Personal choices that create miracles

I shall pass through this world but once.
If therefore, there be any kindness I can show, or any good thing I can do, let me do it now…
for I shall not pass this way again
- Etienne de Grellet

Author and intuitive Caroline Myss in her latest book speaks to the simple gift of giving with stories from her email request to tell of invisible acts of power. Myss opens her book with tales of loss and redemption.
She was inspired by a tattooed and pierced young man who unexpectedly helped a struggling older woman lift heavy boxes. This act of invisible power transformed Myss and so began her latest book of “creating miracles” by chronicling acts of healing, loving kindness.
A nurse recounts how her faith was restored during the lowest ebb of her life, after divorce and the tragic loss of her teenage son. Her supervisor said, “I am going to believe in you until you believe in yourself,” rather than dismissing her during a life crisis.
A rookie police officer gives a homeless man $1.25 and finds out months later that her act of kindness has transformed his shattered life. A stranger who refuses aid to a hungry man finds her take-out food spoiled by evening. A mother who lost her child to SIDS reaches out to another grieving mother and communicates an unspoken understanding of mutual loss.
Healers quietly reside in all of us, says Myss. She retells her tale of healing while boarding a plane: Struggling with a long-term back problem, Myss is unable to lift her heavy luggage. A burly fellow traveler easily tosses her bag up into the storage bay.
Page after page is filled with endearing tales of healing, interwoven from the perspective of the giver and receiver. Each person transformed.
Miracle meals delivered to a single mother with hungry children during the holidays. Anonymous strangers drop off money to those in dire need. Myss joyfully weaves her message of faith, spirit and hope. Exquisitely simple in its heart message, Invisible Acts of Power is a rare gem for dark times.
Myss reminds us of our necessity to contribute at any level, be it miniscule or grand with the universal gesture of giving. We can all be billionaires of kindness. That our humanity is woven together, sometimes tenuously, with an invisible thread of love, made strong by action and care. Myss reminds us that Earth angels are amongst us: tattooed, burly, gruff, gentle, kind and unexpected.

Caroline Myss lives in Chicago, Illinois. Invisible Acts of Power, 2004, $35, Free Press, a division of Simon & Schuster
www.myss.com
Tony Jordan, who works for Finlandia Pharmacy in Vancouver, looks for seeds of hope daily etonyjordan@yahoo.com

It's the Crude, Dude

Book review by Ralph Maud

I didn’t myself think that the Iraq invasion was oil. I thought it was new-fangled ideology about US world domination along with old-fashioned cronyism in at the spoils. I imagined the US could always buy oil on the open market. Why would it have to invade to get it?
But Linda McQuaig is very persuasive. There is no writer of greater persuasive prose in the world today. She came within a hair of convincing me that oil is the overwhelming motive for the Iraq invasion. It’s the difference between buying oil and controlling oil supply.
She goes back to J.D. Rockefeller and his lust to monopolize US oil production:
If there is one thing that stands out in the history of the rise of Standard Oil, it is how Rockefeller never hesitated to lie, cheat or toss aside any code of fair play or common decency – not to mention observance of the law – in his efforts to eliminate all competition (p. 169).
And with much evidence McQuaig shows that Big Oil has been bullying in a like fashion ever since, and on an international scale with the aid of the US government. Mohammad Mossadegh, the popular prime minister of Iran, was gotten rid of because he nationalized the oil industry. He was replaced by the US sponsored Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.
Exxon was given free rein to set up a monopoly situation in Saudi Arabia. The Big Oil/CIA leverage on Iraq goes back a long way. And McQuaig scoffs at the idea that it’s just coincidence that the current administration’s first attempts to impose “democracy” on countries should be on countries crucial to US oil strategy.
I was totally swayed by McQuaig until the latest news report from the interim Iraqi government that it is “currently conducting talks with an Irish company, Petrel, to refurbish and develop oil installations around Kirkuk and Tikrit.” This is in keeping with the decision that “the state-owned Iraqi National Oil Co. will maintain the ownership of existing assets” while “new activity” will go to the private sector. But Petrel I have never heard of. Where is Big Oil? There’s no mention of Exxon. The US fights a war and Exxon gets bumped by this Irish group? Begorrah!

Linda McQuaig’s book It’s the Crude, Dude: War, Big Oil and the Fight for the Planet is published by Doubleday Canada 2004, $35.95. Ralph Maud is a Simon Fraser University professor emeritus of English.