REMINDER from Mano:
It is important to record the special experiences in your life as a reminder and blessing for your daily life.
REMARKS from Barbara:
Mano made the request to record special events and special learnings so often I should have known he had a deeper reason for me to do it.
REMEMBERING Mary Jane:
I am so grateful that Mary Jane accepted Mano’s request to write his blog when I had refused to do it.
Pulling It All Together
Blog #140
At the end of August I had a fall and slight concussion. Since I am now 97 years old there was concern I should not live alone and would need 24 hour help each day. My wonderful daughter, Donna Theresa, found two amazingly wonderful women to share the 24 hour care. Deep changes have been happening since August 2020 when the CZU fire swept over my mountain and ate my home with wildfire. Two years later I moved into my newly constructed “Japanese style” home, basically a large 30-foot open ceiling room for kitchen, living, and dining area, den, bedroom, work room, and guest room all open off of the Big Room. All wood is redwood, harvested in the Santa Cruz Mountains. I love my new home.
I moved into my new home July 2, 2022 after spending one month in and out of the hospital with heart stuff and Covid and days of sleep, barely conscious. Donna Theresa lived with me for 3 months as I recovered and settled in my new home.
A very large male physical therapist came to work with me when I got home from the hospital. He woke me out of the deep sleep I had been in for days saying, “Wake up Barbara. Pull yourself up. You are a strong woman Barbara, pull yourself up.” I woke up hearing him speak. I had no energy. He kept saying, “you are a strong woman, pull yourself up!” These words soaked deep into my mind and heart and I said to myself, “I am a strong woman,” and I started pulling on his arms to pull myself up. With his help I did it, embodying the consciousness that I truly am a strong woman.
Mano has asked me to make a list of special experiences in my life. He also has asked me to read my autobiography, Living With The Spirits Of The Land, again. He is asking me to review my life as it comes close to its end. I have made two promises to God over the years that leave me in perfect peace on the matter of life and death.
Sometime in the ‘70’s when I lived in the Los Angeles foothills, a huge earthquake was predicted suggesting Los Angeles was going to slip into the ocean. I was part of a prayer group that choose to pray all night to save Los Angeles. Sometime in the prayer I had an awareness that brought peace to my heart: “In a body, or out of the body, I serve God.” With that awareness I have always had peace about the issue of life or death. I was amused when one of my prayer partners was so angry because she had prayed all night and nothing happened.
The second statement came after Jim and I purchased the Amphitheater. Hanna, the woman who sold us her little cottage next to the Amphitheater, sent us the manuscript for a piece of music Don Hoe had been inspired to write while he was working in the Amphitheater, pulling weeds and raking the grounds. The words to his song touched my heart and I knew this is true for me too:
Lord I will go where you want me to go
and I will stay as long as you need me.
So here I am, a 97 year old woman excited to enter the first day of the new year, 2025. This year is said to be the beginning of “The New Age.” The years 2012 – 2025 have been transition years of turmoil. The picture I get is two rivers meeting and going through rough waters as they join and start moving together as one river as the two continue their unique flow in one direction.