Thirst

“I cannot remember how I felt when the light went out of my eyes. I suppose I felt it was always night and perhaps I wondered why the day did not come.” Helen Keller

Helen Keller, a bright and interactive toddler, fell ill with ‘brain fever’ when she was nineteen months old. Her parents thought she might die, but she did not. When she recovered, she could not see or hear. Waking up to a dark, silent world, she often grabbed and screamed and thrashed her way through the next five years, while in the world of light and sound, her parents continued to love her and protect her from her own destructive fury.

Many of the spiritual teachings I read would say Helen’s story is reenacted with each new birth. I think of my own bad behavior, the too many times I’ve felt thwarted, thrown tantrums, large and small, snatched at relationships or food or books or ideas or new clothes, trinkets, gadgets, or experiences for comfort. I would have used alcohol or drugs (I was a dedicated cigarette smoker) if only I had the capacity for it. Looking back, I realize at those times I felt alone, separated from some bright love I longed for with all my soul. Most of my life I have searched for the language of love and truth, a language which would connect me with the larger universe and with my neighbor, with my children, husband, parents, friends. When I can’t connect, often I get mad. More often I get sad.

I believe the spiritualists. I believe the world of absolute love, friendship, and communication…communion…surrounds us, even though we are deaf and blind to it. But I want more than to believe it. I want to experience it. Others have experienced a reality greater than the one we normally see, or at least reported they have. I know because I keep tabs.

Once my husband, who had been practicing meditation in our back yard, sat on the deck outside of his office and smoked a cigarette. The building next to him dissolved, and he could see, not bricks and mortar, but shimmering energy, a reality which he says underlies the seemingly solid form of the bricks and mortar. He stopped his back yard meditating immediately. He felt he couldn’t work in the corporate world if he couldn’t see the corporeal world which housed it. He knew the energy was no more real than the bricks, but he will always have the knowledge of the brief moment the veil covering our work-a-day world lifted, and he was shown more.

A man I know works in a liquor store. One day while he was updating the books, he was enveloped in a white light. “What did you do,” we asked. He said, “Kept working until it went away.” He plans to have his eyes checked, but since the white light has never returned, he keeps putting the examination off. I think he, no matter how reluctantly, glimpsed the Other World.

The daughter of a friend said she meditates. She had been troubled by her childhood religious tradition. Once in a meditation she ‘saw’ a clear light, and knew Jesus was in the light. She was miffed. He laughed. “I’m not like you think,” he said. “I’m like you.” Then she was washed with an incredible sense of peace and love. On another occasion the walls of her bedroom dissolved, much the way the building did for my husband. Like him, she was a bit daunted.

The woman who worked for my father took off too often for my taste, though she was wonderful in many respects. When she missed one more Monday, I prodded her for details. She had not been sick. She had been to church in Houston, Texas. No, it wasn’t a church group trip. Finally she told me the whole story. God had told her to go to Houston. He spoke to her in voice just like hers and mine. A real voice. She and her husband drove all day Saturday to get there. God hadn’t revealed the exact location of where she was headed, or the reason for the trip. He said she would recognize the destination. Once in Houston, she told her husband to exit the interstate. They pulled into the parking lot of a McDonald’s. On one side was a Days’ Inn. On the other was a church. The woman knew they had arrived. They ate burgers, slept in the Days’ Inn, and went to church the next morning. They joined the congregation in the fellowship hall after the sermon. A parishioner came through the crowd. My friend recognized her, though she had never seen her before. “God sent me to tell you that you are making the right decision. You must do what you’ve been resisting,” my friend said. The woman from the church began crying. She had been praying so long for God to send her guidance she could believe.

My stepdaughter tells me when she meditates she ‘sees’ a ball of radiating energy, and knows everything emanates from the same source of energy. One internet acquaintance tells me she has caught glimpses of the Other World since she was a child. Another friend meditates, too. She is guided in her life’s path with symbols and flashes of phrases. When she follows this direction, her path smoothes out before her.

These are not by any means all the accounts of which I have read or heard, and does not include the flashier incidences of famous and minor mystics who received direct transmission of “the peace that passeth all understanding.”

This is what I want and have not received: the peace that passeth all understanding. I have moments of a sense of space, which brings with it an easing. For some of those moments I am so grateful I almost swoon….as if I am on the crest of a cosmic roller coaster, and the world as I know it is about to fall away. For others I feel as if I am afloat in a field of possibility I would call Love.

You would think that would be enough. You would be wrong.

My spiritual teachings say consistently the Voice of God will give me specific directions. Have I heard the Voice of God? No. What I do hear is a small, quiet voice which if spoken aloud, would sound just like my own. I am not reassured. If I already knew the answers, I wouldn’t be seeking them in prayer.

A childhood friend developed paranoid schizophrenia in his late teens. In his thirties, he used to drop by my house and talk about his instructions from God. He was to wash the world in the Blood of the Lamb. “The problem is I can’t be sure if it’s God or the Devil,” he would say. “If I’m ever sure it’s God, I’m going to have to do it.” It’s the message of War and the Sword we have heard since the advent of even a notion of God. With relief I do trust my spiritual teachings, which says everybody wins. If anyone must lose, I may be sure the Voice of God isn’t the one I’m hearing.

But like my childhood friend, I want to be sure the Voice I am hearing is God. Or some sign, maybe not the complete dissolution of worlds the renowned mystic Paramahansa Yogananda saw, or even the walls of the building next door or my room. I don’t even require a burning bush. And if I heard a Voice, just like yours and mine, directing me on a mission with only the name of a large city as my instructions, I might be a wee bit recalcitrant. But Jesus in a clear light, flooding me with love, even for a moment, would be a moment to cherish as I plodded my way forward. A white light would be nice, a ball of energy, or a Voice, not my own, giving me specific instructions about how God expects me to do Her Will today.

Oswald Chambers, in My Utmost for His Highest, says wanting that Voice of Direction is spiritual impertinence; “you are expecting God to tell you to do a big thing, and all He is telling you to do is to ‘come.’” Chambers also says God’s silence is His first sign of intimacy, for when God graces you with His silences, you are moving into a deeper level of communion where, without pretty pictures of reassurance, you can still move in this world with perfect trust that God has heard you.

Jacques Lusseyran, blinded when he was eight, learned to move through the world with that perfect trust. Instead of darkness, he discovered Light, a Light he needed as much as air. “There was no way out of it,” he said in his autobiography, And There Was Light. “I was the prisoner of light. I was condemned to see.” When he was afraid, the light disappeared. When he “hesitated, calculated, thought about the wall, the half opened door, the key in the lock...” objects reached out to trip him. Anger, impatience, being anxious to win, to be first, becoming jealous or unfriendly, all locked him into a world dark and hostile. “But when I was happy and serene, approached people with confidence and thought well of them, I was rewarded with light.” Jacques did not need a sign, or a seeing eye dog, or to have his physical sight miraculously restored.. “I always knew where the road was open and where it was closed,” he said. “I had only to look at the bright signal which taught me how to live.”

But I, a seeing woman, still feel blind. Because I can’t see Jacques Lusseyran’s sure Light, I long for Word from God.

“God speaks to you all the time,” my stepdaughter said. She means through other people, and that is true. I’ll be barreling along, sulky and grim, when something happens, a word is spoken, usually by someone whom I’ve suspected of being in that moment a drab, bitter, hard pebble of a person. My world cracks, and God’s generosity shines though.

At those times I feel about God’s Education the way Helen Keller, in The Story of My Life, spoke of the gift of language Anne Sullivan gave to her. Helen had been learning to spell words with her fingers, “monkey-like” and without comprehension of any meaning behind them. Miss Sullivan had been trying, without success, to make Helen understand the difference between mug and water; then she tried to help Helen realize the word for doll applied to both her old rag doll and her new china doll. In exasperation Helen broke her china doll, and was glad the source of her irritation was destroyed. Miss Sullivan did not give up. She didn’t punish Helen for her tantrum. Instead, she took her outside, which delighted the child. She took her to the well house. There she placed one of Helen’s hands under the spout as the water gushed out. In Helen’s other hand, Miss Sullivan spelled the word ‘water.’ “Suddenly I felt a misty consciousness of something forgotten—a thrill of returning thought; and somehow the mystery of language was revealed to me,” Helen said. “I knew then that “w-a-t-e-r” meant the wonderful cool something that was flowing over my hand. That living word awakened my soul, gave it light, hope, joy, set it free.”

She went back to the house, eager to learn the word for every object she touched. That night she went to bed, her world blossoming with words, and thoughts behind the words, and “for the first time longed for a new day to come.”

When God speaks to me through this solid world around me, like Helen Keller, I am washed in the Living Word. The world which had taunted me takes on new meaning, one I am eager to learn. Like Jacques Lusseyran, my step is light, my foot is sure, and I, too, can move around obstacles with ease. Then I begin thinking again. Once more I am blind and vexed.

“Why don’t you speak to me?” I cry to the Holy Spirit, the name with which my spiritual teaching refers to the Voice of God.

I speak to you through your writing, a voice said today. It was a small voice, with space surrounding it, the voice I have heard clearly in my head, the voice I so often discount because it seems to be mine. It’s true. Whatever I write stays with me. Over and over events happen, illustrating something I’ve recently explored with keyboard and words, and the correlation surprises me.

I was chagrined, but not mollified. “How can I trust you?” I asked. Trust me until I’m wrong, the voice said.

Suddenly I am aware I am the child of God. Why wouldn’t God speak to me in my voice? Is not my voice in His service? What measure do I have to mistrust it? I am reminded of my deafness, my blindness, and God’s immense, reassuring silence. In the enormity of that silence I must be still and listen. Who would God send to call me home, except His children, my sisters, my brothers? What Voice would He use but theirs, and mine? If I were given a cherished moment to carry with me as I plod my way forward, would that moment become my treasure, in place of God’s Living Word? Would I discover what I thought was a jewel had become a boulder? What need have I of flashy tricks and fancy illusions when goodness and mercy surround me, and God is with me always, sustaining me with joy? And in this day, God blesses me with His silence.

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Both Jacques Lusseyran and Helen Keller present me a metaphor for seeking my Voice and my Light, more complete than any I can articulate. Below are excerpts from their autobiographies:

“A light so continuous and so intense was so far beyond my comprehension that sometimes I doubted it. Suppose it was not real, that I had only imagined it. Perhaps it would be enough to imagine the opposite, or just something different, to make it go away. So I thought of testing it out and even of resisting it.

At night in bed, when I was all by myself, I shut my eyes. I lowered my eyelids as I might have done when they covered my physical eyes. I told myself that behind these curtains I would no longer see the light. But light was still there, and more serene than ever, looking like a lake at evening when the wind has dropped. Then I gathered up all my energy and will power and tried to stop the flow of light, as I might have tried to stop breathing.

What happened was a disturbance something like a whirl pool. But the whirlpool was still flooded with light. At all events I couldn’t keep this up very long, perhaps only for two or three seconds. When this was going on I felt a sort of anguish, as though I were doing something forbidden, something against life. It was exactly as if I needed light to live—needed it as much as air. There was no way out of it. I was the prisoner of light. I was condemned to see.

As I write these lines, I have just tried the experiment again, with the same result, except that with the years the original source of light has grown stronger.

At eight I came out of this experiment reassured, with the sense that I was being reborn. Since it was not I who was making the light, since it came to me from outside, it would never leave me. I was only a passageway, a vestibule for this brightness. The seeing eye was in me.

Still, there were times when the light faded, almost to the point of disappearing. It happened every time I was afraid.

If, instead of letting myself be carried along by confidence and throwing myself into things, I hesitated, calculated, thought about the wall, the half-opened door, the key in the lock; if I said to myself that all these things were hostile and about to strike or scratch, then without exception I hit or wounded myself. The only easy way to move around the house, the garden or the beach was by not thinking about it at all, or thinking as little possible. Then I moved between obstacles the way they say bats do. What the loss of my eyes had not accomplished was brought about by fear. It made me blind.

Anger and impatience had the same effect, throwing everything into confusion. The minute before I knew just where everything in the room was, but if I got angry, things got angrier than I. They went and hid in the most unlikely corners, mixed themselves up, turned turtle, muttered like crazy men and looked wild. As for me, I no longer knew where to put hand or foot. Everything hurt me. This mechanism worked so well that I became cautious.

When playing with my small companions, if I suddenly grew anxious to win, to be the first at all costs, then all at once I could see nothing. Literally I went into fog or smoke.

I could no longer afford to be jealous or unfriendly, because, as soon as I was, a bandage came down over my eyes, and I was bound hand and foot and cast aside. All at once a black hole opened, and I was helpless inside it. But when I was happy and serene, approached people with confidence and thought well of them, I was rewarded with light. So is it surprising that I loved friendship and harmony when I was very young?

Armed with such a tool, why should I need a moral code? For me this tool took the place of red and green lights. I always knew where the road was open and where it was closed. I had only to look at the bright signal which taught me how to live.”
Jacques Lusseyran, And There Was
Light ,p. 19-21

“Have you ever been at sea in a dense fog, when it seemed as if a tangible white darkness shut you in, and the great ship, tense and anxious, groped her way toward the shore with plummet and sounding line, and had no way of knowing how near the harbour was. “Light! give me light!” was the wordless cry of my soul, and the light of love shone on me in that very hour.

….The morning after my teacher came she led me into her room and gave me a doll….When I had played with it a little while, Miss Sullivan slowly spelled into my hand the word “d-o-l-l.” I was at once interested in this finger play and tried to imitate it. When I finally succeeded in making the letters correctly I was flushed with childish pleasure and pride. Running downstairs to my mother I held up my hand and made the letters for doll. I did not know that I was spelling a word or even that words existed; I was simply making my fingers go in monkey-like imitation. In the days that followed I learned to spell in this uncomprehending way a great many words, among them pin, hat, cup and a few verbs like sit, stand, and walk. But my teacher had been with me several weeks before I understood that everything has a name.

One day, while I was playing with my new doll, Miss Sullivan put my big rag doll into my lap also, spelled “d-o-l-l” and tried to make me understand “d-o-l-l” applied to both. Earlier in the day we had had a tussle over the words “m-u-g” and “w-a-t-e-r.” Miss Sullivan had tried to impress it upon me that “m-u-g” is mug and that “w-a-t-e-r” is water, but I persisted in confounding the two. In despair she had dropped the subject for the time, only to renew it at the first opportunity. I became impatient at her repeated attempts and, seizing the new doll, I dashed it upon the floor. I was keenly delighted when I felt the fragments of the broken doll at my feet. Neither sorrow nor regret followed my passionate outburst. I had not loved the doll. In the still, dark world in which I lived there was no strong sentiment or tenderness. I felt my teacher sweep the fragments to one side of the hearth, and I had a sense of satisfaction that the cause of my discomfort was removed. She brought me my hat, and I knew I was going out into the warm sunshine. This thought, if a wordless sensation may be called a thought, made me hop and skip with pleasure.

We walked down the path to the well-house, attracted by the fragrance of the honeysuckle with which it was covered. Some one was drawing water and my teacher place my hand under the spout. As the cool stream gushed over one hand she spelled into the other the word water, first slowly, then rapidly. I stood still, my whole attention fixed on the motions of her fingers. Suddenly I felt a misty consciousness of something forgotten—a thrill of returning thought; and somehow the mystery of language was revealed to me. I knew then that “w-a-t-e-r” meant the wonderful cool something that was flowing over my hand. That living word awakened my soul, gave it light, hope, joy, set it free. There were barriers still, but barriers that could in time be swept away.

I left the well-house eager to learn. Everything had a name, and each name gave birth to a new thought. As we returned to the house every object which I touched seemed to quiver with life. That was because I saw everything with the strange, new sight that had come to me. On entering the door I remembered the doll I had broken. I felt my way to the hearth and picked up the pieces. I tried vainly to put them together. Then my eyes filled with tears; for I realized what I had done, and for the first time I felt repentance and shame.

I learned a great many new words that day. I do not remember what they all were; but I do know that mother, father, sister, teacher were among them—words that were to make the world blossom for me, “like Aaron’s rod, with flowers.” It would have been difficult to find a happier child than I was as I lay in my crib at the close of that eventful day and lived over the joys it had brought me, and for the first time longed for a new day to come.
Helen Keller, The Story of My Life, p. 35-37

Invitational

My stepdaughter asked me to go to a Barrage performance in a town fifty miles away. “We can go out to eat, and have girly night,” she said.

Sweet….but fifty miles away, for a show that didn’t start until 7:30 at night? Just what was Barrage? Would my snoring disturb the rest of the audience?

I thought about it. My daughter recently separated from her husband, and we haven’t made time to talk. She might need support, or at the least I could satisfy some motherly curiosity. I make farther trips for other people all the time…going with this neighbor to the doctor, picking that friend up at the airport. If she had said, “I want to go, and I can’t go alone,” my answer would have been yes. Girlfriend is my best role. What she said was, “Do you want to go?”

No. Yes? I decided to ask for a miracle...remembering with miracles everybody wins.

I thought of the disciple of the Swami Sri Yukteswar Giri who barely missed the train for a festival she wanted desperately to attend. At the station she cried out to the Swami, miles away at the festival, to help her with her dilemma. The train stopped, then rolled backwards to fetch her. When she arrived at the Swami’s compound, she thanked him for his help. He suggested in the future arriving at the station a few minutes earlier might be less dramatic.

Most people don’t require a miracle in order to decide whether to accept an evening out, but my spiritual study says there is no order of difficulty with miracles, so I figure there is no order of magnitude, either. I had conflicting interests. The sum of the parts really is less than the whole when you don't want all the parts, which meant to me since I didn't want it all, I didn't know what I did want. Why not make miracles the grounding principle for living my best life?

“I really want to see this troupe,” she said.

“Okay,” I said. She had appealed to The Girlfriend, and The Girlfriend doesn’t rely on miracles. She is putty for any person who has a need she can fix. “Let’s do it.” But it didn’t feel okay.

“Why do I get the feeling you’re not real committed to this?” she said. “E-mail me when you’re sure.”

For two days I waited for word from the Higher Intelligence. The day of the performance I broke. I e-mailed her: “And where do you stand on Barrage? I've been so ambivalent on that one, I turned it over to the universe, but kept expecting the skies to part and the best answer for all to be broadcast.”

She wrote me back. She was tired and was heading out of town for the week-end. No hundred mile trip for her tonight, maybe we could eat out, maybe the Mexican place?

Yes, on eating out. No, on Mexican. I had my perfect answer, and I didn’t need a miracle for deciding where not to eat. The Mexican place was the only restaurant where my husband does eat, and was definitely off the girly night list.

My husband had been checking with me on our plans. He hates for me to be on the road after dark, so I figured he would be happy with the dinner in town. “Am I invited?” he asked. He rarely initiates a social occasion out. How could I say no? “Yes,” I said. But my heart wanted girly night. This was not my perfect answer. “Where are you eating?” he said. “Mexican,” I said. “Where else would we eat if you’re invited?” This was definitely an imperfect answer, but I am The Girlfriend. Pleasing everyone else has been my stock-in-trade. I know most people outgrow this trait. We all have our issues.

I thought about it. I have been working at telling the truth. I always thought I told the truth, mostly; maybe I hedged numbers when I related an incident, said somebody did something five times when they really did it four, but otherwise, I pretty much stuck to the facts. Only I have discovered The Girlfriend will tell the truth when she tells, but often she doesn’t tell. My practice kicked in. “About supper,” I said. “I don’t want Mexican. The cheese is always bad on Thursday.” That’s true. It is. We didn’t eat out on my birthday because we only eat Mexican out and my birthday was on a Thursday and the cheese….never mind. "We're going to the Crystal, if you want to come." I told the truth, but not the whole hog truth. I didn’t say I wanted girly night, but I needed to leave something for God to do.

Which isn’t quite true. I knew his answer when I asked. He’s a great husband and an excellent friend. I didn’t need to throw his gender in his face. I figured if he surprised me and said yes, that was the answer from God.

He said no. He is more used to making up his own mind than I am. “But ask her how Pistachio is doing.” He is curious, too, but he has his source for getting information. Guess who Pistachio is and who is the source.

At last I had my miracle. Girly night in town, no Mexican. My husband didn’t have to worry about us being on the road. We would eat Mexican tomorrow night, when the cheese was fresh. This felt right. Everybody wins.

But the real miracle is this: I am learning to speak my truth. With truth, no matter what the outcome, everybody wins. Maybe next time, I’ll tell it all. If I don’t know it all, I’ll know Who to ask. Camellia

Getting to Here from There

Violet and William Kaczmark of Florissant, Missouri headed out for a family party one Saturday and got lost. Violet, 83, wanted to stop and ask directions. William, 81, refused. For nearly twenty-four hours they drove, stopping only for gas.

My first husband once got lost in a minor city in Louisiana. “Ask directions,” I urged. He, like William Kaczmark, refused. At one point he was reduced to wishing a flood would wipe out the city. He would have rather had an entire population struck dead than to ask a convenience store clerk which turn would take us in the right direction.

I chalked his stubbornness up to personality peculiarities until I went with my second husband and his brother to locate a family cemetery. We circled around the countryside for a good while, neither of them willing to find a local who could direct us. When they stopped for gas, I went into the little country store under the pretext of getting a Coke. I asked the man behind the counter which way we should go, and he told me. I wasn’t sure that the guys weren’t going to think I cheated by asking, and so would keep rambling until some cemetery, any cemetery, appeared. But I finally understood: Men don’t ask directions.

What do directions have to do with the spiritual path? For me it’s simple, and not just a guy problem. Often, as long as I can gas up and chug along, I keep puttering on a route which will get me nowhere, doing more of what got me so lost to begin with, hoping to recognize my destination if I arrive.

You would think by now I would instantly recognize this method is not only futile, but silly, because for me there really is a better way. Miracles. To me miracles are asking God, the Universe, a Higher Power, a Greater Intelligence for a different way of looking at where I am, for help to see what I can not now see. Each time I am able to do this I am given an answer, one much better than any I have been able to devise with my own, lonely, limited perception.

Take the kitten I found recently. I couldn’t keep it. I had already tried to find homes for kittens earlier, and knew the difficulties involved in private placement. The pound…well, it does what it can, but I know there is a lot it can’t do. I did remember to turn this kitten and its well-being over to God, and I also peddled it from door to door, guided from one animal-loving neighbor to the next. I refused to go to houses where I knew the kitten might not fare well, or to try to guilt a susceptible party into taking it, and thus transfer my burden. I got pretty disgusted along the way, thinking that what was futile and silly was my behavior. A grown-up simply must have better things to do with her time. But I had made it my intention to trust God that day. The kitten was taken in at the last house on my list, people I originally suspected would not be physically able to care for it. Not only did they want this little kitten, they wanted one more.

Maybe to you, this story sounds as if I got lost on the road and forgot to ask directions. No. I had turned the problem over to the Supreme Navigator. A friend told me, "I am more of the "prayer moves mountains, but you should keep pushing while you are praying" school.” I told her I thought a frumpy 55 year-old woman pushing a kitten off on the neighbors was pushing on the mountain. But more than that, I had been reminded of how miracles work.

According to my spiritual study, miracles do not depend on the magical powers of wishful thinking, or of any particular rituals. I was reminded miracles never take from one person while giving to another. Having requested, I can be sure I will be given the means by which the miracle is accomplished. My spiritual study tells me when I am not relying on myself to find the miracle, I am fully entitled to receive it when I request it, and that I should not be satisfied with less than the perfect answer.

The new kitty parents stopped a couple of days ago to tell me about the kitten’s progress. Not only was she thriving, but they adopted another one, one I already knew about. Why? Because I had dropped by a vet’s office (not my regular one) to pick up some dog food when a woman came in with a cat who had ridden to her office on the motor of her truck. I gave her my neighbors’ name. They did want the cat, and they said they were also adopting a friend’s soon-to-be homeless cat. No more, they said. They now had a full house.

And I was reminded, not only is God’s answer perfect, it is abundant, more than I could have asked for.

When I asked for a miracle, I wasn’t given a map. I was given a way. If I had done it on my own, I might have put the kitten back where I found it, taken it to the pound and let them do the dirty work for me, kept it even though I had all the pets I could manage, bullied someone else into taking it, given it to someone I knew couldn’t take care of it. I would have kept driving without asking for directions, which I have done plenty of times in the past.

When the Greater Intelligence gives me an answer, the Voice does not sound like Charleton Heston saying, “Lock and load.” I have to be alert. God might be speaking to me through my neighbor, or the person I’m entangled with. Maybe through the clerk in a convenience food store.

Or through an ominous looking stranger in a parking lot in a city far from my own town. That happened once during a particularly stressful period. A man who looked as if he could mug me asked as he was passing by, “Are you going to make it?” Maybe the stress had already driven me crazy, because I answered him. “I can only hope,” I said. I hurried on, afraid he might want to start conversing, when I heard him yell, “Stop!” Instead of bolting for my car like a sane person, I did stop. I turned to face him. I could not quite comprehend what he was telling me, but instead of nodding my head in agreement and making a break for it, I asked him to repeat himself. “Prayer,” he said. “Hope and prayer. Remember. It takes both.”

If I am particularly obtuse, if I have forgotten it takes both hope and prayer, sometimes God has to speak to me the way He did to William Kaczmark. A stranger who heard the missing persons report observed the Kaczmarks’ vehicle weaving erratically between lanes. He got them to pull over. Then he grabbed the keys and called the police. Violet said if the stranger hadn’t stopped them, they would still be lost.

So it really is not just guys who are challenged when it comes to asking directions. Any time I think I can bull my way through a situation based on sheer perseverance, I’m bound to make a bad situation worse. I’ve found it does take hope and prayer. That’s when I need to ask for directions. I need to ask for a miracle. I’m going to be lost until I do.

One of Life's Little Lessons...

Last year for Christmas my sister gave me a basket full of kitchen gadgets and four 'recipes in a jar'….jars full of the ingredients for pasta and for cookies. The cookies were whole grain chippers. We ate through the pasta pretty quickly. We don’t often eat cookies, and the jar sat on the shelf, looking pretty. The first week in November I got a hankering for something sweet. I pulled the jar down and whipped up some cookies. They would have been wonderful except something, probably the oatmeal, was rancid. Into the trash with the batch of them.

The morals of this story are evident: Never confuse decorative and delicious. Goodness can't be hoarded. Better to be fat last winter than disappointed this fall. The Universe can give you a gift, all ingredients and instructions included, only if you are willing to receive it. Camellia

P. S. Does anybody have the recipe for whole grain chippers? Being denied, I now have a craving.

Lights, Action, Camera/Cut

Researchers at the University of Rochester set ferrets to watching the movie Matrix, then measured the neural patterns in the ferrets’ visual cortex. Don’t worry if you don’t really know much about neural patterns, or you only have the vaguest idea a ‘visual cortex’ might be brain related (it is), or how you feel about the reality-altering Matrix, though exploring all those lines of thought are attractive. Today I want to talk about the results of the experiment: neural patterns in the visual cortex of adult ferrets correlated with the images they viewed. Not so with the young ferrets…which indicated, at least in ferrets, that young and old don’t comprehend what they are seeing in the same way.

But the experiment went further. Once the movie was over, the ferrets were placed in a darkened room. The researchers discovered the young ferrets’ brains did not keep working as if they were processing visual information, but the adult ferrets’ visual cortex kept working at 80 percent, only 20 percent less than when they were actually watching the movie.

Michael Weliky, associate professor of brain and cognitive science at the University of Rochester, says this study suggests the brain is doing 80 percent of its processing without any immediate, concrete visual data, processing which isn’t necessary for survival, since young ferrets don’t do it and still manage to breath in and out.

After reading about this study, I immediately incorporated it into the wash of ideas I’ve been gathering over the years, reconfirming my own superstitions: When we’re young, we don’t really have a fixed concept of what the world is about. As we grow, we make up a movie, playing it over and over again, elaborating, changing details, enhancing. Situation by situation we take external circumstances and adapt them to fit the reality we’ve already established in our brains. I know this is a slippery concept, but think about it. How else could your cousin have seen something encouraging enough in that scoundrel to have actually married him?

Check it out. The next time you are doing a mundane task—probably not folding clothes, because from what I hear, nobody gets around to actually folding the clothes any more— but anything else—rinsing the dishes, say. Try to notice your brain. What’s it doing? If you were a young ferret, it might be noticing how warm the water is, or observing the way the bubbles collect on the surface of glass. Of course young ferrets might have discovered the fun of splashing water, or wish to see how far a plate might sail across the kitchen…okay, my analogy is running away with me. But what are you doing, you who are neither ferret nor quite so young? Making a grocery list? Trying to explain to an ex-spouse how certain behaviors are really harmful to the kids? Wondering why you are doing the dishes—alone—again?

What happens when you just wash dishes? What happens when you walk to the car, you just walk to the car, aware of the leaves crunching under your feet, the dark clouds gathering in the west, the light haloing the edges.

I’ve tried it, hoping to find the joy the spiritualists talk about. I discovered I was more aware of the world about me, but for the most part I was still grim. One day I realized though I had stopped the movie in my head, I had retained the main character—me. And Me was grumpy…there were no victims to save, no villains to vanquish, no great feats to perform. A ferret brain with nothing to fiddle with. Who wouldn’t be grim?

What I do most of the time, even in my sleep, is rerun the movie. Like the ferrets, we are continually making the world in which we live…making it up with bits of that and pieces of this, matching them with the reality we’ve already constructed in our heads. But is the world in our heads the one we want to live in?

One day, for a brief moment, I gave up the Me. Now I was in the day, the walk, the step. And this is what happened when I gave up the movie and the concept of the main character… I can’t describe it. No drum rolls, no heralds of angels, no dissolving of the corporeal bindings of the material world. Nothing like the big-time mystics experience. Maybe peace. That’s as good a word as any. Peace and space. When I’m not running the movie of Me, external events still continue, but now, if I’m coming from peace and space, my ferret brain is still, peaceful, and I have left enough space for a different reality to emerge.

Aunt Camellia's Rules for MOPB

MOPB—Minding Other People’s Business—is a spiritual path as much as any other, and Aunt Camellia, Crone Extraordinaire, is the expert due to background, focus, and avocation. She issues from a long line of Tenders of How Things Ought to Be. Many a family member has traveled to far climes to escape the scrutiny of the Tenders. As a cousin said of one of the escapees, “If she didn’t want us talking about her, she shouldn’t lead such an interesting life.” Aunt Camellia also spent her youth and a long time after observing. Other people seemed to know the right way of doing things, and she felt if she looked closely enough, she would know, too. When that didn’t work, and Camellia found the enjoyment of outrageous behavior of her own wasn’t sustainable, she began reading, searching for great words to lead her on a better path. Now, after nearly a whole lifetime on this journey, Aunt Camellia has codified the process of minding other people’s business for herself, and will gladly share her insights with you.

Rule 1—Aunt Camellia often finds herself taking more than merely entertainment value upon hearing about the to-doings of others. She offers advice, thinks about it, offers it again, keeps thinking about it, offers it…well, you have the picture, and probably have had the benefit of such advice from one of Aunt Camellia’s many counterparts. Aunt Camellia has become, as the Buddhists say, attached to both the advice and the outcome. Which means, as she has often said without understanding the import of her own words, she is talking to herself. The world is Aunt Camellia’s mirror. When she points a problem out in others, the Universe is drawing her attention to a problem she has with herself. And if she really really doesn’t want to address this problem, telling others how they can fix themselves certainly keeps her too busy from noticing and changing her own behavior. On the spiritual path, when Aunt Camellia finds herself in swivit over other people’s behaviors, she is relieved when she remembers it is all about her. When she can finally muzzle herself and take a deep breath, she can hear all that good advice she has been shoveling out. Aha, she’ll say. And smile, remembering Rule 1—the best advice is given to yourself.

Rule 2—You, dear soul, might come to Aunt Camellia and say, “My life is so unruly, and I really think something must change….here, him, her, them, more, less…etc.” Next to herself, this is Aunt Camellia’s favorite topic, and she will gently answer, “The world is your mirror. What you see outside yourself is merely a reflection of confusion within.” Now you will probably bristle, thinking Aunt Camellia is telling you to stay and suffer in some untenable situation. Not so, and she will be glad to discuss this for hours. It’s so much more fun than dusting, especially if coffee and chocolate are included. But in essence the discussion always comes back to Rule 2—when you are in a stew, unless you recognize the thinking which got you there, you can leave, but you will only take the stewpot and the fire with you.

Rule 3—Perhaps you plan on coming to Auntee and saying, “Should I change…here, him, her, them, more, or less…?” No. You don’t have the stamina for it, and you will only come back later whining how nothing worked out. Aunt Camellia can’t abide a whiner (which probably means she is one, but she isn’t handing out advice on whining, so doesn’t have to deal with it herself right now) and will do anything to avoid even the future possibility of listening to one. She firmly believes in Rule 3—if you have to ask permission, don’t do it.

Rule 4—You have just come to Aunt Camellia and said, “I am going to do such and thus..” incredibly stupid thing. If Aunt Camellia has managed to notice you have not asked for discussion, and she is not wrestling with the same idiotic issue herself, she figures it is a done deal. She’ll say, “Have fun.” Because as is stated in Rule 4—if you need the lesson, the Universe will provide it. Just remember, you are about to live an interesting life.

That’s it. Four rules which cover all the bases Aunt Camellia can think of. You might want to keep a copy of these rules in your billfold for a handy reference, in case Aunt Camellia isn't available (she's never learned how to answer her cell phone), and you are in need of some emergency advice. If you are old enough that giving advice is far more interesting than doing the things that generates it, congratulations. You are probably a Crone, and already an expert on Other People’s Business. Feel free to adapt Aunt Camellia’s rules for your own use. If you get them wrong, somebody will tell you about it.

The Power of Prayer

A therapist friend of mine recently told me she sees many anxious clients in her practice. She said she teaches them new language skills, ones which allow them to comfort and reassure themselves. When they use the skills, they are happier and more confident. They have changed their emotions, they have changed their world, and science has the MRIs to prove it.

Unfortunately, what she sees is that these people just plain get tired of practicing new skills. It is work, and even though they like the results, they weary of the effort getting there.

This fits in with my theory, a metaphor if you choose to call it that, of how the world works. Our thoughts are electromagnetic impulses in our brains. We come into this world with certain tendencies, based on genetic and chemical make-up. Influenced by our environment, our genes instruct us to fire off synapses and flood our brain with certain chemicals, reinforcing our view, what we are teaching ourselves about the world. We begin a story line, embellish it, and tell it to ourselves over and over, until this fable we’ve concocted, pumped up by chemicals, entrenches certain habitual reactions, and we think we know reality. If the story becomes problematic enough, we try to change it. But it’s like trying to learn to ride a bicycle from start every morning of the world, and we give up from the fatigue, find ourselves plodding along on our crippled, mental feet, thinking the same old thoughts, getting the same old painful results. But at least it’s something we know. A little truth we can rest on.

Think about it. Think about something you would like to change. Let’s not even go to esoteric personality traits such as anxiety or irritation. Pick something physical. I smoked. I tell people I only smoked for three weeks, and quit every week after that for twenty-five years. I loved smoking. I hated smoking. Smoking made me calm. Smoking made me feel like a no-worth felon. Sometimes I quit for two hours. Sometimes I quit for three weeks. I would cry, I would rage. Where once I smothered my otherness in burning nicotine, I no longer had a defense between me and the prickful world, no pacifier. Even so, once I quit for three years. Why did I go back? I would tire of the effort it took to not smoke, even though during the three smokeless years I could not think about smoking a good deal of the time, and really preferred the not smoking life most of the time. But let something stressful happen, let me get around folks who were having a pleasant social time and drinking, let me surface from a deep concentration and want some instant relaxation, and I thought of my old friend, the cigarette. At those times, I understood when one of my friends told me, “I knew I could choose cocaine or life,” she said. “So I quit. And felt I had chosen second-best.” Finally, the third time the police came to the house in the life of our tempestuous child, I grabbed a friend, jumped in her car, told her to give me a cigarette and dare not to say a word.

How did I finish for good? I reached that juncture. I knew it was cigarettes or life. Still, I could not quit. One day in my back yard, I fell to my knees. Okay, so the yard’s private and nobody could see me. I don’t know exactly what I said, but I imagine it something like this, “I made this addiction, and cannot unmake it, but I am willing to let it go. Please help me.” A great cry from the heart. Then I immediately got up, went to the swing, sat down and lit up.

And it tasted bad. I looked at the smoldering cigarette. I did not want it. I put it out. I’ve never smoked again in my life. I’ve never wanted to.

It did take me about three weeks to get over the ritual aspects, and perhaps some physical side-effects. I was tired. I slept more. I prayed to let go of my thoughts of cigarettes. And they did pass. My husband still smokes. Unlike the previous times, this time his or other people’s smoke didn’t make me nauseous. It didn’t drive me crazy with desire. Once I dreamed I smoked, something which occurred in my past quitting episodes. In the past I would wake up devastated, with the feeling I had lost and cigarettes had won again. This time in the dream I realized I was smoking, and like that morning in the swing, I looked at the cigarette. “It’s just a choice,” I said to myself in the dream, “I can smoke if I want to, or not.” I didn’t want to, not even in the dream. After all those years, I had finally let cigarettes go. I was free.

Now if it worked for cigarettes, why am I still grappling with fat and salt, clutter, anxiety, the need for reassurance and approval? What is it I have not been able to let go of?

I don’t know. I am still struggling in these areas, still practicing, still having some success and some setbacks. But I believe this. I believe change can come, and when it does I won’t have layered new thoughts or new ways to practice over the old ones, though for now the practice may make me stronger. When change comes it will be because I have, with help from an Intelligence greater than I, let go of that which I have made and which no longer works for me. I will have asked, and I will have received. I will have changed my mind.