"Creating a Charmed Life" by Victoria Moran

"Creating a Charmed Life" by Victoria Moran
1999, Harper San Francisco
ISBN: 0-06-251580-2

I appreciate short. I also appreciate advice from someone who can actually help me to create noticeable and good changes in my life all without a whole lot of effort or expense on my part.

In “Creating a Charmed Life” by Victoria Moran in the second chapter I got help. This chapter is titled, “Follow Your Heart”. Victoria talks about how we can get wrapped up in the stuff we do and be held in thrall by our activities and schedules so that we don’t have room to take care of others in a graceful and loving way.

A few days after I had read that chapter a co-worker called me on a Saturday to ask for help with something I felt he should be able to handle himself. I was crabby but I did say I would go help him out. This really messed up my Saturday. I had so many things planned. I was in the middle of doing them and because of him I had to drop everything and leave. I had about a minute of being furious but then this curtain seemed to drop over all that drama and I was suddenly calm and full of love. It’s the only thing I can describe it as, just this very real expansiveness of heart. It was a calmness that settled over me as I went out to help him. A couple of hours later I was home and I picked up where I’d left off with all the important things I was doing.

But, what was also very interesting to me was that if I had reacted to this scene as I have in the past with similar things I would have been angry about it days later. That same burst of anger I felt in the beginning would have been kindled over and over again and it would have been a really long time before I let it all go.

And all of that happened from reading the second chapter, all of 2½ pages, in “Creating a Charmed Life”. All the chapters are that short. Victoria has written the book with women in mind, but I would think men would get a few good jolts from it too. The subtitle of the book is, “Sensible, Spiritual Secrets Every Busy Woman Should Know”. I agree. I like sensible and in my line of work (secretary during the day, psychic at night) these insights are especially welcome.

I’d recommend buying this book. These chapters are like movies. Read one. Let a few days go by and see how you can easily accomplish something of wonder in your own life.

"Finding Your Soul in the Spirituality Maze" by Thayer White

Inevitably, it happens that you will come across a book that has the ability to change your life.

“Finding Your Soul in the Spirituality Maze” by Thayer White is one of those books.

Thayer, who I have had the honor of calling friend for close to 15 years, is a psychotherapist and a pioneer in the field of new age spirituality. If you are to invest time, money and attention in each and every one of the New Age schools of thought that have sprung up and continue to spring up you would be, quite understandably, confused and feeling lost in this maze. Thayer has zeroed in on a path that can help you make intelligent decisions about where to invest your attention to the maximum benefit in the development of your own spirituality.

ASHEVILLE NC, August 4, 2008. “The Law of Attraction usually fails folks,” claims New Age author and therapist, Thayer White, in his new book, Finding Your Soul in the Spirituality Maze. “If the Law worked at all well, every city block in Europe and North America would have a few new millionaires by now. There would be Law of Attraction support clinics everywhere curing high blood pressure, heart isease, diabetes, cancer and genetic disorders. The obese would be shrinking.” Available with book purchase is a free bonus audio of Thayer describing why the Law of Attraction usually fails folks. Find out more about the book and special free bonuses.

There is a school of thought that states if you don’t learn a lesson completely in this lifetime you can always spend time with it in your next lifetime. In some instances a person might be inclined to make more inroads and progress on whatever difficult life-lesson they’ve got facing them this time around rather than be faced with more of the same in their next incarnation.

But, the quest for your own spirituality is one of those life-lessons that happens to each and every person in every one of their lifetimes. This is one of the most important lessons and the more progress you make with it the richer your life might be in every one of your incarnations. This is an investment you can make for yourself that has dividends that will continue to pay off, life after life after life.

“Home to Holly Springs” by Jan Karon

“Home to Holly Springs” by Jan Karon
2007, Viking
ISBN: 978-0-670-01825-3

“Home to Holly Springs” by Jan Karon. This is one of those good clean books. You also won’t want to put it down. I cried through most of it. It helps to have already read the first 9 books in the Mitford Father Tim series. I’ve got them all on the bookshelf in the bedroom and I might just start over reading them all again.

“Home to Holly Springs” is the first in the Father Timothy series. You don’t need to have read the first ones. You can start with this one. But, I guarantee that you’ll feel better.

I was drawn to these books because of the spiritual slant. Father Tim is now a retired Episcopalian priest. Late in life, in his 60’s, he got married to Cynthia who writes children’s books. He adopted a son before he got married, Dooley, a thrown away child who ended up on his doorstep wanting to know where he could take a dump. How more down home than that can you get? These are honest, hardworking, no nonsense people you will certainly come to love.

In, “Home to Holly Springs” Father Tim takes a trip back to his roots, to where he was born and raised and hasn’t been to in 38 years. It’s a revelation all the stories he hears, all the people from the past he meets up with. I’m not going to give it away. Oh, no. You’ve got to read this yourself. I can’t wait for the next one.

“Endless Chain” by Emilie Richards

“Endless Chain” by Emilie Richards
2005 by Mira Books
ISBN: 978-0-7783-2316-7

“Endless Chain” by Emilie Richards is one of those books that sort of fell into my lap. I read something briefly on the internet by somebody who was talking about one of her books. Even then something inside me told me to read one quick. Right away I hopped on over to my account at the Oakland Public Library and ordered up a book at random. That was “Endless Chain”. I’m really impressed.

The writing is clean, it’s smooth. It’s not convoluted or shining with excellent literary allusions or anything like that. It’s clean. It’s fresh. It’s a love story and I couldn’t put it down until I finished it.

This is the story of two people who find each other. Sam Kinkade is the young minister and Elisa Martinez. Endless Chain is a story of how the quilters in a church going community opened their arms to include Elisa and taught her how to quilt. She made an Endless Chain. Click here for a pattern.

Sam wants to include the Hispanic community in his church and is met with opposition. Elisa helps him to overcome the obstacles and when it appears she is also in need is helped by Sam.

It’s a story of searching and finding, of danger and of fear and an unfolding of love that is sweet to see. It’s a story of history repeating itself over and over again and it is an "Endless Chain".

"Finding The Deep River Within" by Abby Seixas

"Finding the Deep River Within" by Abby Seixas
2006 Jossey-Bass
ISBN-13: 978-0-7879-8097-9

“Finding the Deep River Within” by Abby Seixas is written primarily with women in mind, this book can benefit everyone. Sometimes we get so caught up in what we do for a living, the things we do at home for our families, our recreation and our hobbies that we constantly feel we are living in a panic. Life is so fast, events happen in our world so quickly that it seems we’ve got absolutely no control over anything.

This book will help you to take control of your life. It shows you how to slow down and to dip down below the surface of conscious living to move into the deep river of spiritual and self nourishment. It shows you that even though you have obligations and tons of responsibilities you can still take time for yourself.

Face it, when you die you’ll have the opportunity to say, “This is what I did”. Now, while you are living deliberately choose what you want to say about how you lived your life.