Hi! My name is Jill. Thank you for looking at my Blog. This Blog is part of a 2011 Gratitude Project at Nexus Church Brisbane, Australia.
My aim is to create a place where we can share about things we are grateful for in our "middleages". I have so much to be grateful for that I decided to list things alphabetically from A-Z from January to December for one year. Hope you enjoy the journey!
............because yawning is still a wonderful mystery in many ways and I'm grateful for that.
We know a yawn is a semi-automatic reflex that originates in the brain stem in response to a lower level of oxygen in the brain. Yawning does not necessarily indicate fatigue, although people do tend to yawn when they're sleepy.
Yawning is an action that occurs throughout the animal kingdom. Several different brain chemicals seem to be involved in yawning, but the mechanisms are still not understood.
For example, yawning seems to be contagious. Why is that? We simply don't know.
Here are a few things that are known about yawns:
The average duration of a yawn is about 6 seconds.
In humans, the earliest occurrence of a yawn happens at about 11 weeks after conception - (yes that's BEFORE the baby is born)
Yawns become contagious to people between the first and second years of life.
So if you are over 2, you will probably find yourself yawning as you watch these videos!
Yes, at this time of year we can become a little jaded about Christmas carols as we are stalked by them just about everywhere we go! Nonetheless they are one of the great traditions of Christmas and I amgrateful for carols that remind us of what Christmas is all about.
The word carol actually means dance or a song of praise and joy!Carols used to be written and sung during all four seasons, but only the tradition of singing them at Christmas has really survived.
The first recorded Christmas carol is from AD 129, a Roman Bishop said that a song called 'Angel's Hymn' should be sung at a Christmas service in Rome. Another famous early Christmas Hymn was written, in 760AD, by Comas of Jerusalem for the Greek Orthodox Church. Soon after this, many composers all over Europe started to write carols. However, not many people liked them as they were all written and sung in Latin, a language that most people couldn't understand.
This was changed by St. Francis of Assisi when, in 1223, he started the public performance of nativity plays. The people in the plays sang songs or 'canticles' that told the story during the plays. Sometimes, the choruses of these new carols were in Latin; but normally they were all in a language that the people watching could understand and join in! The new carols spread to France, Spain, Germany and other European countries.
The earliest carol, like this, was written in 1410. Sadly only a very small fragment of it still exists. The carol was about Mary and Jesus meeting different people in Bethlehem. Most Carols from this time and the Elizabethan period are untrue stories, very loosely based on the Christmas story, about the holy family and were seen as entertaining rather than religious songs and they were usually sung in homes rather than in churches.
When Oliver Cromwell and the Puritans came to power in England in 1647, the celebration of Christmas and singing carols was stopped. However, the carols survived as people still sang them in secret. Carols remained mainly unsung until Victorian times, when two men called William Sandys and Davis Gilbert collected lots of old Christmas music from villages in England.
Before carol singing in public became popular, there were sometimes official carol singers called 'Waits'. These were bands of people led by important local leaders (such as council leaders) who had the only power in the towns and villages to take money from the public. They were called 'Waits' because they only sang on Christmas Eve (This was sometimes known as 'watchnight' or 'waitnight' because of the shepherds were watching their sheep when the angels appeared to them.), when the Christmas celebrations began.
Also, at this time, many orchestras and choirs were being set up in the cities of England and people wanted Christmas songs to sing, so carols once again became popular. Many new carols were also written .
New carols services were created and became popular, as did the custom of singing carols in the streets. Perhaps the most famous carol service, is the service of Nine Lessons and Carols from King's College in Cambridge, UK. This service takes place on Christmas Eve and is broadcast live on BBC Radio (and all over the world). The Service was first performed in 1918 as a way of the college celebrating the end of the First World War. It is always started with a single choir boy singing a solo of the first verse of the carol 'Once in Royal David's City'. http://tistheseasonto.be/carols/once-in-royal-davids-city.html
A service of Nine Lessons and Carols, has nine bible readings (or lessons) that tell the Christmas story with one or two carols between each lesson.
As for we Aussies we have our own carols that celebrate a hot Christmas celebrated in city and country alike. Here are a couple of my favourites.
I think texting is possibly the greatest step forward in communication since the telephone was invented in 1876 and before that, language itself.
With friends and family all over the world, face to face communication is just not possible most of the time. Skype and live messaging are good, but require the internet.
Texting on a mobile phone can be done basically anywhere, and any time these days (although I do draw the line at texting someone who is in the same building as you!)
Even the shortest text to someone says "I'm thinking of you." Making a phone call isn't always simple or easy. Texting is.
Perhaps I'm easily pleased but I'm grateful every time friends and family text me (especially my big sister who has taken to texting an abbreviated form of "good morning" to me in a variety of languages, just to keep me on my toes!).
I still like to spell words out and use punctuation - I'm old school- but I don't mind if others are not.
In fact, here's a list you can text me any time.
<3 “sideways heart” (love, friendship)
.02 my (or your) two cents worth
2EZ too easy
2G2BT too good to be true
^5 high-five
*s* meaning “smile”
*w* meaning “wink”
Life in the middle ages is often associated with an inability to sleep. I am grateful these days for knowing I have had a stint of three or four hours of slumbering bliss as I peer at the clock radio in the early hours of the morning.
I am also grateful for happy dreams and perhaps even more grateful when I wake up from nightmares.
Sleep is essential to good physical and mental health and I read that adults still need 7-9 hours each night.
I hope you enjoy these quotes about sleep.
Sleeping is no mean art: for its sake one must stay awake all day. ~Friedrich Nietzsche
Sleep that knits up the ravelled sleave of care
The death of each day's life, sore labour's bath
Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course,
Chief nourisher in life's feast.
~William Shakespeare, Macbeth
People who say they sleep like a baby usually don't have one. ~Leo J. Burke
Life is something that happens when you can't get to sleep. ~Fran Lebowitz
A good laugh and a long sleep are the best cures in the doctor's book. ~Irish Proverb
And if tonight my soul may find her peace
in sleep, and sink in good oblivion,
and in the morning wake like a new-opened flower
then I have been dipped again in God, and new-created.
~D.H. Lawrence
Insomnia is a gross feeder. It will nourish itself on any kind of thinking, including thinking about not thinking. ~Clifton Fadiman
If people were meant to pop out of bed, we'd all sleep in toasters. ~Author unknown, attributed to Jim Davis
Sleep is the golden chain that ties health and our bodies together. ~Thomas Dekker
People who snore always fall asleep first. ~Author Unknown
The worst thing in the world is to try to sleep and not to. ~F. Scott Fitzgerald
O bed! O bed! delicious bed!
That heaven upon earth to the weary head.
~Thomas Hood, Miss Kilmansegg - Her Dream
There is no hope for a civilization which starts each day to the sound of an alarm clock. ~Author Unknown
It is a common experience that a problem difficult at night is resolved in the morning after the committee of sleep has worked on it. ~John Steinbeck
Nothing cures insomnia like the realization that it's time to get up. ~Author Unknown
All men whilst they are awake are in one common world: but each of them, when he is asleep, is in a world of his own. ~Plutarch
The best bridge between despair and hope is a good night's sleep. ~E. Joseph Cossman
Oh sleep! it is a gentle thing,
Beloved from pole to pole.
~Samuel Taylor Coleridge
I'm not asleep... but that doesn't mean I'm awake. ~Author Unknown
The amount of sleep required by the average person is five minutes more. ~Wilson Mizener
