I had a road trip for some 90 minutes - one way - on the open highway today, down to a small town south of me to see a man about a particular kind of horse (it's all too tacky to describe here so we'll leave it at that eh? ;)).
I was on my own. Hubby had kindly filled the car with fuel, checked the tyres, cleaned the windscreen and all that when he got home from work this morning.
I did some errands, attended my bible study group for a bit. I put Lenny Kravitz's "Mama Said" album into the CD player in the car and then headed out into the darkening southern skies. Rain was looming but that's okay - we NEED it desperately in these parts.
So with a light heart and my passion for LOUD music, on my own with sweet nothing but me and the road, I headed southwards.
The music moved my spirit to levels of incomprehensible joy! I just felt so enlivened and REAL driving in my microcosmic world of tin and petrochemicals. It was totally surreal and lovely and wierd and wonderful and divine! I felt as if I was engaged in a kind of mellow gathering of mind, spirit and soul that the pieces of me were connecting and growing new shared veins and memories.
I've more or less given up on listening to long news items on the radio these past few months. Don't get me wrong... I still keep up with the headlines every morning but that's enough for me right now! There is so much terror, pain, disgusting and vile corruption of hearts and minds that it has become merely fodder to keep the airwaves busy and I don't NEED that right now! I want to FEEL peace, love, joy and the warm cup of human kindness around me. If there was just a teeny tiny little piece of peace in each one of us for a moment every day - then this poor sad world might just be a little better for it. Besides.... when I do need to get a salient reminder that all is not as it should be... I just go read Dave Pollard's incisive words - I wince in pain and then move on because I want to save the world too and it's just too much to do it all at once on my own! Sorry Dave! :s
So these days I find my peace in prayer and in music! I find it has given me a much better ability to cope with the massive amount of media that comes at me every day. With that... my heart has been happier, lighter, freer, and more coherent than I have felt for many, many years.
I sincerely promise that I didn't smoke anything or drink anything untoward before I left! ;) :D LOL.
I realise that such inordinate joy is a little creepy for some people. To see someone who is grinning large like Whoopie Goldberg in cats whiskers (a la Alice in Wonderland) can be a LITTLE much for some more tortured souls! I do realise this and I have tried to keep it all contained I assure you! It is however very difficult to keep the bubbling fountain of pure unadulterated happiness from exploding out from ones chest! This blog is just the pressure valve eh? ;)
Anyway - Lenny's words reverberated in my ears (I'm surprised they're not actually bleeding - crikey! I really did have that music loud in the car today :D).... every lyric seemed to fit with my souls need today. I love that about the poetry in music - it always means "something" when you need it to mean something!
I arrived safely in good time. In fact enough to kill so I wrote some stuff down in my notebook just for the hell of it. :)
Scattered leaves of emotional decay
lie in
tumbled yellow on the lawn
of my soul.
The tree of my Self is stripping back,
back to
structure and clearly recognisable
form and shape
to winter in the quiet rest of Just Being
I am content
and though all is frost around me
I feel the warmth of the Son
in my branches
and my heart flows with viscous sap
of life-giving Joy
So here I wait in this gentle wintertime
to weather stiff breezes
and refreshing rain and to feed
my roots with times' sweet
nurture.
...and when the painful buds of Spring's bloom-time
are ready to reappear
I shall have grown,
more tall, more strong, more permanently grounded
within this earth.
© M. Pitman 2006
I saw "The Man" and s'all good :D so began the trip of 90 minutes back home again!
I whacked an ELO album into the player and got into the groove once more.
I seriously had to laugh when I inadvertently turned down a dead end street just when Jeff Lynne sang the line "I've been living on a dead-end street" (from Sweet Talkin' Woman)
What a blast to have that little bit of synchronicity today! I am still giggling over that one!
Anyway... this is going to sound completely ditzy and juvenile but I have always found the affirmation of my God in the Rainbow! Every time I see a rainbow I KNOW that I'm being looked after, smiled upon and well.... assured that my existence is of value! yeah! I know... completely out there isn't it? :o But, I saw that rainbow today on my trip home. It was as if God was saying that all this Joy within wasn't just an accident of time, place and my soul's journey... it was deeply and intrinsically BREATHED onto me and into me by a force I can only barely comprehend. It was pure! Light refracted and yet completely pure a thousand fold over and it is the essential element of any miniscule effort of courage I can muster.
I got back home and ran some more errands. Now... I don't believe this a co-incidence at all but I caught up with an associate - a lovely woman who is suffering cruelly from that most malicious of diseases, melanoma cancer! A gorgeous woman who has not done anything to justly deserve this blight but is deeply and severly suffering in her body and her soul. I could see it in her eyes and through into her heart. She was in that most fragile of places - intense and overwhelming pain and God! But it hurt to see her.
A knife-through slice in this most glorious of days - just to remind me that THIS is what my Joy is for... to impart and give compassionately and intimately where it is most needed. To feel the pain of another but not to be buried by it but to infuse that pain with something beautiful and soft and lovely and real! Mercy! Joy is for bringing mercy to those who need to know that they are not alone despite any cruelty of circumstance and evil intent in this suffering world.
It's evening now... my day is nearly done. God in his wisdom has shown me both sides of His Rainbow today. I have seen both Heaven and Hell and it's been worth the trip every tiny part of it.
Sorry this has been so long! You KNOW I just had to share this don't you? ;) :D
Light Always (and rainbows if you will :D).
Mitch
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