Eclipse & Happy Merry Everything!
 |
Hello all! I wanted to post some sort of really fun, wise, enlightening article here for the holidays, and if there is time I still may do that. But in the meantime, what is happening tonight is fun, spiritual and has attracted wise seekers throughout the ages.
Tuesday is a total Lunar Eclipse. It is also the Winter Solstice and the World Wide Chant for Peace Day. Some are saying this is the first time in over 400 years all of these events have happened on the same day. Christmas is upon us, the day Christians celebrate New Light coming into the world. So I can’t top any of that in terms of spiritual ponderings.
Given all of that, I wanted to post this article, which can be found on Space.com. The times are written in EST, but if you are in CST time zone, the eclipse begins at 11:29 Monday night and ends at 5:04 Tuesday morning. If I don’t make it back here before Christmas, I wish you not just a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, but all the Light and Love and wonder of the ages.
As we all ponder the Light and how it comes into our lives, may we remember to practice wellness and dwell in gratitude. Many people just experience this season as busy and stressful– may we also remember and practice generous intention, love and joy. May we remember our Oneness with the Light of the world and joyfully share that with others. May we remember those for whom this is a sad, lonely, cold or frightening time. May we send Light and Love to all beings, near and far. May we hold in our own hearts the wonder of waiting for the Divine, for the gifts of the spirit, for supernatural and once-in-a-lifetime events. May we all be safe, loved and happy. May enduring loving relationships brighten our lives, and may you listen to your heart above all other voices.
Go in the peace of the infinite Light available to you, safe travels, and happy holidays.
Without further ado, here is the full article.
peace 🙂
The 12 Stages of Monday’s Total Lunar Eclipse
By Joe Rao
SPACE.com Skywatching Columnist
posted: 19 December 2010
10:25 am ET
No enthusiastic sky watcher ever misses a total eclipse of the moon. The spectacle is often more beautiful and interesting than one would think. To prepare for the rare event on Dec. 20-21, here are some tips to keep in mind.
During the time that the moon is entering into, and later emerging from, the Earth’s shadow, secondary phenomena may be overlooked. Below we describe 12 stages of a total lunar eclipse. [Lunar Eclipse Viewing Guide]
Probably not all of those mentioned will occur because no two eclipses are exactly the same. But many will, and those who know what to look for have a better chance of seeing them! [Amazing photos of a total lunar eclipse]
Click here for a table showing the times of all 12 stages in different time zones. This star chart shows where in the sky the upcoming lunar eclipse will appear.
The various stages, fully described:
1) Moon enters penumbra (12:29 a.m. EST/9:29 p.m. PST) The shadow cone of the earth has two parts: a dark, inner umbra, surrounded by a lighter penumbra. The penumbra is the pale outer portion of the Earth’s shadow. Although the eclipse begins officially at this moment, this is in essence an academic event. You won’t see anything unusual happening to the moon – at least not just yet.
The Earth’s penumbral shadow is so faint that it remains invisible until the moon is deeply immersed in it. We must wait until the penumbra has reached roughly 70 percent across the moon’s disk. For about the next 45 minutes the full moon will continue to appear to shine normally although with each passing minute it is progressing ever deeper into the Earth’s outer shadow.
2) Penumbral shadow begins to appear (1:13 a.m. EST/10:13 p.m. PST) Now the moon has progressed far enough into the penumbra so that it should be evident on its disk. Start looking for a very subtle light shading to appear on the moon’s upper left portion. This will become increasingly more and more evident as the minutes pass; the shading will appear to spread and deepen. Just before the moon begins to enter the Earth’s dark umbral shadow the penumbra should appear as an obvious smudge or tarnish on the moon’s left portion.
3) Moon enters umbra (1:33 a.m. EST/10:33 p.m. PST) The moon now begins to cross into the Earth’s dark central shadow, called the umbra. A small dark scallop begins to appear on the moon’s upper left-hand (northeastern) limb. The partial phases of the eclipse begin; the pace quickens and the change is dramatic. The umbra is much darker than the penumbra and fairly sharp-edged.
As the minutes pass the dark shadow appears to slowly creep across the moon’s face. At first the moon’s limb may seem to vanish completely inside of the umbra, but much later, as it moves in deeper you’ll probably notice it glowing dimly orange, red or brown. Notice also that the edge of the Earth’s shadow projected on the moon is curved. Here is visible evidence that the Earth is a sphere, as deduced by Aristotle from Iunar eclipses he observed in the 4th century B.C.
Almost as if a dimmer switch was slowly being turned down, the surrounding landscape and deep shadows of a brilliant moonlit night begin to fade away.
4) 75 percent coverage (2:23 a.m. EST/11:23 p.m. EST) With three-quarters of the moon’s disk now eclipsed, that part of it that is immersed in shadow should begin to very faintly light up similar to a piece of iron heated to the point where it just begins to glow. It now becomes obvious that the umbral shadow is not complete darkness. Using binoculars or a telescope, its outer part is usually light enough to reveal lunar seas and craters, but the central part is much darker, and sometimes no surface features are recognizable.
Colors in the umbra vary greatly from one eclipse to the next. Reds and grays usually predominate, but sometimes browns, blues and other tints are encountered.
5) Less than five minutes to totality (2:37 a.m. EST/11:37 p.m. PST) Several minutes before (and after) totality, the contrast between the remaining pale-yellow sliver and the ruddy-brown coloration spread over the rest of the moon’s disk may produce a beautiful phenomenon known to some as the “Japanese lantern effect. ”
6) Total eclipse begins (2:41 a.m. EST/11:41 p.m. PST) When the last of the moon enters the umbra, the total eclipse begins. How the moon will appear during totality is not known. Some eclipses are such a dark gray-black that the moon nearly vanishes from view. During other eclipses it can glow a bright orange.
The reason the moon can be seen at all when totally eclipsed is that sunlight is scattered and refracted around the edge of the Earth by our atmosphere. To an astronaut standing on the moon during totality, the sun would be hidden behind a dark Earth outlined by a brilliant red ring consisting of all the world’s sunrises and sunsets.
The brightness of this ring around the earth depends on global weather conditions and the amount of dust suspended in the air. A clear atmosphere on Earth means a bright lunar eclipse. If a major volcanic eruption has injected particles into the stratosphere, the eclipse is very dark.
Because of the recent eruptions of the Eyjafjallajökull volcano in Iceland last spring and the Merapi volcano in Indonesia in October, one and possibly two clouds of ash and dust might be currently floating high above the Earth. As a result, the moon may appear darker than usual during this eclipse; during totality, parts of the moon might even become black and invisible.
7) Middle of totality (3:17 a.m. EST/12:17 a.m. PST)The moon is now shining anywhere from 10,000 to 100,000 times fainter than it was just a couple of hours ago.
Since the moon is moving to the north of the center of the Earth’s umbra, the gradation of color and brightness across the lunar disk should be such that its lower portion should appear darkest, with hues of deep copper or chocolate brown. Meanwhile, its upper portion – that part of the moon closest to the outer edge of the umbra should appear brightest, with hues of reds, oranges and even perhaps a soft bluish-white.
Observers away from bright city lights will notice a much greater number of stars than were visible earlier in the night. The darkened moon will be near the constellation Taurus, just beyond the tips of the bull’s horns and hovering high above the stars of Orion, the hunter.
The darkness of the sky is impressive. The surrounding landscape has taken on a somber hue. Before the eclipse, the full moon looked flat and one-dimensional. During totality, however, it will look smaller and three-dimensional – like some weirdly illuminated ball suspended in space.
Before the moon entered the Earth’s shadow, the temperature at the lunar equator on its sunlit surface hovered at 260 degrees F (127 degrees C). Since the moon lacks an atmosphere, there is no way that this heat could be retained from escaping into space as the shadow sweeps by.
Now, in shadow, the temperature on the moon has plummeted to minus 280 degrees F (minus 173 degrees C). A drop of over 500 degrees F (300 degrees C) in only about two hours!
8) Total eclipse ends (3:53 a.m. EST/12:53 am. PST) The emergence of the moon from the shadow begins. The first small segment of the moon begins to reappear, followed again for the next several minutes by the Japanese Lantern Effect.
9) 75 percent coverage (4:10 a.m. EST/1:10 a.m. PST) Any vestiges of coloration within the umbra should be disappearing now. From here on out, as the dark shadow methodically creeps off the moon’s disk it should appear black and featureless.
10) Moon leaves umbra (5:01 a.m. EST/2:01 a.m. PST) The dark central shadow clears the moon’s upper right hand (northwestern) limb.
11) Penumbra shadow fades away (5:20 a.m. EST/2:20 p.m. PST) As the last, faint shading vanishes off the moon’s upper right portion, the visual show comes to an end.
12) Moon leaves penumbra (6:04 a.m. EST/3:04 p.m. PST) The eclipse officially ends, as the moon is completely free of the penumbral shadow.
you can find the original article here, at Space.com.
Dealing with Difficult Relatives
Your friends, family and your love must be cultivated like a garden. Time, effort, and imagination must be summoned constantly to keep any relationship flourishing and growing.
-Jim Rohn
OK, so I admit it. I’m not normally a reader of Max Lucado’s work. But I have had many chats lately with a lot of people feeling pain about the “hellidays,” family time, obligations and expectations, stresses and so on. Not a lot of excitement about connecting with the famdamly in these conversations. So, I thought I’d pass along something someone sent me about how Jesus dealt with his own family. Nothing original here…not in terms of what I’m posting, but also not in terms of the challenges we all face with the folks we want to love, or wish would love us.
It’s painful for a lot of people this time of year…it’s lonely for many and the truth is that I think most of us wish for some version of Norman Rockwell when in truth we have some version of the Manson family. So, as we go into a time that is intended to celebrate the harvest and abundance of another year, I thought I’d post this as a reality check. Because if the guy a lot of people believe is God in the flesh wasn’t understood or appreciated by his family, then maybe it’s a little easier for us to let go some too…
Also, if I don’t make it back here before Thanksgiving~~ May you feel the blessings and peace of a loving and abundant universe. May you live in peace and dwell in gratitude. May you feel the arms of a loving God in the hugs of friends and family. May you celebrate another year of bountiful, joyful harvest in your life. May you giggle and chuckle, rest and play, eat, drink and be merry. May you be blessed with good friends and a spiritual family that is deep, rich and wide. And, if you are so inclined, May you remember all for whom this time of year is painful and send them a few prayers and some of your own joy as well. Thanks. Peace and blessings to all…
With that, I leave you with Max Lucado…
Dealing with Difficult Relatives
by Max Lucado
Does Jesus have anything to say about dealing with difficult relatives? Is there an example of Jesus bringing peace to a painful family? Yes, there is.
His own.
It may surprise you to know that Jesus had a difficult family. If your family doesn’t appreciate you, take heart, neither did Jesus’.
“His family … went to get him because they thought he was out of his mind” (Mark 3:21).
Jesus’ siblings thought their brother was a lunatic. They weren’t proud—they were embarrassed!
It’s worth noting that he didn’t try to control his family’s behavior, nor did he let their behavior control his. He didn’t demand that they agree with him. He didn’t sulk when they insulted him. He didn’t make it his mission to try to please them.
Each of us has a fantasy that our family will be like the Waltons, an expectation that our dearest friends will be our next of kin. Jesus didn’t have that expectation. Look how he defined his family: “My true brother and sister and mother are those who do what God wants” (Mark 3:35).
When Jesus’ brothers didn’t share his convictions, he didn’t try to force them. He recognized that his spiritual family could provide what his physical family didn’t. If Jesus himself couldn’t force his family to share his convictions, what makes you think you can force yours?
Having your family’s approval is desirable but not necessary for happiness and not always possible. Jesus did not let the difficult dynamic of his family overshadow his call from God. And because he didn’t, this chapter has a happy ending.
What happened to Jesus’ family?
Mine with me a golden nugget hidden in a vein of the Book of Acts. “Then [the disciples] went back to Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives.… They all continued praying together with some women, including Mary the mother of Jesus, and Jesus’ brothers” (Acts 1:12, 14, emphasis added).
What a change! The ones who mocked him now worship him. The ones who pitied him now pray for him. What if Jesus had disowned them? Or worse still, what if he’d suffocated his family with his demand for change?
He didn’t. He instead gave them space, time, and grace. And because he did, they changed. How much did they change? One brother became an apostle (Gal. 1:19) and others became missionaries (1 Cor. 9:5).
So don’t lose heart. God still changes families.
From He Still Moves Stones
Copyright (Thomas Nelson, 1999) Max Lucado
Meditation and Attention Span
Meditation is the tongue of the soul and the language of the spirit…
~~Jeremy Taylor
I took this pic of the flowers with the small Buddha out at MABA, the Mid America Buddhist Association. It was a day of choosing focus and the flowers in direct focus with Buddha in the back seemed to capture if for me. MABA is a gorgeous place and one of many places in the St. Louis area to learn more about meditation. St. Louis offers meditation and prayer opportunities in nearly every faith tradition or practice, as do most cities. If you are looking for suggestions about places to check out in STL or your area, feel free to contact me.
In general, if you are looking for more peace, joy, focus and stability in life, a regular practice in any healthy spiritual tradition will be a pathway to those blessings and much more. So with that in mind, I thought I would pass along this article. The findings will not be a surprise to anyone who already practices prayer and/or meditation, but it’s nice to see anyway.
This is a direct cut/paste from Science Daily. Enjoy!
ScienceDaily (July 16, 2010) — It’s nearly impossible to pay attention to one thing for a long time. A new study looks at whether Buddhist meditation can improve a person’s ability to be attentive and finds that meditation training helps people do better at focusing for a long time on a task that requires them to distinguish small differences between things they see.
The research was inspired by work on Buddhist monks, who spend years training in meditation. “You wonder if the mental skills, the calmness, the peace that they express, if those things are a result of their very intensive training or if they were just very special people to begin with,” says Katherine MacLean, who worked on the study as a graduate student at the University of California, Davis. Her co-advisor, Clifford Saron, did some research with monks decades ago and wanted to study meditation by putting volunteers through intensive training and seeing how it changes their mental abilities.
About 140 people applied to participate; they heard about it via word of mouth and advertisements in Buddhist-themed magazines. Sixty were selected for the study. A group of thirty people went on a meditation retreat while the second group waited their turn; that meant the second group served as a control for the first group. All of the participants had been on at least three five-to-ten day meditation retreats before, so they weren’t new to the practice. They studied meditation for three months at a retreat in Colorado with B. Alan Wallace, one of the study’s co-authors and a meditation teacher and Buddhist scholar.
The people took part in several experiments; results from one are published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. At three points during the retreat, each participant took a test on a computer to measure how well they could make fine visual distinctions and sustain visual attention. They watched a screen intently as lines flashed on it; most were of the same length, but every now and then a shorter one would appear, and the volunteer had to click the mouse in response.
Participants got better at discriminating the short lines as the training went on. This improvement in perception made it easier to sustain attention, so they also improved their task performance over a long period of time. This improvement persisted five months after the retreat, particularly for people who continued to meditate every day.
The task lasted 30 minutes and was very demanding. “Because this task is so boring and yet is also very neutral, it’s kind of a perfect index of meditation training,” says MacLean. “People may think meditation is something that makes you feel good and going on a meditation retreat is like going on vacation, and you get to be at peace with yourself. That’s what people think until they try it. Then you realize how challenging it is to just sit and observe something without being distracted.”
This experiment is one of many that were done by Saron, MacLean and a team of nearly 30 researchers with the same group of participants. It’s the most comprehensive study of intensive meditation to date, using methods drawn from fields as diverse as molecular biology, neuroscience, and anthropology. Future analyses of these same volunteers will look at other mental abilities, such as how well people can regulate their emotions and their general well-being.
Association for Psychological Science (2010, July 16). Meditation helps increase attention span. ScienceDaily. Retrieved November 21, 2010
Getting There
Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.
~~Ralph Waldo Emerson
Hello all 🙂
I was talking with some folks over the weekend about the paths we walk…how we think the path we are on will lead to a certain place, but part of the journey is accepting when it wanders into other areas. Staying on the path and getting there aren’t necessarily the same thing, but probably all part of the same path. It reminded me of the wonderful poem by David Wagoner, so I thought I’d post it. We’ve all earned this ” worn-down, hard, incredible sight Called Here and Now…” I hope this finds you enjoying it. Have a great day!
Getting There
You take a final step and, look, suddenly
You’re there. You’ve arrived
At the one place all your drudgery was aimed for:
This common ground
Where you stretch out, pressing your cheek to sandstone.What did you want
To be? You’ll remember soon. You feel like tinder
Under a burning glass,
A luminous point of change. The sky is pulsing
Against the cracked horizon,
Holding it firm till the arrival of stars
In time with your heartbeats.
Like wind etching rock, you’ve made a lasting impression
On the self you were
By having come all this way through all this welter
Under your own power,
Though your traces on a map would make an unpromising
Meandering lifeline.What have you learned so far? You’ll find out later,
Telling it haltingly
Like a dream, that lost traveler’s dream
Under the last hill
Where through the night you’ll take your time out of mind
To unburden yourself
Of elements along elementary paths
By the break of morning.You’ve earned this worn-down, hard, incredible sight
Called Here and Now.
Now, what you make of it means everything,
Means starting over:
The life in your hands is neither here nor there
But getting there,
So you’re standing again and breathing, beginning another
Journey without regret
Forever, being your own unpeaceable kingdom,
The end of endings.~ David Wagoner ~
(In Broken Country)
Mesothelioma Cancer Alliance
Health is a large word. It embraces not the body only, but the mind and spirit as well… and not today’s pain or pleasure alone, but the whole being and outlook of a person…
~James H. West
Hello all! The Mesothelioma Cancer Alliance is interested in working with health and life coaches as a resource for their clients. We are honored to be part of their network, thanks!
From their website, feel free to check them out for education or an additional resource.
Life & Wellness coaching has been shown to benefit those suffering from mesothelioma and asbestos cancer . Visit the Mesothelioma Cancer Alliance to learn more about Mesothelioma.
Thanks!
peace and blessings,
Blogger Slacker
Hello all 🙂 I’ve been a total blogger slacker the last few weeks, but with good and fun reason. If you are interested, you can read about some of those adventures on Spirituality Blog, a post titled Love is Kind. I was thinking a lot about time, love, patience, kindness, fun, grief, healing, and on and on it goes.
I took this pic in Florida, after driving an enormous damn yellow moving truck from St. Louis all the way south. Any further with that stuff and we would have all drowned! 😉 Along the way, I had plenty of time to think and ponder, which was part of the fun. I was thinking about everything from Buddha to the Corinthians to Goethe, which is presumably what happens when the brain begins to fry after 15 hours in a moving van with 10 more to go.
I realized today that van was bigger than my healing room, it was sort of like trying to drive part of my house. Very interesting. I got to practice a lot of things that week…wide right turns, some patience, defensive driving skills, my favorite curse words, etc. But I kept coming back to trying to practice love and patience. There is a reason they call it a practice. In the course of these very human events, I was thinking a lot about something Goethe wrote, so I will share it here. ..
I have come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element. It is my personal approach that creates the climate. It is my daily mood that makes the weather. I possess tremendous power to make life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration, I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis is escalated or de-escalated, and a person is humanized or de-humanized. If we treat people as they are, we make them worse. If we treat people as they ought to be, we help them become what they are capable of becoming.
I am still unpacking some of what transpired in the last month. I suspect at some point I will write about more of it, but for tonight, it’s good to play on the Blessings Blog again. Feel free to check out more thoughts on the Spirituality Blog, they have both been lonely as I was playing in the Yellow Submarine 🙂
On the final note, I thought I’d post one of my fave cartoons. It sort of captures the balance of living life and blogging about it.
Peace
Seek and ye shall find
Archives
Follow on BlogLovin
