Tuesday, December 24, 2019

Talks with Spirit

I had a talk with my Guardian Angel. You know I like to take stock at the end of the year. Where I've been and where I'm going. So, Spirit and I had a talk. I thought about what to call a Guardian Angel. Spirit came to mind and I almost decided it sounded too much like a name you would give a horse. But, then I thought: "Why Not?" Spirit is what we believe ourselves to ultimately be. We pray to the Holy Spirit or sometimes to spiritual universe so I guess calling my Guardian Angel "Spirit" is okay. I also use the pronoun "He" but I don't mean it as if I've talking biologically. I fully believe spiritual reality is beyond a male/female label but I'm not crossed over to spiritual reality fully yet so I have to use what I can. Anyway the conversation is ongoing and sounds something like this.

 I'm not really sure what to think about the nature of things these days. After all I had heart surgery last year and I don't remember any great spiritual events during my time on the table.

 Spirit: "Well, you woke up didn't you?" Yeah, but how is that spiritual? Spirit:  "It's all spiritual." "you have thought that spiritual is an airy fairy floating around as a blob of luv but in reality spiritual/biological/mental they are all just life in different states or vibrations for want of a better word."  Me: Well, I did have some weird stuff going on. I remember in high school I went out for football one year. I w\sh I had stayed and played but I didn't . Anyway I remember we would do a drill called bull in the ring. I bet  they can't do that now but this was back in the dark ages of 1974 or so. I was in the middle of the ring and extremely near sighted but had to remove my glasses. So, I pointed at the blurry blob of players and the one you point at charges you. He really came in a blur literally. I remember hitting the ground so hard that the world shifted. Turned upside down and then flipped back as if in a cartoon or something. 

Well when I woke up from heart surgery I remember seeing the sink on the ceiling. That's how I knew my body had really been through some trauma. Not to mention my brain. 

Spirit: "Yes, but if you had of been in oblivion then there would have been nothing left of you to wake up. So, trust me. I had you." If you had not come back to conciousness you would still have woken up embodied. You would not have been obliterated and you wouldn't have been absorbed into some void." 

I remember some odd dreams. I saw names of staff written on a board in the hospital room. You know like Head Nurse, Technician, Doctor. I was kind of out of it and decided it looked like a baseball card lineup the manager presents to the ump before a game. Before you know it I'm dreaming of old days like from the thirties and baseball and even predjudice that some people fought in order to play the game. Weird stuff. 

Spirit: Well, your consciouness was not really as firmly connected to the body as it usually is and you were manifesting some old memories and books and thoughts without a lot of filter from the brain.

Then I had this thought. I was like an amoeba or something and lived for a short time and died. Then I was a little more present and lived a hard life and died. Then I lived again as a peasant or a worker or something. Then I lived a short hard life and died. Was that pure fantasy? Evolution as I or life evolved? I just don't know but it seemed a little different than the baseball dream. Although, I don't know how much.

Spirit: "Well, you know spirit or consciousness is primary. So, biological life mirrors consciouness. So, if biology evolves is it that strange to find that spirit evolves? What goes around comes around." 

You mean reincarnation? 

Spirit: "Oh look."  
Me: What? 
Spirit: Do you remember dreaming of flying the other night?
Me: Yes, I remember. I was walking and decided to get something that was out of my reach. I just floated right up to it. When I woke up I honestly felt like it was a part of me or an ability that I have always had. That we all have. But, at the same time I knew not to go leaping off of a building because gravity ya know.

Spirit: Yep. That's kind of like your question. There is a time and place and even a reality to it. But, this isn't the time or place and you're not really able to understand it in it's entirety right now. After all whole religions have started up because someone got a little "enlightenment" and thought they had the whole thing figured out. It just ends up with war and anger and priest or monks or rabbi's or inmans manipulating people. 
Me: In other words you're not going to tell me.
Spirit: Not now. But, keep asking. Keep searching. If you could know it all then God would be a much different entity and not really much more than a super hero instead of the very essence of all that is.

Me: I get tired sometimes with people trying to tell just so stories. I see people trying to tell other people how they should pray or making fun of them for praying. I hear people taking up for powerful politicians as if the rich and powerful needed defending. I think people treat God like that too. As if God were some poltical party that if you don't defend then "he" will get kicked out of school or government or he will get angry at all of us little necked apes and wipe us all out.

Spirit: Sometimes you just have to let people be who they are. Don't be afraid to speak your truth but at the same time you have to allow others room to be human. To make mistakes and learn and grow at their own pace.

Me: Well, we live in a really screwed up world. I remember being in a social work class at Hawaii Pacific University once. A person spoke up and said that maybe this world was hell. I kind of agree. 

I remember reading "The Great Divorce" by C.S. Lewis. In it the citizens of hell are traveling by bus to a shining city. They are on the outskirts of heaven. But, they can't enter. For one thing they don't know that they are in hell. They won't admit it and they refuse to wake up. It kind of reminds me of this world sometimes. The churches want political power and will praise evil men in order to be granted access to power. Meanwhile children are raped and women exploited and the poor go hungry. Then the church's wonder why the atheist mock their version of god and why they find it so silly for this group of people to claim some kind of spiritual advantage in a cruel and seemingly random world.

Spirit: That's true. But, there is a plan.
Me: Really? What is it? 

Spirit: It's to continue to evolve. People worry about global warming and they worry about making a young woman have a child that she isn't willing to take care of. Meanwhile they cut taxes that would have allowed her child to get medical treatment and food. They worry about the world warming up while people are in slavery in China and Korea and parts of Africa and being slaughtered. They worry about gun control but yet are afraid because of political correctness to call out the leaders of communities in Chicago or Baltimore where people are killing each other. They criminalize a person who smokes a plant that comes out of the ground and instead of putting money into mental health and social services they place a larger burden on law enforcement to do the work of social workers and nurses and yet law enforcement isn't trained to do that. But, it's growing pains and people often hit rock bottom in their own cruelty and ignorance before they are able to climb back up out of the muck.

Me: So, people today have their echo chambers. I know I'm not overly religious these days but it reminds me of a place in the bible. It says that people heap teachers to their own ears. That reminds me of the internet and social media. People get into groups such as "conservative, liberal, religious, atheistic, black, white and so on." Then they sit around and swap horror stories about how evil and stupid the other side is.

Spirit: "Yep." 

Me: Well here I am coming to the end of another year. It seems like God put it on fast forward a few years ago and now time flies by. Back when I was young a year seemed like it crawled past. Now, I have a hard time holding on to it long enough to live and get things accomplished before another day ends.

Spirit: It get's easier"
Me: Really?
Spirit: "No, not really."
Me: Thanks a lot. 

Spirit: :Hey I'm here with you."
Me: I know. So honestly. Thank you.

Me: I'm going to do a meditation tonight and I hope I can clear my mind enough to listen to you.
Spirit: That's wonderful because I constantly speak into your spirit and dreams and day. We just have to keep tuning your ears.

Me: Let's do this again soon. I need to listen more and I really do want to get ready for this part of the journey. The road behind me is winding way back there. But, the road ahead looks like it could be coming to an end soon just over those hills.
Spirit: Maybe, but maybe it's just about to branch off to a bigger highway.

Matthew 11:15 He who has ears, let him hear.

Tuesday, December 10, 2019

The Allstar's meet John Records Landecker


  I happened to wake up at 1:30 in the morning and decided instead of trying to go back to sleep I would just get up and check email. That got me to thinking about how I used to deal with middle of the night sleep issues in my youth. I think now that my generation may be the last of the real rock radio generation. I always had a radio by my bed and it was often tuned to WLS in Chicago with John Records Landecker spinning the hits. Now, I grew up in the deep south as they say up nawth. But, I also grew up in the era of the AM radio giants. I would get tuned into WLS because at night they allowed certain stations in the nation to crank up the signal. I remember going  to school the next day and hearing my friends talk about listening to Chicago the night before.
 If you were cool then you listened to the radio once the adults were in bed. It was a habit I kept throughout my twenties and into my thirties. I would listen to talk and news stations like KMOX in Saint Louis and also a Cleveland station and a New Orleans station. I was rocked to sleep by the sounds and voices coming out of the radio. I was then woken the next morning by the sounds of the local Gadsden, Alabama stations signing on. When I heard WGAD in Gadsden sign on then I knew I had made the journey and was now safely back home. 

I don't know why but the sounds of people talking in the distance has always soothed me. When I was a kid I would be in bed and hearing the adults in the living room talking softly would help me drift off to sleep. 

Another trick I had to help me sleep was naming Allstar baseball teams in my head. Some people counted sheep or so I hear. I counted the pitching staff and roster of my all star teams. First the national league and then the American. 

So, here I am and it's now two o:clock in the morning. I'm not sixteen anymore and it's a long way from the 1970"s until the twenty first century. But, just for fun and not using google I'm going to see what my sixty something year old brain matter has rattling around in it. I'm not going to do the present day lineups. I'm going to try and do the allstar teams I would have done to sleep if this were still around the early to mid seventies. Then I might post this blog and go to bed.

  The National League:

Manager:Sparky Anderson: Reds
First base: Tony Perez: Reds
Second Base: Bud Harrelson: Mets
Short Stop: Maury Wills: Dodgers
Third Base: Pete Rose: Reds
Catcher: Johnny Bench: Reds
Pitcher: Tom Seaver: Mets, Phil Niekro: Braves, Steve Carlton: Phillies, Don Sutton: Dodgers.
Relievers: Clay Carol: Reds, Pat Jarvis: Braves, 

Left Field: Willie Stargell Pirates
Center Field: Roberto Clemente Pirates
Right Field  Hank Aaron Braves

American League:

First Base: Al Kaline: Tigers
Second Base: Frank Cash: Tigers
Short Stop: Campy Campaneris A's
Third Base Sal Bando A's
Catcher: Bill Freehan Tigers
Pitcher: Jim Palmer Orioles, Vida Blue A's, Mickey Lolich Tigers, Dave Mcnally Orioles. 
Relief Pitchers: Bill Lee Red Sox, Mel Stottlemyer Yankees,

Now back then I would have named managers and back up's and more pitchers. I would have had more players and my starters would have been different and certainly I have left off many players due to the intervening years and trying to remember on the spur of the moment a long ago era of sports. 

But, anyway at the end of that I would find sleep somewhere and drift off. I'll check this for accuracy in the morning but right now for fun and because I'm getting sleepy I'm going to sign off for now. I'm sure my favorite Atlanta Brave of all time Hank Aaron hit the game winning homer for the national league somewhere in the night. You can read about it in tomorrows version of the "Braves Box" in my old hometown Gadsden Times somewhere between July 1972 and July 1975. Goodnight for now Sports Fans.