The World Is Shrinking

Oh, Journal, I know you'll forgive my absence but I needed a break from the machine.  So let me tell you about what happened on this morning's walk.  As you know, I walk every morning, down the sidewalk of my City.  I was paced just right as I noticed a woman to my right, up about 50 feet, holding her left hand to the side of her head, with her head bent down and her body position odd.  She had her right side to me.  I thought, oh wow this woman is having a migraine attack, I've seen them they're horrendous!  Firmly grasping my cane, I quickly limped up toward her, ready to assist, which is the frustrated doctor in me.  I was about 10 feet away when I heard her talking, and then as I got closer, suddenly she reared her head back and let out a sound something like a psychotic scream but, in hindsight, I see now was a laugh.  I stood there staring at this woman who was not, as I imagined, having a migraine, but holding a cell phone to her ear and enjoying a good joke with someone.  I was startled into a rabbit-in-the-headlights kind of paralysis.  Then I slowly turned my head, noting my surroundings more closely.  Look, there's a man talking away to what appears to be no one; something's stuck inside his ear.  There's a kid with an iPod wrapped in his own personally programmed bubble, not having to listen to anything he didn't want to.  Wherever I turned, a cell phone, an iPod, something that kept strangers out was in use by people who kept their heads down, their eyes averted.  Were they acting in their own movies, soundtrack and all?  We've developed a method of acting in life without interacting with life-forms.  It's just incredulous to me, I mean at least with a Walkman you could still hear people when they talked, but people wearing these "ear buds" are telling the world "You don't count."  People talking on cell phones most likely have a very important reason to do so.  Being disabled I should probably have one myself.  But it's on the bus, when I hear, "Yeah I'm about 2 minutes away" that I realize how these things are being used mostly to keep us pinned to our separate worlds, our own self-made environs.  This is all superb technology.  I just wonder what the next personal bubble will be.   

The Sink Hole

With the realization that I have a separate Journal for all my dreams, why not put a few dreams into this Journal?  All my life I've dreamed in technicolor, with a soundtrack and inter-useable characters.  A therapist once told me I'm a "lucid dramer" in that I can program a dream, or rearrange one whilst having it.  I always thought everyone could do this.  So here's something that my brain concocted late in 2003: 

Never in all my "dreaming life" have I been happier than while having a "Super-Deluxe Dream" a kind of stranger-than-truth dream.  In this one, I am in the front yard of the house I grew up in, and beneath the lawn there was a huge undergroud ocean of moving mud.  Like a river.  You could see the rifts and cracks in the lawn to peek into the ocean of mud, and something else too: a kind of carpeting, the pattern of which I recognized.  Suddenly, one of my brothers, Sean, and another young man  named Bryan came running out onto the lawn.  They immediately disappeared beneath the soft green grass, into the mud ocean.  I did not panic, and in fact took charge.  I organized a search party and ordered everyone to form a line (for some reason).  I started barking out warnings about the underground sea of mud, and to be careful as we looked for the two boys.  They may've drowned by now.  The mud sea was moving and rolling, like a real sea.  People were coming into this scene and interrupting things, I was getting angry.  I kept telling them, "Stop!  This is important!"  Finally I managed to get everyone in a line, then we all seemed to go our separate ways!

The dream took on a different look - I was at a Mall I knew, after being driven there by my Mother.  I was supposed to be at work, and was changing clothes in the back seat.  I went into the Mall on one side, and "floated" through it wearing a little pink shiffon scarf - I weighed about 40 lbs., reached maybe 4' tall.  I think I was a doll of some kind.  I didn't so much walk as "float" around the store and its floors.  When I was ready to leave, I found an exit and floated through.  To my horror, I was in the City I now live in, I didn't want to be there.  I "ordered" my brain to re-arrange the dream and put me back on the front lawn of my old home.  It did.

I notice a man wearing flashy clothes, a heavy-set man I think I was supposed to know, getting in the way of the rescue attempt I'd organized.  I cornered him, tried to remove him from the property.  I took him across the street and distracted him.  Memory dims here, but I think I killed him and hid the body.

I'm back in the front yard, and no one is around.  Those boys, they must be dead by now.  I "dive" into the lawn, into the ground to find them.  I'm pushing mud away from me, swimming in it to find them, but I can't.  Suddenly, I feel something sharp rub up against my leg.  It's Sean's teeth, his mouth is open - I found him.  He was drifting in the mud with Bryan, both of them in a state of float or drift, not conscious, just being carried by the moving sea of mud.  I grabbed them both and hurled them up onto the ground, into the fresh air.  They immediately started filling their lungs with air, it was so gratifying!  But wait, something is wrong.  They're not the same, they've changed somehow.  I waited too long to pull them out, being drowned in the mud changed them in some way - they were the same, but not.  It was a horror movie being played out as my dream.

There was a huge house, as there always is in my Super-Deluxe dreams.   I knew this house, and the eccentric evil Doctor who owned it.  He was doing dark experiments on the "mud people" who "died" underground and were then revived.  I thought it was only Sean and Bryan but inside this house I saw dozens of people wrapped in that carpeting material, with wet mud covering them.  The mud is always wet so the person inside stays alive.  It connects somehow.  I saw the evil Doctor disappear into a room and I followed him, slamming the door behind me.  He was bending over a body wrapped in a wet-mud carpet, and I could make out the person's shape inside.  He was trying to breathe.  He made a strange, inhuman sound.  I looked at the Doctor but he didn't seem to care.  This Doctor was intent on his experiments and nothing else mattered.  I didn't like it here suddenly, and wished myself back up to the yard, then into the house I grew up in - where I belonged.     

Quotes of the Quotable

"Only one principle will give you courage - that no evil lasts forever, nor indeed for very long."     Epicurus

"Lord, on You I call for help against my blind and senseless torment.  You alone can renew inwardly and outwardly my mind, my will, my strength - which are weak."  Michelangelo

"Receive what cheer you may.  The night is long that never finds the day."                           Shakespeare

"Suffering is a misfortune, as seen from the one side, and a discipline, as seen from the other."        CSR

"Look for the truth - search for the good - hope for the best."  csr

"The triumph of evils occurs when good men do nothing."  Edmund (Abrgd)

"When you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares back into you."  Neitzsche

"Just as a burden shared is a burden lessened, a sunbeam reflected is a shared brightness, multiplying itself in the glory of God."   csr

"If your teeth bother you, don't worry.  Just ignore them and they'll go away."    csr

"Even our best and brightest would hang their heads in shame if their faults were written on their foreheads."       Old Irish Proverb

"Today's mighty oak is just yesterday's nut that held its ground."  Jerry B.

"Man plans, God laughs."  Anon.

                             ( A bit more of my prose )

Your giving has allowed my living.  Praying is something that can change a life, can rearrange a soul in strife.

All the days I am lost and afraid,

always do I find the glory of Your heart's rays

sent to warm, received with praise.

Or the coolness of the shade, your aid to me

when I burn in the sand - without a tree

on this so risky land.

You only, have reached to me with Your hand

without a moment's thought -

and through this act of pure love I see

my life you caught, before I could fall.

For this, I thank You -

I thank You for it all. 

 

One Big ((Thank You))!

My sincere thanks to CYNDY our Guest Editor, for chosing my journal as a top pick - I'm honored and surprised!  And to all my friends, both brand new and oldish (lol) I thank you as well for your encouraging words and offers of congratulations.  This means alot to a mere fledgling, and I hope one day to spice things up!  ::Huggies:: Cathy

"Time and Space" Written 1980

Look ye upon this, both Time and Space

how low we are to the earth, whenst

upon thy visage, ancient face

I gaze in wonderment, close to grace -

and try to unravel the secret, which is me,

and from whenst I came to be.

How can I but answer, whereupon I am asked,

that I am the sum total

of all that is yet to come,

and all that has passed.

For what, then, can be the present,

whether living fast or dying slow,

but the embodiment of what has just occured

and that which has yet its face to show.

csr

"Faraway Lover"

It avails you not, to think upon distance,

nor the might of the realm of space -

for that is all it can ever be,

this great thing that now separates -

and you and I, we are so much more

while urging hearts to a faster pace.

I think upon you, and though feel as I do

the need to race and linger

at your side,

I give to this no never mind.

For you are contained within the ocean of my heart,

and will never go out with the tide.

The Evolution of Prayer

If only you could arrange your life so that everything you did was an act of gratitude to God, can you imagine the outcome?  Most likely, you'd never hurt anyone or be hurt.  LIFE AS PRAYER - PRAYER AS THANKS.  The recitation by rote of all those "Our Fathers" and "Hail Marys" are just as ligitimate certainly as any prayer one could compose in the mind, from the heart.  But I've discovered that, for the most, people prefer to talk to their Creator in their own words.  A "learned" prayer is what we teach children, who don't yet possess the full vocabulary to show their parents that they can pray.  I think this is a kind of shame, in that who better than children know how to speak to God?  Nevertheless, as adults, after awhile and many years of praying for various people and things, wants and desires, you come to a place where the only satisfying method to reach God is through meditation, by clearing one's mind and making quiet the brain so nothing but His Light can come through.  That's the Light I seek when I pray, and I do that by simple thought on all that I believe God to be.  Then, before long, my thoughts become even less than that, there are no words in my mind, I am in communion with the Light of the Lord in my soul 

Prayer has evolved when words are no longer necessary, or even thoughts  You are in a state of pure gratitude.  This gratefulness is so intense, that a prayer for a sick child comes out as pure thanks to God, and nothing else, no name, no petition, nothing else is needed.  It's not an easy thing to attain, and I'll never truly achieve it - Buddhist monks are alot closer to the true act of praying, I'd say. It's hard to calm the heated mind, the chattering brain, so busy with the world's minutia.  

Evolved prayer never asks for anything.  What do you need in life that you think God isn't aware of?  We use words in prayer because we firmly believe that if we hear these words in the mind, so will God.  Truly, anything that brings us that much closer to our God, by whatever name or however praised, is a good and necessary thing.  No one can live fully without their soul, and I believe that soul is our "God-part" that one Light inside which God placed there somehow (not for me to know the methods) which makes me a reflection of the Lord in all I do and say.  The soul is eternal, but finite.  I believe only a certain number of souls were created and the fleshy containers we live in will circulate and revolve, incarnate and reincarnate, so as to animate that body into acts of goodness which, by their nature, can only reflect goodness and mercy, the reflection of God in our lives.  But we're not perfect and that's a good thing.  Life is a continual act of striving to reach that single, all-knowing Light, and when we reach it, we're already gazing upon the Face of God. 

I sit on the bed and get physically comfortable.  A sort of "lazy lotus" position.  Clearing my mind gradually, making quiet that noisy brain which is desperate to form words.  I rebuke the words, I enter the realm of thought.  In my thought, I form pictures.  In these pictures I note the beauty of nature, of the myriad life forms sharing this space with me, of water, air, light.  Then I am close - it is Light that I am seeking, for I am in a state of prayer.  When all thoughts have finally dissolved into pure feeling, I can then sense that one boundless Light, and I center all meditation on that Light.  To me, in every way that means anything at all, that Light is God.  It is the larger version of my soul. This is the time for gratitude, and I reform all thought in the pure feeling of being grateful, over and over.  "Thank You!" can be a feeling, it need not be words.  Just gratitude.  The state of being grateful.  No petitions, no begging, no deal-making, not even a word not even a thought.  Just being there and feeling thankful to God is the most evolved prayer I can imagine.     

Everything You'll Ever Need To Answer Any Question

 

If no one believed in me, would I disappear?  Lucky for God, He doesn't have that problem.  If suddenly every living thing in the Universe didn't believe in monotheism, would the One God cease to exist?  No, I doubt God depends upon our faith in Him to stay alive in whatever state He exists.  So:  as long as I'm living, and note there are many things in life too difficult to understand, things I might miss, I decided to find a single method of thinking that would get me, or any one else, through the toughest of decisions and potholes of life's highway.  It all revolves around the act of hypothesizing. 

Let's suppose you are presented with a case, someone puts forth a suggestion, an idea, an argument for or against something.  This would include seeing a red light and making the decision whether to ignore it and drive on, or stop.  Okay, someone makes their premise.  When you respond, you are essentially rendering a verdict.  In the courtroom, juries are asked to consider a claim and the evidence for or against that claim, then reach a verdict based on its merits.  This process is also used in all the sciences and philosophies, it's called hypothetical reasoning, and I am making my own case for it as the key to answering every question.  I've arrived at 5 pared-down steps needed in this process:

l.  State very clearly what the claim or quest is.

2.  Gather all the evidence both in support and defiance of this claim.

3.  Examine this evidence very thoroughly, without bias.

4.  Consider any alternative claims or questions.

5.  Draw a logical, reaonsable conclusion based upon all of the above.

I know, it sounds far too easy, but remember that hypothetical reasoning is a way of evaluating specific claims in life, it's not a shortcut to certainty.  You may never be certain of anything, anyway, in this life we are forced to deal in what is reasonable, what seems to work.  If you just can't make up your mind about something in life, it is always permissable to suspend judgment.  After all, since we don't know what amount of time is allotted us, who's to say we haven't far more than we thought?  

Using hypothetical reasoning to get through life and it's myriad quests and claims is a quantifiable thing.  It can be measured, tested.  For instance, if you leave an ice cube on a table and return in a hour you'd find a small puddle in place of the cube.  Your reasoning would tell you the ice cube melted.  But why?  This is hypothetical reasoning.  Someone else might put forth that the ice cube was removed from the table by someone with very wet hands. 

It seems far easier to prove something was done than to prove it was not done.  How does one prove they did not do something if evidence exists that they did?  Using hypothetical reasoning once again, take the quest through those 5 simple steps and you can make a reasonable deduction.  I can't think of anything in life that wouldn't stand the litmus test of this method.  Can you? 

 

 

Boring But True

I'm thinking this will be one of those entries I'll be adding to, by and by.  So let's begin:  Boring but true, is the fact that all apes are born left-handed.  My my.  Also, tigers have stripped skin as well as fur.  And we're born with more bones than we have right now.  Yeah!  And and...lemme see, oh yeah: more people went bowling than voted in the last election.  And the universe has no center, no edges.  What else...I think people who make entries like these have too much spare time - so I'll go do some laundry, I'll be back with MORE interesting tales from Boring ButTrue! 

Back.  Humans are the only mammals, indeed the only life form, born "unfinished".  (The skull plates have not yet knitted together) Also, because our brains are too large, being born causes pain to the mother while this is not so for any other animal. 

Another:   Gays can adopt children, but they cannot marry.  Huh?   

Just saw this on the news: There exists a big hockey fan, name of Stanley F. Cup.  True!  And boring!

The USA has more prisons than any other country on earth.  We also have the most overcrowding.  

Ah, another one:  Certainly not boring but very true is the fact that if you were to unravel the DNA of just one person, it would reach all the way to the moon.    

 

 

 

THIS IS IT? TIME WRITTEN: August 2004

March of 2004 came in for me as the agent of change.  It was full of hard, unforgiving edges and sharp feelings with unfamiliar hues.  March was horrendous.  March was like a fierce, overpowering warrior.  March is passed now, but it was the worst month of my entire life.  March was the month I should have died.

Duly marked on my calendar, I knew March was the time.  It was a new calendar, for it was the beginning of a new year, the year 2004, and I had a dear friend to bury.  Carol.  I knew her for so long, and far better than her family, so I was chosen to lead the mourners in our catholic rituals of adorning the body then burying it, almost too sad.  Why did she die in January?  It's the start of things, didn't she know that?  Comfort never really came for me, as I had to stand firm and strong for her family.  They expected it, and I do as I'm expected.

On the day of her wake, I was wallowing in the depths of my soul.  I couldn't quite prepare myself, and kept dropping things.  The January cold was biting and mean as I opened the window to clear my head.  That's when my new calendar blew off my desk and onto the floor, opening to the month of March.   I reached to pick it up, and with a firm grip, watched open-mouthed as it fell from my hands, dropping again to the floor.  Then I noted with a wry pessimism that the month was, once again, March.  I was losing my grip.

At the wake I was somber, while still managing to be helpful and courteous.  When everyone had finally left and my task of chief mourner was through, I stood alone with Carol by her casket, gazing at her too-perfect face courtesy of the mortician's skilled hand.  It didn't seem as though anything would ever look alive to me again.  I asked Carol for a sign, in keeping with our long-held agreement that whichever of us died first, the other would send some important message from the Great Beyond.  We never doubted we could do it, so as I looked upon her too-still visage I got the message, clear and ringing like a bell at Easter.  She was with her beloved William, her husband, who died 20 years earlier and far too soon.  All she wanted was to be reunited with him, and now she was.  Carol never saw much use in the joys life offered after Billy died.  She couldn't see humanity as a gift anymore.  All she wanted was her husband back, who she met when they were children.  And now they were together.  She told me so and I believed her.

Back out in the dark January chill I got into my car and slowly drove home, pensive, waiting for my true chance to mourn.  I was still thinking of that calendar, how it had fell open to March not once but twice, for no reason I could fathom.  Soon I was pulling into my driveway, when suddenly I heard someone calling me.  Not in words, mind you, but a feeling of words being spoken, in my brain.  I'm in mourning, I thought, I'm not pulled together yet.  But the words were there, as clear as Carol's post-mortem message to me:  I would die in March, it was time to prepare.  Prepare!  I suddenly realized what was happening.  Although I had only 3 months to live, God was allowing me time to get my affairs in order, to set things right wherever they were wrong.  I locked the car, went inside and tried to make sense of this.  Soon, exhaustion overtook me and I fell onto my bed into a deep, dark, dreamless sleep.

The first thing I noticed was the thin powder of snow which fell during the night.  Then the previous happenings came pouring into my consciousness like ice cold water.  Rushing to call my brother Christopher, I then dressed and drove to his place.  With as serious a face as I could muster, I told him the basics of the previous night, that I was to die in March, and asked if he'd be the Executor of my Will.  This involved a tidy commision, I reminded him, almost $1,200.00, in addition to the bequests I already planned to make.  Still he looked hesitant.  When I told him all he need do was sign a single affidavit while I adjusted my Will, he made agreeing sounds and we chatted about Carol over his usual terribly brewed coffee.  Soon, however, I had to leave, telling him there was much to do and I was on a schedule.  He smiled.  Christopher always smiled when he thought I misplaced my sanity.  Never a criticism, only a smile.  So I left.

As January flew by, then most of February, I was almost completely prepared for my coming death, however it would manifest itself.  I noted with disdain that Chris had never signed the affidavit I asked, and as I type this now in August of 2004, he has yet to bother with it.  So he didn't believe I was going to die.  What could he know that I didn't?  What does he still know?

Well, I obviously didn't die 5 months ago, but it taught me something about myself.  I was completely unprepared for tomorrow, for what could happen at any moment.  Even people with terminal illnesses don't know the exact time of their death, which should cause someone like me, a perfectly healthy human being, to rush into a state of panic because of my unreadiness.  I thought I was unready because my Will wasn't done.  I thought I was unready because my house wasn't in order.  I thought I wasn't ready because I hadn't yet said my personal goodbyes.  "Oh what fools we mortals be...."  For I've come to a superb knowledge:

I wasn't ready to die because I hadn't yet talked to God.  I hadn't thanked Him over and over for giving me a soul and bringing life to it, and a body to animate it.  Why was my Creator the one thing I hadn't realized needed attention?

Well, I'm over it now and happy to be alive each day I am.  My dreams have returned, soft and lively.  Everyone who crosses my path gets direct eye contact with a smilling, daring "hello!" and as I sense their stares as I continue on my way, I whisper softly, "Thank you, Carol, I got your real message, loud and clear.  God will never find me unprepared for Him again."  

I still hate March, though.     Cathy S. August, 2004 

 

 

"Just Once More, Just for Me"

Look not at my age,

for I carry the banner of immortality -

the soul lives on indefinitely

and fortunate it is for me,

devoid of rights and wasted rage.

                   ***

Let me borrow from my Mother,

who's life was sometimes tested

and whose body we have rested

in the place she had requested,

this woman like no other.

                  ***

Here is what she might have said:

Life can be a book of song,

stand up straight to sing along,

and when your life is going wrong,

I'll pull you up ahead.

                ***

You cannot ever cease to pray.

Ask Our Lady's intercession.

Always make a good confession,

and you'll be in the great procession

on that Glory Day.

                 ( Thank you Mother, I love you - visit again. )

csr

Golden Days

So how do I talk to you now, Mother?  God has wrapped your soul into His sheltering love, and I am an orphan.  Dad left us so long ago I've only the smallest of recollections for one I always called my VERY BEST FRIEND.  How can that be?  Time, I suppose, yes it must be all this time gone by, Dad.  Almost 20 years since you left. Did you welcome Mother when she appeared?  Ah well ... how she could sing, remember?  All who heard Mother ring out such dulcet notes would always feel the need to tell her so, and some would find themselves in tears.  I was among them, do you remember Mother?  With my piano as your partner you made such music as would cause birds to be hush, the better hear your voice.  But it's over now, and forever.  So with 7 other siblings, I am parentless, an orphan.  Age means nothing when you find you're now accountable to no one.  Mother, did you ever know of the countless times I've shied toward you, in tears, looking for the validation only a Mother could give?  I was a child then.  When your body gave up it's worldy work, I felt as a child then, too.  And I fear I may always feel as a child when thinking of all those unanswered questions I'd one day intended to ask.  Then you became terribly ill and my chance disappeared, like so many stars blinking out their light in the dawn of day.  One night you became ill, in the morning you were gone.  So how do I talk to you now?  I called you Mother, but not always - once upon a carefree time I called you Mama, like all children do.  When was the last time, was I six, maybe fourteen?  The final time you call your mother Mama is a sweet and shady moment that isn't really noticed, but privately somehow should be marked down.  Rest, Mama, rest your soul and be happy now, for your have found release - you sing with choirs of angels, for the gentle Prince of Peace.  

A Thin Observation on Relationships

Here I sit thinking easy thoughts, nothing so diffuse as the end of days or the center of the Universe.  Remembering that it has no center, nor indeed no edge, I know to change gears and get hurriedly back to those easy things, thoughts that barely use a brain cell to form.  And here is one, so I observe:

On what grotesquely thin ground do we form lifelong relationships?  There's nothing thin about the ground of trust, nor respect, nor reverence for the talent one has to live.  But what of a head of hair?  Laugh, as well you may, but think you on this:  the phenomenon of a person's head of hair carries one of the truest weights in how we bond as humans.

Of all the inhumane punishments you can inflict on someone, shaving off their hair is the grossest of all.  Our hair is our living crown, we wear it proudly and guard it jealously.  For a woman, it is the top point of the pyramid of her womanhood; the only woman-part that can be shown.  The others must be kept hidden, but your hair belongs to the world.  Swept up, combed out, brushed and shining, it teases all who see it.  Hair will identify your sex long before anything else does.  It is the bedrock of middle-class upbringing.  Wash it, dry it, brush, shape and comb it, it's your secret power.  Lose your money, your friends, your health, but don't loose your hair.  When shaved or cut off, it will lay on the floor like so many thin umbilical cords which attach us to our society.  Our humanity.  Shorn, they lie in dead, drying heaps, no longer nourished by the body's juices.  The lighthouse of our inner selves, these arrogantly proud strands, suddenly no more than refuse to be swept up.  How helpless we look without our hair.  Helpless and humiliated.  And when we love someone, fully and truly, is there not a swift but sure shock to see them without their hair, so thoroughly stripped of the dignity of their gender?

Hair.  The glowing outer shield that shelters the tiny force within it.  We are all so ... vulnerable. 

"Long-Distance Love" ((#))

A heart as full as vessels hold,

    I hold you as I can -

though miles conspire to separate

    I write to you again.

The gift of words will last a life,

    be they harsh or kind -

for once the eyes do take them in

    they're branded on the mind.

And sweet are those I get from you,

    a faith in me, I sense -

It's truly earned in all I feel,

    to ease you when you're tense.

Though try I do, to find a way

    I stumble at each start

in dealing with my other side

    who keeps herself apart.

Oh, don't let's speak of that my dear,

    I've all this love to spill -

and we shall triumph in our time,

    until these clocks do still. 

csr

 

Alone with God in the Rain

It's raining on my part of the planet as I make these notes, and has been for what seems time ad infinitum.  What does this do to me, well let's see:  having a nerve disorder called acute Neuropathy and another called sciatica, dampness always calls for pain and pain leads inevitably to a desire to rush to be alone, wanting to hurt in private peace, not to be seen in one's weakness, hoping the hurt will dissipate if no one sees it.  So I turn down offers to go here, make excuses why I can't go there, never quite able to convey the extent of my physical pain even to close friends because as we all know, only our pain counts while we're flush in it.  Selfish and insecure, we cringe at the thought of someone finding us so utterly weakened.

Which is how I find myself happily alone as I pour down the aspirin, not bothering with pain killers because neuropathy is incurable and who wants an addiction on top of all else...

Sure that no one can see, or know, I nuture myself as best I can, becoming my truest pal and buddy, rattling off all the reasons why some are meant to hurt and some meant to ease it. Then it hits me - like it always does, as a bolt of truth:

GOD never leaves anyone, anywhere, at any time, for any reason, even when you want to be hidden.  He knows my pain in these times of self-pity better than any human could ever make pretense to.  GOD sees me and I've no reason to cringe before Him because He Himself endured such agonies in the human form of His own Son, Jesus Christ, and who better to know what man can do to man in the name of whatever is popular to decry at the time?  Jesus was not half man and half God, He was 100% human and 100% Divine, I'd say, while He walked this earth, to better direct His people to understand the words of their inspired elders, the Prophets. I tend to turn to these words, written by several men over and over, edited, changed and rearranged so many times, yet undeniably still a treasure trove of common sense by which to guide one through life, a better person.  The Bible is like that for me, while in pain.  I seek the trials of Job, astonished and ashamed at my own petty hurts.  The poetry of the Psalms is such that its beauty can pull me from my hiding place and have not a fear of expressing my physical hurt, for it's all part of me and those who know of it are at ease with it's needs, i.e., walkers, leg braces, canes. The paraphrenalia of man's tenuous hold on life.

These past 13 years in a "disabling" state I've heard many offers of advice, all well-intended, but the one I could never accept was: "Others have it far worse, what if you had no legs" etc.  Maybe I'm odd but it never gave me comfort to know that someone else suffered more than I did, physically.  And I've found a way around this recurring pain that has been successful for me, so far:  Work with it. What else does one do with something that won't go away?  Cooperate. Like two opposing governments, you work it out together and find a median peaceful solution.  A truce of sorts.  As is my want, I gave it all over to poetry:

                            "SHINING LIGHT"

If you do live in constant pain, and fear you cannot smile again 

If every move is full of woe, you feel there's no safe place to go,

Seek out your God, your closest Friend, and do not break when you can bend.

You've always been within His sight, so make of pain a "Shining Light" -

Dwell upon this very hard, for life can be so tough and scarred,

In every plan or scheme or race, give your thought to Saving Grace.

For it's not the hurt that makes us brave, it's not the fear of coming grave

But rather, it's the way that we, turn on our Light, with Dignity.

csr

                                                                                                                          

                                  

 

 

 

 

 

    

 

 

 

World of Wonders

Holy moley, people are fantastic!  Where have they BEEN all my life lol?  I'm just thinking how easy it is to get a smile from someone - give one first.  I live in a city where people walk around with invisible barriers surrounding them, thinking they're intact, untouchable, hoping against hope that no one makes eye contact.  I thought, enough of this, I'm making contact with the life forms!  What a happy, surprising delight to get your "hello, good morning" returned with smiling enthusiasm.  Makes you think, wonder what THEY were thinking about before I made contact lol...Or things like this journal, you peck out a few thoughts on the keyboard and just like that, a fountain of good wishes pour down on you, the varied comments and suggestions, hugs and help, all kinds of useful, positive stuff.  No more the flotsam and jetsum of small-hearted fakes who only want your treasure - the gems of your mind.  I adore the diversity I'm absorbing, the sincerity coming through so clearly.  When you offer someone a "good day" sometimes you see shock in their eyes, but almost immediately it's supplanted by an eager "and good day to YOU!" and if you're lucky, they'll engage your ear in all the vagaries of their lives.  "I couldn't get my own son to do the shopping for me, isn't this awful?  A grown man, letting his poor old mother ....."  Before long you get an education of life in "the good old days" and if you listen, really listen to people, you find something of yourself right there in a stranger's words.  We're all connected - how many times have I heard that, said that, without thinking what it truly means.  We ARE connected, if by nothing else than we share a planet.  People.  Awesome.  Wonderful.  Everywhere.     

"Another Path"

Do not stand hard-faced against me,

should I chose not to join in the dance -

For I have found in my solitary way

that I am here on a second chance.

And I dare not waste a moment,

though dancing sounds a delight -

I really must be about my way

of doing what I feel more right -

for me.

csr

"This New Day"

Thank you, God, for this new day, I'd thank you for it anyway -

but this new day is special, for, it follows one which is no more.

Thank you for each leg, each foot, as one before the next I put.

Thank you for these eyes to see the glory of your Majesty.

Humble me with my small cross, make me grateful in my loss,

for I am but Humanity, in all its great diversity.

I look upon the sandy shore to find the whys and wheretofore,

the answers to my questions lay in all I do and all I say -

So I will speak of Thee, my Lord, I will read Your Word, My God

Be it mosque or highest steeple, I will gather with your people.

Today I give the world my best, and it returns to me to rest,

and I have been so very blessed as all my riches can attest.

 Thank You God, for this new day, I'd thank you for it anyway

as one more night you pulled me through, I want to spend this day with You.

csr

 

 

"Generosity"

In thanks to all those who possess a wisdom deep inside, most likely born of the trials and errors of life, and may not even realize they are teaching others I say:

BE NOT SO FAR FROM ME

AS THE YEARNING HEART DOTH PREACH -

FOR THE WISDOM OF THE LEARN'ED ONES

STAYS CLOSE TO THOSE WHOM THEY WOULD TEACH.

Soon more poetry will make its inevitable way to these spaces, for as most people I tend to think in pictures that transform into words. Years of scientific research reveal that the right brain controls our empathetic, artistic, even reckless urges - the acts we perform from a true need to express.  The left brain is logic itself and got really high grades in math lol.  It controls our instinct to kick someone in the shinbone rather than talk out a difference of opinion with civility.  I want so many things for people who strive with all they have to make a difference!  I want their names on a plaque somewhere!  People who float through life on a cloud of indifference are missing so much, and I find you never really get to convince them otherwise, because it's "Why work if I don't have to?" That's the start of "Why do anything if if's done for me?"  Soon comes "Why stay awake when I can just sleep?"  You probably see where this ends up:  "Why live?"  So people need purpose, need motivating forces.  My belief is that the ones I refer to in my little verse are the people with more to offer, therefore have more responsibility to give of themselves, guide those who prefer their soft clouds of "So what?"  If a thing makes no never mind to someone, one day we'll have people seeing starving, homeless folks on the street and they'll walk right by.  Oh wait, that's already happened, hasn't it.  

Self-Possession

What an amazing feeling, I wake from a deep sleep with an unusual feeling of completeness, and it's surprising!  I even remember the dream I was having and how it woke me, just when I felt my most secure.  I think my subconscious knew I'd want to experience this and journal it, because by the morn I might not feel the same.  I'm not sure!  But it has happened before, so .. All I know is this dynamic of self-assurance and confidence, of feeling like I've just killed a dragon lol this is amazing!  It's as if I've gathered all the refuse of my hurts and woes and just laughed them away - left them to die of inattention, as they should.  Who could hurt me now?  Why would I allow anyone that power ever again?  The comments of my family seem ages old, and so inaffective.  How could I let simple words direct my feelings. when those same words were as negative and useless as - well, what's the most negative, useless thing I could have, I suppose it would be a belief in the metaphors and allusions of others whether they're loved by me or not!  Alluding to my hair length as holding me back somehow, why didn't I see the jealousy and just pain idiocy of that remark?  This is enlighening, no wonder I woke up!  And there's humor too, when I realize how foolish I was to allow that hurt.  I see now I'm a perfectly complete and self-possessed woman all on my own and need no confirmation except that from God, in private meditative moments of communion.  I think I know what I'll do, start my yoga classes again.  I doubt this neuropathy will make it easy but so what - right now I feel as a human newly brought to the well of self-assurance, and I'm drinking in all I can.  Good for me! 

Repressing Instinctive Anger

How can one reasonably repress the instinctive need to lash out when hurt, to tell a person how badly they disabused you, how completely inaccurate they might be about you?  When someone cuts to the quick and draws our private blood of the soul, we want to reciprocate with hurts to their being, just as fierce, just as painful, just as damaging and hopefully, come out the "winner" which of course makes no sense at all and never brings true satisfaction.  Yet we do this all the time.  There must be a better way, a more civil method of curbing the urge to strike out when struck.

I recently became the victim of such an outpouring of criticism, done under the protective guise of the word "constructive".  Though so much of it was inaccurate to my way of thinking, surely these horrors must've originated in some factual base, for my torturer was positive and steadfast in their belief they were right, I was not.  Being told you are "self-delusional" unless you embrace the beliefs of another is not just specious, it also hurts.  The psychic damage may take several introspective, meditative sessions before one returns to self-possession, self-assurance.  How is it that we allow others to utilize such power over us, a power we invest trustingly and perhaps with naivete but nonetheless sincere.  Perhaps it's time to stop sharing ourselves with those who can hurt us.  But how to recognize the sadist behind the sympathizer?  Their disguise is so well crafted!  Point, how do we suppress the urge to repay hurt with more hurt, how do we stop the cycle?