The Secular Prophet

Steve Jobs took the symbol of fallen humankind ~ the apple which Adam and Eve bit into ~ and combined it with God's promise of love for humankind. Now, the apple has become a symbol of progress and positivity, a symbol of the beauty man can render, as a partner in creation. Steve Jobs has revolutionized the way we experience the world: iPod, iPad, iPhone. A visionary, Steve seemed to see into the future, or did he carve it? A little bit of both, I think. I read an article recently in which the author referred to Steve Jobs as a secular prophet. How very appropriate.

What a huge loss we have endured in the passing of Steve Jobs. How blessed I feel to have been touched by him through my use of his technology. I wonder if he had any clue how many people he inspired.

Those That Did Not Make It

As I ponder the personal, emotion and spiritual work I had to do to get one year clean, and the work it takes to remain clean, I take a moment to reflect on those that did no make it .... how sad, for them, and moreover for those left behind, who loved them so.

Going to rehab remains one of the best decisions I ever made.

Trust30 ~ Divine Idea

Divine idea ~ force of the moon  ~ a creature with cold, forbidding beauty, born under a dark star. Living a nightmare from which he cannot wake. A stranger to himself, he sits inside a prison of intoxicating rage, stitching the tapestry of deceit ~ his. He sells truth to the highest bidder ~ his word erratic as the wind. His exquisite face, grooved with sorrow. Happiness has died for this, a sad ghost. Still, his blistered, broken heart belongs to me. My love for him dances, naked, on my face. My love for him, the blood of his soul. And, perhaps, of mine.

image from deviantArt

{this post inspired by the #Trust30 writing challenge}

Trust30 ~ Your Personal Message

Love is louder than hatred and war.

{this post created for the #Trust30 challenge}

Trust30 ~ Afraid To Do

Writing cleanses. Writing provides me with a place where I can wash my fears and hang them out to dry. Many times, writing becomes the only place I can truthfully face my fears, and then return to visit them. Passion, pain, regret, grief, desperation, trauma, helpless vulnerability ~ all of these frighten me, and all of these take presence in my writing. Writing delivers me from my fears, fears that I offer up for all to see, in the rawness of wounded moments. Writing enables me to metabolize my fears.

{this post created for the #Trust30 challenge}

Wishcasting Wednesday ~ What Do You Wish to Begin?

This week Jamie Ridler asks us what we wish to begin. Here is my answer ...

Letting Go ... Accepting Myself  and My Feelings 

... Sharing My Story ... Restoring My Faith in Myself

Trust30 ~ Five Years

What would you say to the person you were five years ago?
1. Stop. Please, don't travel down that road called Cocaine. Nothing good will come of that journey. Only immense pain and destruction. It will cost you everything. Please, don't go there.
2. You have attitude. Seriously, lose the attitude and all that negativity. We only attract what we emit. It takes more than skill and intelligence to get ahead. They always pass you by because of your shitty attitude.
3. You cannot fill that void inside of you with external things. Things = stuff. You can't by your way to satiation. You have to live it. The answers live inside of you. So, stop your shopaholism and your ridiculous indulgence in mind altering substances.
4. Where ever you go, there you are. No shit.
5. For heaven's sake, grrrrrl, stop trying to rule the world. You're such a control freak. Cut it out. Instead of taking everyone else's inventory, take your own!
6. You lash out so much. And hang onto so much rage. Why? Let go and let God. (Yes, God.) Someone wise once wrote, "acceptance is the answer to all my problems today." Think about the wisdom in that statement.


{this post created for the #Trust30 challenge}

Trust30 ~ Dare To Be Bold

What’s one thing you’ve always wanted to accomplish but have been afraid to pursue? Write it down.

1. Write a book or 
2. Write more than one book

Also write down the obstacles in your way of reaching your goal.

1. My own fear of failure
2. My own sense of perfectionism, which manifests itself as the Censor, and can ultimately maime my muse, creating writer's block.
3. Ambiguity about subject, theme.
4. Muddled up fears about how to promote my writing ~ do I need to find a literary agent? (I think I do).
5. Fear that I will quit, i.e. not finish writing to book.

Finally, write down a tangible plan to overcome each obstacle.

1. Break this enormous project up into small goals, sort of like "bite-sized pieces." 
2. Connect with my muse often, i.e. daily; this will render that Censor less powerful, while keeping me connected with my creative energy. 
3. I have the seeds of ideas ... I need to develop, organize and prioritize them into outline format. Also, just writing (with no preconceived idea of what will emerge) allows me to tap into my creativity and my muse.
4. I will have to attend book and literary festivals, and do some research on literary agents, in order to find one. Also networking may assist me in the search for an agent.
5. Setting smaller, attainable goals will make the endeavour seem much less daunting, and therefore, make me less likely to bail. I have a story (actually stories) to tell, they want to tell themselves, they will not allow me to run from writing them. Pacing myself  is key my completion of any writing project.

What are you waiting for?

1. Nothing. 
2. I'm working on a few things.
3. The ideas have taken root.

{this post created for the #Trust30 challenge}

Trust30 ~ One Week Left to Live

What would I do, if I had only a week left to live? I would spend it with the people I love. I would document, photograph and possibly videograph my last days. I would savour each moment, rather than mortgage the present for some pie-in-the-sky future payoff. What would I place on my stop list? Procrastination and regret.


{this post created for the #Trust30 challenge}

Trust30 ~ Post-It Question

A question for myself:

In 48-hours I will return to this post and provide answers to this question.


{this post created for #Trust30}

Trust30 ~ One Strong Belief

I believe in the goodness of humans ~ all humans. I believe that everyone enters this world with purity of heart, and sacred intentions. Sometimes, something along the way happens, something which breaks us from the inside, out. Currently someone living on the fringes of my life finds himself there because he behaved badly. I find myself alone in the belief that he will undergo a metamorphosis, and that unconditional love can pave the way to that metamorphosis. With patience, my patience, I can watch the caterpillar become a butterfly. I can do nothing to speed up the process, all I can do is love him through this process.

{this post written for #Trust30}

Trust30 ~ Today in One Sentence

Today I awoke to the sound of grace falling down around me ~ golden streams shining into my eyes, reaching deep inside me, animating the core of my heart, produced a most beautiful resonance.

(This post created for #Trust30)

Wishcasting Wednesday ~ What is Your Money Wish?

I wish to have enough money ~

not ridiculously lots, just enough ~

Enough to survive, and even thrive a little

Enough to share with those I love,

And even some who have less than I

image by: Mephiles99

{pssst! check out my first #Trust30 post ~ here}

Trust 30 ~ 15 Minutes to Live

I started smoking crack to quell the howling inside my head. Instantly, it would set my heart hammering, as though trying to break out of my chest cavity. Instantly, it would create a fantasmagorical euphoria. A euphoria that forbade me from seeing beyond itself, from seeing the falseness of it all. I believed myself to have wound up and tidied all unravelled bits of myself. I told myself that my world had knitted itself together like an expert weaver repairs an unravelled cloth. How I believed my own lies! How I cheated myself from touching and tasting the truth! My heart divided itself, chamber by chamber. My capacity for compassion shrivelled. The iciness of dread struck me, day after day. The virtue in me died, leaving only the stink of desperation, which clung to me like sand does to wet toes. Betrayal and deception became my best friends. I threw down the hearts of all who loved me, and watched them shatter into a million tiny pieces. And now, and now I find myself seated at a table, covered with each tiny shard of broken-ness. My task? To piece each heart back together. God has given me an eternity to complete this task. And I shall nurture it.

{This post created for #Trust 30 ~ a 30-day writing challenge that will foster self-reliance.}

She Means Grace

You know that I loved you? From the moment I first saw you, I loved you, a beautiful stranger, my sister. Even the very sound of your name, sparks my heart to skip a beat. Even when it's not you, but someone else with that same name. Yes my heart flutters at the very sound of your name, at the very thought of you, sister. Ah, but I, a mere child, and so naive, could not understand where you'd been, the things that happened to you, and the hatred and rage which festered in your heart.

I grew up watching our mother grieve for you, her lost little girl. And, so, I could not imagine how you couldn't know that she loved you. I thought that love, mine, could make us sisters, real sisters, such as I never, ever had, but always dreamed about. How could I know that, some of that hatred and rage, you'd saved for me? How could I know, in my child-like way, that you hated me simply because I had what you did not ~ our mother? How could an awkward little girl like me envision myself a symbol of your painful, love starved childhood?  I want to beg forgiveness for my childish naivety. I want to beg forgiveness for all the things your child-self suffered, in the absence of a mother. I want to beg forgiveness for every moment in your life that starved you from the most basic, life-sustaining element ~ love. But how should you forgive me, for the sins of others, others who have long left this earthly life?

photo © 2007 Joy Coffman | more info (via: Wylio)

I want to understand this thing, this force, that both draws us toward and repels us away from each other. It defies logic. Love defies logic. And the more I loved, the stronger my anger became. Anger at your rejection of me. Anger at learning that love cannot and will not repair everything that has broken. You entered adulthood with a bruised and broken spirit, believing that blame would bring you healing. And when you finally found your scapegoats, did the healing begin? Only you can answer that question. Just as only you can reconcile the fact that you've spent so much time angry for the pain and deprivation of your childhood, time that you could have spent reveling in that one thing you have so longed for ~ a mother.

I love you still. I suppose I never stopped, though I believed for a long time in the mutual exclusivity of anger and love. I suppose I had yet to learn that anger doesn't exist without love. Now I know. My heart has always had room enough for ambivalence. And so, I love you. Still. Even if only from afar.

Wishcasting Wednesday: What Do I Wish For My Health?

I wish for acceptance in purging from my Self and Soul all the ugliness of past trauma and pain
I wish attain balance for my bipolar mind and spirit
I wish for drops of grace to quench the scorching fires of regret
I wish for time that no longer hangs heavily, but that flutters joyfully
I no longer wish for growth at the speed of pain, but, rather, love
I no longer wish to be that moth, drawn to the flame, but rather, a part of that flame.

Wiscasting Wednesday: What Dreams Do You Wish For?

image by IceandSnow

Untitled

 

 After The Ball by Tammara

I cannot count it, the many hopeless nights when my shadow searched for yours. You thought to punish me, by removing yourself, leaving me filled with this, an insatiable hunger for absolution. I would burn away the world, to feel your lips passionately pressed against mine. And, so, I remain frozen, in footsteps untaken … our footsteps. And I ask myself, was that Dangerous Angel real? Then I feel a familiar ache, the ache of scars unhealed, located on the driest, whitest landscape of that infinite desert called pain. And I tell myself the purpose of scars: to remind me that the past was, indeed, real. I shall not want to languish in that notoriously unending desert.

Mum

Ode to Joy, originally uploaded by anEccentricMagnolia.

In 2 weeks' time my Mum will turn 80 years old. Wow. That means she will become an octogenarian. How time has flown, especially now that time says I'm a grown-up.

But, you know the interesting thing? In my heart, Mum remains ageless. She certainly doesn't look her age, on the outside, to the world. I know, though, that her place in my heart counts the most.

And, as for me being grown-up? To my Mum I am and shall ever be the baby ... You know that she's still the one I run to, when I have an ouchie? And she still dispenses her loving care with tenderness, even over the phone.

How blessed am I?

Wishcasting Wednesday: How Do I Wish to be Brave?

I wish to be brave by letting go.