Do You Recognize the Blue Moon Events in Your Life?

blue moon nasa

The sky here in Northern California is clear and bright. Tonight, August 31, 2012, I’ll be able to see the blue moon. When two full moons occur in any calendar month, the second is called a blue moon. The term (in its modern usage) has nothing to do with the moon’s color. A blue moon [...]

A Time to Count Your Blessings

count your blessings

I’m about to board a bus to upstate New York for the Thanksgiving holiday. I just spent several days in New York City after traveling across country from California. This is the one time of the year when my whole family gets together. It’s our family reunion–and not always a pleasant one. Not everyone gets [...]

Simple Thoughts of Gratitude on the Anniversary of 9-11

I woke today at 5 a.m. in California worrying. “I should get up and check the news,” I thought. “I should be sure everything is okay in New York.” Both my children are in New York. But I don’t like to focus on the negative.I try not to worry (although I’m a worrier and was [...]

Ridding Yourself of Anger

I know the uselessness of anger. I know the damage it causes both emotionally and physically. Yet, sometimes anger proves the most difficult emotion to change. Once it comes over me, it feels like it attaches itself to me like a vice with no removal mechanism. I’m left to watch the negative results set forth [...]

And You Shall Be a Blessing…

male dancer

How often do you leave your home and go somewhere else to live for any period of time? For the second time in two years, my son and I are going off to live in New York City for seven weeks this summer. This reminds me of the Torah portion we read called Lech Lecha, [...]

Everything is a Blessing

Yesterday I wrote a post about everything being for the good. Interestingly, today when I opened my daily message from Neale Donald Walsch he had written something very similar. He said God wanted me to know: …that it sometimes looks like “one thing after the other,” but really, it is Blessing After Blessing. I know, [...]

Practical Spirituality: Blessing the Food You Eat

BOU202915

Many spiritual traditions contain a practice of blessing food prior to eating it. Christians, for example, say grace before a meal. This prayer more often than not thanks God for the food they are about to eat. Jews say a blessing over a particular type of food–one for bread, one for wine, one for cookies [...]

Practical Spirituality: Using Your Hands in Service to God

hand washing

Starting today, about once a week you will find a practical spiritual practice here on As the Spirit Moves Me. The tip may come from the Jewish tradition or from other major religious tradition, such as from Christianity, Islam, or Buddhism. These practical spiritual practices are meant to be adaptable by anyone, and they also [...]

Memories are a Blessing and for Blessing

Joannie Rochette grieving after her Olympic performance in Vancouver.

It’s a Jewish tradition when someone dies to say, “May his or her memory be for blessing.” The actual honorific is “of blessed memory,” a translation of the Hebrew “zikhrono livrakha” (m.)  or “zikhronah livrakha” (f.). It’s an odd type of statement really. I tend to say, “May his or her memory be a blessing.” [...]

Say a Special Prayer this Shabbat for Haiti

As Jews around the world usher in the Sabbath with the candle lighting ritual, they ask God to spread over them “wings of peace…sukkat shalom.” They ask for “Shabbat shalom…Sabbath peace.” While some Jews actually will feel that peace during the 25 hours of this week’s Shabbat, I’m sure the survivors of the earthquake in [...]