The Stream of Healing, Remembrance and Awakening

I started the day grumpy but didn't notice until I began interactions with The World. An hour of telephone calls, a stop at the market to pick up cat food, a trip to the office which involved dealings with Russell, Mary and Larry Bird (the cat) and I realized my neck hurt and my mouth was dry. My voice sounded strident and my thoughts were careening inside my head. I felt possessed.

On the way home, traffic was frustratingly sluggish and choppy. A small group of men were gathered around a white van that had rolled into a ditch. A fire truck screamed by. EMTs were pushing a woman out on a stretcher in front of a neighborhood restaurant. On the radio, a local talk show host was trying to stimulate call-ins by making outrageous, misogynist generalizations. Overhead, for the third day, the military boys played with their loud, fast flying machines.

I thought, the whole damn world is possessed!

For several days I've been thinking about giving up cigarettes, starting an exercise regimen, resuming meditation practice, returning to the Kegan-Lahey work, eating better and/or designing formal spreadsheet schedules for piano work and writing. Feeling like there's something I need to do, something I need to change. All the madness in the street today--it's not just me. "Things" are out of balance, out of sync...

Back at home, an hour or so of piano work softened the jagged edge of my mood; but I still felt there was/is more going on, more for me to know or see in this possession, this imbalance in me and the world. I ran the water to wash dishes and looked up--as I always do when petitioning Higher Power for input, guidance, clue... What is here? Help me see It.

The phone rang.

It was the storyteller Opalanga from Colorado. DCE met her a few months ago at the Rocky Mountain Storyteller's gathering and returned to Gulfport visibly deeply impacted by making her acquaintance. She sounded like someone I would like to meet. She sounded like a member of the Tribe.

I recognized the call as response from Higher Power. We talked of many things. I experienced especially high resonance near the end of the call as our cell phones began to break up. She said she would be holding up my continued awareness of the importance of making music to my spiritual health, awareness of the essential balance, nurturance and sustenance it provides. She said she had only this week resumed a meditation practice, holding herself to make meditation as important as brushing her teeth before leaving the house each day.

She said she has begun stopping at yellow lights when she's driving. She said the practice slows her down and this is a good thing. This reminded me of two new practices in my life: paying for things with exact change and always granting entrance to vehicles trying to merge into traffic. Both practices are slowing me down and it feels good.

I'm going to borrow another practice she mentioned: whenever she opens a door, anywhere, she stops and asks Spirit to go before her. I felt that in my bones when she described it.

We talked of many things. Too much to write here. I was the complete opposite of grumpy during the call.

When I got off the phone, I popped in a CD and Joni Mitchell was singing about seeing "through a glass darkly." The lyric comes from the Bible. I looked it up. I don't know why these verses belong in this post but as I read them, they felt like a keenly relevant part of the flowing story of this day.

1 Corinthians 13

1If I speak in the tongues[a] of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.

2If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.


3If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames,[b] but have not love, I gain nothing.

4Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.

5It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.

6Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.

7It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

8Love never fails. ...

9For we know in part and we prophesy in part,

10but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears.


12Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face.
Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.


13And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.