in our Five-Part Harmony column inspires us to improve our state of mind and achieve inner peace.

But, wait, there’s more: After Midnight includes a chilling account of a phantom hitchhiker; Em-brace Your Inner Monster delves into the nasty characteristics of those born under the Gemini and Cancer zodiac signs; A Seat at the Table includes three delicious vegan recipes; Holy Holistics gives you all the info you’ll ever want or need on cardomon, lemongrass, and sage—their medici-nal properties and more; and we share three incredible Random Acts of Kindness stories.

As always, we want to hear from you. Please send story ideas and feedback to us at youonlybetter@rwwbooks.com.

Better is… better. We’re in this together.

L E T T E R F RO M T H E E D I TO R

Bonni Hamilton, Editor

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W H AT ’ S I N S I D E

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Bonni Hamilton Editor

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C O N T E N T S

4. Heads-Up Smart people and the logic of mania

10. Knocking on Heaven’s DoorFormer seminarian and longtime astrophysicist Bernard Haisch asks fundamental questions about God

13. Madcap MusingsOn life and on others

14. Ignite the LightThe Celtic love of story and the Bard’s lampoon Brigid and the well of heart healing

19. Pioneers of PossibilityA Q&A with TinyBuddha.com founder Lori Deschene

23. After Midnight The Evidence for Phantom Hitch-Hikers

28. Embrace Your Inner MonsterThe truth behind Gemini and Cancer

31. Five-Part HarmonyThe Dalai Lama improves your state of mind and inner peace

32. A Seat at the TableThree delicious vegan recipes everyone will enjoy

34. Holy Holistics Julia Lawless educates us about cardomon, lemongrass, and sage

37. Random Acts of Kindness

H E A D S - U P

THE LOGIC OF MANIA

The challenges smart and creative people encounter often

include anxiety, over-thinking, mania, sadness, and despair.

In this excerpt from Why Smart People Hurt, Eric Maisel

explains the rigors of mania and he provides some

important questions to contemplate.

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T his species that we currently are, this par-ticular experimental model, has a brain of a certain sort with its particular capacities and tendencies. Countless metaphors have been created to capture aspects or qualities of this brain, from brain as spider web (delicate, mini-mal, and hypersensitive) to brain as lens (mag-nifying and intensifying energy to a profound point), from brain as lamp to brain as map, from brain as cookbook to brain as toolbox, and of course brain as computer, calculator, and so on.

For the purposes of this article, let’s consider it as a high-performance engine in some of its aspects, capacities, and tendencies. It is an un-usual and unique engine that we rev up but that also revs itself up and functions on its own, per-petually and for its own reasons. We can send it racing after a calculation and make it do math or balance our checkbook. But it can also send itself racing to create a dream or a nightmare, an obsession or a mania. In this regard, it is also something like a high-strung stallion that we can ride if we are masterful and careful but that can also gallop off on its own.

What are the features of this high-performance engine or high-strung stallion that cause smart people so much distress? One is that mysteri-ous and potentially dangerous state known as mania. Mania can hit anyone—it can be induced by street drugs and by other causes, including the dynamics of one’s own racing, needy brain. But here we’ll focus on how mania arises from a person’s reliance on brain activity to solve her problems, including her existential ones, and the special way that such reliance afflicts smart people.

People who think a lot are more prone to mania than people who do not think a lot. That intel-ligent, creative, and thoughtful people are the ones more regularly afflicted by mania is be-yond question. Research shows a clear linkage between achieving top grades or scoring high on tests and suffering from bipolar disorder (that is, that so-called disorder in which depres-sion and mania cyclically appear), and between other similar measures of mental accomplish-ment and a racing mind.

There is plenty of evidence to support the con-tention that mania disproportionately affects smart, creative, thoughtful people. One study involving seven hundred thousand adults and reported in the British Journal of Psychiatry indi-cated that former straight-A students were four times more likely to be diagnosed bipolar (or manic-depressive) than those who had achieved lower grades.

In another study, individuals who scored the highest on tests for mathematical reasoning were twelve times more prone to bipolar dis-order. Similar studies underline the linkage between creativity and mania, and we have hundreds of years of anecdotal evidence to support the contention that smart and creative people often get manic.

The current naming system used to describe so-called mental disorders like manic-depression and bipolar disorder is weak and highly suspect, however. I’ve discussed this matter of the arbi-trary, whole-cloth creation of mental disorders through certain ruses of definition, including the spurious defining of the term mental disor-

There is plenty of evidence to support the contention

that mania disproportionately affects smart,

creative, thoughtful people.

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your racing brain. There is an emergency here, most often an existential emergency as the indi-vidual stares at nothingness and is petrified by the view. She must get away from that horrible feeling and, with a kind of strangled laugh that mimics mirth but isn’t mirth, she turns to her brain for help. She is frightened and in anguish, and to deal with that, she shouts to her brain, “Get me out of here!” Her brain then takes off, dreaming up every manner of scheme, activity, or desire.

All of the characteristic symptoms that we see in mania—including seemingly high spirits, heightened sexual appetite, high arousal levels, high energy levels, sweating, pacing, sleepless-ness and, at its severest, when the train has run off the rails, hallucinations, delusionsof grandeur, suspiciousness, aggression, and wild, self-defeating plans and schemes—make perfect sense when viewed from the perspective that a powerful need has supercharged a brain already inclined to generate thoughts. This thought machine has been revved up inthe service of nothing less than the direst exis-tential hunger, lack, or fear imaginable. All the rest follows.

To switch metaphors, the stallion has been spooked and will crash through even the sturdi-est fence in his wild, panicked flight.

The driving impulse may not be limited pain; it may not be pain at all. You may be working on a novel or a scientific theory that excites you and you can’t wait to get on with it. Still, that excited pursuit, even though in pursuit of something positive and valuable, has caused your mind

der itself, in Rethinking Depression and else-where. Here, let me just repeat a warning to be wary of employing or taking seriously the cur-rent mental-disorder naming system. In natural psychology, we completely eschew it.

The current naming system leads to odd and wrongheaded hypotheses, for example, that “because you are bipolar, you are creative” or that “perhaps mania accounts for the higher test scores.” What is true is that the greater the reliance on thinking and the more brain capac-ity for thinking a person manifests, the greater his or her susceptibility toward a racing brain. If you are inclined to think, why would those thoughts not be inclined to race in certain cir-cumstances?

If, for example, something threatened you or challenged you, why would your brain not race in its quest to deal with that threat or challenge?

What is called mania, in this regard, is simply a racing brain driven by a certain powerful pres-sure, need, or impulse. Anything that gets in the way of this seemingly forward motion—a physical obstacle, another person’s viewpoint, even a delay in the bus arriving—is viewed as a tremendous irritation. Hence the irritability so often associated with mania. This irritation makes perfect sense: if you must get on with whatever your racing brain is proposing—get every wall painted red, capture that song, solve that theorem—then nothing must get in the way.

It is this must that is at the heart of the matter. The must is the foot on the pedal that is driving

What is called mania, in this regard, is simply a racing

brain driven by a certain powerful pressure, need, or impulse.

Anything that gets in the way of this seemingly forward

motion is viewed as a tremendous irritation.

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to move from a lower gear to a higher gear, dramatically revving up the engine that is your brain, and now that engine is whining and straining. A dangerous dynamic is now at play: are you driving the engine, or is the engine driving you?

Yes, you are still in the saddle and clutching the reins, but the powerful stallion may throw you at any second.

What can be done about this racing? Natural psychology has many answers having to do with the art and practice of making meaning. However, the short answer is increased self-awareness and the courage to see one’s nature. It is the individual exposing this situation to himself and for himself, announcing that he must wrest control of his mind and his life, and practicing the techniques conventionally called mindfulness techniques, that amount to the short answer.

What we are actually talking about as a prospective solution or possible aid is not only con-ventional mindfulness, in which a person learns how to better deal with the contents of his or her mind, but a new awareness of the limits of thinking, the pressures of thinking on the organism, and the many other built-in challenges that come with having an experimental brain faced with out-sized challenges. Let’s call this new awareness brain awareness to distinguish it from mindful-ness. The main tactic a person can use to deal with the problems flowing from having this par-ticular experimental brain is brain awareness.

If a given individual won’t do this work or at this split second can’t do this work because her mania just can’t be mediated by her own efforts in the state in which she finds herself, then she may indeed be forced to resort to the unfortunate conventional solution of psychiatric medicine. She may need lithium, anticonvul-sants, calcium channel blockers, antipsychotics, benzodiazepines, or some other chemical used

to supposedly treat mania and with the power (though only sometimes, and always with a physical and emotional cost) to do that work for her.

In the end, it is the brain-aware manic individ-ual herself who ultimately must accomplish the odd and seemingly impossible task of saying, if only in a whisper, “I know that I’ve set my own brain racing, but that racing isn’t really a very good answer; no, creating mania isn’t the an-swer.” Perhaps our next brain model will come with an off switch and we will be able to shut the machine down as wanted, but for now, the only off switch we have is smart inner conversa-tion.

In natural psychology’s view of what is going on, where it is completely un-

derstandable and plausible how this wild ride came to be, we ask the individual—demand of him if we love him—that he examine his reasons for racing and not feel so free to race. It is not a race that can

be won, a truth the brain-aware manic knows somewhere

in his being and a truth that brings with it additional sadness

even at the height of the racing, as the manic races but knows that he can’t outrace existential distress.

Indeed, it is that very sadness that the manic is fleeing as fast as she can, even as she is rac-ing right toward it. It is like the Sufi tale of the disciple who flees his town because he believes that Death is coming for him there, and he races right to the place where Death is waiting. That is exactly where the manic also arrives—at depression.

Mania is completely understandable as a natu-ral result of setting a brain racing in support of the huge tasks, like making meaning, that human beings face. If, for example, a creative person experiences creating as a meaning opportunity and is pressured to race in the service of her creative efforts, she may usually

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seen sights, and all the excitement and meaning that is so patently lacking here in the castle?

The pressure is bound to mount and you rationalize that it is probably safe to go outside given how serene the countryside looks, how rarely bandit sightings and wild animal attacks are reported, and how wondrous the sights and sounds to be found out there are. The dangers aren’t apparent and the payoffs feel enormous. Sooner or later, a person is going to get castle fever as he stands on the ramparts and gazes over that lovely landscape that looks so serene. He is bound to stare so hard that he will begin to see mirages of meaning out there.

Smart people tend not to realize the extent to which both their forced calmness and their mini-manic activities are more ways of defend-ing themselves against letting their mind roar away in mania than affirmative lifestyle choices. They are unnaturally calm or constantly busy not so much because they love calmness or love keeping busy but because they do not want to permit the indulgence of mania. They are mak-ing an honorable effort to keep their racing mind in their own control—at the expense of what may prove to be unhappy lifestyle choices and huge expenditures of energy.

As a result, most smart people prevent them-selves from launching into full-blown mania. They do something else instead: they so assidu-ously guard against this wild ride that they live becalmed, in a forced state of calm that is very much like a straightjacket. Many smart people are living a forced calm life so as to help them-selves deal with what would prove a manic way

able to mediate that mania. But sometimes that pressure may overwhelm her. There is no sim-ple off switch that she can throw—which makes this risk all the more real and dangerous.

There is, however, an off switch that people do try to throw. They try to white-knuckle calm-ness. They don’t really feel calm, but they do everything in their power to act calm and be calm—maybe using alcohol to help, maybe using mindfulness to help, maybe using con-stant activity to help. This is why we don’t see more frankly manic people. Smart people ev-erywhere are doing their best not to be manic, hanging on to the reins of their racing brain as one might hang on to the reins of a wild stallion.

This is exhausting work, and sometimes these people are unequal to it, just as one might be able to hold on to the reins of a wild stallion for a while but for only so long. At some point, that powerful animal rips the reins right out of a wrangler’s hands. Nevertheless, smart people are for the most part built pretty well to hang on to calmness and to avoid full-blown mania—at the cost, however, of a tremendous amount of energy expended to maintain their white-knuckled calmness.

Even as they hang on, they are enticed by that mania. Consider the following analogy. If you live in a castle and pillagers periodically roar through your kingdom, bandits roam the coun-tryside, and wild animals lurk in the under-brush, you know that you are safer inside the walls than outside. But what if you know or sus-pect that somewhere out there are psychedelic parties, wild river rides, strange never-before-

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of life if they dared to let themselves go. They intuitively know just how dangerous and pow-erful the engine of their mind is, and for safety reasons, they tread very carefully through life.

You would think that a person would need to experience full-blown mania at least once in his life in order to recognize it as something that he does not want to experience ever again. Nor is it that children watch cautionary videos about mania in school, as soldiers are made to watch cautionary videos about venereal disease, and are taught to avoid it. Nor does anyone around them warn them about it. So why is this threat perceived as so very dangerous when it is nei-ther taught, talked about in casual conversation, or personally experienced?

The likely answer is that intimations of the dan-gers of mania come with the original endow-ment that makes a smart person who he is. He is probably built right from the start to be one of those people who recognizes himself in that crazy manic man on the street, who sees as part of his future the manic episodes of a Beethoven or a Byron, the one brushing aside waiting piano students because music is dying to come out, the other racing across Britain on a ram-page of sexual encounters with married women and young boys. Somehow he knows that he has that in him—that knowledge is a feature of his original personality.

If you have been endowed by nature with a brain that can race, it makes some sense to suppose that you have also been born with intimations of the dangers of allowing that brain to race. And it may perhaps also be the case that some numbers of smart people are born without this built-in understanding of how dangerous mania can be—and therefore are less effective in protecting themselves against its onslaughts or actually invite it into their life. Just as a given person can look down at the edge of a thousand-foot drop and experience no ver-tigo when, one might guess, nature should have built her to back away, so a given smart person may be built without a sufficient sense of the dangers of full-blown mania.

Why Smart People HurtEric Maisel • Conari PresseISBN: 9781609258856

A smart person therefore faces two different but related threats, the threat of painful, white-knuckled calmness that feels like self-created boredom and a prison sentence, and the threat of uncontrolled mania that is painful in the experiencing and that is likely to culminate in despair as she realizes that her manic efforts did not change the facts of her existence.

QUESTIONS FOR CONTEMPLATION:

1. Do you experience mania?

2. How does it express itself?

3. Do you feel that you keep yourself artificially calm as a way of dealing with incipient mania?

4. To what extent can you let your brain race but still remain in control of it?

5. To what extent are you at once attracted to mania and frightened of mania?

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Former Catholic

seminarian and longtime

astrophysicist Bernard Haisch

proposes that science will

explain God and God will

explain science. Consciousness

is no mere epiphenomenon

of the brain: it is our

connection to God,

the source of all

consciousness.

K N O CK I N G O N H E AV E N ’ S D O O R

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RETURN OF THE ASTRONOMER-PRIEST

Throughout this long journey, and despite a successful career in mainstream science that spans three decades, I never stopped asking fundamental questions. Moreover, my science has led me full-circle

to a search for answers to some most unscientific questions:

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In essence, I have become—perhaps despite my-self—the astronomer-priest of my early dreams.

I now know that the answers to these questions cannot be found in astronomy—or indeed any-where in modern science. Moreover, I believe these questions are not being answered correctly by the religions of the world either. Indeed, I think that some of the answers given by religion today are exactly the opposite of the truth and are responsible for the violence and hatred that engulfs the planet. Some of the purported answers are monstrously inhumane and unwor-thy of a real God.

I believe it is time to put medieval notions of divine fiefdoms—and all their attendant notions of allegiance, punishment, vengeance, and ser-vitude—behind us and move to a more rational and inclusive view of spirituality, one based on compassion and unity.

I, therefore, propose the God Theory—a theory that is intellectually satisfying as well as spiritu-ally enriching. What are its implications for us as human beings? What is our relationship to the God of the theory and God’s to us? How can we reconcile spirituality and science? How can we transform the world from one of suspicion, intolerance, and hatred to one of trust, toler-ance, and love?

ASKING FUNDAMENTAL QUESTIONS

The God Theory is my attempt to answer funda-mental questions about our true human nature in the light of modern science. It is based on the simple premise that we are, quite literally, one

with God, and God is, quite literally, one with us.

What would you do with infinite potential, some literally unlimited ability to do anything? Or to back up and put it in more prosaic, but more easily comprehensible, terms, imagine having a billion dollars in your bank account. Would this give you pleasure or satisfaction if you could never spend a penny of it? I doubt it. Except perhaps for a Dickens miser, the joy of wealth is in making use of it.

So try, in your limited human capacity, to imag-ine the existence of an unlimited conscious being of infinite ability, existing outside of space and time. This being must transcend space and time, because otherwise, whatever created space and time would be still greater than it. Where does such an imagined being take us?

Some of the ideas of this being become our laws of physics as well as our dimensions of space and time. An infinite number of other ideas that this being must have play no role in this par-ticular universe of ours. They may be put to use in creating completely strange other universes (so-called multiverses) that modern inflation theory postulates, perhaps adjacent to ours in some hyperdimension, that we would have no way of detecting owing to laws of nature totally incompatible with our physics and space and time.

The basic concept is that some combination of ideas within this infinite consciousness are com-patible with each other and together result in environments in which evolution can take place and beings can live. Some, however, are totally

Is there really a God?

What is my destiny?

What am I?

BERNARD HAISCH

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incompatible and result in pure chaos and an inability to evolve and manifest materially. A square-circle universe, for instance, presents an irreconcilable paradox without possibility of development.

An interesting question to consider here is whether an infinite intelligence knows implicit-ly which ideas are compatible, or whether even an infinite intelligence resorts to trial and error to achieve its ends. Infinity being what it is, I think we can safely assume an endless number of congenial combinations capable of yielding universes with characteristics that are utterly unimaginable to us. Yet these unimaginable universes still fulfill the essential purpose of the initiating intelligence, which is to manifest all physical forms possible within a given universe governed by a given set of ideas-become-laws. In this way, the infinite consciousness moves beyond sterile potential to actual creation—to doing rather than just being. He gets to act out and live out his ideas . . . his fantasies. He gets to spend his billion dollars.

Following this logic, the manifestations of this infinite consciousness in this particular physical universe are none other than all of us and all the things we perceive around us. The intelli-gence experiences itself through us because we are one with it. We are the creating intelligence made manifest—sons and daughters of that in-finite consciousness, experiencing one particu-lar creation that happens to consist of space and time and the laws of physics known and loved by modern science.

Also following this logic, religion’s claim that God knows our every thought begins to make sense. Our thoughts are part and parcel of this infinite consciousness. We just don’t have direct knowledge of this in the here-and-now. Yet there is nothing fundamentally mysterious or invasive about this sharing of thoughts. It is no more mysterious than when we, as adults, remember our own thoughts as children.

This infinite intelligence is, therefore, a direct analog of the Creator of religious doctrine, one totally compatible with modern science, be it the Big Bang, multi-dimensional string theory, evolution, etc. At some level, we know this to be true, because our consciousness is a part of the Creator’s consciousness. In some literal sense, we actually make our own universe and then enter into it. In this way, the Creator gets to experience one tiny part of its infinite potential through each of the billions of individual lives on this planet (and probably elsewhere). The infinite intelligence gets the joy of spending his billion dollars on all sorts of amazing experiences.

We are not fully aware of this, however, because the experience of physicality retains its infinite potential only when it is not fully defined. Our incomplete knowledge of physical reality en-riches our human experiences by maintaining its novelty, its unanticipated outcomes, its new-ness. It allows us each to live our lives as a great adventure. What sense of satisfaction would a scientist derive from inquiry if the laws of physics were all clearly revealed as part of the act of creation? What joy would there be in searching for buried treasure if you knew all

I believe it is time to put medieval notions of divine fiefdoms—and

all their attendant notions of allegiance, punishment, vengeance,

and servitude—behind us and move to a more rational and inclusive

view of spirituality, one based on compassion and unity.

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The God TheoryBernard Haisch • Weiser BookseISBN: 9781609250140

along where you hid it? It’s the mystery that underwrites the joy of discovery.

One of the oldest of religious teachings is that “The One who became many is becoming one again. ” That is how I view what we are all doing right now.

W MADCAP MUSINGS ON LIVING

Many people today believe that cynicism requires courage. Actually, cynicism is the height of cowardice. It is innocence and open-heartedness that requires the true courage—however often we are hurt as a result of it. −ERICA JONG

The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware. −HENRY MILLER

Do one thing every day that scares you. −ELEANOR ROOSEVELT

If you don’t become the ocean you’ll be seasick every day. −LEONARD COHEN

W MADCAP MUSINGS ON OTHERS

It is very unnerving to be proven wrong, particularly when you are really right and the person who is really wrong is proving you wrong and proving himself, wrongly, right. −LEMONY SNICKET

Our perfect companions never have fewer than four feet. −COLETTE

If you think you’re enlightened, go spend a week with your family. −RAM DASS

Family life! The United Nations is child’s play compared to the tugs and splits and need to understand and forgive in any family. −MAY SARTON

The Celtic Love of Story in Poetry and Song;

and the Bard’s Lampoon

I G N I T E T H E L I G H T

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Though the Celtic love for song and story amounted to an addiction, it was not solely on this account that the bard enjoyed honour and reward. He also possessed magical powers.

Seized by what the Welsh still call awen, the divine muse, he did not merely declaim, he prophesied. As late as the times of Gerald of Wales individuals known collectively as awe-nyddion were to be found and were consulted by those who wished to know the future. In order to discover it they threw themselves into frenzied paroxysms, babbling incoherently and giving all the indications of being entranced. It was for the questioner to winnow his answer from the chaff. Gerald, though he does not seem to have witnessed the performance, suggests the awenyddion may have been in the thrall of demons or spirits—a not untypical medieval conclusion. He casts doubt on the validity of the answers given in this way on the ground that if the same question were put twice it received different responses each time. All the same, one cannot help being reminded of the frenzies of the Delphic Pythia in their prophetic trance.

Even more dreaded was another of the bard’s quasi-magical skills: the power to sing the glam dicin. This was a form of lampoon with the potency of a spell which at one extreme could be used to drive out rats and at the other to disable, even kill, a human victim.

The glam was feared as much as or more than the weapons of an enemy, and even the greatest heroes avoided falling victim to it. When Ferdia is ordered by Mebd, his queen, to do mortal combat with his fellow student-in-arms, Cu Chulainn, he tries to refuse only to be warned he will be satirized. He does the queen’s bid-ding and dies for his efforts. It is a similar threat which compels Cu Chulainn himself to yield his three spears to the enemy bards who ask for them. By gaining them they are able to master and so destroy him.

As with so much else in Celtic life, the glam shares a mythical origin. When the divine Irish

bard Coirpre visits the Fomorian tyrant Bress, offended by his shabby treatment, he leaves the palace without taking leave of his host and instead of the customary panegyric sings the first glam uttered in Ireland:

No meat on plates,No milk from kine;No welcome for the late;No reward for bards:May Bress’s cheer be what he gives to others!

The Fomorian king came out in red blotches and, since a monarch must be unblemished, had no option but to abdicate. Later, when the Fomorians made war on their enemies, the Tuatha De Danann, Coirpre, himself a member of the divine Tuathan clan, again put his satiri-cal skill to use to ‘take away’ the honour of the Fomorian warriors, thereby incapacitating them even before the battle.

Like awen, belief in the power of the bard’s lampoon continued in Wales well into the Middle Ages, and it was believed that it could bring its victim out in blisters. In the light of

our modern knowledge of the intimate relation-ship between psyche and soma, mind and body, it seems far from inconceivable.

Celtic MythologyWard Rutherford • Weiser BookseISBN: 9781609259914

From Druids to King Arthur. With an introduction by

John Matthews.

Celtic M

ythology Rutherford

In this lively and absorbing account of the world of Celtic myth and the role it has played in the development of Western culture, Ward Rutherford explores one of the jewels of European cultural heritage. In so doing he demonstrates how deeply Celtic mythology has become embedded in Western consciousness.

With a new foreword from John Matthews—historian, folklorist, best- selling author of Pirates and winner of the Benjamin Franklin award for The Winter Solstice—this book provides a highly literary and engaging insight into:

The world of the Celts, including an historical overview from their emergence as an identifi able people around 1000 B.C. Also included is an explanation of their social structure.

The contents of Celtic myths and the differences and similarities between their manifestation in Britain and Ireland.

The topography of the supernatural world of Celtic myth, including discus-sion of Druidism, Shamanism, and the meaning of Celtic myths.

The infl uence of Celtic myth in English literature from Arthurian legend to the Grail legend.

Celtic MythologyWard Rutherford

With a foreword by JOHN MATTHEWS

From Druids to King Arthur. With a foreword by

John Matthews.

The Nature and Infl uence of Celtic Myth from Druidism to Arthurian Legend

Cover design: Graham Lester

ISBN: 978-1-57863-586-3 U.S. $14.95

15

16

Brigid—mother, daughter, healer,

bard, warrior, fire goddess, goddess

of the oak, animals, and magic. Brigid

of the spring, her festival Imbolc,

oversees fertility of all kinds. Brigid is

many things to many people—Celtic

pagan goddess, Christian saint,

Caribbean Voodoo deity. In this exercise

from Brigid by Courtney Weber, we ask

beloved Brigid to help heal our hearts.

I G N I T E T H E L I G H T

Once when Brigid was in Armagh, two per-

sons passed her. They bore a tub of water, as they

wished to be blessed by Brigid and healed with

the water they brought. The tub fell behind them

and went round from the door of the stronghold

to a faraway lake. They cried out, fearful their tub

had broken and water spilled. But it was not bro-

ken and not a single drop fell out. Their faith and

determination made that Brigid’s blessing was

upon them and where the water spread, every

disease and every ailment in the land was healed.

—Inspired by traditional tale

Exercise: The Well of Heart Healing

17

As a tarot reader and Priestess of Brigid, I often work specifically with heart healing. The healing of the heart is complicated and often trivialized as selfish or unimportant. But hurts we’ve sustained, caused, or borne witness to leave their own physical or emotional manifes-tations. In time, the injured heart can become hardened, insensitive, even cruel to others or possibly physically ill, itself. Healing the heart is not selfish. A healed person is more likely to want to heal or help others and often does.

Reflection: Healing starts with a map, but

usually winds through uncharted wilderness.

If our plan for healing goes awry, can we trust

in Divine Order? Can we be open to a new

direction of healing? Can we believe in our

own cracked vessels becoming whole?

Healing is often represented by gentle images, and wells are often imagined as peaceful. Yet wells are deep and the depths can be murky or dangerous. When we stand at the edge, we cannot see the bottom or what may be in there. Likewise, healing is not always pretty. Healing can be painful, hence why morphine and other pain drugs were invented. Contemporary artists often represent Brigid the Healer as a serene-faced woman, forgetting that Brigid also rules fire and the pressure of the forge. Many individ-uals, myself included, have experienced Brigid the Healer as more of a tough physical therapist than a gentle nurse, one focused on the goal of the injured helping themselves to be stronger. The task of emotional healing frequently brings up deep wounds from the darkest wells of our souls. When this happens, it’s easy to want to pull back, preferring to exist in familiar illness than take the path of unknown and often uncomfortable healing.

This exercise is designed for your well at home. It can be adapted to your work at a holy well, if you live close to one.

Exercise: The Well of Heart Healing Brigid is arguably the most popular figure in Celtic mythology and religion.

At the end of the rite, sit in the space, acknowl-edging it as a sacred place of healing. Meditate on what you would prefer to see in your world and self, rather than focusing on what you left behind. If you traveled to a well, take the stone with you and throw it over your shoulder

before leaving. Do not turn back once you have done so. If you made your well at home, drain the water from the tub or pour the water down the drain. Then, walk to the nearest crossroads or intersection and throw the stone over your shoulder. Do not turn back once you have done so.

BrigidCourtney Weber • Weiser BookseISBN: 9781609259617

Brigid, you are a beacon of peace,Please bring harmony to my conflict,Light to my darkness,Hope to my sorrow.Spread your mantle of peace over my troubles and anxieties.May my peace be firmly rooted in my heart and world.Inspire me to act justly, even when justice has not been shown to me.Brigid, as you are a voice for the wounded and weary,Strengthen what is wounded and weary in me.Calm me into a quietness that heals and listens.May I grow each day into greater wholeness in mind, body, and spirit.

A piece of lodestone from a local gem dealer, or any dark stone: salt or Florida Water (also called Agua Florida—easily ordered online), if you don’t have a store near you that carries it; a warm bath or a bowl or basin of water. Place the stone in the water. If you are visiting a body of water or a holy well, bring the stone along but hold it in your hand—do not throw it into the water.

Call to mind the circumstances that pained you. Describe them aloud and envision your words absorbed by the water and the stone. Do not judge the pain or analyze it. Let the anger and the tears fall into the water. When you have said all that you can say, recite the following (adapted from a traditional prayer to St. Brigid for peace):

Materials

+ +

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BrigidCourtney Weber • Weiser BookseISBN: 9781609259617

Lori Deschene is the creator of TinyBuddha.com and the author of Tiny Buddha’s Guide to Loving Yourself—a little book with big power. She shares 40 unique perspec-tives on loving yourself, including: realizing you’re not broken, accept-ing your flaws, releasing the need for approval, forgiving yourself, letting go of comparisons, and learning to be authentic. She inspires us to take good care of ourselves. Here she talks about her background, what drew her to create TinyBuddha.com, and about her latest book.

Q: Tell us a little about yourself and Tiny Buddha.

A: My name is Lori Deschene and I am a writer, dreamer, traveler, adventurer, daughter, sister, and fiancé, to name just a few descriptive words. For most of my younger life, I defined myself as someone who struggled with depres-sion, insecurity, and an eating disorder. After that, I then spent years hiding myself in shame, feeling terrified of being seen for all my flaws, mistakes, and weaknesses. While I’ve always been self-reflective—a consequence of start-ing therapy at age twelve—it wasn’t until my mid-twenties that I really embraced personal development and understood the power of growing through my challenges. This is part of what motivated me to start Tiny Buddha in 2009 as a multi-author blog, where anyone can share what they’ve been through and what they’ve learned. Over the past six years, it’s grown into a vibrant community with more than 1,200 contributors and over 2.5 million monthly readers. It’s a place where people are brave in sharing their experiences and feelings to help themselves and others. I think it’s also a space

P I O N E E R S O F P O S S I B I L I T Y

19

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where we can feel less alone with our struggles, and more empowered to heal and grow through them.

Q: How did you choose Tiny Buddha’s Guide to Loving Yourself in particular as the subject of this book?

A: I was originally planning to write a dif-ferent book about what it means to “win” in life. Shortly after I signed my contract, I went through a series of life challenges—a major surgery, a robbery, financial struggles, and the death of my grandmother. It was an emotion-ally draining time for me, and one of the most difficult I’d experienced in years. After telling my publisher I wasn’t going to be able to write the book, I started being a little hard on myself, especially since I’d already announced the project on the Tiny Buddha blog. As time went on, I began to reevaluate what it means to take good care of myself, and I thought about a goal I’d had to write a series of “Tiny Buddha’s Guide to” books, sharing stories and insights from community members. Since I had just gone through a time when I really needed my own love and compassion—and since I’d spent my younger life mired in self-loathing—I realized I wanted to start with a book fo-cused on self-love. I think it’s something we all struggle with at times, and yet it’s so important for our happiness. Everything we do in life is a reflection of how much we love ourselves.

Q: At the end of each section, you offer your top four tips about each topic. What are your top four tips for loving yourself?

A:—Identify, appreciate, and harness the strengths in your “flaws.” For a long time I thought my emotional oversensitivity was a massive flaw—but I wouldn’t be able to do the work I do if I didn’t feel and experience the world in the way I do. I still work on how I re-spond to my emotions, but I’ve challenged the

perception that there is something “wrong” with me for being the way I am. The only wrong thing is thinking I am fundamentally inadequate, be-cause it’s simply not true.-Know that your mistakes only define you if you let them. Formerly, I believed that I was the culmination of my worst mistakes, which meant that I had no choice but to feel ashamed of my-self. Now, I see my mistakes not as the building blocks of who I am, but as stepping-stones to who I can be. They are my tools for growth and learning, and therefore incredibly valuable.—Realize you are beautiful not in spite of where you’ve been, but because of it. I used to think I had to hide the truth of my past, but I now

recycle my former struggles and pain into something useful for oth-ers. My past isn’t something I need to hide; it’s something I need to share to make a positive difference in the world. —Recognize and honor your values, needs, and priorities. This is really the biggest one for me. When I honor my values, needs, and prior-ities I am able to be true to myself and to act with integrity—and this is the foundation of my self-love, self-esteem, and self-respect.

Q: In one chapter, you say “Perhaps the big-gest challenge isn’t learning how to repair our-selves, but rather learning to accept that we all deal with uncomfortable situations and emotions in life.” What has helped you shift from a repair mindset to an acceptance mindset?

A: I was in my mid-twenties when I hit a big turning point in terms of my perception of myself. Up until that point, I’d spent most of my life building a long list of reasons to feel ashamed of myself. Since I saw myself as pathetic, worthless, and unlovable, I eventually isolated myself in a tiny dorm-style apartment miles away from my friends and family—ironi-cally, in New York City, one of the most crowded cities in the world. One night when I was feeling particularly hopeless and disgusted with myself, I found a quote that challenged everything I formerly believed: “Life is 10% what happens

I think this is the key to meaningful change and authentic connection:

realizing we are all both students and teachers.

21

to you and 90% how you react to it.” Suddenly I considered that I didn’t have to view myself as a weak person who’d experienced a set of difficult circumstances and then made a seemingly end-less string of poor choices. I could be the strong person who finally decided to learn and grow through all of it.From this understanding, I then considered that maybe I didn’t need to change anything about myself; I only needed to change how I saw my-self and what I did in response.

Q: What would you say has been your big-gest challenge in your personal development, and how have you learned to accept and process that challenge?

A: My biggest challenge has been shame. After more than a decade of bulimia, and count-less self-disrespecting choices, I felt terrified of judgment and rejection—but mostly I was afraid that I deserved those things. I’ve worked through this, and continue to work through it, by breaking down the walls of secrecy. In shar-ing the things I’ve felt tempted to hide, I’m able to let go of the belief that these things make me unworthy of love. It also helps to connect with others who’ve experienced similar things. I am always compassionate toward other people when they’re hurting, and this helps me re-member that I deserve that same understanding and compassion.

Q: Being transparent about your journey and lessons learned can leave you feeling vulner-able. How do you experience vulnerability and what helps you sit with this feeling?

A: I experience vulnerability in two dia-metrically opposed ways, depending on the day and the specific circumstances surrounding it.

Sometimes I feel a cathartic release, a sense of freedom, and a deep sense of pride in my will-ingness to be fully seen. Other times I feel ter-rified, panicked, and convinced I’d feel safer if I resisted the urge to be so honest. What helps me when I feel the latter is to remember that soon enough I will feel the former. The cost of feeling the highs is occasionally feeling the lows—and on the whole, it’s worth it.

Q: Kristin Neff, the author of Self-Compassion: Stop Beating Yourself Up and Leave Insecurity Behind, suggests that self-acceptance, which is something mentioned a lot in Tiny Buddha’s Guide to Loving Yourself, is more conducive to happiness than self-esteem. What do you think about this?

A: I think it’s fascinating, and it makes a lot of sense. Self-esteem is an evaluation of worth, where self-acceptance doesn’t require any self-judgment, whether positive or negative. It’s embracing ourselves for both the light and the dark, which I believe is the foundation of self-love.

Q: A common misperception about self-acceptance and self-forgiveness is that when we practice these traits, we give ourselves permis-sion to get away with anything. What is your experience with this?

A: I have to wonder, what’s the alternative? After you do something, can you not let yourself “get away with it?” Once it’s done, it’s done. I think it really comes down to finding a middle ground so you neither beat yourself up nor shrug it off. What’s important is to learn from the experience so that you can empower your-self to do something positive with the lesson.You can’t do that if you’re devoting all your en-ergy to self-flagellation.

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Tiny Buddha’s Guide to Loving YourselfLori Deschene • Conari PresseISBN: 9781609259129

Q: You highlighted in the book that it’s a positive sign if some people don’t like you. Can you explain this powerful message?

A: This one was huge for me. For most of my life I “shape-shifted” around different people to seem like someone I thought they’d like. But ironically, I didn’t like myself when I did this. It’s hard to respect yourself when you real-ize you value what other people think of you more than you value your true self. Eventually I realized that if I stopped adapting to please the people around me, I would inevitably please fewer people. But that would mean I was no longer putting their opinions above my need to be authentic. And learning to be comfortable in my own skin would be far more valuable than losing myself over and over again in the fruit-less pursuit of mass acceptance. If you look at gaining approval in this way—assuming you’re not being rude, inconsiderate, or thoughtless—it can then be a positive sign if some people don’t like you.

Q: What’s the main message you hope readers take away from this book?

A: No matter how we struggle, we don’t need to feel ashamed. We’ve all had our own unique experiences and challenges that have contributed

to our learned behaviors. The important thing to remember is that we are not alone, and we can all learn to transform the voice inside our heads—and our lives—if we’re honest with each other and ourselves.

* Questions developed by Hannah Braime.

Top 4 Tips About Self-Acceptance from Tiny Buddha’s Guide to Loving Yourself

1. See yourself as a work in progress.When you focus on perfection, you inevitably feel dissatisfied because perfection is unattainable. Shift your focus instead to lifelong growth, and recognize that we are all works in progress, constantly evolving and never finished. From this space, you’re better able to see challenges and setbacks as a valuable part of the journey—which is in itself the destination—rather than an obstacle to where you want to be.

2. Accept yourself in action (and model it for others).Oftentimes when we don’t accept ourselves, we look outward for acceptance; but in actuality, it needs to happen the other way around. We teach people how to treat us through our actions. Teach people to accept you for exactly who you are by showing them what that looks like: Celebrate your positive qualities; talk to yourself kindly and make self-care a priority; reinforce that you’re doing the best you can, and your best is good enough; and recognize that your poorest choices don’t define you.

3. Create stillness to feel more at ease with yourself.When we refuse to accept ourselves, there’s a feeling of resistance—this sense of fighting who we are and trying to escape or transform it. We naturally feel uncomfortable when we refuse to let ourselves be ourselves. Take time to simply be, whether that’s through yoga, meditation, or deep breathing. From this place of mental stillness, it will be easier to recognize and honor your authentic self—and enjoy all the things that make you feel happy, passionate, and fulfilled. When you grow into yourself, acceptance is a natural consequence.

4. Use your judgments as a mirror to grow into greater self-acceptance.Recognize what behaviors you judge in others and use them as a compass to understand where you need to offer yourself compas-sion, and where you may want to challenge yourself. If you judge people who seem needy, are you ashamed of holding that quality? Can you offer yourself compassion for that trait, and in doing so, start understanding and transforming it? If you judge people who go for their dreams, is there a part of you that is holding yourself back? Can you push yourself out of your comfort zone in some way, which will make you feel proud of yourself?

A F T E R M I D N I G H T

The Roy Fulton Story in Which He Meets the Phantom Hitch-Hiker

23

Roy Fulton is a slim, sandy-haired young man whose main leisure interests revolve around darts and Liverpool Football Club. He has no preoccupations whatsoever with occultism or the paranormal. However, it is not necessary to hold some prior belief in apparitions in order to see one, and Mr. Fulton has gone on record as saying that he encountered one of the most disputed of them all: the hopelessly hackneyed Phantom Hitch-Hiker.

All over the world motorists

report giving lifts to hitch-hikers

who then vanish, ghostlike,

en route. Phantom Hitch-Hikers,

as these insubstantial passengers

are called, have become classified

as an urban legend and related to

ions. But is there more to such

stories than picturesque folklore?

Are there genuine paranormal

experiences behind the reports?

24

NIGHT RIDE“As I said, you know, I was playing in a darts match over Leighton Buzzard; I left there about twenty past nine and I was driving through Stanbridge . . . and there’s a road down there called Peddar’s Lane . . . about 100 yards past there the street lights fin-ish. There was a figure I [saw] on the left-hand side, thumbing a lift down there. I pulled up in front of him, so I could see him walking back into the head-lights.

He had a dark-coloured jumper on, dark-coloured trousers, with an open white-collared shirt. He came up to the motor; he got in there and sat down—he even opened the door himself, I had nothing to do with opening the door. I asked him where he was going and he just pointed up the road—never said a word. So I assumed he was either going to Dunstable or Totternhoe.

So I was driving up the road, I suppose I was driving for—what, four, five or six minutes, I suppose, doing a speed of about 40 minimum. I turned round to offer him a cigarette and the bloke had disappeared. I braked, had a quick look in the back to see if he was there. He wasn’t and I just gripped the wheel and drove like hell. And that’s all—you know . . .”

That’s all: some would say it was too much. The passage just quoted is taken from a taped inter-view I had with Mr. Fulton in early 1980; three years further on he was still maintaining that his story is authentic—that one dark October evening he did meet a Phantom Hitch-Hiker.I have played my tape to many people: to a handful of parapsychologists, to groups of school-children, to friends—to anyone who cared to listen. Naturally, their responses varied; one member of the Society for Psychical Research referred to it as a ‘typical case of apparition,’ while a fourteen-year-old boy gave a tight-lipped sneer of, ‘Nah, don’t believe it.’ Who is to say which is the more accurate evalu-ation? Common sense and folklorist consensus inclines towards the fourteen-year old’s assess-ment of the matter; parapsychologists who wish to vote on this side, though, are honour-bound to present good, logical reasons for doing so. Those reasons can only emerge after a thorough sifting of the evidence on offer.

Although Sally Staples was the first to turn Roy Fulton’s allegations into national news with her Sunday Express article, ‘Was it a Ghost that hitched a lift and . . . ?’ of 21 October 1979, it appears that the author of the original printed source was closer to the scene of the incident: Mrs. Anne Cox (then Court), who described it in the Dunstable Gazette three days earlier. By talking to her I obtained independent impres-sions of the case and of the eyewitness, as well as clarification on particular points left unan-swered after my own conversation with him.Establishing how this type of account first came to the ears of a journalist can prove a helpful guide in assessing its veracity. A ghostseer who contacts a paper may be motivated by a genuine desire to relate a true experience, but they can also be inspired by the possibility of personal glory (or notoriety), if not by the idea of more tangible (financial) rewards. Neither form of aggrandisement—psychological or financial—necessarily proves the story to be a piece of fiction, but the mere fact that such a motive exists (or is firmly suspected to exist) can undermine the credibility of some cases as far as many investigators are concerned.

However, it appears that Roy Fulton did not make any such approach; Mrs. Cox came across the story in a roundabout way, through the hus-band of a friend of the witness’s wife. The issue of the Dunstable Gazette that included the ‘Night Ride Riddle’ appeared on a Thursday; next morning the Sunday Express telephoned the paper asking for further information. Certain embellishments to the story that appeared in the Express’s treatment of the incident but were not in the Dunstable Gazette’s preced-ing account—the local geography, the weather conditions, and so on—were thus provided by Anne Cox, who also passed on the names of two persons quoted with great effect in Sally Staples’s write-up of the case: Mr. Bill Stone, the publican, and Police Inspector Rowland.

Dwelling upon the way in which Roy Fulton’s experience became, in a sense, national prop-erty reveals how circumstantial details not found in the local paper’s account were made

25

available for the wider audience of the Express; more important, it may offer an answer to a puzzling discrepancy between the tale as told by Ms. Staples and the testimony of the witness as recorded by myself on tape. I will point out the nature of this discrepancy and the possible so-lution to it presently. For what it may be worth, I can say that Roy Fulton did not strike me as a glory-seeker. ‘Are you a star now?’ asked the pub’s landlord Bill Stone, as he passed by with a swift glance at my whirring cassette recorder. ‘Yeah!’ replied Roy in a tone that carried more than a hint of self-derision.

Or perhaps, the knowing scep-tic will reply, the derision was aimed at the so-called investi-gator beside him. It goes with-out saying that 98 percent of what follows rests solely on the unsupported word of a solitary witness who testifies to a ‘truth’ that bears a terrible resem-blance to folklore—in which eventuality there are no means known to science to eliminate the possibility of a hoax. The remaining 2 percent consists of the fact I found only minor and explicable inconsistencies between printed and oral (taped) versions of the story; the fact that Anne Cox was prepared to believe the man was telling the truth as he per-ceived it to be (her only doubts centering not on the integral points of the story but on a suppos-edly related ‘historical’ exegis to be discussed later); the equally-trusting reaction of the police; and lastly, the corporate acceptance of the tale among Roy’s circle of acquaintances (which I had to take on trust), excepting perhaps one fel-low who ‘wouldn’t believe it unless it happened to him.’ If these indicators are not sufficient to sway the reader’s judgement, the only feasible alternative is to think the incident a complete fabrication.

‘You look as if you’d just seen a ghost.’

Roy Fulton’s account opens with him driving home from a darts match in Leighton Buz-zard. Anyone who knows anything about darts matches (and more especially about the ambi-ance in which they are played) might infer that the witness had been imbibing pretty freely during that contest, but they would be wrong. The Sunday Express asserted that Roy had drunk one and a half pints of lager that evening; dur-ing our interview he amended the quantity to two pints and in addition gave me the impres-sion that he is capable of taking that amount (and more) without losing touch with reality.

Mr. Fulton had good reason to be careful where alcohol was concerned. A carpet-fitter needs to be mobile—or as Roy himself puts it, his driver’s licence is his job—and the Leighton Buzzard police are, he assured me, notoriously hard on drinking and driving offenders.

In sum, Roy Fulton denies he was drunk, or anywhere approaching drunk, on 12 October 1979. There was cor-roboration of this in what the Dunstable Police told me; as far as they could discern, Mr. Fulton had been sober when he made his report. Besides, it is hard to see how two pints of lager (to take the

outside figure) could have played a part in his experience. Can such a quantity induce any sort of alcoholic hallucination in a person, let alone one of vanishing hitch-hikers? This may not pre-clude the possibility that Roy Fulton’s passenger may have been a hallucination of some other variety, but that is a complication which I do not wish to introduce at this time.

About one and a half miles west of the A5 lies the village of Stanbridge. Just past the Five Bells public house, and not far from where the light-ing ends, Peddar’s Lane becomes Station Road. Anne Cox described the scene for me as ‘quite

26

an eerie sort of place, quite desolate and flat—one of those roads that go from one village to another. But it’s a very flat sort of area; there’s certainly no hills, no trenches, nor any trees to hide behind.’ It was here that Roy Fulton picked up his Phantom Hitch-Hiker.

He drove down the unlit stretch of road in his mini van, not especially excited or nervous—certainly not thinking about ghosts, a topic which he confirmed (in response to my query) had not been discussed in the pub before-hand. There was no car radio to distract him. The night, ‘as black as it would have got,’ was broached by occasional fog patches: ‘that’s what made it more spooky than anything.’ Then he saw the Hitch-Hiker.

I asked Roy to confirm that his first impression had been of a man soliciting a ride like any ordi-nary hitcher. His answer was:

“Yeah! He was thumbing a lift, you know, standing sort of square on with his thumb out in the road. I pulled over in front of him, so that he had to walk back [i.e., towards] the motor.”

For an interval of several seconds, then, the witness had the man in the clear view of his headlights; he could pick out the dark hair, white shirt, dark trousers. The only peculiar and perhaps disturbing element about what he saw was the man’s face: very pale and unusually long, which Roy indicated for me by tracing an imaginary continuation to his own jawline. He was, moreover, totally real and ostensibly solid to Roy’s eyes: ‘I saw him as clearly as I can see you,’ he expostulated.

Next, we note that it is the Hitch-Hiker who takes the initiative, not the driver: he walks back to the waiting car and opens the door.

Here is the only discrepancy of any significance appearing between my recorded and printed sources, for whereas the Sunday Express says that Roy was the one who let the Hitch-Hiker into the van there is his taped statement that he ‘had nothing to do with opening the door.’ I heard him repeat this several times and have

the feeling that the contradiction came about as a result of journalistic inference. Sally Staples wrote her account from information provided by Anne Cox, whose Dunstable Gazette piece does not specify who opened the car door. It is likely that attribution of this action to the driver was a piece of logical deduction on the part of the Express writer. Conscious that a ghost story was being told, uncertain as to who made it pos-sible for the Hitch-Hiker to get into the vehicle and supposing apparitions incapable of such physical effects as manipulating door handle mechanisms, the writer may have concluded that it had to be Roy Fulton who was respon-sible for this phase of the event.

The fact that the opening of the door had the proper result of activating the car’s interior lighting adds credibility to the picture created by Roy Fulton; the next stage, however, may impress some readers as being somewhat unlikely, if not downright unbelievable. When asked where he wants to go, the hitcher points wordlessly in a direction which could mean Dunstable or Totternhoe. There is no conversa-tion; the entire episode is noiseless save (pre-sumably) for the purr of the car’s engine, with-out even a rustle of clothing. Surely a motorist in this uneasy situation would make some attempt to communicate with his passenger?

Eventually Roy Fulton did make such an at-tempt; he offered the man beside him a ciga-rette, a small enough act but one which effective-ly interrupted the silence that accompanied the arrival of the hitch-hiker. More significant, it was the crucial action that alerted the motorist to the sudden absence of his short-term companion.

Before we move on to this event, two points can be made. The first is a generalization; sympa-thetic readers may take the ostensible unreality of the silent drive as an argument in favour of its reality. If Roy Fulton had decided to ‘fake up’ a ghost story, he would perhaps have tried to emphasize the initial credibility of his phantom by producing a talking specimen conforming to our expectations—especially our expectations concerning Hitch-Hikers, which are usually very vocal. And why not also conform with estab-

The Evidence for Phantom Hitch-HikersMichael Goss • Weiser BookseISBN: 9781602959877

lished folklore precedent by picking up a female Hitch-Hiker rather than a male one?

The second point is more specific. While we may find it strange that the witness did not try to engage the hitcher in conversation, we should respect the fact that Mr. Fulton did not regard it so at the time. During our interview he admitted that the man’s silence had struck him as slightly unusual, but any incipient alarm he may have felt was overcome by the rationalization that the dark-haired stranger might have been deaf and dumb. That, he insisted, was just his interpre-tation. Apart from this, Roy is neither given to long conversations with total strangers nor is he the type of person to force conversation upon a companion who patently does not feel like talk-ing. On reflection, the lack of exchange between driver and Hitch-Hiker may not be notably sus-pect, whereas a talking ghost might have been uncomfortably close to folklore.

The uncommunicative nature of the passenger makes intelligible the next part of the story. Roy drives off, confining his attention to the road, not glancing at the person beside him:

“The interior light came on, I remember that; the in-terior light came on, the car door shut . . . that is the last—I’ll be honest with you—I can really tell, ‘cos as you know, when you’re driving, and driving on country lanes, the passenger seat is oblivious [sic]—you’ve just got your eyes on the road and that is it.”

There passes a period of time measured by the newspaper accounts in terms of the approxi-mate distance covered by the speeding van—one mile, perhaps two, which if Roy was doing ‘forty minimum’ would mean about three min-utes. This, of course, is an estimate drawn from the witness’s recollection of the events and it is not remarkable that during our conversation Roy was inclined to think the time-span was possibly longer: ‘I suppose I was driving for—what, four, five, or six minutes. ’ The fact remains that it was at this moment that Roy decided to make his friendly gesture, which allowed him to realize the hitcher was missing (‘and when I turned round to offer him a cigarette, the bloke had gone’) but not to appreciate exactly when

27

the disappearance had taken place. Hence he could not be sure of how long the pale-faced young man had remained next to him in the car.

Roy’s reaction to the discovery is instinctive: he applies the brakes (the Dunstable Gazette sug-gests that the car did not come to a full halt) and rapidly checks to ensure the man has not crawled unobserved into the rear of the van, though this he knows to be an impossible pos-sibility. It is equally unrealistic to suppose the fellow had leapt (also unobserved and without activating the interior light!) from the van as it travelled at ‘about forty minimum. ’ The road behind was empty; the flat farmlands offered no hiding places even if the man could have made a surreptitious exit from the car—although it is worth remembering that the incident was alleged to have taken place at night, when it was ‘as black as it would have got.’ Full comprehen-sion dawning upon him, Roy suddenly felt very cold, yet his hands perspired. He drove off as fast as he could to his local.

‘You look as if you’d seen a ghost,’ commented someone as Roy came in.

‘Yeah,’ replied Roy grimly, ‘I have.’

DEGENERATE GEMINIMay 21 to June 21

E M B R AC E YO U R I N N E R M O N ST E R

In the zodiac, Geminis are represented by twins. The twins symbolize their dual nature, their dexterity to change modes quickly, and their ability to hold multiple sets of morals and ideals to be simultaneously true. We could stop this chapter here, because this establishes the baseline truth about Geminis: they’re two-faced. They’ll say one thing to your face, and as soon as they’re with someone else, they’ll bust out with a completely different opinion. They don’t hesitate to flip-flop in their friendships, their politics, or their morals. If you want to be con-stantly surprised, befriend a Gemini. You never know what they’re going to say or do.

Geminis also can’t shut up. They think a lot, and they speak a lot, but unfortunately for the rest of humanity, they don’t always do it in the correct order. Geminis have to talk through ideas to understand them more thoroughly, and they love to bounce ideas off other people as they’re developing them. This means that at least half of what comes out of

their mouth consists of completely unformed ideas, or—in layman’s terms—verbal diarrhea. Geminis gravitate to others who speak their minds, even if their ideas vary from what is cur-rently considered to be socially acceptable. They also read everything they can get their hands on and like to work their well-read nature into conversations, to prove that they aren’t as bird-brained as some of their conversations would lead onlookers to believe.

Because of their dual nature and their social behavior, Geminis find themselves surrounded by a large and diverse group of friends. If you’re ever invited to a Gemini’s party, assume that you’re going to positively detest at least a third of the people there. If you ever casually men-tion to a Gemini that their friends are scumbags, they’ll just laugh it off and say something

infuriating like, “It takes all kinds, doesn’t it, chap?” Geminis love the thrill

of taking risks, even when that means associating with less

desirable social circles.

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CONTEMPTIBLE CANCERJune 22 to July 22

You have sooooo many feelings, Cancer, and that’s exactly why you’re so very contemptible. Other signs of the zodiac can keep it together and play it cool while you’re just weeping all over the place. Tears of joy, tears of sorrow, tears of confusion… you cry them all. You get sniffly when you meet a kindred spirit, or when you fall short of a professional goal, or when you see a commercial for an Apple product. Everything just feels so dreadfully deep and serious and soggy when you’re around.

Look, your cosmic symbol is the crab. (Side note: Don’t get all excited about the sixty-nine-shaped astrological symbol. It certainly does not mean you’re some superstar lover, though it does mean that you like to give as much—or more—than you like to receive.) Anyway, you would do well to take a lesson from the crab and develop a hard outer shell. Then, people would have some barrier between themselves and your feelings.

Cancer, be honest, are you at your healthiest right

now? If you can’t see your toes, or you wheeze when you’re walking to the mailbox, you might want to take a general assessment of your hab-its. Are you exercising enough? Are you living a healthy lifestyle? Or are you eating full cans of frosting with a spoon and washing it down with a Big Gulp? You could blame the obesity gene, but Cancers are prone to calming their nervous emotions with Twinkies or other tasty junk foods.

Remember that novel called The Shining? OK, well, do you at least remember the movie? Well, Cancers often have a little bit of “the shining,” with strong intuition and a connection with their past lives. They are really sensitive to their surroundings, and if one part of a Cancer’s life is in disorder, it can ripple through to every other aspect. They use their psychic tendencies

to justify wearing questionable clothing such as tie-dye T-shirts featuring

a wolf howling at the moon, or long velour dresses

with tattered hems, or anything with black lace and a fringe. Cancers are not known for their fashion-forward choices.

The truth is that each sign has its own terrible qualities and its own fatal flaws. In this issue we look at Gemini and Cancer. Geminis are shallow,

gossipy, sarcastic, and think that they’re better than everyone else. Cancer comes across as weak. No matter how often they leave the house, deep

down they’d much rather be in sweatpants in front of the television.

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your incompatibility ratingGEMINI INCOMPATIBIL IT Y RATING

ARIES—this may be character forming: a megadose of your own love potion.TAURUS—they will try to tie you down with food and flattery.GEMINI—exhausting; how will the four of you keep it up?CANCER—inevitably ends in tears (not yours, of course).LEO—come on like royalty, but they’re just another frog to you.VIRGO—will smother your every betrayal with understanding and forgiveness. Aargh!LIBRA—see what happens when con artists collide.SCORPIO—social butterfly meets professional insectivore.SAGITTARIUS—folie à deux; bungee jumping without strings.CAPRICORN—you leap at the chance of leading astray the zodiac’s Mr. Repression.AQUARIUS—no good at all—way too cool to rise to your bait.PISCES—perfect: the zodiac’s amphibian, your natural prey.

CANCER INCOMPATIBIL IT Y RATING

ARIES—hyperactive optimist meets paranoid pessimist.TAURUS—friends have to pry you apart, you are so possessive.GEMINI—you move sideways; they can always outswerve you.CANCER—long, moody silences that only end when one of you dies (and maybe not even then).LEO—they gleam and shine; you, serf, are a mere reflection.VIRGO—they insist on pouring bleach into your rockpool.LIBRA—they live for pleasure, you exist because you must.SCORPIO—beadier eyes, a more wieldy shell; they make you feel even more worthless.SAGITTARIUS—will crush you and your shell without noticing.CAPRICORN—they use your shell as a step up to higher things.AQUARIUS—demystify your angst sessions by explaining the chemistry of light levels.PISCES—slip out of your grasp to flirt with other shellfish.

Bad BirthdaysSarah Christensen Fu • Hampton Roads PublishingeISBN: 97816128333237

Incompatibility ratings courtesy of Darkside Zodiac by Stella Hyde.

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F I V E - PA RT H A R M O N Y

When one is very involved in hatred or attachment, if there is time or possibility during that very moment, just try to look inward and ask: “What is attachment? What is the nature of anger?”

The Bible says that swords can be turned into ploughshares. It is a beauti-

ful image, a weapon transformed into a tool to serve basic human needs, representing an attitude of inner and outer disarmament.

We learn from the principle of depen-dent origination that things and events

do not come into being without causes. Suffer-ing and unsatisfactory conditions are caused by our own delusions and the contaminated actions induced by them.

For a bodhisattva to be successful in accomplishing the practice of the six

perfections—generosity, ethical discipline, tolerance, joyous effort, concentration, and wis-dom—cooperation with fellow beings and kind-ness towards them are extremely important.

The healing power of the spirit naturally follows the path of the spirit. It abides

not in the stone of fine buildings, nor in the gold of images, nor in the silk from which robes are fashioned, nor even in the paper of holy

writ, but it abides in the ineffable substance of the mind and the heart of man. We should sublimate our heart’s instinct and purify our thoughts.

Our state of mind plays a major role in our day-to-day experiences as well as in

our physical and mental well-being. If a person has a calm and stable mind, this influences his or her attitude and behavior in relation to others. In other words, if someone exists in a peaceful and tranquil state of mind, external

surroundings can cause them only a limited disturbance.

It is under the greatest

adversity that there exists the greatest potential for doing good, both for one-self and for others.

The Dalai Lama’s Little Book of BuddhismHis Holiness the Dalai LamaHampton Roads PublishingeISBN: 9781612833422

Spend just five minutes with these thought-provoking words

from the Dalai Lama—his wisdom is guaranteed to improve

your state of mind and inspire inner peace.

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SERVES 12

INGREDIENTS

1 Japanese eggplant, sliced into 12

sea salt

6 veggie mozzarella slices, cut into triangles

2 medium tomatoes, sliced into 12

cracked pepper

12 fresh basil leaves

olive oil

Eggplant Medallions

METHODSprinkle the eggplant slices with sea salt, place in a colander with a weight on top and drain for 1 hour. In a skillet, grill the eggplant, without any oil, for 2 minutes each side. Place the “cheese” triangles on top followed by the tomato slices. Sprinkle with pepper and add a basil leaf. Drizzle with oil. Place under the broiler for 2 minutes, or until the “cheese” begins to melt.

A S E AT AT T H E TA B L E

Aviary Ravioli withHip Herb Pesto

SERVES 4

RAVIOLI:

1⁄2 pound tofu

2 tablespoons fresh cilantro

1 tablespoon safflower oil

2 tablespoons cornstarch

1 tablespoon egg replacer

1 tablespoon white wine

1⁄4 teaspoon grated ginger root

salt and pepper to taste

1 package wonton wrappers

Convince (and possibly convert)

your non-vegan family and friends with

these three delicious vegan recipes.

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The Easy VeganJanet Hudson • Hampton Roads PublishingeISBN: 9781612832227

METHODPlace all the ravioli ingredients, except the wonton wrappers, in a blender and mix well. Put 1 teaspoon of the mixture onto each wonton wrapper, brush the edges with water and cover with a second wrapper. Press to seal and, if you wish, trim with a decorative cutter. Cover while you prepare the pesto.

Brown the pine nuts in little of the oil. Cool. Place all the pesto ingredients, except the oil, in a food processor and puree until course. Now add the oil a little at a time to adjust pesto moisture. Warm in a saucepan over the stove. Bring 8 cups of water to a boil and add 1 tablespoon oil. Gently add the ravioli one at a time; once they have popped up to surface, cook an additional minute and then drain.

Serve with the pesto.

Polenta Pound CakeSERVES 8 PLUS

11⁄2 cups all-purpose flour1 cup cornmeal

11⁄2 teaspoons baking powder1⁄4 cup vegetable margarine

3⁄4 cup brown sugar3⁄4 cup raw sugar

3⁄4 cup tofu1 teaspoon vanilla extractDash of almond extract

Dash of sea saltegg replacer for 5 eggs

powdered sugar

METHOD Preheat the oven to 350° F. Grease a 9 x 5 inch bak-ing dish or loaf pan and dust with flour. Mix the flour, cornmeal, and baking powder. Set aside. In a large bowl, beat the margarine and sugars until combined. Add the tofu, salt, and extracts. Add the egg replacer and mix well. Now add the dry ingredients and stir until just combined. Bake for 60–70 minutes, or until a

toothpick comes out clean. Cool for 10 minutes then invert and give it a blast of powdered sugar.

PESTO:

1⁄2 cup pine nuts

1 cup safflower oil

1 jalapeno chili, roasted, skinned, and seeded

4 garlic cloves

1 1⁄2 cups fresh basil

1⁄2 cup fresh cilantro

1⁄4 cup fresh mint

1 tablespoon maple syrup

Juice of 2 limes

2 tablespoons tamari

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H O LY H O L I ST I C S !

From Julia Lawless’ The Encyclopedia of Essential Oils,

here is some comprehensive information about

cardomon, lemongrass, and sage.

FAMILY Zingiberaceae

SYNONYMS Elettaria cardomomum var. cardo-momum, cardomom, cardamomi, cardomum, mysore cardomom.

GENERAL DESCRIPTION A perennial, reed-like herb up to 4 metres high, with long, silky blade-shaped leaves. Its long sheathing stems bear small yellowish flowers with purple tips, followed by oblong red-brown seeds.

DISTRIBUTION Native to tropi-cal Asia, especially southern India; cultivated extensively in India, Sri Lanka, Laos, Guate-mala and El Salvador. The oil is produced principally in India, Europe, Sri Lanka and Guate-mala.

OTHER SPECIES There are nu-merous related species found in the east, used as local spices and for medicinal purposes, such as round or Siam cardomon (Amo-mum cardamomum) found in India and China. An oil is also produced from wild cardomon (E. cardamomum var. major).

HERBAL/FOLK TRADITION Used extensively

as a domestic spice, especially in India, Europe,Latin America and Middle Eastern countries. It has been used in traditional Chinese and Indianmedicine for over 3,000 years, especially for pul-monary disease, fever, digestive and urinarycomplaints. Hippocrates recommended it for sciatica, coughs, abdominal pains, spasms, nervous disorders, retention of urine and also for bites of venomous creatures. Current in the British Herbal Pharmocopoeia as a specific for flatulent dyspepsia.

ACTIONS Antiseptic, antispas-modic, aphrodisiac, carminative, cephalic, digestive, diuretic,sialogogue, stimulant, stomachic, tonic (nerve).

EXTRACTION Essential oil by steam distillation from the dried ripe fruit (seeds). An oleoresin is also produced in small quantities.

CHARACTERISTICS A colour-less to pale yellow liquid with a sweet-spicy, warming fragrance and a woody-balsamic undertone. It blends well with rose, olibanum,

orange, bergamot, cinnamon, cloves, caraway, ylang ylang, labdanum, cedarwood, neroli and oriental bases in general.

CARDOMON Elettaria cardamomum= • =

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PRINCIPAL CONSTITUENTS Terpinyl acetate and cineol (each may be present at up to 50 per cent), limonene, sabinene, linalol, linalyl acetate, pinene, zingiberene, among others.

SAFETY DATA Non-toxic, non-irritant, non-sensitizing.

AROMATHERAPY/HOME USEDIGESTIVE SYSTEM: Anorexia, colic, cramp, dyspepsia, flatulence, griping pains, halitosis, heartburn, indigestion, vomiting.

NERVOUS SYSTEM: Mental fatigue, nervous strain.

OTHER USES Employed in some carmina-tive, stomachic and laxative preparations; also in the form of compound cardomon spirit to flavour pharmaceuticals. Extensively used as a fragrance component in soaps, cosmetics and perfumes, especially oriental types. Important flavour ingredient, particularly in curry and spice products.

LEMONGRASS Cymbopogon citratus

FAMILY Poaceae (Gramineae)

SYNONYMS 1. Andropogon citratus, A. schoenathus, West Indian lemongrass, Madagascar lemongrass, Guatemala lemon-grass. 2. Andropogon flexuosus, Cymbopogon flexuosus, East Indian lemon-grass, Cochin lemongrass, native lemongrass, British India lem-ongrass, ‘vervaine Indienne’ or France Indian verbena.

GENERAL DESCRIPTION A fast-growing, tall, aromatic perennial grass up to 1.5 metres high,producing a network of roots and rootlets that rapidly exhaust the soil.

DISTRIBUTION Native to Asia, there are two main types: 1. The West Indian lemongrass which is probably native to Sri Lanka, now cultivated mainly in the West Indies, Africa and tropical Asia. Main oil producers include Guatemala and India. 2. The East Indian lemongrass, which is native to east India (Travancore, etc.), now mainly cultivated in western India!

OTHER SPECIES There are several varieties of lemongrass of which the East Indian and the West Indian types are the most common. Chemotypes within each variety are also quite

pronounced.

HERBAL/FOLK TRADITION Employed in traditional Indian medicine for infectious ill-ness and fever; modern research carried out in India shows that it also acts as a sedative on the

central nervous system. It is also used as an insecticide and for fla-vouring food. After the distilla-tion process, the exhausted grass is used locally to feed cattle.

ACTIONS Analgesic, antidepres-sant, antimicrobial, anti-oxidant, antipyretic, antiseptic, astrin-gent, bactericidal, carminative, deodorant, febrifuge, fungicidal, galactagogue, insecticidal, nerv-ine, sedative (nervous), tonic.

EXTRACTION Essential oil by steam distillation from the fresh

and partially dried leaves (grass), finely chopped.

CHARACTERISTICS 1. A yellow, amber or reddish-brown liquid with a fresh, grassy-citrus scent and an earthy undertone. 2. A yellow or amber liquid with a fresh, grassy-lemony scent, generally lighter than the West Indian type.

PRINCIPAL CONSTITUENTS 1. Citral (65–85 per cent), myrcene (12–25 per cent), dipentene,

= • =

methylheptenone, linalol, geraniol, nerol, cit-ronellol and farnesol, among others. 2. Citral (up to 85 percent), geraniol, methyl eugenol, borneol, dipentene; constituents vary according to type.

SAFETY DATA Non-toxic, possible dermal irritation and/or sensitization in some individu-als – use with care.

AROMATHERAPY/HOME USESKIN CARE : Acne, athlete’s foot, excessive per-spiration, insect repellent (fleas, lice, ticks), open pores, pediculosis, scabies, tissue toner.

CIRCULATION, MUSCLES AND JOINTS:Muscular pain, poor circulation and muscle tone, slack tissue.

DIGESTIVE SYSTEM: Colitis, indigestion, gas-troenteritis.

IMMUNE SYSTEM: Fevers, infectious disease.

NERVOUS SYSTEM: Headaches, nervous exhaustion and stress-related conditions.

OTHER USES Extensively used as a fragrance component in soaps, detergents, cosmetics andperfumes. Employed as a flavour ingredient in most major food categories including alcoholic and soft drinks. Also used for the isolation of citral and for the adulteration of more costly oils such as verbena or melissa.

FAMILY Lamiaceae (Labiatae)

SYNONYMS Garden sage, true sage, Dalmatian sage.

GENERAL DESCRIPTION An evergreen, shrubby, perennial herb up to 80 cms high with a woody base, soft, silver, oval leaves and a mass of deep blue or violet flowers.

DISTRIBUTION Native to the Mediterranean region; cultivated worldwide especially in Albania, Yugoslavia, Greece, Italy, Turkey, France, China and the USA.

OTHER SPECIES There are sev-eral different species and culti-vars which have been developed, such as the Mexican sage (S. azurea grandiflora) and the red sage (S. colorata) both of which are used medicinally. Essential oils are also produced from other species including the Spanish sage (S. lavendu-laefolia) and clary sage (S. sclarea) – see sepa-rate entries and Botanical Classification section.

SAGE, COMMON Salvia officinalis

HERBAL/FOLK TRADITION A herb of ancient repute, valued as a culinary and medicinal plant– called herba sacra or ‘sacred herb’ by the Romans. It has been used for a variety of disor-ders including respiratory infections, menstrual difficulties and digestive complaints. It was also believed to strengthen the senses and the memory.

It is still current in the Brit-ish Herbal Pharmacopoeia as a specific for inflammations of the mouth, tongue and throat.

ACTIONS Anti-inflammatory, antimicrobial, anti-oxidant, anti-septic, antispasmodic, astringent,digestive, diuretic, emmena-gogue, febrifuge, hypertensive, insecticidal, laxative, stomachic, tonic.

EXTRACTION Essential oil by steam distillation from the dried leaves. (A so-called ‘oleoresin’ is

also produced from the exhausted plant material.)

CHARACTERISTICS A pale yellow mobile

= • =

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The Encyclopedia of Essential OilsJulia Lawless • Conari PresseISBN: 9781609258573

liquid with a fresh, warm-spicy, herbaceous, somewhat camphoraceous odour. It blends well with lavandin, rosemary, rosewood, lavender, hyssop, lemon and other citrus oils. The common sage oil is preferred in perfumery work to the Spanish sage oil which, although safer, has a less refined fragrance.

PRINCIPAL CONSTITUENTS Thujone (about 42 per cent), cineol, borneol, caryophyllene and other terpenes.

SAFETY DATA Oral toxin (due to thujone). Abortifacient; avoid in pregnancy. Avoid in epilepsy. Use with care or avoid in therapeutic work altogether – Spanish sage or clary sage are good alternatives.

AROMATHERAPY/HOME USE None.

OTHER USES Used in some pharmaceutical preparations such as mouthwashes, gargles, toothpastes, etc. Employed as a fragrance component in soaps, shampoos, detergents, anti-perspirants, colognes and perfumes, especially men’s fragrances. The oil and oleoresin are extensively used for flavouring foods (mainly meat products), soft drinks and alcoholic beverages, especially vermouth. It also serves as a source of natural anti-oxidants.

R A N D O M AC TS O F K I N D N E S S

The Baseball Mitt

When I was in college, I worked part time at a sporting goods store. There was a kid who would come by two or three times a week to visit this baseball mitt he wanted to buy. My manager and I would joke about him not only because he was so dedicated and persistent, but also because he had picked the best and most expensive mitt in the shop to be obsessed with.

This went on for months. The kid would come in, and you could tell he was so relieved that the mitt was still there. He would put it on, pound his fist into the pocket a couple of times, and then very carefully put it back onto the shelf and leave. Finally, one day he came in with a shoe box and a smile about eight miles wide and announced that he wanted to buy the mitt. So the manager brought the mitt over to the cash reg-ister while the kid counted out a shoe box worth of nickels, quarters, and dimes. His stash came to exactly $19.98.

The mitt cost $79.98, not including tax. My manager looked at the price tag, and sure enough the 7 was a little smudged, enough that a desperately hopeful seven-year-old could imag-ine it to be a 1. Then he looked at me, smiled, and very carefully recounted. “Yep, exactly $19.98.” Wrapping up the mitt, he gave it to the boy.

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R A N D O M AC TS O F K I N D N E S S

Random Acts of Kindness, Then and NowConari PresseISBN: 9781609257620

Spare Change

Every day I walk down to the mall to get a cappuccino, and every day I get hit up for spare change. Every day. The panhandlers all have these wonderful stories, but you never know what to believe. After a while it gets to be an irritation, and then I find myself getting upset that I’m so irritated over what is really

just spare change. One day this person came up to me and said, “I just ran out of gas. My car is about six blocks away from here, I have two kids in the car, and I’m just trying to get back home.”

I said to myself, “Here we go again,” but for some reason I gave him $10. Then I went on and got my cappuc-cino. As I was walking back to my office, I again saw the man stand-

ing by his car, which had run out of gas right in front of my office. Seeing me, he came over and said, “Thank you, but I don’t need the full ten,” and handed me $2.

Now I find that being asked for money no lon-ger bothers me, and I give whatever I can every time I get the chance.

City Kindness

I was about to go into the hospital for breast cancer surgery when there was a knock on my door. It was a man from the utility company telling me that the next week they were going to tear up the street in front of my house to put in a new sewer. My face fell and I said, “This is terrible! I’ll just be back from the hospital convalescing from cancer surgery.” The man turned and left. I later found out that they totally rearranged their schedule so that the work on my street wouldn’t begin till several weeks later to give me some peace and quiet when I first got home! For years later, I would see that guy working on the sewers around town and we’d wave to one another.

The quality of mercy is not strained, —It dropeth as the gentle rain from heaven

Upon the place beneath : it is twice blessed, —It blesseth him that gives, and him that takes.

—William Shakespeare

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