The Story of A Little Girl – Part III

For thousands of years, there has been a negative denotation of left-handed people. It exists throughout many cultures of the world. In some cultures being left-handed is a punishable crime. The punishment can range all the way to death.

In Christian literature left-handedness is considered a sign of being a servant of the Devil. When the little girl was eight, she was living in the Bible Belt and in this part of the country the literal word of the Bible was accepted.

Today, in much of the country, being left-handed is more a matter of curiosity and does not carry the stigma that it used to. In other parts of the country and the world it is still a dangerous thing to be left-handed. It is estimated that today somewhere between 7 and 30% of the world is left-handed. Although definitely in the minority, the numbers are significant.

Our story concerns the little girl who was and still is profoundly left-handed. As many families did at this time, the little girl's family went to church frequently. Her father was in the church choir so they went more frequently than some. The little girl was young enough that she didn't always understand the sermons. They confused her on more than one level. The people who sat in the pews said they believed the words of the Bible, but most of them didn't seem to live by those words. However, they did seem to judge other people by those words. How strange, to hold others responsible for their behavior but not themselves. So on the Sunday that the minister spoke about left-handed people being the servant of the Devil. She really didn't pay much attention. She knew she wasn't working for the Devil. She didn't think she was working for anyone. The minister's words did not make any sense, so she ignored him. Her father did not.

When they got home later that day, the little girl overheard her father speaking to her mother. He said, "No child of mine is going to be left-handed." He told the mother to call the school the next day and tell them to make the little girl use her right hand whenever she would naturally use her left. The little girl was also supposed to use her right hand at home, too. Again, the little girl didn't understand the fuss. But what chilled the little girl's soul, what froze her to the bone, was her father's statement that no child of his would be left-handed. Did that mean he wasn't her father? How could that be? He was the only man that she had known as her father. She would do anything, anything at all to win his approval. Though she would not know this for many years, this was the first betrayal.

Her mother called the school, as her father had directed. When the teacher told her to use her right hand for writing she tried. It was strange. It was wrong. It was uncomfortable. It made her brain hurt. It made her cry. But she kept on trying. She had to please her father. As she kept trying, she started to get angry. She didn't understand the anger, but it kept growing.

When she ate her dinner, she was told to put her fork in her right hand. It was embarrassing. She had a hard time getting the food to her mouth. She became frustrated. She cried. She became more angry.

As the week went on, she developed headaches, her heart would race, her hands would shake, and she would cry and cry and cry. If she did not learn how to use her right hand she would not have a father. Why was it so wrong to be left-handed? Her anger grew. She started throwing tantrums. By the end of the week, her mother said to her father, "She's left-handed. Let her be." From that time on she would spend a large part of her life trying to please and win the approval of her father, to little avail.

Were the little girl did not have the approval of her father, she did have the favoritism of her teacher. The little girl would tell you that being teacher's pet is not all that it's cracked up to be. In fact, it worked against her in her relationship with the other kids in her class. It also created problems at home. The little girl remembers getting 100's on her arithmetic exams. She would take them home and show them to her parents. Her mother would congratulate her and tell her she'd done a good job. But, her father would review the exam and find that she had made mistakes and tell her to take the test back and show her teacher. He never congratulated her on what she did right. He only told her what she did wrong.

A new ritual started in the third grade. When she got her report card, she took it home for her parents to see and sign. Her report card showed A's and B's. Her mother told her she'd done a good job. Her father told her she could have done better. All of her B's should have been A's. This continued through all of her school years until she graduated high school. A's were expected. B's were tolerated. Anything less than a B was tantamount to failure. She was never congratulated on her A's and when she got a B she was told she could do better. A C meant a meeting with the school counselor. At one point the little girl was told that since A's were expected no congratulations were needed and telling her she could do better was called Management By Exception. It seemed a cruel thing to do. Little girls should not be managed. They are to be loved, cherished, and encouraged. This was the second betrayal.

As the woman who was that little girl looks back on this time, she realizes that her father was doing the best that he knew how. It was nobody's fault, that he couldn't give her what she needed. Nevertheless, it left scars

The little girl now had a number of life lessons to learn:

She needed to redefine what home, hearth, and stability was.

She needed to learn that acceptance doesn't come from others, but comes from within.

She needed to learn, that while it's nice for others to appreciate your successes, it is more important that that she recognized and appreciated her successes.

She needed to learn that the more you seek approval from others, the more it slips away.

She also needed to learn forgiveness. She needed to learn to forgive others for the hurts they inflicted and she needed to forgive herself for the hurts, she accepted.

She had also picked up something else that she would have to deal with in her life. It is called an anger overlay or a red overlay. She would find that her temper was quick to rise and that, when it rose, she literally saw a red. She was not in control of her anger when she saw a red. Interestingly, there was always a piece of her that was separate from what was going on when this anger came upon her. It frightened and paralyzed her as much as it frightened people around her, but it would be years before she addressed it.

There would be one more lesson for the little girl to learn, but it would come when she was a grown woman and would require all of her strengths to deal with. For now she had enough work to do. For the next year or so she would try to work around her lessons.

The little girl had contracted to learn many difficult lessons. Today, the grown woman who was that little girl wonders what she was thinking at the time she contracted them. She did not have a bad life. She had fun. She laughed. She had her books to read. She had her curiosity keep her interested. She had come to the Earth school to learn, and learn she would. She would spend many years learning her lessons, and even when she learned them, she didn't always practice them. Bad habits can be hard to break. It is also true that her spirituality

was asleep, and while it is difficult enough to discern our lessons when we are awake, it is almost impossible to discern them when we are asleep. But just because we are asleep doesn't mean we won't experience those knocks on our heart. The little girl, would soon experience her first lesson again.

The Story of A Little Girl – Part II

When we left the little girl she was getting ready to move to a new home far away from where she was then living.

The family did most of its traveling at night so the little girl, her brother and sister would sleep most of the trip. All that the little girl understood was that they left their home and she woke up in a new place, some place strange called a motel. It consisted of a big bedroom with two big beds and one small bed and a bathroom. Was this their new home? "No," she was told. They would just be there for a few days while they were waiting for their furniture to arrive.

She has one vivid memory of that short interlude, and it concerns her brother. One evening after eating dinner they were allowed to choose a desert. The little girl's brother, who was a year younger than her, chose strawberry shortcake. He was told it was a big desert, but that was what he wanted and that was what he got. When the little girl saw the desert, she could not believe her eyes. It was a mountain! It was at least 5 inches high and 6 inches in diameter! The little girl, her mother, her father, her sister, all the other diners in the restaurant, and the staff watched stunned while her little brother ate the whole desert! It was a story told for many years and became a family legend.

Soon the day came to move into their new house. Today, the woman who was that little girl, would know it was a ranch-style house with an attached carport. There were lots of trees around the house, but no Willow tree. No big tree to sit under and play. But there was a backyard and it was a great backyard!

The house sat on a hill and the backyard sloped down the hill. The backyard could be gotten to from either the front yard going around the side of the house or from the screen porch in back of the basement. Several feet from the screen porch the property dropped suddenly to a terrace which went about the width of the property. To the little girl, who had no sense of size yet, it seemed a mile wide and 2 miles long, but was probably only about 50 feet wide and maybe 75 feet long from the terrace to the bottom of the hill. At the bottom of the hill, there was a short flat area that led to some trees and the trees bordered a small creek. The hill was great for laying down on the grass and rolling downhill in the summer and for riding cardboard sleds and trashcan lids downhill on the snow in the winter. There were trees and bushes and bracken along each side of the property. On one side there was honeysuckle and, in the summer, the little girl used to pick the flowers and taste the honey. Also in the summer there were fireflies in that backyard and the little girl and her little brother and sister used to like to catch them. It was a magical place for a little girl.

She bathed in the magic for the rest of the summer before school started. She grew to like her new home. She met some of the other kids in the neighborhood. She even made friends with a little girl down the street. That little girl's daddy worked with her daddy. Though she was a year younger, the same age as the little girl’s brother, the two of them became friends.

When school started, she made a few more friends, but these were friends that she only played with at school because they didn't live in her neighborhood. But soon having "friends" paled against the greatest discovery in her life so far.

In the school where they used to live, she had learned the basics of the alphabet and very simple words. Now, in the second grade, she would begin to expand her vocabulary through reading. As her vocabulary expanded, so did her appetite for reading. In many ways, this appetite would become an addiction. In time this addiction and her natural curiosity would lead her to read almost everything she could lay her hands on: fiction, nonfiction, biography, philosophy, religion, New Age, decorating, cooking, crafting and even product labels. But right now she was in the beginning of her addiction and her love for reading began to expand her vocabulary far beyond that of the other children her age. Even the adults around her were often surprised at the advanced words he used. She also found that books were much more interesting. She felt safe with them. Even at this early age, she found that she could go anywhere a story could take her. This discovery was especially important, as she found that she was not very athletic and not very good at the games the other kids played and what was worse, when it came picking teams, she was always the last one chosen. This was very painful for the little girl.

The children choosing did not choose her last out of meanness. They were trying to build the best team possible. But the little girl who had never done much socializing with other children, interpreted this as a form of rejection and was angered by it. To avoid the rejection,  she no longer played with the other children and spent more and more of her time reading or just avoiding the other kids. The little girl was not lonely; she did have her books, but she was not learning how to play and build relationships with other people. This pattern would cause problems later.

The little girl had now created two life challenges. She would need to redefine her definition of home, hearth, and stability. She would also need to learn that she couldn't build her identity by an unqualified acceptance by others, but rather through her acceptance of herself. she also needed to learn to accept others as they were.

Third-grade brought its own challenges.

The Story of a Little Girl – Part I

There was a little girl that did not like change. She was a happy little girl even if she seemed somewhat serious to others. She lived in a small house on a corner lot. There was a large willow tree in the front yard. It was the perfect place for a little girl to play. Actually all the children love to play there. Her mother liked to sit underneath the willow tree in the summer, while all the kids in the neighborhood played around her.

The little girl delighted in making mud pies. They were her specialty, and if she couldn't be found playing under the willow tree with its protecting branches she could be found in the dirt, making her specialty mud pies

Her best friend lived next door. There was a short split rail fence separating the two properties. She and her best friend would stand on the bottom rail and hang their arms over the top rail and talk and talk and talk.

It was a different time then. Children could play outside in their front yards without fear of strangers. The little girl's house was set high above the street, or at least it seemed so to the little girl. From her high vantage point she could look down on the traffic safely, not that there was that much traffic.

It was perfect, everything a little girl could ask for. Then one day the house was gone. The tree was gone. There was no dirt for the mud pies. The fence was gone. And the best friend was gone. There was a new house.

The grown woman who was that little girl remembers little of that house. Her only clear memory was that there was a sidewalk in front where she learned to roller skate. she had no friends that she can recall and doesn't remember anyone her age, living close by. When the grown woman who was that child looks back on her memories of that house her mind gets an overlay of gray.. The grown woman would tell you that that was negative energy overlaying the house.

It was the house the family lived in, but it was never a home. The house just never felt right and the only memory she took away was that this is where she learned to roller skate.

Then, they moved again. This place was very different. The little girl can remember standing across the street and looking at her new home. There was sunshine all around. The house floated in the sunshine and there was something else. The grown woman that was that little girl would say that there was a heavenly presence around that little house It was a pretty house and even at the tender age of six, she thought that the name of the street, Rosewood Circle, fit the house perfectly. She doesn't remember a lot of houses around them. She does remember a lot of open area in which to play. There weren't any trees, at least like the willow tree she still remembered.

There was a vacant lot she used to walk to and one day she found something very amazing! Wild asparagus was growing in the field! Up to this point she could take or leave asparagus, but this was so amazing she had to pick it and take it home to her mother. Her mother cooked it and the little girl has never forgotten the taste of it to this date.

She can remember no children her age to make friends with in the neighborhood and so she learned that she preferred the company of adults to that of children. Oh, there were children in the neighborhood, but they were all younger than she was and for the most part that meant they were boring playing their “little kid” games.

All in all, the little girl was happy. She would have been content to stay there for the rest of her life. But life is nothing if not change, and one day the little girl found that this home was to be no more.

This was too much for the little girl. She craved stability. She craved a place that was safe and warm and constant. Three homes in seven years was too much. At least it was too much for this little girl.

The grown woman who was that little girl, knew the little girl had not had it all that bad. There were many children who changed homes every year, if not every few months. There were children who moved to places where they didn't even know the language. But the little girl didn't know that. The little girl couldn't know that. And frankly, the little girl wouldn't have cared. After all, she was just a little girl.

"They" say that personality and behavior patterns are pretty much set by the age of seven. If so, what had the little girl learned?

She had learned that she couldn't count on friends to stay in her life. She had learned that no home was permanent in her life. At the tender age of seven she had learned that it was best not to make friends that way you didn't have to leave them. She had learned that she also couldn't count on "home."

The Soul craves what the Sole craves. The little girl didn't know why she needed home why she needed friends why she needed stability. The grown woman understands that these were urges she came with at birth. In looking back, the grown woman who was that little girl, realizes that there were lessons for the little girl and she was not learning them. In her fear and self pity, she had cut herself off to learning those lessons. It would take many years before she learned those lessons.

Water Visions

An interesting fact has recently registered in my consciousness. Almost all my dreams, visual meditations, and visions have water as an element. I can only remember one dream that did not have water as an element.

It is not always the same vision of water, though some of the water settings do repeat. But water is there and oddly enough it is a reassuring aspect of these ventures.

Water may contribute to the story or it may simply be a backdrop. It is always in a natural setting, never in a container built by man. It may be placid, slow moving, rushing or tempest. It might even be mysterious, but never dangerous. Whatever the circumstances, it is there and somehow reassuring.

They say that water represents spirituality. I can see that possibility in some instances. But sometimes it seems expectant; as if it is waiting for something to happen. At other times it seems to leech negative emotions from my psyche and replace them with a soothing balm.

It is usually the first thing I notice. Do I unconsciously look for it and insert it if it’s not there?.. I have no answer.

In some cases water is not a constant throughout the sequence. It may start out being part of the sequence, but at some point I move away from it. I may return to it before the sequence is over, but I may not.

Does this have some meaning or is it my conscious mind looking for meaning where there is none? I am not a big fan of coincidence. I have often found that when something repeats there is something to look at, something I am supposed to see. It may take some time and require facing something that I’d prefer not to face, but I can usually make sense out of the repetition. I have not been able to with all this water.

So I wonder…Is this nothing more than a constant reminder that this is the water planet and that I am mostly water and all living things have water as a component of their existence and that bonds us all in, not only a cosmic way but, a literal way? The saying goes: “from dust to dust”, but that is not strictly true with humans and with many other creatures and plants. Humans are conceived in a very moist environment. When we transition, if left to its own devices our body’s moisture will return to the earth, then all that will be left of us is a small pile of dust. In between we need water to survive and cannot survive or thrive without it.

Or is it possible that this is some kind of psychic plea for help? Humans are sickening many of the waters of the world, destroying habitats and making waters unsafe to drink or even step in. We have piles of garbage floating in the oceans. Pesticides are poisoning our groundwater. All of this affects not only humans but all other creatures and plant life. Am I being shown what our waters could, should be like? Are we beginning to cross some fatal boundary from which we cannot recover? The water that I see in my dreams, visions and meditations is good. There are vibrant growing plants and living animals in and around it. Am I being shown what could be again or what is forever gone?

Is there a message? Is it spiritual or literal or both? I don’t know. But I wonder…

Alone

Some who are reading this may know that I volunteer for a hospice in my area. My current patient is in a very nice group home. There are a limited number of residents and generally at least three staff persons when I come to visit my very sweet patient. The common area, a great room, is very comfortable and inviting. There is a covered porch off the room and there are a half dozen or more rockers for sitting and soaking up the sun. The yard off the porch is nicely landscaped and soothing to the eye. I have been in a number of facilities over the last few years and this is one of the nicest that I have seen.

As I observed in my other blog, the residents spend a great deal of their time napping and, even when they are awake, they don’t do much interacting. I also noticed that interaction is between the staff and resident and that the residents do not have anything to do with each other. This disturbed and saddened me until this past week when it all came together for me.

This home, as nicely decorated and landscaped as it is, is a cross between a prison and a train station for the residents.

Given a choice, most of the residents would likely choose to be in their own homes or with their families, but instead they find themselves locked up in this “home”. I say “locked up” because they are, indeed, locked inside the facility. When I come to visit I am let in through two locked gates to get inside. Granted, this is a safety precaution to protect them as many do not necessarily know where they are and when they do move, they don’t have a clear destination or any idea how to get there. The locked gates keep them from wandering out and getting lost or hurt. Nevertheless…

These were once vital people who are now deemed to be a danger to themselves and others due to some loss in cognitive skills or inability to take care of themselves due to some physical malfunctions. They are now biding their time and waiting for their next move; their last move, hence the train station. Many of them have been diagnosed as having only a short time left.

Each of the residents knows that the person they are sitting next to today may not be there in the morning. There is no purpose to making friends who may not be around tomorrow. The loss tugs too strongly at one’s heart. The knowledge of this potential loss is such that they do not talk or even look at one another. The only constant to be counted on is the staff. So these are the people they talk to.

So, they spend most of everyday sitting by themselves, watching TV, reading or napping. Occasionally one of them will have a visitor for a short time. This is something to be cherished, but the visit is all too brief and then they are left behind in their velvet prison.

Yes. Now I understand why they do not talk to one another. It is why they do not make friends with one another. It is why, in a group of 12 – 20 people, they are alone.

What if

The other day while eating my lunch, I thought about how fortunate I am but how fragile that fortune is. I thought about the people who thought their futures were set and now those futures are shattered and I wondered…


What would I do if I had no roof over my head; no AC to cool me in these hot humid Houston summers; no electricity to run the AC and lights and refrigerator and computer and music and DVDs and heat my water and run my dish washer and cook my food. What would it be like not to shower and shampoo my hair each and every day? What would it be like to have no food? What would it be like to have only the clothes on my back? What would it be like to have no car nor any money to take a bus? What would it be like to have no idea where to turn for help and no one to help me figure out where to turn?

And I wondered…

What would it be like to have nothing but what I wore on my back and nowhere to turn for hope? What would it be like to have no hope?

And then…

A small voice in the core of my being said, “Those things you are wondering about are just things. But Hope. No one can take Hope from you but you. As for those other things, you did not bring them in with you and you cannot take them out, so what do they matter?”

Ah, I thought, the high road is all well and good for the pure energy we were and the pure energy to which we will return, but while we have taken on a corporal body it has requirements that we must address or suffer the consequences. The body must have fuel in order to work and thrive. It must have protection from the elements and temperature extremes. It must find ways to survive and thrive for the success of the species. Since we chose to enter this corporal being we have responsibilities to it that we must honor or we may find that we cannot complete the tasks that we came here to achieve. If enough of us choose not to honor these responsibilities of guardianship then the earth school may cease to become the great school that it is.

So the questions remain and I wonder: What if….

Musings Of An Eclectic Mind

Do you ever have a thought capture your mind and you just have to follow the thread of that thought to the end? I have, and I suspect many of you have, too.


These thoughts usually begin with an observation. Quite unexpectedly that observation connects with something I’ve observed previously and just filed away without any expectation of when I might need it, if ever.

Sometimes these threads lead me down interesting corridors leading to insights about myself. Sometimes they lead to insights about my place in the Universe. Sometimes, they lead to no particular conclusion and get filed away until some other stray thought causes them to come forward again.

Do these kinds of perusings happen to you? I suspect they do more often than most people will admit.

Curiously, these connections and insights occur most often when I am living in the moment; observing with disinterest, but not uninterested and not thinking about all the other things having a call on my time. I almost hear a click in my head as the connection takes place. When that happens I become quite still as the thread consumes my attention. I seem to step outside of myself and the situation as I continue to observe and connect and follow the thread of the original thought. When I follow the thread to its end I usually experience a moment of pure connection with the Universe. It is a powerful moment.

There are times when my attention is drawn to greater events around me and to peoples’ reactions to those events. They may contain a lesson for me, causing a shift in my perspective and perhaps my behavior. These occasions can be quite profound and enlightening.

Sometimes these events happen in clusters, sometimes they do not happen for periods of time, However, I have created this blog in order to record them when they occur and what my conclusions or lessons were.