Usually I check out the daily news at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/. But a couple of weeks ago, I headed out early to run a bazillion errands. I had just moved back to San Antonio after living in Upstate NY for a couple of years. Familiar San Antonio streets no longer felt familiar. And neither did the NPR world...Korea posturing...Iran assembling...world economies veering...clandestine affairs proliferating. 

(Okay, so I realize how transformation works: old forms decay and die even as new life is gestating and being born...somewhere...for sure. Only not where I sat...unaccustomed, back in Texas but not yet at home in my own skin.) 

Hardly able to stand my miserable self, I stopped in at the 410 Diner on Broadway. Guaranteed, I'd find downhome cooking, and homegrown news from the SA paper vending machine just outside the front door. It was sold out. Grumblingly, I snatched a USA Today (Note to self: 3 days in an emotional tomb is quite enough rot).

There it was. Hope. The big picture. A metaphysical principle pressed between the pages of USA Today. Laid out in an article about a strange new cloud formation. The first new clouds identified since 195l: undulus asperatus, Latin for turbulent indulation. As above so below, I thought. These clouds are form and substance. A mirror reflection of our birthing process. Look how planet earth and humankind have transformed since 1951. The stratasphere is acknowledging our transitional stress. 

Now I was full of expectation. Tuned in to all that is. Feeling at one with the Universe. On alert for synchronisitic events--the language of soul--to provide more infomation on this rebirth theme I'd stumbled onto. 

Onto the next errand, at the UPS Store on Broadway, I stopped to pick up mail from my box. A forty-something woman crouched before the main desk, piling neatly folded and stacked baby clothes into a cavernous box. The owner of the store commented that probably all six boxes would weigh between 60 and 70 pounds like the one he weighed on the scales.

Fascinated...and expecting omens...I strike up a conversation. My new, box-stuffing friend, Diane, shares that she gave birth to triplets--two girls, one boy-- twenty years ago. Because she chose each outfit--for all those twenty years--with such care and love, she couldn't stand the thought of throwing these precious garments away. So she collected them, shelved them, stored them and waited, while she and her husband searched. All these twenty years, there were no other triplet newborns with whom to share twenty years of growth.

Now Diane's triplets were in college, adults themselves. Their family was happier than she could have imagined all those years as they struggled through exhausting ages and stages. But still, there was this disappointment. No baby X3 to breathe life into pink and blue onesies, toddler flowers and dinosaurs, et al. Six boxes. Sixty collective years. Three hundred sixty pounds. 

Fate--or maybe God--was on Diane's side. Finally, after waiting for twenty years, an online search located a family in Arkansas who fit perfectly. Newborn triplets, two girls and one boy.  

Through misty-eyes I asked Diane if she thought their family and this newfound family would be best friends. "Definitely." Diane assured me. I believe her. It was meant to be.

Baby fingers and toes...cloud's illusions I recall...chaos leaning toward love...the Universe revolves as it should. 

And me? I feel infinitely more satisfied than I did when I walked into 410 Diner a couple of weeks ago. Sometimes epiphanies fade. This one hasn't. It was meant to be. 

I'll reincarnate as clouds so I'll have a birds'-eye view as Planet Earth heals, wars cease, human beings wake up, realize we are all one and love each other. Is complete healing too much to hope for?

Lots. Freaked me out when I learned to differentiate between psychic and normal in my first psych class in college. Before that, I thought everyone could read each other's thoughts. Realizing that not every one did made me nuts for awhile. I felt like a voyeur...most unwelcome felony. So...I became a therapist, legally licensed to know secrets. I've come full circle. I think we are all actually psychic. Intuitive ability is like turning the water faucet on and off. I have control. Now I don't "work" unless I'm paid...or when I'm doing my own inner work. Most times I operate out of my ditsy-blond personality (I learnt it  growing up in Texas), guaranteed to make me intuitively brain dead. If you bumped into me in the grocery store I wouldn't know nothin' about nothin'. 

The rush of wind....stillness of sunset....tears rising behind my eyes like a cresting wave...bubbles of joy vibrating my heart...two hands clapping...peace spreading through my body like the whoosh of eagle's wings in flight...and sometimes like a herd of buffalo.

Sleet is pelting the windowpanes, snow is piled in deep furrows and I'm entranced, vibrating with the coming chilly purple nightfall. A couple of weeks ago I quit dreading the early twilight. My eyes really saw, my heart felt the beauty...the promise of cave-time intuition...awareness...hope...healing as gray snowclouds fade between the stark tree branches outside my windows, and soften into deepening lilac, purple and black velvet. Chilly nightfall has become my metaphor for the birthing of our new world....the gentle night enveloping another Team Obama day...bringing our global village closer to healing. It's wondorous.

I'm a Texan accustomed to heat, spending a lot of time outdoors and organically exercising in nature. Now I'm in my second year living in Upstate NY with wintry snow drifts and icy walkways. It's beautiful and not conducive to outdoor activity until I get geared up for snowshoeing and cross-country skiing. Voila!  I've discovered the gym and I'm loving it! Adaptation is my surprise blessing in the deep of winter.

I'm not about practice so much as being. Religion defines and divides, spirituality embraces the love--which it seems to me--is central to all world religions. For a kid of the Fifties growing up deep in East Texas, Christianity was my starting point. Now I consider myself, if not completely enlightened, then at least spiritually promiscuous and deeply satisfied.

As I sat to write the first Gaia blog since June 2007, lyrics from The Incredible String Band  Alice Is A Long Time Gone popped into my head. Like Alice, in September 2007 I ate the cookie and slipped not down the rabbit hole, but along the ribbon of highways that led me from San Antonio to Upstate NY.
 
I have been in a cave of sorts...named family and writing. I've not been disconnected from the outer world (thank God for Obama!) but more connected to my own story and streaming love and light to the world from my quiet inner process.

Now, I'm slowly resurfacing and wrapping my arms around all the love and hope I see...much of it here at Gaia. Before I write more, I want to read all my friends blogs (I've lost some of you. It's a wonder all of you haven't deleted me since I've been MIA for so long.) I'm just glad you are here. I have a lot of catching up to do. And I will....

Absolutely, although I don't call it "suffering" but undergoing, as in "going through an underworld experience." When I find myself in a dark place, I remember more clearly who I am, what I am made of, and am reminded of other times I felt so far from the light, yet still managed to somehow find it. I'd be masocistic if I sought "suffering" and yet when it comes, I am reminded that I do have a roadmap which leads to healing--often forgotten when things are smooth sailing.

"I am more myself with you than I am with anyone else."  The words may come out differently with different people, but the message is the same:  You allow me to be myself.  Wow.  That gives me chills. 

It's what I want in all relationships, man, woman, every race, every color, every religion:  to empower one another to our highest good  Which to me, means we are being our authentic selves.  No bells.  No whistles.  Just BEING.  And trusting the truth of our hearts to come through even on our less-than-perfect days.  Ummmmmmm....lovely.