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?