To My Village

There is a lantern in the corner of my mind. I would like it to be shining on a snowy field, lighting a stand of graceful Fir trees, and a horse with a jingle bell collar pulling a sleigh full of over-the-top happy people. (Off to Farmer Gray's birthday party for sure.) Trouble is, they're predicting 70 degrees for Christmas Day here in Virginia - which just isn't right! But we'll deal with it, and hold the dream of a White Christmas, letting the lantern shine on.

Shine on - throughout the village. The village full of my peeps, the family and friends who are all around me - some near and some too far away. All sorts of people live here. A rainbow connection with multicolored people of different faiths, shapes and sizes. Ours is a village full of differences. A village of happy and sad people and people who are just plain in-between any such extremes, which make up the majority, I suspect. The people who color our lives, and those who keep us all on track.

The Holidays, we can agree, are especially a time for children. (We've all been there once upon a time, and that's how we know). And this brings me to the part of my village who have lost children.
It brings me into a kindergarten class full of children, not my own, singing carols, or O'l McDonald or whatever, and the sound of the childish voices that always make me cry - long before my own child was lost. It's just a thing with me. I cry when I hear children singing. It's especially true now.

There is a time to cry. Sometimes alone, and sometimes surrounded by the village. And it's all okay. We'll stop crying when the time is right, and no one knows when that will be. But it will happen. And the village that has been there through the tears will be there to celebrate our new-found happiness in a new-found, and brave new world.

It will happen. It happened when I took the first step into that new world I hadn't asked for, and I realized that I was entering a changed reality that offered new paths to explore, and I had the rest of my life to contemplate and explore everything about that strange reality.

The landscape is different, to be sure. I am different. But I'm alive - with a whole new life ahead of me. And it will be good because, with the help of my village, I will make it so.

That's how it starts.

I've found that it's a decision to remember life as it was, and to seize life as it is now and join it. The black shroud I covered myself with in the beginning was calm, warm, nurturing, and I guess I could say, comfortable. And it was necessary for the healing to begin. It was a dark and sad place. For me, it was not a place I wanted to stay in. It was too sad. I wanted to be away from it, to shed it like a wet, wooley, too tight skin. So, I took the first step out of it, as so many others have done, leaving the depressing cocoon on the ground.

At first I felt nothing like a butterfly. And there were many times I wanted to crawl back in. But my village called me out.

Slowly I began to see beyond the emptiness I had imagined lay ahead, to the roads that lay ahead, gleaming in the weak sunlight that peeked through the branches of winter trees. I noticed that the asphalt on the road ahead was warm, and I took another step towards a new life I surely hadn't asked for, but it was the only one I had.

There were people waiting for me. My family was there and as I walked towards them I realized I loved them fiercely - my friends were there too, and I found I wanted to be with them. I wanted to join the world, to share all of their lives and be a part of them. My life expanded with the realization of how VALUABLE they all are. My love for them expanded as we reached out to each other, and I vowed I would protect and love them all like a ruffled mother hen! My kids have since eased me out of that thought, but not entirely.

Out of my loss has come the realization of how precious all life is. How tenuous. It must be cherished with the single-minded fervor of mother tiger, but just don't let the others know you'll pounce to protect it at any time. That can be scary.

Instead, I'll hike through a canyon, climb a mountain, swim across a river or write a book. I'll reach for all there is. Because life is precious. And if I want to dream of a white Christmas now or in July - I will. I will dance and I will sing anywhere I please. I will try things I've never done before - except sky-diving. And I expect my village to be there too! Skinny dipping anyone?

And when we've all recovered from that euphoria, you may rest assured that when, and if, you're ready to be pulled out of a cocoon, I will be there for you as you have been there for me.

I wish for my whole village, wherever you are, whatever your beliefs are, or are not, the love, peace and joy in my lantern light of Christmas, and join me in raising a glass for all of us when the clock chimes in the New Year!    





 

Premonitions

 We've all wondered about premonitions. I know you've had at least one of these. How did you explain it? Like most people, you probably didn't have what is known as a 'rational' explanation; which may have led you to believe you must be a little 'irrational'. Does that mean you're crazy? You wondered. I don't think so. I believe that to explore this premonition thing, we have to go beyond the physical and the obvious, and what we understand to be 'possible'.

Remember the time you were thinking of someone - perhaps it was someone you hadn't seen in ages, and guess what! The phone rings and it's him. Or her. Your first words might be, "I was just thinking of you!" Or, "We're on the same wavelength, I was just thinking of you!"  Or, as I have said many times, "You must be psychic! I was just thinking of you!" Often, it's someone you haven't seen or thought of in ages. It's not possible!

So, you explore all the possibilities of why that might have happened, and when you can't think of any earthbound explanation like, "I heard your name the other day, and I was wondering how you are." or "Someone mentioned your husband yesterday ..."  When none of this applies, and the only thing you know is that you thought of this person out of the blue, for no reason, right before the phone rang- you have to wonder, What was that about? And even if you had been thinking about that person because you'd heard the name mentioned yesterday or the day before, it still doesn't explain why that person thought of you and called you - right at the time you were thinking about him. When there's no physical explanation, we have to wonder, that whatever 'psychic' means, we might all be a little psychic.

 I believe that we have more than the five physical senses we are taught about on the first day of biology class. There is a sixth sense that is just as strong, and when cultivated, it's ten times more accurate. Some call it Intuition, or Second Sight. It is not physical, it is beyond the physical. Is it your mind playing tricks on you? No. You know of nothing that initiated this phone call, nothing that was conscious or subconscious ... which is the mind's domain, perhaps. Then, to my way of thinking, it must be the Spirit part of Body, Mind and Spirit.

It's not such a far fetched idea. A majority, if not all religions, folk lore and philosophies teach that we have a spirit. I believe that we are primarily spirit, living on earth in an earthly body to help us get around on this earthly plane.

So, it occurs to me that sometimes this spirit, yours or mine, may get tired of being ignored and does something to shake things up. Like that phone call. Spirits get around, you know. Without your knowledge, they may leave the earthbound vehicle they travel in, (you) and flit over to a friend's spirit and say something like, "Ginny would love to hear from you - give her a call." And flit back in! You may even have felt a little off-base or scattered while the spirit part of you was gone - but you never even knew it was out calling on friends and setting things up. Or observing a situation, or any number of excursions. Like the premonition I had when both my older kids were in a car accident. They were in America, I was in Singapore.

My mother remembers an especially strong premonition her mother (my grandmother) had one day. They were out shopping in the city, standing on the sidewalk waiting for the lights to change so they could cross the road. Cars were zipping by, (loud, 1940's exhaust spewing motor cars, I'm sure) and right at the time the red light changed to green, my mother stepped into the street, only to be grabbed back by my Grandmother who was yelling,"Don't go!" In the next moment, a high-tension cable from one of the overhead tram lines snapped and fell to the ground right where they would have been standing. My grandmother didn't see it happening. She wasn't looking up. The noise of the city would have covered up any snapping sound - and who would have known it was a cable snapping even if they had heard it? It was a premonition.

A teenage boy, on his his way home from football practice suddenly says, for no reason at all, "I don't think I'm going to live to be very old." Disconcerted, his mom says, "What makes you think that?" and he answers, "I just can't see myself at the age of forty or fifty . . ." And he was right.

You can think of lots more instances of premonition. I'd love to hear your thoughts and your stories that go beyond the realm of known possibility :)

All I have left to say, is pay attention to those tweaks from the spirit that is you. They know so much more than our limited minds and brains do. And you can ask your spirit, intuition or sixth sense, anything, and get an answer.  Isn't it wonderful to know that we have such a resource?
See you soon!