When We Get Old by Deborah Jordaan

Good day to our loyal readers. Today I would like to write about what happens to us when we age and get put in an old age home.

I’m a carer at an old age home and the stories I hear and the things I see makes me wonder why we as parents do so much for our children just to have them put us in a home when they can’t cope with us anymore. As always it’s a generalised opinion as not all families put their parents there to get them out of the way.

Some elderly people are better off in a home as they can receive the care they need in regards to their health and grooming as things get difficult to the point where the elderly person can no longer do things for themselves. Being a carer is satisfying to me as I can be to the elderly person what they need me to be and I do it lovingly.

My dear mother passed on a few years ago at our home and I decided I wanted to be there for similar situations where if a child or partner were not present and a person was ill and was going to pass on that I could be there in their stead to reassure the person that everything is alright and they are not alone. Every person I take care of I feel I can save them or at least make their journey less stressful.

We take for granted that we can groom ourselves. To the ill or elderly person even those daily tasks become too much. They also like to be clean and pampered and they need to be reassured they are in safe hands when tended to. Make them feel they matter and they are not useless that they can’t tend to themselves.

This is where I hear the sad tales. Some are put in a home because their children have taken over their finances and their home and they don’t want them around. Other children are wonderful, they see to the needs of the parent or relative. They visit regularly where the other children just leave them there and always have a story as to why they can’t come visit.

I see their pain and joy and it warms my heart that I can be there for them in some small way. I see my parents in every one of them. So I care for them as I would my own parents. I love and respect them and don’t treat them like a child. They might be old and maybe become forgetful but they are an adult and command respect.

So my wish is that someone that is being neglectful reads this and realises how lucky they are to still have a parent. Take time and spend time with your loved one. No money or worldly goods can replace a parent.

Be Blessed

Ebb and Flow of Life by Vanessa Anderson

In the beginning we were connected, rooted within communities in which every member of that society had a purpose, a place and a gift it honoured its collective membership with. There were the protectors, the teachers, the gatherers and the collectors of truth and all were welcomed at the feast and each had their story to share, the old and the young alike and those who wove words threaded a fabric that clothed their past and guided the path to come.

There were deep roots to source through the healers, the medicine men and women ordained through insight to help others recognise the light in themselves. There was a knowing, a trusting in the accounts that were to follow as well as those had had passed, an understanding of the role that each had to play and all of this had us firmly rooted, connected and within reach of each other, an interdependent web of creation that ebbed and flowed in a thriving symbiosis.

Over the eons that stretched from the beginning, the threads grew taut, some held, some snapped and recoiled, spiralling helixes in the network of time and we were left with memories held only in the flight of our dreamtimes.

Over this time that we all now find ourselves, the implausible peculiarity that has catapulted our already fragile connection to source – I find myself in a foreign place, longing for that familial embrace. It is that dread of finding yourself in the centre of a room, it is grand with high ceilings and gilded mouldings and everywhere people in conversation both gaudy and muted, familiar in faces and frequent embraces, I should feel acquainted, a consort, included. Instead I am found to be alone in a room full of people.

I flit and I flutter from one to another, my voice is as soft as the skirt on a flower but inside my head it’s a thundering bellow. A stumble of words over numbers and matters that matter in truth neither value nor substance, we dance and we flirt around what really matters and discount our senses and truth on the matters.

So far from the ebb and the flow we have travelled that the stars that once lit our night sky have faded from memory. In my dreamtime I sit beneath those distant stars, held warm by the fabric of our story tellers, the teachers, the healers and the warriors. I smell the fires, see the flames and dance with the wisdoms of the ancients.

I long to meet you there, where you and I do not need to feel alone in a room full of people, where I see you, and you see me, to connect with the familial that is who we really are, for you and I are not alone under the stars, we are the stars, a twinkling pin hole in a dark sky, a gathering light in a darkness whose time has come to pass.

Come, sit with me and let us talk – free of ego, an unrevised, unedited and unapologetic conference of truth and if words do not come, let us sit together in silence, in the quiet that recognises the ‘us’ in each other. Let’s start a conversation under the night sky, let us be the spark in each other.

When You Are Ready by Michael Edward Bradford

When you are ready
Your life will begin to change
And the past, with all its hurts, pains
And disappointments will gently melt away.

When you are ready
Your confusion, resistance, fears, and doubts will dissipate
And your desire for freedom will grow
Beckoning you to fully embrace the real you.

When you are ready
Your mask, your survival kit, will no longer be needed
And the true you, the authentic you,
Will gingerly peek out seeking the light of life.

When you are ready
Your pride, looking good, and being right will no longer matter
For your desire for truth, connection and spirit
Will awaken and fill you.

And when you are ready
Your vision will clear and you will know, beyond the shadow of a doubt
The gift that you already are.
It is time, beloved being of light, to ignite and shine bright!

Listen and Do by Elsabe Smit

This is a time to get straight to the point. The world – not just South Africa – is dithering precariously on the precipice, and it is up to each one of us how we deal with this situation.

We are heading for a showdown between good and evil. Who will win? I saw a video not so long ago where a participant in a debate stated that the outcome of the current madness is predestined by God, and God never loses. That truly hit me between the eyes and in my heart.

God never loses.

Does that mean we need to simply sit back and wait for God to do His thing, so that we can go back to our convenient old routines again? Clearly not – we cannot return to division and hatred and “my religion is better than yours” and “let’s pray for all the people of one skin colour at the exclusion of another”. None of that is valid any longer. All of that belongs to the Age of Pisces, and we have left all of it behind us.

We are now in the Age of Aquarius. We are waking up to a new world – a world of looking after each other and sharing our future. We are entering a world where it is always clear who will win the race between good and evil. We are also understanding more and more that it is not for us to decide what is good and what is evil.

If it is not for us to decide

what is good and what is evil,

then how will we know the difference?

We will know when we allow God (or whatever you want to call your Maker) to talk straight into our hearts. We will know when we look a person in the eyes and see the goodness there. Our eyes never lie, and remember, the eyes are the windows to the soul. Not the skin colour. The eyes.

We need to take care of each other, and we need to stand together.
How should we stand together? There is only one answer to this. We need to stand together in prayer and in meditation – not because God needs any help, but because we need to be willing to receive clear instructions from God – and those instructions will be founded in Love.

This is not the time to take up arms – leave that for the people who need most of our prayers, no matter the reason why they feel that the solution is to take up arms against their fellow citizens. In this country we have been there and done that, and we all know where it got us. What we should rather do is pray that those who believe in an eye for an eye, or those who are instructed to take the lives of other people in the name of duty, must feel a stirring in their hearts to put down their arms and stand with the rest of humanity in prayer against evil.

This is not about helping an Almighty God – it is rather about helping ourselves and our loved ones to listen to the instructions from a loving God. The more we are willing to listen, the clearer the instructions will be.

Am I writing this on behalf of any religion? Definitely not – I am not religious at all. Am I trying to convince anyone to leave their religion? Definitely not – who am I to tell anyone what to believe? Am I writing this for the people of one country? Definitely not – this situation touches everyone in the world – both the perpetrators and those who want to see Love win this situation.

I am writing this to say pray to God in whichever way and pledge your faith, and then meditate so that you can get clear instructions from God, no matter what the basis of your faith or religious beliefs are. These are our strongest weapons. Let us use them.

Namaste.