My Feng Shui article from the Dallas Morning News!

Uncertain times tend to make people feel nervous, and when unexpected events come along – even positive ones – it can really complicate things. Take my friend Layne, for example. She was thrilled when her daughter was selected to compete in the Future City engineering competition in Washington, D.C. But the cost of the trip wasn't in the budget.
"I had no idea where that $1,500 would come from. The stress of going into debt was making me depressed, so I put a note in my Helpful People/Travel section of my house and another one in my Wealth corner: 'Help with D.C. trip.' Not four days later, one of the other parents on the FC team called to tell me that my hotel room would be completely comped!"
Layne didn't use magical thinking to manifest a free hotel room. She simply shared her situation with her friends. Then she went one step further and used Feng Shui to enhance the energy of her home. She created a physical form of prayer with the notes and left the rest up to the heavens.
The 5,000-year-old philosophy of Feng Shui helps people look at their external environment in a new way. Every space, whether it's a house, a room, a desktop or even a city, is divided up into nine equal sections. Each of the sections in this "Bagua" map corresponds energetically with a different part of your life. Layne needed money for a trip, so she focused on the Travel and Wealth sections of her home.
When my husband was laid off a year and a half ago, I immediately placed a small table-top water fountain in the middle front part of our home, which is the part of the house that corresponds to Career and Life Path. Running water symbolically generates more opportunities.
Next, we swept out the garage, which is the front right corner of our home. This is our Helpful People/Travel section, and when this part of a home is neat, organized and filled with things that have positive stories to tell, you'll find that others show up to help you in ways that you didn't even know you needed.
I addressed the Skills & Knowledge section of the house, which is the left front corner. Any job search will lead to multiple opportunities, even if one of the options is to remain unemployed. Having the ability to discern the right step to take is key to future satisfaction. Clutter in this part means that your thought processes are too twisted to let true guidance through.
Finally, I scrubbed the walls in our Wealth section, which is the far left corner of the house. I got rid of the broken vase there and replaced the dusty plastic flowers with flourishing green plants. I also relocated a bamboo plant here to symbolize a new opportunity full of growth and abundance. I had my husband write out notes of gratitude for the new job to serve as physical reminders of the intentions.
While I worked on the house, Allen was busy networking and polishing his resume. He started doing some freelance work, and was pleased to see some promise there. Then the phone rang and a colleague from his previous employer asked if he'd be interested in coming back.
Of course, waterfalls, positive affirmations and bamboo plants won't fix a bad resume, a defeatist attitude or poor money management. However, by making conscious changes in your physical environment, you begin to modify your attitude – and your actions.
So finish your coffee, and take a look around. It's a perfect day to clear some clutter!
Beverly Biehl of Frisco runs her own interior decorating and feng shui consulting business. Her e-mail address is Beverly@TheIntuitiveInterior.com.

Now I lay me down to sleep...

It's amazing to me how easily old prayers spring to mind when I am back home with my siblings and my mom. For example, our breakfast prayer is probably the longest one that I've ever heard of, stemming from an early 80's Catholic program called Renew (or something like that...) It goes like this:

Bless us, oh Lord, and these Thy gifts
For which we are about to receive,
From Thy bounty,
Through Christ, Our Lord, Amen.

Good morning, good Jesus, this day is for you.
I ask for God's blessings in all things I say and do.
I offer up all of my thoughts, words, deeds, actions, and sufferings
in reparation for the sins of my past life.

Lord, we are your people, the sheep of your flock.
Heal the sheep who are wounded.
Touch the sheep who are in pain.
Clean the sheep who are soiled
and warm the lambs who are cold.
Help us to know the Father's love through Jesus the shepherd and through the Spirit.
Help us to lift up that love and show it all over this land.
Help us build love on justice and justice on love.
Help us to believe mightily, hope joyfully, and love divinely.
Renew us that we may help renew the face of the earth.

Whew! Breakfast is usually cold by the time we finish this whole thing, but we never fail to say it every morning when I'm at the farm. Even though I haven't claimed to be a Catholic since my late teens, I still faithfully follow the traditions whenever I'm with the fam...you know, when in Rome. However, there is something so beautiful about these prayers. I'm a firm believer in the benefits of blessing food, since it literally changes the vibration of your meal prior to eating it, making it more nutritious for your body.

I know that most Catholics believe that reincarnation is a bunch of nonsense, yet that last line of the second prayer always confused me. The sins of my past life? Technically, that's what confession is for, so is there another life that I'm supposed to be atoning for? Maybe so, maybe not...but it certainly makes for good pondering.

In the meantime, I'll just keep trying to do my best for this moment, this day, and this lifetime!

Diet, continued

Still going strong on the meatless meals! I've been surprised at how easy it is, as long as I'm doing the cooking. Otherwise, it's all meat, all the time at nearly all of the restaurants, especially the fast-food kind. No wonder most vegetarians I know of tend towards the thinner side.

I've been very appreciative of this experience. I am currently undergoing a new supplement regimin in an attempt to finally rid my body of a decade + long sinus infection, and am finding that my urine Ph is trending very alkaline. Good news if you want to stay cancer-free, since cancer cells die after only 24 hours in an 8.0 + environment. It's pretty standard for vegetarians to have this high of a level, though kinda hard on one's urinary tract. I'll be undergoing a "mudding" process next week, and will write about that, too.

As for right now, I'm going to try to relax here at the farm. It's harder than I thought, since I still have things to catch up on, read, and help around the place. I still feel like I'm not doing enough, too. Oh well...par for the course,I'm afraid!

Day 10...still no meat.

Today is proving to be the hardest yet in my quest to go for the full Lenten season w/o meat other than fish on Fridays. My daughter has joined me in this quest, and while most of the time I feel just dandy w/o it, we're having fajitas tonight. I love beef fajitas, but at least I can console myself with the portobello substitute. I've been going through some type of detox as far as I can tell, as my skin is breaking out, I have a mild rash, and I've been going through some digestive changes as well. Nothing major, but it's all very interesting.

It has been a day of ups & downs. I went to church on my own today, which was kinda nice. Alexander stayed home, since he had his big Cottilion ball today, and both kids needed a chance to sleep in. It would have been wonderful to dance with my son, but instead he chose to make the obligatory dance an absolute nightmare for me. Needless to say, after spending those few minutes on the dance floor with him telling me how furious he was with us (me) for going to the ball (only the last 30 minutes), it's going to be a while before I can feel like doing anything nice for him. A big apology from him and some serious groveling will be in order...little twerp. I sure didn't see any of the other kids spewing venom at their parents during the 3 songs that had been set aside for this purpose.

I finally got all of the paperwork in for the church trip that I'm organizing for Heifer Ranch in AR, so that was a load off my mind. One of the greeters asked if I'd be willing to help his boss with some feng shui options for his office, and maybe do some energy clearing on him, too. I was very pleased that he felt good enough about me to make that recommendation. It's just what I needed today!

Today is also the anniversary of my Dad's birth...I miss him. 2 1/2 years isn't that long for him to be gone, but some days it feels like it was just yesterday. Hope those angels know how to make German Chocolate Cake for him!

Newspaper love...

I went to a terrific symposium last night at the Dallas Morning News for all of the community Voices columnists. Many of the regular column writers were there to give advice on how to make a column more interesting, more compelling, and above all, worthy of the time spent reading it. I so appreciated those professionals taking the time out of their long days to share their expertise with us amateurs. It again stoked my desire to become more thoughtful and more critical of my motivations behind my words.

I guess it's a good thing that I have a computer to hide behind at times...sometimes I that "delete" key really is the most important one on the whole keyboard. Too bad the mouth doesn't come with one.

Anyway, I continue to be terribly saddened by the demise of the newspaper world. Yeah, you can get all kinds of news online these days, but where does that content come from? Yup, those pesky reporters that insist on getting paid for their work! I will be very curious to see just how much will go unchecked in the future years with severely limited investigative reporting staff. Do you really think that Nixon would have been brought down by bloggers?

For those of you reading this, make sure that when you buy something at a store today, tell them that you found their ad in the newspaper. Hopefully that will keep them from slashing their print budget, and perhaps it will give this venerable institution a few more years. One step at a time, and we'll all get through this. Times are a-changing, but on this topic, I'll dig my heels in.

meatless wonder - update

Well, much to my surprise, I haven't missed meat at all. I've noticed a definite lessening of my fat layer on my abdomen, and my digestive system seems to be approving of my decision, too. It has another interesting effect...I had wine with dinner last night, and it was almost silly how quickly I, well, got silly. So, meat must have the ability to absorb alcohol, or at least slow the absorption by the body. Go figure...