Voicemail...

Hey, you've reached me. Leave a message after the beep.

Hey, it's me. Please pick up the phone...

[pause]

Okay... I see that you aren't ready just yet. That's okay. I just need you to listen to what I have to say.

Love... I need you to listen to your Soul. Your body is the only thing keeping it standing, isn't it? You can feel how heavy it is, can't you? I know that you can. It's terrible on you, yet you bear it alone. You wont let me help you. I can't take your burdens from you without your consent. I respect you. It's like stealing from you. I don't want to steal from you. But if you give them to me, I may be able to help. If you let me take charge of them, your soul can be left to flourish. It can stop being like cobblestones around your feet. You may be able to move like you once did again.

Please pick up the phone. I know you are there...

I need you to know that I've never left you. I've been by your bedside those countless nights you've been crying. I'm there now, as you fight them. You've been ashamed of your tears. You've been ashamed of much. The way that you walk. The way you speak. The way you look. These are things, gifts, that I made especially for you. You used to like them. Why not now? Because of the way that other people look? Because of how much attention they get for their looks? What's the big deal? The difference between you and them is that they have a camera in front of them and they can assimilate to what is 'desirable' to the rest of the world. I don't want that for you. I gave you a beauty on the outside that matches who you are on the inside. It's a quiet beauty. It's a stand alone beauty. It's a beauty rooted in my strength, stemming from your spiritual limerence, watered by blessing and contemplation, and blooming in divine enlightenment. The enlightenment that comes from the realization that I have never left you.

I know why you cower from me. I know why my name stirs emotions of anger and animosity and misery in your heart. That heart of yours is a gift from me, but you are letting it control you. I want you to stop sitting on the sand of emotion and join me on the stones of truth. The truth that I love you, better than anyone can love or has loved you. The truth that I've got you now, and, no matter what happens, I'm not letting go of you. I've got you now... please, just let me love on you. You and I both know what you look like it when your need for it isn't fulfilled. It hurts us. Do you hear me? I'm not talking about your relationship with me. I mean that you are hurting US! Me, your only true love! I am in pain when you are floundering about as you do! I feel how you hurt yourself in ways you could never imagine! I know how your stomach is constantly in knots from the guilt, the shame, the anger, the disappointment. I know... I know...

Your mailbox is almost out of space. You don't have to pick up right now. Think about what I said. I know what you need. You know what you need. I'll be waiting for your call.

Do not be afraid. Do not cower from me. I know, sweetie, I know.

*END OF MESSAGE*

The search for what should've been there all along.

I've come to the realization that identity is a fragile thing. Who we are, what we are, the small things that we define ourselves with are a lot like calculus or economics. The second we figure out where a single point of a curve is on the graph, time moves, and the point is lost. Such is the case with identity and certainty. Calculus and trigonometry stop being such, and instead become life, centered about what should be and what happens with life gets in the way.

I apologize for not writing for a while... I've lost myself. As soon as I try to find some sort of constant in my life, something that I can rely or depend on, I find myself uproot, stripped bare, by my own doing sometimes, and I try to find something to grasp onto in order to survive. Something to root myself in.

And so... it is time to delve into my theories again.. to try and expand and hone my formula in order to stay true to myself. I uttered those words again: "I don't like a single thing about myself." That was a cop out to myself, and I know it.

So it's time to ask myself, "Who am I?"

I know these things about myself: I am alive. I am competent. I am literate. I am sensitive. I am curious. I am paranoid. I am spiritual. I am cocky. I am musical. I am a soul, a mind, a heart. I am an orator, of sorts. I am knowledgeable. I am imaginative. I am particular. I am aware. I am enough by myself.

Everything I had written up to that last sentence I know and believe about myself. I have a lot to offer... but not enough to offer myself. What is it that I am in need of for myself?

I know I need these things: companionship, comfort, motivation, strength, hope, love, power, belief, determination, honor, respect, certainty.

How can I supply these things to myself? A lot of my friends/readers may suggest that I read the bible. In time, maybe I will be able to, once I get over my unsettling irritation with it. I know that the bible has a lot to teach me, and that I would be a fool to not at least look at it, but I have my own issues to conquer about the bible first... [It's about time that I deal with them, however... I've got to stop procrastinating.]

But I will figure a way to administer these treatments to myself. In a way that allows me to endure more than I have before. Such is to live, is it not?

Windstorm

It is always quite something to watch an jet fly above a windstorm. When you watch it lazily stream across the sky, you can all but forget the furious bending of the trees and  beating of the gusts. Maybe it is the same with feeling the rain pummel you in the midst of the thunderstorm, or watching the first snowfall of the season while out in ungodly chill.

Last night, I think I may have met one of my Spirits in my dreams... He was scruffy, blond-haired, with piercing blue eyes... another person, I'm assuming another spirits, called him Michael. Recently, I had come to the conclusion that my spirits were more than just totems, but guardian angels, as it were. This one was  meant for protection. He was Atticus, I had come to understand, but I also understood that he must have more than one name. I also glimpsed at the others too, but only Atticus, only Michael, sticks in my mind now.

Michael, the Archangel. Michael, the protector. Michael, the general. How odd to see him in the betwixt of consciousness and unconsciousness. I did not wake definitely: I slipped in and out as if on medication, but I remember his face, and another's voice.

If you stare at a jet above a windstorm, the windstorm stops being terrible.

To live a Dream...

I don't know of any of you guys have made or kept resolutions, but i can tell you i have been having trouble even defining my new resolution. I don't wan to not make a resolution; I think one of the best parts about myself is that I strive to become ever better. Strive to morph evermore. That's why I started blogging in the first place.

So the words for this year...: commitments to belief.

One thing I have long since realized is that I am a man of dreams. I spend my days lost in another reality. Dawn-to-dusk, I have devoted my eyes to my blue walls and blue skies, watching my white ceiling and white clouds. But I have been so lost in them... I've become lazy. I've let myself fall everywhere; mentally, I'm less astute. Personally, I'm less discipline.  Spiritually, I've lost conviction and perseverance. I've become, in my own light... useless to my own salvation.


But no more. I've feared standing for anything because I've been afraid to be wrong. No matter what I've been looking for, no matter what dreams I've dreamed, I've looked at the meaning, the work behind it, and I've grown weary, even before I take the first step. I can't live like that anymore. I can't live so disgusted with lack of knowledge. I can never be anything... if I never act on faith. I keep analyzing, analyzing, dreaming, analyzing, doubting, abandoning my own ideas, my own goals, my own ability to watch those blank walls and and changing skies... ignoring my world and the needs it asks of me, and, in a way, ignoring my own potential.

But no more. No more.

This year, I've made one resolution: Commitment to my belief, but I'm taking my dreams seriously too.

Seriously enough to live them out. Seriously enough to act on them, following them into the places I'd otherwise be too afraid to go.

Homecoming

"I'm coming Home,
I'm coming Home,
Tell the World I'm coming Home,
Let the rain,
Wash away,
All the pain of yesterday,
I know my Kingdom awaits,
And they've forgiven my mistakes,
I'm coming Home,
I'm coming Home,
Tell the World I'm coming Home."

The declaration of Skyler Grey does not belong to the female duo alone, nor to P. Diddy when he recorded the song. Nevertheless, those words announce a sunrise of Hope; a sunrise of Strength.

These past few weeks have been some of the most trying morally and physically. As I descend into the abyss, I have found no shortage of trials and deterrents as I seek passage to the furthest point of this journey: Spiritual Continuity.  Though, at this point, the journey isn't even close to its conclusion, I've learned much about myself... but I have wronged one of my other Spirits.

My Spirits are a God-send. All three have been entrusted to me for protection and expression. I have simply  been afraid to use all of them. I've doubted myself. I've devalued myself. I've got to bring myself back. I've got to continue.

“I don’t know if I continue, even today, always liking myself. But what I learned to do many years ago was to forgive myself. It is very important for every human being to forgive herself or himself because if you live, you will make mistakes-- It is inevitable. But once you do and you see the mistake then you forgive yourself and say, ‘well if I’d known better I’d done better,’ that’s all. So you say to people who you think you may have injured, ‘I’m sorry,’ and then you say to yourself, ‘I’m sorry.’ If we all hold on to the mistake, we can’t see our own glory in the mirror because we have the mistake between our faces and the mirror; we can’t see what we’re capable of being. You can ask forgiveness of others, but in the end the real forgiveness is in one’s own self. I think that young men and women are so caught by the way they see themselves. Now mind you. When a larger society sees them as unattractive, as threats, as too black or too white or too poor or too fat or too thin or too sexual or too asexual, that’s rough. But you can overcome that. The real difficulty is to overcome how you think about yourself. If we don’t have that w never grow, we never learn, and sure as hell we should never teach.”--Maya Angelou.

I'm sorry, God, for running from you. For retreating into the hypothetical and theoretical and philosophical and psychological in an attempt to escape from you. I'm sorry, Holy Spirit, for resisting you. For rattling against your grip, trying to drown you out with fallacious reasoning, trying to drive you out with acts of spite. I am sorry, Israel, for holding you back. For calling us stupid when you show yourself, for putting my hands over your lips when you want to speak what we all know, when only you had the courage to say and do it as it is.

Up to this point, I've not had a resolution for the new year. I have one now: to better utilize my Spirits hear on earth, to continue to push through the noise to my dreams, and to connect with the God here, now, before me, behind me, to my left and right... and Inside of me...

So, Diddy.... Take us Home :)