finding my REALigion

 

i have a feeling this bit of writing...always stream of conscious...may become extreme of conscious before i am done here...

ignition...lift off...full throttle up...here i go...

when i was a little girl i fell to the ground and stopped breathing...long enough to hear odd sounds...like sound that was movement...like a fluted tunnel...i saw many pinpoints of light grow into one big light...it was a very brief experience but in the split of a second i felt it...the love...all love...or at least a feeling i associate with what love is without all the gravity of being flesh and bones...i felt a fluttering of my own energy...i didnt know it was the real me at the time but i do now...

then i took a gulping breath and sat up...i think that was the moment i started on this quest without fully knowing it until later in my life...the quest to understand what being human is and what being a human with spirit is...

i have often failed at being human...not good at fitting in or dealing with the bullshit...i see through a whole lot of bullshit and it often feels like wool against my skin...it annoys me...sometimes i will say something to the manufacturer of it but most of the time now i just try not to get any on me...

i love and speak of life in a way that messes me up...i have given people chance after chance to be kind to me and they find it safe to be unkind to me instead...for they know if i love them i dont walk away easily...well until the last couple of years...i got my heart ripped out by some cruel words and since then i started changing this part of me...i dont like the change...it has broken me down...i have nightmares about it...wake up with such sorrow it literally makes my heart hurt...i stopped trusting myself...and others...i felt the human part of me shriveling up...death has been near...not suicide but death...illness after illness...sinking into poverty...giving up...and i know if i didnt deal with this i would end up hopeless and homeless...and then death would come and ease me from this life...and i would regret this...

i would regret failing to be a better human to myself...i would regret the loss of this life and the time i could have spent loving better and being me...

so as i sat in the bathroom last night...trying to get my asthma under control...wondering if this was it...i spread a blanket out on the cold floor...i had a few pictures of loved ones sitting on the floor next to me...and i looked at them and felt comforted...i wasnt afraid...

i have never been afraid of death or what is on the other side of it all...i know there is love and compassion...and i spoke in my heart to that god i love...which is love...the unseen beloved...and i just asked for courage to live and not fail...

i went to sleep early this morning on the floor of the bathroom with friendly faces beside me...i didnt dream...i did empty out of my sadness...and when i woke up the sun was shining and snow had settled on the world outside...i sat up...got up...put my hand under the bathroom faucet and took a handful of water to my dry lips...

and as if a voice had reached through time and space i heard the voice of one i have loved forever...her voice said "blessed is she who seeks"

it made me smile...and feel alittle crazy...but i understood it...and knew that voice...felt the strength of those words...let those words steady me and hold me to this body...i took a puff of my inhaler...a pill...let myself sit in silence for hours...thinking of those words...letting them become a meditation...

blessed is she who seeks...

and i have been seeking...for nearly all this lifetime i have known i am more than this cage of bones...i know i am more than a lifetime of experiences...i have fallen and gotten up again and again...always amazed at the grace and stillness i find holding me...

but the last few years have taken a huge hit to my faith in others and i became more and more upset at the way this world is being trashed...i was losing my religion...

my religion has been humanity...you have been my religion...

i consider us a sacred creation and have done my best all my life to treat others as sacred...but it has worn me down...these last few years...

my whole life has not been easy but i could always look around and see good people doing good...but the last few years i have begun to see good people pervert themselves...sell out...buy into the destruction of our world...gluttony has replaced generosity...power grabbing has become the norm...the worship of gurus and celebrity has replaced self awareness...egos are out of control...it is painful to witness...the planet is sick because human beings are sick...but so many reach for the poison and not the love potion...

the more i saw of it all the more disappointed i became...the more faith i lost...yet i denied it...i didnt want to know i was losing my faith...my religion...i began to see humans as the disease and not just symptoms of the darkness consuming the world...i began to secretly have anger and hatred for humans...

each animal abuse story...each child rape...each school shooting...each dirty government politician...each corrupt corporate action...each bite of polluted food...each sip of unclean water...each foul mouth speaking in a grocery line...each time someone didnt stand up and take a good action...each homeless person ignored...each gutter full of trash...each beach littered with dead whales and dolphins...each and every act of hate...i felt it...the coldness of losing my religion...of losing my faith in people...

and today as sirens filled the air...as i sat here letting my body recover from the asthma attack...i wept...for myself...for this world...for all the beauty being lost...for the horrors...for those sitting alone like me...struggling...mourning the loss of all this potential...grieving over the stupidity of it all...the waste...the selfishness...

i journeyed...to my storytelling guide...i asked him to help me...he has become family to me...and instead of advice he asked for a story...about the grim reaper...so i told him about the time the grim reaper came to town...this is the story...

this grim reaper had been coming to our town since its founding in the early 1800's...the reaper would come and take someone in a gruesome tractor accident...or from giving birth or from scarlet fever or from choking on christmas dinner...in some gruesome sorrow-filled way...

this time the grim reaper came for the most adored and oldest person in town...miss james...102 years old and still teaching first grade...a teacher for over 81 years...from riding on the back of a mule from homestead to homestead...to one room school...to the elementary built in the 1970's...she had seen nearly all the townsfolk in her class...and this was a woman so loved and appreciated that everyone spoke softer when she was around and had their manners in check...

but the grim reaper didnt care about how much folks loved her...he wanted to take a prize from the town...so he did...

miss james was standing at her bathroom sink one evening...she had disrobed and was taking a bird bath when the reaper passed over her...he whispered in her mind to go outside and sit down...and she did...as if walking in a dream...she was sitting under the maple tree in her front yard on the coldest of winter nights...without a stitch of clothes on...she thought she was sitting back at the one room school reading to children...

a neighbor found her in the morning...frozen to death...

the town was horrified...she was in her right mind...she would have never done such a thing...she was a modest woman...she loved life...and it began to be said that very morning the grim reaper was heartless and cruel...for taking such a good woman in such an insulting way...but the town put aside their hatred and anger to celebrate miss james...

they laid her out on a bed of pink roses...her favorite flower...sung songs to her she had taught them all...they told stories and praised her and served a feast in her honor...she was placed in the most beautiful white casket...lowered into the ground with gentle hands...flowers must have been in great shortage in the world that day for thousands circled her grave...

days later there was a big meeting at the town hall...it was decided to get that dirty grim reaper but good! it was miss mae...the healer woman and now the oldest person in town at 99 years who came up with a plan...

signs of welcome went up on every door and business and on every street corner...

WELCOME GRIM REAPER!
WE HONOR YOU FOR YOUR YEARS OF SERVICE.
COME TO THE TOWN SQUARE AND LET US CELEBRATE
YOUR 200 YEAR ANNIVERSARY.

now they didnt know if it had been 200 years or not...but they bet the grim reaper had lost count in his much longer track of time reaping souls...

day and night someone sat with a large bell brought down from the church tower to ring when the reaper came...each person watching...waiting...for the reaper to appear...and the grim reaper did come...

in dark cloak and hood...in a deathly cold blast of wind...the grim reaper swooped down and began walking up the middle of main street and to the town square...the bell sounded and town folks came running...

the mayor welcomed him with a key to the town...the grim faced ghoul reached out with a boney hand and took the oversized key inscribed with "thank you for 200 years of service"...a band played and miss mae was brought forward...

the reaper towered over her...his scythe held low...

someone brought a ladder to her and helped her climb it...she was still only eyes to chest but that would suit her just fine for what she did next...

she spoke with a strong raised voice..."old reaper you have been taking lives for 200 years...we all gotta go and there aint no one here would fight you...but you been taking folks in nasty mean ways...heartless ways...so i figure you aint got a heart!"

and as quick as a hummingbird darts through honeysuckle...miss mae reached into her chest and took out her heart...slamming into the dark hollow spot where the reaper was missing one...

miss mae fell back dead and was caught by her grandson who laid her down softly on a cart full of daisies...her favorite flower...and folks watched as her soul climbed up out of her and departed in a ray of light so pure it made everyone's heart joyful...

the grim reaper stumbled back...stunned...letting out a hellish cry...growing color to the flesh where before there was only sickly grey skin stretched over bones...his empty eyes of dullness turned to the sweetest color of summer sky blue...

he took a deep breath and fell to his knees...

miss mae's grandson stepped forward and said "reaper you aint so grim now are ya? you got the heart of a healer in you...a good woman and friend to all...you go on taking souls to their afterlife...but now i think you will be kinder and gentler in how you take them wont you?"

the reapers new eyes welled up with tears...he nodded yes and flew away...

and from then on when someone crossed over to glory they crossed over with a smile on their face...always found with a pink rose and a daisy upon their chest...

 ~*~

so this...in the middle of a day of struggle...was the story i told my dear storytelling guide...and as i wrote it my heart softened...i felt the acceptance of what i have been going through...and smiled at the thought of a whole town standing up to the grim reaper...not to defeat it...but to help it have empathy...i understood the teaching in this story...this is us...this is how the world can survive...if we give love to those who dont know how to love...teach them by example...with courage and open hearts...to have empathy...

i HAVE been losing my religion...my faith in humanity...understanding there are good folks doing not good things...as i have done this too...ashamed of my actions...saddened by the harm i have done...all of us struggling in some way...searching...hoping to find some kind of meaning to life...

tonight...i breath alittle easier...letting go...of beliefs...ways...patterns of behavior...even letting go of those i love so much...letting go of grief and disillusionment...letting go of what i thought would make my life better but in the end it only crippled me from living my life...i placed my faith in people who live in fear...the fear of death and of life and love...i placed my dreams in the hands of others and that was foolish...i take those dreams now...of children...family...a home...and i kiss them and let them slip from my heart...blessing them as they go from me...

and here i am...finding my REALigion...a different way of seeing the world...as it is...a mess yet beautiful...i see others and all their frail broken parts and love them...but i let go of...well...i let go of my need to struggle in it all...

i send my love into the coldness of this world...and there is light...and sounds like movement...like a fluted tunnel...and all the fragmented parts of myself i make whole...i give all my love to the broken hearted of this world...i understand...

the spirit of love...it is out there...if you need to feel loved hold out your hands and scoop it up...place it over your heart...let it sink in...the warmth of it...the music of it...the light...

this world is fading...will it fade into darker times or be filled with good works and much love? i dont know...i have lost my faith in humanity...but i have found a greater faith...in myself...in love...and in the hope that love will heal broken hearts...

blessed is the seeker...she found herself...