Proper Grammar Matters :-)

Thanks to Wally for this gem.

On my 66th birthday (not mine but the joke teller) I got a gift certificate from my wife.
The certificate paid for a visit to a medicine man
living on a nearby reservation that was rumoured to have a wonderful cure for erectile dysfunction.

After being persuaded, I drove to the reservation,
handed my ticket to the medicine man
and wondered what would happen next.

The old man slowly, methodically produced a potion, handed it to me, and with a grip on my shoulder, warned,
"This is powerful medicine and it must be respected
.You take only a teaspoonful and then say '1-2-3.' 
When you do that, you will become more manly 
than you have ever been in your life and you can perform as long as you want."

I was encouraged. As I walked away, I turned and asked, "How do I stop the medicine from working?"
"Your partner must say '1-2-3-4,' he responded.
"But when she does, the medicine will not work again until the next full moon."

I was very eager to see if it worked so I went home, showered,
shaved, took a spoonful of the medicine,
and then invited my wife to join me in the bedroom.

When she came in, I took off my clothes and said, "1-2-3!"
Immediately, I was the manliest of men.
My wife was excited and began throwing off her clothes. 
And then she asked, "What was the 1-2-3 for?"

And that, boys and girls, is why we should never end our sentences with a preposition!

ONE COULD END UP WITH A DANGLING PARTICIPLE

A waste of Thyme

Saw a kid standing on one leg at an ATM.

Confused, I asked him what he was doing?

He told me he was just checking his balance.

Q. Which country's capital has the fastest-growing population?

A. Ireland. Every day it's Dublin.

I have many jokes about unemployed people, sadly none of them work.

So what if I can’t spell Armageddon? It’s not the end of the world

I bought a wooden whistle. But it wooden whistle. so I bought a steel whistle. But it steel wooden whistle. So I bought a lead whistle. But it steel wooden lead me whistle.

RIP boiling water. You will be mist.

I tried to sue the airport for misplacing my luggage. – I lost my case.

Why did the tomato blush? – Because it saw the salad dressing.

Did you hear about the man who was accidentally buried alive? – It was a grave mistake.

I would tell you a construction pun, but I’m still working on it

If you give a gator a GPS, does that make it a navigator?

I had to clean out my spice rack and found everything was too old and had to be thrown out. – What a waste of thyme.

What do you call a dead parrot? Polygon

What did one ocean say to the other ocean? Nothing, they just WAVED.

Can you SEA what I did there? I'm SHORE you did. Why are you so SALTY? Don’t be a BEACH.

Why do cows have hooves instead of feet? – Because they lactose.

What do you call a cow with no legs?

Answer: ground beef.

I had to clean out my spice rack and found everything was too old and had to be thrown out. – What a  waste of thyme.

My poor knowledge of Greek mythology has always been my Achilles’ elbow.

My friend could not afford to pay his water bill anymore, so I sent him a card, “Get well soon.”

Where do mathematicians go to die?

The symmetry

Accordion to a recent survey, replacing words with the names of musical instruments in a sentence often goes undetected.

I was very lonely so I bought some shares. – It’s nice to have a bit of company.

Transitions to retirement or anything new 2

William Bridges wrote a very personal account of his own transition during and after his wife’s battle with, and eventual death from, breast cancer. The Way of Transition is the book. In the book, Bridges helps us to understand transition as so much more than simply a change from one state to another. He explains that transition has three parts, only one of which is the liminal space. The three parts, which Bridges says overlap rather than occur sequentially, are:

1.   Making an Ending

This involves more than just leaving your job, or waving bye to the kids as they move out of your house. A good ending requires that you let go not only of what you used to do but of who you used to be. For example, I retired and then immediately start working as a substitute teacher, my rationale was that I still wanted to teach and I thought a bit of extra money and an opportunity to continue to work with colleagues and students, would be helpful. But the real reason was that I still identified myself as a teacher. It took me another 8 years before I realized that I needed to end my role as a teacher and find a new role. Without an ending, there is no new beginning and no possibility of transition.

2.               Inhabiting the Neutral Zone

Danaan Pary describes it as letting go of one trapeze bar and grabbing the next one. “But every once in a while, as I'm merrily (or even not-so-merrily) swinging along, I look out ahead of me into the distance and what do I see? I see another trapeze bar swinging toward me. It's empty and I know, in that place in me that knows, that this new trapeze bar has my name on it. It is my next step, my growth, my aliveness coming to get me. In my heart of hearts, I know that, for me to grow, I must release my grip on this present, well-known bar and move to the new one.

Each time it happens to me I hope (no, I pray) that I won't have to let go of my old bar completely before I grab the new one. But in my knowing place, I know that I must totally release my grasp on my old bar and, for some moment in time, I must hurtle across space before I can grab onto the new bar.”

William Bridges speaks of this time, as a time of chaos, as “that state of pure energy that is experienced either as a jumble or a time of empty nothingness [that] makes us feel out of control and a little crazy.”

3.               Making a New Beginning

When beginnings come after a definite ending, and time hanging out in the liminal space, those beginnings have great power. Bridges assure us that they are “marked by a release of new energy in a new direction–they are the expression of a new identity.”

Every new beginning confirms that the ending we experienced was real. We will feel a sense of the original loss. And we may worry that this won’t be the right new beginning for us, or that we might fail.

How to Survive and Thrive in a Liminal Space

Liminal Spaces require that we be willing to live with the ambiguity of not knowing what’s next. That’s an incredibly uncomfortable, anxiety-provoking place for many of us.

While waiting is the primary task of the neutral zone, there are a few things you can do while you wait.

·       Schedule a new experience at least once a week. Ideas could be everything from wandering through a toy store to taking a guided walking tour of your own town.

·       Pay attention to meaningful coincidences, or what Carl Jung referred to as synchronicity. They often serve as arrows pointing the way to your next step.

·       Access your creativity in whatever form works for you. You might plant a garden, paint a picture, or write a poem. Creative acts are both soothing and supportive of self-understanding.

·       Meditate.  Meditation is enormously helpful in managing anxiety and getting us used to wait peacefully.

 “We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned so as to accept the life that is waiting for us.” Joseph Campbell

Transitions to retirement or anything new 1

We cannot discover new oceans unless we have the courage to lose sight of the shore. Anonymous     

I had not heard the term liminal space until a few days ago and I was enchanted by the concept. The word liminal comes from the Latin word limen, meaning threshold, any point or place of entering or beginning. A liminal space is not just the physical space between one place and the next it is also the time between the ‘what was’ and the ‘what will be our next.’ Liminal space for some is a place of transition, waiting, and most importantly, in my mind, not knowing.

Author and theologian Richard Rohr described this space as:

“where we are betwixt and between the familiar and the completely unknown. There alone is our old world left behind, while we are not yet sure of the new existence. That’s a good space where genuine newness can begin. Get there often and stay as long as you can by whatever means possible…This is the sacred space where the old world is able to fall apart, and a bigger world is revealed. If we don’t encounter liminal space in our lives, we start idealizing normalcy”.

Have you ever been in a physical liminal space? I have, and so have you I suspect. Every time I go to present a workshop to a new group, I stand at the door, just before crossing that threshold not knowing what to expect. The scariest physical liminal space I remember standing in was the room my wife had just entered to give birth to my daughter. I stood on the threshold and was afraid of going in, but I knew I had to enter to start our new adventure. Maybe you are more familiar with the emotional liminal space that you have encountered? Some of these could have been at the moment of transition from:

·       one home to another

·       married to divorced

·       employed to fired or retired

·       with children coming home to an empty-nester

·       the end of one decade to the start of another (i.e., age 59 to 60)

·       a loved one in your life is gone from your life through death

Each of these finds us where Rohr said, “where we are betwixt and between the familiar and the completely unknown”. It is a scary and lonely place to be. As a result, most of us will avoid making a transition if we don’t know what is coming next. We stay in a lousy marriage, we wait a few more years before moving, or we postpone our retirement date until we have amassed more money, sense or our health forces us to retire. Many of us will try to get through this time as quickly as possible. We will land on what next so we can feel comfortable.