A New Day

Sometimes in life, we find ourselves "off the track".

My good friends know the last six months have found me so off the track, I don't know where it is...disappointments, falsehoods, game playing, heartbreak in relationships, health, employment...whatever, can grind you down like pencil lead.

When two of my best friends told me a couple of weeks ago "I look behind your eyes and I see nothing in there," I knew it was time to start over. 

Then a very sweet friend sent me this today...for anyone who has found themselves off the track and wondered..."is this it?"
Maybe you can start over...

"You can get yourself a small room in a new city where no one knows your name
just yet
but they will,
for they will see you walking quietly through the market on Sunday mornings,
and sitting at the cafe on Tuesdays
scribbling thoughts in that worn out notebook,
or in the library between the shelves of different worlds, and late on Friday evenings
you will sit peacefully in the corner of the pub
by yourself
and you will be okay with that.
Some nights beautiful women will buy you drinks and ask your name
and you will smile, but be okay with walking home alone
because one day someone will know you
without asking your name
and that’s the person that matters.
So wait a few years,
until you can get yourself a small room in a new city where no one knows your name
just yet
but they will
and there will be an older lady
knocking at your door
saying hi and you’re very welcome,
and you can have a garden
where only flowers grow, with no thorns, that you plant yourself,
and on sunny mornings in April
you can sit and watch them bloom
a little more each day,
just like you do,
bloom a little more
each day.
And on crisp winter mornings in January you can drink coffee in the cold
on your own front porch
and the town is empty
but full
of other things
like space.
And hope.
And purity.
Wait a few years,
when things are clearer, and you will go on well. Just hold on
and wait.
You WILL be ok."

-Charlotte Erickson

I am starting over. In a new town. You?

In Search Of...."God?"

I've reached a point in my life where "God" or whatever "he/she" may be is so far removed from my life, it's scary. I realize other people don't share my belief there is something bigger out there, hell two of my kids don't believe in "it" at all. That's fine. If you choose not to believe, you believe in that choice, and that's OK.
So, where do you go to find "God"?
"He's in your heart" a good friend said. Not that easy.
"He works through you," added another.
So, does that means if I do good works, be nice, generous, kind, considerate, he (we'll use he subjectively) will magically appear?
So when searching for "God" where do we start?
I was listening to some blue grass music on the way home from work today and I thought how many people find God in bluegrass music. Alison Krauss was featured and I think she's pretty godly.
So, where do we start?
I think first we must define God. I see God as not quite a person, but a guiding force that guides us, maybe a conscience, an intuition, a second sense that, if allowed, will hopefully allow us to make choices in our lives that enrich us, surround us with a feeling of comfort knowing we are doing the right thing.
I have a guardian angel. I know it. When I was three, my next door neighbor was a guy of about 21, who would let me ride in convertible, wash his car and, from what I gather was crazy about me. He drowned on his wedding day and I guess for the next few weeks I would come over ans wonder where Bobby was. It got to the point that my mom wouldn't let me go outside because she knew how much it upset Bobby's mom for me to go over there.
It's him. He's my guardian angel. Don't ask why I know, I just do.
But as that proof of God? I don't know, if I feel he's my guardian angel, then I must recognize there is something out there, bigger than us. I know I have felt his presence a number of times in my life, and the times I have ignored that instinct, that feeling, I've usually made the wrong decision. I know people will poo poo all this, but there HAS to be something to believe in.
The last six months of my life have been me walking around the desert waiting for manna to drop from heaven. It seems like it's been kick Randy in the nuts everyday season. From failed relationships, to being gaslighted by someone I trusted respected, admired and adored, to losing my job, to just about anything you can think of, I've been through it. Where the hell has God been through all of this?
Maybe right here lurking but not posting. Maybe nowhere to be seen. I sure haven't felt God lately.

So, I'm on a search to find "him." "I'm on the road to find out..." as Cat Stevens once said.
Let's take a look at the simple things...a walk in the woods, a bike ride feeling the wind in your face as you go faster and faster. Maybe simple smile, hello or a kind gesture now and then when someone least expects it.
I've reached November in the calendar of my years, maybe even mid November and I know I need to find "him" soon.
The way I look at it, it's kinda like Pascal's Wager, it is an argument in apologetic philosophy devised by the seventeenth century French philosopher, mathematician and physicist Blaise Pascal (1623–62).It posits that humans bet with their lives that God either exists or does not.Pascal argues that a rational person should live as though God exists and seek to believe in God. If God does actually exist, such a person will have only a finite loss (some pleasures, luxury, etc.), whereas they stand to receive infinite gains (as represented by eternity in Heaven) and avoid infinite losses.
Whatever that means...I think it means if there IS a God, and you have lived your life denying his existence then you are standing before him in the afterlife, how do you explain it to him? I'll report back with various clues along the way.