(a life's worth of small epiphanies)
A memoir: the story of a life filled with clear moments of heavenly guidance. Utilizing the metaphor of a heavenly teacher, the book illustrates, through personal story, the divine direction available to us all.
"I like to imagine that I have a true teacher, a figure much like the mythic Merlin, whose business it is to gently guide me toward the truth. My fantasy involves a mentor, master guide, compassionate being who walks beside me, neither of us seeming to set the pace, neither forcing nor dragging the speed, moving along at a mindful stroll and noticing things together. There are times when I point things out to the teacher and times when I sense the teacher directing my attention."
Book seeking publication
Published by Cezanne's Carrot in the Fall, 2008 issue.
winner of the nonfiction editor’s prize
An exploration of the concept of prayer, suggesting simple communion.
“Perhaps the heavens, like caring parents, just want to hear from us”.
(Published in the online Journal Cezanne’s Carrot, Spring ’09)
“There is a point in a singer’s voice, between upper and lower register, where the voice breaks, where the instrument must shift. A similar threshold exists in my own soul, where I move from the power of thought and action to the power of prayer. It is a place I return to often.”
A treatise on visitation dreams, those in which one believes one has been visited by a departed spirit.
“I love such stories. I hope, by the end of my life, to have collected such a comfortable pile of them that I can tuck in amid them like a puppy with its litter, and drift dreamily into the everlasting.”
A piece on Mother's Day, which suggests we take another look at the American holiday by honoring mothers around the world. The essay was published in the online journal, Read The Spirit. click on the link below to read
http://www.readthespirit.com/
(published in the journal Big Muddy)
The story of an African American woman who worked for my family when I was a child in the late fifties, early sixties in Louisville, Kentucky.
“All of the years spent with our family without being part of our family. All the days and nights of invisibility. That I had ever let her slip from such a beloved central figure to such a distant and sporadic concern. I knew better. I was born knowing better.”
A short history of brief moments of awareness.
“There have been a number of instances where I believe I have been given a glimpse into the intricate workings of the heavens, where the Beloved has tipped his hand, so to speak, and I have been allowed to see the machinations of the perfect design. I imagine these glimpses are judged to be just the right size for me, for though these occurrences have not been earth-shaking and huge, worthy of a printed pamphlet, they have seemed to me as full of the truth of an ever-present divinity as the night sky is of stars.”
A testament to my childhood exposure to a grandmother’s unorthodox spiritual thinking.
“Even with this early indoctrination, it has taken me over forty years to trust this world of spirit aid so entirely that I can honestly say that I do not live in a world of random occurrences, chance encounters, of isolation. I do not live in the world in which I believe most people to live. I live in a world where the spirit in all life is transcendent and matter cannot matter without it, and where the growth of that ever-rising spirit is the central reason for our presence here. I live in a world where the progress of my own small spirit may be as important as the progress of the human spirit in its entirety, essential to the ordering of the universe, and therefore closely watched and guided.”
A picture of my mother and her graceful acceptance of Alzheimer’s disease.
“I had a dream the other night that my mother stood before me with precious gems shining throughout her body. In this dream I was given to understand that we are all born with these jewels inside of us, but that over a lifetime, dust will collect on them. However, if we are careful to try and discover our true selves, to strip away the extraneous, we will end up not only clearing the dust from these gems but polishing them so that they sparkle with great brilliance. My mother’s collection of rubies and emeralds, sapphires and diamonds glittered as if just created.”
Culling a few reality-bending anecdotes from my life and others', this essay extols the ability of the unexplainable to melt our frozen belief systems.
“I sense my own belief system slowly unveiling like an oil painting. Some days it’s newly painted, alive and wet with fresh, bright colors and other days, having been abandoned for a while, it appears dry and crusty. When this canvas begins to look crumbly and neglected like an old wall, some baffling occurrence will inevitably come along to confound me. I am grateful for this aid, preferring to live with a measure of mystery about me, believing this to be the possible breeding ground for enlightenment.”