A Letter To The World

September 11
(a song)

In my heart I wrote a letter to the world
it sounds sad to say I wrote it with my tears
but I did

And I know that there are those who die in wars
and I know that children go to bed unfed
it makes me sad
it makes me mad

And there are some who say There Is No God
did we forget he gave the world to us?
if you do bad you will have bad,
if you do good you will have good,
Hey, hey, this is a story we're all writing!

In my heart I wrote a letter to the world
it sound sad to say I wrote it with my tears
but I did
and then it disappeared...


Star Saint Claire, September 11, 2011

Dance, Chaz Bono, Dance With the Stars!

This is sad. In a world that's falling down, where we ordinary peacemakers struggle to keep some semblance of humanity in daily life, even if just common courtesy, a large so called Christian group has nothing better to do than call for a boycott of the American TV show "Dancing With the Stars."

Because of the show's inclusion of Chaz Bono, Cher's daughter turned endearing son, and Carson Kressely, a fabulously sweet gay man, onemillionmomsdotcom is reported as saying, "Christians should not watch the show, no excuses." (if you do, they'll smack you in the crotch with a ruler, i imagine...)

(and anyway, these kinds of persnickety "Christians" should already SO NOT be watching that skimpily costumed, lust inducing show...)

Chaz Bono and Carson Kressely have the same heart, soul, mind, humanity, intelligence, as any of us, and probably MORE compassion, considering the hate they face, and the arduous struggle endured to become who they are.

Our teacher said, Do not judge. Our teacher went about doing good. Our teacher brought life, light and hope. The only ones he judged were the religious types, NEVER the common person. Remember Mary Magdalene?

Stop showing us what you are against, and start showing us your LOVE. Perhaps then, more will believe.

Trouble Comes When...

Trouble comes when the mind runs ahead of the soul. The soul is patient, gentle, orderly, methodical. The mind is a whirlwind. Yes, at times the soul flits and flies, grasping bits of beauty in the air, but mostly the soul is a quietly flowing stream.

To wait for the soul makes the mind impatient. Yet if we can train the mind to accompany the rhythm of the soul there will be harmony, and together we will create greatness.

Dear readers, what say you? How do we slow our minds?

Life is Not a Problem!

Lately, with the state of the world, construction noise on our apartment house (and perhaps Uranus retrograde!?), I have been having a harder time keeping my mind from fear and stress.

In answer to my pain my Wise Self says:

LIFE IS NOT A PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED, BUT AN ADVENTURE TO BE LIVED.

What, dear readers, makes you feel more alive, more adventurous?

What Would You Have This Child You Love To Know?

A woman walks down the street carrying a jug of water.
Her mind is troubled by things occurring to her
and by things happening on earth.

An angel says to God,
What would you have this child you love to know?

And God says,
I would wish this child I love to be thankful for the good, clean water in her hands.

I would wish her to feel the cool breeze, and know it is my breath.

That each person she passes has a sun, moon, and star inside,
just as the sun, moon, and star within herself.

I would wish this child I love not to think about problems,
but to fill her mind with beauty, hope, and peace.

To see the flowers and butterflies, the shadows of trees, the flight of birds.

I would wish her to hear the song of birds,
 and know it is my voice.
To smell the jasmine in the air,
 and know it's my perfume.
To see the sky
 and know that all is well.

To breathe,
and know that breath is grace.



Star Saint Claire  7/7/11, San Diego, CA

Balancing Act

A bird flies from the ground to a small branch, and lands.
The branch wobbles. Whoa, thinks the bird, maybe I made a mistake.
Then he finds his balance. The bird looks around, content.
He begins to sing.
The twig shakes again. So he stops.
The bird sees something in the grass, and dives down.
The grass is as tall as trees. He can't see past it.
But he can eat.
Everything, the flying, the eating, even the balancing, seems like hard work.
Only in brief moments is he perfectly balanced.

We may not always be balanced.
But we are always who we are - a person, or a bird.







Star Saint Claire, May, 2011, San Diego

The Sky is Blue?

The sky is blue. it seems incontrovertible. yet. one could say with equal authority the sky is gray. white. orange. depending on the weather and the time of day, right? shall we disagree about this and kill one another over it? i think not.

maybe we can agree on this: the sky is the sky. the sky is.

and what of God? so many pretending to know, convinced they know, who he likes and who he hates and what he is and how and where. if we disagree, shall we kill one another over the color of God? the name of God?

maybe we can agree. God is God. God is good. God is.

as a peacemaker i am so weary of the fighting, the wars, the arguments, the opinions, the ideology some are willing to kill for. i feel like giving up. what will happen if all the peacemakers give up?

just now i feel qite zen about this. even if i give up, the sky will still be the sky. and God will still be God.

Please Pray For A Young Girl

The Why Of Where We Are

Our apartment is sweet, but tiny. We have tried (and prayed) to move elsewhere without success. I finally accepted that if God has us here, it must be for a good reason...

Earlier today I suddenly remembered that if I didn't send my mum-in-law's Easter card, it would be late. So I walked to the neighborhood mailbox, smelling yellow flowers along the way, such a delicate scent as to be almost indiscernible. And I thought about delicate things, and how each is powerful in its own way.

The mail had already gone. If I had known that, I thought, I would have taken it to a different box.

On a whim, I took a different route home. A ways down the street a little dog, a young man, and a young woman stood in a doorway. Another young woman sat weeping on the stairs. I passed by. But then I stopped. Should I go back, or not? I went back. The man and dog were gone. But the young woman was crying even harder and louder. She had left the steps, and was now standing with her face pressed up against the door. Her friend was trying to comfort her.

I said I was sorry to impose, but just could not pass by when someone was crying so hard. She couldn't take it, she said. Her boyfriend had left. She had tried, or maybe wanted to try, to kill herself. I said that every single person with any kind of heart has felt that pain at some time. I told her it is okay to feel deep pain, but it is not okay to punish ourselves for what someone else did. I told her she must promise to tell her friends whenever she feels suicidal. She promised.

Her friend assured me they would be all right. Maybe I didn't do enough. I never saw her face, or asked her name. All I know is she is thin, young and has long shiny brown hair. Please pray for her.

Know Thyself - The Cube Game

My dear friend Shell, in Taos, taught me this game in the spring sunlight on the flowered patio at the Adobe Inn (hi, Adobe Inmates!) where we lived and breathed, briefly and beautifully, side by side in tiny heart-shaped spaces...(the best/blessed neighbors, ever.) The Cube Game: In a flat desert space... Imagine a cube. Imagine a storm. Imagine a ladder. Imagine a horse. Imagine flowers. Now that you have a picture, and the placement of the objects, here is the interpretation: The cube is your self. The storm is your future. The ladder represents friends. The horse is your lover. The flowers are children. My cube was a floating, transparent box with an open top and one black side. It was surrounded by a feeling of timelessness. What was yours? P. S. Self awareness inspires love of self, which inspires love of others, and love of Good. We all need awareness desperately just now with the world in such chaos. And that is why I shared the cube game...We are all works of art.

Tsunami on the Blue Planet

The waves even reached us here in San Diego. Under a Tsunami watch all day. The Blue Planet, shining like a tear in God's eye.

Such a powerful earthquake that the earth's axis actually shifted ten centimeters... ironically, the measure of space opening in a woman before a baby is born. What is the Earth birthing?

The ocean, and the oceans of tears, connect us all...

Invasion of Love (conclusion)

(continued from previous three posts)

How can you be so sure they'll be human? I asked.
Because we're all human, Kel insisted. All made in the image of God! No frog-people, no aliens. Just beautiful, tangible daughters of Eve. Plump and ripe as fruit, man!

He leaned back, hands behind head, dreaming. A nightbird called from the edge of the forest, lonely. I shivered. We hadn't laid eyes on a living breathing girl our own ages since the fifth grade.
So when do we leave? I joked.

Just as soon as we believe it, man. Think positive! We'll ride the milky way like cowboys ride horses, he said. Slide down that path of light like its a river or an avalanche - ride in like heroes, man, like heroes! Just think!

We gazed at the Blue Planet, solitary, shining like a tear in God's eye. And it did seem ripe for invasion. An invasion of love.

THE END

Invasion of Love, part III

(Continued from previous posts)

Kel pressed the button and we zeroed in on the Blue Planet. Closer and closer it came, water and land, grass and rivers, deserts and farms. Cities glittering like eyes. Green trees, blue lakes.

Blue and green, I said.
God's favorite colors, said Kel. Our own planet was mostly blue and green. Sister planet, he sighed, raising a toast.
When we get there, I said, what will we do?
Heroes, he said. We'll be heroes, man. Not by fighting, by loving! He held an imaginary girl close, made kissing sounds, m-m-m. Some of our contemporaries had got rid of their emotions. Not Kel. He'd kept all of his.
Love conquers all? I joked.
You know it, man, he said.

God, I said. I wish this window zoomed in closer. What if they have green skin, no arms, four legs? What if they don't look like us?
They'll look like us, Kel said.
Brown skin, black hair? I said.
Two arms, two legs, walking upright...and...his hands traced an hourglass shape in the air.

So when do we leave? I joked.

Invasion of Love (part II)

(sci-fi short story cont'd from previous post...)

So what does God live inside? I asked, grabbing another beer.

God lives inside God, Kel stated. We gotta go there.
He pointed. The Blue Planet, shining and spinning in the middle of the window, beyond us far away, small as a sapphire.
There are girls there, man, he said.

We sighed. Years ago, young women began leaving our world in droves to become nurses on planets torn by war. The men had tried to stop them, but the girls proved altruistic more so than domestic. Having more advanced thought patterns, they flew away on wings of pure belief, like doves. None of the men could figure it out. How to leave the planet, that is.

Now the remaining girls were cloistered, pressed into service bearing children for the Kingdom. When these babies grew up, there would be girls to marry again. But not for years. We felt very bad. Being teenagers and all.

Kel pressed the button and we zeroed in on The Blue Planet, object of our desires.

(to be continued...)

Invasion of Love

(A Story In Progress)

We were sitting out on the portal of my house, looking through the telescoping window and drinking beer. It was night. Pinprick stars spangled the distance like chips of ice, and orbs floated like colored drops.

Man, said Kel, just think.
What, I said.
All those planets. Figments, or real?
Real, I said.
Not just thoughts, he agreed. Reality! Just think, man. Use your brain.
For what? I said. The air smelled like wet grass.

He waxed on. If the ego is only negative thought, and all negative thought is a lie, then negative thought is the devil.
Okay, I said. Kel was religious. I wasn't.
And when all the planets, the ones with life, figure that out, we will banish negative thought. Voila! He snapped his longish fingers. Paradise regained!
Your eyes are shiny, I said.

Just think, Kel said. God is THE PRIME MIND. And we are all, all of us, all of this, inside the vast being who is God. Just like tiny organisms live inside us, we live inside God, the prime host organism.
So what does God live inside? I asked him, grabbing another beer.

(to be continued...)

Random Pursuit of Happiness and a Prayer

I have exhausted myself. In the last two weeks, inspired by an Oprah episode, I have tried and failed to become a vegetarian. Likewise I have tried and failed to lose weight. Tried and failed to "fix" the painting I'm working on. And so on. Trying to catch happiness. Caught a (two-week and counting) horrid cold instead.

Trying hard to listen to the soul and not the ego. Failing, predictably, as it is the ego who demands we "try hard" in the first place. Ack.

What you want you will not get. What you don't want, you will have. A koan. Or whatever those Zen riddles are called.

The one brilliantly bright spot I have created amongst the recent ruins is this prayer:

May today be Beautiful. May all my relations be held in the hands of God.

Well, it's simple.

The things that make me happiest are simple. Lace-like shadows of ferns against a white fence - a mockingbird singing its heart out - a donut.

What are your simple solutions to gain happiness?

Intuition?

It's said that faith isn't a feeling. And neither is love. That faith and love are decisions. Hmm. I don't know if that is true, but isn't it much nicer to feel? It makes faith and love so much more real...to me, anyway. To me, feelings are the proof. I feel, therefore I know...

So what is intuition? Webster's defines intuition as "immediate and instinctive perception of a truth." I have also heard intuition defined as "inner knowing."

A few days ago I had an intuitive urge to give one of my paintings, a small St. Francis icon, to a woman I barely knew. Come to find out she has other saints in her home. She told me she had a St. Anthony statue who fell off the shelf and lost his head. She never found it. Ironic, since he is the saint who helps us find lost things. Also synchronicitous, as I had just that morning mentioned St. Anthony in my blog post. It seemed like, and felt like, my intuition to give her the icon was right.

But what is intuition? Is it a subtle course correction from the Spirit? A nudge in the right direction? A voice? Or all those things?

What does intuition feel like, sound like, say? Is it desire? Warning? Different things at different times? Where is it located in the body? Does everyone feel it? What does intuition mean to you?

The View From Here

Waking. Making tea. (Honey, cinnamon, lemon, cream.) To take outside with a book and sit under a canopy of birdsong, with a view down the street of Victorian houses, trees, and lit-by-morning, mirror-windowed sky-scrapers.

But where is the book? The one in particular I want is Bradbury's Zen in the Art of Writing, my favorite writing book. It inspires me. Reminds me why I write. And I can't find it on the shelf.

Is it on the messy desk? No. The messy table? No. A quick prayer to St. Anthony, the saint of lost objects. I walk across the kitchen and look back at the shelves from a distance. There it is.

Sometimes we have to step back to see what is right in front of us.

As with life. At times I am able to float above my life and see what I am Looking for with clarity and perspective. Very often I cannot. The ego views life as a problem to be solved. The soul sees life as an adventure to be lived. I wish I could err on the side of the soul more often!

What are your ways of gaining clarity and perspective?

Death By Words

There was an unfortunate man. Words came to him. Words lodged in his head. Words filled his face and throat and chest and arms. Words piled up in his hands. God help me! he said. But he did not move his pen across the page.

He was a religious man. May I express the voices of angels, he cried. But he would not record their utterances. Spirits of the dead inhabited him. Lovely visions and lonely dreams. Words filled his stomach and legs. Words reached his feet. But he would not walk across the page. And he died.

If only he would have written his story, they said. Then we would have known who he was.

***
We write to show people who we are. We are afraid to show people who we are. Yet we still write. Why do you write?

(p.s. my just released novel YOU WAKE DREAMING can be found at barnesandnoble.com/ebooks)

Birds Fall From The Sky

Birds are falling from the sky! Blackbirds and Starlings. Beautiful birds!

So sad. So scary. Why is this happening? In the New Year we need symbols of hope, not destruction!

Over a thousand birds fell from the sky in Arkansas, now a thousand more in Louisiana. Their organs show blunt-force trauma. My heart shows blunt force trauma.

Birds are, for me, a symbol of all that is good in the world. Birds remind me of the angels. Birdsong revives my soul when I am blue.

Since a child, birds are a symbol of hope, renewal, God's care for the smallest of creatures.

There is the well known scripture that not a sparrow falls without God's noticing.

So God, birds are falling from the sky. Are you noticing?