Tenshi Mama

We might be running out of oil. Would that be such a bad thing? Well, I guess if we switched to coal, it would. Or planted corn all over the country to fuel our cars. But it seems to me that running out of oil is much less scary than what seems to be happening when we burn it.

We adjust to climate change by using our air conditioners more, by moving inland, by insulating ourselves, by shipping more food, and by burning more oil. We drive or fly airplanes to environmental conferences, we buy cool “eco” stuff (imported from China), and we watch the climate change happen. We tell ourselves that we’ll drive a little less, or we get a slightly more fuel efficient SUV.

An article at Science Magazine offers some ways to achieve real change. Maybe we better start talking about that. Maybe we better start making a real difference, so we’ll have time to wonder if we’re running out of oil.

In February, I discovered the Group of 1000 (which is connected with the Conversations With God Foundation), and joined. Then I learned that there would be a conference, about a week away, in Ashland, Oregon, only a three hour drive. It was a free conference, and most retreats with Neale cost hundreds or thousands of dollars.

But at the time, I didn’t even know how I was going to pay the rent. Money was very short. I knew that going to the conference was the right thing to do. After all, if I saved what little money we had, I still wouldn’t have enough to pay the rent, and I needed spiritual clarity. So I left half with my family for groceries, and spent the rest on gas and food. The first night I slept in my van. The second and third nights a generous and sweet woman at the conference let me sleep in her hotel room (Thanks!). It worked out.

So we’re talking about the next conference, and Neale asked who would come if it were to be held in London. I asked, “Do you mean do we know *how* we could make that happen?” He clarified: “Raise your hand if you’d make it your highest intention to be there.” So, of course, I raised my hand.

I was thinking as I was driving home, “Apparently, I’m going to London! Weird…” It was hard to believe, but I knew it was important that I believe it, so I tried to.

But this past week something happened that really shook me. I got a contract that paid me over a thousand dollars up front and will pay that much again at the end. This one is going to pay for other stuff, but it occurred to me that this is a perfectly normal thing to have happen, and it will happen again. And I was walking down the street one afternoon last week, looking at plants and flowers, and suddenly it dawned on me. *This will happen again.” And if it happens again, then going to London will be easy.

Fancy that.

Isn’t life grand? Here’s wishing all of your dreams come true as well.

P.S. We managed to pay the rent, and a few weeks later, happened upon a *much* nicer apartment and managed to move, too. I’m liking this manifesting thing.

I recently discovered Oso Delicioso,* which looks like a particularly pretty drive-up coffee kiosk, but is actually more of a real kitchen, with local, organic food! How cool is that?

My friend (who had been on the lookout for places that serve local, organic food, especially affordable ones) said she wasn’t interested because she’s avoiding fast food. And this got me thinking.

They do serve food to people in cars, and they do use paper wrappers and plastic cups. (Though I’m guessing they’d use whatever dishes I brought with me.) What else might Oso Delicioso have in common with McDonald’s? Is this fast-food in the ways that count?

* * *

When I mention talking with God, people ask “How do you know it’s God? How do you know it’s not your imagination? How do you know it’s not of the devil?”

First, my imagination is a direct link to Godsource, if I let it be. Why would God need to speak in a booming voice or from a burning bush, if I’m listening? Imagination is one of the most amazing things in the entire world. Wouldn’t it be a perfect vehicle for God’s communication?

As for whether what I’m hearing is truly God, or some evil spirit or my mundane speculations instead, here is how I know. Only our highest thoughts come from God. Only our grandest visions, our purest feelings. God-Oneness cannot be expressed as other than truth, joy and love. If it’s fear, it’s not god. If it’s deceitful, it’s not god. Judgemental, sorrowful, separate, it’s not god.

See how easy that is?

* * *

So I was thinking about fast food, and whether Oso Delicioso would count, and what I realized is that the reason I don’t want to go to McDonald’s is that it’s not made with love.

I want to eat food grown and collected with love, prepared with love, served with love.

If we get that part right, the rest will follow.

And now, I’m off to get a stuffed biscuit, made with organic flour and local eggs.
________________________________________________________________
*Oso Delicioso is in Eugene, Oregon, where W. 6th and W. 7th connect.

Good people have been trying to end poverty, wage peace, protect the environment, support women, improve education and prevent disease forever. And things do get better. But the problems persist.

This is not how Humanity is meant to live. How is it possible that we pass someone on the street who is hungry and asking for our help, and we do nothing? How can it be that mothers will kiss their children goodbye and send them off to a place where they have to ask to use the restroom, where they are bullied and told what to think, and where there’s a definite chance someone will start shooting and they won’t be able to defend themselves? And shouldn’t it be unthinkable that we continue to drive (and yes, I do it too) when we know that the earth we call home is struggling to support us?

What about the folks who make their living lying to other people? The soldiers who follow orders knowing that they’re wrong? The cops who beat somebody up just because they can? Shouldn’t this be unthinkable?

I have a beautiful vision of what humanity can be. We can be loving, kind, forgiving, compassionate, joyful, and so many other things. But something is holding us back. Bezillions of non-profits can’t bring this vision to life. Politicians can’t either.

See, it’s not a political problem. It’s not an economic problem or a military problem. It’s a spiritual problem. We need better ideas about god and our place in the universe.

What we need is a new myth — a new set of ideas about who we are and what life is all about. We need a myth that will shows us our own divine nature, and that we are all one.

~

Once upon no time at all, in the place called Everywhere That Is, there was All That Is. All That Is was very powerful, maybe even omnipotent, since All That Is includes all the power that is. All That Is was a field of energy, with limitless potential and limitless power.

But All That Is wanted to experience what it was like to be all of these wonderful things. All That Is wanted something to matter. Literally, All That Is wanted something to matter, to become material. All That Is wanted to experience mass and gravity, light and peace, learning, and love.

The problem was this: how could All That Is experience light, when there was no darkness? How could All That Is experience learning, when All That Is already was, and so knew, All That Is?

All That Is, in Infinite Wisdom, knew what to do.

All That Is began to individuate, creating illusions of separateness, absence, and emptiness. These bits, these sparks of the divine fire, could be, could experience, and could even create, the amazing beauty that is already All That Is.

Great stars formed, burning with a bright fire. Smaller bodies formed, warmed by the stars, and on those smaller bodies, life took form. Life!

You and I have a vision of what life can be. We are part of the illusion, and we are also All That Is. We are sparks of the divine fire.

We are expressions of divine love, embodiment of divine creativity. We are the soul of the universe.

And more than anything, we are one.

Writers who defend their clichés on the grounds that “they wouldn’t have become clichés if they weren’t good” may have a terrific point. And they should enjoy that, because what they won’t have is successful writing.

A cliché is a word or phrase that’s been overused. It may have been a clever phrase when it was new, but readers are tired of it now. Reading it is boring. (I hope you got that. I said “boring.” That word should terrify you. If it doesn’t, well, maybe you should consider a new career.)

• Cliché is a crutch that lets the writer use an acceptable one-size-fits all description, instead of crafting the perfect description for the circumstances.
• A cliché makes for uninteresting reading. The reader already knows what “flat as a pancake” looks like. It doesn’t invite her to create a new mental image.
• The best writing is a rich interaction between the writer’s mind and the reader’s. Using cliché is a lazy way of writing that encourages a lazy way of reading, making it very difficult for the reader and the writer to connect.

Clichés to avoid

icing on the cake * bright and shining * all for the best
play favorites * give it a rest * just deserts
better late than never * too tired to sleep * play with fire
diamond in the rough * wet behind the ears * short and sweet
live dangerously * point of no return

When cliché is a good idea

There are a few good uses for cliché.

Twisted Cliché

Irony should be used carefully, because the technique itself is becoming cliché. But if you can pull it off, the rare twisted cliché can be fun. “What a great birthday! The tickets to Hawaii were just icing on the bright red Porche.” (I didn’t say I could pull it off!)

I used to get a kick out of my dad saying “Never put off to tomorrow what you can put off indefinitely.” Isn’t he clever?

Revealing a Character

Fortunately, your characters don’t have to be as good at putting together words as you are. If Mama has been telling Henry not to go out with his friends, you might quote her as saying, “Mark my words, boy. You go up there tonight, you gonna get caught red-handed!”

Cliché used in this way lets the reader know who Mama is. We learn not only that she doesn’t want him to go, but we learn how she talks to him, and we begin to learn something about their relationship.

Because cliché doesn’t have the impact of more creative word-crafting, it’s likely that Henry isn’t going to be very strongly affected by her words. But rather than have Mama talk to the boy without using cliché, and possibly really reach him, here I want to show the reader a character who uses cliché easily, and to show the consequences of that sort of interaction. In fact, as I’ve been sitting here making up this interaction, I’ve discovered that Henry feels that his Mama never listens to him, and he ignores what she says because it’s so vague he can’t even argue with it.

(Dang. I hate it when throw-away characters
come to life, and I have to save them in a drawer.)

Cliché Hunting

Those two uses of cliché are usually ok. But the rest you have to fix. Here’s how:

• Practice listening for cliché as you go through your day. Any phrase that could be taken from one scene and dropped into an entirely different one and work fine should get your attention.
• Read your work out loud so that clichés you miss will catch your attention.
• Visualize your scene clearly, so that you won’t be as tempted to use the first phrase that comes to mind to describe it.

Now you know another trick for making your writing sparkle! If you have questions, send me an email. I’ll answer as best I can.

Well, just to follow up a bit, I have to say it was an understatement that concussion mimics fibromyalgia. It brought on a full-blown flare, including reduced immune function indicated by a three-month bout with cold/flu/bronchitis/etc.

Unbelievable. Yet it is passing. I’m able to get through class again. And I’m back writing again, much to the relief, I’m sure, of my large audience of readers.

If you’re down, or having a flare or relapse, keep the faith! Healing happens.

A few weeks ago, I got a concussion by cleverly slamming my forehead against the edge of a shelf. It hit at an angle, across my left eye, the bridge of my nose and my right eyebrow. I think it happened because I was already a bit dizzy and uncoordinated due to a minor fibromyalgia flare.

Not especially interesting in itself, but what I found amazing was the discovery that the resulting symptoms mimic fibromyalgia, exactly! And apparently I’m not the first to notice this. Dr. Mary Lee Esty, in Neurotherapeutic Therapy and Fibromyalgia Using EEG-Based Stimulation suggests that Fibromyalgia is a brain dysfunction. She points out that problems relating to whiplash are “the result of the biomechanical forces of whiplash causing traumatic brain injury and its inevitable central nervous system dysfunction.” She also points out the whiplash, traumatic brain injury and fibromyalgia have an “almost complete overlap” of symptoms.

I haven’t been back to Karate yet. I’ve biked many miles, but not enough. I’ll consider this EEG stimulation at some point, but for now, I’ve got to get moving again.

I am far behind in my blogging; I have several notes in my journal that I’d intended (still intend) to put up here. But I didn’t want to put this off:

Yesterday, I biked 5 miles to the bike repair store. After some loitering and a mile walk, I arrived at the dojo for my class (a hard one!). That was followed by another mile walk and another 5 mile ride.

10 miles biking, 2 miles walking, and an hour of Karate.

Wow.

Wire-tapping, herding Americans into “free speech zones,” detaining citizens without charges, and generally ignoring the law are acts George W. Bush excuses by saying that this is war. What does that mean, exactly?

War used to be easy to identify. It happened between states—governments, actually—according to predictable rules. But when someone blows up a building for a political cause, is it an act of war, or a crime? When bin Laden’s people did it in September, 2001, it was an act of war. When McVey et. al. did it in 1993, it was treated as a crime. When Iraqis do it, it’s treated as both at once.

It’s important to know the difference, because our constitution limits what police can do. They are forbidden, for example, from driving down the road shooting whoever looks suspicious. They aren’t permitted to arrest people and put them in secret prisons with no access to attorneys, and without filing charges.

The idea isn’t new that “rights” just don’t apply to certain groups of people. We’ve all heard someone say that child molesters don’t have rights. Lately, we hear that terrorists don’t have rights.

But here in America, we’re supposed to understand that people are innocent until proven guilty. Innocent men have rights. If we forget that because of the horror of the crimes involved, we will have given up on what it means to be freedom-lovers.

I found this on the Chicago Manual of Style website, and felt compelled to share it with my readers (both of you).

Q. In a software application that catalogues musical albums in a sidebar column for playback selection the main developer insists on using italics for the album titles. I advised to drop the italics mainly because on today’s low-resolution screens italic typefaces are rendered poorly. I reasoned that the CMOS advice that artwork titles should be set in italics is to be construed as a device of emphasis that sets the respective title off from the flowing text. If the context would consist of titles only (and no surrounding text) there would not be a need for emphasis, hence no italicization. Is this correct?

A. You make a good argument. The fact is, any time italics are unreadable, they are inappropriate. Although Chicago style is to put titles of albums in italics, CMOS was not written with Web design in mind. Even in Chicago books, there are separate rules for display type. For instance, book titles are often set in roman type on a title page. It’s probably best for you to ditch the italics.

It’s common for people to complain that the Chicago Manual is stuffy, or too constricting. But it’s this kind of common sense that makes me love it.