December 2008 Newsletter
Hello to All!
I hope you celebrated a wonderful and joyous Thanksgiving Holiday with friends and family and that you came away from the dinner table with a heart filled with love, laughter, and gratitude instead of a distended belly grossly stuffed with food and experiencing distress. Why do we give ourselves permission to "pig out" during the holidays? What does overeating, a form of gluttony, have to do with loving each other and giving thanks? Nothing actually, as I see it but somehow we are conditioned to "over do it" during times of intended celebration and often loose sight of why we come together as families in the first place. So, what we originally plan as a day of sharing and bonding with those we love often leaves us with a feeling of bloating, lethargy, and a digestive tract riddled with heart burn.
I think this is something to reflect on as we enter December, a month filled with holiday celebration. Have we become so accustomed to the holidays that we just walk through this season mindless, planning our menus while wondering what gifts to buy? Having been raised in a large family with many aunts, uncles, and cousins, not to mention grandparents, our holiday celebrations were all about the food preparation, who was bringing what dish, and who ended up sitting at the "big" table (meaning the adult table). There was much laughter and bonding but ultimately, our celebrations were all about gathering at the table and eating. If one wasn't serving or being served some food, then something was amiss. Family, food, love, and laughter were a complete package and one didn't exist without the other ingredients.
I'm not saying that this was wrong. What I'm saying is that our family focus was more about the food served than the actual holiday being celebrated. To this day, one of the first things I do when someone walks into my home is to offer him/her some form of refreshment because it's only proper and "loving" to do so, as I was conditioned from childhood. If we really concentrated more in giving each other and ourselves heartfelt "love" we probably wouldn't be focusing on food to fill this internal void.
How many of you associate giving or receiving food as a form of love? If we could temper this slightly and make a distinction between the different factors that comprise an individual and see food for what it really is, a form of nourishment for the body, then maybe we would be able to nourish our minds, our emotions, and our souls with the proper and specific nourishment each requires. Food does not need to be the end all, cure all of our totality. We need spiritual nourishment for our souls, as much as we need intellectual nourishment for our minds, emotional nourishment for our feelings, and physical nourishment (food) for our bodies.
We are complicated beings that require specific forms of nourishment and fulfillment for each individual aspect of ourselves. If we could see, understand, and accept the fact that we are a composite of multiple aspects requiring fulfillment from multiple arenas, maybe we would be more balanced, integrated, and joyful and more capable of sharing our blessings with others less informed and less fortunate.
What is one of the most important factors an individual requires to fully experience celebration in its ultimate form? -Other individual(s) to share in their celebration- Celebrating alone usually isn't much fun and it can be difficult to reach the complete depths of celebration without someone to share it with. It's similar to the question often posed about whether a tree in a forest, when falling, really makes a sound or not if no one is present to witness its fall. So, can you truly celebrate fully alone? Maybe some of you can and congratulations as you have found the true meaning of loving and honoring yourself but for the most of us, celebrating alone isn't very rewarding nor fulfilling and often leaves us feeling a little sad and empty.
Why not focus deeply within yourselves and discover the true meaning of celebration and find someone, or multiple someones, that you can celebrate with. If for some reason you find yourself away from friends and family during the holiday season, find a local hospital, nursing home, or charity that you could participate with and share in their celebration. You would be making some individual's holiday season a little brighter and fun filled just by your loving presence. Not only that, you would also benefit from the celebratory process as "When two or more of you are gathered in My name there is LOVE!!!" Why not spread the love around this holiday season? It costs us nothing to give it and it's free to the recipient, and as we all know, the more we give, the more we receive. That's a Win-Win formula if I ever heard one!
Wishing you and your family and friends a most fabulous Holiday Season and may you be fortunate enough to lovingly share in the blessings of this season's celebration.
With love and gratitude,
Bianca Guerra
I hope you celebrated a wonderful and joyous Thanksgiving Holiday with friends and family and that you came away from the dinner table with a heart filled with love, laughter, and gratitude instead of a distended belly grossly stuffed with food and experiencing distress. Why do we give ourselves permission to "pig out" during the holidays? What does overeating, a form of gluttony, have to do with loving each other and giving thanks? Nothing actually, as I see it but somehow we are conditioned to "over do it" during times of intended celebration and often loose sight of why we come together as families in the first place. So, what we originally plan as a day of sharing and bonding with those we love often leaves us with a feeling of bloating, lethargy, and a digestive tract riddled with heart burn.
I think this is something to reflect on as we enter December, a month filled with holiday celebration. Have we become so accustomed to the holidays that we just walk through this season mindless, planning our menus while wondering what gifts to buy? Having been raised in a large family with many aunts, uncles, and cousins, not to mention grandparents, our holiday celebrations were all about the food preparation, who was bringing what dish, and who ended up sitting at the "big" table (meaning the adult table). There was much laughter and bonding but ultimately, our celebrations were all about gathering at the table and eating. If one wasn't serving or being served some food, then something was amiss. Family, food, love, and laughter were a complete package and one didn't exist without the other ingredients.
I'm not saying that this was wrong. What I'm saying is that our family focus was more about the food served than the actual holiday being celebrated. To this day, one of the first things I do when someone walks into my home is to offer him/her some form of refreshment because it's only proper and "loving" to do so, as I was conditioned from childhood. If we really concentrated more in giving each other and ourselves heartfelt "love" we probably wouldn't be focusing on food to fill this internal void.
How many of you associate giving or receiving food as a form of love? If we could temper this slightly and make a distinction between the different factors that comprise an individual and see food for what it really is, a form of nourishment for the body, then maybe we would be able to nourish our minds, our emotions, and our souls with the proper and specific nourishment each requires. Food does not need to be the end all, cure all of our totality. We need spiritual nourishment for our souls, as much as we need intellectual nourishment for our minds, emotional nourishment for our feelings, and physical nourishment (food) for our bodies.
We are complicated beings that require specific forms of nourishment and fulfillment for each individual aspect of ourselves. If we could see, understand, and accept the fact that we are a composite of multiple aspects requiring fulfillment from multiple arenas, maybe we would be more balanced, integrated, and joyful and more capable of sharing our blessings with others less informed and less fortunate.
What is one of the most important factors an individual requires to fully experience celebration in its ultimate form? -Other individual(s) to share in their celebration- Celebrating alone usually isn't much fun and it can be difficult to reach the complete depths of celebration without someone to share it with. It's similar to the question often posed about whether a tree in a forest, when falling, really makes a sound or not if no one is present to witness its fall. So, can you truly celebrate fully alone? Maybe some of you can and congratulations as you have found the true meaning of loving and honoring yourself but for the most of us, celebrating alone isn't very rewarding nor fulfilling and often leaves us feeling a little sad and empty.
Why not focus deeply within yourselves and discover the true meaning of celebration and find someone, or multiple someones, that you can celebrate with. If for some reason you find yourself away from friends and family during the holiday season, find a local hospital, nursing home, or charity that you could participate with and share in their celebration. You would be making some individual's holiday season a little brighter and fun filled just by your loving presence. Not only that, you would also benefit from the celebratory process as "When two or more of you are gathered in My name there is LOVE!!!" Why not spread the love around this holiday season? It costs us nothing to give it and it's free to the recipient, and as we all know, the more we give, the more we receive. That's a Win-Win formula if I ever heard one!
Wishing you and your family and friends a most fabulous Holiday Season and may you be fortunate enough to lovingly share in the blessings of this season's celebration.
With love and gratitude,
Bianca Guerra