It was a hellish, hot day in Montauk, back in July of 2011, when I went with TJ Clemente, on a work assignment, to interview Ed Koch. 

When I entered the lovely, Montauk home where Mr. Koch was staying, he was taking a mid-day siesta on the couch. A moment later, waking with a start, the then 86-year-old, former mayor of New York, was feisty and fiery as ever.

Throughout the interview, I tried to stay in the background, almost invisible, as not to stop the flow of dialogue that was crashing about the room, like the waves of the nearby Atlantic.

When the interview was over, Mr. Koch looked over at me, and before he could say anything, I threw him a curveball by asking him his trademark question, “How’m I doing?”  He laughed, and said, “You’re doing just great!” He then asked the loaded question, “So, what do you do for a living?”

For most people, that is a simple enough question to answer, but for me – it usually makes me squirm. Sometimes, I will just say that I am a writer, and leave it at that. That is what I fully intended to do that afternoon, but TJ answered, “She’s a psychic/medium.”

Oh, boy,  the can of worms was opened. There are basically three different stock reactions to my profession:

1) The person then wants to know if I can contact  their loved ones who have crossed over.  I then answer with my own soundbite: “I am not working right now, and I want to read another person like I want pins in my eyeballs. No, I am not talking to any of your dead relatives. “

2) They look at you like you belong in a straight-jacket, just like those people who think they’ve landed off a spaceship, or those megalomanics who think they are Napoleon.

3) They think you are a total charlatan looking to sell them snake oil or the fountain of youth, and they want no part of you.

Mr. Koch, however, responded differently.  He looked me deeply in the eyes, and asked me to describe what I do. He listened intently, and then the others in the room talked about some psychic experiences they’ve had or messages that they have received from those who’ve crossed over. Mr. Koch, at this stage in his life, seemed very interested in what everyone had to say, and added a few funny and intelligent insights of his own.

My impression of this man, who others have judged to be fast-talking, opinionated, and rude, was quite the opposite.  That day, with me, he was open, intelligent, funny, inquisitive, gracious, and most kind.

Last night, it was 1:30am, and I was still working, answering emails, when TJ said to me, “Ed Koch is back in the hospital.” I didn’t look up from my ipad, but answered, “He is in organ failure right now. It’s over.” I then felt the spirit of Mr. Koch pass by. “How’m I doing?” was the thought that crossed through my mind. Telepathically, I told him, “Great. Godspeed, Mr. Mayor. Go proudly to God. “

I awoke this morning to the news, that our former mayor died at 2:00am. I was not surprised.

Ed Koch will be missed.  Few people have the courage to say what they need to say, without worrying whether people are going to like you or not.   He was the quintessential  New Yorker, telling it like it is, with that unique brand of New York/Yiddish humor that makes all New Yorkers, as they walk through their day, sound like stand up comedians.

I feel blessed to have met him.  May he rest in peace.

Peace.
Cindi

           Somewhere along the line, we all have to relive our parents’ marriage, mostly the marriage we saw before the age of five.  During those early formative years, our minds were like sponges soaking up everything we heard and saw.  Reliving your parents’ marriage can be good news, if your parents had a happy, healthy, and loving relationship.  On the flip side, if your parents’ marriage was a train wreck, this can be very bad news.

            Even the village idiot can figure out why we would want to duplicate our parents’ marriage, if it had been a good one.  It can be a little harder to figure out why in the world we would want to duplicate a bad one.  If we accept the premise that we are here on earth school to learn, evolve, and grow, the reasons are not all that complicated after all.

            When we’re young children, we tend to be very judgmental.  We watch our parents’ bickering and think, “If I were married, I’d never speak to my husband that way.”  Or, “If I had a wife, I’d never treat her like that.”  The universe registers those early-on thoughts, and when we grow-up, it throws them back in our face saying, “Okay, little know-it-all, let me see you do better.” 

            Of course, when we’re young, we have no idea how difficult it is to scratch a living out of the earth or how stressful life can be for grown-ups, even under the best of circumstances.  So, we sat in judgment of our parents, all the while lacking the wisdom and knowledge we needed to see the situation from a more compassionate viewpoint.  Only later on, after we find ourselves doing the same destructive song and dance that our parents did — and shockingly — sometimes doing even worse, do we begin to realize just how difficult love and life can be.  

             What lessons do you think the universe is trying to teach us via this painful experience?  Basically, we’re asked to stop being judgmental of others, and to forgive our parents for they knew not what they did.

            If we are to move away from these destructive relationship patterns, we must first forgive our parents.  Have you forgiven your parents for the sin of being all-too-human?  Until you forgive them, you will be doomed to repeat their marriage over and over again. This may well be the reason why your relationships always seem to start out great, and then end in disaster.

            After we’ve forgiven our parents, we then need to forgive ourselves.  Learning to forgive ourselves can prove to be the hardest forgiveness lesson of all. We have to stop beating ourselves up for messing up our relationship(s), and we have to vow from this day forward to learn to do better.  If we learn from our mistakes, we then begin to live in a world where, “It’s all good.”

            If we’re to have happy and healthy relationships, and show our children how to do the same, we need to learn to monitor our words and deeds on an every day basis.  We have to learn to say what we mean and mean what we say, without being mean about it.  We need to catch ourselves when we see that we are falling back into our old, destructive patterns.  After a while, these healthy patterns of interacting with others will become a natural way for us to behave and react.  Soon, you will find that all your relationships, both the romantic ones and the platonic ones, are flourishing and growing.

Peace.
Cindi

         If your love life has gotten a little stale lately, and you need to infuse some new life into it, try recreating the lost art of writing love letters, but with a modern twist — send them to each other via email.  With a little patience and a willing desire to learn, the two of you will reap the romantic benefits that this soul-expanding, heart-opening experience can inspire. 

            If you don’t believe in the power of the billet doux, get a hold of the romantic comedy, The Love Letter, and see how one letter, carefully crafted with words that were sensual, provocative, and tantalizing, penetrated the heart of each and every person who serendipitously stumbled upon it.  Or watch Message in a Bottle and see how a letter sent out to sea produced waves of passion in the woman who fatefully found it washed up on the shore. If you want to watch a movie that revolved around a passionate love letter that Beethoven composed, check out Immortal Beloved.  And can any of us forget the romantic scene in Sex in the City: the Movie where Carrie is reading a book of love letters out loud, in bed, to Big?  Does it get anymore romantic than that?  Yes, when the love letters you are reading were written especially for you or by you.

            Don’t worry if you’re not a very good writer.  Say what’s in your heart.  Tell your partner how he/she makes you feel.  Rekindle the original spark that ignited your love affair by reminiscing about the first time you met, the first time you kissed, the first time you made love, or the first time your realized that you had fallen in love.  This is not the time to get hard-core graphic about sex.  Try to think in terms of the old movies you can still see on Turner Classic movies, where you never actually saw anybody doing anything sexual, but the movie was steamy hot anyway. Think Gone with the Wind.  Try putting yourself in an emotional time machine in which letters were the main vehicle people used to communicate their deepest feelings for each other.

            If you need some help in getting started, try reading love letters that others have written.  The book, Passionate Love Letters: an Anthology of Desire, by Michelle Lovric is an absolutely beautiful book to read and to look at, since you get to see photocopies of the actual love letters.  You can read what Napoleon wrote to his beloved wife, Josephine; and what a host of other famous people, including the poetess Elizabeth Barrett had to say to her Twin Flame, Robert Browning. You can also just surf the web.  There are countless numbers of web sites that have copies of famous and not so famous love letters to inspire you.  Steal whole passages from these letters, if they say what you truly feel.  After a while, the art of sensuous writing will begin to flow quite naturally between the two of you, and both of you will look forward to these passionate email exchanges.  

            The only rule is this: These letters are for your eyes only.  They are a secret code that the two of you share with no one but each other.  This way you will both feel free to express your innermost dreams, thoughts, and desires

            Don’t just give this gift of love on special occasions; try making a weekly ritual out of it to keep the flame of passion burning all year round.

Peace.
Cindi

             Studies show that the number one thing couples dread talking about is, no, not sex but — money.   Other studies reveal that even though women are out there in the work force in record numbers, when they marry, they still tend to turn over the family finances to their husbands.  It’s time for women to realize that if they can bring home the bacon, they can certainly help decide what to do with it once it gets there.

            Money represents different things to each and every one of us.  This is part of the reason why we have so much trouble talking about it without fighting about it.  For some of us money means success.  For others, it represents security.  Still others associate it with power or the ability to feel in control.   Some others believe money is for saving, while others feel it’s for spending. Most definitely, money is a loaded issue, and that’s one thing we can all agree on.

            The arguments you and your husband have about money really revolve around the issue of how each of you views money.  If your husband is a “high risk-taking kind of guy,” and you’re the “keep the money in the bank type,” you and your husband are going to keep on fighting, until you come to some kind of compromise.  For instance, you might both agree not to invest any money you need for the immediate future, but you could allow him to take a greater risk with the money you’re both saving for retirement.

            If money was at the heart of many of your parents’ battles, even broaching this topic can make you feel like you’re entering a war zone.  For this reason, you may have dealt with this painful emotional issue by simply denying its very existence.  If you’ve been telling yourself that you’re taking the high road claiming that love has nothing to do with money, do think again.  The inability to resolve money differences ranks high on “the why I got a divorce list.”

            Use these tough economic times as a wake-up call for you and your husband to stop hiding your heads in the sand, and to start talking about your finances.

            You can begin by facing the cold fact that marriage is more than a love relationship. It’s also a business partnership.  Many families are in financial ruin because one or both spouses weren’t honest about what they were doing with money.  They have been guilty of fiscal infidelity.  As a relationship coach, I am stunned by the number of my clients who have no idea how much their spouses make or how much debt their spouse has incurred. When questioned, these same clients are hiding the how and why of their financial situation as well.  Ask yourself this question.  If you had a business partner, and you had no idea how much money your partner was taking from the business or how much debt this person was incurring, would you continue to keep this business partner?  More than likely you would dissolve this partnership.  As a society, we have to stop thinking what we or our spouses don’t know can’t hurt us.  Money secrets, lies, and omissions have destroyed many a marriage.

            The time has come for couples to start airing their financial dirty laundry.  Come clean with what’s going on, and stop sheltering each other from harsh financial realities.  Stop blaming and screaming at each other, and start talking — dollars and sense.  Agree to come up with some new strategies and to not dwell on the past. Approach the topic of family finances as two equal business partners sharing ideas and plans.

            See this as a test of for better or worse and richer and poorer.  Recognize that your family is a financial unit.  Commit to the family business, and do your part to keep things afloat.

Cindi Sansone-Braff, is “The Romance Whisperer,” and the author of Grant Me a Higher Love: How to Go from the Relationship from Hell to One that’s Heaven Sent by Scaling The Ladder of Love.  Visit her web site at: www.grantmeahigherlove.com.

Peace.
Cindi

Peace.
Cindi

1)      As a couple, commit to working on your communication skills.  A year from now you will be amazed how your everyday way of interacting with each other has become joyful, respectful, and filled with great honesty tempered by kindness.  This means that you have to choose your words carefully.  In other words, say what you mean and mean what you say, without being mean about it.  This way, you will stop bottling up all your emotions to the point where they have to come out in an angry and explosive way. 

2)      Encourage each other to have some separate hobbies, interests, and friends outside of the relationship.  Allowing each of you to do your own thing some times will ward off that “trapped” feeling that can be so deadly to a relationship.  When you come back from your solo adventures, you will have much to talk about as you share your experiences with each other.  This way, there will always be something new to learn about each other, and the relationship won’t become dull or stale.  Thinking that you or your mate knows everything there is to know about each other can be a real deal breaker.  

3)      Vow to really listen to each other when you talk.  Stop multitasking when your mate is talking.  Shut off the television, iPod, cell phone, and computer, and look directly into your mate’s eyes as he/she talks.

4)      Find a new fun and healthy activity you can do together.  Try power walking, skiing, going to the gym, joining a ballroom dancing class, or a bowling league together.  You could also try signing up for a cooking class or any class the two of you would find interesting.  Don’t worry about the outcome of doing these things.  Don’t make it competitive.  The key word is — fun.  New interests will certainly spice up the relationship and give both of you something to look forward to.

5)      Make a pact to schedule an affair with each other.  Block out a couple of hours in advance, at least once a month, in which making love, being romantic, and seducing each other is your top priority.  Allow plenty of time for massages, caressing, and kissing.  Allow time for cocooning afterwards.  Cocooning is the art of deliberately locking the world away, so two lovers can timelessly and intimately embrace, energize, and enjoy each other.  Bask in the afterglow of lovemaking by talking, touching, kissing, and hugging.  Remember to schedule your affair in the day or early evening, so that you’re not too tired for post-sex intimacy.

6)      In these tough economic times, agree to give gifts of the heart, and not ones that break the bank.  Help each other with mundane tasks that need doing.  Help clean, fix, or repair things for each other.  Wash each other’s car, make dinner, or delicious, money saving bag lunches for each other.  Also, come up with some inexpensive, but fun dates to go on with each other.  For instance, plan a picnic, or go to the park, or stay home and play a sexy board game for couples, such as Indecent Proposal or Passion Game.   

7)      You have 365 days a head of you.  Think of creative ways to say “I love you,” and be sure to say those words to each other at least once a day.

8)      Write loving, funny, or sexy emails to each other throughout the year.  Reinvent the art of the love letter.  Writing is an activity that comes from the heart and soul, and these loving emails will ignite romance and passion in your relationship and keep the flame of desire burning all year long.  Don’t just do this on special occasions, but do it on a regular basis.

9)      Since this is a new year, let go of last year’s grudges.  Let bygones be bygones.   Stop bringing up old fights.   Forgive the past.  Forgiveness means letting go.  Letting go of past offenses, both the once you’ve committed, and the ones your mate has committed, will give your relationship a new lease on life.

10)   Let this year be a year filled with laughter and humor.  Make your time together fun, no matter what.  Try not to take everything so seriously.  Use the expression –It doesn’t matter, as often as you can, particularly when things seem to be going wrong.  In other words, if life seems to be handing the two of you a lot of lemons, learn to make lemonade together!

Wishing you a peaceful, joyful, and love-filled New Year!

Peace.
Cindi

  

          

“And no one dared disturbed the sound of silence.” Paul Simon could not have sung a more fitting song than “The Sounds of Silence,” at the funeral of Victoria Soto, the brave, young teacher,who died trying to protect her young students. 

I had just sat down to right this piece, when the news story of yet another crazed gunman popped up on my computer.  This one in Pennsylvania.  Five more dead, including a woman decorating a church hall for a children’s Christmas party. 

God knows, we could all use a little Christmas now, but there is a Connecticut cloud hanging over Christmas present, like a ghostly apparition. This cloud, this shadow of death, can be a key to clarity, or we can use it to blanket the truth.  The latest rampage in Pennsylvania is just adding more salt to the wounds of a very, confused, very divided country.

Hotly debated throughout the land of the free is this — who is to blame for the Newtown tragedy?  Like the child’s game of hot potato, the so-called grown-ups in this country, who hold the future of America in the palms of their hands, keep passing the buck back and forth, claiming that they or their causes, creations, or capitalistic interests have nothing to do with the mayhem and madness we have seen far too often in the dawning of this new millennium.

First and foremost, the ultimate responsibility for the massacre at Newtown lies with Adam Lanza.  His own blood, the blood of those children, his mother, and all the others, is on his hands. He planned and executed this horrific act of violence and the real truths concerning the how and why of all this, will be buried along with him. This Adam, born and bred in America, not a terrorist, mind you, but one of our own homegrown nuts, will have to answer to his maker, just as the biblical Adam had to answer to God for his fall from grace. With that said, from now until doomsday, we will all try to figure out why these senseless acts of man’s inhumanity to man keep occurring, and what we should or shouldn’t do, can or can not do to prevent these mass murders from happening again.  Yet each of us will be preaching to our own choirs.  From “The Sound of Silence,” we could all sing in unison this verse, “People talking without speaking, People hearing without listening…”It is becoming all too apparent that exercising your right to free speech and bringing up certain inalienable rights will have people gunning for you, and not with the slow loading weapons of our forefathers, but with weapons of mass destruction that can wipe out a classroom of innocent schoolchildren in minutes. Consequently, people are scared silent.  If you write about gun control, hundreds of angry people post nasty, comments about you and what you have to say.  All this anonymously, of course.  So much for the courage to put your name where your mouth is.  This is just a new form of bullying, cyber-style.

The fact that people are stockpiling guns right now in response to this tragedy is frightening. Are we all becoming a bunch of Survivalists?  From all accounts, Nancy Lanza was a Survivalist, and we all know how that turned out. Humans are first and foremost mammals, yes, animals, and each and every day we have to rise above our own animal natures and listen to our higher consciousness.  Does “survival of the fittest” mean, he who has the most guns wins?  No, “survival of the fittest” means listening to divine guidance and using your intelligence in your quest to live a long and productive life.  That is how the quick-thinking, 6-year-old girl survived the slaughter at Sandy Hook, not by grabbing a gun, but by outwitting her killer by playing dead. 

The NRA announced their simple solution to schoolroom slayings: armed guards stationed in every school, because “the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun”.  There are those who claim,”Guns don’t kill.” Others are convinced that it’s all Hollywoods fault.  Hollywood then claims that they are only giving people what they want, and even point back in time to the Greek tragedies, with their theme of vengeance, for their intelligent justification for the spilling of blood and guts in every other movie and television show.  And Hollywood further argues that it isn’t their movies that are causing this mess anyway – it’s video games and mental illness.  Other says, it isn’t mental illness, but the psychiatric drugs these people are on — or off — that is causing the rise in random mass killings. Still others  claim that it is the amount of hard drug use among our youth, including Heroin and other opiates. Other people point their fingers at the parents.  Yes, it’s all their faults because they aren’t showing enough tough love, or because they are sparing the rod and spoiling the child.  Still others will say spanking is the culprit; or parents aren’t there enough for their kids, or they are hovering over their offspring too much, you know the helicopter parent-thing. Still others notate that it isn’t the children raised in poverty that are doing these mass murders, but those raised in the land of plenty: the land of affluenza created this deadly epidemic.

I’ll admit –guns don’t kill people.  No, guns and ammunition,  in the hands of the human animal, kill people. And until we sort through the hundreds of other theories as to why this is happening, I, for one, believe in gun control, otherwise the fashion choice of this decade will be a well-fitted suit of armour, for you and yours. 

As we lay 2012 to rest, we will be ringing in the year 2013 with the ominous sound of a death knell.

 

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Peace.
Cindi

With visions and the reality of super storm Sandy still haunting the Northeast, we now are faced with another all too real nightmare : the mass slayings at Sandy Hook Elementary school.

Life deals in metaphors and the name Sandy stood out in my mind.   I took a moment to look up what the name Sandy means, and I was surprised to learn that it means: the defender of man and the protector of mankind.

What is the message from above?
Who is the protector of mankind? 

As the friends and families of the those slain at Newtown grieve,
So does an entire nation mourn, and so grieves the heaven, and mother earth, as well.

At a time of good will toward men, and the celebration of the Festival of lights; in a season of the birth of a savior, our children should have sweet visions of sugarplums dance through their heads, and not rancid visions of a crazed,lone, gunman run through their heads.

In the long, cold, dark days to follow, the innocent children and the caretakers sacrificed trying to save them, will all be laid to rest forevermore.  But among the living, the pain and the suffering will long endure.

Even through the pain, we can’t help but mourn for a mother gunned down by the child she conceived, bore, loved, and raised.  And in our hearts, we must find a way to forgive Adam Lanza.  We can eventually forgive the boy/man, but not his actions.  His actions are unfathomable and unforgivable.  For any parent, for any thinking, feeling person, all these visions, all these horrible truths,will bring us, just as super storm Sandy did, collectively, to our knees. 

What happened in Connecticut was a tragedy of epic proportions.   God knows that this mass murder isn’t the first of its kind, and sadly, it won’t be the last, unless we as a nation and as a people get our heads out of the sand.

As we walk through the bloody alleyways of our hearts and souls, and watch the new stories of those who were senselessly slaughtered and those who managed to survive, we must ask — why this? Why this now?

There will be more questions than answers.
More tears shed than any of us can bear.

We need more than flags waving at half-staff, and much more than moments of silence.

America we can start by boycotting our entertainment industry.  Silence the violence that streams through your homes hourly on your big screens.
Monitor the music your children listen to on their head phones, which glorifies drugs and violence; and for the good of all, put your money where your mouth is and stop buying your children violent video games.

The horrid sounds of screams blaring over a school intercom, and the curses of a young madman, will long echo throughout our classrooms, and the sight of blood and carnage will forever haunt all of us, for as long as we shall walk this earth. 

We are a nation and a world that is failing our children and ultimately all of humankind.
If we continue to blindly defend our right to bear arms,
then I hope we are strong enough to bear the burden of that right, and that we find the strength to carry out the dead and dying…

In the small, Thorton Wilder-like town of Newtown, a town whose motto is,”Nicer in Newtown,” this holiday season there will be many presents that were bought that will never be opened…

In memory of those so mercilessly slain, this year, before you give your children the gifts you’ve purchased —  think carefully. Do these gifts show you to be the protector of humankind? Or are they more instruments of destruction?

I pray that we do not lose our faith in God and in the good powers of the universe. for they are more powerful than any evil, but God has no power to interfere with free will and stop what humankind, itself, must put an end to.

We are the protectors of man, you and I.
May the tiny dead and the giants who lost their lives trying to save these children, sleep in heavenly peace.

May they guide us toward true peace on earth.

Peace.
Cindi

I was saddened to hear the news that Jovan Belcher, the Kansas City Chiefs linebacker, who was a former high school football star from West Babylon, shot his girlfriend to death in their home, before killing himself in front of three team officials at Arrowhead Stadium.

This well-liked, young couple appeared to have it all.  Money, success, good looks, and a beautiful, 3-month-old, baby girl.  This leaves us all wondering, what went wrong?

The Ladder of Love is a classification system for relationships that I explain in great deal in my spiritual, self-help,  book entitled Grant Me a Higher Love.  Try visualizing that love is like a ladder.  The top rung of this ladder would be Soul Mate love, which brings out the best in us.   Many people are offered this kind of love, but few couples actually maintain it.  Soul Mates love each other with their entire heart, soul, mind, and body.  Soul Mate love further asks that we commit to that love and commit to healing.  These couples are expected to treat each other as equals.  No one is the master.  No one is the slave, and certainly, no one is mommy or daddy to someone who won’t grow up.  It is the commitment to healing that seems to give people the most trouble.  In order to maintain this high level of love, couples have to give up their addictions, learn to say what they mean, mean what they say without being mean about it, and stop re-living any of the dysfunctional patterns of behavior that  they may have witnessed growing up in their own parents’ homes.

In the middle rungs, on the Ladder of Love, we have the “old ball and chain thing,” where we take each other for granted, and it pretty much looks like a sit-com marriage.  Think: Marie and Frank Barone, the fictionalized couple supposedly from Lynbrook, Long Island, on Everybody Loves Raymond. 

At the bottom of the Ladder of Love is toxic love or what I call Cellmates, who bring out the worst in each other. 

Relationships tend to go up and down this ladder on an hourly, daily, and weekly basis.  The trick is to have a toxic moment, but  not a toxic month.

 True Cellmates find themselves in a  tragically destructive  relationship, which ends in a courtroom, a jail, an emergency room, or a morgue.  It becomes brutal love, order of protection love, and, sadly, headline making love.

What fuels toxic love?  Unhealed childhood issues stemming from dysfunctional families, which may have been overridden with violence and/or sexual abuse.  Pathological jealousy issues, drugs, alcohol, and/or mental illness also play a big role in these over-the-top, drama-driven relationships.

Toxic love serves a purpose in this world.  When people have rage, which stem from unresolved issues, what are they going to do with all that anger?  Give thanks that most people won’t go out and gun down innocent people in a movie theatre, or act out in the form of road rage, but rather, they pick someone they love, who they can rage with behind closed doors, and then look normal in the outside world.

Even nice people can find themselves embroiled in a toxic love affair.  They had no idea who or what they were signing on for.  I call this falling for the princess or prince who becomes the beast.  When the unhealed issues start surfacing and a nice person finds that they have fallen in love with a drug addict, sex addict, alcoholic,  rageaholic, pathological liar, or gambler, to name but a few of the toxic scenarios, after a while the frustration level, hurt, and anger can build to explosive levels. Even nice people begin losing it.

Today is a good day to think about where your relationship is on the Ladder of  Love.  Are you taking your mate for granted?  Are you not healing your issues?  Are you having way too many toxic moments?  Take some time to think about what your relationship is telling your children about love.  Do you want them to grow up thinking that love starts out good and then it stinks? 

Soul Mate love teaches our children peace, love, and joy.  Mediocre love, where you take each other for granted and stop communicating, teaches our children cold war.  Toxic love teaches outright war.

My prayers are with the friends and family of this young couple, and for their young daughter, who was left orphaned by this tragedy.

If you want world peace, then make peace within your heart, in your own home, and within all your relationships.

Peace.
Cindi

Police on guard at every gas station? I think this is as horrible a vision as any left by the havoc hurricane Sandy wrought. Have we become such an amoral, narcissistic, lawless society, that a short gas shortage reduces us to Dodge City? Had it been a water or food shortage, would we have had to call in the National Guard to stop the looting? Would we have had to board up our houses once again — this time not from the fury of gale force winds, but from the fury of humans?

The name Frankenstorm is beginning to fit. The human monster created by this disaster is terrifying. What messages are the so-called adults of our communities sending out to our children? Do we not teach them to share and wait their turn on line? We tell them that bullying is wrong, but then show them, that it’s OK for grown ups to bully each other.

Could we use this time on gas lines to listen to music, read a book, or play with our cell phones? Could we use it as a moment to chat with our neighbors, who are also waiting on line? What in the world has happened to people? In the 1970s, when we had to wait on gas lines, we did it. We waited patiently, and back in the day, there were a lot less electronics to entertain us while we waited.

Long Island, in this day and age of news traveling at the speed of light, the world is watching us. The phrase, “ugly American,” is sadly ringing all too true.

I am using poetic license and slightly changing J.F.K.’s infamous words: “Ask not what your county can do for you, ask what you can do for your county.”

What about bullying an already stretched to the seams L.I.P.A? They did not create this mess, and crews are working round the clock, doing the best they can to help. Enough already with the hissy fits and throwing temper tantrums, while aiming missiles at our local and national government officials. None of this is doing any of us any good.

In Matthew 12:25, and later used in a speech by Lincoln, Jesus said, “Any kingdom divided against itself is laid waste; and any city or house divided against itself will not stand.” We, as a community, have to stand together. We are all on the same team. We are not an army of one, but a civilized society, that can overcome anything, when we come together as a loving unit. But if we’re going to fight each other like cats and dogs, we will all walk away more bruised and battered than before.

It will take the greatest minds of the 21st century, and the grace of God, for we, as a people, to figure our way out of the mess that our raping of the earth, and the resulting global warming have created. If we harness the good powers of the universe, we will find solutions and survive as a species. We can choose to either rise to the occasion and use our higher consciousness — Cosmic Consciousness — harnessing the spark of God housed within us; or we can descend to our animal nature — to the dog–eat-dog mentality, in which we behave like a pack of scavenging, wild dogs, reverting to our savage nature.

We can rebuild together. Each of us can help heal the earth and our towns using whatever God given gifts we have. I am choosing to use my words to help soothe the tattered human spirit. I envy those skilled enough to use their tools and skills to actually build or fix structures. Whatever your job is, do it now as a labor of love. As you stock the store shelves, bless the powers that be, for the abundance now being showered upon us. Pick up the trash, cut the trees, teach your children well, whatever it is that you do, do it with consciousness that this world is built one brick, one word, one good deed at a time. Never forget: the world as we know it can be more quickly and more easily destroyed with — one gale force, one angry word, or with one push of a button. We have always gotten by with a little help from our friends, and we have always depended upon the kindness of strangers. This is the way of the world.

We need a miracle right now. Miracles are earned and then granted by the grace of God. We can choose to be Scalawags or Carpetbagges, pirates or piranhas. We could also choose to be angels on earth, earning our wings — one kind word word and deed at a time.

Greed breeds greed and kindness is contagious. Do we want the world to remember Frankenstorm as the storm that dubbed Long Island, “Dodge Island?”

Godspeed, Long Island.

Peace.
Cindi