Taking Stock

“Have you ever stopped for a moment and looked at yourself through the eyes of the ultimate observer?” ~ Ramtha, What the Bleep do We (K)now!?

“No one is dumb who is curious. The people who don’t ask questions remain clueless throughout their lives.” ~ Neal deGrasse Tyson

“If we lose love and self respect for each other, this is how we finally die.” ~ Maya Angelou

I’m one of those people who is always asking questions, always seeking deeper meaning from outside and inside myself. I guess I’m a perpetual student. I come by it naturally, I learned it from my father. He wanted to know everything there was to know and so do I. I understand that won’t be possible while I’m alive in this physical body. Though, I’m pretty certain that once I pass into the next dimension, I’ll be immersed in the true reality.

Having written that, I want to stop a moment and take stock of what I’ve learned so far. I’ll be turning sixty-five at the end of this month so it seems like a great time for reflection.

I started this blog five years ago to be an electronic journal. I’ve been keeping one since I was twenty-four years old. I do still hand write in a paper journal occasionally, but I like the speed at which my ideas come out onto the screen as I type. That led me to create Sage Woman Chronicles. It’s my way of taking my ideas and experiences out and examining them.

A life long passion of mine has been to understand the relationship between Divine Oneness and human beings. That’s what led me to study religion in college, then theatre, then to become a teacher, to travel, to read extensively, to write. And it all started when, at eight years old, I felt the presence of Divine Oneness on the day I was confirmed. That connection has rarely been broken. When it was I was the one who broke it.

You might be surprised to know that one of the ways I reconnect with the Divine is by reading and watching movies and TV. I’m picky about what I watch. A healthy dose of PBS, Natgeo, the Science and Learning channels are part of my viewing fare. But I’m also always on the lookout for good story telling in a variety of genres. It may seem odd that I seek spiritual enlightenment from those sources, because we think of them as pure entertainment. Some people use entertainment as a drug to numb their stress, or pain. But I don’t think that’s true for everyone.

Here’s one small piece of evidence to support my premise. Every week I listen to a podcast titled “What Do I Read Next” hosted by Anne Bogel. Her format is to have one guest on and they talk books. At one point she asks the guest to talk about three books they love and one they hate. This is a version of what many of them say about the book they hate, “I just didn’t connect with it.” Many of the guests talk about how they read to get a new perspective on life, or to learn something about a different culture or country. Reading isn’t just entertainment to them, though it’s that too, but it’s a way to expand and grow. At the end, Anne recommends three books for them to read and she always wants to hear back about what they thought of the books she recommends. She and the guest have made a connection.

To me, art is a profound attempt by the artist to make a connection with their audience. I teach theatre classes. One thing I’ve noticed about my students, especially those who take acting because they need a fine art credit, is that they are surprised to learn that theatre is all about the examination of human behavior. It teaches methods for getting to motivations, why people do what they do. And that’s a skill we can use in all aspects of life. Because that’s true, plays, movies, and episodic TV shows can do the same thing. And now that I’m a novelist, I find that the fiction writer must show the character’s thoughts and feelings so their readers get a glimpse into their motivations and hopefully gain a deeper understanding.

This semester I’m directing the Shakespeare play Measure for Measure. It’s not one of his more well known plays but what happens in the play is so contemporary. The main event that the play revolves around an incident of severe sexual harassment. One of my students said, “This play is so full of unanswered questions.” And I agreed with him. As I examined the script, I came to understand that Angelo, the abuser, has cut himself off from other people by cultivating an image of the pure, faultless human being, while all the time seething underneath with self-doubts, suppressed passions, and dark emotions that he doesn’t want to face. The Duke of Vienna goes undercover into the city for reasons which are not clear, and leaves Angelo in charge of cleaning up the moral degradation that has occurred throughout the city. The first thing Angelo does is arrest one of the most prominent citizens for getting his fiancé pregnant. His downfall begins when the man’s sister comes to beg for her brother’s life. Angelo is smitten with her and offers to save her brother if she will “give me love.”

I’ve seen two versions of this play. Both directors chose to take a dark view of Angelo and people like him. I found something different in the play. At the end, the character Mariana, who was abandoned by Angelo, says, “They say, best men are moulded out of faults;/ And, for the most, become much more the better/For being a little bad: so may my husband.” It’s this idea that we have chosen to emphasize in our production. We all make mistakes and if we learn from them we can become more understanding, less judgmental, and more loving. Measure for Measure, and all of Shakespeare, have layers upon layers of themes for us to examine. All good literature and movies do. They are a doorway into the human soul and that’s what I find fascinating about them.

As I was writing this post, it went in a little bit different direction than I was originally intending. That’s okay, I’ve got another post on Saturday, when I may write more about the connections between seemingly disparate media that I’ve been making lately. I’ll leave you with this quote from my A Course in Miracles lesson for today. It struck me as profoundly comforting and perhaps it’s an idea that you need too. “Try to remember when there was a time, perhaps a minute, maybe even less when nothing came to interrupt your peace; when you were certain you were loved and safe. Then try to picture what it would be like to have that moment be extended to the end of time and to eternity.” Maybe that’s what we seek when we pray, meditate, read, watch content, talk to our friends and family, to find those moments of profound peace and extend them for as long as we can.

Thanks for reading, liking and commenting. I appreciate it very much. I hope you have moments of peace today.

Lucinda Sage-Midgorden © 2018

Lucinda is the author of The Space Between Time, an award finalist in the “Fiction: Fantasy” category of the 2017 Best Book Awards. It’s a historical, time-travel, magical realism, women’s novel, and is available in all ebook formats at Smashwords, or you can find the ebook at iBooks or Barnes and Noble. I you prefer a physical copy, you can find a print-on-demand version at Amazon. To join her email list, click here. She will never sell the names on her list.