Memorial Day

It is said that there can be a better world.

It is said that it is better to become active and fight for a solution to today’s problems, than to complain and do nothing.

Our country was built on the shoulders of courageous men and women throughout our history. Men and women of all races, religions and philosophies have demonstrated their strength to us all.

The strength I speak of isn’t the strength of muscle, or armament. It isn’t the strength of putting our petty differences aside for the purpose of our nations common good.

The strength I speak of is the strength of conviction. Commitment. The strength to face the fear of the unknown when circumstance suggests overwhelmingly that to do so is putting the instinct of self preservation aside. Putting the need to defend one’s own life behind the need to defend another's life, or, way.......of life.

Or, is it a reflection of the concept of self being much larger than a single individual?

Unity of purpose. Unity of mind. Unity of spirit. America has been referred to in the past as “The melting pot”. I submit that the kettle of American military service is where the broth of American values comes together.

Duty. Honor. Loyalty. Self-Sacrifice. Pain. Fear. Hope. and Love.

As a member of the family of the American Military, I salute you for continuing to carry on our code. Our values. Our message to the world.

You are the best of what we are.

Thank you.

A Stitch in Time

...and what began initially as more of a change in atmospheric condition, began to make itself known with a gentle invasion. Like vapor entering a room, the change in attitude and perspective was imperceptible at first, and manifesting itself so slowly that there was no indication that life had ever been any different.

...and so it was with him, the world, and it’s condition universally.

The only constant in reality is it’s inconsistency. Each aspect of reality pinwheels around the fulcrum of what is held up and examined, rendering adjacent occurrence seemingly insignificant. However, all that is, remains interwoven with long threads which usually remain latent, only to reveal themselves connected by the snag of the observers caught attention.


Indication of movement becomes subjective. Brooding clouds of emotion offer rain for indeterminate period of time.

And it rained.

For one season after another. It continued to rain. The spirit drowning in adversity as the water level continued to rise. Desperation forms one last cry as the spirit is submerged and disappears into the black, the depths where shadows of meaning make their home.

The waterlogged soul swells until one day, the new sprout of spirit is born.

Upward, beyond the waterline the promise of alternative reality beckons. Yearning and desperate for light the spirit moves upward, reaching.
Feeding with the roots from the past deep water the spirit breaks through to minimal resistance, where the dawning sun nourishes.

A May Day

“Are you Single?”

“Are you Gay?”

“Are you Working?”


If Lisa’s interrogation technique isn’t just hitting the nail on the head I don’t know what would describe single life in 2008 better. I’m referring of course to the movie “P.S. I Love you”. (Quite honestly the most significant film to come out of Hollywood in quite a while, but I’ll review it elsewhere, later)

I have had several conversations with people lately, and completely unintentionally, have run across a general feeling of resigned indifference among those I spoke with in regard to their level of hope when it comes to finding someone.

How things change when you wake up and find yourself over forty and single.

It is such a head spin really.

It seems as though as people we all find ourselves slowly outgrowing those things in our life which have held us back. Ironic really. Although we may dread the thought of attempting to define our lives in a manner other than who we spend it with, who we love or who loves us, it is at that precise moment of clarity when the pressure of making a perceived deadline expires in our life, that we are finally freed from constrictive vision.

Separations are difficult. There are moments, to be sure, of extreme distress, but over time things become a little more desensitized. People say that time heals all wounds, but what they REALLY mean is, time will grind away your need to care about the things that you cannot control or understand with the efficiency of a power sander.

I think one of the most difficult aspects of a separation is that when we love someone, REALLY love them. We have a tendency to define our world around them. When they are gone, our world collapses. The foundation upon which everything is built is destroyed. First we have to learn to live again. Then we have to rebuild our world, sometimes completely from the ground up.

The aging process just accelerates and modifies these processes.

How do we build our lives in the first place?

We live in life's fun-house hall of mirrors.

We learn about ourselves when we see ourselves reflected in others. How they see us shows us what we are like. The more consistent the feedback we get from larger numbers of people, the more we integrate those perceptions as part of what we actually are.

We define ourselves by what we do. Who we love. Who knows us. Who loves us. Our position in a group of friends. Our position in the pecking order at work. Our position in our church. The relationships that we share with our neighbors. Even our relationships with our own and our neighbors pets. All of these mirrors help us to see ourselves. We define ourselves by the mirrored reflection of ourselves that we see in others eyes.

In a loving caring community of people, these mirrors can be helpful. Like playing with a chemistry set, we mix our personality with other personalities and create reactions of all different kinds. Some of these reactions we take pleasure in. Some of the reactions are unfavorable.
But we learn from all the experiences equally. This helps shape an image in our minds about who we really are. It helps us to define the difference between ourselves and others. From this we define our personal worlds.

In a fragmented community where people are more self serving than loving, more opportunistic than supportive, or more suspicious than open, the safety net of love is not present. Destruction reigns over Love.
All parties lose.

Then, there are those who, like myself, were born to a crippling shyness which prevented interaction with other people. I did not have the consistency of community reflection. I could not therefore see myself. An incredibly vicious cycle whose teeth tore at me for many long years, and whose scars still cross my heart to this very day. I could not enter into a group of people because I could not face not knowing who those people saw. My desire to be accepted outweighed my need to be seen in any certain way. I integrated too much of what others perceived (incorrectly) about me. As I look back, I begin to see why.


I attended five high schools in four years. I did not feel connected enough to attend high school prom. I was forced by circumstance to learn to survive without a solid self image. I learned instead to become a mirror. My friendships were sparse and often very intense as a result of those friends giving me the love I would normally have received from a larger number of people. These people were incredibly strong in character to reach beyond the silver lining of my highly reflective surface, to reach deeper in......to find me.

Those people literally, saved my life. I will never be able to fully express the depth of my gratitude and love, for all of you. You have been my lovers and my best friends. You have shared what you have seen in me, WITH me, and by your efforts have helped me to finally understand a measure of who I am. You have helped shape me into what I am today.

So now, at the incredible age of 43, (can you say late bloomer anyone?)
I finally can turn from a past where unrelenting pain and sorrow has been my lifelong companion, and look forward. I will look forward through my past until I can get to my present, and then I will look beyond.

I will not fear living a life of solitude any longer. It is time for me to realize that I have “been there, DONE that”. If I wind up living a life of solitude, then that is what I will have, and it will be good. After a very long time of contemplating the whole life thing, all I can say to anyone feeling similarly is this. Maybe I have been looking at this all wrong. Maybe I am not here.....for myself. Maybe I am here for others. From this perspective I can rest assured that my life will have meaning. For as I will raise all those around me who desire to integrate my influence, of my love and support, my life will come to have meaning. My existence will be understandable to me, my passage through this world will come into sharp focus.


I ..........Will ...........Love.


The Spirit and the Will come together.
The Divine enters into equal partnerships, and the trinity becomes A-parent.

I will no longer wait for my love to find me. I will instead love those around me. I will no longer search in vain for my love, for my love has been here all along, waiting, to be expressed. Waiting patiently for me to learn that unconditional love, is just that. Instead of being selective and compartmentalizing my love, I will share it, universally.


So I see that this May Day is more about potential and less about dis-stress. More about acceptance and less about fear. More about hope and less about tears.

Mothers Day

A time to recognize and honor our mothers. A celebration of not just the feminine, but specifically the aspect of feminine nurturance and sacrifice.

Mother’s Day is more than just a moment in time to remember those who have sacrificed of themselves for our benefit. It is a time to recognize the Divine aspect of what a mother really is to us.

“Mother is the name for God from the lips of children.”

This is a quote from the movie “The Crow” as I’m sure you’ll all remember. I think I got it right, but I’m too tired to look it up, but you get the idea.

It made me wonder upon hearing it what that meant that the word “Father”, was supposed to mean. Does that mean that “Father” represents Satan?

(laughing)

From this I went on to think about how “To Mother” isn’t necessarily limited to women.

Strangely, some of the most nurturant people I have ever known, were in fact, men.

So what is it that we celebrate of our mothers on this day?

I submit that what we are really celebrating is our very first relationship.

First contact.

From the moment we were conceived, our mothers were there. They were the first person that we became aware of. They were the liason between the world we do not now remember, and the world where we reside today.

All of us are raised with the unmistakable bias of what our mothers thought. We are an extension of them. Their pain, their pleasure, their hopes and dreams and even their fear.

The intimate bond between our Mothers and ourselves is perhaps the single most significant aspect of the human condition...which we all share regardless of race, religion, nationality, or even our sex. If we are alive, then at one point we had a Mother. A woman who cherished us and didn’t qualify the unconditional love that she gave to us.



We all want our Mothers to be proud of us. We all want her to know that no matter how many years have passed, or how many miles are between us, or even how many disagreements that have ever come between us, that at our deepest core, we want and need their approval and their Love.

Our Mothers don’t make life easy for us. They push us and challenge us to do things that we might never have the courage to try without them firmly behind us. They can drive us to the brink of insanity with their inflexibility and their quirky idiosyncratic personality traits, and yes, sometimes with their pitchfork. They were and are an extension of THEIR Mothers. The Divine nature of our Mothers has been passed down through time and space into the heart and eyes of the woman standing before you. All of her Love, and all of her pain are a part of who she is. Equally, all of her Love and pain is a part of who we are. Sometimes I wonder if all the world might become at peace if we could only erase our mothers pain.

Mothers Day is a day to recognize the beautiful aspect of self sacrifice. For our Mothers have given much in order for us to be.

My Mother is incredible. She has helped fashion me into who I am. She has taught me Love and discipline, self sacrifice and purity. She is the anvil upon which I was forged by the hammer of life. She knows me in ways that I don’t even know myself. She knows my strengths and my weaknesses. She is my author, and I am one of her masterpieces.

I hope that what I give to the world is worthy, of what my mother sacrificed to create me.

I love you mom.

Chiron’