peaceful parenting and oils

These days, when there's trouble with the kids, I'm learning to go straight to the diffuser. 

Citrus oils can't make anyone bounce out of bed and get dressed... but they can sure make it easier. 

Cedarwood can't make anyone treat their siblings with warmth and affection... but it can sure make it easier.

Lavender can't make anyone calm down at bedtime... or maybe it can? The point is, I can't control my kids behavior, but I can support them in doing well.

Nine times out of ten, that's enough.

Not always, mind you. Willful sin is a thing, after all. 

But it's not usually the main thing, and it's never the only thing.

Most of the time, my kids want to do well, and things turn around when I take small steps to make that easier for them. 

And on those rare occasions when it really does just boil down to plain old sin? Then we need all the help we can get. 

As the fragrant mist shifts our moods, I'm reminded to take account of our flesh. Doing well takes more than willpower: it requires humble, prayerful planning. 

speaking the light

This Thanksgiving, I'm overwhelmed with gratitude for plants. For all the bright green leaves that teach me to gather the light, and now the gold and red ones dancing to the ground, teaching me the ways of graceful surrender. I'm grateful for Young Living, and the opportunity to recieve nourishment from so many plants from all around the world. I'm grateful for this business, too, with its organic growth structure that invests us all in one another's success.

And I'm also grateful for the FDA regulations that govern the things I'm allowed to say about these products.

Which is surprising, since those regulations are the main reason I didn't start selling essential oils years ago. Using plants to take charge of my own health has drastically improved my life, and I wanted the freedom to tell my story with honesty and integrity.

But freedom of speech doesn't do much good if you never get around to writing out your story. So I decided to take the plunge, carve out a space to say the things that I can legally say, and let go of the rest. After all, I wasn't saying them anyway! Besides, if we had to play convoluted word games, as a poet I ought to welcome the challenge, right?

As it turns out, though, it's much more than just words. (Words always are, aren't they?)

The FDA guidelines are pushing me to think in terms of maintaining health rather than avoiding sickness. By keeping the focus on wellness and nutritional support rather than disease, I am learning to bless the light when I might otherwise be inclined to curse the darkness.

It's kinda sorta changing my life.

Sometimes sickness calls for drastic measures, and at those times, there is no substitute for a personal relationship with a qualified professional.

But just as self-care makes a poor substitute when professional medical care is needed, even the best medical care cannot replace intelligent self-care. All day, every day, we are taking things into our bodies: through our mouths, yes, but also through our lungs and our skin. Doctors can advise and prescribe, but they can't possibly take responsibility for managing all the things that we are constantly putting into our bodies. Nor do they want to. The better we do our job of self-care, the better they can do their job of specialized medical care.

Self-care isn't about fixing disease. It's about pursuing, supporting, and maintaining health. It isn't about fear, but about gratitude and nourishment.

So I'm grateful that these rules are teaching me to seek and speak the light.

In praise of pumpkin spice

'Tis the season for cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, and cardamom. (Mmmm.... cardamom...)

With that first brisk autumn breeze, we begin to crave the warming spices that will support our bodies through the challenges of winter.

Our bodies pretty much know what they're doing.

The pleasures of taste and smell are true responses to real goodness. Cinnamon, cloves, and cardamom have long been used for immune support, and nutmeg is winter-wonderful for an entirely different set of reasons. The research is fairly sketchy (who on earth thinks half-drowning exhausted rats is a good way to study mental health??!!), but apparently I'm not the only one who finds nutmeg encouraging.

Science has yet to provide anything really definitive about these potential benefits, but the tantalizing bits of information that we do have are enough to make me take these cravings seriously.

I've been revisiting Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, and once again, I'm astonished and delighted by the powerful clarity of his categories. This time around, though, I find myself vehemently disagreeing with much of what he puts into those brilliant categories.

For Aristotle, appetite is fundamentally irrational. In this view, the virtuous person is the one who has learned act according to reason rather than appetite.

There's a very large grain of truth this. Unchecked appetite leads to disaster, and reason can set us back on the correct course.

But it can go the other way, too. Sometimes we reason badly, and sometimes our bodies know things that our minds haven't figured out.

All of our senses are lovingly designed to respond to truth. And all of our senses are fallible. Each element of the soul is a necessary component of a finely-tuned system of checks and balances.

Thanks be to God, who gives us good gifts, and the capacity to delight in them!