Saturday, May 19, 2012

That's No Cricket, That's My Savior

With all the growth in my life recently I have been praying a lot. I've been writing to The Committee and talking to them frequently. Their table has been littered with my worries, my joys, my pains, my fears, and my confusion. What the hell am I going to do with this one precious life, and the other two even more precious lives that rely on me? How am I best going to prepare them for their lives in this world as I fumble through my own?
Since the wusband left I have had to learn to rely on myself. Part of that growing up has been learning to trust my gut. I even took a picture of my belly with the words "Trust your gut" written on it, just to remind myself. Just to set it in my flesh. Prayer has helped a lot with clarifying my mind and easing some of my worries. I am getting into the habit of laying things on the table and walking away (at least for a minute) and then waiting until I have a feeling, or an idea that I can't seem to shake and I think, Okay this is the answer. I'll try this.

It is so easy for me to forget I have the divine in me. The Committee sits at their table housed in my soul, their table is my heart. The wisdom about how my life should be lived and how I should raise my children comes from the divine inside me, not from some ethereal boardroom in the sky.  I have a postcard I made that says: 

But really, what does that mean? I think there is a thin line between following the voice of the divine within and schizophrenia. There is this great weekly podcast call RISK.  One week they had a show called Spiritual Breakthroughs. The host Kevin Allison told a story about his God journal that was modeled after the spiritual conversation between God and the author in Conversations With God.  Allison's God calls him Sweet Pea and gives him amazing advice during a time when he is feeling lost and adrift. After a few months conversing with God Allison starts to question the journal and who is really the voice on the other side of the pen. One day when he is really stressed God suggests to Allison that he smoke a little weed, watch some movies, or put on some Miles (Miles Davis).







Wait a minute...what did you say God?  I'm not sure I heard that right. I could've sworn you just told me to smoke a bowl.


I think Walt Disney had the right idea when he gave Pinocchio the cricket as his conscious. It was a separate being. There were no questions about hearing voices, seeing things that weren't there. It was an actual critter. We all saw him, heard his amazing little cricket voice. Yet, it was a cricket. It was miraculous that Jiminy was talking and singing. It wasn't just some normal human being that you could hear advice from any day of the week. This little bug obviously had something special. Jiminy was clearly a divine being and dressed the part, that dapper little dude. 

One pitfall of your divine voice being a cricket, though, is that if you get tired of listening to all his holy advice you could just crush him under your boot and find another cricket. I have a ton in my basement waiting to be listened to. 

In my life I have had many crickets, many different spiritual teachers that have fit my life at the moment, but then I needed to move into another phase. I recognized their divine nature in the way they lived and the words they spoke. When it was time to move on I didn't crush them under my boot I just walked away.  But now in my life I have a desire to learn to trust my own inner divinity. Unfortunately it's not so easy when your inner voice speaks in the same tones you do. Trusting my gut requires a superhero leap of faith. If I listen to the wrong voice and make a mistake, then the buck stops here, with the Queenpin. There will be no lackey for me to blame it on, to put in the line of fire if there is a misstep or miscalculation. 

One of my favorite books I've ever read is called A Prayer For Owen Meany by John Irving. Owen Meany listens to his divine self without fail. He knows he has a divine purpose in this life and he sees that divine purpose woven into everything. He accepts that his certainty makes him different, that it makes him hard to take. When he speaks in the book it IS ALWAYS IN ALL CAPS, BECAUSE IT IS SIGNIFICANT. Does that annoy you? Owen Meany does not give a rats ass, and I love him for that. He is  quirky, weird, and brave as hell. The courage of a lion in a four foot frame. 
The thing is, Owen Meany is a character in a novel, and though Sassy Queenpin is a persona, the author is a human being, and her life will not wrap up neatly in the end. It is life and it is messy. The larger scheme is too vast for me to see and, unfortunately, my cricket isn't giving me hints on what's to come (cruel bastard, oh that's right, I don't even have a fucking cricket). 

Kevin Allison wrote conversations with God for five months. Looking back years later he says, "Now, I still don't know to what extent I believe in God. I still don't know what the fuzzy line is between me talking and some Higher Power, and I accept that even the best wisdom I have access to is flawed, but the best you can do is the best you can do, and why not always be reaching for it in some way?"

And this is what I return to again and again. Life is not perfect, and to try to make it so for me or my children equals misery. One of the greatest compliments I ever received was from a friend (Marvelous Maine Mama, queen of the Pancake Palace) who read this quote: 

"Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming 'WOW What a Ride!'"
    --Unknown

She looked over at me and laughed and said, "That reminds me of you." Without a doubt I know that that is the lesson the divine is here to teach me, and that hopefully I can pass onto to my children: LIVE AND LOVE, IMPERFECTLY, MESSILY, LOUDLY, LIVE AND LOVE.

What I need the frickin' cricket to remind me of again and again is that THE REST WILL JUST FALL INTO PLACE. 



No comments:

Post a Comment