The Memory, the Magic, the Mystery / The Healing Power of Laughter / Sept. 4: Classes resume

                 Endless in its Beauty

At every crossroad
we have a choice.
We travel in one
direction
or another,
never knowing
we are all lost
in the vast void
of timeless space.

Timeless
in the moment,
without form
in the now
to be,
and truly ageless
in our search for Love,
our Love for Life,
and for one another.

“The end of all our exploring
will be to arrive where we started
and know the place
for the first time.”
– T. S. Eliot
.

And then one day
we come to see
God,
in His Love
for all there ever was,
and all there is
to ever be.

We each live
for but a moment,
just one brief moment,
the moment
when we realize
the Heart of God
beats within
every lonely
Life
in search of Love,
and longing
to be.

       Dog-leaping Happiness                        (Our precious Lila, shortly before she departed us in this Life)

In the Sacred Time
of that moment
lives the memory,
the magic,
the Mystery
of Life
and Living.

“I am almost a hundred years old;
waiting for the end,
and thinking about the beginning.

Meg Rosoff

There are things I need to tell you,
but would you listen if I told you
how quickly time passes?

I know you are unable to imagine this.

Nevertheless,
I can tell you that you will awake someday
to find that your life
has rushed by at a speed
at once impossible and cruel.

The most intense moments
will seem to have occurred only yesterday
and nothing
will have erased the pain and pleasure,
the impossible intensity of Love
and its dog-leaping Happiness,
the bleak blackness of passions unrequited,
or unexpressed, or unresolved.”
– Meg Rosoff

                  Endless in its Beauty.

My Dear Friends,
the Love of God
will never let you go.
In His Arms
you can never
be alone.

His Love
bears the Torch
to Light the Way.
It restores
all Life
to another day.

Do not let
your thoughts
close the door
to your precious Heart,
for only it may see
the Rainbow
through a rain of tears
that promises
not in vain,
to return God’s Love
again and again.

                           Endless . . .

From the Sacred ground
blossoms all Life,
endless in its Beauty,
now
and to be.

In Nature,
the end
is the beginning.
And so it is
with us.
With our Mother
Earth,
and God as our
Father,
in mind and in memory,
and in all things that matter,
every moment is
resurrected,
and Life and Love
go on.

In God’s Love
there is no
loss,
only what is
found.

And,
there is rest
for the weary
Soul.

Cecelia Weir

“There is Rest For The Weary,
True rest for the Soul.
Troubles, trials and tribulations.
Yes, the agony of time
As Eternity rolls.

Faith is the key.
Prayer is the answer.
And God got it all in control.
If you’ll just go to Him,
And talk as you stroll along,
The relief will begin to surface
And you Heart will be made strong.

Be encouraged in this Life
For there can be Happiness
Right here on Earth.
Despite its pain,
Its misery and its strife.
The good Lord loves you
He sees, He knows, and He cares.
If we but only trust Him

For He is Love..
And He is Light….
He’ll be your Light.
He’ll be your Guide.
For He’s always there
Right by your side.
Live in your Soulful rest.
That the Heartfelt ease
Will give you Life at its best.
Rest, rest, in the Lord.
For He is..
Rest
For The Weary.”
– Cecelia Weir

                     The Sun restores Life.

As our Lives
return a borrowed day,
let us Pray.
The Sun restores Life
in its ray,
and keeps God’s promise
of another new day.

“There is an ecstasy
that marks the summit of life,
and beyond which Life cannot rise.
And such is the paradox of living,
this ecstasy comes when one is most alive,
and it comes as a complete forgetfulness
that one is alive.
This out of all will remain.

They have lived and have tossed:
So much of the game will be gain,
Though the gold of the dice
has been lost.”
– Jack London (Love of Life)
.
The crystal mirror
of our memory,
sometimes with painful longing,
sometimes with delight,
invites us to return,
to never leave again
the Beauty of Love
lost along the way,
never fully knowing
that this moment,
and the last,
are one.

Goodnight.

Laughter Therapy
click here to read more

“The most wasted of all days is one without laughter.”
– E. E. Cummings

What is laughter therapy?

We were born with the gift of laughter. Laughter is a natural medicine. It lifts our spirits and makes us feel happy. Laughter is a contagious emotion. It can bring people together. It can help us feel more alive and empowered.

Laughter therapy, also called humor therapy, is the use of humor to promote overall health and wellness. It aims to use the natural physiological process of laughter to help relieve physical or emotional stresses or discomfort.

Research supporting laughter therapy

A growing body of research supports the theory that laughter may have therapeutic value.

For years, the use of humor has been used in medicine. Surgeons used humor to distract patients from pain as early as the 13th century. Later, in the 20th century, came the scientific study of the effect of humor on physical wellness. Many credit this to Norman Cousins. After years of prolonged pain from a serious illness, Cousins claims to have cured himself with a self-invented regimen of laughter and vitamins. In his 1979 book Anatomy of an Illness, Cousins describes how watching comedic movies helped him recover.

Over the years, researchers have conducted studies to explore the impact of laughter on health. After evaluating participants before and after a humorous event (i.e., a comedy video), studies have revealed that episodes of laughter helped to reduce pain, decrease stress-related hormones and boost the immune system in participants.

Today more than ever before, people are turning to humor for therapy and healing. Medical journals have acknowledged that laughter therapy can help improve quality of life for patients with chronic illnesses. Many hospitals now offer laughter therapy programs as a complementary treatment to illness.

The Healing Power of Laughter

For people living with cancer, it may seem strange to find humor when facing such serious issues. Yet, laughter may be helpful in ways you may not have realized or imagined.

Laughter may help you feel better about yourself and the world around you. Laughter may be a natural diversion. When you laugh, no other thought comes to mind. Laughing may also induce physical changes in the body. After laughing for only a few minutes, you may feel better for hours.

When used in addition to conventional cancer treatments, laughter therapy may help in the overall healing process.

According to some studies, laughter therapy may provide physical benefits, such as helping to:

• Enhance oxygen intake
• Stimulate the heart and lungs
• Relax muscles throughout the body
• Trigger the release of endorphins (the body’s natural painkillers)
• Ease digestion/soothe stomach aches
• Relieve pain
• Balance blood pressure
• Improve mental functions (i.e., alertness, memory, creativity)

Laughter therapy may also help to:

• Improve overall attitude
• Reduce stress/tension
• Promote relaxation
• Improve sleep
• Enhance quality of life
• Strengthen social bonds and relationships
• Produce a general sense of well-being

Laughter therapy at CTCA

At Cancer Treatment Centers of America^® (CTCA), we fight cancer using an integrative approach. Our Mind-Body Medicine Department offers supportive options, including laughter therapy, to help you cope as you receive conventional cancer treatments.

Laughter therapy strives to help you use and enjoy laughter as a tool for healing. Dr. Katherine Puckett, Chief of the Division of Mind-Body Medicine at CTCA^®, first introduced laughter therapy at our Illinois hospital upon a patient’s request.

CTCA offers humor therapy sessions, also known as Laughter Clubs or humor groups, to help cancer patients and their families use and enjoy laughter as a tool for healing. These leader-led groups take patients through a number of laugh-related exercises, including fake laughter and laughter greetings.

Laughter Club is based not on humor or jokes, but rather on laughter as a physical exercise. One group laughter exercise involves patients standing in a circle, with the leader in the middle. Patients put their fingertips on their cheekbones, chest or lower abdomen and make “ha ha” or “hee hee” sounds until they feel vibrations through their bodies. Dr. Puckett says that, during these exercises, it is hard for people not to join in because laughter is so contagious.

According to Dr. Puckett, at the end of a laughter therapy session, patients have said things like “I didn’t even think about cancer during Laughter Club” and “That felt great! Things have been so hard that we hadn’t laughed in months.” Dr. Puckett adds that the 8-year-old daughter of a CTCA patient who attended Laughter Club said afterwards: “I never thought about laughing every day, but now I realize I can. Like even when I don’t feel happy, I can still laugh and feel better.”

“To enable someone to laugh
is much like
giving them
a bouquet of beautiful
Flowers.”
–  Wm. C. Anderson

Lyrics/songs texts/paintings/articles
are property and copyright of their owners
and provided for educational purposes.

Copyright Disclaimer – Section 107 – Copyright Act 1976,
allowance is made for “fair use” for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship,and research. Fair use is permitted by copyright statute. Non-profit, educational or personal use tips the balance in favor of “fair use”.

© Copyright 1995-2018 The Anderson Private School.
All Rights Reserved

Who We Already Are

Dedicated
with all my Love
to Lila.
She passed away yesterday.
I thank God
for the beautiful Gift
of her precious
Life.

Rescued
from the uncertainties of Life,
Lila returned all my Love
and rescued my Heart.

And in my Heart
she will remain.

“You are shelter from the storm.
The shadows fade away,
all cares pass away.

As hour by hour, day by day
Your love lightens up the sky,
As it shines across the night.

And when the end of day is come,
Stay with me through the dark
and bring me home.
You are there whichever way I go.
Keep me safely night and day.
Always there,
whenever I’m alone.”
– Libera

                           Simple moments renew us.

Rev. & Mrs. Don Welsh

Reverend Don Welsh
shared a truly beautiful insight:
click here for more

“Spiritual growth
is really a process
of pushing back the boundaries
of our ignorance of God
and our own nature,
so that we grow into
who we already are.”

So very much
of what we search for,
long for
and fervently Pray for,
is already here.

“It takes courage
to grow up
and be
who you really are.”
– E. E. Cummings

                    Such is the nature of Love.

Like a Flower
in Spring,
we are
the beautiful unfolding
of a Mystery.

To the mind of mankind,
it may not seem
to matter
that the songs of our lives,
the symphony of our Creation,
is understood.

The magnetic resonance
from the music
created by our brief passage
through time,
passes right past
Human intellect
and travels into
the Sacred Heart,
which always remembers,
always reflects.

“God is Love
and only creates out of a desire
to express Love.”
– Ernest Holmes “Living the Science of Mind”

My Friends,
we
are becoming aware
of a unifying energy structure
to our Universe,
a field of intelligence permeating
everything.

                       Always reflects.

“Science
is saying that everything
that vibrates
possesses intelligence,
and everything vibrates,
and there is a central intelligence
everything
vibrates to.”
– Lynne McTaggart, “The Field”

Such is the nature
of Love.
The Compass
of the Heart
guides us toward
the destiny of Truth.

Rivers
of tears
over many, many years
flow through the veins of time.
And the embodiment of
Love
is found in each precious
drop.

Simple moments
renew us.
Each act of
Kindness
gives birth
to Hope,
saves us from
ourselves.

“There is a Higher Will
present throughout all Creation
and within all Created things,
possessed of another agenda
than what seems obvious
or expected.”
– P. M. H. Atwater

There peals an everlasting song.
To the Sound of Thunder,
the Stone of a Cave
was rolled back,
to let the Holy Spirit
live free again.

And we observed
the mirror of
reality
turned into a
window.
The Beauty of
Life
resurrected,
and the Eternity of
Life
reflected.

        The Beauty of Life resurrected.

“Science has shown
the particle
and the wave
are the same.
God
is both immanent
and transcendent,
internal and external,
composed and
Compassionate,
the One
while also the Many
 in One.”
– P. M. H. Atwater

“When I applied my mind
to know wisdom,
and to see the business that is done on earth,
how neither day nor night
one’s eyes see sleep;
then I saw all the work of God,
that man cannot find out
the work that is done
under the sun.
However much man may toil in seeking,
he will not find it out;
even though a wise man claims to know,
he cannot find it out.”
– Ecclesiastes 8:16-17

        There is a Higher Will.

Copyright Disclaimer – Section 107 – Copyright Act 1976,
allowance is made for “fair use” for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship,and research. Fair use is permitted by copyright statute. Non-profit, educational or personal use tips the balance in favor of “fair use”.

Love Does That / Adventure Trip Next Week / This Friday: At School

“Love is the offspring
of Spiritual affinity
and unless that affinity
is created in a moment,
it will not be created
for years or even generations.”
– Kahlil Gibran

Life is the first gift, Love is the second, and Understanding the third.       – Marge Piercy

From the metal of clay
are made
we.

Of all things
ever created,
we were so Loved,
we were Lovingly made
to ever
be.

“The righteous
will possess the earth,
And they will live
forever on it.”
– Psalm 37:29

       Under a beautiful canopy

To share
the same Loving thoughts
as the One
who made you and me,
One who Loves us beyond Belief,
is living
as though one river
flows
from Sea
to Eternal Sea,
Gracefully moving
through you
and me.

Love is ever fluid
to those in need,
as rivers of affection crest
and overflow,
and rush with a mighty force
through the Divine Being
that dwells inside
every Heart that sings.

God’s Grace
is denied to none
and cannot be swayed
from ever flowing
to those
whose Heart is in Love,
and in
Prayerful need.

Like drops of rain
falling freely
through the sky,
all the tears
we cry
fill the seas of life,
and then run dry.

             To guide your feet

If you get to where your going
before the end
of your day,
before the tears run dry,
and things that do not matter
come to know your name,
your Heavenly Father
can show you the way
and
by the Grace of God,
you will never be
the same.

The Path to Salvation
lies under a beautiful
Canopy,
upheld by a mighty Forest
of unbelievably beautiful Belief,
planted in the Heart by God
to shelter you
from the storms
and assuage your grief,
to guide your feet,
and shade you
beneath beautiful clouds
of relief.

      Beautiful Clouds of relief.

In forgiving,
we forget
what now never was,
never is,
never again can be.
By the Light of God
you now can see,
and finally feel
truly free.

“Love is the immortal flow of energy that nourishes, extends and preserves. Its eternal goal is Life.”                            – Smiley Blanton

My Dear Friends,
if you look at
one star in the Heavens,
just ONE,
and gaze long enough,
everything else just disappears.
What you are left with
is ONE,
and only one,
bright and shining star
in the field of your vision,
in your mind,
in your Heart.

Everything else just disappears.

Such is the nature
of our reality,
of our Heart,
of our mind’s eye.

Try it sometime.

“Love is the strongest force
the world possesses,
and yet it is the humblest
imaginable.”
– Mahatma Gandhi

And if you look
with your Heart
at one other Heart
just ONE,
and for long enough,
everything else just disappears.
What you are left with
is one,
and only ONE,
precious thought of another.

Such is nature of
Love,
that it can remove everything else
in the Universe,
everything below,
everything above.

“I can see the distant light,
hear the music all surrounding,
That shatters the silence so heavy to bear,
Lifts my soul into the night,
fills my heart with Love abounding,
And brings me the peace
we all surely will share.”
– Cleo Laine & John Dankworth

Try it sometime.

In Loving someone so intently,
everything else
simply disappears:
your sorrows,
your fears
your pain and suffering,
your unbearable grief,
your heartaches and tears.

And when you awake
from what you believe
is a dream,
you
will have also
disappeared.

Such is the nature of our reality.

Love
does that.
It removes you,
from you.
And suddenly,
you are
what you come to
Love.

And a child
is re-born.

And Life
and Love
live again.

And you know
the words
to your Song.
And in the beauty
of the Dawn,
once again
you sing along.

Such is the nature of our mind’s eye.

Such is the
Love of God
for you.

If you look to the Heavens,
and Pray for the Love of God,
and for long enough,
everything else just disappears.
And what you are left with
is One,
and only One,
bright and shining Star.
And the Love of God
shines down
upon you.

Goodnight.

Everything else just disappears.

“Everyone says love hurts, but that isn’t true.
Loneliness hurts. Rejection hurts. Losing someone hurts.
Envy hurts. Everyone gets these things confused with love,
but in reality love is the only thing in this world
that covers up all pain and makes someone feel
wonderful again.
Love is the only thing in this world
that does not hurt.”
– unknown

“Man is capable of loving
and the ultimate form of love is
Holiness.”
– Sorin Cerin

IMPORTANT  DATES
May 16-20 Adventure Trip to Little Rock, Ark.
May 20 Last Day of School
(See William’s Weblog at andersonschool.net for trip details (posted Wed. at 7:00 p.m.)

                                    Spring Trip Itinerary

It’s time for our Spring Adventure Trip, and we are headed to Little Rock, Ark.  Little Rock has a big role in history. Here, we will learn about Central High School’s place in the civil rights movement, explore the Clinton Presidential Center & imagine a world free of hunger & poverty at Heifer Village.

*  Be sure to have ALL forms signed, dated and witnessed (where required) and turned in to Dr. A. by Friday, MAY 13. NO, you may NOT participate without these forms properly completed.

Monday       Meet at the Train Station at 12:30 p.m.
Do NOT be late! Do NOT drop off your child without Dr. or Mrs. Anderson present!

Depart Fort Worth by Train   1:20 p.m. (Meet at the Train Station)
Arrive Little Rock                 11:30 p.m. We will be picked up by bus for transport to the hotel (and later to other Arkansas Destinations)

Tuesday       Farmer’s Market (River Center)    7:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.

Lunch                                          12:00 p.m.

Tour of Clinton Library                1:30 p.m.

Heifer Village                               4:00 p.m.

Wednesday  Historical Bus Tour 10:00 am (4 hours).  * Meet in the Hotel Lobby at 9:30 a.m.

Thursday     Museum of Discovery               10:00 a.m.
Maritime Museum                       1:00 p.m.

Friday        Transportation to train station 2:00 a.m. This is NOT a misprint. Wake up & get on board!

Depart from Little Rock             3:10 a.m.       (Now you can sleep.)

Arrive in Fort Worth                   1:25 p.m.

Additional events include: Peabody Park, Big Dam Bridge, and River Lights in the Rock.

The itinerary is susceptible to change. A hot breakfast is included at the Hotel. Lunch and dinner will be additional expenses, and we ask all students to order from the children’s menus, which are more reasonably priced.

Departure for Little Rock is at 2:20 p.m. on Monday, May 16, from the Fort Worth International Transportation Center, 1001 Jones Street, Fort Worth, Texas 76102. Meet at the Train Station with your luggage at 12:30 p.m. Do  NOT  be  Late.

Please check with Dr. Anderson to be sure he has ALL current telephone numbers to reach you. It is CRITICAL that we be able to contact you in case of an emergency.

Our sincere gratitude to Gina Moreland for planning this wonderful trip.
Thank You!

Thank You
Bill  &  LeVonna

“Love is the voice under all silences,
the hope which has no opposite in fear;
the strength so strong mere force is feebleness:
the truth more first than sun,
more last than star… “
– E E Cummings