Tiny healing books

By Marie Tan-Hancock  It was maybe "the childhood day" yesterday for me.  Keep reading.... One of the most amazing kudos of the social media and digital world is about keeping communication alive, and to start bonding with our old friends and long lost relatives. Through social media, we can connect to anyone in the world, watch reels, read threads of news, true, fake or made up, free videos of everything you want to know and the list goes on...  A few weeks before Christmas and the new year, I deactivated one of my Facebook accounts. Of course, the messenger stays: why? My only sibling left now is my oldest sister. She's in her early 80’s and is on messenger every day, sending me inspirational postcards and GIFs, which I appreciate from my heart. I want to communicate with her often, as much and when able. Then option # 2, I can communicate to my few special friends occasionally. What works for me, and I'm sure it works for everyone. When I'm happy, everybody...

  On New Year's Eve, my hubby woke me up with a happy face and a Happy New Year greeting at exactly 12 am. When I looked at the clock, and I was somewhat worried that it might be 12:01 am not 12 am. I didn't want to be sleeping an hour before the New Year... but he assured me that I woke up at 12 am and not one second beyond... I was thankful....very thankful I was able to wake up and greet the new year with a grateful heart, complete awareness of God's love, and mindful of the overflowing blessings of life. At that moment, to me it was enough! It was a moment to appreciate the gift of life. Then  in no time, as an American tradition, we turned on the TV to watch the ball fall at midnight in New York to welcome the NEW YEAR 2026.  Though we were a few seconds late, the Fox network kept on repeating the scene of that moment the ball finally dropped to welcome the new year. To me....it wasn't a plan to watch the TV.  I stopped watching fireworks during New year's eve....

   I thought this was the saddest, maybe worst (sorry, my human nature saying) Christmas ever!  We were finally planning to attend the midnight mass, since there would be no one celebrating with us this year on Christmas day so we didn't need extra sleep to prepare for our family Christmas lunch this time. Last Thanksgiving day, 2025, we gathered around with family (I am blessed with a beautiful, good natured and only step daughter, the daughter of Louie and her family, and in laws, Louie's, only brother, the late John and his family) our second Thanksgiving day without John, and the first Thanksgiving without our beloved dog, Souvie. But we moved on, in spite of our heavy hearts. And none of my three girls were around to celebrate with me.  Picture: Thanksgiving day 2025                            ************** It was Monday, I could feel there was something going viral (a virus) swirling aroun...

 An empty manger... The whole Christian world is waiting now for the birth of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Every year we celebrate Christmas to remind us of the birth of Christ.  Jesus made himself one of us. We can see Him in our midst every day... those people and children in need, the old, the frail, and the sick.  Jesus was about to be born but His parents couldn't find a home to even rest for the night. They were not famous people. Everyone must have said no to them, so the Holy Family ended up in a stable instead.  Jesus taught us humility. Yesterday, after we exited from the freeway, an old homeless man was right at our car window as we stopped for the red light to the side road. He was holding his sign as he looked around asking for cash or food. I didn't look at his sign made of a brown card board box, but his eyes met mine. As I bent over to get cash from my purse, the light turned green, and we had to go. As we drove further from the road where that o...

    When I was 10 and in gradeschool, our teacher wanted our class to write about what Christmas means to us, in a paragraph. It took me maybe more than an hour to decide what I was going to write. But I knew I could write it quicker and simpler with just one line, what Christmas means to me: and it is about giving. Today, I cannot even remember what I wrote in that paragraph, what it meant to me at that age. But all I can recall today were the precious and vivid memories of what I saw and felt in our home during Christmas season: it was the happiest day of the year for our family back in the Philippines. One room in our house was filled with wrapped and unwrapped gifts, sponsored items like calendars, shirts, hats from my papa's job company, produce from our farm and a lot of toys, canned foods and goodies. It was a time of giving. Christmas caroling was expected every day at home. My parents welcomed them all. As a child, my parents didn’t really teach me to give, but they s...

  Walking 20 minutes or more is our best part of the day. Bacon, our mixed chihuahua/rat terrier is happy where she can sniff around every few steps... then she stops and sniffs more. Such a simple happiness, that's her breed, more sniffing than walking.  Every time we walk and I see a penny, or anything with God's name on it, clean, dirty, filthy or rusty, I'll pick it up. Sometimes I see religious pamphlets or Christian notes stuck on benches, left on tables, distributed by someone from a different faith, or anything where God's name and words are written. I pick them up, bring them home and put them in church where they need to be seen, respected and honored.  The  USA  currencies have "In God We Trust" engraved or embedded on bills and coins. That's God's brand, "In God We Trust."  Materialism is the brand of so many of us. The world seems to love everything material: Louis Vitton, Coach, Hermes, Lexus, Maserati,...just a few I am familia...

  By Marie Tan-Hancock  For many years, close to 26 years, a large part of my adult life was soaked in social media. Whatever platforms available, you could find me in there. In spite of having a crappy phone before, there was not a problem. I had to find ways to join the frenzy culture. For two decades, I witnessed how the social media progressed and grew. There's always something trending, and the influencing ideas you see are often all about just needing attention. With all of these noises in the cyber world, enough is enough! Now I find it suffocating. Like many others, "FOMO" fear of missing out struck a nerve. We are afraid of being bored. Our urge to open our phones as soon as we wake up, checking how our posts are doing and counting our likes, rather than counting our blessings early in the morning are the new putterings. What's going on now in this world is senseless.  Listening to the conversation between Michael Knowles and Fr. Dan Reehil, in some ways ha...

  In 1984, after quitting Med School for the second time, Marie dedicated her young life to serving actively in the youth healing, prayer and music ministries, in her parish way back in the Philippines. In 1986, she joined her parents in the US. However, her involvement in the healing ministry continued as the years went by.  A Ministry, as generally defined, is a "service of a spiritual or charitable nature performed by a person or group, often outside of a formal church structure."  Marie, in spite of her predicament, never stopped serving God, regardless of circumstances. She later started another ministry, a book ministry - where her writing has given her a sense of purpose, to answer the call to evangelize.  Marie said: "I don't want to be filled with so many things that don't seriously matter anymore to me. I want to be useful and of service. I love to share what's in my innermost being, because that's where God's calls start. It's not what ...

 By Marie Tan-Hancock    "There once was a man who sat on a fishing dock and observed how a bunch of live crabs, in a bucket, behaved. While they all squirmed at the bottom, every now and then one crab would crawl up the side in an effort to reach the top and escape. But each time it made its way closer to the rim, a crab from below would reach up and pull it back down. Then, another crab would climb upward, and again, one crab from the bottom would tug it back down.  A crab placed alone in a bucket will easily climb out and escape, but when you place it with a few of its mates, this interesting phenomenon occurs: One at a time, as the crabs try to escape, other crabs will pull them back down to their misery and the group’s collective demise," wrote Omar Itani "In psychology, this behavior became known as “The Crab Effect,” or “The Crab Mentality,” as a way to illustrate the selfish, harmful, and jealous mindset of some members in a group, who will try to undermine a...