Healthy Happy Loving Life: Favorite Food Blogs

Tags

at choice, Blogs, Celebrating the good, chocolate, free, GF, Happy Healthy Loving Life, Kebba Buckley Button, Theme song, UpBeat Living

© 2020 Kebba Buckley Button, M.S., O.M.  World Rights Reserved. 

In the last several days, I was asked both what I do in my “spare” time, and what my favorite blogs are.  And it just so happens that my favorite fun is creating delicious foods.  And two fantastic blogs definitely involve cooking, baking and often chocolate!  As a writer, I have seen hundreds of blogs, and for me, these two stand out as the most fun:  Gluten Free Homestead and Chocolate Covered Katie.

For me as a cook, I need to be able to prepare treats and meals that fit a lot of different diets and sensitivities, especially gluten-free.  These two favorite blogs are both about cooking and baking and treating for whatever factors.  I love that!

Today’s email from Gluten Free Homestead is, of course, another outstanding one.  Labeled simply, “New Recipe For You”, it offers an Easy Creamy Broccoli Cheddar Soup, with video.  Created by Barbara Bianchi, this blog is also now offering  an ebook cookbook, with 50 low-carb and gluten-free recipes.  You can find the Gluten Free Homestead on Facebook and Instagram.  And you may want to subscribe.

My other favorite blog is Chocolate Covered Katie.  Katie is a baking genius who never stops experimenting.  She creates delicious treat recipes, most often chocolate, and often in small batches.  So you don’t have to have dozens of those gooey chocolate almond cream-filled cupcakes with something rich topping them…in your kitchen, tempting you until you’ve gained many pounds.  You can make a few.  Katie is kind.  She also gives you options with every recipe: which fat or oil works best, when to substitute in avocado or applesauce, what flour gives what results with this recipe, what “milk” to use, or whether this matters.  Today’s email features Low Fat Chocolate Muffins, together with links to recipes for Banana Muffins, Applesauce Muffins, Oatmeal Muffins, and Pineapple Muffins.  You can find this blog through her eponymous Facebook page, or through her website, http://www.chocolatecoveredkatie.com .

It’s important to have pleasure and fun in life, and I have fun just reading through these recipes, then pleasure eating my results!  I hope you’re having fun and pleasure, too.  I hope you’re entirely:  Healthy Happy Loving Loving Life^sm!

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Kebba Buckley Button is a stress management expert and award-winning author who celebrates life.  She also has a longtime natural healing practice and is an ordained minister. Among her books are: Discover The Secret Energized You (http://tinyurl.com/b44v3br), Inspirations for Peace Within:  Quotes and Images to Uplift and Inspire, and Sacred Meditation: Embracing the Divine.  The books are available on Amazon and through Kebba’s office.   To email us, kebba@kebba.com .

Books by Kebba Buckley Button

Healthy Happy Loving Life: Your Theme Song

Tags

at choice, Celebrating the good, free, Happy Healthy Loving Life, Kebba Buckley Button, Theme song, UpBeat Living

© 2020 Kebba Buckley Button, M.S., O.M.  World Rights Reserved. 

I have heard this question a few times in recent years:  if you, or your business, had a theme song, what would it be?  I was totally stumped the first time I got the question. In fact, I was terrified, because we were going around the table, with a group of authors, and the moderator wanted each of us to give forth about our theme song.  She thought anyone who didn’t know their theme song was, basically, a doofus.

She had a point.  Shouldn’t we be able to encapsulate our business goals and qualities briefly? But do most of us have the talent to do that in verse, then make it a song?  Hey, I don’t even enjoy picking songs for weddings or other theme parties.  But finally, I realized there are a couple of songs that might represent me and my practice.  First, I teach people specific ways to dissolve and finish with their pain: physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual.  I teach people how exactly to find their inner gratitude and to move into joy.  I say we are in/joy/meant.  Second, I teach people to develop a strong core of Peace Within, so that stressors don’t bother them.  Then, I encourage people to take that into their relationships and into the World.  But more on that in a moment.

Victor Hugo, the author of Les Miserables, said,

Music expresses that which cannot be said on on which it is impossible to be silent.

And actress Zooey Deschanel has said,

Everyone should have a theme song!  It should make you feel like a million dollars.

 

Finally, one day, I was walking along, feeling great, when a song started playing in my head:  “Something’s been happening to me/I can’t believe it myself/suddenly I’m up on top of the World…never thought I could feel so free/flying away on a wing and a prayer…could it be me?”  This turned out to be, “Believe It or Not” by Joey Scarbury. I realized, that’s the feeling I want my clients to have: free, at choice, feeling great.

Photo by Francine Masterson

My other theme song would be about peace, for the individual, leading to peace with others and peace for the Planet.  If a  billion people all had Peace Within, and a desire for peaceful relationships, how could there be rioting and war?  Fortunately for me, someone has already written that song: Jill Jackson and Sy Miller wrote, Let There Be Peace on Earth (And Let it Begin With Me), and Vince Gill performed it in a Christmas album of the same name, released in 1993.

Do you have a theme song?  Or have you thought of developing one?  I would love to hear about it. I would love to hear that you, too, are living in the state I call:  Healthy Happy Loving Loving Life^sm!

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Kebba Buckley Button is a stress management expert and award-winning author who celebrates life.  She also has a longtime natural healing practice and is an ordained minister. Among her books are: Discover The Secret Energized You (http://tinyurl.com/b44v3br), Inspirations for Peace Within:  Quotes and Images to Uplift and Inspire, and Sacred Meditation: Embracing the Divine.  The books are available on Amazon and through Kebba’s office.   To email us, kebba@kebba.com .

Books by Kebba Buckley Button

Healthy Happy Loving Life: Fall Pleasures

Tags

at choice, Celebrating the good, Fall pleasures, Happy Healthy Loving Life, Kebba Buckley Button, UpBeat Living

© 2020 Kebba Buckley Button, M.S., O.M.  World Rights Reserved. 

Fall is a special time in the U.S.  The pleasures of Fall have their own transformative qualities.  One of my most vivid and joyful memories in life took place in the Fall in New York State.  We were driving south toward New York City on the Taconic Parkway. (Above is a photo as the Taconic Parkway looked when I first saw it.) Leaves were showering.  The near sky was golden, copper, and red, flickering and ever-changing and seemingly infinite.  It was a magical experience I still remember vividly– a time of deep peace.

Shira Tamir said,

Anyone who thinks fallen leaves are dead has never seen them dancing on a windy day.

In the Fall, the summer flowers at homes are replaced with Fall varieties.  The endlessly beautiful leaves have their own woody fragrance. Streets sound different as the trees release their leaves and the pavement becomes padded.  Dogs bark at the falling leaves, and rakes try to keep up.  Dogs and children complete to leap into piles of leaves.  Back patios are redolent with the steaming fragrances of turkey or chickens in the smokers.  It’s the perfect time to stack wood and have evening fires.

Doorways now sport orange, red, and copper wreaths, and Autumn objects. There are now displays of crates, straw bales, and pumpkins, even straw people.  Skeletons and skulls for Halloween and All Saints Day.

Inside, there’s baking, the sweet smells of spices.  There are the sounds of baking pans clinking on oven shelves, cabinet doors clunking open and closed, open and closed.  Soups, chili.  Roasted potatoes and yams.  Gourds arranged on the dining table. Piles of fudge and cookies go into vintage tins.

Further afield, farms offer apple picking and corn field maze walking.  We hike old farm trails in Sedona, stopping at farm stands for corn to roast and apples to bake into pies.  There are evening hayrides with bonfires and singing, hot cider and roasted marshmallows and s’mores. Some are preparing their warm clothes in team colors for tomorrow’s football game.

Iconic author F. Scott Fitzgerald said,

Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the Fall.

Let the Fall pleasures wash over you and shift your beingness into the next season. Embrace and savor the seasonal joys.  Let them bring you deep peace.  And now you’re in the realm of Healthy Happy Loving Loving Life^sm!

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Kebba Buckley Button is a stress management expert and award-winning author who celebrates life.  She also has a longtime natural healing practice and is an ordained minister. Among her books are: Discover The Secret Energized You (http://tinyurl.com/b44v3br), Inspirations for Peace Within:  Quotes and Images to Uplift and Inspire, and Sacred Meditation: Embracing the Divine.  The books are available on Amazon and through Kebba’s office.   To email us, kebba@kebba.com .

Books by Kebba Buckley Button

Healthy Happy Loving Life: Second Day Back

Tags

Enjoying life, Healthy Happy Loving Life, Natural pain solutions

Welcome (back) to the new version of my long-running blog about being as healthy and happy as you can be, enjoying life as much as you can!  I started blogging in 2009, when social media was young.  I took a class on Facebook, Twitter, and blogging, and it was a mind-blower.  At first, I was spending 20 hours a week, learning and practicing my new skills.  I learned photo selection and manipulation, and how to get those pesky titles, subtitles, and captions in all the right places.  Now I’m fast at creating what I want.

I’m using the Ultimate Blog Challenge this month (look for the group of that name on Facebook)– one article per day– to motivate myself to get back in the driver’s/writer’s seat.  There was a lot of family business the last several years, and I just couldn’t keep up my weekly articles and newsletters.  For a couple of years, I did write monthly articles for an authors’ blog.  If you’re interested in seeing those, I will be making the collection available as a pdf ebook.  Now, a shift in family needs is allowing me to spend more time on what I’m called to do: consulting, healing, and writing.  During the last few years, I did continue teaching and speaking.  I finished two full-color browsing books:  Inspirations for Peace Within and Sacred Meditation.  My next planned book will likely be on stress and burnout.  Stay tuned!

Some people wonder how I got into the field of natural medicine.  While I don’t believe in dwelling on the negative, I will share my story briefly here.  In my twenties, I was a serious, focused workaholic engineering manager.  I published mightily; I had quite a publications list.  One night I realized the large knuckles of my hands were burning badly.  I dismissed it, since my mother had first experienced mild arthritis around the same age.  Mom had never done anything about her arthritis, other than take anti-inflammatories and supplements.  I look a lot like Mom and have had much the same metabolism.  So I thought, no biggie.  I have what she had.

Wrong!  Within a year, I was burning from head to toe, and aspirin wouldn’t touch it.  There was a terrible stiffness with the burning.  On the worst day, it took me 2 hours to turn over to reach a telephone, to call in sick.  I thought I might have about a dozen years before I would be in a wheelchair.  There would be no marriage, family, or children.  I took up yoga and jogging.  I worked and experimented and prayed. I continued my career in hydrology and engineering.

In the eighth year of my research and efforts, a miracle was revealed: I had beaten it!!  I was at a party, when a friend started talking about Her Arthritis like it was her lover.  After being introduced to her new diagnosis, she bought a new car for it.  We had been going on group campouts.  She bought all new camping equipment for her companion-disease.  She bought new furniture for her companion-disease.  I listened as generously as I could.  Finally, I heard myself say, “well, when I had horrible crippling arthritis… I did (these things to beat it)…”  I was so shocked to hear myself speak of the horrible burning condition in the past tense, that I can’t tell you what the friend replied.  Or even what my sharings were.  I do remember her frowning at me.  We were both struggling to be polite.

Within a couple of years, I was so involved in natural- and energy medicine, and natural pain solutions, that I was bored with hydrology and engineering.  I gave notice and left the engineering firm I was working for. I opened my own holistic healing practice and have now been at it for over 30 years.  I have helped many, many people with energy healing, dietary adjustments, intuitive guidance, positive languaging, relationship strategies, and understanding the “why” of their physical discomforts.

I invite you to join me on this journey of seeking happiness, health, and a love of life!

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Kebba Buckley Button is a stress management expert and award-winning author.  She also is an ordained minister and has a natural healing practice. Among her books are: Discover The Secret Energized You (http://tinyurl.com/b44v3br),and Inspirations for Peace Within:  Quotes and Images to Uplift and Inspire, and Sacred Meditation: Embracing the Divine.  The books are available on Amazon and through Kebba’s office.   To email us, kebba@kebba.com .

Books by Kebba Buckley Button

 

Upbeat Living: Happy National Cheesecake Day!

Tags

cheesecake, Health, health food, Kebba Buckley Button, National Cheesecake Day, pleasure, Relax, stress, UpBeat Living

© 2016 Kebba Buckley Button, MS, OM.  World Rights Reserved.

In recent years, health pundits would not have called cheesecake a “health food”; but today is National Cheesecake Day!  So relax and take a time-out from worrying about fats, and celebrate the pure pleasure of this family of deserts.  In fact, cream cheese is loaded with Vitamin A and fatty acids that help our health.  And a key dimension of Upbeat Living is enjoying your life!

Want to make your own cheesecake? Here is my own recipe for an Irish Cream Cheesecake, no technical skills required.

KEBBA’S IRISH CREAM CHEESECAKE

For filling:

3 x 8-oz. bricks of cream cheese, room temperature
½ c Irish Cream liqueur (Kebba’s favorite: Carolan’s, available at Trader Joe’s)
½ c heavy cream
3 eggs
3 T flour (GF if you like, rice flour or oat flour if you like)
1 c organic sugar
1 t vanilla or almond extract
1/8 t sea salt

For crust:

1 ¼ c graham crumbs + 3 T butter + 3 T organic sugar + 1/8 t sea salt
OR use 1 2/3 c honey corn chex crumbs + ¼ c butter + ¼ c organic sugar
OR use 2 frozen GF pie crusts, following package directions

If making your own crust, blend the ingredients with a fork and press into an 8” springform pan, pressing up sides.  The Chex formula can fit a 9” springform pan. (Ever try to buy an 8” springform pan?)  This may sound dumb, but wrap the bottom of the springform pan firmly with foil, as the melted butter may leak.  Now put the cheesecake on a cookie sheet.

Blend the filling ingredients.  In springform pan or pie crusts, bake at 425 for 25 minutes.  Take it out for 10 minutes and finish baking at 350 for 15 more minutes. In the pie crusts, test for firmness after 5 more minutes. Of course, note variations needed with your stove.

Chill the cake/s before serving, for 2 hours or even overnight.  Dust lightly with cocoa powder and drizzle with favorite fudge sauce, just before serving.  Next time, make 2 and freeze some.

Now sit down with your cheesecake and enjoy every bite slowly.  Savoring causes a food to fill us up sooner.  And relaxing with a pleasure is also stress-dissolving.

So Happy National Cheesecake Day, my friends!  Enjoy, and let me know how you like this cheesecake!  And that’s Upbeat Living.

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• If you enjoy this post, please click “like” in the FB widget in the right hand column! You’ll have our undying gratitude plus a huge rise in your Good Karma! Due to a recent FB change, our “likes” look low.  Thanks for your help!

Energy – Peace – Meditation

• Kebba Buckley Button is a stress management expert.  She also has a natural healing practice and is an ordained minister. She is the author of the award-winning book, Discover The Secret Energized You (http://tinyurl.com/b44v3br), plus the 2013 book, Peace Within:  Your Peaceful Inner Core, Second Edition(http://tinyurl.com/mqg3uvc ). Her newest book is Sacred Meditation: Embracing the Divine, available through her office.  Just email SacredMeditation@kebba.com. 
• For an appointment or to ask Kebba to speak for your group: calendar@kebba.com .

Celebrating Freedom – From Sameness

Tags

freedom, freedom from sameness, in/joy/meant, stress

©2015  Kebba Buckley Button, MS, OM.  World Rights Reserved.

Today is the ultimate freedom day. 

 

Each July 4^th, we in the USA celebrate our broadest freedom:  the founding of our country, on the basis of people’s right to live as they choose.  We rightly remind ourselves that, “[F]reedom isn’t free.”  Hundreds of thousands fought and even gave their lives, here and abroad, to establish and keep the freedom this country enjoys.  Most Americans want people to live entirely as they choose.  Each American chooses how much to be the same as, or different from, other people.

In peace ministry, I saw a video scene that became indelibly imprinted in my mind.  In a community ruled by the Taliban, girls at age 11 were expected to start wearing a light blue burka with an open-weave eye opening.  One day, twenty girls looked at each other and asked, “[W]hat would happen if we took these off?”  They took them off and joyfully ran down a hill, together, celebrating their humanity, not their sameness.

Riding a train one day, leaving New York City, I helped a woman with a beautiful baby, when we were asked to change cars.  I had never before seen a baby with 6 perfect toes on each gorgeous little foot. My ideas of what is normal, same, and usual expanded that day. My mind was more free.

A priest friend of mine has a son, Christopher, who is 6 years old. Recently, she recounted this story, which I am using with her kind permission:  “Christopher came home from his 2 nights at church camp raving about the ‘coolest man who was born with only one hand!’ The fact that he was born this way delighted him and clearly expanded his worldview immensely, because it hadn’t occurred to him this was a possibility before. We may get nervous when our kids stare at someone who looks different than them, but C made it clear that differences are marvelous, exciting, and inspiring. Children are curious about people and want to celebrate the uniqueness of others which then, I imagine, makes the other not quite so other. And I am pretty sure that’s what the world needs. Thanks, Christopher.”

This great vignette illustrates freedom from sameness, freedom from believing everyone is or should be the same. When we take delight in our originality and our differences, we are free.  Celebrate your freedom, give thanks often, and let that lead your joy.  And you will easily remember that we are In/Joy/Meant.

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• Kebba Buckley Button is a stress management expert.  She also has a natural healing practice and is an ordained minister. She is the author of the award-winning book, Discover The Secret Energized You (http://tinyurl.com/b44v3br), plus the 2013 book, Peace Within:  Your Peaceful Inner Core, Second Edition. Her newest book is Sacred Meditation: Embracing the Divine. Both that book and Peace Within are available through her office.  Just email books@kebba.com. 
• For an appointment or to ask Kebba to speak for your group: calendar@kebba.com.

UpBeat Living: Roger Ebert on Remaking His Voice

Tags

Cancer, Gratitude, irrepressible, positivity, Roger Ebert, Upbeat, UpBeat Living

© 2013 Kebba Buckley Button.  World Rights Reserved.

Roger Ebert 2002
Photo by Andrew Sullivan

In the previous post, UpBeat Living celebrated the irrepressible, upbeat nature and achievements of Roger Ebert, who sadly passed away on April 4^th.  Today, we celebrate his final project, Remaking My Voice.

Known primarily as the most authentic and truly blunt film critic to grace our TV screens, Ebert had been a chatty communicator since at least grade school.  In first grade, he was told he talked too much.  By High School, he was a reporter serving the school newspaper.  By age 25, he was working for the Chicago Sun-Times.  He continued to work for the Sun-Times in various media until his death.  He used his voice for radio, television, and movies.

In what could have been seen as a tragedy, Ebert went on to lose his physical voice in 2006.  Cancer surgery made it impossible for him to talk.  After an apparently successful operation to rebuild his jaw, Ebert thought he was going back to work in a few weeks.  He had pre-taped six weeks of programs.  However, one day his carotid artery—the huge artery that runs along the side of the side of the neck, behind the jaw, and up into the brain— burst. His doctor said he had never seen anyone survive a carotid artery rupture. Ebert then spent a year in the hospital and had six more ruptures of the carotid.  The team gave up on reconstruction of the jaw.  His physical voice was done.  Ebert would later write: “[H]uman speech is an ingenious manipulation of our breath, within the sound chamber of our mouth and respiratory system.  We need to be able to hold and manipulate that breath, in order to form sounds.”  He could no longer do that.  But he was still sparkling, animated, and funny.

Now this dynamo simply accelerated into new forms of expression, as well as greatly stepping up his writing via blogs and Twitter.  He began “speaking” by keyboarding at a computer that spoke for him.   Saying he had always taken for granted the ability to speak, Ebert presented a TED talk in 2011 (www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNXOVpN8Wgg).  Sitting with his wife and three friends, they shared the narrative and Ebert finished with a joke, which he keyboarded into a laptop that spoke for him.

Ebert’s final message to those of us “listening”:  “[W]hat you see is not all you get!”  To attempt rebuilding his jaw, surgeons had harvested bone from his shoulders, which actually affected not only his shoulder profile, but also the way he walked.  Now missing a jaw altogether, Ebert had an unusual face shape.  He found that people would stare, and some would assume he was deaf, then shouting to him.  Only his physical voice was missing.  Through technology, he had found his greater voice, and he could express himself more and better than ever.  In his TED talk, Ebert did not talk about gratitude for life as such, but he expressed it, in his lively ebullience and his obvious love for communication, for his wife, and for his friends.  This was a man who truly lived.

Roger Ebert:  a voice for the ages.  Let us continue to hear him and his message.

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● If  you enjoy this post, please click “like” in the FB widget in the right hand column.  You’ll have our undying gratitude plus a huge rise in your Good Karma.

 

● Kebba Buckley Button is a Master’s Degree scientist, a minister, and the award-winning author of  the 2012 book, Peace Within:  Your Peaceful Inner Core (http://tinyurl.com/abd47jr), and also Discover The Secret Energized You (http://tinyurl.com/b44v3br).  She also has a natural healing and stress management practice and is a celebrated public speaker.

 

● Your comments are welcome!

 

● Get these articles by email– just click the Subscribe Free option in the right column.

 

● Reach the writer at kebba@kebba.com .

 

UpBeat Living: Two Thumbs Up, Roger Ebert!

Tags

Celebrating the good, enjoy, living beyond, positivity, Roger Ebert, The life you want, UpBeat Living

© 2013 Kebba Buckley Button.  World Rights Reserved.

 

Photo by Microsoft

This column, UpBeat Living,  is about celebrating life.   It’s about accentuating the positive in our words and attitudes, in our choices of friends, colleagues and projects.  It’s about turning any negativity into constructive response.  It’s about converting “stress” into worthy choices and forward motion, turning problems into projects.

Today, UpBeat Living celebrates a man who robustly lived a life in forward motion: Roger Ebert. This famous film critic helped define that profession and set standards many are still trying to meet.  With his authenticity and ability to make his points clearly and succinctly, Roger Ebert stood alone.

It’s hard for me to remember a time in movie history when Siskel and Ebert were not on the air.  I’m sure, during the Silent Movie Days, they were there already, with closed captioning or hand-held signs, giving us their honest and well-considered opinions.  Picture them on the silent screen, sitting opposite each other, and holding a sign up with one hand, holding a thumb up or down with the other hand.  A piano would be playing in the background, urgently if they were arguing, and lyrically, if the two were in agreement.  Today, it’s silence only, for the two great movie critics.

Gene Siskel died in 1999, and Roger Ebert died on April 4th.  The two began working together, hosting a PBS TV show, reviewing movies, in 1975– a bit after the days of silent movies–  taking it to syndication in 1982.  Siskel stayed until 3 weeks before his death.  Ebert wept on air in the next episode, as he saluted Siskel and their partnership, then continued forging his creative path.

Whatever stage of life Roger Ebert was in, he went at it with gusto.  He began life as a movie critic with the Chicago Sun-Times in 1967 and still wrote for them until his death.  He would eventually author 20 books and hundreds of columns, co-create countless television episodes for film reviews, visit Sesame Street a few times, author screenplays, and give a TED talk. Even after he was diagnosed with thyroid and salivary cancer in 2002, he lived with the condition with grace.  He kept smiling, and his eyes were bright with passion.  After surgery in 2006, he finally lost his jaw, his ability to speak and his ability to eat.  Unrecognizable from the square-faced man we had seen for many years, he still seemed to smile all the time, and his eyes danced with joy.

Roger Ebert celebrated his life with his wife, attorney Chaz Hammelsmith Ebert, whom he married in 1992.  She has said their life was better than any movie.  In recent years, Roger Ebert spoke through his blog, his 800,000-follower Twitter account, and a voice-synthesizing computer.  He exuded enthusiasm, wonder, and happiness.  Once he lost his physical voice, he wrote and presented a Ted talk about the importance of “voice” on different levels of life (www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNXOVpN8Wgg).  So the man who made his name using his voice to talk about films had created his most important work, a film, without using his voice.

My review of his film:  Excellent!  Two thumbs up.  You will long inspire us, Roger!

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● Kebba Buckley Button is a corporate stress management trainer and the author of the award-winning book, Discover The Secret Energized You (on Amazon.com at (http://tinyurl.com/b44v3br) , and the 2012 book, Peace Within:  Your Peaceful Inner Core (on Amazon.com at http://tinyurl.com/abd47jr).  She also has a natural healing practice and is an ordained minister.

● Your comments are welcome!

● Get these articles by email– just click the Subscribe Free option in the right column.

● Reach the writer at kebba@kebba.com .

UpBeat Living: Peaceful World? Day 1 of Season for NonViolence (SNV)

Tags

Ghandi, Jr., Martin Luther King, MLK, Peacemaking, Season for NonViolence, SNV

© 2013 Kebba Buckley Button.  World Rights Reserved.

If you dream of a peaceful world, but you think there is nothing you can contribute to that vision, here is great news for you.  There are actually simple ways you can contribute your thoughts, your prayers, and even your actions toward the creation of that peaceful world.  Here is a great program to consider.

The Season for NonViolence (SNV) was originated 15 years ago by the Association for Global New Thought (AGNT).  The SNV runs for 64 days each year, from January 30^th, the anniversary of Mahatma Ghandi’s death, to April 4^th, the anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  The SNV was created as a grassroots education and demonstration program committed to showing and growing  nonviolence as a powerful way to heal, transform, and empower our lives and our communities.

Each day during the SNV, I will be posting the thought for the day from AGNT.  I will also be expanding on the meanings of the Season.  Here is AGNT’s Day 1 meditation:

DAY 1 Jan. 30: The thought for today is COURAGE.

“I can shake off everything if I write; my sorrows disappear, my courage is reborn.”

-Anne Frank

When you discover that everyone is contained in you and you are contained in everyone, you have realized the unity of life, which is the divine ground of existence.  Then you are not just a person; you have become a beneficial force. Wherever you go, wherever you live, those around you will benefit from your life.  Even one unassuming man or woman in a community has the courage to lead a nonviolent life, she will make her contribution, and she will slowly inspire others to make the same contribution, because human nature responds to such an example.

When we can say, “Whatever comes, we will not be afraid because the divine Self is within us,” then this resoluteness and faith will enable us to work free from tension, agitation, and fear of defeat. The person who works in this way is at peace, because he or she is not anxious about results.
Today:  I will light a candle to symbolize my commitment to accept the courage to practice 64 Ways of living nonviolently.

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● Kebba Buckley Button is a corporate stress management trainer and the author of the award-winning book, Discover The Secret Energized You (on Amazon.com >Books>Buckley), and the 2012 book, Peace Within:  Your Peaceful Inner Core (on Amazon.com >Books>Button).  She also has a natural healing practice and is an ordained minister.

● Your comments are welcome!

● Get these articles by email– just click the Subscribe Free option in the right column.

● Reach the writer at kebba@kebba.com .

UpBeat Living: The Oscar-Nominated Film You Must See—Five Broken Cameras

Tags

nonviolence, Palestinian, Peacemaking

© 2013 Kebba Buckley Button.  World Rights Reserved.

Today I saw an extraordinary film and met the brother of the filmmaker.  Today I saw first-hand footage of farmers whose land was seized by encroaching development, approved by a ruling government.  Today I saw Israeli soldiers arrest a youth, handcuff him, blindfold him, then shoot him in the leg, then take him to prison.  Today I got to sit with a Palestinian man and ask him questions about his and his family’s experience.

Today I saw a film on life in Bil’im, Palestine.  The film is called Five Broken Cameras. The film won the World Cinema Directing Award at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival.  It also won the Special Broadcaster IDFA Audience Award and the Special Jury Award at the 2011 International Documentary Film Festival in Amsterdam.  Now it is nominated for Best Documentary Feature, in the 2013 Academy Awards.

The title refers to the series of 5 cameras that the filmmaker, Emad Burnat, used over the course of 6 years.  Each camera, in turn, was either shattered by Israeli military gas grenades or shot directly by Israeli fire.  He still has all five cameras.  Emad is a softspoken man who shares his narrative in an even tone.  This makes the action he films all the more shocking.  We are shown a world in which ultraorthodox Jews have decided to settle further into the West Bank, building high concrete buildings and a boundary structure that cuts right across Palestinian lands.  We see the orthodox arrive to move into the high buildings, wearing identical outfits with white shirts and dark pants, the women in white dresses.  We see and hear many angry, indignant, arrogant remarks from this group, including, “if he keeps filming, I’ll break his bones.”

A number of farmers are cut off from their property on the Israeli side of the barrier, a double fence separated by the width of a military Jeep.  The villagers develop a system of nonviolent protest, and they demonstrate peacefully every week.  The Israeli soldiers respond to the unarmed villagers, holding only flags, with teargas canisters and bullets.  At one point we see people shouting in warning tones, and the soldiers have a moment of remorse:  they have shot an Israeli girl.  They are horrified.

Armored Jeep-type Army vehicles roar through the village at night. The villagers are told, at the doors of  their homes, that “the military has declared this area a Closed Military Zone”, and therefore the Army can break into the homes in the middle of the night and arrest people at will, even children.  Children are often arrested and held as long as 18 months, with payments of often 6000 shekels ($1500-2000) required before they can be released.  The children of Bil’im have a march one day, chanting “we want to sleep”.  The 30 children are met again with gas grenades and gunfire.  People are wounded and people are killed all the time here.

Most astonishing is the peaceful manner adopted by the people of Bil’im.  Asked how they deal with the Israeli military occupation, Emad Burnat says, “it takes strength to turn anger into something positive”.  He says further, “[B]y healing, you resist oppression.  Forgotten wounds can’t be healed, so I film to heal.”

Today I talked with Iyad Burnat, the filmmaker’s brother.  He spoke with the same even tone his brother uses in narrating the film.  Today, that made the story even more shocking.  Today I was outraged.  Today I knew I must share this story.

Today you can see the trailer:  http://vimeo.com/15843191 .  Today you can buy the DVD on Amazon.

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● Kebba Buckley Button is a Master’s Degree scientist, a minister, and the award-winning author of  the 2012 book, Peace Within:  Your Peaceful Inner Core (http://tinyurl.com/abd47jr), and also Discover The Secret Energized You (http://tinyurl.com/b44v3br).  She also has a natural healing and stress management practice and is a celebrated public speaker.

 

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