Well, today, I wish all of you a Happy Thanksgiving.  It's time  not only to be grateful, but also to take stock of all the ways I am a TURKEY, and all the ways that I am "stuffed" perhaps with resentments and rage, defensiveness, loneliness, numbness, and any other "energy" that is just plain deadening.  The Thanksgiving Turkey, unfortunately, has to die so we can devour the poor bird.  But if you are reading this, then you don't have to die, and no one is going to eat you up.  Or perhaps, if we can give up being a stuffed turkey, people will show up in our life who will just eat us up and love us "to death."  We have so many interesting sayings in our language!

     So my good buddie Bruce says to me, "Vern, it's not going to kill you to let yourself be loved."  And of course I have to have my BUT.  "But Bruce, what about those people in my life who love me to death?"  Did you know that the French have a word for orgasm which translated literally means "little death."  Leave it to those French folks.  If you hold your nose when you talk and speak from the back of your throat, you will sound like a French person instead of a turkey!

     So love is a funny thing, and I believe it is right there in front of each of us, for the asking and for the taking.  We have to first make room for love in our mind's eye so we can see it.

     The same way I can only be grateful if I can see in my mind's eye all of my abundance.  We each have an abundance and an abundance of GOOD "stuff."  Again, if I get so "stuck" on my lack of what I think SHOULD be there, then I don't see the abundance that is there.

     Am I sounding a little preachy this morning?  Isn't that sort of what a blogger does?  A little personal sharing, a little sermon for the day, a little insight into life?  I like being a little "preachy" because my most favorite "congregation" is myself.  As I write this to whoever will be reading it, I also get to read it myself!  And I'm feeling inspired to be less of a Turkey today!

     I have to confess that yesterday, from time to time, I was a real Turkey.  So maybe my guilt about that is spawning my blog today.  I did ask for forgiveness, and it was clearly confirmed for me that I was being a Turkey.  It's great to get validation, isn't it?!  Even though I was sort of hoping my loved ones would say something like, "Oh you weren't being a Turkey...that's okay!"

     By the way, how many of you old folks remembered what yesterday was?  Someone said that November 22 for us old folks is like 9-11 for this generation.

     Again, Happy Thanksgiving and be careful out there among the English today!