(A grandson wanted me to start blogging and set me up in 2011 and designed the blog. I posted the foreword from Kiss The Moon in September of 2012 because he thought it was important that readers know how and why I write.
There are new readers not familiar with my writing so I repeat this to answer the question how I keep my faith in Life in the light of chaos. It has not been a walk in the park but a horrendous journey at times but when the dark times lifted it was with a renewed sense of I was not abandoned.
With the coming of my century mark in little more than a decade, I live with a philosophy mended with extra yarn to cover the rips in my life. It has worked for now. I will demand broader horizons in my next address. This time required my very best efforts. I apologize for being no fun but it was what it was.)
Foreword from Kiss The Moon . . .
The sun was bright coming in through the high windows on that first day of English Lit at the University. (I was 18.) The professor was introducing herself to us and I don’t know when my attention wavered, but when I looked down at my paper I found I had written these words, ‘Fear death, ahh I do because I love life so much’! I did not know where these words came from but it was an affirmation and I realized that those words had always been true.
Even today there would be argument as to the source of them. My thoughts mix smoothly with what I consider a given and myself the instrument through which it comes. I know when the work is mine. I also know when a thought is inserted or given. And when one is given, there is a giver.
A leap must be taken when the truth of that statement is faced. It is the reason people go to church on Sunday or to the synagogue on their Sabbath. As a friend said to me it is what we hope is true. Yet when faced day after day with significant events or thoughts, it is a puzzle as to why the evidence does not speak to the person. It will eventually and when it does, it will be the right time.
For me the beginning was in the classroom but took possession of a corner of my mind and stayed there while other things were happening. Though I was always alert to the thoughts that seemed to come from nowhere, there was this portion of me that tested the limits of what was my history
And then one night, while sitting at the desk I found words tumbling over themselves and when I was finished, a poem had been born. I found myself wondering exactly how this all came about. Surely I must have memorized this some long ago. But nowhere could I find this poem. And it was not the kind of work I would have done on my own.
So I read it to the family and they laughed because it was comical but philosophical. And we let it go at that. Nobody of course believed me as to how it came about.
It took a letter to my mother to convince me that there was a Presence in my life. I started the letter and suddenly the words were writing themselves and the missive was one of good thinking and good psychology. And from that point on, the muses, or the Teachers as I often call them, were my companions.
There are those who say that within the layers of the human being there is knowledge and this knowledge rises when stresses demand answers or directions. This could very well be, and I would not argue this point at all.
But when a grateful heart murmurs a thank you and the response in mind is you’re welcome, followed by a sense of rightness and companionship and love, then one knows there is a Presence.
It has been a war of words over a lifetime. A philosophy has been hammered out and though it may not rest comfortably with organized religion, still I have woven a philosophical blanket with mended holes that has managed to keep me warm. It has taken all the years of my life and it has been a hard work.
But I would not have missed a day of it.
(artwork by Claudia Hallissey)