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?

Love One Another, A Christmas Meditation

The gospel of Christ can be told in seven words: Love God, Love Others, Love Your Self. If we love God, we will love the self. If we love the self, we will love others. But how do we love God?

We love God by loving Good. (God is Good.) By loving Truth. By loving Beauty. By loving Love. (God is Love.)

How do we love ourselves? By loving the goodness in us. By cultivating the truth, beauty, love, and light in us.

When we love ourselves we will naturally love the goodness, truth, beauty, love, light, and worth in others.

We learn by practice. Practice loving something small. A cat, a dog, a flower, a child. It is easy to love things that are lovable and beautiful.

We are lovable and beautiful.

Have a lovely and meaningful Christmas.
Peace and love, Angel-Star

Reaching For The Light

"Beauty is truth, truth beauty..." (Keats).

I bought some little pots of herbs and put them in my kitchen, where they promptly began to die. (I have wanted an herb garden for some time, though I have never done well keeping plants alive.) I kept watering them, but they got sicker and sicker. I realized they were not getting enough light.

The chives were a goner, but I sat the basil and the parsley outside on the porch. The parsley turned yellow. The basil became brown sticks. It was too late. Then I left on a trip.

When I returned, the basil, miraculously, had one green stem surviving. And then this one green stem got leaves. It now bends itself outward, almost horizontal, reaching for the light.

Oprah and The Talk - Are There Angels?

The day after her amazing Streisand tribute, Oprah featured "John of God," the man who has been healing people for fifty-some years in Brazil.

Dr. Jeff Rediger, (oprah.com) who went to observe John of God at work, came away from his encounter radically changed. He said he now realizes our lives, and our selves, matter more than we can ever imagine. That the human alive on earth contains more dignity and purpose than we ever believed possible. What a beautiful reminder. I too believe this. But I usually forget.

Dr. Rediger also said we may feel alone, but we are not. We are surrounded by beings, always.

The following day, On "The Talk" (a new talk show), the subject was guardian angels, and whether they exist. I found it intriguing, even amazing, that these shows had such spiritual themes. Is it because we are approaching Hanukkah and Christmas? Is it a sign of the troubled times?

I believe in angels. Do you? Have you seen one? Been helped by one?

Winter Writer Blues and Streisand on Oprah

The latest person to view my novel ( a publicist I met by phone, serendipitously) gave it thumbs up. Granted, I heard this second hand through her cousin, my unofficial agent, my novel's champion! (No actual agent, yet.) So should I follow his advice to self publish? Should I make an e-book?

I am confused, tired, bemused, annoyed, perhaps depressed. I have an urge to burn all my old diaries.

In other, better news, Oprah pays tribute to the great Barbra Streisand today. In a previous Oprah interview, Streisand revealed she forgot the words once and did not perform publicly again for twenty-seven years . I was shocked, and oddly comforted. Maybe there is yet hope for my twelve year old unfinished first novel. And the fifty-odd old songs of mine hiding in a folder. And the current, four years in process, novel? Maybe in time these hidden talents will see the light of day.

I keep thinking too much time has passed. During those twenty-seven years I wonder if Streisand obsessed over not performing like I obsess over not publishing.

Eventually though, she stood on a stage again and let her voice rise up.

How do we find the courage, the heart, to keep putting our voices out there?

Fingerprints

Oprah always asks, What's one thing you know for sure?

What I know, as said once before, is that "No one can tell you your fingerprints are made wrong."
But what I meant was - You are unique in all of time. No one will ever have your same voice-print, fingerprint, DNA, brainwave patterns, or heart.

When you make a work of art, or a poem, it has never been seen before. It is something new under the sun.

No one can say you, or your art, is made wrong. (If they do, here is a handy retort: Up Yours. Feel free to use it often as may be necessary.)

So, what is one thing YOU know for sure?

Paradise Lost (again)

(I visited Taos last week. In Taos, the mountain speaks.
It tells us where we have been and where we are now.
It enlightens us. We have only to listen...)


PARADISE LOST


In the beginning LOVE
created the heavens and earth

LOVE created light
LOVE created
everything that moves

and LOVE said,
let us make children
in the image of LOVE

so LOVE made a woman
and LOVE made a man

and LOVE told them
to love the earth
and to make more children
in the image of LOVE

LOVE also said
do not choose knowledge
over love
or you will lose paradise

***

(and so it was, and so it is...)

Star St. Claire
1o/25/2010 Taos, NM