Tragedy

Tragedy happens so often in our world that there must be some lesson in what appears to be the senseless and the sadness.

Maybe one of our missions, while we are so briefly here, is to learn how to look at what happens to us and to others, not as a random ration of pain, or as bad karma, but as a non-understandable experience to learn compassion, love and empathy and as a result to have the opportunity to make different choices in our own lives.

How do we begin to understand the deep desperation of protesters in Iran who endure pain and dying for principle or the ruling clerics and their sycophants who care for nothing but the sustainment of power and control?

How do we even try to understand the consuming hatred of terrorists who view life with such little value and with so much darkness, that they can not see a future beyond the deaths of innocents? What lesson do they hope to teach? It certainly isn’t one of Islam. Islam is a religious practice acknowledging God through the name of Allah. Islam does not preach terrorism in any form.

I wonder if, in that other place, the place where some believe we go after our life ends here, there is an awareness of what goes on in this earthly density. I wonder if those who die are angry at the ending of their lives.

Is there rage there or is that kind of emotion left behind? Is justice important or is it a different justice seen in a divine context?

I don’t know if there will ever be temporal answers to these questions, but there is another question that’s equally important. If we were somehow given the answers through intuitive meditation could we hear the truths of spirit through our anger or pain?

Old Sayings

We say a lot of old expressions and many times the original meaning has been lost.

Our Grandparents had a saying for almost every occasion. If you tried to do something in a hurry and flubbed it you would hear, "a stitch in time saves nine"or "many a slip between the cup and the lip."

How about "bite the bullet", that comes from the medical profession in the 19th century. Surgeons called on to perform battlefield operations ,when no anesthesia was available, would give their patient a bullet to bite on in hopes of taking attention off the pain.

"Cut to the Quick", has an Anglo Saxon origin. Quick meant "alive or living". The original phrase means to cut through the skin to living tissue or figuratively, "You have hurt my feelings".

"Tongue in Cheek" was first used in the mid 1800's and was similar to the wink nowadays. It means we really don't mean what we're saying.

"Out of the Frying Pan and into the fire" is an ancient expression probably adapted from the old Greek saying, "Out of the smoke and into the flame".

"Thrown in the clink" is a slang saying for taken to jail. Clink probably came from an old prison on Clink Street in London, England.

How about BVD's. The euphemism for long underwear. For years people thought BVD stood for "Baby's Ventilated Diapers" or " Boy's Ventilated Drawers". BVD stood for the names of the founders of the company that made them. Bradley, Voorhies and Day.

One of my favorite sayings these days is: "Two things are infinite : the universe and human stupidity; I’m not sure about the universe."

Have a great Monday.

Night Storm

Good Morning,

Another storm moved through last night. The weather department called it severe. There were fiercely strong gusts, pelting rain and lots of lightening and thunder. I loved it. The Muse came out again. Have a great weekend.

Night Storm
© 2009 Rolland G. Smith

The joy of rain came passing through
My elemental sphere of life.
A type of storm though known, but new
That set, for some, a passing strife.

With falling limbs from gust and strike
And tearing shears of nature’s breath,
The thundered sound of lightning’s might
Delayed by many miles of depth.

Each storm is like an Escher paint
Complete with knowing its return,
But I embrace with no complaint
The fury’s force without concern.

Ellis Island

I had an extraordinary experience many years ago. I was on Ellis island in New York harbor. If you haven’t been there, you should. It is a place that is energized with the resonant memory of the past.

It’s an exhilarating experience standing in what is now the Ellis Island museum. I felt the courageous spirits of our immigrant ancestors and I had a profound respect for their courage to embrace change. So many moved step by step through the great hall on their way to a new life. Freedom started with a boat ride across the bay to lower Manhattan and then spread to the cities and towns and prairies of America.

Amid the din of other people and soft conversation, I walked the path and steps that 18-million immigrants followed. I felt their hearts as I sensed their pride at what they personally accomplished, and at what this country has become because of them and what we still can be.

These ghosts of greatness linger there, not because they came through that portal of liberty so many years ago, but because they stay to stand watch. Their presence is everywhere, in old photographs, in hundred year old scribbled messages to loved ones on a passage wall, and in the descendants, who visit here and keep it hallowed ground.

Ellis island reminds us that it does not matter how or where or when potential greatness comes to this land, it only matters what one does with the manifesting dreams of freedom, opportunity and responsibility.

It also reminds us that our forefathers came from somewhere that wasn't here seeking to manifest a hope into a vision of a future. Is that so different from today?

Nature

I send hugs and greetings to my friends in Wisconsin who embrace their nature with joy, wonder and appreciation. I send profound respect to my friends all over who walk the talk and know that we are the nature we abuse.

I salute your passion, your dedication, and especially your appreciation of the “isness” of being in an environment of unimaginable beauty in its detail. So few of us take the time to look, to feel the consistency of nature’s grace and change.

Take clouds for example. In the last thunderstorm that rolled through your area, did you notice the roiling and darkened Cumulus Nimbus hammers that pounded your space? Did you look out and see their turbulence? Did you count the time in seconds between the lighting flash and the sound to know the approximate distance it was away? Or were you inside aware, but unobservant of what was going on in your immediate nature.

How about when the storms of life and nature pass? Do you take time to acknowledge with thanks the peace that follows? Here’s what I see when the puffy cumulus flatten out within a temperature gradient that gives their base a flat surface.

Stepping Stone Sky
©2008 Rolland G. Smith

They float upon the blue of heaven’s floor
Above the desert dry and highway street;
These steps of mystic mist that gods adore
When walking top the clouds in soft bare feet.
Dissolve they do for spirits quickly pass
Attending to their realms and duties held.
Then Gaia in her nature smooths the path
And gathers mists together in a meld.
From this she makes another downy cloud
Where spirits rest before the morning bright.
For soon they rush to gather and enshroud
The human pleas from prayers before God’s light.
All this is from a photo of the sky.
And spirit’s grace commands I say, “Oh My”!

We love the dichotomous aspect of nature. Wet here, dry there. Cold there, hot here, and all of it interchangeable and all of it seemingly cyclical even though most of us cannot remember the weather specifics from month to month let alone season to season.

Sure last summer was hot and the winter was cold, but beyond that did you notice any differences from the year before and the year before that? Did the other beings of nature react or play differently? Was there more fruit on the tree this year than last?

If you want spiritual awareness of life, if you want refined attunement to your soul’s environment; to your nature, then choose first to be aware of your climate and then your weather will be second nature to your understanding.

Photo by: Claude Charlebois

Family thoughts

Today is one of those days of family thoughts.

My wife and I sat in silence last night and then we talked about the day and the expectations for tomorrow.

Expectations of the normal things that life brings, but also the ones in life that are profound to family by sharing joys and concerns. Today will bring a gathering of family to acknowledge an act of service.

We have a nephew who is a career military professional, an officer by both experience and time and within a few weeks he will be deployed to Afghanistan for a long tour of duty.

He leaves a family at home. A wife, a teenage daughter and a nine-year-old son. It is not a good time for a Father to be away, it never is, but our nephew’s deployment is indicative of our nation’s military families these days.

We ask much of our soldiers and their families. For the individuals in uniform, who have chosen the military as a career and probable service in foreign lands, it is always expected, but never desired. For the families of those who serve it is a different story.

As a country we ask these families for the sacrifice of self. We ask for willing separation from the human loves and likes of our soldiers and we as a country acknowledge little in appreciation for the innocents of choice; those who by circumstance of birth or marriage must endure the constant thought of a warrior in harms way.

What families do is worry in silence and often in private. Families smile and honor the choices of our soldiers. Families hug and pray and with pride and tears send our young and their leaders off to a battle that’s different from what war use to be.

The saying from the past is still valid today. "They also serve who only stand and wait."

My wish for my nephew is courage in his choices, wisdom in his leadership, peace in his heart, kindness in his confrontations and safety, not only for him, but for all the lives he cares for and leads in the service of his country. May the blessings of life be forever embedded in the beats of his heart until he and all return to the sacred ground of home.

Window Rain

It’s been raining here in the East for the last several days. Short showers here and there and then downpours and deluge for a time as weather systems move through the northeast. The ground is saturated and flooding has occurred.

Some friends have complained about the wet and damp, but I love it. Watching it rain from the comfort of a dry place encourages an exchange between spirit and mind that is missing when the outdoors beckons with the freedom of sunlit choice.

For me rain has always awakened the Muse. This one called Window Rain comes from my book, Quiet Musings.

Racing, chasing down the pane,
Drops that started out as rain,
Some are fast and others slow,
Nervous sliding to below.

Stopping, starting, this way that,
Changing by another’s splat,
Lenses into nature’s gray
Help define the type of day.

Streaking, leaking, lines of wet,
Never staying never set,
Trace their path before it’s dry
To see a water butterfly.

No singing song of “go away,”
I truly want the rain to stay.
I miss it when it is not here,
To make my glass a chandelier.

People Power

Why can it not be that freedom of choice is the norm within and upon this magnificent world? The answer is not in our stars. It is within our hearts and the earth’s collective heart for it beats in the harmony of balance.

Right now the country of Iran is beating with a heart of potential change, of freedom, of liberty, of choice, of individual power through her people who seek self-expression. The consequences of this desire is terminal for some, injurious for others and inimical to the clerics whose power is increasingly suspect.

Each individual protester seeks to choose the structure of government. It may end up where religious institutions and their regimen retain control, but history has proven the disenfranchised always fight for the right of self-determination and once the fight has begun it does not end until it is accomplished.

Power to the people was an expression used by social change elements in America in the 1970’s to energize like-minded souls to support a cause. It worked! It worked in images of clinched fists and the result was change.

Perhaps the power phrase will enthuse an Iranian population mired in control, conditioned in fear, constrained in belief and graced with an historic past that could be an inspiration for the world today.

Persia was wonderful. It was the cultural beginning of our current civilization. The early history of humankind goes back to Iran and to a land the ancient Greeks called Persis.

If Iran in its current revolutionary and religious encumbrances can embrace its historic and true nature of refinement, beauty and art, power will be with the people and not with the clerics who hold it for difference reasons. And if the people of the world choose to give the Iranians prayerful support this may be the tipping point leading to a peaceful future for the Middle East and the world.

Sibling and Gossip

The Book of Genesis taught us the lesson of Cain and Able.

Prime time television entertains us with the conflicts of family. Psychologists tell us that competition between brothers and sisters is normal and that that competition can be positive or negative.

Lucien Bonaparte used his political position in France to help his brother become emperor. Napoleon returned the favor by making his brother king of Italy.

History has many examples of those who resented a sibling success. Novelist Henry James once wrote that he was sorry whenever his older brother read one of his works because he said, his brother was so constitutionally unable to enjoy it.

The word "sibling" goes way back and comes from "sib" which meant any relative; it did not have to be a blood relation. In those days, for instance, a god-sib was a god-relative or god-parent.

For the most part, the link between brothers and sisters is the longest lasting of relationships and is considered one of life's most satisfying bonds. A bond of sharing hopes and wishes and successes and failures and secrets and when you share that much, it is the nature of others to talk about it.

In time, a god-sib, came to mean any close relationship. And close relationships know a lot about each other and again the tendency is to tell others what you know. God-sib, became gossip.

States Names

Most of us are proud of the state in which we live. Listen sometimes when Jay Leno or someone like him mentions a state's name. If there is somebody in the audience from that state, they usually applaud.

Many of the names have interesting histories. Kentucky, for instance, comes from the Iroquois and it means "land of tomorrow".

Tennessee used to be called Frankland, and was named after Ben Franklin, but it was changed to Tennessee which comes from the Cherokee. Tennessee was their name for the Tennessee River.

Connecticut comes from the Indian word Quonecktacut, meaning river of pines. Idaho comes from two Indian words, Eda Hoe, and it means, "light on the mountain."

Joseph Shipley compiled this information and put it in a book called the DICTIONARY OF WORD ORGINS. He believes Illinois may have been an Indian word for "river of men." Iowa was derived from a tribe of the Sioux nation and means "Sleepy Ones."

Massachusetts is Algonquin for "small place at big hills." Michigan means "great water."

The Spanish influence is evident in some states names. Florida means flowery. Colorado is Spanish for the colored country. Nevada means snow-clad.

Washington was originally called Columbia, but to avoid confusion with the District of Columbia, they renamed it Washington, after old George. The District of Columbia was named in 1791 in honor of Christopher Columbus, but since the city of Washington is there, there is still some confusion between the state and the city. The Bureaucracy was at work even then.

Morning Thoughts

I trust this day finds you in the easy experience of just living with joy and appreciation. We all participate in the theatre of life and often worry about innocuous things and events when it fact the outcome is never the lesson, only the doing is.

This morning was one of those special beginnings. It’s a lazy day for me. I really have nothing I have to do today. We need days like this every so often.

An early morning crispness and clarity encouraged a fresh look at the meaning of life. At first, finding meaning in just a look around seems impossible, but then, if we move within the glance to the power of the observation, meaning abounds.

I walked in the garden. A coffee cup cradled in my hands. The House Wrens were already busy with their young in the Hackberry tree. They have such a sweet sound, a melodic warble that sustains a lasting smile.

Their little ones are ready to leave the nest. What a leap of faith that is for these tiny-feathered creatures. Their only experience is sharing a nest and being fed and then one day they must jump into life. There is hesitation, but no fear. Why is that? Trust is the freedom to take the leap. We humans could use a little more trust and a little less fear.

The brilliant yellow Day Lilies ascended to the rising sun, each one finding a way to the light. They share water and the ground with other plants and flowers taking no more space that what they need. Another lesson for humankind if we choose to see it.

May your day be filled with grace and appreciation.

Iran's Election

The Islamic revolution of 1979 in Iran has proven that religious control of any country is a travesty of individual rights and a usurpation of individual freedom and action.

Supposedly President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won reelection as the political puppet of an Islamic government. Whether the election was sacred in truth or filled with fraud cannot be fully known in a country with governmental and religious control of media, the courts, the police and the military.

It can only be know in the hearts of her people.

What the world hears clandestinely is a different story. Digested stories from pole observers of voting fraud. Stories of open political dissent and street protests.

Iran has a covert media. The official one operated and controlled by the government fears it. It is a people’s media; a horizontal one for it transmits information from person to person, from group to group, grass roots to grass roots via Internet and cell phone connections like Facebook, Twitter, email and more.

Their stories and reports are the ad hoc poles of true consensus. This is where the basic right of freedom lives in the actions of patriots. These are the life measures of a consensus in a country where only a select few control the many in order to sustain power.

A storm of truth has been loosed in Iran and despite the fact that power can contort and control; the infectious desire for freedom is roaming the sands, the mountains, the cities, towns, and villages and the hearts of Iranians.

Flag Day

Sunday is Flag Day.

There was a time in our history when our flag was empty of experience. It had the symbolism of a united people and the expectation of greatness, but we were a young country and as yet had little collective history.

The United States wasn’t even a year old when Continental Congress adopted the design on June 14th, 1777. But now, centuries later we should remember that our flag is much more than red and white clothe stripes and symbolic stars in blue.

It’s everything that’s ever happened to this country and everything we’ve ever done. It’s victory and defeat. It’s protests and pageantry. It’s honor with humility and shame with remorse. It’s living and dying for principle. A nation is not its flag. Our flag is the collective body and history of our nation. It’s not only the rights we are guaranteed, but it’s also the personal rights we embrace and grant to others through courtesy and compassion and character.

Above all the flag is the waving symbol for the entire world to see our courage, our liberty, and our belief in the God we trust.

Thomas Berry

Another friend has crossed the threshold into the light of another place. I received the following from EnlightenNext magazine. You can find them at enlightennext.org.

Quote:

“A Tribute to Thomas Berry

The renowned eco-theologian Thomas Berry died in the early morning of June 1st at the distinguished age of 94. Even though we never met Berry, many of our contributors and close friends were deeply inspired by his life and work, including leading evolutionary thinkers like Brian Swimme, Mary Evelyn Tucker, Michael Dowd, and Connie Barlow. Berry was greatly influenced by the evolutionary cosmology of French Jesuit priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. A Catholic priest himself, Berry will be best remembered for helping the religious traditions to recognize the ecological crisis as a deeply spiritual issue”.

I knew Thomas Berry. I had that privilege through an environmental organization, which we both embraced and would occasionally meet for gatherings and board meetings.

He was/is an extraordinary thinker. When we connected on an irregular basis he was in his seventies. He was cogent, alert, profound, brilliant and dedicated to his passion of proving that the amalgamation of ecology and spirituality is a must for humankind to embrace as a truth.

He once said to me, “Descartes killed the world”, I suppose Berry was referring to Descartes denial that consciousness could be attributed to animals in order to explain their behavior and perhaps even to a suspected denial that the planet embodied sentientness.

In any event Berry was as a profound a thinker as was Descartes and probably more so since Berry had the advantage of the proofs of modern science. Thomas Berry will be missed and I am honored to have known him.

Gas Gouging Again

Some observations today on current oil company’s greed.

I’ve written about this before and given the oil corporation's penchant for gouging profit, I will probably write about it again and again.

You would think that we consumers would wise up somewhere along the way, but so far that hasn’t happened. We go on our merry way accepting this or that and we blindly condone, by inaction, the usurpation of fairness from our daily lives.

Doesn’t it seem a bit strange that in the last couple of weeks the price of gas has risen twenty percent? Why? (Hint – it’s the summer driving season.)

Look around at the television and newspaper headlines. Do some Google research. There is no new overt crisis happening in the world or looming on the horizon. No hurricanes in the Gulf to disrupt production or the processing of oil. No coup in an oil-producing nation. There is no breakdown of a manufacturing plant anywhere to use an as excuse or even headlines that OPEC is feeling pee ode at some action taken by our government and cuts production.

These are some of the reason the oil companies have used in the past and we consumers have passively accepted them over and over as the reasons for paying gouging gasoline prices.

When are we going to learn?

Consumption is the harbinger of higher prices.

What free enterprise has always embraced from the beginning of mercantile democracy is that reasonable profit and fairness encourages growth and loyalty; untenable greed precedes demise.

Many of our corporations who have forgotten that premise are now lying under the tombstone of failure and if others are not careful it will be their downfall into the economic abyss of memory for new technologies are emerging and consumers only remember fairness.

Ridge Line Thoughts

I crossed a high mountain ridge the other day to visit friends some distance away. From my car I could see a long way into the valley below as the road wound down the mountainside. It was a scenic wooded land with only a few cleared farm fields visible as quilted patchwork in the occluded distance.

It was also a cool day and under the green canopy of a vast forest I could sense where some homes were located by the light gray plumes of wood fire smoke rising from beneath the thick tree cover.

It was a pleasant experience and one of pastoral empathy; I even imagined the comfort of porch sitting and innocuous conversation.

When peaceful scenes like this occur it engenders in me a profound sense of loss for my mind remembers more of the world’s chaos than my eyes could sustain while enjoying a singular grand vista.

I do ask myself the proverbial question. Why is this so?

I have experienced villages and cities in many parts of this magnificent world. I’ve had conversations and laughs with the simple souls of life and I’ve conversed with the leadership of nations on the major questions of the day.

It is my observation that both groups want nothing more than to sit by a comforting fire with the calming aroma of wood smoke and share their experiences of life, doze a little, maybe even whittle some creativity in their minds while enjoying the simple things in life.

It seems to me that is our nature and all we have to do is claim it by being it.

Would conflict end then? Would children no longer cry from hunger and adult carelessness? Would love then fill the little hearts of humankind? I wonder.

Again and Again

Last week had another anniversary that should never be forgotten.

A number of years ago when Bill Clinton was President there was a diplomatic scramble to accommodate the Chinese for a meeting in New York. It was a meeting between Clinton and China’s President Jiang Zemin.

It was to have been at the main branch of the New York public library, but the Chinese discovered that there was a exhibit there detailing the Tienanmen Square massacre. The Chinese were offended and demanded a new meeting place.

Truth will always offend when its reality is denied.

American sources estimate that thirty-five hundred people died in the Beijing protests of 1989.

The world of twenty years ago saw the pictures, the bodies, the pain, and to this day, the Chinese Government continues to deny that anyone but soldiers died in the weekend massacre.

The collective heart of humankind, however, knows the truth and weeps.

There is another sadness, beyond the loss of life. It is the continuing shame that again in human experience an oppressive authority used and uses force to deal with an idea of freedom.

Force will never conquer the desire for freedom, nor the active quest of free choice. History has validated that truth over and over again on the crumbled actions of oppression. Truth and tolerance, compassion and education, common courtesy and common sense are the only values that will sustain a government in power and elevate the condition of its people.

It is sad that twenty years have passed and despite remembrances and an occasional condemnation by global organizations it happens again and again. Look at Tibet! Look at Darfur.

D-Day

It is an anniversary tomorrow. A terrible remembrance of sacrifice and courage. It is D-day, June 6th, the storming of the beaches in Normandy, France in an operation called "Overlord". I was there on the June 6th, 1999 anniversary with six veterans who had not been back since they fought and crawled on those beaches in 1944.

Yesterday I met two of those six veterans for a reunion of our experience. WRNN-TV which broadcast the original visit in a two hour documentary hosted the reunion. Only two of the original six are left. World War Two Vets are passing and they truly are the Greatest Generation.

What follows is a poem I wrote to conclude the documentary.

“Lest we forget.”
© 1999 Rolland G. Smith

It was the day and the month the warriors returned
To the place where many died, the dawn the beaches burned.
The hard of then, now softened by the passage of the years.
It freed again the feelings that surfaced with the tears.

The mind and step would falter returning to the scene
Their bodies now are different. The beaches now pristine.
So many came to witness the warriors return
And wondered if their courage was something they could learn.

Valor comes in time of need, for courage is within
When tyranny oppresses it rises once again.
Old warriors we thank you, for life and limb you gave
To hold the sacred honor of the free and the brave.

You came from planes and gliders and from the ships at sea
And moved across the beaches to free French Normandy.
You now return to see, the place of battle fears
The combat dead now hold you and wipe away your tears.

The world too rejoices in thanks for how you fought
It weeps for lives that lost and too for lessons taught.
And if there is a legacy, besides long rows of white,
Let it be a world call, never the need to fight.

Presidents and the Press

Some thoughts on the press and the presidency.

Mistrust between the press and authority has been around for a long time.

General William Tecumseh Sherman once said:

“I hate newspapermen. They come into camp and pick up their camp rumors and print them as facts. I regard them as spies, which in truth, they are. If I killed them all there would be news from Hell before breakfast”.

The Federalists, led by Alexander Hamilton controlled their own newspaper. It was called the Gazette of the United States.

Thomas Jefferson, who was an anti-federalist, wanted a newspaper to express his views. Not only that, Jefferson knew whom he wanted for an editor. It was a guy named Philip Freneau, a writer known as the “poet of the revolution.”

There was one problem. Freneau did not want the job.

Jefferson persisted and when he offered Freneau a no-show government job, plus access to all foreign intelligence reports and a lucrative contract to print government documents, Freneau agreed to run Jefferson’s newspaper.

George Washington was president at the time and Jefferson was Secretary Of State and through his newspaper he criticized and editorially jabbed at Washington.

Old George would bitterly complain to his cabinet about that “rascal Freneau.” But Jefferson insisted he had no recollection of being told that his clerk for foreign languages ran a newspaper in his spare time.

When Jefferson became President, he took control. He spoke only to his own editors. Opponents and other reporters knew only what they read in the Jefferson controlled newspaper.

It did not matter that Jefferson was the author of our Bill of Rights. Freedom of the Press seemed to be a child forgotten by a busy President.

Terry Lipman

I’m old enough now not to be surprised when informed that a friend died. It’s going to happen to all of us someday. It doesn’t make it any less sad however.

We’re always shocked when someone passes that we knew, or worked with or admired, but as we age the realization or better yet the expectation is always there in the closed compartments of our minds. We all pass when we finished what we came here to do in the density of form.

I was ten when my first friend died. Her name was Libby McCloud. I prayed for her well into my adult years and even to this day I think of her childhood smile and playful teasing.

Through the years when other friends and colleagues passed I attended their services, grieved with others and shared the memories of good times and laughter. We all do that when we attend to the living by respecting the dead.

Yesterday I received the news that a long time friend died of a heart attack. Terry Lipman was a fine man with a great spirit that guided his noble pursuits and earthly accomplishments. He knew about the spirit and feared no ending. He knew that life is eternal. He knew our forms end, but not the spiritual energy that inhabits and guides the body. He knew the individuation of the indivisible continues forever by the grace of love from the All That Is.

A poetic epithet is my gift to his life.

You gave in life your love and light
With grace of self beyond life’s fright.
So now you are forever here
Deep in our hearts your spirit’s near.

Goodbye Terry. The eternal light is now brighter.

Good On You Mate

I met a man the other day. He was from the land down under. It was his first visit to the United States and I assume by the places he’s visited and the seeming joy in his presence he was having a good time on his journey.

My conversation with him, however, was focused on another type of journey; one that he took from a place of no name into an injured body that needed much repair.

He had what is commonly referred to as an NDE; a Near Death Experience. This man was driving on a highway in Australia when a truck crossed the divider and slammed head on into his car. He died!

Standing outside the demolished car he watched as others attended to his crushed body. His spirit was detached from his form, but he was aware of what was happening. He knew there were other helpful beings around him and some of them were not in a body. Some were angels. He looked through the proverbial tunnel of loving embracing light that many people claim to enter when having an NDE, but he did not go there.

What happened next is unknown.

What is known to him is that he returned to a body that was badly damage and he was different. He had some memories of his previous life experiences, but little ability of how to control his body. His hand control was sluggish, walking and movement difficult. It was as if he had never been in a body before, albeit an injured one.

It took years of rehabilitation to fully function. Family, friends and the doctors thought he was brain damaged and he certainly acted that way as he learned to function in bodily form. But slowly, not only awareness, but knowledge of things he wouldn’t, shouldn’t and couldn’t know were obvious only to him.

He was his old self as a body, but connected to an ethereal source. He could hear what people think; answer their questions before they were asked. He could hear the counsel of a knowing spiritual voice. He was psychic. He was a walk-in.

A walk-in, in the arcane school of esoteric parlance is where a highly evolved spiritual being inhabits a body willingly given up by the birth soul. The walk-in does so to be of service to humanity.

What I have taken from his story is the memory of a marvelous afternoon with a gentlemen who is far more aware than many I have talked to. A man who is far more loving than some others I have befriended in my lifetime and a man who is far more profound in the simplicity of life and living than I have recently seen. I am a better person for having experienced his presence.

Real Survival

I’m sure the current Reality shows have lots of fans. I hear people talking about them and the spring ratings sweeps have ended.

The survivor shows are the real sham. It's a production. A game show. Survival is a misnomer. There are dozens of production crew members on location, videotaping a drama with amateur actors. Eating rats or other detritus is shock drama to keep you watching, but it's not really survival.

If anyone of the contestants were starving, hurt or harmed in anyway, other than a bruised ego for being voted off the show, then the production crews would have provided aid or sustenance. Besides the contestants can quit at any time.

The real survivors of the world are the starving children and adults in places that might just as well be an island for all the attention the outside world gives them. They do not have the luxury of immediate outside help, nor can they quit and go home. They die. According to the world health organization, 35 thousand people a day, a thousand children an hour, die from hunger and hunger related diseases.

The few who do make it are the real survivors.