Solitude

Always it is in the morning in my daily “Conversations With G-d” that my life path takes on clarity regarding its directed meaning.

Of late I have been wondering about that directedness; the guidance that I trust to show me the path I must best follow each day, if my life is to have unity and a reasonableness that makes sense, at least to me. Who is it that is doing the leading, I have been asking myself?

The question particularly intrigues me when I contemplate “My Prophecy.”

Since August of last year when Sue, my colleague, collaborator and Spirit Sister, and I returned from our visit to Elyria (Ohio), the place of my birth and childhood, I have grown increasingly sensitive to the fact that my life has been directed now, for over forty years by a prophecy I received in the midst of  the Watergate scandal.

A long anticipated pilgrimage to one’s hometown, not visited for a good long time, can certainly prompt such contemplations; one of those periodic life reviews most of us are inclined to make now and then.

However, my questioning of the prophecy’s origins became particularly pointed after our return home. The fortieth anniversary of Nixon’s resigning his presidency was a few days after that and the commands of my prophecy are quite intricately woven together with the Watergate break in and its fallout..

I maintain that what I experienced on the occasion of my receiving a vision I later called prophecy came from outside of me. But could I have been mistaken?

It is a bit troublesome, especially when a certain something has consistently been experienced as the guiding light of one’s life, to not know from whence that guidance comes though most of the time I am not particularly concerned about it.

But every now and then I ponder the circumstance, as I did this morning, asking myself along with wondering about the true source of my prophecy, who, indeed, am I really talking to when I tell myself – and a few choice others – that I am talking to G-d every morning?

Jack, my radio show co-host, has been an astrology enthusiast for decades. And while he would not consider himself an expert on its intricacies he can, with a bit of prompting, be enticed into providing me with a few planetary perspectives now and then.

Not too long ago I asked Jack if he could give me some feedback on how the heavens; the planets and so forth, might have lined up that day of my prophecy so as to, somehow, create the conditions for it. Reluctantly, Jack acquiesced to my request, providing me with a cursory glance into possible answers for this mystery of mine.

What did I get from my inquiry?

Primarily the same answer I get most of the time; when I am talking to G-d as I do daily, who I am talking to, be it inside of me or outside, is just simply and not so simply at all -- G-d!

My daily solitude is the playing field for that experience.

So maybe the heavens opened up that day of my prophecy because the planets were lined up in some perfect way to occasion that happening. Or maybe I just happened to have opened up my own self in some certain special way.

Whatever – I have been guided by a prophecy for forty long years that has directed my life path.

How very special!  Lucky me! 

And, lucky me, again, that I know how very much of a treasure is my Solitude!

Our Political Swat Team

A neighbor of whom I am rather fond and keep in touch with occasionally by email responded to my blog article about my voting for Hillary with a bit of “disbelief” that I would make a choice like that! Perhaps, he also wondered at my selection this early in the game.

Oh well I hadn’t expected to win any popularity contests with my bold statement of support for this particular candidate except, maybe, from some of the diehard Democrats and, likely, from the feminists among them.

I wasn’t quite certain how to immediately respond to this friend neighbor’s challenge right off.  But then I read a CNN article wherein the reporter, Ms. Ashley Killough, described Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker as hitting “back at potential GOP presidential rival Marco Rubio over  the Florida senator’s charge over…..”

Well you fill in the blanks.

The topic could be any comment made by another who is one’s political opponent. The subject matter changes, the manner of combat rarely, if ever does. In other words Walker took a swat at Rubio and soon Rubio will swat him back.

Thus I come back to Hillary.

We definitely, in my opinion, don’t need our politics to be handled like a SWAT team going after armed criminals in the guise of other presidential contenders.

The deal, as I see it, is who is going to do the best job throughout the campaign to even appear capable of leading us to overcome the viral polarization in our country and help our very sick society heal.

I don’t necessarily trust Hillary. She’s a politician. That means she’s a game player capable of the dirtiest maneuvers to get what she is after. But I don’t expect to find any other among them upon whom bestowing my trust would bring me comfort to any greater degree. After all politics is politics and anyone who tr2usts a politician is a fool in my book.

But Hillary has, by this time, developed a bit of grace and diplomacy; the skill of a veteran who knows how to get in the cage with the other large predators and come out relatively unscathed. So, while I certainly cannot say that I trust her, I am betting on her finesse.

Not meaning that I think she is lily white. It’s just that I think she has the skill to cross the great congressional divide without being decimated, manage our international diplomacy -- and -- G-d help us, achieve a greater unity among the citizens of our country.

I was proud of Hillary’s representing us, even with her flaws, as Secretary of State. So I feel confident I would respect her manner in representing this country at home and abroad as our president.  This would be such a relief that I cannot even speak it!

Still I can always change my mind as the campaign game plays itself out. But from where I sit now, with lots of organizational experience of my own, I think Hillary just might be able to do the bridge building we need.  All I see of the others candidates so far is more bullying and provoking polarization. I don't believe it needs to be this way.

I also don't think Hillary should lose just because she is a woman either!

I want someone who can help me hold my head up high, again, as an American.

What I don’t want is a president, even a potential one, who starts off his/her campaign on the attack of the other candidates as ENEMIES that he must take dead or alive, as if he/she were a SWAT team member! 

For all its imperfections the America I know and love is not yet a war zone! And, that’s not what our election process should look like here either, as if a bomb threat were lurking at every corner!

Anyway since our last presidential election I changed my voter registration from Democrat to Independent.

I don’t belong to any party anymore and that’s how I will make my voting decision; any which way when I get to the polls!

Women Power: A Critical Vehicle For Change

For Krystal and the Hood College Psychology Club

My first car was a fifty-six T-bird. With my Dad’s business partner of the era, George Barris, the absolute most famous custom car designerin the world to my knowledge, contributing to its sparkle and flash, my father even had it a bit customized for me.

How great the power of that little car felt to my adolescent-getting-to–know-the-world -around-me self! I can still feel its burst as we peeled away from a stop light, propelling me way out ahead of all those other cars, instantly left behind, thanks to the command of my fuel injection accessories.

Mine actually was green,
But this will do for now.

What a great entrance to emerging adulthood that was for me!

How much better than that could the owner of Hollywood’s Custom Corner on Vine Street (circa 1952) have demonstrated his proud-as-a-peacock manhood than to gift his young daughter with a car of this ilk?

I have a whole slew of T-bird stories in my treasure box of memories of life with my Dad and Mom and our life in Southern California. And, today they feel ripe and ready to begin pouring forth. It must be the sunshine of this spring day bringing them into my consciousness.

If I am to complete the mission I have set for myself with this blog site—taking off the thousand masks I wear to be authentically me in present time -- I  will, over time, want you to see how this T-bird story group morphs into my “Hot Pants, Motorcycles and K Street” life and stories.  But for today suffice it for me to say that over the years I have come to recognize the power of women as essential change vehicles, in or out of the cars we drive.

To make my point, I can now unequivocally state that I am definitely going to vote for Hillary!

In spite of the many things in her manner that I haven’t liked, Hillary is the one for me!

In fact, I’m even going to go a step farther and see what I can do to aid her campaign to help get her elected.

Yes! I am voting for Hillary without a doubt.

You know why?

It’s because I really like the way she threw her hat in the ring. I think she is setting her pace to genuinely play the real deal “game.”

Having said that I will soon want to discuss the GAME with you to which I am referring; the New Horizons Truth or Dare Game. I wish we could all be in it together, forever and ever, even in everyday life as a style of being.  

New Horizons Truth or Dare Game surpasses everything else I have ever known as the highest impact process for collectively learning how to live a life of “power with” rather than power over.  New Horizons “new” Climbing The Mountain of Awe Game is an updated version of our original GAME, circa 1976. Still I am unlikely to ever have that original Truth or Dare Game experience again. Those days are over, leaving only nostalgia behind.

More on this as time allows.  I have been working myself to the grindstone this past month, preparing for not one, but two Coffee House Conversations, back to back.

It was a hellish experience that only a workaholic, power addicted, determined to break the glass ceiling at all costs woman would like.

I did not like!

That’s not me, anymore. It took every strength I had in me to break the habit, my workaholic habit, Dark Side mode as it was.

Now the sun is beginning to shine again outside my window with the birds chirping their merry song and the flowering trees in bloom. I need a walk and fresh mountain air right now more than I need most other things. So off I go to drink all that in now as I chug my way up the mountain road that is my best, regular aerobic workout, long neglected because it was just too darn cold for me these past few months.

But I will be back here writing soon again with lots more to say. The hellish demands ended late day yesterday and I have a storehouse of updated reflections on life and stuff to share.

See ya soon again now that I am making my way back to my Beloved daily writing pattern.

My womanly way of power allows me that; time for the inner me; meditating, reflecting, contemplating, time for balance and gentleness, not all about the man’s way of power that steely, fast and furious little T-bird introduced me to.

I am most grateful for the balance.