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?