From an Upper Floor

I have been wondering the quality of thought and also if my life could have been spent other than what I have been about.

How much of it designed and designated and how much busy work simply to get through without causing mayhem, or just abandoning commitments and doing my thing, whatever it happened to be.

I remember the hand outstretched after my younger’s birth and giving permission to take it and leave.  But who will take care of the children?  The eternal question with me.  Especially since I gave birth to these three.

When I was told that the Veronica today was not Who I was, in my thinking I was only Who I knew to be and did not know Other.  That’s why what is this life’s participation would not be sitting in the head of Who we Were.  And who I was with the deeds committed before birth would not be committed by the who I am today.

And the qualities of or the character of the then Veronica,  or whoever I was, could be or were as undesirable or hurtful or dastardly as whatever needed to be unlearned by me as well as my chosen ones.  We have a history because as Jesus said, the twig already is bent upon arrival also.

And therefore who is without sin, my Mentor asked.  Who is without sin to cast the first stone.    So he pleaded,  forgive them Father for they know not what they do.  There were few with prior memory.

I am awash. . . because it all makes sense.  And I turn over for what I need to see in a language that I will write today to be understood.  We need language in the vernacular to be an instrument of peace.  I am sure others know this but with me it connects everything in my head.  It makes exquisite sense and the connections are vivid.  I scribed the following (in bold)  May 23, 2020)

It seems like such a large task but it has taken almost a hundred years to learn.  And each step has taken its toll and left you awash again.  Yet you did not dismantle nor abandon.  You stayed the route and continued to love. Who do you know would have stayed?

(most of them did.  My sibling family except those whose lives were turned upside down.  When violence took them or abandoning was survival.  Yet the damage has been great because there was no one to teach or even say with meaning that this too shall pass.  Education,  but even formal education does not give this kind of knowledge.  I don’t know what does because I don’t know what is within the individual to work with the lacks or injustices to remedy what cannot be seen to be remedied.  Sometimes it is simply survival when we leave.)

It is all a matter of who holds the sparklers.  Isn’t it?  (don’t make it sound like a matter of who has suffered enough!  Like how much can you take before you break!  Then it makes it sound like some kind of game to be levied on someone still trying.  Because there is an element of undergirding ethics that Doris Lessing wrote about that laws are not made but are inherent in the nature of the Galaxy or the Universes. . . ..  I think that within each of us is the divine working that pleads with  us to keep loving because worlds are banking their survivals on the each or someone finding the way that will open them for life with Purpose, or Divinity or even Sacredness.  Its Sheen with meaning.)

That caliber of one’s thoughts will attract the caliber of teacher one needs.  Or possibly what think you?

Like Minds. . .

My thoughts rove the ethers
like a magnet pulling
like thoughts to themselves.
The excitement rumbles
through my belly
while heart accelerates its beat
forcing my blood to course
through my body drunkenly.

Heady stuffs
to know that mine is thought
matched by invisible minds. . . .

I swim in conscious waters
resembling earthstone.
Pulsating, yearning, I find it humbling
to think that heaven’s thought

has searched out mine.

Evolution says It has to be taught. . .

It seems like such a small thing, this matter of conscience.  No big deal we think, cause everyone has one, everyone’s born with one, right?  Nada.  Not.  No.  Everyone does not have a conscience which is knowing right from wrong,  or more accurately,  more true from false.

It all has to be taught, like love has to be taught.  But we talk about conscience,  the ability to truth talk, or to feel shame when our behavior is inappropriate  in public or even alone when we violate our belief systems.

Small potatoes?  But we lead countries astray when we hold high positions or families when we are part of them. Or leading students astray when we should set the example: example for truth, facts, behavior.  Simple as that.  Or as complicated.

Having no conscience means that we feel no shame or remorse or even regret when we befoul the value system of the majority, especially when we unite for any cause and we agree on certain principles.  For example, appropriate civil laws of a country are needed for the ongoing peaceful life of all citizens.  Not too much to ask for.

A lot when positions of power, whether ruling heads or courts give favors to friends or those with money, placement above the law.  This does not escape the notice of the rest of us who must obey to the letter of the law or face judgmental predicaments.

The behaviors of those without conscience don’t seem to suffer and their charms defy punishment.  In fact they often boast they can do anything, playing on the secret desires of many who then think that getting away with inappropriate behavior is working smart.  As one of my astute readers suggested,  do we work hard or work smart?

Rules are changing and we should look to where the numbers are growing where knowledge does not allow options to cause harm with no penalties, no consequences anymore.

Because we grow in knowledge where to enhance all life, no matter where that life breathes. is the only option we have because to do otherwise is wrong.

Doing the right thing is what we are taught in kindergarten.  Life, with its Balance or God, will find us in circumstances not as good as we’ve known.  Biblical injunction is fact for those who believe Whose Vengeance it is, (and hovers beneath all knowledge we claim).

This behavior with no conscience has been costly.  It has cut short lives that killed many with crossed signals; taken meaning out of families intent on working hard and flaunting defiance of the laws intending civil unity.

Heaven can only send out souls in the caliber it has received.  Times they are ‘a changing, the bard sang eons ago.  There is a balance to all Life no matter the belief system one calls this Balance.

And I have to say Jane, your words hang on my heart.  Word hard or work smart?  Balance says we have ploughed the hard ground with sweat and Life smiles in favor of the work hard majority.    It seems the playgrounds are closing.

She lamented after birthing eight children. . . and in her last days, was sorry because she knew how difficult life had been for me.  I didn’t know how to love she said.  Nobody taught me.  And with the person who meant so much to her, her mother who did not rescue her, she never knew a mother’s hug nor a beating heart next to her cheek.

And it was another checkmark next to an emotion that has to be learned on this Earth planet.  With due respect to the counselor who ascribed to feelings are not facts, except in the process of learning to trust yourself and they are your feelings.  And trusting your feelings is a great step in learning to trust yourself.

When talking this over with my sister, she said she didn’t believe anyone cannot love a baby when they put that baby in your arms!  There’s a world of unloved babies who grow to be unloved adults who never had a mother’s arms around them with a hug.  Nor a breast against their cheek just to be loved close.

I had no clue when I cut a piece of sour cream coffee cake this morning, it would give rise to tears of memory.  Invited by a neighbor that snowy moving in March day with 3 children to dinner at their home, the first time coffee cake as dessert became special.

She gave me the recipe and another memory of her in tears at my door when she failed a son.  She did not know what to say when his baby died that she never met.  Though she cared for her son, the emotion was not real because the baby was not real.

When his mother died, we met and talked and overcome with emotion, the son was grateful  feelings were still hers.  He was afraid she had none though he was raw with them.  Evidence that those who are born to us sometimes come from different worlds than we do.

We are labeled needy, called drama ridden,  frequently shouted because Ma, she’s crying again!  We remember being loved, somewhere cherished and missing it sorely this time.  But too many neither know of love or close off the channel never wanting to know the pain again of not being loved.

On this Mother’s Day, to those bereft of arms, open yours, embrace those nearest and hold close the babies.  Let them be raised knowing the close presence of a beating heart next to their cheek.

It was an ancient belief that the Mother God would be the healing salve for reconciliation.  Be that Earth God to bring peace on this day.

artwork by Claudia Hallissey

Like Me. . . aged old friends. . . . . 

I had been asked what are my favorite books I go back to time and again.  Once there were friends and loves I phoned and chatted before my hearing deteriorated.  And rather than ask to repeat themselves, now my books become my old friends that I find just as refreshing as I did when first read. And without feeling guilt when I turn each phrase to catch their elusive meaning!

I reread and depend on eye sight and insight through lifetimes learned. Books now refresh thought and reveal themselves deeply as I too reveal myself.  There are contemporaries whose works are always timely.

The essays of Emerson and Thoreau speak to us all in varying degrees.  I say to him Waldo, I hardly knew ye. And Thoreau I admonish for the maxims told to those young who left their commitments to follow their dreams, their imaginations.

Accountability and shared work load was not yet in their lexicons. Authors and audience alike.  Yes, I know, I would spoil their fun.  I know.  Other shoulders carried the work while wild oats was sown; other backs were bent.  Forsooth!

Jane Roberts and the Seth books, whose talent was shared with those of her husband to produce controversial voluminous works causing protest lines around the publishing house.  Comfort zones were upset even then with new thought, yes.

While Doris Lessing and the Shikasta Series introduced those like me to evolution and learning throughout universes under the safe heading of science fiction so we did not have to explain why we danced with Spirits.

Susan Howatch with her Church of England  series told of earthy life and meanderings of those wearing birettas and long skirts  before the scandals of the churches both Catholic and Protestant and Frank Herbert with eloquent memory of his wife produced  the Dune books which my sons said Mother, these are your books.  Chapterhouse Dune was written I swear for me and they all are to this day.

These are my peer group I keep close to my chair.  These are old friends with whom I visit.  My newest visitor is Michael Talbot and his Holographic Universe which affirms for me my thinking since I came into this world without a putting place either for my memories or for myself. The others, the ones with worn out covers where I keep doing reference work, are my oldest friends,  my refuge. . . .along with my mentor. . .

• Refuge In Dreams . . .

In the beginning when I was young
and when I was very cold,
I took my mammoth skin
and drew it closer about me
and found refuge in dreams.                                                                                                           

Like a tourniquet,
it stopped the flow of life out of me.

Now I am old                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           
and I huddle still deeper in my woolen wrap.
Closing my eyes, I discover
refuge again in my dreams.

And find it stops the flow of life out of me.  Again.                                                                                                          

More than a Hope. . . for earth. . .

I grabbed an old yellow tablet to write on and came across a note I had written when I was reading Return To Life by Dr. Jim Tucker.  The note read that observation determines the reality.  Measuring something, I wrote, creates a reality that did not exist before.

Now my  thoughts.  When I made note of that and forgot that I did, tonight (April 30, 2020) it triggered the following which made me find the book (right away!) Holographic Universe by Michael Talbot. This undoes me because I have had no training in physics but in reading this in 2015,  I understood its meaning for me.

Subatomic particles once thought to manifest as waves.  Which for the following reasons they say should not be classified solely as  waves or particles.  But something (or stuffs) known as quanta.  Because the only time quanta manifest as particles is WHEN WE ARE LOOKING AT THEM!   (So when we measure a something and name it creates a reality it did not have before.  It opens a whole new world.

The comment in the book was not what we expect from the natural world but more from magic.   I am in awe that this was awakened in me, to make this connection the minute I saw my note. As I rummaged for the book I said in mind that this is what Michael Talbot said in Holographic Universe.  My knees go weak.

I have used this book as reference since first read.  It explains my world of me to me.  I knew where in the book this topic was.  In minutes I found it.  I have written that when we pray, think, converse in mind, we assume an Other.  This mind companion is our Divine Within, the highest and best we hold as our bar to match our lives to.  All actions, all thoughts, everything.)

I scribed. . .    ‘ We will ask of him how did you spend your days?  And man will say, I work at such and such and have accomplished great things.  But we will say, what did you think?  And what will man answer?  For the heavens know, do they not, what transpires in the mind of man.  

The heavens know.  To resolve issues which plague the heart is the work of man.  We pester the mind with that which has not been resolved and bring forward the issues until man feels possessed.  Try, we say, try.  Resolve them and bring some peace to your life.  But thought, that marvelous process which separates man from the unthinking and no vision creature,  when we see that man disparages this active tool which is his gift,  then heaven laments.

Thoughts will be the wings upon which man will fly.  It will be the culmination of a life’s work and there is nothing else.’

Please, I say, open the books and learn.  Peace will then be more than a hope for Earth.

Since I was a little person, I was conscious in an unconscious way that money was not available.  I remember once arguing with my mother  that it only costs a dime, whatever it was.  And the wise woman said when you don’t have a dime,  a dime is a lot of money.

So I wished for a doll with hair so my wonder was what could I do.  And we ate bread sometimes that came wrapped in yellow-orange cellophane.  So having experience in substitutions, I cut strips of the cellophane and curled it around a pencil and it stuck itself into curls.  I glued them on my bald doll and whoa!  I made curls.

I taught myself many things.  Some were primitive and still are with no innate talent. Some things I learned became quite good simply by practice. Never professional by any stretch of the imagination, but quite good.  Passable.  And they served me.

Like the small cupboard I made for my sweats by building a three shelf bookcase and then putting on shutters which served as doors.  Stained and sanded to complement other room items, it served well.

Some people are averse to substitutes.  Not the real thing they say, always reminding one that they are substitutes.  One can be patient for the real to come along,  but circumstances alter things,  friend Jan often said.  Priority was need and money unavailable.

When I began scribing, I learned that my night travels were welcome.  I visited other worlds and showed how I took what laid about and used in the making of something needed.  Ahhh yes, substitutes!  Whoda’ thunk it?  Except me because it was something I did.

In my Pewabic dream segment I appeared somewhere with a tile and showed the audience what could be done with things borrowed from a future source matched with things unused.  It is done all the time.

The wall quilt piece shown makes me pleased.  As my skills lessen in age I have used other muscles and organs as substitutes.  That word again!.  Fingers go numb because of nerves pressing uncushioned.  Hand and eye coordination is not swift.  Muscles atrophy.  I cannot hold a needle and thread and cannot bend easily anymore.

But like the little engine that could, yes I can, yes I can, my head sings new melodies.  And ideas blossom and keep me fed.  I cropped the quilt’s blue binding so as not to distract from the new materials I made with green scraps for the evergreens and blue for the home.

I am pleased with the free motion quilting background.  It took longer than formerly,  but as Governor Cuomo says all the time,  the new normal is now.  I did this, you can do your thing too.

As long as I breathe this rarified air of my blessed planet,  I will not be a kept woman, but still a contributor.  A small way to be sure,  but a big some thing for me!  Served with a crusty loaf of bread to make grown men cry. . . . .