I wanted you to know that from now on, my blog posts will be published on Sundays. My class schedule makes it hard to publish on Saturdays. Story~Power will continue to be published every other Wednesday.
We’re still working on improving the look of my website and learning the new method of publishing posts. Thanks for your patience with that.
I hope you’re doing well. After so many months of upheaval in the world, I must admit, I’m having emotional days. But I don’t try to suppress my feelings and that seems to help. Talking to friends and loved ones also helps.
Also, I am adding a donation section to my posts. If you like what you read and want to contribute to my work, I will be most grateful. Thank you in advance to my donors.
Lucinda is the author of The Space Between Time, an award finalist in the “Fiction: Fantasy” category of the 2017 Best Book Awards.
Have you ever experienced life shattering events? Yeah, most of us have. In The Space Between Time, Jenna Holden gets slammed by her fiancé walking out, her mother’s untimely death, and losing her job all in one week. But she receives unexpected help when she finds her three-times great-grandmother’s journals and begins the adventure of a lifetime.
The Space Between Time is available in all ebook formats at Smashwords and for Kindle at Amazon, or you can find the ebook at iBooks or Barnes and Noble. If you prefer a physical copy, you can find a print-on-demand version at Amazon. Stay tuned for news when the audiobook version is published.
“Kindness in words creates confidence. Kindness in thinking creates profoundness. Kindness in giving creates love.” ~ Lao Tzu
“I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.” ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.
So this weekend I forgot for a few moments to spread love. Sometimes using technology is my kryptonite. If I have to fill out forms, or change my website, I get all flustered because the forms ask questions I don’t know how to answer or the steps to make the necessary changes to whatever it is I’m doing don’t make sense to me.
This past weekend we decided to purchase a new mattress. We’ve needed to buy one for a very long time. And, of course, we had to decided how to pay for it. Use our savings, a credit card, or finance it. Well, financing the purchase seemed the best choice. But there I was filling out financial info, which drives me crazy. And I had questions about what they wanted for some of the sections. I emailed my question, and finally after waiting for what seemed like an hour or two but was probably really only thirty minutes, I made some phone calls. When I finally got the correct person on the line to answer my question, I was frustrated but trying really hard to be kind and reasonable. But, the answer she gave me made me nervous. I didn’t think we’d get the financing, and we’d have to start all over with Barry filling out the forms. I wanted to scream.
I thought I had ended the call. I mean, I’d pressed the red end call button right? I turned to Barry and exploded with some expletives and then I heard this kind voice on the other end of the line say, “Is there anything else I can help you with?” I was mortified. I told her no and thanked her in the kindest voice I could muster and ended the call.
The pit of my stomach was sinking into knots. I’d yelled at the customer service person who didn’t deserve it. I felt terrible as I finished filling out the form, and SURPRISE got approved for the financing. The order was placed and confirmed. Then I left my computer for a while to calm down.
With my stomach still rolling around with self-recrimination, I remembered the Ho’oponopono meditation. So I sat down, thought of that customer service agent and said, “I’m sorry, please forgive me, I love you, thank you,” sending myself and her good energy. I said it several times until my stomach unclenched and I felt that somehow she felt better too.
What that experience taught me is that, I brought all that drama onto myself. I didn’t have to get upset. Perhaps the way forms and websites are set up don’t always work for me because my brain works differently than the people who programed them. That doesn’t mean they’re right and I’m wrong. It means I have to be patient with the process. I have to decide how I’m going to react. One way I have found to deal with these stressful situations is to take breaks to calm down and try to see the procedure from a new perspective instead of insisting the developers configure things to suit me.
The next day when I was waking up, I remembered an entry from the Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu. It happens to be one of my favorite bits of wisdom from that book, but I hadn’t thought of it in a very long time.
This is from a translation by Victor H. Mair, and was reprinted for the 1997 Book-of-the-Month Club offering with permission of Bantam Books. The poem is eerily appropriate for the times in which we live.
Human beings are soft and supple when alive, stiff and straight when dead.
The myriad creatures, the grasses and trees are soft and fragile when alive, dry and withered when dead.
Therefore, it is said: The rigid person is a disciple of death; The soft, supple, and delicate are lovers of life.
An army that is inflexible will not conquer; A tree that is inflexible will snap.
The unyielding and mighty shall be brought low; The soft, supple, and delicate will be set above.
Each of us has times when we are inflexible. I’m inflexible when it comes to computer technology. But I have to learn to bend and go with the flow because having a rigid idea of how the apps and websites should work doesn’t make me feel good and the bad energy emanates outside myself. Who knows where it might get stuck?
It’s the same with people. I have to be flexible, listen and accept others as they are instead of who I want them to be, because we each have our place and purpose in the world or we wouldn’t be here.
As I’m writing this, outside my window the wind is blowing the grasses and trees in a beautiful dance. This prompts me to add, I’m sorry, please forgive me for forgetting to spread love, I love you, thank you. I still have a lot of work to do on myself. Maybe one day I’ll automatically remember to spread love in every situation in which I find myself.
Thanks for reading, liking and commenting. I appreciate your support.
I’m adding a place for you to donate to my blog and or podcast if you’d like to support my work. I feel a little strange about that, but I’ve been thinking that I need to support artists so they can continue their work, so I might as well join them in allowing people to support my creative efforts as well. You are under no obligation to contribute. Thank you if you do. I appreciate it.
Lucinda is the author of The Space Between Time, an award finalist in the “Fiction: Fantasy” category of the 2017 Best Book Awards.
Have you ever experienced life shattering events? Yeah, most of us have. In The Space Between Time, Jenna Holden gets slammed by her fiancé walking out, her mother’s untimely death, and losing her job all in one week. But she receives unexpected help when she finds her three-times great-grandmother’s journals and begins the adventure of a lifetime.
The Space Between Time is available in all ebook formats at Smashwords and for Kindle at Amazon, or you can find the ebook at iBooks or Barnes and Noble. If you prefer a physical copy, you can find a print-on-demand version at Amazon. Stay tuned for news when the audiobook version is published.
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?’ Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us. it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.” ~ Marianne Williamson, A Return to Love
This week between the last post and this has been a really difficult one for me. Nothing terrible happened. It’s all inside stuff that has been coming up for examination that has laid me low. I haven’t been interested in food, or programs on TV. Even though I restarted doing my audiobook, I’m not excited about what I’ve done. The recording seems boring. Why would anyone want to listen to me drone on?
Other things have niggled away at me. Several posts on Facebook this week irritated me, almost prompting me to make comments contrary to the person’s point of view. One of these stopped me in my tracks for a little while. The young woman who posted it is a loving person. When she smiles she lights up a room. This past week, I read one of her posts. It started off with the kind of sentiments I’d expect of her. She was asking us to come together, to listen to each other, and try to resolve our differences. Then she wrote that our president had to be strong to stop the … My stomach clenched up and I felt such dark emotions. I almost wrote a response, but I knew that anything I wrote would not change her mind and would damage our relationship.
I thought about her post for the rest of the evening and just as I was getting ready for bed I realized why I’d felt so terrible. It felt like she wanted those of us who don’t think like she does to listen to her and to accept that we are wrong and to think the way she does. I may be completely wrong in my assumption. But with further thought I came to the conclusion that’s what I want. That’s what we all want. We want people to see the world the way we do. It’s so much easier because then I don’t have to do the work of loving them no matter what.
I get signals all the time to help me untangle the knots in my thinking and feeling. This week my dramatic structure class watched a movie version of An Ideal Husband by Oscar Wilde. It’s a story that seems trivial on the surface, with a character, Lord Goring, who often says: “To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.” It seems he loves to be idle more than to engage in any meaningful endeavor. But he’s the character who gives most of the great pearls of wisdom throughout the play. In fact, the title of this post is one of his lines. And that line, that it is the imperfect who need love, gave me pause. Not one of us is perfect. Well ultimately, our souls are perfect, but as we live out our time on this planet, we’re here to make mistakes and learn from them. We all need love.
And this is what I’ve been learning this week. It’s our self-hatred that causes most of the problems we face. We think that there is not enough of anything to go around, and so we scratch and fight each other for the seemingly limited resources. We take offense if someone disrespects us, when in reality, we don’t respect ourselves. To avoid doing the necessary work to love ourselves, we demand that everyone adopt our point of view, and we post nasty comments to those who contradict us.
Now, I’m just as guilty of everything I’ve just outlined as everyone else. I’ve been working on loving myself for most of my life and sometimes I wish I’d just get to the end of it already. It’s so much easier to blame others for my faults than to take each one out and love it to healing. I mean we are taught that loving ourselves and putting our needs first is selfish. But what if that’s wrong? What if Lord Goring is right, to love oneself is not only the beginning of a lifelong romance, but the answer to the worlds problems?
I’m in the middle of reading the most profound book, The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates. It takes place in the days before the Civil War when the Underground Railroad helped many “tasked” people find their way to freedom. Today something in that book stopped my mental wheels in their tracks. What if, instead of pointing out all the faults of the president and his cronies, we stopped our resistance and just loved them. I’m not saying ignore the sins of the past. We all have to face the consequences of our actions. But what I’m saying is to do what Jesus said, “Love thy neighbor as thyself.”
I believe we’re at a confluence of Divinely orchestrated energies that are forcing us to change. We each have a specific role to play in that change. There are people who’s purpose it is to bring out the truth of all the dark deeds of people in power. It’s their soul contract. They chose to take on these roles so old institutions and ways we’ve been treating each other throughout the centuries can end and we can build something out of light rather than darkness. This is something that’s happening throughout the entire world not just in the U.S. But that’s not everyone’s contract.
I’m not exactly sure what my role is beyond continuing to learn to love myself and sending Reiki and spread love and light to support people during the change. Sometimes, like when I saw those Facebook posts this week, I hear this little voice telling me not to respond. And often I don’t understand that because to paraphrase Martin Luther King, Jr. if we stand by and say nothing we condone the evil. But in the Tao Te Ching, there is a concept called Wu Wei, the art of non-action. It’s a philosophy that states, the best way to deal with conflict is not to act at all, not forcing any solution, but letting things flow. And I do remember seeing this powerful image on social media a few months back of demonstrators, standing still in the streets. In fact they looked like they were meditating. They weren’t carrying signs or shouting. They were just standing, peacefully. I don’t know what part of the world this demonstration took place. But I’m thinking, maybe that’s what we could be doing now. We could be standing up and implying by our silence, “Enough is Enough”.
I do not have any answers. Sometimes my head spins with all the opposing energies flying around exploding against each other and it’s draining. I have to make daily intentions to return to love no matter what anyone says or does and trust that the Divine is in charge and has our best interests at heart.
I send love and light to you. Thanks for following, liking and commenting.
Lucinda is the author of The Space Between Time, an award finalist in the “Fiction: Fantasy” category of the 2017 Best Book Awards.
Have you ever experienced life shattering events? Yeah, most of us have. In The Space Between Time, Jenna Holden gets slammed by her fiancé walking out, her mother’s untimely death, and losing her job all in one week. But she receives unexpected help when she finds her three-times great-grandmother’s journals and begins the adventure of a lifetime.
The Space Between Time is available in all ebook formats at Smashwords and for Kindle at Amazon, or you can find the ebook at iBooks or Barnes and Noble. If you prefer a physical copy, you can find a print-on-demand version at Amazon. Stay tuned for news when the audiobook version is published.
Randy and I attended Graceland University, acted in plays together, and eventually both of us got theatre degrees. We haven’t seen each other in many years, but we keep in touch via social media. I was excited to talk with Randy since he’s a fellow writer. This is part one of a long conversation about our passion for stories.
Randy Murray
Randy Murray was born in rural Southern Illinois, the 5th generation on the family farm. He attended Graceland College (now university) in Lamoni, Iowa, where he received a BA in Theatre and Speech Communications, followed by a Masters of Fine Arts in Playwrighting at the Southern Illinois University at Carbondale.
After college he began work in the early high tech industry as a training developer and instructor, followed by roles leading marketing departments and product management, and ultimately, business management. He capped his career as a business writing and communications consultant for large businesses and marketing agencies.
His play, Grimaldi: King of the Clowns, was performed after his graduation in the SIU main stage season in 1986 as well as preformed for the American College Theatre Festival. It has subsequently been preformed at Howard Payne University and at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
His book, Writing Assignments, is available on Amazon.com.
He remains active as a writer and playwright and is an avid ukulele player and performer. He lives in Westerville, Ohio, outside of Columbus, with his wife, Diane. His two adult daughters, one a musician, the other a painter, both have careers in the arts.
Plays, Myths, and Stories discussed in this episode.
Greek Myths Star Trek the original series James Blish, author of Star Trek novelizations of the original Star Trek series, and Cities in Flight War of the Worlds radio show by Orson Wells The Federal Theatre Project The Common Theatre Project Plays by William Shakespeare discussed: Love’s Labor Lost, Measure for Measure, Twelfth Night Patrick Stewart reading Shakespeare’s Sonnets on YouTube The Globe Theater in London Hadestown Music, lyrics and book by Anaïs Mitchell developed with and Directed by Rachel Chavkin (Tony Winner) Gilgamesh The Iliad and The Odyssey by Homer Antigone by Jean Anouilh based on Antigone by Sophocles Birthright a novel in progress by Randy Murray
“Humans are not ideally set up to understand logic; they are ideally set up to understand stories.” ~ Roger C. Schank, Cognitive Scientist.
Lucinda is the author of The Space Between Time, an award finalist in the “Fiction: Fantasy” category of the 2017 Best Book Awards.
Have you ever experienced life shattering events? Yeah, most of us have. In The Space Between Time, Jenna Holden gets slammed by her fiancé walking out, her mother’s untimely death, and losing her job all in one week. But she receives unexpected help when she finds her three-times great-grandmother’s journals and begins the adventure of a lifetime.
The Space Between Time is available in all ebook formats at Smashwords and for Kindle at Amazon, or you can find the ebook at iBooks or Barnes and Noble. If you prefer a physical copy, you can find a print-on-demand version at Amazon. Stay tuned for news when the audiobook version is published.
“You must always be willing to truly consider evidence that contradicts your beliefs, and admit the possibility that you may be wrong. Intelligence isn’t knowing everything. It’s the ability to challenge everything you know.” ~ Meme shared on Facebook by Deb Sprague.
Propaganda: “information, ideas, or rumors deliberately spread widely to help or harm a person, group, movement, institution, nation, etc.” ~ Dictionary.com
“Only love is real.” ~ A Course in Miracles
I’m going to do something I should have done long ago and break my own rule to be careful with what I write, because the energies are coming to a head and I can’t keep quiet any longer. I know some of you following me are not from the U.S. The politicians I write about today might not mean anything to you, but I hope my internal process will make sense.
And, trigger alert, I’m not going to sugar coat my views as I usually do. You don’t have to read or even follow me if you’re offended. The time has come for me to be brutally honest.
I’m voting for Joe Biden for President of the United States. He wasn’t my first choice. And I’m not voting for him so I can “Vote Blue, No Matter Who,” either. Nor is my decision to vote for Biden a choice between the lesser of two evils. I’m voting for a man of integrity, decency, and deep caring for his fellow citizens. Biden wasn’t my first choice. I didn’t think he was a great person to lead our country until recently. Let me tell you my process.
As you might have guessed by many of my previous posts, I’m a proud liberal. I was taught to be open to new ideas and to examine my own thought processes. I was taught to have an open mind and heart and accept and love people as they were and not try to change them. That’s the definition of a liberal. Since some conservatives have used propaganda to demonize that word, we liberals have turned to the word “progressive” to describe ourselves. That’s my starting point.
After being a lifelong Democrat, I changed my party affiliation to Independent during the 2016 election because I felt that the DNC was pushing Hillary Clinton on us, even though Bernie Sanders had tremendous support from the young, people of color and even people like me, old Baby Boomers. Polls can be manipulated, but many of them showed that Bernie was the one to defeat Donald Trump. When Hillary was nominated, I was angry and saw conspiracy theories. Well, there were conspiracies to interfere in our elections, but perhaps not among the Democratic Party leadership.
Morph to earlier this year. I’m still registered as an Independent, but the only options among progressives were Democratic candidates. There were four I liked, candidates I thought could possibly get the nomination and defeat Trump. Bernie Sanders, Pete Buttigieg, Kamala Harris, and Elizabeth Warren were my favorites. But there were so many candidates running, I knew I had to wait to see which ones would be left standing by summer.
It finally came down to Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden. I didn’t want Joe Biden! I thought he was a weak candidate. My mind filled with conspiracy theories again. Were the Russians interfering with the Democrats? But as I talked with my sister, Celeste, about the situation, we said to each other, “We have to consider what Divine Spirit wants.” And so we started to listen to Biden. We listened to the people who knew him and we changed our minds.
The Democratic and Republican conventions are over now. And it’s clear to me that, as Nicholle Wallace of MSNBC said on the August 26th evening broadcast of the Republican convention, “We can’t keep up with the propaganda. They are not telling lies. They are serving and producing propaganda. And we are still four years into this presidency ill equipped to respond to it.” That got me thinking, how do we combat propaganda? And what I believe is that we expose it for what it is. That’s what honest journalists, people who worked with Trump, and even his family members have been doing. They’re tearing off his mask so we can see his true motives, his true character.
I’ve talked so often over the last three years with people about the fact that we as a nation had to have Donald Trump become our president, because we’ve ignored all our opportunities to heal old wounds of racism, financial inequity, and so much more, going back since the beginning of our country. At the beginning of Donald Trump’s presidency, it felt like the darkness had descended and we’d never see the light again. The daily news bore out my feelings. But as Gary Zukav wrote in his book Seat of the Soul, humans learn through crisis. And I felt that not only our country, but the world was at a confluence of historical crises with great changes on the horizon.
I’m so glad I took a step back to examine why I didn’t like Biden, because I started to notice that he has been consulting many of the people who had been running against him. The Democrats are forming a coalition. They are taking a serious look at the problems we’re facing, and planning how to solve them. And they aren’t letting Trump have all the air time. They are challenging his assertions, pointing out his lies, and blocking his policies that are trying to erode our Democracy.
As I paid closer attention to Biden I heard him comfort people who had suffered the loss of loved ones from gun violence or the pandemic. He shared the pain of the loss of his own loved ones. He exhibited empathy and compassion with those suffering people. And that’s what we need right now, someone who is softer, sympathetic, compassionate, but tough enough to work for all of us.
Another thing I liked about him was that he owned the mistakes he made in the past, like when he didn’t believe Anita Hill when she related what happened between her and Clarence Thomas and then he voted to confirm Thomas as a Supreme Court Justice. He apologized to Anita Hill for that. Owning up to your mistakes takes courage.
The clincher for me was the deep contrast between the Democratic and Republican conventions. These are words I heard speakers use at the Democratic convention: Compassion, empathy, decency, honor, hope for the future, equity, healing racial wounds, ending divisions by listening to each other, sharing love, and light to every person in this country.
At the Republican convention, the RNC decided not to have any platform other than to bow to Trump’s wishes, which are all about spreading fear, hate, division, and using words like “law and order” to mean making the populace do what he wants them to do. He punishes people, businesses, and states that challenge his xenophobic racism and his orders to harm the environment. When asked about how he feels about the huge number of deaths from the virus, he said, “It is what it is.” He’s shut down journalists who ask him the tough questions that he doesn’t want to answer because they make him look bad. I could write a book about all the things he’s done that are unethical, uncaring, or even violations of the law, but you probably already know what they are.
So many prominent Republicans, honorable conservatives, have walked away from their party because their leaders kowtowed to Trump. That tells me that we are waking up. Old paradigms that no longer serve our country or humanity are breaking down. The words, “It’s nothing personal, it’s just business,” aren’t acceptable any more. Profit, the bottom line, and hoarding wealth and disrespecting human dignity are on their way out.
I learned two words this week that describe Trump perfectly. The first was spoken by Michael Steele, former head of the RNC, and a former Republican. He used the word “sycophantic”, to describe Trump. It means “a self-seeking, servile flatterer’ fawning parasite’ (Dictionary.com). As you might have guessed, I had to look that one up.
The second word popped up on Dictionary.com when I was looking up another word I wanted to use in this post. It’s the word of the day for August 27, “vituperate: to use or address with harsh or abusive language; revile …” That word also describes Trump.
You know the times they are changin’ when the players and teams of the NBA, and many other sports teams refuse to play games until the violence against blacks and other people of color stops. I know Trump won’t stop it. He ripped the scab off of racism, he has fueled and condoned it because it serves his purposes to do so. But, thank heaven he has, because now we whites are being forced to take a good look at ourselves and all we or our ancestors have done to suppress, cheat, enslave, and kill people of color.
I’ve asked myself, what attitudes do I have that are racist? What do I assume I know, but am completely ignorant about? It’s an uncomfortable task to undertake. But it’s necessary and I’m doing it because I believe that each individual person is important and should be treated with dignity and respect.
No political party or politician is perfect. To think that we’re going to be able to elect the perfect leader, is wrong. No one person can shoulder all of the burden. But it’s our responsibility to do our research and choose the best people running for offices that we can. And we have to find ways large and small to make this world a better place in which to live.
I may not vote for the same people you will. But if we stop following the crowd and let go of our prejudices and actually listen with open minds and hearts to the candidates, that’s the best thing we can do. What words does the candidate use? Are they loving and compassionate? Do they have clear plans for how to begin the work of solving problems? Or do they point the finger and blame other people? Do they ignore their mistakes? How do you feel when you listen to them? Examine those feelings. Do you like or dislike them because their message is dark and hateful, or is it because you have a set idea in your head about what you want to hear and you’re not willing to be open to this particular candidate?
If you’re on the fence about what kind of person should be in the White House come January 2021, I suggest you watch The American President (1995). In a speech to the press near the end of the movie, Andrew Shepard, played by Michael Douglas, says, “America isn’t easy. America is advanced citizenship. You gotta want it bad, ‘cause it’s gonna put up a fight.” I wish I could quote the entire speech, but I want you to watch the movie because it’s main theme is about character. In that same speech, Shepard says, “Being president of this country is *entirely* about character.” I’d say being any kind of leader is about character. So the question is, which candidate, Joe Biden, or Donald Trump has an upstanding character? Which of the people of either party up and down the ballot are people of honor? I’m going to do my research, and those are the people I’m going to vote for.
My aim is to spread love and light with this blog, which means pointing out darkness and hatred that we need to deal with as well. We can’t build a better world if we hide from the nastiness of life. So, if you’re going to leave comments, make sure they are respectful and thoughtful. I’m not going to allow any attacking of myself, or other commenters on this site. Nasty comments will be removed or not approved, because remember, only love is real. All the other stuff is just our egos getting in the way.
Thanks for following, reading and liking. I hope we can build a better world together.
Lucinda is the author of The Space Between Time, an award finalist in the “Fiction: Fantasy” category of the 2017 Best Book Awards.
Have you ever experienced life shattering events? Yeah, most of us have. In The Space Between Time, Jenna Holden gets slammed by her fiancé walking out, her mother’s untimely death, and losing her job all in one week. But she receives unexpected help when she finds her three-times great-grandmother’s journals and begins the adventure of a lifetime.
The Space Between Time is available in all ebook formats at Smashwords and for Kindle at Amazon, or you can find the ebook at iBooks or Barnes and Noble. If you prefer a physical copy, you can find a print-on-demand version at Amazon. Stay tuned for news when the audiobook version is published.
Sage Woman Chronicles 