IF WISHES WERE FISHES

I just finished posting a review on Librarything for a newly published book, [The Wishing Year] by Noelle Oxenhandler. In case you're interested, you can get there from here by clicking the link on my sidebar. It turned out to be a good book. I am recommending it to those of you who need to know that life can be rewarding and loving. Although it is very much NewAge for the first half, and uses one word that I personally find very revolting, no matter what the intended definition, for a chapter or two, it does finish with a flourish that is very loving, hopeful, and uplifting.

"If wishes were fishes, we'd all have a fry," my sister Diana used to say to me when I was little. "If fishes were wishes," I think is how it went next, "we'd all have to die." I never did 'get' that second part. I didn't really understand the first half. But, after dodging the mystic definitions in the book surrounding Zen and Buddhist philosophies, I am satisfied that there are ways of wishing that can and do have substance and hold quality. If you get a little discouraged with the initial practices of merely sitting in an empty room and waiting for your magic fairy godperson to appear with a magic wand, be assured that the world appears in physical form and you can find happiness and passion, which is what life is all about. Wishes are fishes, perhaps, but they don't just jump into your frying pan. We have our own part to play. And that part includes breathing, relaxing, and accepting the beauty of your life as it already is.
The rest will come. Think about it. We know this as blessings and they are abundant. "We'll all have a fry."