NEWS
A Spiritual Publication

Issue # 20
Sept - Dec, 2005

 
This is an active HTML webpage with working links, BUT it can be printed for easier reading.

ARTICLES: 
Editor's Welcome 

Diane's Welcome 

Serione's Message 

The Stillwell's Miracle

Charitable Giving

The Katrina Test

Diane's Incentives and Class Schedule 

If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind.

-Shelley



Editor’s Welcome
 

This is a difficult time to find serenity, making it all the more precious. The sense of serenity I prefer, is akin to the attribute of peace as alluded to in the Abrahamic faiths by: ShaLoM, SaLeM, and ISLaM.  All are derivatives of the ancient script SLM and imply a form of peace derived from surrender to God’s will.

If you are seeking some serenity, some peace, in this troubling time, then turn to your heart.  The truest testimony of God is written in the hearts of his creation.  So to find peace, do the heart’s work.  Give to charity, help your fellow man.  If you can’t help the immediate victims of Katrina, then help those closer to you.  Give in simple ways, like acts of kindness.  Simple anonimus gestures can raise the vibration of our world.

May you all find some serenity in these rough times, we will do what we can to help. As such this will be a lighter newsletter.  There is still much beauty and joy in the world, take time to breath it in, you must care for yourself before you can help others.

Peace,

Jeffrey

 

 
Diane’s Welcome
 
My heart goes out to everyone who has been affected by Hurricane Katrina whether it be first hand or at a distance. We are definitely all affected on such a profound level that there are  not  words to humanly describe the multitude of emotions that are energetically touching every one of us.  To some, the statement I am getting ready to make may sound a little odd and yet I believe that the majority of you will relate to what I am about to say.  The storms have a consciousness of their own and know exactly where they are going.  They will miss a home, a community, a person, etc. and go to another right next to it.  Jeffrey and I have seen this first hand in various places that we have lived.  In these times of change and uncertainty it is very important that we listen to our gut feeling and honor what we receive.

  On a much lighter note, we moved to Acton, CA in June and really love it here.  We are about 1 hour North of Los Angeles, surrounded by a silhouette of moutains.  At present, I am doing phone sessions only and it will be noted in  future newsletters if that changes.  

   In closing, I wish you all a feeling of peace and funfilled Holidays. 

With Love, Diane

 

 

With Love, From Serione'
 
 

Hurricane Katrina’s wrath denotes a wakeup call for humanity in civility.  The majority of you segregate within your own families, communities, states, and nations because of your fierce beliefs.  Beliefs have been more catastrophic than weather to humankind since your inception.

The storms are reflective; be it by the hand of man or nature.  They create change and balance by purifying, cleansing and healing that which is wounded.  

An outpouring of humility from around the world encouraged heartfelt empathy and set the stage for humanitarian priority, which is essential for balance.  

Your prayers have been answered in a multitude of ways that may not be understood nor accepted by the majority.  Opportunities are abundant for those who allow their heart to guide them.  

Your ecological systems within the earth and the human body are one of the same in that they affect each other.  As either holds onto that which is not a benefit for growth and to flourish, illness sets in and permeates the whole and then healing begins.

When you balance your own lives by opening your hearts to self and others you assist the earth’s balance by lessening the transitional impact.

As you evaluate your life, are you growing?  What are your greatest aspirations?  Are you honoring self or allowing your life to be dictated by others? Are you willing to release the storms in your own life for a peaceful existence?     

We wish you much love & balance in these transitional times

Serione’

 

 Serenity News Opinion Poll: How many dogs does it take to change a light bulb?

Just one, Me, and then I’ll replace any wiring that’s not up to code.

Oh, me, me!!!!! Pleeeeeeeeeze let me change the light bulb! Can I? Can I? Huh? Huh? Huh? Can I? Pleeeeeeeeeze, please, please, please!

Make Me!

I’ll get it but first, I’ve gotta lead these people out of the dark, and make a perimeter patrol to see that no one has tried to take advantage of the situation.

I’ll just blow in the Border Collie’s ear and he’ll do it. By the time he finishes rewiring the house, my nails will be dry.

Dogs don’t change light bulbs. People change light bulbs. So, the real question is: “How long will it be before I can expect some light, some dinner, and a massage?”

 


The Stillwell's Miracle

 

In disasters of Katrina’s scale, there is always a sense that more folks could have died, and that miracles of survival have occurred.  One such miracle story, is that of the Stillwells of Biloxi, Mississippi.  As if their name presaged their fate, they were spared death in miraculous fashion.

The Stillwells chose to ride out the storm because they new that if they evacuated it would be days or weeks before they could get back in to their home, and their house had survived every storm since it was built in the 1800s, until Katrina.

It was the storm surge that they had underestimated and that would ultimately destroy their home.  As the waters rose they escaped to the second story of their brick home.  From the windows it became obvious that the entire house was moving in the surge.  It stopped when it became lodged in the trees across the road from its original lot, but then it began to disintegrate.  As the storm raged and the floodwaters roared and swirled around their collapsing house they made their way out of the window.  There they were rescued by a boat, their own boat, miraculously swept along with the house into the same clump of trees.  It was a rough ride, but they weathered the storm in their boat, and survived.

I am reminded of an old joke, perhaps too close to truth today to be funny,  but the message is important enough to risk it.  The joke goes like this:

A Minister sat on the roof of his house as the flood waters rose.  A boat goes by and a fireman offers him a ride to safety, but the Reverend answers “No thank you, the Lord has promised me deliverance from harm, I will wait upon my Lord.”  Later as the water continued to rise, another boat comes by and again the Minister waves them off, waiting for divine intervention.  Finally a helicopter comes by as the Minister is standing on the peak of his roof, waters swirling around his feet, but still he stands firm in his faith, declining the ride and insisting that the Lord has promised his deliverance so he would wait.

The minister drowns and finally gets to meet his Lord.  When He asks the Lord why he didn’t come to save him, the Lord replied, “I sent you two boats and a helicopter, wasn’t that enough”?

We are all potential tools for God’s use, may we will to will his will, and thus do his work.  

 

War, tsunami, and hurricanes; over the past year many have suffered losses of family, friends, lovers, love, and even faith.  My simplest consolation is that whatever suffering we may endure in this life, will be a blink of an eye compared to our eternity of peace yet to come.  

It is said that among the angels; those who chose to live, learn and serve God, by enduring incarnate life are especially honored.

Peace and love to all whom have suffered.  The angels sing of your courage, and your service to the Universe.  You are loved.

Jeffrey

 

This Holiday Season,

Be Thankful, Be Grateful, and Be Charitable.  

We wish you Peace, Love, and Abundance for now and always.


Its Here!

Jeffrey’s first Book,

"Honor Amidst the Shadows"

 

By Publish America,

details at our web site:

www.serenitynews.net/bear.htm

Click cover for link to mywebsite

 

Also for sale at:

www.amazon.com

&

www.bn.com

 





Charitable Giving

If you are wanting to contribute monetarily to the victims of Katrina, I would say there is no rush.  There will be needs much farther down the road and the passions will subside, leaving future needs short for cash.  But in any case here are some recommendations for you.

To research on-line contributions here is a site devoted to rating the relief agencies based on their efficiency, giving lots of good info including mission statements for each organization.  Check them out at:     www.charitynavigator.org   

For Katrina, I recommend  charities Like the American Red Cross,  Salvation Army, and Habitat for Humanity.  The first two do  good work in the beginning of an emergency, but Habitat will swing their hammers into action when it comes to rebuilding homes for poor survivors.  Oprah Winfrey is also looking long term with her charitable fund. Check it out at www.oprah.com , click the link for the “Katrina Home Registry”.

For animals, we like Noah’s Wish.  This  is the only pet charity specifically focused on animal rescue.  They  actually go into harms way to rescue domestic animals of all kinds.  C heck them out at: www.noahswish.org

Please do NOT respond to unsolicited E-mail from what looks like real charities, assume that they are scams.  If you do not go specifically to the web sites don’t trust them.  

But also important, I would ask you please, do not let Katrina steal donations you would have given to other great charities like, cancer research, homeless shelters etc.  Consider  the cancer patient whose chance for hope lost its funding, making them another distant victim of Katrina.  The pain feels very similar to the abandonment so many victims of Katrina felt.

 If you can’t give money, or want to do more, volunteer locally or give to your local food banks, blood drives and, give time to kids, or the elderly.    Katrina is changing lives, many for the better.  If we all become more active and charitable then Katrina will be remembered for more than death and destruction.  It will be seen as a wake up call, and a rebirth for human civility.  That will give the death’s and humiliations of Katrina some meaning.

  



The Katrina Test

I believe all things happen for a reason, even terrible catastrophes like Katrina. There is little comfort in that thought, but one thing is certain, we can ill-afford to fail to learn the lessons Katrina brought us.  

While many folks are busy trying to fix blame I think the deeper lessons of Katrina are sociological, and fundamental in nature.  John F. Kennedy said “If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.”  I do not feel race was at issue here except that it is a sad fact and product of our past social injustices, that there are a disproportionately high number of poor African Americans. But, money equals power, so certainly if the whole of New Orleans was high value property of an affluent demographic, they would have had the political clout to get better levies built sooner, rather than later.

That said, I’m not certain that if the Superbowl were filled with 25,000 affluent white folks, the federal Government could have worked any faster.  It appears that FEMA dropped the ball before the storm even hit.  If there is a fatal flaw in the Federal system it is too much bureaucracy, and the fact that so much decision making is based on cold statistical models and numbers, not people.  

So huge lessons lie in the modern concept of risk management.  Having some experience in this industry I can tell you it is the coldest of science applied to human reality.  Human losses and the potential for disaster are broken down to raw cold numbers.  Numbed out bureaucrats stop seeing the human loss potential and just see numbers.  Let me give you an example.

According to the Corp. of engineers, a Katrina sized storm hitting New Orleans was a once every two hundred year event.  But when was the last time that occurred, not in 300 years of recorded weather history.  But you can get an event in the last year of one 200-year cycle and in the first year of the next 200-year cycle and still over time average once every 200 years (2events/400 years=1event/200 years).  Such is one problem with statistics.  

But perhaps, the biggest problem I have with statistics, is that they minimize the human factor, and raw numbers can be misleading, as the human tendency is to interpret them poorly, or to allow ones own biased perception to manipulate the numbers.  The risk above of a Katrina type storm was overdue, but the feeling among the public is that once every 200 years is a rare event not an imminent danger. Politicians back popular projects, bureaucrats worry about budgets, so where were the leaders with the courage to look at the potential for disaster and fight for what is the best for us. There are few real leaders to be found in Bureaucracies.  

 Mayor Nagin himself said the pre-storm evacuation was considered successful, as he stated “normally you only get 60% evacuation, we managed to get 80%”.  Again the numbers gave him a false sense of security before the storm.

A Corp. of Engineers officer stated the 1 in 200 years number as a statistic, saying that they were prepared for the 99.5% most likely event.  That statistic ignores the fact we were over due and clearly politicians were not alarmed enough by the “numbers”, but now they now know how much pain and destruction the 0.5% event can cause.   

Here is the ugly truth; people not numbers were suffering the worst kind of indignity and death.  Katrina’s victims could not see the scope of the disaster, or understand the errors FEMA and others made in the first days, all they felt was overwhelming loss plus feelings of abandonment and betrayal.  

Yet there are silver linings to Katirna’s storm clouds.  Katrina shows us that we must put the human factor back into civic planning.  I’m not just talking about emergency planning, but we allow ghettos to build beyond the ability to serve them (or evacuate them) with the poor  put in harms way, relegated to the trashiest or higher risk areas around dangerous factories and structures (like levies).  Public planning should not just be about economic growth.  

Katrina’s aftermath gives us an opportunity to rebuild the entire infrastructure of a major city and to help a bunch of people start over in life.  There is great power in a complete start over, as there is no old stuff to get in the way, no old habits left to interfere with new habits.  I expect many previously poor folk will rise to new heights (some in new home cities), because of the opportunities created by the thousands of caring folks shocked into action by this event.   In fact, I also suspect that history will show this disaster to be the largest willingly undertaken redistribution of wealth in human history, as private and federal dollars pour in to help the victims rebuild, relocate, and start new lives.  

Dr. Depok Chopra reminds us that we are all connected.  Almost everyone who watches this disaster is affected, and that affect leads to  feelings of compassion.  Compassion is the basis then for feeling real love for our fellow man.  

He also reminds us that 40,000 children starve to death in the world every day, but we lose site of that statistic.  If children were starving in New Orleans at a rate of 100 per day (a fictitious rate I chose to give a dramatic example) then the  number of kids starving world wide only increased by 0.25% for a couple of days.  How’s that for a cold statistic that in no way conveys the real suffering?

I hope that we Americans, who have been so long focused on wealth and selfish indulgence, will grow more worldly and more spiritually mature from this event.  May we  stop accepting statistics that hide real horror behind a cold mathematical mask.  May we all get more involved with caring for our fellow man.  

The days to come will show us the details of our mistakes and misperceptions, but one thing is certain: If we do not learn the lessons of Katrina, the Universe will offer another class next term.  We all but failed the first exam, will we be ready for the second?

Peace,

Jeffrey

 

 

There is no limit to the amount of good that people can accomplish, if they don't care who gets the credit.

-- Anonymous

 

“There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread.”

-Mahatma Gandhi

As I prepare this e-version of the newsletter, the "re-test" for Katrina, Hurricane Rita, is upon us and we await the results.  This is a chance to get it right in the short term.  Unfortunately humans can be terribly short sighted. Perhaps the true second test will be a different disaster after we have numbed from the pain of Katrina a little.  Then we will see if we fell back into old bad habits and if we moved forward with real change.

A second thought, consider Karmic law at work. President Bush and some of his supporters have denied the effects of global warming.  So Earth is manifesting its most obvious effect, more & bigger storms, and she is hitting them where it hurts, America's biggest oil producing region. It has to make the oil execs nervous, but then again maybe not.

 


Things Are Looking Up!

Our view is becoming more global...

And we are learning EMPATHY!

We’re appreciating our families more...

While opening our families to adopt those in need!

We are sharing our abundance!

 

 


 

Diane's Incentives and Class Schedules

Incentives:

First Time Clients: $15.00 off 1 hour session

 

 Specials:  (Holidays: October - December)

Buy 5 “30 minute sessions - $300” get 6th free

Buy 5 “60 minute sessions - $600” get 6th free

(expires 1 year from purchase - not valid with any other offer)

 

 

 Scheduled Classes:

Self Discovery Through Divine Channels
Learn to open, validate, and trust your Inner Guidance.

Next Class To Be Announced

 

The Art of Manifesting
Learn to manifest your desires, get out of your own way and know when to step forward, click above link for more info.

Next Class To Be Announced


*To register and schedule classes in your area, call Diane on 888-910-2038* 


We all have this ability and the answers lie within.
Unlocking and recognizing this truth creates limitless possibilities.


Diane's Client Testimonials

Hi Diane

I was just thinking of you last night and will be calling you soon.

Thought you’d like to know that our last reading included you telling me a spotted dog was going to come into my life, but you did not think it was the “fire engine type”(meaning a large dalmation).

Well... see attached picture of my new puppy... who happens to be... yes, spotted. A big spot on her back and every day more spots are appearing!!!! I had nooooooo intention of another dog yet when we went to look at puppies for a friend, low and behold, this one tugged at my heart. She is giving me lots of love and... you called it!

Thanks again for your guidance and I will be calling you soon

Karen Detmering - New Jersey

 

 


More testimonials may be viewed at:
www.serenitynews.net/testimonial.html


"I want to personally thank all of you who sent your testimonials to me.
I was extremely honored and humbled by the comments.   
If you wish to send a testimonial, please send it by e-mail:

diane_rose@earthlink.net



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