The King…has left the building

I was going through my film collection and I decided to re-view one of my films. I was about half way through it when I felt something in my head click. It was actually kinda freaky.

All of the elements are there. I can’t believe I never saw it before.

We are nerve-wracked by his behavior before we have any sense of who he is, or, what he wants.

We are awestruck with his enormity; the unstoppable force of his Will, and the physical strength with which he enforces it.

We are terrified at what we perceive to be his unpredictable anger, until such time that his wrath becomes the shelter of our protection.

We long to communicate with him, but communication seems limited to what he will show us.

All of these qualities weigh heavily upon us, as we attempt to formulate the concept of who he is, but it is this final quality which leaves us with our mouths wide open in confusion and wonder.

We are mystified that as small and seemingly insignificant as we appear to be, that such a creature could find us lovable. Not just appealing, but that he could know something about us from a look, that is so valuable to him, that he would be willing to lay down his life to protect it.

The very necessity of his desire to safeguard us, providing him with a previously unknown purpose.

The statement was made, “It wasn’t the planes that killed him. Beauty killed the beast.”

It wasn’t physical beauty which killed the beast; it was the beauty of our innocence.

The story of King Kong is the story about our relationship to God.

It is the story that we will accidentally destroy God with our ignorance and our fear.

So what is it that we really mean to convey when we say, “The King…has left the building”?

Constructive Deconstruction

A little bit of cooking for the holidays.

The New Year is coming around the corner, and with it comes all the anxiety that we create for ourselves regarding our personal progress in our lives. Let’s take a quick look at how we create ourselves and what ingredients are in the mix.

The real question that I have to ask myself is:

Who do I want to BE?
Each year we have the opportunity to break away from what has been (what WE…have been) and we have the capacity to re-invent ourselves. Reality is based upon our perception of it. Our view of the world is largely filtered by who we believe ourselves to be. It is shaped by the beliefs that we hold in regard to what we believe is possible for us, and also by that which we believe is outside of our reach. I’d like to focus on tossing MOST of that away. Start with a clean counter. Get out your cutting boards, and let’s just have a look at what we can make.

When I get to the point where I am conscious of a desire (or a need) to remake myself, it’s rather like working in the kitchen. Am I looking for a recipe book? Or do I feel confident enough in my own ability to create something wonderful from scratch? It’s actually best to start with the recipe that I have used to create myself from last year. It’s much easier to make small experimental shifts in my concoction than it is to daringly throw something together completely from scratch. After all, I DO NEED a good point of reference right?
When I am mixing values and traits, how much of the cookbooks baseline do I use for my creative endeavor? How much do I use from last year’s recipe? How much of the spice of my personal creativity do I use?
How much do I incorporate from the given of what others believe is true, (the acceptable norm) verses how willing am I to go out on a limb to create something in myself which is truly unique?
Once I decide to mix the proportions, it is EXTREMELY important that I follow through. Nothing will guarantee my unhappiness at a later date more than my creating a recipe for a character that I cannot or will not complete. I must remain mindful not to set my expectations for myself higher than my ability to stretch out to reach that goal. Equally, I must set my expectations for my personal growth high ENOUGH, to make a personal challenge of the endeavor, or I will not experience the growth I desire to have.

Baby steps.

So, let’s get a general idea of where we want to go for the rest of our lives, but most importantly, let’s keep it manageable and set our timer for simply the next year. (Because NEXT year, we will bake again!)
I can start with what I know I have already experienced. I can decide to add to my personal recipe things that I see needed an adjustment from last year. I can add new feelings I have as a result of last years’ growth to the mix, while removing some of the ingredients which didn’t quite work out. Things that took away from the finished product or aspects that didn’t add to its aesthetic appeal.
It is important for me to remember in this process that I can be WHOEVER I want to be. I can shock friends and relatives by throwing in a new spice, or I can add more of what I know that they already like. Whatever I decide, I must remember that I am not creating this recipe for them. I am creating it for myself. I am the one who must continue to be challenged. I am the one who I am creating for in the first place. This is my life. What do I want to experience? It is up to me to play in the kitchen with my recipe of who I am until I am satisfied. This is my most basic freedom. It is my most basic right. It is also…my most precious GIFT…to the Divine, to myself, to my loved ones, and to the world.

So….get your apron on and get busy!

Happy Holidays.

Deleterious Delirium

As I sit here feeling like I am on my deathbed, I am reminded in the most curious of ways how the Divine likes to get my attention. I don’t like to come off as preachy or melodramatic, my motivation is actually much more self-centered than anything like that. I grew up in a world where I fell in love with many things; I also grew up in a world that taught me to fear nearly everything and every one. In one of the conversations I had with the Divine as a much younger man, I was told that it is up to us, each Spirit upon this earth, to shape this planet into what it is that we consider comfortable. From that point on, I have done my best to help where I can to affect the changes necessary for this world to be more comfortable for myself, and others like myself, to exist in. I wanted a place to live where people were free to be who they are, from the INSIDE. From where we most closely resemble the essence of what the Divine created us to be; not from the outside where circumstances and convention and all the other dynamics occur to effectively twist and distort our Spirits away from the Divine expression of what we were meant to be actually was. Her Grace assured me that this was a noble path to take but warned me of the potential of discomfort. Of course, being young, and brash, I did what most insolent youngsters do and cast aside all warnings of danger. Part of the luxury of youth is the gross incomprehension of time, and the accompanying knowledge that youth and erroneous perceptions of indestructibility wind up being only a small portion of our lifetime. I knew I had to start small though, so I began one person at a time. Each time I saw a person I could help, I did. For a while this process seemed to be working, although honestly it became something of a conundrum when it appeared that I was making myself out to be a person who more closely resembled a doormat than a human being trying to help others. I found out much later down the road that people are just so not used to someone being good to them, that they wind up being suspicious of my motives, and some, sadly, actively undermined me in an attempt to stop or otherwise disrupt what it is that they saw in me. Eventually this started showing up in my attempts to build a career. Eventually, this manifested itself upon my Spirit in the form of negative self esteem.

I never gave up though, and I will continue this process for as long as I am able.

Those of you who have followed me for any length of time know that I tend to be somewhat opinionated. Outspoken. The previous experiences in my lifetime have helped thicken my skin to the danger of being the one in the crowd who will speak up when things aren’t right. I have many battle scars as a result of undertaking the counter-attack against what I consider to be wrong. Now, while it’s certainly true that as I write this, I cannot actually see unless I close one eye, and I am sitting in a puddle of my own sweat, my head is pounding with an urgency that suggests I may not be around too much longer, there is just this one thing I wish to impress upon any and all who would listen.

I am not any more special than any of you are.

I just elected to suffer the consequence of seeing my will through to the end.
(whether that end be my own, or that of the battle)

EACH of you has the ability, the capacity, the strength and the courage to stand up for what you believe in.

The ultimate test is overcoming your OWN personal objections as to why you cannot, should not or will not do so. You were born with an intrinsic sense of right from wrong, long before you had any person, group, religious doctrine or patriotic flag to tell you the difference. If you look for it in your heart, you’ll find it. It’s waiting for you to listen.

If enough of us stop this process of perpetuating the status quo, if enough of us can begin to see that we are all the same, if ENOUGH of us reach out to one another and realize that bitter people are HURT people….we just might have a chance of turning the tide. It has nothing to do with how much or how little money you make, how well or little known you are, how strong or how weak you are. It has to do with how much you care. It has to do with how much of your original Divinity you can recall. It has to do with your ability to realize that you are living in a very small drop of water, on a leaf, growing on a much bigger pond.

I’m amazed sometimes at how the Divine likes to get my attention. When she wants me to stop, believe me, she’ll find a way. Sometimes I have trouble sitting still. Always I have trouble arresting my mind. With this sickness, she’s managed both.

Ok I gave the message ………..so can I get better now?

Message in the Bottle

For Penny,

(Written with David Gilmour’s “Near the End” playing in the background)

Life is hard.

It can be a wonderful adventure, or a harrowing tale, but all of it, both the good and the bad, teaches us the lessons that we need to learn in order to get to that next level.

Observing the world means that we each, must create a mirror image of that world inside of ourselves. It reflects what we have been exposed to, the things that we witness, the experiences we have had, the people we have known and the things that they tell us about ourselves. It is the place inside of us where our virtual parents live, and where they continue to exist long after they have passed from this plane of existence. We build this world unconsciously; we add programming or content to it every day. It is the place where everything that we “know”, resides.

Within that world, is a dark place where we store our pain. A treacherous place, because like the scene of a grisly car accident, it is a place where we cannot bear to visit, yet we spend a great deal of time there. We return to it often trying desperately to gain some measure of understanding from an experience that went horribly wrong, or was otherwise damaging to us. It is the graveyard where the ghosts of lost love reside. Not just the lost love of a partner or companion, but the lost love of a parent or a guardian as well. In the center of this cemetery is a grave where some of us may be shocked to discover a tombstone with our own name on it. The tombstone marks the loss of love that we have for ourselves.

Within this grave are all of the reasons why we feel like we are unlovable. The secrets, the compulsions, the evil deeds, the passionate wanton cruelty to another, the ugly compulsion to protect ourselves by seizing power over others….the things that bring us shame and fear. For many of us, the amount of time we spend staring down into this deep dark whole, is as secret as this hidden cemetery is in the first place.

But it’s there, and we all go to stand next to our own graves of lost love more than any of us likely admit. Most of us find coping strategies to deal with the pain of one sort or another, but most of those “strategies” create even more problems and actually add to the gravesite more reasons to come back to the edge and stare, ponder, wonder and despair, at why we do these things to others, and why we do these things to ourselves?


As I look back into the crystal ball of my own world, I recall the faces of those I have looked up to who have folded while struggling to come to an accord with the demons that live in that grave. Layne Staley, Kurt Cobain, and my grandfather Leslie Caldwell just to name a few. Each of them stood too close to that grave, and eventually, they were pulled into it by the demons they had buried there.

The riddle of the message in the bottle is as old as humanity itself. Like the pirates of old have often sung about, those who crawl far enough into the bottle to discover the message, usually take that message to the grave with them. The Dead tell no tales. Layne did his best to document his decline, hoping that those with ears to hear, and understand, would learn from his mistake. I interpret the name of his band Alice in Chains to be fully representative of the entire experience.

The moral, if there is one, is simply this: there is no escape from the pain of life. There is only our ability and our desire to face the unpleasant aspects of it with hope, fortitude, stamina, Love and forgiveness. The Message in the Bottle was written by the Grim Reaper, and you really don’t want or need to know what it says.

I love you Aunt Penny,

Goodbye.