Author: Tom (Page 62 of 71)

Tom is a stroke survivor, a seeker, a meditator, a veteran firefighter and rescue tech, a motivational speaker, a poet, and a blogger (new site) & author. He is also the father of three and as their student and teacher, has found applying spiritual practices to all aspects of life provides a vast amount of possibility and abundance. Tom has discovered that true forgiveness is the key to a pure heart, and a pure heart can lead us to wondrous experiences.

You can also connect with tom on <a href="https://www.facebook.com/Tomgwriter55/".

“LIVE”

April 3, 2013 / Tom

In the end, none of this will matter.

I will be some old, decrepit shell of who I am now laying on some tomb of cloth and comfort looking back and wondering why any of this mattered to me at all. I will look at my frail arms and wrinkled skin and wonder what I was working toward. I will think about the hours working out, the time spent with my mind buried in a book somewhere and I will ask “why?”. I will look at the coldness of the room around me and remember the memories of making love and of the feelings created in those moments, wondering if it was all worth it.

And then I will smile, and that smile will be the answer.

I will know in the end that God does not exist.

I will see in the end that whatever I thought God was simply was a dream conjured up by the minds of men who simply could not help but try to name the unnamable. I will see that while I was busy worshiping a figment of man’s imagination I missed what God was. I missed Her in the trees as I walked. I missed Her in the songs of the birds and in the sounds of a stream rushing to the ocean. I missed Her in the autumn’s unforgiving coldness and the warm renewal of spring.

In the end I will find that I was so busy looking for life out there that I missed the life in here. I will see that the reason I closed my eyes in prayer was so that I would not look anywhere but within me for the answer. I will find that I am, and always was, the Creator, and that anything and everything was possible had I only sought to make it so. I had the power to heal. I had the power to live. I had the power to be.

I will struggle to move my head enough to see around me, only seeing walls; the same walls I’ve always had around me. I’ve built them, carefully laying block after block until I finally found myself bedridden and without the strength to lay another. I will shed a tear at the meaningless of these stones, suddenly realizing that I simply did not love myself enough to be free. I will remember my many protestations of freedom, but as the end slowly casts its light upon me I will realize how imprisoned I was. I will see my chains in the many “should haves” and “what ifs” my mind sends forward in the stark realization that I never truly lived.

Then I will silence my mind as the walls disappear around me.

I will know then that I was never the body, or the mind, or the beliefs, or the faith, or the failures, or the successes. I was never a husband, or a son, or a brother, or a father. I was what created, and experienced, all of those things.

I will then begin to see what I never knew as God in my body, in my heart and in the way I viewed things. A woman will come in my room to help prop up my weakened head, and ask me if I need anything. I will see what I never knew as God in her, in her smile and in her actions of care and compassion. I will see God in the pillow that now supports my head and in the woven fabrics that now cradle my aged body. In fact, I will see God in everything and realize that there is nothing I am not.

I will see God in the aloneness that I feel, in the waiting and in the moment. I will remember God in the strength I once had and in the strength I now possess. I will hear God in my breaths and in the gaps between them. Again I will smile.

There will be a chuckle as I see that I have experienced the Universe and that, yes, the Universe has experienced me. That laugh will come with a sigh in the realization that it was all so perfect even as my mind now finds fault in what I did not do.

Had my religion been experience I would have been in church every moment of my existence. Had my faith been in “what is” I would have not needed faith at all. Had my mind been focused on that practice I would have easily kept God’s day holy. Each and every moment is God’s day, and presence is the way we keep it sacred.

In the end I will see it all, and in the end I will shout out to me now and say, “LIVE” and beg for a baptism into experience where a priest is found in everyone and everything and the truth is found in each and every step of my life. As my head sinks into the chilly waters of doubt I close my eyes to save them from the sight. There, I feel my heartbeat loudly, and feel the tug of the surface pull at me.

Then I am raised, as if from the dead. As my head breaks the rippled surface my eyes open and I am born. Not born again, but continuing the process of birth that will end the moment my eyes close for the final time. I give thanks for the dream sent back in time by me at the end. I give thanks for the voice echoing in my head commanding me to LIVE. I give thanks for the uncovered truth of who I really am. Then I take a step toward…

How Beautiful You Are

March 31, 2013 / Tom

I wonder if you realize how beautiful you are.

How the gray, mundane world bursts alive with color at the dawn of your smile. How the bored silence of the routine jumps to life with the sound of your voice. Can you see the cracking dawn within your soul? Do you know what your very existence does to a man only half of who he is without you? I sit, and I stare, and I remember.

I wonder if you realize how beautiful you are.

Naturally, without the fine tuning of an artist’s pen upon your skin, you are beautiful. Found in the subtle power of your touch, of the simple yet overwhelming grip of your gaze, is the defined knowledge of beauty born in the chills that run down my spine. Seen in the calm pools of your eyes and known in the sure intelligence of your voice, it is there. It begs me forward to a better part of me. It asks nothing more than the best of who I am, and I in return, often fail in the quest to get there.

I wonder if you realize how beautiful you are.

As the morning light gently caresses your form the breath is drawn out of me. My heart beats to that spot where your hand touches my face and your mouth reaches for mine. The hardest parts of me dance in the soft, moist pools of promise as the sanity in which I once believed vanishes as if it were some gifted hallucination of gods who could have only hoped to have been here, now. I smell you as your hair tickles my face as you climb on top of me. I look “up” although I’ve lost all sense of direction as gravity loses its grip upon my soul. And…

I wonder if you know how beautiful you are.

How the moment I enter you all things cease, how our bodies disappear and how time and space cease to exist. I wonder if you feel the waves of pleasure as I do, if you are hearing the same song as I reach for you, never getting deep enough in this endless pool but always trying. I gasp for air I do not need, and I search for things found the moment of this union. Then I feel the puddle we have created, and like a vast river on which I ride I know I will one day find the ocean. We will find the ocean.

I wonder if you know how beautiful you are.

I seek to show you the gift you are to me. I stretch my arms out wide as if some sacrifice upon an altar, grasping at the fabric on which I lay but not wanting to feel any part of it. I’m not holding on, I’m letting go despite what my hands would cling to. I give all of me to you in this moment. Every bead of sweat, every sound, every breath, every beat of my heart is yours. Take it, my love, and hold in gently in that space where your deepest treasure can be found. Take it, my love, and forget the moment before and do not seek the moment after. Be with me here, now, and never let me go.

In the orange flicker of Heaven’s great candle we lay. Out beyond the veiled glass doors of our space resides a place where our minds will go even as our souls remain. You turn to me, and in the glow of love and of the morning light you say,

“Do you realize how beautiful you are?”

I kiss you gently as the angel’s wings surround us both. In the mirror it is I see, and it is in the silent surface of our river that I know. Sing to me, my heart, and bless this moment in eternal memory! We close our eyes, embraced to sleep awakened in love’s sweet harmony.

To You, The Unknown

March 19, 2013 / Tom

Somewhere in the warming spring breeze I can hear her. Like a whisper she moves through my soul, into my heart, slowly caressing my mind with loving verbs while embracing my lips with her own. Somewhere beyond the mountain in front me she must be there, looking at the elevation and wondering if I, too, am there.

I am, my love. I am here. I am waiting. I am listening and I am seeing. The scars you see have prepared me for you. The wounds you see bleeding are not wounds at all, they are openings for the light to enter. See that bandaged place? See me remove those barriers to the light and watch me shine. See the untouched parts of me, those vestiges of a future only seen in the present moment. Protect those sacred spaces so that I may stand there naked, without armor or a veil of any kind, as your man without a question in a space where there are only answers.

That mountain in front of us must me climbed and at the summit we will meet. There we, those two blocks of ice, will begin to melt into one another as our sweat, our souls, and our tears merge into that one puddle of Being we were destined to become. We will walk together through the hottest fires, the coldest winter storms, in both shear bliss and utter despair. We will walk together through the white and the black, the light and the darkness, both of us drawing swords against those dark demons that would devour us in the fractured corners of our minds; both embracing those moments where there is no battle to be fought. We will touch the sky and dust the white clouds from the blueness while kissing the stars; making love in the moonlit glow of the dream we have allowed to be.

There, a kiss will bring a smile, a laugh, and a beginning. A new Universe born in each embrace, in each caress, and in each challenge our humanity will offer. I will enter all of you as you embrace all of me, and I will hear your heart beat through different ears, see your smile though different eyes, and feel you through different senses unblanketed fear but shrouded in love.

Yes, my Unknown Love, the climb is worth it. The bumps and bruises you will feel as you climb, as you stumble, and as you begin your climb anew will heal as my arms hold you tightly to my chest once you reach the summit. If you get there first, wait for me, I am coming. If I get there first you will find me sitting still, smiling, as you find renewed strength and life just at the sight of me. You will come, yes you will, and you will never leave.

No vows will be necessary as our lips speak the only words necessary. No promises will need be issued as our dance will speak the only truth we will ever need to know. We will have found ourselves, our moment, and our testament to the journey we have made. We will try to keep the Sunrise in our eyes as we remove the barriers to our Now, to our moment, to our dance. Laugh, smile, and know we are here.

Now, I look for another handhold on that mountains face and honor the mountain. With each pull upward I hear that whisper in the wind. “Your soulmate is out there, struggling as you struggle, seeking as you seek. At the top of this mountain you then realize that ‘what you are seeking is also seeking you.'”

When Love comes suddenly and taps
on your window, run and let it in but first
shut the door of your reason.
Even the smallest hint chases love away
like smoke that drowns the freshness
of the morning breeze.
To reason Love can only say,
the way is barred, you can’t pass through
but to the lover it offers a hundred blessings.
Before the mind decides to take a step
Love has reached the seventh heaven.
Before the mind can figure how
Love has climbed the Holy Mountain.
I must stop this talk now and let
Love speak from its nest of silence. ~Rumi

The Space Between (Songs of Inspiration #2)

February 22, 2013 / Tom

The space between

The tears we cry is the laughter that keeps us coming back for more

The space between

The wicked lies we tell to keep us safe from the pain

I sit in my car at a stop light with the laughter of my little ones behind me, tears streaming down my face. Tears sometimes are the echo of the heart not specifically pointing in any direction but somehow facing inward, reminding us that there is something warm beating within us. Tears are not always tales of sadness or remorse but are sometimes stories of healing, of potential, of a glorious birth that is about to take place.

In my mind I stop and look forward yet behind me. I see the desolation, the destruction, the wreckage of what could have been. I see the wisps of black smoke rising above the moments in my life where fear had sheltered me from one storm only to create a far more destructive one. I see the litter strewn about my life and the burned out shells of books that could have been so beautifully written and read. I see the partially burned out pages moving with the dust devils of my memories, roughly being jostled from one resting place and swirling upward violently before coming to rest in another.

These swaths of living hell are not all I see even if they are the first things that have captured my attention. Wounds will do that to you. Those pieces of yang will distract you from the pieces of yin that also lie in this path. In order to see them you must learn to look beyond what time and conditioning have taught you to see and then you must open your arms to embrace it all. This isn’t about rejecting the periods of darkness that have kept you company in your nights, it is about embracing the light that comes in the spaces between. It is then about realizing that the darkness truly comes only in the spaces between the light. It is then about accepting both as a part of your day, part of the moment that is you.

I then saw the fields of flowers interspersed in the charred remnants of my moment. I began to hear the singing of birds above the crackling of burning embers and the life dancing about in my story. I could begin to feel the love above the ashes, and smell the fragrance of the roses, the carnations and the orchids. I could feel Life in it all and I smiled through the tears as the laughter of my little ones echoed around a mind no longer dulled by the numbness of a dream only I could create.

I could see the black clouds adorning a full, blue sky and realized that yes, the moon does shine during the day too. The tides go high and then low just as life ebbs and it flows. We don’t measure the tides by the height of the sand yet I have chosen to measure my life by the abundance of sadness. What if I was to measure it by the presence of love; focusing on the area of flowers and of the mellow beauty in the songs of the nature around me? What if instead of seeing the patches of destruction I saw the vast areas of loving awesomeness that made them so noticeable? What if I changed my focus, changed what was the space between?

The space between

Where you smile and hide

That’s where you’ll find me if I get to go

What if I choose to let go? What if I chose to act on that feeling I have when I look into her eyes? What if I chose to smell the roses instead of running from the dying flames of a past that is no longer there? What if I simply held her hand instead of thinking about then? What if I decided to dive into her, to walk that distance that separates us and erase that space between? What if I kissed her into a smile, coaxed her from her hiding place or simply went there with her? What if I…

…acted a little less like a boy beaten and a young man faulted and more like the being I want to be?

The questions mount, filling up the space between the gaps in my breath. I look at my empty hand and I wonder what it would be like if her fingers filled the space between my own. I wonder what would happen if there was no space between our lips, our mouths, our bodies. I can imagine the beauty in the space between our footprints in the sand as we walk hand-in-hand kicking the foamy surf forward. I wonder about the beautiful realization that occurs in the space between our eyes as we look into each other’s soul, and in the space between the heartbeats we share in a long, loving embrace.

I wonder about the words we could write in the space between our story of now and our story of tomorrow and, yes, I wonder about the space between my story of then and the moment we are sharing. My mind circles around the space between the rising and the setting sun, and the darkness that comes in the space before the sun rises again. I also wonder if I would ever know the sun if it wasn’t for that darkness, or notice the beauty of my life without the ugliness. I wonder if I would ever know the beauty of a loving hand in my own if not for its absence.

We’re strange allies

With warring hearts

What a wild-eyed beast you be

I can hear the endless fights and the countless debates about things. Things. I can feel the intimacy slip through the spaces between wrong and right, of listening and talking. I can hear the striking of the arson’s match setting the artist’s canvas on fire and the writer’s book to flame. I can hear the tears as the breath escapes our very mouths, and hear the fingers part as our hands fall to our sides and our gazes turn from what could have been.

I can sense it coming. Isn’t the testament of devotion and of love the beginning of the storm? Isn’t the wounded mind wracked by what it has seen surely cursed to war with the very heart it seeks to know and to love? Isn’t a bruised heart like the broken mast of a floundering ship in a raging storm sure to sink in the sea of its own devices? Isn’t a tired body sure to burn in the fires the mind has set?

Or are those things the very beginning of rebirth we seek? Isn’t it just a matter of awareness, of seeing the opportunity to embrace the beauty and be reborn? Is it just a matter of seeking something different?

The space between the stories of my life gives me enough room to experience it just as the space between the sky and the ground gives us enough room to fly. A horn blows from a car behind me allowing me to realize that the space between the red and green light at this intersection has allowed me to find some clarity in an otherwise hectic morning. I look in my rear-view mirror at my little ones in the back seat and notice the space between the tear on my cheek and the smile on my lips.

Perhaps we find our greatest experiences in the space between. Perhaps we find our wisdom there. Maybe we begin to realize our own truths as we begin to realize the spaces between. Maybe the greatest parts of who we are resides in the spaces between the illusions and delusions we have created about who we are. Maybe my soul has always been singing the words I now hear in my mind spreading across my soul like the light from the Sun cresting above the morning horizon.

The space between

What’s wrong and right

Is where you’ll find me hiding

Waiting for you

“Expect Much of Yourself (and Little of Others)” Lent #8

February 21, 2013 / Tom

So read the message out of the fortune cookie I just devoured. The result was the same as is often the case when random messages hit my eyes and I began pondering the meanings of such a message in my own life. Just as I often do, I will share my musings with the hope that you don’t hate me too much as a result.

That in itself is my expecting little of you. Yes, I can count with much sorrow the numbers of people who have stopped being my friend because of my attitudes about things. For instance, there are my former friends who are Catholic who first decided to leave my company because of my attitude about the Church (I’ll spare you the gory details in the hopes that more fruit doesn’t drop from my tree). I lost more when I decided to abandon that cult (uh oh) for a more stable and, for me, truer belief system.

I’ll admit I didn’t expect their reaction. After all, Jesus preached about tolerance and love so I expected those who followed his message to tolerate me following my own path. I expected them to smile, preach to me for a bit about how I could be “saved”, and then just consider the good things about me that they liked in the first place. After all, they couldn’t have just liked me because I ate a wafer while pretending it was a body, drank some wine while pretending it was blood, and gave my hard-earned money to an organization that is among the wealthiest in the world to support priests who actually lived better than some in their own congregation. They couldn’t suddenly dislike me because I found “God” in the woods while finding little of Her in the ornate garnishments of an overly large building they referred to as “God’s house”. Or could they?

Before you get all crazy about my tone and my choice of words, understand that I was not always this blunt in expressing my beliefs. I used to take a sensitive, tactful path toward explaining myself when asked. I would watch my words while expressing myself compassionately and lovingly only to find that the very idea that “one of them” could “reject Jesus” was enough to have me thrown out on the street. I would explain that I loved the message of Jesus. I loved the idea of living compassionately and without bias, often in poverty while washing the feet of my servants (I didn’t have any, so that part was easy). I loved giving of myself, of eating with those considered sinners within my society, and surrendering to the Universe (using the word “Universe” instead of “God” somehow instantly turns you into a hippie new-ager going straight to hell. I now wear the moniker with pride.)

Well, I no longer watch my words when discussing religion, particularly the Catholic church and generally Christianity. I usually begin to lose my cool right around the “well Muslims blow up things” that invariably falls freely from the mouths of most Christians I talk to about the history of Christianity. I whip out my “guns” (facts) and begin shooting “bullets” (the truth). Mostly, those Christians I talk to quickly don their own bullet (truth) proof vest (the Bible) until they can retreat into the world of silence and “excommunication” through the mechanism of being offended. It’s an interesting mechanism.

I then lost a whole bunch of “friends” when I decided to experience the vegan/vegetarian lifestyle. It seems that if you decide the killing of animals and the physical effects the practice of carnivorism has on your body is not for you, you suddenly become an unwelcome insect in some circles. I, frankly, had no idea my choice would have this effect. Now, I realize that most of us who decide to adopt this lifestyle can get a bit “preachy”, but understand that when you begin to experience the wonderful effects of a plant-based diet you want everyone you love to know about it. I’m a giving guy mostly and it felt like I had found some secret to feeling great. I had never felt so alive and vibrant then when I was vegan. Why would I not want to share that awesome feeling with those I care about?

That is a mistake when it comes to health. You need to shut up, and you need to simply feel great all on your own it seems. People seem to love their unhealthy lifestyles, and regardless of how much they may love you they will quickly turn if you try to take away their meat, their processed foods, and their poisonous fast food lifestyle. I have since become mostly vegetarian as I’ve recently decided to give some meats a try to see if it helps me.

The truth? Adding meats to my diet has made me a physical wreck. My joints now ache. I feel tired. I feel stuffed and I am gaining some weight. Secretly (if you don’t want to know skip to the next paragraph) every nagging ailment that had bothered me before I made the switch to vegetarianism has returned in force as if they were waiting for me to “slip up”. So, I have made a decision to go back to vegetarianism at the very least and veganism whenever possible. While I, and others, may be experts in lying to themselves, our bodies refuse to lie to us. My body tells me to stop eating the meat and return to the greens and veggies that made me feel more alive than I have in my entire life. Pain is a voice of the body telling us that something is wrong. Fatigue is telling us we are doing something that is making us tired. The only thing that I have changed is the adding of meat so I figure that has to be the reason. So, I simply cut it out and see if that is truly the reason. If my body returns back to its former feeling I know I have found an answer; my own “fountain of youth”.

This time I won’t preach unless specifically asked. I will go about my business and not say a word to anyone unless they ask. I don’t care how great I feel or how bad they feel. They are free to poison themselves as much as they want just as I am free to seek health in a way my experience has taught brings it to me.

The next destruction of some of my friendships was the gun control debate. Man, people truly love their instruments of killing. I used to be one of them, so I understand the addictive qualities of maximum firepower and the warm feeling one finds in the false sense of security. Still, I never expected to be challenged as I have. I even had one former friend tell me that we need to protect the easy access to guns despite our kids dying because knife violence would increase. Now this type of reasoning will get me out of my shell pretty easily. See, the visions of bullet-riddled kids in a classroom simply does not allow for the idea of rising knife violence to enter into my mind. I simply cannot look at the facts surrounding gun violence and forgive it because someone may use a knife instead. Perhaps it is that thing we all call “common sense” that has infected my brain. I just hope it is contagious.

As you can see, I can posses an acerbic wit at times. I can be very blunt and very “acidic” in my delivery on certain topics. I have found this tact works best for me. See, it gets my point across to those who would put on a fake smile, a fake “Jesus saves” button on their lapel while putting their fake arm around me in friendship. I can disagree with my friends without discarding them. I don’t love their opinions, or their beliefs, I love them. So discarding any one of my friends for some idea they may have (there are exceptions to this rule; priest-like people who would harm young children is one example) is ludicrous.

That is me expecting a lot of myself. I have had to learn, however, to expect little of others. Yes, I am sure that they believe they are doing the same and simply not tolerating my heresy and liberalism. I get it. Yet for every friend that disappears in the fog of differing beliefs I find one that is tolerant, truly compassionate and worthy of my trust. Still, it is the expectation that is the crippling injury here.

I have learned that the reason for my acerbic wit and blunt delivery is similar to the idea in farming of “thinning the crop”. A farmer will go through his crop and purposely knock fruit off the trees in order to increase the quality of the remaining fruit. I have no doubt that my methodology is doing the same thing. I am making room for quality fruit by getting rid of the excess. I am attracting people who think like me and, in the process, finding that great minds truly do think alike (ahem, yes that is a laugh you hear in my arrogance). Yes it is easier to feed the hungry when I am partnered with those who want to feed people in a healthy way and not those who want to argue about what red meat to give them. Yes it is easier to dance this dance when we are all listening to the same song.

Yet I rarely take the easy way out so I will continue to allow anyone who disagrees with me to argue their point. I won’t shun you (unless you act in a priestly way while harming young children, for example) and I won’t deny you. You will be my friend, and you will be in my heart. I love your perspective because even as I debate the point with you I am challenging my own views through you and learning. Even as my pig-headed and stubborn self is debating you I am challenging everything and learning in the process. Why would I not love you for all of your effort?

Finally, there is a Lent 2-7 in my drafts folder. I didn’t post them because they are about the Christopher Dorner escapade and I feared losing even more friends over my feelings there. Plus, I am in the process of combining those masterpieces into one large journalistic piece (journalism today being op-ed pieces with facts strewn in there somewhere). I will call that “Lent 2-7” when I am done just to prove that I have kept my Lenten vow. Yes, it would be the first time in my life that I truly stuck to my Lenten promise.

A Trinity of Inspiration (and a book to boot!)

February 16, 2013 / Tom

Thanks to the efforts of a good friend of mine, Casey Alls, three of my best poems are now set to a feminine voice as part of her Heart Songs book launch on February 25th. I’m proud to be featured in the book, and only look forward to its success. Thank you Casey.

The poems I’ve written included in this set are:

Check out her blog at www.holisticdiva.com, and like her Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/LiveWell.BeWell

[soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/playlists/2935225″ params=”” width=” 100%” height=”450″ iframe=”true” /]

Give to Live (Lent Post #1)

February 14, 2013 / Tom

So I’ve made this commitment to write something every day of lent as part of my “Give Something, Don’t Sacrifice, for Lent” thought. Rather than sacrifice, say, ketchup for lent, I decided to share my ketchup with you as a way that I’ve decided to celebrate lent. Yet, I used to be Catholic, so perhaps this is one way to assuage my conditioned guilt complex while, at the same time, not give in to it completely. Actually, it truly seems to me to be just something that lets me honor the tradition of lent while doing so in my unique (but not completely different) relationship with the Universe (what some of us call “God”). Maybe the parts of me that want to attract the positive have decided that sacrifice and rejection only breeds suffering and more rejection whereas the embracing attracts the very things we are searching for. In the immortal words of Sammy Hagar in the song “Give to Live”:

If you want love you’ve got to give a little

If you want faith you just believe a little

If you want peace turn your cheek a little

Oh, you’ve got to give, you’ve got to give, you’ve got to give to live

And let’s not forget that you will always get what you ask for. So, if I want you to laugh at me, I have to be first willing to laugh at myself. If I want you to love me, I first need to love myself. The beautiful art of giving is not about rejection or sacrifice, it is first about being willing to accept it all. You can’t give what you don’t have, so you first must gain the very thing you want to give and that only happens when you are willing to ask for it, accept it and, yes, expect it. I can’t feed the hungry if I have no food, and I can’t love you deeply and passionately if I have no love within me.

So the idea of sacrificing something as a method of honoring Love, God, Universe, Being (whatever you want to call It) seems silly in my unique (but not completely different) relationship with It. I need to EMBRACE and ACCEPT things even if my non-attachment to those things means I can easily give them away. The idea is to not focus on the “sacrifice” but on the acceptance. Don’t “sacrifice” chocolate for lent, instead readily accept it but then give it away.

Therefore, I decided to not “sacrifice” writing for lent but to readily accept each and every moment of inspiration and then give it away. I know, that is not something unusual for me, but it is evidence of the beautiful dynamic between the acceptance and the sharing, of the getting and the giving, that makes the gift and the giver One. In order for the Universe to bestow Her wonderful gifts on us all we must not only be expectant of such gifts but must also be completely willing to accept them all. I must be willing to expect these moments of inspiration. I must then be willing to accept them. Then I must be willing to not have them flow to me, but through me. I can take what I need and then let the rest go to those who can use it.

Maybe that is what the season of lent should be about. Maybe it should be about not sacrificing anything but rather about practicing the letting go of attachments we have to things we don’t need. Maybe it should be about the flowing through, not to. Abundance should not stop with me, it should come to me with whatever I don’t need making its way to others who do have a need. Well, I am wondering what would happen if 4 billion people all did this type of practice. Stop sacrificing things as if having them is some kind of negative to begin with. Instead, accept those things and then give away what you don’t need. Hhhhhhmmmmmm, that sounds like an idea Jesus himself could certainly get behind. At least the Jesus I know.

Peace.

The Wanderer and His Children

February 11, 2013 / Tom

When, I ask humbly, is it time to tighten the laces on my boots and to just start walking?

When, I question the Universe around me sternly, is it time to stop catering to the maniacal creations of man and start living?

I feel it in every pore of my body and nearly every fiber of my existence. I need to walk. I need to let go of all of this stuff and just start walking. Starve if I must, freeze if I have to, die a lonely and tired death if that is what I am destined to do but do it nonetheless. I close my eyes and can see it clearly; a roughly unshaven man walking with the mountains and the pink-hued tales of sunsets as his backdrop with nothing by his side but the stories of then and the causes of now guiding him.

The more I sit idle in this apartment the more I feel sure that every note the Universe sings to me is telling me to leave. The more I sit alone in stillness the more I am sure that the echo in my mind takes me to a place I have never been before. The more I look at the wreckage of my life behind me the more I feel destined to walk the wilderness of this place both figuratively and literally. The more I look at my hands once filled with the grip of lovers the more I know I should have a walking stick in one and a book in the other. The more I miss the embrace of passion the more I am certain it only stings to open my arms. My heart is open and full even if my arms are empty. My legs are restless with the fatigue of modern life and with the weight needing things. My shoulders are raw and sore from bearing the crosses of my experience, and rather than stumble and fall under the weight of that wood I simply want to pick it up and throw it far over some cliff somewhere. I want to watch it tumble through the open air, and I want to watch it shatter into a billion splinters as it hits the craggy rocks below. I want to be done with it and die a free, liberated soul.

Yet the Universe has given me chains that bind me to this place. I look at the eyes of my loving children and I weep for the ties that bind me here. I hear the word “Daddy” and I shudder at the thought of not hearing it again save those moments when dreams remind me of who I am to them. I wonder if they could ever forgive me for leaving while, at the same time, wonder if they can ever forgive me for staying. I wonder if I am failing to teach them the most wonderful lesson of all, that we are not born to wear the chains given to us by our parents and, ostensibly, by our posterity but are rather born to be free people liberated from such need. I wonder if they would get it, if they would take flight themselves one day, and if they would love the man who simply sought to be a free man wandering among the chains that bound others to a nonexistent dream. I wonder if I need to be the teacher, or if I need to remain a slave to the ideas of what I need to be, created not by me, but by others who will teach my children that I have failed them.

In those fibers of my existence that cause me to stay I have found a tight chain binding me to this piece of ground. The mountains call. The beaches beg. The road whispers in my ear but the chains clang loudest as my babies hug me and tell me how much they love me. The sweet music of that clanging chain rings loudly in my ears, reminding me of all I have ever wanted to be while demonstrating to me that I can be it given the right set of eyes, ears and limbs to adorn me. Their love fills my heart with the nectar of the gods while their laughter fills my ears with a certain knowledge that I am here for a reason. The Universe laughs heartily at this human notion that I am a provider of something even as my mind begs to be that provider. I want to be special here. I want to be needed here. I love being “Daddy” and I love being me. Yet, I need to walk to be free.

For now I lay next to my son and play with my daughter’s hair listening to their stories and their jokes and their dreams only

Photo by Tom Grasso

imagining walking free among the trees and sleeping under the stars. I only imagine the pangs of hunger as I wait for nature to provide. I only imagine never hearing my phone ring, or getting the mail, or hearing about some human atrocity or insanity inflicted on another. I can only dream of the sounds of nature being my constant companion, and Earth under my body as I make my way to some destination only God knows.

I can only imagine meeting people whose names do not matter, whose faces are but temporary visions in a story full of those things. I can only imagine being woken up each morning by the rain, or the sun, or the birds, or the crack of thunder.

I smile wandering in my mind while enjoying the moment with those who love me dearly. I laugh at the sound of my son cracking himself up. He is his Dad’s son for sure. No one can crack himself up like I can save this wonderful boy who is laying on me telling jokes that magically appear in his head. I love his little voice, the fact that a boy so big for his age can still bring a smile to my face with the innocence of his voice. I love his big little hands as they hold mine, his fingers tightly grabbing his “favorite poopy Daddy” with all of their might. I love his stories, his insight, and the brave way he adorns his fears as if they are a cape rather than something to be ashamed of. I love how he buries his sturdy head into me when something that scares him comes on the screen, and how he tells me his goal in life is to be “an Army guy who delivers pizzas.” I love his rationale; he can be in the Army but help people who are hungry at the same time. A peaceful warrior who carries a big gun with the voice of an angel making people laugh along the way. That’s my boy.

I give a chuckle marveling at my baby girl. She was born early and a fighter with what the doctors called “an attitude.” Yes, an attitude, a medical term for a tough female who has a heart of gold and a will of tempered steel. Her laugh can make anyone laugh, and I love when I say something that hits that spot where that laugh comes from. She’s as beautiful as her mom, with an artistic ability that comes from both her parents. She is steely sensitive, often unwilling to let her heart out even as her compassion and love comes spilling out all over the place. Her smile can make me instantly feel alive, and in those rare moments when she says “Daddy, I love you” my heart melts and the Sun breaks through even the thickest clouds. I know love here in this place with these Beings, and I know the sweet music of a man imprisoned by the sheer joy of love like a bird imprisoned by the loving tug of wind beneath its wings. Sometimes the freedom isn’t in the flight, but in the ability to land wherever you so choose.

My oldest daughter isn’t here, she’s away at college being mad at me for one thing or another. She may never know how she woke me up at the moment of her birth. She may never realize how dead asleep I was in my own drunken state, and how that gigantic spark of love felt the moment my eyes saw her began an awakening process that continues to this day. She is, was, and remains a gift who doesn’t realize her greatness. Yes, I am blessed.

Those are my tethers to this world, this reality; my “happy chains”. Those are the fuel to the fire of my joy that shows itself in the smile that crests upon my face in their presence. Those are the once-dreams-now-reality manifestations of a prayer once uttered by a lonely boy in the darkness of his tortured chamber. Those are what keep me here, rooted in the human dream-state we call reality wondering why I need to live here at all. Those are the little specks of “me” that grow daily into something completely “not me”. Those are flakes of angel’s dust that will remain long after my body returns to the place it was spawned from. Those are my children, my babies, my life.

Smile now and get the joy out of you. Laugh at my condition, the one that sees me playing this insane human game because of a Divine joy I have in being with those I love. Laugh at me while I play a string-less guitar singing a song you have never heard of before. Laugh at me as I dance out of your rhythm although certainly within my own. Watch me walk, fade into the pink-hued sunset of my dreams as the laughter of my little ones follows me into the wilderness. Chuckle if you must but please, I beg of you, never offer me that sympathetic “shake of the head” in bewilderment of my actions. Never offer my children a condolence as they eye their Dad with a spy-glass that cuts through the trees and the mist and the fog and the dew leaving only a certain truth to be seen. Let them laugh at their Dad and be free unto themselves in whatever fit of laughter, anger, sadness or joy they find in their ever-present moment. Who knows, maybe one day you may strike up the courage to tighten your laces and walk into the woods even if for a little while.

As for now I will close this chapter as the dusk settles in on yet another day. I will go and check on my now-sleeping sparks of joy and settle into my own place for the evening. I will let go of my passion for walking and rest here for a little while waiting to repeat the insanity and the wondering and, yes, the wandering all over again tomorrow. I am not sure of anything except the fact that if I am graced with yet another day of breathing here I will be blessed with another day looking out at the horizon wishing I was walking there. I will wake up, shower and make breakfast for the three of us. Then I will begin yelling, screaming, begging and praying for my little ones to get ready for school. I will have to remember that they don’t necessarily care to brush their teeth or comb their hair. I will have to be aware that their school necessities are necessary not to them, but to insane adults who put such importance on such meaningless things. I will have to remember that they don’t quite yet get the vast importance of “being on time” and that they simply don’t yet know that money does not grow on trees. I will have to remember that none of my important “adult” things matter one bit to my two littlest bundles of joy. I will then realize, again, that I am jealous that they haven’t yet been bitten by the serpent of insanity that has infected most of us with a disease called “adulthood”. I will then shake my head, vow to take it easier on those who still marvel at the idea that we adults think that we are, well, right. I will also vow to be more like the boy who believes that Army men should deliver pizzas and the girl who refuses to quit at anything she does. I will also vow to call the 18-year old who doesn’t answer anything not a text and who will most likely not return my voice mail.

Then I will look out at the trees, tighten the laces of my boots, and vow again to walk one day to parts still unknown. I will hear the mighty roar of nature in my mind. I will feel the breeze rustle through my heart and the leaves fracture beneath my feet. I will dream of freedom from the dream even as I caress the chains that keep me firmly planted here. I will go to an office I can’t stand, go through the motions I have practiced most of my adult life, and wander through the mundane practice of insanity we all call “sanity”. I will do it all over and over again until, one day, I either walk free or return to the dust we call “heaven”.

My First Kiss

February 7, 2013 / Tom

My first kiss.

I’d rather not share with you the tale of my first kiss. That story of clumsy and ineffectual pecking is best saved for a time when I want to make my children laugh with hysterics in a more advanced age. No, for this purpose I want to share with you all my first kiss, that kiss that still burns in my heart and still brings me to my knees.

She had come from a distance. We had flirted with the idea of kissing for quite a while, and that idea had come to a reality in what seemed like an eternal wait for her body to meet in that place where our hearts and our souls had already arrived. We had been talking for weeks and learning about each other at the most fundamental of levels, sharing pictures and teasing innuendo as we played with the idea of actually making something of the feeling we both shared. My soul had never spoken to me before like it was speaking to me at that moment, and I had never felt the presence of another Being in me as I had her. It was a love I had never experienced in my life, and one that still flows in my veins and brings my soul to a presence undeniably Divine.

The hours since she had alerted me to her departure dragged by. It seemed like the weeks prior to her leaving were shorter than the 6 hours it took her to arrive. She had texted me at the crossing of each state line during her drive, and when the text arrived that said “New Jersey” I nearly lost my breath in anticipation. That hour and a half or so seemed to pass slower than had any other moment in my life.

Over and over again I seemed to look at the clock only to see the second-hand had moved. I cursed the time and realized that the time she would be with me would move much faster. I wondered if I could somehow capture the slowness of this moment and apply it to the moments we would share. I knew somewhere Einstein was laughing in his grave at the notion.

Oddly, I had no doubt that this was to be a special meeting. My eyes, my mind, my heart and my soul all had been opened to a wondrous new awareness in the weeks since our discussions had started. The air tasted fresher as it entered my lungs. The sky seemed brighter. The tumult that was my life seemed relatively meaningless in the face of the power of what I was feeling. It seemed all so very perfect and necessary, and shortly I would hold the hand of a lover I had never met.

Weird, huh? Yes, for me it was all so very weird. My life had not led me to such a destination before, and my heart was not accustomed to such folly. This type of relationship was not my type. I had not met someone who inspired my Entirety the way she had. What happens if she is not real? What if she never shows up?

Soon I found my mind drifting off to memories of her words, her voice, her sweet nothings and her beautiful everythings. I was feeling the embrace of her mind and the touch of her soul in the chilled spring air as I sat in stillness feeling the rush of it all force out the seeds of doubt that were springing up all around me. I felt her getting closer to me with each inhalation to the point where exhalation became nearly impossible.

Eventually there came her headlights in the darkened distance. As the two eyes of the night grew closer I could feel the gaps in my heartbeat become shorter and shorter. I sat on a curb as some port of call for her to find until those lights got closer. I stood up, barely able to stand but also unable to sit any longer. The moment had arrived.

With some direction she parked her car and got out. My body had forgotten the benefits of breathing as I walked over to greet her. My God! her beauty caused me to flutter. Her smile lit up the evening sky as if the Sun herself had come to the dance. Her eyes, those gateways that had first captured my attention and caused me to reach out to the distant horizon, would not let me go. At some point I stopped walking and began floating to the place where my entire world came together.

We hugged, and as our lips touched I had my first kiss. For the first time the world ceased to exist where we were. As our lips embraced and our tongues danced I couldn’t tell you where I was or what was around me. Except her. Her heartbeat. Her breath. Her body. Her soul. All meshed with mine in a way that told me I was exactly where I needed, and wanted, to be. We two ice cubes had further melted into our singular pool of Love.

Our breath became one in that first kiss. Our bodies sunk into each other as stars melded and suns engulfed each other. Life was born there, and memories faded. Injury was cured, scars healed, and a song that God herself sang was written in that place where our two bodies finally felt a new earth born. There, I knew my destiny. There, I needed no proof of anything.

We repeated that first kiss many, many times over the course of our time together. I call those moments the “Big Bang”, the creation of a Universe of Love that may never be repeated again in this lifetime. Eventually, like is the case with many a Universe, the mind seemed to kill what the Divine had created yet each time my heart beats I remember that first kiss and the purity that defined it.

In that regard I will always cherish that moment. It continued a process of transformation that continues even this day, and I still get the feeling of absolute and pure love in the memory. While a tear may creep its way into my eye in the thought, it is a smile that forces it to spill upon my cheek. I am grateful for feeling such love, and while the experience may never be repeated again in my life, I certainly am grateful for the opportunity I had to have it. I have been blessed.

*Love*

This Time…

February 2, 2013 / Tom

The weird part was that I thought this would be easy. I thought once realization happened the rest would come naturally. That was how it had been before, and in the 45 years I have lived in this existence it had always been a pretty easy process.

Not this time.

This time I have found a hole in my heart unfilled by realization or by diversion or by any other means yet discovered by this Wanderer. This time each known method of progress keeps taking me back to where I have started. The realization caused things to “end” (a euphemism at this point since nothing has truly “ended” within me). Diversions are supposed to lessen the impact and make moving on a smoother ride. Absence is supposed to work with time to limit the flow of memories and of desire. “Supposed to”. In this case it’s just been a rather stark “epic fail”.

This time realization set our feet in concrete to see the end become reality. Like two ships parting in the fog of night we followed our own currents to different lands. Like a Lion and Tiger we staked our claim to the prairies of our existence and marked our separate territories with words and actions. Here is where the story ends for me usually. Here is where I move on. Here is where I simply know I have had enough and untangle the web in my heart where she once caught my dreams and held them tight. Here is where the hole fills, where the beauty of the stars diverts my attention from the beauty of the moon. Here is where I forgive, forget, and find bliss elsewhere.

Not this time.

This time I sit in stillness weeping on the inside. This time the stars hold no luster for me. This time the moon has captured my heart and holds it completely. This time I feel helplessly surrendered to the soul that refuses to budge from its position. This time I feel truth in the knowledge that Love is a dynamic that cannot be explained and, to borrow a line from one of my favorite movies, “can’t be bargained with. It can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead.”

Different from the Terminator is that Love, of course, doesn’t stop even after your body dies. In It’s truth, Love continues on even when the mind and ego have conspired against it. In this experience I have learned that the soul sees and only knows Love first and when it finds its mate it refuses to let go. Your mind cannot handle things in its frailty. Your ego refuses to allow things based on its greed. Your soul…well your soul refuses to let Love die even when the ego and the mind demand it so. I have experienced True Love for someone other than my children in this lifetime for the first time since my birth, and my soul refuses to let go.

My mind harbors no fantasies of reconciliation. My ego demands I find alternatives to edge my soul out of the discussion. Yet each act of ego and of mind serves to highlight the strength of my soul’s conviction to its own realization. At my core I am in Love, and the rest of me can’t help to be in love with that which my soul demands I know.

So, while the breeze from her lips tries to turn the page my soul holds firm to the book. I can still hear her soul, her very Being, call out to me. This isn’t a mental thing, it isn’t a psychological dependence on a fantasy. No, this is something so deep within me that it will bring a tear to my eye at the slightest moment of stillness. My mind has moved on and is as equally determined to stay there as my soul is to remain knowing this Love it has found. Imagine that, a battle between the Divine and the man that is completely absent the need for her physical presence. Imagine she does not need to be in this dynamic for me to Love her, or to need her, or to be faithful to the truth that what my soul has found can never be lost. Imagine an embrace devoid of the physical that encompasses the vastness of the Universe in its most quantum level.

So why lie about it? Why pretend that I am not in Love, not with a body that is absent in my life, but with a soul that could never leave? Men lie too often about what their soul knows as they cater to not only their egoic need for solace but also for the egoic need of others to be the One. Others may capture my body or my mind but my soul is elsewhere, begging the Universe to be heard. I wonder if that will change as I wander this place, or if time and space will find my soul’s dream realized in the presence of what it knows.

This time I will search those caves and shine light in places I once feared to tread. What an exploration this has been as I laugh and cry, dance and sit still, remember and forget all at the same time! What a realization this has been. What a journey…