It's been a while since I've updated anything on my personal website or sent out a newsletter.  Quite honestly, last fall was the roughest period of my entire life.  Not that I hadn't been through things that were equally painful emotionally, it was just that the sequence of events that came at me in rapid succession just got to me in a way that nothing else in my life ever has.

I'm a fairly optimistic soul, mostly because I've had a deep, abiding faith that there is a God who cares for me.  So, when difficult times strike, I've always believed that God could help me find a way out. When things have gone wrong, I've simply worked harder. If I've been tired, I seem to have always had some people to lean on.  This time, it seemed like every aspect of my life went down all at once.

First of all, there was my separation and subsequent divorce.  This was painful, of course, particularly since I loved my wife very dearly.  She was very good to me during the time we were together. 

Then, there was the death of my office manager's husband, which essentially put half of my staff out of commission for a time.  This happened just as we were moving the office, so it essentially shut down my business, and the events surrounding his death were traumatic for all of us.  In fact, we're still recovering. 
Finally, to top it all off, there was my gall bladder surgery.  Basically, for the first time in many years, I had a serious health crisis and wound up in the hospital one week after the tragedy with my staff. 

I was already in some pretty serious debt and wondering how I was going to cope with it, and now I had a bunch of medical bills, along with a business that was suddenly struggling. 

When it was all put together, for the first time in my life I could see no way out.  I didn't have the energy to work harder.  I didn't have the people that I usually relied on to get things done and  I didn't have financial resources to hire more help. I felt like God had jerked the rug right out from under me.  In fact, energy wise I still haven't recovered.  I can't work a full day without become extremely tired.

I say this was a rough time because I have never felt so hopeless in all my life. However, I decided to simply take things one day at a time and not worry too much about the future.  It helped.

Then one day my youngest daughter, Katie, who has been staying with me during her semester off from college was playing some hymns.  They were one's I grew up with and one of them has these words:

"It may not be on the mountain top, or over the stormy sea;
It may not be at the battle's front, my Lord will have need of me;
But if by a still, small voice he calls me to paths that I do not know,
I'll answer dear Lord with my hand in thine, I'll go where you want me to go.

Chorus: I'll go where you want me to go dear Lord, over mountain or plain or sea,
I'll say what you want me to say, dear Lord,
I'll be what you want me to be.

There's surely somewhere a lowly place in earth's harvest field so wide,
Where I may labor through life's short day, for Jesus the Crucified,
So trusting my all to thy tender care, and knowing thou lovest me,
I'll do thy will with a heart sincere, I'll be what you want me to be."

The words of this song kept ringing in my head and snapped me out of my funk.
Almost 35 years ago I pledged my life to God and promised Him that I'd do whatever
He wanted me to do, no matter what the cost.  I realized that I had gotten so used
to being blessed that I'd started to take it all for granted. I started to look around me
again and count my blessings, another one of the hymns I heard that day.

"When upon life's billows you are tempest tossed,
When you are discouraged thinking all is lost,
Count your many blessings, name them one by one,
And it will surprise you what the Lord has done."

Do you realize that half the people in the world go to bed hungry
and I've never been without food.  In fact, I have too much of it so I have to control
it's intake to try to maintain my proper weight.  I've never been without a home
that has hot and cold running water, electricity and central heating.  A large percentage
of people in the world don't have these things.  We are so blessed in this country,
but we're also so spoiled. 

I know that there has been an economic downturn, but in general, Americans are
still very wealthy compared to the rest of the world.  Perhaps we need some hardships
to try to get our priorities straight again. 

For me, this time of trouble has been a chance to do some serious self-reflection.  I've
realized how many things I could do without and still be happy.  I've realized how blessed
I really am.  Most of all, I've realized that God is in charge and I've decided it's OK to
surrender to the hardships we sometimes face, too.  It's been a time to relearn the valuable
lesson that "all things work together for the good of them that love the Lord."  That's all things,
meaning both the good and the bad.

So, I've posted some articles this time that reflect less about physical health and more about
our attitude on life.  I'm finishing up my emotional healing book (something I've wanted to
write for 15 years) and I'm nearly done. 

All in all, I'll say that in spite of everything that's happened, I'm doing very well.  I'm trusting
my all to God's tender care and sensing again that He loves me, no matter what, which means
I'm back on track and hope to be able to continue to provide you with useful information
in 2010.

God bless.

When I'd hear people say, "there's a thin line between love and hate" and other similar phrases, it always used to puzzle me.  I couldn't figure out how love could turn to hate. Then I realized that the emotion most people call love is really desire. 

Desire is a form of love, but it's a self-centered form of love. Desire arises out of my own emotional needs.  I have love as desire for many things, but they are always things that please me, that bring me joy or pleasure or fun.  I can love ice cream, love hiking or even love another person this way, but when the object of my desire fails to bring me pleasure or worse yet, brings me pain, my desire can turn to hate in an instant.

Love, as I have come to understand and experience it, is a general good-will towards others.  It is an other-directed emotion that enables me to respond to other people's needs and feelings with kindness and compassion.  Because it is a self-less emotion, it cannot turn to hate because when we act out of love we never expected anything in return.  So, there is no unfulfilled desire that can turn to hate.

Relationships start out with people being "in love," that is, they desire one another because they see a promise of emotional fulfillment in the other person.  This is what romantic love is all about. Being "in love" is feeling desire for someone.

Unfortunately, when we fall "in love" we are never seeing the object of our desire clearly.  We are seeing the other person through the "lens" of our desire.  We are enchanted, in love with our own illusion, not with the actual person.

That's why a few days, or a few months or perhaps even a year or so later we start to become disillusioned.  We become disenchanted.  The object of our desire has flaws.  They have needs of their own that we don't want to meet.  They have annoying habits. They are just as imperfect as we are.

Being disillusioned is a good thing, because it can open the door to real love between two people, but most people simply trade one illusion for another. Now, the object of their desire isn't "right" for them.  So, they start cataloging their partner's faults to prove this new illusion.  They may "split up" or they may stay together but fight and make each other miserable.

Love is a choice.  We choose to be loving.

A relationship requires that we balance our desire with being loving. We have to be able to communicate our desires to our partner without making our partner wrong or demanding they fulfill them. We have a right to ask for what we want, but we cannot demand it. After all, is this person you claim to "love" your slave?  What requires them to fulfill your desires?  You are not a child who is "entitled" to have their parents feed, clothe and take care of them.  You are an adult, and adults fulfill their needs by creating mutually agreeable exchanges.

Of course, if the other person does hear your request and respond to it in a loving way, you will feel more "in love" with them.  But the reverse is also true.  If you are willing to hear their requests and respond to them they will feel more "in love" with you.  In other words, other people being "in love" with you is primarily dependent on how you treat them.  Whether you are loving to them, or not, is your choice. 

Jesus asked, if we love those who love us, have we really accomplished anything good?  Not really, because everyone does that.  It's easy to feel loving towards someone who is being kind to you and fulfilling your emotional needs.  The harder task is to be loving towards them when they aren't being very kind or fulfilling your emotional needs.  That's the point when we learn how loving we really are.

We have an even greater opportunity to learn to be loving when we feel used, abused and betrayed. I'm not suggesting that you "put up" with being used and abused.  You shouldn't.  But, you don't have to hate the person who did it to you. You just have to take steps to remove yourself from the situation where they can continue to use and abuse you.

It seems to me that most people today only want love as desire, they don't want to actually learn to love.  That's why marriages don't hold together. That's why families are constantly being broken up and destroyed. Many people today actually feel like they have the "right" to emotionally abuse other people.  What is usually depicted in movies and TV shows as "being in love" are actually dysfunctional people caught up in love as desire who are actually abusive to each other.

We need to help people move beyond love as "desire" and realize that this kind of love will never bring lasting joy or fulfillment.  This can only be done when we can start reconnecting with real love, something in very short supply in our modern world.

Well, I may as well get this over with.  I posted pictures of my wife Helen and our wedding on this website and many of you met her at NSP convention.  On August 5th, she moved to Las Vegas where she has been staying with friends.  She joined me briefly at the convention there and to avoid feeding the NSP gossip mill, neither she, nor I, nor any of my staff said anything about our breakup.
I was actually OK with her leaving and even OK with the idea of us getting divorced because I've had a very happy time with her.  She was always a joy and a delight to me.
However, I did uncover some stuff that happened between us that really hurt and I've been working on trying to heal from it for the past couple of weeks.  It's been a real test of all I've learned about emotional healing.  I'm very grateful for what I've learned about emotional healing because if I didn't have this knowledge I think I'd have become a "basket case." 
Fortunately, it appears we have worked out terms for a friendly divorce and at least we won't be parting ways with angry, bitter feelings.  That's something I'm very grateful for, because I'd rather keep loving feelings between me and other people.
Anyway, God works in mysterious ways.  What has happened between Helen and I has catalyzed me to be able to start writing the book on emotional healing I've always wanted to write.  It will be called Heal Yourself: Heal Your World.  My goal is to have it published by November 1st.

David Carpenter in Idaho, a naturopath who has served as the president of IIPA, sent me a link to this video.  I watched it several times.  It really brought tears to my eyes.  This is an inspiration to all of us who dream big that it is possible to make dreams come true.  It is Susan Boyle singing for Britains Got Talent.  I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Click here to view it.



I don't know how your holidays were, but I had the best Christmas I've had in many years.  Three of my five children were with me for Christmas, along with my wife Helen.  This was her first American Christmas. (New Year's is the big holiday in Russia and Christmas is celebrated on January 7 with some different traditions, like Father Frost instead of Santa Claus.) 

That was special enough, but I even got everything I wanted and one surprise I wasn't expecting at all.  The following pictures tell the story pretty well.

   

Everything else was opened and my kids said, "Oh, here's one more present for dad."
When I started to unwrap it, I recognized the package contained a 1/2 reel to reel
video of stuff I had produced in high school. I thought, what's going on here...

Then I realized that my kids had managed to get this old video converted to DVD.
I had not seen this material in about 30 years.  I was thrilled as the following pictures
clearly show...

  

You see, I was the director of our High School TV station EAST-V back in 1971-72. 
We were one of the first schools to have a TV station. Right as we were getting ready
to graduate there was  fire at the school.  I had managed to salvage some of the video
clips of stuff we'd done. 

Unfortunately, I had never updated the format of the video, so I thought it was lost
to me.  My son's David and Ezra arranged to have it transferred at a place in LA,
then produced the DVD for me. 

My son also posted the clips to YouTube.  Here's one of my favorite productions.



The military visited our school and we video-taped them and overlaid
scenes for the song "One Tin Soldier."  In other words, we made a
music video.  I originally intended to major in broadcasting and
my first year of college my botany teacher wanted me to switch majors.
She asked me what I intended to do with a broadcasting major.

I told her I wanted to set video to music. 

She said, "I can't image there would ever be a market for that!"

I like to tell this story as an example of believing in the power of
our own dreams and ideas.  Little did she realize how popular
music videos would eventually become.

Oh, and here's one more clip.  A short one, with a 17-year-old
Steven narrating.



There are more of these on YouTube, including one of my favorites,
my friend Chad Booth doing a fake beer commercial.  (I helped write
the script.)  My user account is abcherb.  Check it out.

I had intended to post this blog before Thanksgiving, but I was too busy making pies!  So, I posted two of my pie recipes for you to read instead.  You can try making them for Christmas if you like.
I really enjoy cooking Thanksgiving dinner and since this was Helen's first Thanksgiving I wanted it to be a memorable one.  Two of my sons, David and Ezra, joined us for the feast.
I want to share with you a tip for a great turkey.  I always get an organic turkey because they feed so many antibiotics to turkeys, but what really brings out the turkey's flavor is to brine it.  I put the turkey into an ice chest and cover it with salted water and ice.  Use 1/2 cup regular salt or 1 cup Kosher salt per gallon of water.  Let the turkey brine overnight (about 8-12 hours, but no longer). 
Remove the turkey from the brine in the morning and rinse it thoroughly.  Pat it dry with paper towels.
Brining really brings out the turkey's flavor. It also helps keep the meat moist when you cook it.  I'll never cook a turkey again without doing it.
Another great tip for cooking a great turkey is to cover the breast meat with a little tin foil tent for about 1 hour of the cooking time.  The dark meat cooks more slowly and this allows the dark meat to get a head-start on the breast meat.
A final tip for cooking a great turkey is to use an oven thermometer to tell when it's done.  I use a probe thermometer that sounds an alarm when the meat reaches the correct temperature.  It helps ensure the bird is cooked just right.  The breast meat should be 165 degrees and the thigh should be 170 to 175. 

It's that time of the year when buzzing children with sugar seems almost mandatory.  As a parent trying to keep my kids away from sugar, Halloween was always a tricky holiday for me.  I didn't want my kids to miss out on
the fun, but I also hated to see them completely wired and high on sugar.

One year, I bribed my kids into going out to dinner and movie instead of going trick or treating.  Another idea is to have a party for them and their friends where you can serve healthier "treats." 

Recently, I read a suggestion for giving out toys instead of candy to trick or treaters.  It's not a bad idea.

It's Helen's first Halloween, so we'll probably contribute to the tooth decay of a few kids by handing out some candy.  I'm not as rigid about such things as I used to be.  (I've never believed that what you do occasionally is as important as what you do day by day.)

Anyway, halloween is the time for monsters, so perhaps one day a year it's OK to let the kids eat a bunch of sugar and act like monsters.  It's all in good fun anyway.

Last Friday, May 2nd, my son David who has been working with me at Tree of Light Publishing for nearly 7 years got his associate degree in Computer Science from Dixie State College.  David will continue to work part time at Tree of Light for at least another year, but he plans to get a bachelors degree in Computer Science.
Here's a photo of David and I after the graduation.

When I was young I had terrible sinus problems.  My nose was constantly plugged up and I was a mouth breather.  After changing my diet and doing some colon cleansing these problems cleared up for many years. 
In recent years, however, I've faced a new problem - allergic reactions.  I'm not sure exactly what triggers my sinuses to flare up, but I know it has something to do with dust and particulate matter because when I work in my garden or do other yard work it will trigger reactions that make me feel awful the next day.
This is very frustrating for someone who loves to garden.  Especially when it's increasingly clear to me that the best way to get really high quality food is to grow it yourself.
So, I've been searching to discover what I can do to rid myself of this problem so I can enjoy tilling, chipping branches, cutting weeds, hauling compost and so forth without paying for it with a day of feeling miserable and stuffed up.  I've tried wearing a dust mask while I'm doing these kinds of tasks, but I still get a reaction - possibly because my eyes are still exposed to whatever it is in the dust around here that irritates me.
The last two weekends I've had some good success in that I've been able to do a lot of work in the garden with only a little bit of sinus irritation, which pleases me greatly.  Here's what I've done.  Besides wearing the dust mask if I'm tilling or doing anything else which stirs up dust, I drink lots of lemon water or fresh grapefruit juice throughout the day.  This provides me with natural vitamin C which is an antihistamine.  I also take 2 IF Relief and 2 HistaBlock periodically throughout the day (about every 2-4 hours).  This reduces inflammation and allergic reaction.  Finally, on the off chance that it is a fungus or something in the soil (my neighbor thinks it is and he has worse problems than I do) I've been spraying colloidal silver (Silver Shield) up my nose. 
It seems to work very well and it's a heck of a lot better than taking those anti-allergy drugs.
Oh, I've already planted carrots, radishes, lettuce, beets, parsnips, turnips, onions, Swiss chard, spinach, peas and string beans.  This weekend I'll be putting in some tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, cruciferous vegetables and possibly some grapevines and fruit trees.  If any of you sign up for my herb walk this summer, you'll get to see my garden (and taste some of my homegrown veggies, too).  Go to www.treelite.com to learn about the herb walk.

Today was a beautiful day and I had to get out and start working in my garden.  I harvested the remaining parsnips and Jerusalem artichokes and started preping my beds for this year's crops. 

I think the most important thing we could ever do for our health isn't taking supplements.  It's regaining access to locally grown food. 

The flavor of fresh produce from compost-rich soil just can't be beat, but the health benefits are even greater.  I just can't buy food from the store (even organic food) that tastes as good as what I grow in my own garden.