Major eBook Price Drop: Brighten Your Black Friday with the Most Colorful Party on the Planet!

  

Dear Radical Readers,

Here’s a major sale you can take advantage of without leaving the comforts of home. No crowds to fight, no elbows and sardine crowding as shoppers scramble for bargains.

To introduce more people to my new humorous mystery fiction that stars an astrologer and head of a longevity organization, I have reduced the price of the eReader versions of The Crystal Ball to from $8.95 to  $3.99. See the sidebar to take advantage! The Crystal Ball is currently available in Kindle, Nook and Smashwords versions—the latter offering a direct download that works on most any device.  Smashwords is also a distributor, and through their distribution process, The Ball is available at Inktera and will also soon be available at the Apple Store, Diesel, Blio and similar e-bookstores.*

  

The Crystal Ball is a party between the pages, a New Year’s Eve and Silver Anniversary celebration filled with mystery, intrigue, astrology, metaphysics—and above all, laughter.

 Paperback Copies Make Great Holiday Gifts

The Crystal Ball is truly a beautiful book, as you’ll see from the launch party display. Many eager readers at the launch event bought copies for friends and family at the same time they purchased their own. Since The Ball occurs at the end of the holiday season—New Year’s—it’s also right in season for you and yours to read while you’re in the holiday party spirit. Available on Amazon.com, the price as of this writing is $13.45, down from the list price of $14.95. One thing you can know. Amazon will always give you the best bargain. For under $27, you’ll have a pair of parties and no delivery charges for having reached the $25 minimum for free shipping.

Give yourself a holiday gift—and someone you love!

More Holiday Gift Ideas to Come

The Crystal Ball will appeal to people into astrology and metaphysics and probably a lot of others who are Astro-meta-curious (like that word?) or simply those who have an open mind and great sense of humor.

Coming in December will be more gift ideas targeted to astrologers, astrology students and the Astro-curious names on your gift list.

Meanwhile, enjoy this sparkling Black Friday offer—good until further notice and at least till the end of 2013.

Happy Holly Days,

Joyce

PS – If you haven’t visited my website lately to see the major makeover to match the party atmosphere of The Crystal Ball, pop on over!

joycemason.com

Be sure to check out all the fun and games on the bottom of the home page.

~~~

*(Please note: There may be some lag time for the eBook price drop to register on eBooks distributed through Smashwords.)

Amen to Prayer Month!

© 2013 by Joyce Mason
All Rights Reserved

 

Sending up our prayers

Thanksgiving Day: This post is a thank-you and early wrap-up of our prayer time together this month and a halleluiah to recognize how important prayer remains to most people on life’s journey.

November has been one of the highest trafficked months ever on The Radical Virgo. While this is partly because there have been more posts than usual, there has also been a marked increase in the times each post has been viewed. I’ve been pleasantly surprised to see your positive response to sharing some of my favorite prayers. My conclusion in seeing this uptick: Readers still pray and we apparently still want to and need to.

In 2007 the Pew Institute did a survey on Major Religious Traditions in the USA. I suspect the trends reported, now based on people’s responses more than six years ago, are even more solid by now.

The US Religion Survey found, among other things, that the largest increase in religious identity was in the unaffiliated group. Spiritual freelancers are greatly increasing.

People moving to the category of no religion in particular outnumbered those moving from groups affiliated with a particular religion by a margin of three-to-one. There are many other facts in the survey that confirm what many of us probably have sensed but did not have the hard data to support until this study. Other facts: Catholicism is losing “market share” the most rapidly. (I suspect the positive influence of the more liberal Pope Francis may shift that trend, at least somewhat.) While still predominantly Christian, a major shift is definitely happening in American religion and spirituality. If you’re as fascinated with these changes as I am, I encourage you to click onto the survey summary above, a well-written synthesis of the results.

My husband and I attended a wonderful interactive play in Sacramento a few years ago called Late Nite Catechism. With a tagline like Time to laugh your sins off, what’s not to love? If you click on the link, you’ll learn more about this delightful show also described as “ … Loretta Young meets Carol Burnett … part catechism class, part stand-up routine. It’s an interactive comedy, one of the longest running shows in Chicago and U.S. theater history.”

During its Sacramento road trip, Late Nite’s “Mother Superior” quizzed the audience about our religion. One woman—she could have been me—said she practiced no set religion but was very spiritual. Of course, Sister had a few words to say about that! Still, this is apparently truer and truer of many people.

Many of us, though, have resisted throwing out the baby with the holy water when it comes to our spiritual practices. Prayer is apparently alive and well, even among those not affiliated with a religion. Mythical Chiron, the informal patron saint of this blog, teaches us about the best of both worlds found in composites. He was a centaur, a composite being. We are composite beings as spirits in bodies. I have apparently absorbed this lesson well, as I have been co-leading for two-and-a-half decades a women’s group, celebrating the solstices and equinoxes. We use prayer and practices from a potpourri of traditions. It’s amazing how this crazy quilt of mixed spirituality makes such a soul satisfying tapestry. The Solsisters are celebrating our 25^th anniversary this Winter Solstice. I’ll be writing more about that next month, and how you, too, can create your own circle for celebrating eclectic spirituality.

This brings me to want to share a few final thoughts that are not only good conclusions to Prayer and Gratitude Month. They also feel like guiding lights to bring with us into the winter holiday season and whatever holidays you celebrate. Here’s the first:

Give thanks for unknown blessings already on their way.

~ A Native American concept

What I love about this idea? It’s epitomizes belief in the flow of prosperity. We are not only loved by God/Goddess/All That Is—the Universe—however you see Him/Her/It. We are constantly, continuously blessed. As we see it and declare it, we make it so. When we feel out of the flow, it’s only because we have yet to see the bigger picture. Some of my greatest “losses” have been major blessings in disguise whose true nature had just not yet been revealed.

Lastly, and even though I have shared this quote many times before, it’s worth repeating as the simplest and most profound prayer we can utter:

If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough.
 
~ Meister Eckhart, German Philosopher

Blessings on the cusp of the Season of Love and Light. Thank you for coming together here. Every convergence of minds and hearts is a form of communion.

~~~

Photo Credit: Pink Party Poster© ThomasAmby

Author’s Note: Did you notice how close the photo for this post is to the background of my novel, The Crystal Ball? On the book background, there are people making peace signs, the International Sign Language gesture for “I love you,” and one obvious Trekkie prominent with the hand signal for “live long and prosper.” Each of these, in its own way, is also a prayer. It’s amazing what I discover my subconscious has delivered to me from odd places, even from my choice of graphics.

The Most Popular Prayers This Month So Far

1. Prayer for Divine Direction
2. Cherokee Prayer/Blessing
3. The 23rd Psalm
4. Prayer to Chiron

An Answered Prayer

A dear friend and I have gone to the same manicurist for some time. I was shocked when I phoned recently for an appointment to find out that “Ami” had left the salon where I saw her for years. My friend and I were brokenhearted to lose our connection with her.

The salon owner was eager to hook me up with another manicurist and not to lose me as a customer. Her lips were sealed for any information about Ami, and I was pretty certain she’d claim ignorance of her whereabouts. I didn’t even bother to ask, thinking it was probably impolite to be so obvious about the fact that I’m loyal to my manicurist, not so much to whichever salon she happens to work for. At my next appointment with someone else at the old salon, I heard another customer express her deep disappointment to lose Ami.

I probably should explain: I come from a family of hairdressers, and because of it, I have unusual standards about my relationships with providers of personal services. Changing hairdressers or manicurists is a very big deal for me, and they are part therapist as well as glamorizers to me. Losing those people in my life is tantamount to a divorce. It’s traumatic. (Read more on this topic in my article Bartenders, Beauticians and Baristas.) My reliance on these heroes to fulfill the needs of my Venus-driven astrology chart is a major bond of trust, and the time I spend with them represents some of my few hours of relaxation and letting go in my whirlwind life. They need have to have good energy, as they’re part of something much bigger in my life than a cut, color or pedicure. They put new life into me with along with a coat of nail polish or hair color, and it’s all about the love and vibes that go with it. (My hairdresser and I hug and say we love each other all the time.)

How could I ever find Ami? I didn’t figure I could stand in the middle of town and yell her name and hope she’d run out of one of the dozens of nail salons in our small city.  I assumed she was lost to us.

For some time, I’d been eyeing the nail salon next to our neighborhood Rubio’s restaurant where my husband and I often have dinner or get take-out. That was even before losing Ami. In fact I wondered, given I was so happy with Ami, why this salon seemed to have some sort of curious draw to me. Once I heard about her disappearance, I figured it’d be a good place to explore for someone new since it was “vibing” at me. It’s near home and I eat and shop in the vicinity often.

The other night, I was going to pick up food at Rubio’s. I looked at the salon, peeked in the window and thought to myself that I should check their prices when I came back out from buying dinner.

By then, I was in my exhaustion mode, how I get by early evening after a hard day—so tired, I couldn’t even remember where I parked, much less continue to think about manicures. Standing between the salon and the restaurant, I was trying to get my bearings about my car. Suddenly I realized someone was calling out my name with great enthusiasm. I turned around …

… and it was Ami! I was so excited to see her. We hugged like long lost relatives, and I told her I’d been so sad, thinking I’d lost her forever. The salon that kept standing out in my mind in yellow highlighter is her new place of work.

If you read my blogs often, you probably won’t be surprised that this happened to me … because these things happen to me a lot. It’s because I’m intuitive, and that “thing” that was drawing me to the new nail salon was a message from Spirit. If Ami hadn’t found me first, surely, I’d have followed that pull and found her myself, sooner or later.

This story proves that Spirit is whispering messages to us all the time. It was even hinting at the answer to my prayer before I even knew I was going to have a need. Intuition is Spirit Within. The universe answers our prayers all the time, but sometimes we just aren’t listening or picking up the signals.

So here’s a prayer I wrote for sensory tune-ups:

Eternal Light, help me see your hints, hear your clues and recognize your pulls toward fulfillment of my needs and desires. Remind me often that all prayers are answered, maybe not in the way I expect—and at other times, in ways much bigger and better than I ever imagined. Lead me on the exciting journey of seeing my ability to manifest what I need in the material world. Thank you for the joy of discovering my own creative power.

May you find what you lose and love what you find!

~~~

Photo Credit: © zzzdim - Fotolia.com

As We Share This Feast

  

A Thanksgiving Grace

Loving Spirit,

As we share this feast, 
may we become healing and light and peace.

May we be one.

Blessings on our food
our family
and our friends.

~~~

Photo Credit: © Sandra Cunningham - Fotolia

This is a Prayer and Thanksgiving Month post. 

Pueblo Blessing

Hold onto what is good even if it is a handful of earth.

Hold onto what you believe even when it is a tree

which stands by itself.

Hold onto what you must do even if it is a long way from here.

Hold onto life even when it is easier letting go.

Hold onto my hand even when I have gone away from you.

~~~

Photo Credit: © Mark Ross | Dreamstime.com

This is a Prayer and Thanksgiving Month post. 

A Native American Prayer for Healing

Mother, sing me a song that will

Ease my pain, mend my broken bones

Bring wholeness again.

Catch my babies when they are born,

Sing my death song,

Teach me how to mourn.

Show me the medicine of the healing herbs,

The value of spirit,

The way I can serve.

Mother, heal my heart

So that I can see the gifts of yours

That can live through me.

~~~

Photo Credit:  Dreamcatcher © Tomasz Zajda - Fotolia.com; Number 300 © Bertold Werkmann - Fotolia.com

I found this prayer in a collection of Native American Prayers in a brochure at our local hospital's chapel. I cannot imagine a more Chironic prayer. As Chiron is the informal patron saint of this blog, I am happy to share this as the 300th post on The Radical Virgo. Thank you for your support and for converging here for healing, insights and laughter.

Prayer for Divine Direction

Lord, take me where You want me to go;

Let me meet who You want me to meet;

Tell me what You want me to say; and

Keep me out of your way.

--Father Mychal Judge, FDNY
(Died 9/11/01)

Photo Credit: © stocklady - Fotolia.com 

This is a Prayer and Thanksgiving Month post.