Song of Susannah- I love you

It is an all-encompassing love that cares for every aspect of you.  It is not blind to fault, but accepting of the fact that we are all flawed.  Although it has great depth and richness, is wide-reaching and strong, it does not suffocate, nor over-whelm .  It liberates and up-lifts.  It does not seek to control, but to inspire.  It has no subtlety, but it does have texture and nuance.  Such love defends and strengthens, but does not over-shadow or enable.  This love has serenity and peace, but also fire and passion.......and wisdom.  This love has wisdom as its cornerstone and maturity as its foundation. It is quiet and compassionate, understanding and gentle.  This love has honesty and wit, humor and hopefulness.  It is experienced, but innocent, devoted, but fiercely independent and based in the love of God and His love of us.  It is tangible and real, loyal and faithful, tender and trusting, durable and enduring.

Two kinds of women and they are both me

There are times when I feel dazed and shy, overwhelmed by your presence.......when I need you to take me by the hand and lead me somewhere safe.......hold me within the protection of your own space......when all I know is that I want to submit.........that I need to give way.......to yield.........to disappear inside you........to feel encompassed, body and soul.  In those moments I am a woman merged with the love I bear you and the love I receive from you.  I am quietly, gently, and joyously complete.  Then there are times when passion overcomes me and I am like a warrior-woman of old, untamed and wild.  I cry out in the all-consuming heat and thrash about demanding that you exhaust me into release.  While both of these women are me, I have no control over either of them.  No one......no one knows them, but you.....no one but you will ever know them.  Both of them love you.

Why can't I understand?

I wanted to write about how and why I love you, but I am profoundly not able to do that.  We became "reacquainted" over a year ago.  You told me early on that you had nothing to give.  I really thought that this was all about "things"......money, assets, financial interests.  That was why I told you I did not need to be married.  I knew what I had been told by first, Patsi, then you, about your life.  I knew how devastating the events you had been through can be.  I know first hand about financial, physical and emotional devastation. I have been to all of those places, had all of those experiences and more.  Each time, I have come back stronger.  I have started over more times than I can tell you and more times than I want to remember.  Except for this time.  I want to start over with you.  I want this to work and I want us to be together forever.......or as much of forever as may be practical to expect.  What I don't know is how to get you see it the same way I do.  I don't really know how to successfully encourage you to come close to me.  Sometimes I feel so inept and clumsy.  I weep at my lack of skill.....or my unworthiness.  Surely, if I were really worthy and deserving, you would love me back and would want to spend your life with me.  Surely...........surely......I could not be so wrong.......again..

I don't know how to explain it

I love the physicality of you....the fact that you are strong, but I don't want you to carry heavy boxes for me.  I love your body, but not just because we make love.  You are the brightest, most astute and interesting man....person.....I have ever known in my entire life.  You appreciate and understand so much that it amazes me.  And yet, you listen to me.....that...blows me away.  You have incredible talent.....you have artistic vision and a real soul.  I love your mind, your intellect, your humor, your compassion......your sense of fairness and honor, your generosity of spirit, your willingness to share.
I am  certain there is a better way to say it, but I don't know what it is.

Out of Control

I am out of control.  I have been all day.  Actually, I have been out of control for a while now....weeks, months.  I was in control until April, maybe into May, but it has gotten to be terrible for the last two weeks.  Why?  I am not certain.  Someone once wrote that control was an illusion.  Not exactly true.  There is nothing illusory about self-control.  In any given nano-second you either have it or you don't.  Sometimes, it isn't a character flaw, it is just incredible fatigue or outlandish stress.  There are folks who are never self-controlled.  Those are the ones who have the character problem.  That problem isn't really fixable.  For most of us, rest up and take the pressure off and we get where we are supposed to be.  We can even manage our crises with self-control.  Sometimes we need coping skills that are beyond the mundane, run-of-the-mill "aromatherapy" and "soft music" tools.  Sometimes the re-institution of our self-control is not a 1-2-3 snap-to-it command, it may be a slow, deliberate process.  Whichever it is, please let it happen soon.

And Sarah Laughed

When God came down to verify the woeful transgressions of Sodom and Gomorrah, he stopped by the tents of his faithful servant, Abraham.  He came to remind Abraham of His promise that  Abraham, and his wife, Sarah, would be the founders of a dynasty.  Sarah was in her tent and when she heard God, she laughed for she was a woman of ninety, well past child-bearing who had given up on the promise God had made.  God immediately asked Abraham, "Wherefore does thy wife, Sarah, laugh?  Does not Sarah believe that the Lord, God, Jehovah, can do anything?"  Abrahan feared God---and, frankly, so did Sarah, so she lied and said, "I did not laugh."
Now God had promised both Abraham and Sarah that they would live to be 175 years old.  Not as long as Methuselah at over 900 years, but still nothing to sneeze at.  However, because Sarah laughed, she revealed that she doubted God.  For that He took away 48 years.  He took 48 years away from Abraham, too, but for an entirely different reason.  The lesson here:  Be very careful at whom you laugh.

Regaining Myself

Every once in a while I allow myself to be absorbed into whatever event or crisis may occupy the moment.  Truthfully, it IS usually a crisis.  I extend myself to those that need me and I let them use me as a tool, a coping mechanism, a support system, a friend, an adviser, a comforter,  a counselor, a confidante, or even a confessor.  I am a gofer and also a builder of bridges.  I do not ever....under any circumstances extend physical intimacy.  My restriction has nothing to do with the moral rightness or wrongness, nor do I accept as just or binding the certitude of others regarding their judgment on my personal conduct.  No, it has nothing to do with that. My reserve allows me to wean from dependence and break the connection so that we can all move on.  If that did not happen, I would be used up, burnt out and would quickly disappear.  Then I would not be here to sing to the moon, sprout sprouts, grow herbs and vegetables, make bread and mango butter.  I would never read the thousands of books I am destined to read or write the five or six I am destined to write.  There would be no one to love unconditionally and eternally, to skinny-dip in the middle of the night, to write poetry, essays and commentary, no one to be the nurse-philosopher.  You see, like you, I am unique in the universe.  I am irreplaceable.

The Field Beyond Ideas

I met you there.  I knew it instantly.  There was no  need for words.  We listened.  We listened to the symphony of the wind and trees.  We watched the mischievous night sky as he let the wind pile up clouds to hide the moon and the stars from us.  We felt the wind against our skins and smelled the freshly cut lawns. The gardenia and jasmine in the back yard, even the magnolias down the street were sweet perfume, heady stuff, that stirs the blood and the soul.  The field is Eden and you and I were Adam and Eve.  Behold the perfect man.  Behold the perfect woman.  At that moment when we find the gift of pleasure, that instant when we cannot be separated by time or circumstance, we find also the gifts of salvation and redemption.  To be loved by you is to be loved by God.  In giving love to you, I give you God's love.  It is all one.  I did not know it until that stunning, earth-shattering moment. 

How to Avoid Disappointment

Disappointment occurs when our expectations are not met.  The obvious solution is to have NO expectations of others.  The only person over which any of us have any real control is ourselves.  Self-control is all any of us can ever hope for, but even that can be over-exercised.  Once upon a time Robert and I talked about Rumi the Sufi author of love poetry.  He wrote "...out beyond the idea of wrongdoing and rightdoing,  there is a field, I will meet you there..."  I thought it was lovely imagery, if somewhat obscure.    Rumi talked a lot about the losing of the ego, putting it away somewhere out of the way.  I initially thought that notion was ridiculous.  I believed that our egos make us who we are, but I was wrong.  It is the loss of ego that allows us to give our innermost selves to our loved one.  It enables us to open our hearts and minds to utterly selfless gifting of our spirits and souls to the beloved.  This is what makes our union, both spiritual and physical, transcendent and beautiful.  I ask no bride price, but I bring you a dowry.  It is all that I am and ever will be, all that I have and ever will have, all that is mine to give.....heart, mind, body, soul.  My commitment to you is for a lifetime and is not contingent upon your willingness or desire to make such a commitment to me.  The only thing I ask of you is that if and when you are ever ready, meet me in that field.

I have lifted you up to the Lord

Bien-aimee, you are unique in the universe.  God, Himself, knows how very special you are and he told me so all those years ago.  God kept bumping us into each other over the years for a reason.  The reason is now, Bien-aimee.  I am the help-meet God has sent you.  I am the boat that will carry you through rough waters.  I am the rudder that will steer you through stormy seas.  I am the stars that help you navigate.  I am the moon that illuminates the night.  It is my voice re-assuring you that all will be well.  Reach out.  Those are my hands holding yours in the darkness.  Please......know that God holds you in the palm of His hand and will not let you stumble.

The Gift We Give Back to God

Just as your body does, so, too, your soul requires nourishment, refreshment, rest, repair. exercise and stimulation.  It also needs pleasure and joy.  Those things are provided through non-corporeal means under both conscious and unconscious direction via our intellect.  Our intellect receives information and stimulation through our senses.  It interprets and responds to that data. The data gathering is very corporeal.  Memories are chemically stored. but the rest an esoteric process.

Too many of us neglect the health of our souls.  We go to church and we pray and believe that is all that we need to maintain a healthy soul.  It is so much more complex.  That spark that defines who we really are needs all the care of a newborn baby.  Although it came with the package when we were delivered, we initially neglect our souls in favor of growing our bodies and our personalities.  The growth of our souls cannot actually begin until our communication skills are more advanced.  If we are very lucky, we have parents who initiate the earliest nurturing of our souls.  Once we are able to independently express our feelings and can begin to understand more complex communication, it is our personal responsibility to take the wheel of our navigation system and learn to set our own course to those places and experiences in life that will promote the growth of our souls.  When it is all over, let me be able to say with perfect joy, "To you, O, Lord, I lift up my soul."

Now it begins

Now it begins...this process of life-change.  Not "change of life" which is a natural process, but the events whereby my life becomes different from what it was.  I have gone through it a lot in the last year.  The biggest change to date was my mother's death last August.  I didn't know I hated her and then I did know.  Surprisingly, for someone I hated, I let her affect my life and personality a great deal.  Then there were other changes.  The really big one is looming before me.  I am about to begin the process of losing my home.  I have lived at this place longer than any other in my entire life.  I love it so much that the prospect of losing it causes me grief so unmanageable that I cannot keep the pain from bleeding though into almost every conscious moment.  I just cannot compartmentalize it fast enough..   My business is finding miracles for other people.....helping them with their lives.  It is, at the very least, irony of the first magnitude.  Like Saint Bernadette, when it was proposed to take her to the Grotto at Lourdes, she refused saying, "...the spring is not for me..."  It would seem that I cannot work my own miracles.  It is not that I am lazy, nor am I a defeatist, so I will try my hardest to alter this destiny.  Who knows...maybe God will help this time.

I wish I was certain of how to spell vicissitudes correctly.....

I have told myself I will not be like the village of pearl divers with their homes on the beach and no windows to the sea.  They had no windows facing the ocean because they did not want to see the vast water of the tsunami reaching out to sweep everything, including them, away.  I will not do the avoidance behavior thing...not confronting what I fear.  I will not ignore what is happening.  I will take charge of the situation and do the necessary......whatever that turns out to be.  I am not afraid.....just sad. 

Because of you......

I am the woman I am because of you and that is a wondrous thing. You taught me so many things about myself while I was learning about you.  It was never about receiving love from you.  It was always about giving love to you.  I am a miraculous creature.  Accept the miracles I bring.  They are for you and about you and because of you.

Questions and Answers

What do you see when you look at me?
What do you hear when you listen to me?
What do you feel when you touch me?
When you say, "I love you...", what do you mean?
These are the questions I need answered.  I don't know that I can ever bring myself to ask them, but the answers are important to me.  Until I die I will remember the words, "You are far more smitten with me than I am with you."  It is true, but that didn't keep it from stinging a bit.  I will remember the words, but as time passes, they will sting less.  The lessons of life can be bitter and painful, but when all is said and done, that is just the way it is.

A Fool's Errand?

The round-trip drive was 568 miles.  The gasoline came to $125.00.  I started at 6 a.m. and got home by 6 p.m.  I had gone to fetch a 10 week old apricot miniature poodle.  I knew my client loved the original dog that was lost to her, but she was so debilitated  now that I could hardly see the benefit...............until this afternoon.  When I put that dog in her arms, I saw that hard-nosed, shrewd, demented little old lady soften and become affectionate and loving.  A pretty large miracle for a really tiny dog.

Are there are heroes in the seaweed?

Good question.  Your approval matters to me.  Reassurances from you can change the course of history and totally change my point of view on everything.  No..that does not mean you tell me what to think.  You never do that.  However, you are the one person on the face of the planet who, if all else fails, can reason with me and successfully persuade me to another point of view.  This would not be because I love you, but because I respect and trust you.  I appreciate your mind, recognize your intelligence and the ethics of your reasoning.  I understand your character, acknowledge your fairness and objectivity. In this life (or any other) and for nearly forty years, you have been, are, and always will be, my hero.

The Path to Enlightenment

I heard it best put by a young woman in a public service announcement, "I believe there are many paths to God."  My friends and acquaintances follow different ones.  This morning I awoke to a program about the Buddha, who existed historically five hundred years before Jesus Christ.  It would seem to me that religion is essentially about providing us with skill sets to help us cope with the concepts of aging, illness, and death.  The gift to sentient beings is the awareness that at some point existence will terminate and that the event, if not traumatically painful and immediate, will be a process, ugly, painful and drawn-out.

I have been a practicing Roman Catholicism after a fashion for forty years.  According to the tales upon which Christianity is based, the first man and woman would have remained immortal and living in the Garden if it weren't for the sin of ignorance....no, I have that wrong.  Adam and Eve WERE ignorant.  It was the serpent who lead them to knowledge, thereby inciting God to cast them out of paradise.  And God has been pissed at us ever since.
Talk about holding grudge.  Why would God punish thousands of generations of his favorite creation who weren't even there when it all happened?  He is a jealous god and a vengeful one and it strikes me as more than a little coincidental that God is frequently identified as an internal deity.  Religion then becomes a form of self-delusion to engender acceptance of our end.  I think there is probably more to it than that, but this is what happens when I wake up at three in the morning and cannot go back to sleep.

The Side-effects of Loving

Just like medication there are side-effects to giving and receiving love.

In giving love we take all the tenderness, understanding and compassion out of ourselves where we have been hoarding them and lavish them over someone outside ourselves....a little like slathering jam on bread. Most of us are not terribly sure how to apply it elegantly, so we just smear it all over hoping not miss any critical area.  We are so enamored of the object of our love that we cannot do too much for them.  You know it is really serious when you realize you would be willing to donate a kidney (or your own heart) to them or take a bullet for them.  Those things are kind of risky, but there is nothing too foolish, too dangerous, or too terrible to endure for the sake of your love.  Your own well-being takes a backseat to the well-being of your love.  We are brave, expansive, generous and forgiving.

In receiving love we learn we have value greater than we ever imagined.  We become confident and bold, become risk-takers, feel ourselves capable of achieving anything simply because we are important to someone else.  We can feel the love pour over us like warm honey........sweet and comforting.  We are brave and expansive and generous and forgiving. 
We are lifted up by both the giving and receiving of love.  Our internal manifestation of the deity is closer to realization because God IS love.

Yes, indeed.  There are side-effects to love.

The work of being myself

Do you think being yourself is an easy thing?  I'm here to tell you it isn't.  Being yourself necessitates never hiding who you are......exposing your most vulnerable feelings to everyone.  That leaves you open to injury from people who may hate you or just not care a nickle for you.  The alternative is never being yourself.  Never exposing yourself to potential injury.  It is like being onstage under a spotlight twenty-four hours a day.  Being closely and continuous scrutinized is exhausting.  Actually, you can do it part-time both ways, but that tends to create false impressions and misapprehension about who and what we are.  Maybe there is no satisfactory answer.

Sometimes we don't get close enough to ourselves to understand

I know what you are thinking.  How is that possible?  We live with ourselves intimately.  That is not true for a lot of us.  Many of us....and I mean many......do not want to examine carefully how we feel about some things....some of us don't want to even be in the same room with those things.  We invent really clever (or so we think) avoidance behaviors.  You know it is possible to ignore the most blatant symptoms of a heart attack by simply thinking about something else.  Yes, you can ignore yourself to death.

My favorite example of not getting close enough to yourself appears in The Runaway Bride.
It had to do with how the bride liked her eggs.  Each of her fiances liked their eggs differently: one scrambled, one fried, one poached, another an omelet.  When it was pointed out to the bride that she appeared to like her eggs the way the whoever she was engaged to liked them, she had to admit that she really did not know how she like them.  Near the end of the movie, she admits to the reporter that after fixing eggs every way she could think of, the only way she liked eggs was in Eggs Benedict.

The point is that in order to really know ourselves, we have to do the work.  It is about knowing how you feel and why you feel that way.

Palm Sunday

I was at church today.  Not unusual.  I sing in the choir and today is Palm Sunday.  The priest, the lector, the congregation and one other voice recite the passion according to Luke.  We go through the triumphal entrance into Jerusalem just before Passover to his burial in a borrowed tomb.  The crucifixion is where I got my revelation.   It was while he was on the cross as two thieves were also being executed.  One guy says to Jesus that if he is who he says he is, why doesn't he save himself and them.  The other thief (We call him the Good Thief) rebukes the man and reminds him that they both deserve their death sentences, but that Jesus had done nothing.  Then the Good Thief says to Jesus, "Lord, remember me when you come unto your kingdom."  The son of God and man says directly to him, "I promise you that this day you shall be with me in Paradise."  In spite of all my research, I have found NO reference to any other individual who got such a commitment.  The rest of us got the criteria we have to meet to get into heaven, but he got a guarantee,

Feelin' Good

A number of vocalists have recorded the song Feelin' Good.  If you recall the words at all, you know how I feel.  Life is good.  No matter what happens......life is good.  It may be hard to remember that sometimes, but it will come back to you.   We have no real esoteric knowledge and given no hard proof, we should make the best of the here and now, have faith, and leave the next step in the hands of the Almighty.  Our circumstances are generally controlled by others, but our perception of circumstance is strictly and totally controlled by us.  We live largely in our minds, not to the exclusion of reality, but including our perception of reality.  If religion has taught us nothing else, it has taught us that.....in spades.  Barring confirmation of an afterlife experience, we should probably make the best of what we've got for our own sakes and that of our fellow-creatures stuck in this version of reality.

The Advantage of Living Alone........

To live alone successfully, for there is an art to this, one must like.......no.....love..the person you live with.  For those of you not really paying attention, that means you......yourself.  There has to be a significant level of understanding, acceptance, tolerance, consideration and love of self.  You need to have a certain level of intelligence, as well, because entertaining yourself can be a complex enterprise.  It also helps to not have serious psych issues....no history of psychosis or major clinical depression (and I do not mean the blues, which everybody gets occasionally).

Living alone is a bit more expensive, so you need to handle money well and be able to live within the discipline of a budget.  Maintaining your environment appropriately does require a bit of the obssessive compulsive trait (not the disease) to guarantee the kind of order that results in domestic peace and happiness.  Believe me, the minimal effort required to maintain order and cleanliness is a whole lot more pleansant than the moving of mountains if you have allowed your domicile to descend into chaos.  The fact that everything is done YOUR way (since you are doing it) adds no small crown of bliss to your domestic heaven.

The other REALLY serious advantage is the fact that you do not have to be considerate of anyone else.  No one will care if you are up all night or out all night.  They won't care if you leave your underwear and socks on the floor beside your bed.  Neither will anyone pick them up from the floor, wash them and put them away so you can wear them again....clean....this time.  You can buy whatever your heart desires at the grocery, even junk food and that strange agave sweetner you like, without worrying someone will eat it or swipe it.  Then, again. no one is going to prepare a hot meal for you, make you soup when you are sick, run to the drugstore, do the laundry and grocery-shopping, clean the toilet, vacuum the floor, wash the dishes and make sure you don't run out of your favorite coffee, milk and splenda.  No one will be there when you start vomiting or spiking a fever as well.

Not having to consider someone else's feelings......Wow! that is a major convenience.  You don't have to listen to them tell you how special you are...how talented.  They don't have to listen to your dreams or complaints, commiserate with your disappointments and celebrate your victories.  No one will be there to offer moral support when life gets difficult or give advice when a problem is too complex.  You don't have to run interference for anybody, but there is no one there to do it for you either.  You absolutely never have to compromise.  When the world or someone in it has tried to beat you into the ground, you need not worry about having to accommodate someone else who might have been a staunch ally to watch your back.  You won't have to listen to someone else's confidences, but they won't be there to listen to yours. 

Yessir, there are definite advantages to living alone.  The question is:  do they outweigh the disadvantages?

Cowardly Commentator

Someone comments on my blog in some version of Chinese.  I always take what for me is a foreign language comment to one of the reliable translation sites and today I did so with a comment from March 12th.  What came back from the translator was basically someone talking about auto-erotic behavior and chat rooms, etc.  I am no prude, but I have a problem with this.  I don't care what people do in private, as long as nobody gets hurt.  What troubles me is somebody trying to hide what they are really about behind a language barrier.
It is a violation of trust, literacy and ethics.  You have no power to hurt me, but you offend me mightily.

The other side of the wall

Sometimes I feel as though I am standing on one side of a wall.  Life is on the other side.  I search for a door or a window, or even a crack, but I cannot find one.  I hear life going on over there,  I have been given visions of it, but I have no idea how to get there.  I want so much to immerse myself in life, in that world....mostly his world........ to be truly accepted.  I don't want to disappear into the sameness of a crowd.  I want to be special to him.  I want his life to be better, happier, easier because I am a part of it.  Sometimes, it seems as though I am treading water in the middle of the ocean.

Hail, Mary........

As I prepare for the ritual that will precede my seriers of "Nitty-Gritty" photos, I am reminded of how unhappy I have been in my life and how desperately I want happiness here at the end of it.  It has to do with relationships.  I have never had a successful relationship.......I never really had a relationship based on anything except mutual need and that was when I was married.  For once...just once in my life I want him to feel about me the way I feel about him.  Maybe it is a process.  Perhaps, being patient is the key.  Will he ever trust me?  Will I ever be the person with whom he wants to spend more than an occasional  week-end? Will he ever really want me to be more than a nightly phone call?  When this began, I thought I knew what I wanted out of it.  I thought it might be dedicated to my re-discovery of the sensuality of life...something I had denied myself for twenty years.  Then it turned into something very different.  I fell well and truly in love with an old flame.....THE first and only old flame, actually.  I suppressed so much of my life for so long, I didn't know how to live any other way.  Now, I have had a taste of what life can really be like and I am reluctant to give up its pursuit.  Holy Mother of God, have I not sacrificed enough? Am I really so undeserving?  Ave Maria, Mater Dei, ora pro nobis.

Talking to God

Like most people, I talk to God.  As I have grown older, I seem to do it more and under much less provocation than in my youth.  It used to be that I would get to a place of panic, fear and/or desperation and I would start talking to God right out loud trying to cut a deal.  I suspect I am not the only one.  As time passed and I got more time and experience under my belt, fewer things made me panicked, fearful or desperate.  I was much more capable than I was at twenty, thirty, even forty or fifty.  Now it comes down to moments of trying to ponder the imponderables.  Why God, do you allow anyone to suffer, but most of all the innocents?  Why do you allow the closest thing to your own divinity here on Earth to seek the extermination of others with equal claim to divinity?  Why do you visit the sins of the fathers on the sons?  Why must the punishment for the loss of Paradise be eternal?  Why can we not learn to truly feel and exercise compassion towards all living things without conditions and exceptions?  O God, Creator of the Universe, speed our evolution toward our own divinity that we might be worth loving and saving.  Let us prove that worth not just in words, but in deeds.

An idle mind.....

Just when I think I have it all figured out, I don't.  I get devastated every time that happens.  You would think that I would learn.  I would think that I would learn.  Is it because I want to believe something so badly that any evidence at all of anything becomes supporting evidence that what I want to believe is true?  I thought only children did that.  Surprise!  Why am I so far behind the learning curve here?  It is not just about figuring things out.  Why is everyone I know armed with the knowledge of how to get what they want out of life, and I am not?  Am I defective somehow and nobody told me?  Was there a meeting to which I was not invited?  I am not really whining.  I don't think there is an answer to any of those questions.  I think some people can and some can't......some people know and others don't......some people live and others watch.

The Extraordinary Man

His name is Robert.  He is my greatest friend as well as the person I love.  He has a strong character and moral center with a deep-seated belief in a higher power.  He is an artist, philosopher, intellectual, philanthropist and survivor.  He is generous of spirit, compassionate, understanding.  He is wise, witty, erudite, extremely well-read and seriously articulate.

His art speaks volumes of his ability, sensitivity, and judgement.  He is strong and capable, open and honest.  Practically, the first thing he will tell you is that he is an alcoholic.  He has been in recovery for more than twenty-five years.  The thing about it is that while alcoholism is the chronic disease he successfully deals with everyday, it is not who he is.  He, quite simply,  is the most extraordinary man I have ever met.

The Value of Women

We place so much emphasis on "manhood" because, in spite of his slightly smaller numbers, he is the dominant gender in most species.  He is the inseminator in the procreative act, but plays no really integral role in bringing the result to the light of day.  In most cultures, he is valued far above the female and women willingly subject themselves to his rule.  I used to resent that, mostly because I had trouble with authority figures, generally, and did not relate well to men, specifically.  I didn't relate well to women either, but that was primarily because I thought they should know better.....that as women, they should have a clear and concise understanding of the unacceptable position in which men placed them.......somewhere behind the family donkey.  Women are the creatures upon which ALL societies are founded and maintained.  They should be elevated and honored in every culture.......not because they are worth more than men, but because they are equal to them.

Who am I?

That is the hardest question in the world to answer.  You would think it should be the easiest.  My feelings and understanding about myself change from moment to moment.  That isn't instability.  It is being open to new ideas, new concepts, new feelings about life and yourself.  If what you believe is who you are then it is important to be prepared to change attitudes.  It makes us able to evolve and adapt.........which is the most significant survival skill we have.  But we, as human beings, want more from life than just the ability to survive.  We believe we deserve a "quality" to our lives.  I believe that is a God-inspired concept......an effort to distinguish man from all other creatures because we most resemble God in apprehension.  I am convinced that God gave man a brain not just for the purpose of operating an organism and continuing the species, but to put us in touch with divinity........His and ours.

The progress of a work in progress........

I love the language of Carol King's "Tapestry":
     "My life has been a tapestry of rich and royal hue, an everlasting vision of the ever-changing view, a wondrous woven magic in bits of blue and gold, a tapestry to feel and see, impossible to hold."

How very much has that tapestry been my life.....still is.  Like any magical, woven work, sometimes it unravels, either intentionally or accidentally, and re-weaving has to be done.  Thank God, we get the opportunity to correct some of our mistakes.  The fabric is always stronger for the re-working and it develops a sort of patina that only loving hands dispensing goodness and mercy can achieve.

The single greatest influence in my life has been my friend, Robert.  I am certain he has no idea that this is so and might even argue the point, but he would lose that argument.  He is a man of intellect, sensitivity, artistic talent, understanding, patience, compassion, tenderness, humor, insight and gentleness.  What I have both gained and lost through him and because of him are the things that forged me into a woman with a limitless compassion, an untiring determination, an amazing understanding, an incredible thirst for knowledge, a compelling need for expression as well as the burgeoning ability to do so intelligently, a desire to be generous with my usefulness, and an unending, overwhelming love for the one man who opened a door for me so long ago and invited me through it.