Hello everyone and welcome to our Friends Forum.

Lets think of this place as a nice cafe with couches around and comfortable chairs and even coffee, tea and cold drinks are available and even snacks and finger foods.

What Confucius called 'Benevolence' ~ more literally ~ ' Becoming a Person' is the recognition that personal character is the consequence of cultivating one's relationships with others.

So we've made a place here for you to come and hang out and visit and make friends. I hope you will all come back often. For myself the weekends will be the time when I can get here for sure and I'll try during the week but that I can't promise.

My name is Cecilia Santana and I have accepted the position as a moderator to this Friends Forum.

I'll share with you one of my secret desires of as long as I could remember and that is to have my own column. I love to write and lately I haven't written anything at all and my inner voice keeps telling me 'you've got to write'. I write for my own therapy, it makes me feel good and and I love meeting new people. I also am a big fan of the I Ching. I studied the Wilhelm/Baynes edition for many years and then last summer I found this site and the Super I Ching. I'm very grateful for both. I have not spent the time I would like to studying the Super I Ching but now maybe I will be more motivated.

There's so many new people on here and all our old friends too that wouldn't it be great if everyone checked in here from time to time and left a note about how things are going in their lives and especially in learning the I Ching and how its shaped and changed your lives.

To begin with I want to thank my friend Horse for letting me practice being a writer here on my favorite website, where I feel safe and loved
And next, to our wonderful friend UK Anon who is always there for everyone and is wise beyond his years.
Thanks guys for showing us that Compassion is not just a theory

I have not been here much in the past few months, my computer crashed and I thought it was a goner but a friend of mine loaded the Lenox operating system on it and it's working, very slowly but at least I can get on line and write.

I just got back from Idaho visiting my Mom. I was out there for 5 days and I knew when I left it would probably be the last time I would ever see her . The reality of that thought didn't really start to sink in until the day before I left. Leaving was sad. I flew from Boise, Idaho to Denver, Colorado, then changed planes to go on into Tampa, Florida. As the plane began taxing down the runway in Denver it all started to hit home that 'this was the last time' the last time I'd see my Mom. That thought made the magical trip which I call 'The Miracle Mile,' which is from my head to my heart, when it becomes 'mine' and I don't only know what I am thinking about but I feel it in the depths of my soul. I love my Mom. I never knew how much I wished I could have loved my Dad more until the few hours before he died but I've been given a chance to love my Mom and feel her completely in my heart. It's funny in a way, how we humans always are relating how 'they' are doing by how we are feeling. I have to remember it's really not about me. It's about her, its her time and if I can keep on a positive note then I can realize what a gift I have been given to mature and become a grownup before my Mom dies and leaves me an orphan. Silly at 51 years old to think about being an orphan. I really didn't even think of it myself until someone mentioned it to me then I sort of bought it and ran with it for a little while really feeling sorry for myself! After awhile I couldn't stand my dramatic self anymore so I just let it go.............but probably not before my neck and back were as tight as a stone wall. I mean 'hey' if you've gotta feel sad why not take it all the way out to the end. Sometimes thats too far I found out. All in one day anyway.

I'm the kind of person that likes to solve things 'right now'. I think I can handle anything for a little while anyway but this time I had to remember that God is not going to give me more than I can handle. Although there have been times that I was sure God had forgotten my name. Sometimes I want to be a wimp, a big weakling and lay down and pull the covers over my head until a year or two have gone by trying to miss out on the pain.

I don't make a good nurse but I make a good doctor. I don't have the patience for people to be sick but I will do everything in mine and God's power to heal myself or others. Maybe after I become a writer I should become a doctor. recently I realized that we are only limited by our own imagination. Another thing I want to do is be a Helicopter pilot. So I've got lots to do but first I will continue writing, get back to reality and do what is right in front of me.

I'm into natural healing and tapping into the magic of the Universe to make my life and others better. I truely beleive in the depths of my soul that God put us here with all the answers, we just have to look for them and sometimes they just come to us as a gift from heaven. So lets talk about that stuff too OK?

I am also a dreamer. My Mom had a picture she bought one time and kept it for years in her bedroom. it was a picture of this guy opening the trunk of a Rolls Royce that was filled with money (dollar bills) and it was parked in front of this old palatial mansion, the kind they built years ago in 'the south'. Big old white two story mansions with great big white columns in front and in that picture I can see myself opening that trunk and it's me who's got the world by the tail! I guess I'm more like my Mom than I thought

I have an image of her in my mind that will be there for all time, it's how I saw her in the last minutes before I left and headed for the airport. She's sitting up in her hospital bed (at her house, she's not in the hospital now but she does need a hospital bed) with her big blue eyes looking over the tray table that rolls up next to the bed. She looks like a little kid with big blue eyes full of love and she's waving good bye to me, such an innocent look in her eyes and a face shinning with love and she's telling me that she loves me. I remember thinking 'hold on to this forever' and my heart ached with love for her, I just wanted to curl up in her arms and be a little kid again and have her tell me everything is going to be alright. I was strong for her and it's been hard on me this week, I haven't slept good this week but it was all worth it cause I wouldn't do anything now to scare her or make her feel bad.

In her day she was a really a beautiful woman. Huge blue eyes, the kind that are a light blue and stunning and shoulder length hair the color of a chestnut. She was the one who introduced me to Metaphysics when I was only 16 or 17 years old. She was also the only Mother I knew that sent her kids to school with brown bread sandwiches, it used to embarrass me, I didn't know until years later just how lucky I was that she was into eating healthy foods. “What I've realized about my Mom is that shes done the best she could and she really did try to be a good Mom. She taught me how to be a lady and we had a copy of 'The book of Ediquit' always on hand to refer to. Because of her I know I could sit down to dinner with the Queen of England and feel completely comfortable (well with my manners anyway, I'm sure I'd have a butterfly or two in my stomach!). I use the Queen as an example cause she was always who my mother used as a roll model. I read something in the I Ching (Wilhelm/Baynes edition) in hexagram #10 'Pleasant manners succeed even with irritable people.' My Mom never read the I Ching or studied it but it looks like something written thousands of years ago still applies to todays life and I'm glad I got that lesson long ago.
I was a cowgirl and thought 'girl stuff' was stupid. But I can say that throughout my life I have silently thanked my Mom many times when I have been in places or situations which called for my very best behavior/manners and to behave like the lady I am, or in her eyes 'should' be at all times

My Mom has accepted me as I am and with each year she makes me feel more and more loved and the more she approves of me the more I see that I am really a special person. We are all special people. Anything God makes is special it's just us humans that have to realize it, God already knows it.

I don't know if I will or if God will give me a new image to see of her but I can't help but get a lump in my throat and tears in my eyes when I see that image of her, that sweet face of hers waving and smiling at me goodbye. Actually I hope I will always be able to recall that picture of her. She has severe Dementia and just about everything else wrong with her but the whole time I was there she was talking about thinking positive and she just kept thanking everyone for all they were doing for her. She said many times 'Aren't I just the luckiest person in the world to have so many people who love me and take such good care of me'
I think it's the happiest I have ever seen her in her life.

I got mad at God a few times while I was there. I do that sometimes, and no God's not gonna strike me dead. God knows my heart before I speak a word and sometimes he knows I have to blow off steam. He's a big guy who can handle anything we can't so I know he forgives me even before I speak. I don't like seeing my Mom suffer physically but she does it with such grace that she just blows me away. God knows what he's doing it just makes me mad as hell sometimes that I don't know all the answers. I guess that's another reason I love the I Ching so much cause it does make us aware of what is going on outside our immediate perception hence we don't have to step on a lot of the land mines of life.

I just realized I'm sounding a bit morose. Sorry about that. I'm not always so 'deep'. But in all reality it is my Mom and she's not gonna live much longer and my heart seems to be doing the talking for me whether I want to say it or not and especially when I think I've had enough of missing her, yet my heart seems to stay in that place longer than I think I should. Oh well I guess that's part of growing up.

Well it's been a very long time since I have written anything that is for everyone to read. I hope as time goes by I get better at it and can stay in the flow and make reading much easier and pleasant for you all.

I'm going now out in my back yard and lay in the sun. It's very warm and humid here in Florida today and I have a three day weekend off from work with nothing planned other than relaxing and maybe getting a tan

I hope you all enjoy this weekend it's also a date of a very miraculous event when Jesus rose from the dead. I just love that story.... like he walks up behind one of the bad guys who killed him and says 'hey, how ya doin'?' can you imagine that?! LOL LOL LOL
I bet Christianity was awesome while some of the original guys were still alive but I think with all things that people get in there and mess it up with power struggles and then money gets involved and then it's just a big mess. More on that next time.

Your friend,

Cecilia Santana
also known as 'Ces' which Horse affectionatly nicknamed me when I first came to this website which made me feel very very much at home, accepted and loved like we all want to be We're all family here I look forward to getting to know each and every one of you!