Author: Tom (Page 5 of 71)

Tom is a stroke survivor, a seeker, a meditator, a veteran firefighter and rescue tech, a motivational speaker, a poet, and a blogger (new site) & author. He is also the father of three and as their student and teacher, has found applying spiritual practices to all aspects of life provides a vast amount of possibility and abundance. Tom has discovered that true forgiveness is the key to a pure heart, and a pure heart can lead us to wondrous experiences.

You can also connect with tom on <a href="https://www.facebook.com/Tomgwriter55/".

Sirens (Finding the Light in the Darkness)

January 2, 2020 / Tom

I have heard the sirens.

As a firefighter and EMT, they were part of the job. They were part of the adrenaline rush. Like the bugles announcing the pending arrival of a cavalry, the sirens let those who had called know we were coming. I have always loved the sounds of the sirens for that reason.

Then one day the sirens came for me.

I was blinded by a brain injury so I could not see them. I could only hear them, and I knew what story they were telling. In all the times I had ridden in the back of an ambulance with a patient I had always wondered when it would be my turn. That time had come.

Some I had ridden with were taking their last ride in the back of the “bus”. I watched some take their last breaths. I heard some whisper unintelligible prayers just before the end. I always had wondered if the language of the afterlife was something none of us were meant to understand. Even when those final words were words I knew, they always seemed to have some meaning I could not fathom.

Sometimes I would hold their hand at the end and feel the energy drain from their flesh.

I felt that their energy was not gone, it was just not there. It had traveled somewhere else, somewhere I had been before and would see again. As I took my ride in the bus, listening to the sirens play their bugle call, I insisted I was not ready to go. This would not be my last ride and this would not be the end of my story.

Fear and Focus

I was, however, afraid. More afraid than I’d ever been in my life. I had decided a short time before they arrived that I would take this ride to its fullest, but something about being on a stretcher in the back of the ambulance unnerved me. Each time I had been in the back of a bus I was the strong one, the one who was there to help. Now I was the patient, blind and weakened in my condition. Yet in that numbing darkness I could still see a tiny flame that pulsed with the rhythm of the siren. I focused on that fire, the tiny glimmer of hope of survival.

That flame was tiny, but it was mighty.

The paramedics were asking me questions and offering me reassurance. I told them I knew the drill and that I had lied to many people in the back of a bus. They answered that they weren’t lying, and I believed them. The little flame suggested that they were telling the truth. I just had to believe.

Things to Say

I knew I had things yet to say. There were the visions of my children that flashed across the darkness. My eyes had failed but my heart had perfect vision. The eyes are not the only parts of me that could see and I was learning that with each passing second. In my heart I was telling them how loved and admired they were. Had I told them that before, I wondered? Of course I had but this time seemed different. It wasn’t my mouth talking, it was my heart.

I hugged them too, a hug that felt more powerful then it ever had. I wasn’t hugging them with my arms, I was was hugging them with my heart. There was such a vast difference between the two.

I saw the Sun rise in my vision and I heard a poem recited in the wails of the siren. The vivid colors of the dawn and the beautiful rhythm of the prose rose from someplace new. My heart was painting on a new canvas and the words flowed from a place I had once only small glimpses of. I still had things to say, stories to tell, but they would not come from my head. They would come from a new and mostly uncharted territory.

I would let my heart tell the story. My heart would be the artist. I would surrender thought to feeling and let instinct be my guide.

Lessons in the Darkness

There were so many lessons learned that night. Time is short. Our moments are fleeting. Bad things happen to good people. The sirens and those sounding those bugles are heroes.

There were some, however, not so cliche.

When my mind is the guide, I see things through clouded and cracked glass. However, when my heart is guiding me my vision is much clearer. In doing something heart-centered I do it with a clear purpose. Mindfulness is not a practice worth much time for me, heartfulness is.

“Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God.” My mind will always be burdened by scars and the traumas of living, but my heart sheds them in the purity of forgiveness. Scars and scabs cannot stain a heart that is pure; such anomalies cannot exist there. What I learned on that autumn night was that my task has always been to reduce the focus on my brain and let my heart lead the way.

“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.” ~Rumi

The barriers I had built against love resided in my mind and all its traumas. It was time to tear them down and burn them to ash in that little flame I saw in the darkness.

(Coming soon, a short story based on finding the flame in the darkness. Follow my Amazon page here.)

The Twenty Tens, A Decade of Wild Change

December 31, 2019 / Tom

The Twenty Tens were a decade of wild change, wild discovery and wild growth. The old normal turned into the new normal, and what seemed certainty was replaced by a certainty that nothing ever is. I’ve learned a lot over the last ten years and for that I am grateful.

A disclaimer. Although I will post this before year officially ends, be certain that I’m not counting my chickens before they hatch. If the Twenty Tens have taught me anything, it is to never count on what is not yet real and to never believe something has happened before it does.

Although a little faith has never hurt anyone. A valuable lesson learned.

The decade started out normally enough. I was married with children, living in a nice home in Southern New Jersey. I can remember ringing in the New Year with the banging of pots and pans, a few kisses and hugs and the normal amount of forgetting to write “2010” on my checks instead of “2009”.

Everything seemed wonderful. As so it was.

There Must be a Fire for the Phoenix to Rise from the Ashes

As I’ve said, the Twenty Tens were a decade of wild change.

Within a couple of years the company I worked for would declare bankruptcy and I would be getting a divorce. My life crumbled around me and I wanted out. My walk to end it all didn’t end as planned, but that is a story for another day.

I would rise and survive, learning to peel away the layers of shit I’d wrapped around me. I threw away the stench of my childhood and the behaviors that went with them as I created a new code to live by.

A couple of years later I would have two near-death experiences. The first was heart related, the second brain related. That was a remarkable metaphor for what needed to change in my life. My heart needed to heal and to open; my brain needed to stop dwelling in the past and future. There was so much to enjoy right now.

In the moments that culminated in what has been termed a “miraculous recovery” I fell in a deep love affair with me. For the first time in my life I loved myself. It was a gift of love that spawned from loss and a lesson in life born from nearly dying.

There must be a devastating fire if the Phoenix is to rise from the ashes.

Wild Change – A Big Move

Less that a year later I would be fulfilling a deep desire to live in Colorado. Miracles all fell into place to see that happen but the long and short of it is that my ex and my youngest kids moved here too. I was working 4 jobs in New Jersey at the time and had no idea what I would be doing once I moved to Colorado. All I knew was that I needed to be here.

With some sadness, I turned in my firefighting gear and said goodbye to a 25-year passion. With joy, I sold most of my possessions, loaded up a moving truck, and left my home State of over 40 years. I left the beach, friends, family and all I knew to venture into an area I had only visited, where I knew no one and had no history. All I knew for certain was that I heard a voice inside me that told me this had to happen and that it would be all good. I trusted that voice.

Within a couple of weeks I had a job in insurance, obtained the required licensing, and had made a few acquaintances. Mostly, though, I began to challenge my body on the trails and began to really know myself in the mountains. The voice had been right, and I’ve trusted it ever since.

The realization of the desire to live here has given rise to a blossoming I only once dreamed of, and a continuation of the recovery I have seen my entire life.

A Great Love

That blossoming has led me to a great love. I’ve been blessed to watch my children grow to wonderful teenagers. I’ve been blessed to see my oldest find herself in her 20’s. All three are wonderfully powerful presents who teach me daily about life. Their smiles raise me, their challenges pain me, but mostly their individuality inspires me.

I am truly a blessed man even in my imperfections. Check that. Especially in my imperfections.

The blossoming also led me to my heart’s mate who, ironically, lived back where I moved from. I believe I was destined to move here and I believe she was too, for we as kindred souls move well among the wildflowers and the breathtaking views. The words we translate from our souls speak the same language, and we compliment each other quite well.

What a great space we now share.

I’ve seen the power of a wild moose, walked paths with elk, hiked alongside chipmunks, told stories to mountain goats above the treeline and felt the energy of native peoples course through my soul. I’ve share an embrace where I once walked alone and shared visions with the unseen that walk beside me. In those rare moments when I pause to look behind me I cannot fathom from where it was I came.

A lost child is a securely found adult and a wounded heart beats strongly. This once-tired soul has found its second wind. What once seemed impossible is now a daily experience, and what once bore wounds into my heart are now-forgiven memories.

What a great love it is.

Beyond Today – More Wild Change?

I honestly have no idea what is to come but I am excited to find out. The Twenty Tens certainly proved to be a decade of wild change. I can’t wait to see what this new decade brings.

I know what I hope to accomplish and I know what I’d like to see. Yet, for all my wants I realize that

Pride

December 30, 2019 / Tom

Sometimes I am so powerful.

I can stand on my own two feet, and face the storm with fearless abandon. As the inferno burns hot before me, I can stare the flames right in the soul as the world turns to ash all around. I can crawl over boulders and reach heights as the fear grips at my mind. There is much fight within me even as the ground shakes below me.

Sometimes, I am so weak.

I hear their voices and I shrink into my shell. My legs wilt under the weight of the cross I bear, falling to my knees in abject failure. The chorus rains down shards of judgment, shards that pierce my armor and force my heart into hiding. I am a lost child, gone beyond my veils, outside the walls of my kingdom.

What is left to do now but learn? Can I shed the mask of pride? Can I rid myself of the weight I’ve carried with me my entire life?

Pride, that alien being to my soul, that bastard bully hiding in the shadows right behind me! Whisper if you will, but I can hear you. Sing if you must, my ears bleed at the sound of your song. One day I shall turn the torch and burn a hole through your darkness. Pride cannot defeat the lowly man with an empty bowl. He stands, kneels, and bows with equal power, with equal strength.

That warrior knows the only strength he needs is to lift his bowl, give all he has, and accept what others are willing to offer.

A hard fight for me indeed. The hardest battles are often the ones we wage within.

A Conversation

I turn to my god, the Silence I crave in the noise of my mind, and beg of Her to answer me.

The answer is as it’s always been. “Shed your gold and give glory to your heart. Pride is thine enemy.”

So much gold has been cast into the raging torrents, sacrificed to the god of who I am. There lies so much of what I once believed important, so much of what I gave my life to have.

“It’s time to give more of you and less of what you have. It’s time to rise, naked in the snow,and be warmed by what only love can provide. That is what you must learn. It is you the world needs, not your coin. It is love that must fill your pockets. You will fly in the lightness of love, not be drowned by the weight in your purse.”

“I have little left to give,” I answer.

“Wrong. You have yet to scratch the surface of what you offer the world.”

A tear forms. I have heard this all before.

“My child, you have hidden behind the quest for things of the world, seeking to be judged by them as some reward. The gold you seek is waiting for you, and when it ceases to be your quest the truth will open up those waters to raging currents. Where the green light shines within you is that space you should work to fill. The other chest will fill after your treasure chest has opened, and your heart becomes free to beat to its own time.

The chest you’ve tried to fill cannot be filled until the chest that holds the true treasure, your heart, is fully open.”

A tear spills. I know all of what I hear to be true.

A Lesson

“It has been said,” the Silence whispers to my soul, “that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to pass the gates of heaven. A chest of gold cannot fit but the man full of love passes through easily. You will leave your gold behind, my son, but love will go with you forever.”

“Yet I tire of the struggle,” I respond.

“Ah, it is the struggle that keeps you from your truth. You will regain wealth, have no doubt, but first you must stop judging yourself in its presence or its absence. When you love, you will know yourself the same both in wealth and in poverty. Neither will change the man you know yourself to be.”

It is the struggle that I know myself, and it is in the struggle that I judge myself as worthy. What was once so easy has now become so difficult. The river that once flowed has now become a trickle.

“The ice up there is ready to melt again and Spring is ready to appear,” said the Silence. “Love shines warmly. Let it shine, watch the ice pack melt and the river flow again. It is truly that easy. Stop being the struggle and start being the Spring.”

I smile, knowing full well the beauty and truth of this remembering.

“I know it is difficult, my son, but you were not built for the easy things. You were bred to make the difficult things easy. You were born to melt the ice…”

A breath, a moment, an undeniable truth.

“…and to light the way. So, now shine. Love yourself as worthy and watch the river flow.”

To Touch the Torch of Freedom (An Immigrant Tale)

December 27, 2019 / Tom

He kept low in the bush, waiting for the Sun to set. Every so often he’d lift his head, checking to his left to see how far the Sun had moved. He had watched the Sun rise from this spot, and now was hoping this was the final sunset he’d see from this side of the line.

On the other side was the torch of freedom. All he wanted to do was carry it and share it with his little girl.

She had been amazing during this journey. Now she snuggled close to him, keeping quiet and low, barely making a sound. She had even urinated in her pants rather than tell her father she had to pee. It seemed she fully understood the gravity of the situation, realizing the hope that lay just a bit further north and a few hours away.

The Decision

Two weeks before his wife had been raped and murdered the local gang. The gang was in control of his neighborhood, having bribed the authorities and intimidated local politicians. Well-armed and well-funded, they were more of a militia than a street gang. They sold drugs and they killed rivals. Police officers who didn’t fall in line where found murdered in their patrol cars. The gang’s response to opposition was swift and deadly.

The villagers were poor and powerless, and often the gang would beat them, rape the woman and children, and murder anyone who stood up to them. The government was useless. The police were either bribed or killed for opposing them. It was a very dark time.

To the north, however, was a light of hope. Symbolized by a strong woman raising a burning torch, many had hoped to find the opportunity and liberation they had heard so much about. They only needed to make the journey. They only needed to risk life and limb to get there.

Legal channels were useless, and they all knew it. They neither had the money nor the understanding to navigate those waters. What they had, though, were two legs and the desire to get there. Few understood laws in their lawless land, but they understood suffering, the intense desire to escape and the value of freedom and opportunity.

The man had no choice but to stay. His wife was too sick, having nearly died giving birth to their 5-year old daughter. One day, his wife went to the market and was attacked by some members of the gang. They held her down, taking turns brutalizing her. When finished, they slit her throat and left her to die in the weeds, where her husband found her that night.

Through his anger, he decided to leave. He knew vengeance would be certain death for him, and he would not intentionally orphan his daughter. Instead, he set his sights on that torch to the north, a light that promised freedom, opportunity, and rest for the huddled masses like them. He threw their few clothes and a picture of his wife in a backpack and began walking north. They had nothing left to lose.

The Journey

The journey to their hiding spot in the desert had been difficult. They’d walked for days and slept little under the rainy nighttime sky. He had blisters on his feet and his lips were cracked with thirst. He gave most of the water he had to his daughter, and had carried her most of the way. The rain at night would wash the caked dirt from their skin, though the cold night air kept him awake. He would cover his daughter the best he could, trying desperately to keep her warm and dry.

A few days into their journey he had been beaten. People like him were targets for local thugs who believed they’d be carrying money for their escape, money he certainly did not have. They only owned the clothes they wore and the meager belongings stuffed into his backpack. They were so meager, in fact, that the thugs who’d beaten him didn’t want them, and they tossed the bag back untouched as he laid bloodied and submissive in the dirt. He had nothing anyone wanted.

He had heart, however, and that would see him through. That, and knowing his daughter was safe. At least for now.

To Touch the Torch of Freedom

The Sun was nearly at the horizon. The man whispered to his daughter that they would be moving soon.

“Papa,” she whispered, “then we cross the river?”

“Yes, mija. Soon we cross the river.”

“Then we touch the torch?”

“Then we touch the torch.”

“What does it look like Papa?”

He had told this story many times as they walked, and he wondered if he’d ever be able to tell it again. It had been a mantra they’d used through the danger and the exhaustion. It had gotten them to this point in their journey.

“First it looks like earth, much like where we are now. Then it looks like a good job in a safe neighborhood. Then it looks like good friends and good schools. It looks like being able to read, and write, and to know things. Good things, like how to help people and make your mother proud. It looks like making the most of the gift of freedom and of the opportunity God has given you.”

“Will we go to jail Papa?”

“Ah, mija,” said her father. “I hope not. We will just do our best, right?”

“Yes Papa.”

She hugged him. He could smell her mother on her and could see her mother smiling at him. This perilous journey was not just for him, but for his daughter as well. He could not let her live, or die, like her mother.

“Now let’s be quiet, mija. We have just a little way to go before we touch the torch for the first time.

She squeezed a bit tighter. She must have sense that the toughest part of this journey was yet to come.

The Destination

This story ends here, at that little line that separates the darkness from the light. It’s a line some wish to become a wall but I hope becomes a bridge.

I want to share the warm light of the torch I was blessed to be born under with those who were not so lucky; those who sacrifice and risk everything just for the chance to place their hand beside mine on its handle.

It would be easy for me to say that others must follow the legal path to enter this land. I just had to be born to be here so that statement would seem to be the purest form of privilege failing to understand its place. I fell from my mother’s womb right smack onto the destination and risked nothing to be here.

I am a human, as are those on the other side of the line. If I can’t reach my hand across that line to pull others over the wall of privilege what kind of human am I? If I can’t help others have the same chance I was born into, what kind of man would I be?

My torch is not just some beacon for others to strive for. It is also a flame that warms the cold places and lights the path I choose to follow. If I can’t share it then perhaps it’s time the torch be extinguished as the meaningless symbol it is. To give it meaning would be to give it breath and to give it breath would mean to share it with whomever seeks it. Otherwise, it’s a waste.

The Shack (the Need for Forgiveness)

December 26, 2019 / Tom

I want to be happy, and share my gifts with the world. So, I must be willing to forgive. A lesson well learned in my time.

My love and I watched The Shack last night. It was the first time for her, the second for me.

I will be honest, the first time I saw it I was left numb, with tears streaming down my face (I don’t fear admitting that even masculine energy sheds tears). I wasn’t sure what to make of how I felt, or the fog that I was in as I rose from my seat. All I knew was that I was wiping remnants of tears from my face wondering what the fuck had just happened.

Art can, it seems, expose the deepest parts of our souls. It can expose the cracks in our armor and show us the places where water seeps from the stone.

Despite what appears to be poor ratings in Rotten Tomatoes, I highly suggest you read the book or watch the movie. I won’t spoil the movie for anyone who hasn’t seen it, but I will describe what wept from my heart as it unfolded.

While pain seems to be the focus of the story, it really isn’t. Forgiveness is the plot line, with pain being the catalyst for the plot to unfold. The story beautifully describes how I see the process of experience. Experience, for me, has always been a series of things known and discovered through contrasts. We know joy from sadness, light from darkness.

And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. ~Book of Genesis

(Contrast. What good would one be without the other?)

Forgiveness can be one tough cookie, and it is meant to be. We all experience varying levels of emotional trauma in our lives. It seems to me that that more cutting that trauma is the tougher the act of forgiveness. Emotional trauma is like lifting a very heavy weight that we just never seem ready to let go of. Our proverbial limbs quiver, our bodies shake yet we just don’t drop the weight.

Forgiveness is, in its beauty, the act of dropping the weight. Usually, though, it’s not as simple as letting go. We all have a need to share the pain inflicted on us and soon those closest to us begin look like our tormentors in the Id. In the absence of the abuser in our midst, others bear the fury of our pain, of our hopelessness, and of our fear.

Until we forgive our tormentor. Then a miracle happens, and there is no more pain or fear to share. It vanishes like a twilight when the Sun rises, and evaporates like the dew at high noon.

Anger is like drinking poison expecting the other person to die.~Buddha.

During the movie, I felt my mother’s presence. I couldn’t tell if it was around me or in me, but it was there. I could feel the pain in her that caused her behaviors in my childhood.

I uttered for at least the millionth time, “I forgive you.”

I felt my loving hand touching her childhood cheek, telling her it would be alright.

I felt my young hand holding hers. “You will be fine.”

I felt my teenage heart whispering to hers, “I will forgive you one day.”

Then I felt my soul touch hers and say, “I do forgive you. I truly, honestly, with all my heart forgive you.”

More weight fell, and as it did I realized I still am carrying some childhood stones in my pocket. It’s fine, I forgive myself for carrying them.

Our abusers, it seems, can stare at us back in the mirror most times. Until we forgive, we are usually the worst abusers we will ever know in our lives. We abuse others but, mostly, we abuse ourselves.

Something strange then happened as the tears again streamed down my cheek. I thought I heard her say, “Thank you, Tommy. I am sorry, and I am waiting. You are my son, and I am proud of who you have become. I’ve taught you well, although I wish I could have taught you in another way, a way I just did not know.”

Sometimes our paths are the only ones we know, the only ones we can see, the only ones we can find. Especially when we are unable to drop the weight and forgive.

More stones fell. The sound they made as they hit the earth sounded like a symphony. Good music is created by good energy. Sometimes so are tears.

(The book the movie was based on is by Wm Paul Young. Enjoy it!)

The Ghost Beside Me

December 18, 2019 / Tom

A ghost sat beside me, rocking slowly on the small, wooden chair. In the steely silence I could hear only two things; the rhythmic beating of my heart and the creaking of that chair. I hear no breaths, no gusts of wind howling just outside my room nor sounds of discarded leaves being thrown about by autumn’s fury. I can only here Death sitting in that chair, slowly waiting for it to be my time.

My eyes had been blinded by the rage of life, my brain injured by the loss of blood. I needed to see, to stand, to walk among my loved ones again. In my blindness I could hear so many things once forgotten. I could hear the smile of my children. I could hear the laughter that came from deep within them. I could hear the sight of a flower blooming in the sunlight, and I could hear the sounds of winter thawing. I could hear the sound of a smile, of a loving glance, and the rising tide of an ocean a thousand miles away.

My body could no longer steady itself against the invisible strings of gravity. The sense of touch I had taken for granted had now changed and, with it a truth I had always depended. The security of all I had known vanished in a breath, replaced by something I was told was “a new reality”. It was a reality I had never requested but had no choice in accepting.

On an opposite side of the room sat another ghost rocking slowly on another chair. There was a warm light pulsing rhythmically with each movement, and a sweet melody vibrating in a heavenly tempo. I could feel the bliss of Life caressing those parts of me left darkened by the stroke, the want of life pulling me out of the numbness. There was, in this moment, a choice to be made and a path to be taken.

I felt no fear in this choice, only a surrender to the reality, swimming in the knowledge that had no control over my circumstance. In that surrender, though, rose a feeling in the numbness, a truth that shouted to me that while control had been lost, I could regain it. I could control my choices from that moment on. I could choose Death, or I could choose Life, and I could ride the wave toward either end. Death offered me a final surrender. Life offered me the challenge I was born to accept. Death seemed easy. Life seemed all-too-difficult.

I chose life, and in the shadows of that night I found my vision. In that unsteadiness I found true balance. In that challenge I found a love of Life, of living, and asked Death to wait his turn. He seemed to smile in return having played his part in the dance of Life.

Death knows, though, that my choice is a temporary one, and that one day he will extend his hand and I will have no option but to take it. Life, however, knows something too. She knows that circumstances arrive, and within them comes a litany of choices. Life knows that she exists in the choices we make within the experience, and she knows that those choices determine to which degree we can enjoy her company. We can either make choices that have us dancing with Life, of we can make choices that have us existing until the hand of Death grabs us in a grip from which we cannot break free.

I have discovered in my own time that Life offers us liberation in the choices we make. Liberation is born in the struggles of our time, and Life is realized in the sweat and blood of our liberation. True living is liberation, and liberation exposes us to the glory of true living. They go together like yin and yang, important ingredients that cannot be separated and are as necessary for one other as the beating heart is to breath and breath is to the beating heart. Fear is but a shackle we have placed upon ourselves, and love is the key that can set us upon a gratitude spawned from great Living. There is great liberation in appreciating the Sunrise whose memory may be all I have one day. Loss shows us the way to gratitude, and gratitude shows us a way from loss. We can be so liberated in sharing gratitude not just in what we have, but for what we have lost.

So whether it is struggling to keep upright when your brain is unable to keep control, or hiking a trail among the beasts of wild and untamed nature, or just getting out of bed to face another day, the challenge itself offers great opportunity for liberation. We can liberate ourselves from the confines of a bed in our dizziness. We can liberate our bodies from the delusion of safety within our unnatural box. We can liberate ourselves from the dread created in the lack of fulfillment. We are the choosers of our own path.

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The Roles We Play

December 12, 2019 / Tom

The jester says,

You cannot survive this. It’s too much for you to handle. You must surrender, give up, leave the field of battle. Give up the ghost, bend knee to the wicked wind, find shelter from this storm. You are nothing but a shadow meant to hide in the dark corners of the cave. The pain is too much, the risk too great, the mountain too high. Save yourself. Run and hide.

The beast says,

What life is there in running from the rain? I cannot, I must not surrender, for enslavement to the fear is a lifetime spent in death. I will set my feet, tighten my grip upon the sword of my own power and fight until my dying breath. I shall light the torch of my own ferocity and banish the shadows in this cavern. I bear the pain as a symbol of my victory, reap the reward from this refusal to surrender, and climb until the view promised my upon that summit is, at last, seen. I have saved myself in standing firm, and in pressing on beyond my mind’s limitations.

The warrior says,

I may retreat, but just to find more stable footing. I may drop my sword, but only to remove the shackles I have placed upon my soul. I may hide, but only to attack at the time of my own choosing. I may surrender, but only to free the parts of me enslaved. I am the fire that lights the torch that all shadows fear, and the storm that sets the trees to dancing in my wake. I am the hawk who sees and knows when to set upon the voices within, and the wind that carries angels up to heaven. Attack me at your peril, for if I so choose I shall crush your head under my heel and leave your carcass to the whims of the Sun.

Some moments I play the jester. Others, the beast comes out. Yet, I always try to summon the warrior, that wise part of me that always keeps me going. After all, life seems to be one successive act of survival after another, one role followed by another, multiple lessons followed by multiple tests followed by even more lessons. The essence of life seems to be in the way it flows; sometimes fast, sometimes slow but rarely stagnant for long.

Woman

December 10, 2019 / Tom

Mother

I can hear your voice echoing through my caverns,

I can feel your rage building like a storm,

I can see your smile, rare and unforgiving,

I know all I am through your eyes.

I am your son.

Sister

I can hear your cries seeping through the darkness,

I can feel your mind twisting in the wind,

I can see your smile, longing for reality,

I know I am forgotten through the temper of your lies.

I am your brother.

Lover

I can hear your heart beating in my silence,

I can feel your soul afraid in being open,

I can see your smile raising me from my ashes,

I know I am alive through the desire of your embrace.

I am your partner.

Daughter

I can hear your first cries as though they sang but yesterday,

I can feel your hand as it grasps at my one finger,

I can see your life unfolding before my eyes,

I know I have done something right when you simply call me “Dad”.

I am your father.

Woman

There are many things that have shaped me,

That have pulled a sculpture from the roughest, burdened stone,

I’ve been hewn by heaven and hell’s sweet majesty,

A woman’s touch is the discourse of this living.

I can rise, and I can love, and I can be all I’m meant to be.

I am a man.

The Walden Pond Within (A Poem)

December 9, 2019 / Tom

I heard a calling once,

The woods, the hills, the simple life,

A small area to call my own.

A devoted hand fearlessly in mine,

A shared dream,

Creating words in the woods,

Stories born in the space between

The soil and the sky,

Living clean, without the nonsense of the lost human mind.

I heard a poem once,

A walk through nature by a heart so inclined,

Footprints left on the earthen soil,

Wiped cleaned by the whipping winds of time,

Still the words imprinted on the sweetest parchment,

Eternally mine to hold, to cherish,

To share to the ones who come calling.

My friends, alive among the trees.

I read a story once,

A man in love with the truth of Walden,

He and I have sipped from the same cup,

Bent our knee upon the same muddy shore,

We’ve written songs only the loon can hope to sing.

Together we have made our stand,

In union we have found the space of our truest love,

Our tears flow as we leave her far behind.

We never truly leave her at all.

I hear the calling now,

Recite the poem in my heart,

Tell the story in my soul,

I see the cabin where we live,

An orange flicker of the fire where we lay,

All we need around us, in us, between us,

A simplicity we’ve birthed in the honor on which we stand,

Two souls warm in the company we have found,

Even as the snows falls out there.

We kiss, forever, here.

The Door to Eternity

December 5, 2019 / Tom

I felt she was ready. For all the clinging of those who loved her, she needed to leave. It was her time, and when the door opened she looked back, smiled, and passed through the threshold.

Behind her was the anguish of her humanity, in front was something more. Before the door had closed she paused to glimpse one last time as the path that was. She saw the joys of her life planted neatly along the way, and relived the laughter and the smiles and the intimate moments where love had swaddled her soul. She also saw the pains, the suffering, the anguish and the rush of fear that being human had created. In joy she was so mindless yet in fear the mind was all she had.

The look back, it seems, is something all souls do. When they look back at their lives most know it is time to move on. Those who are not ready, though few they be, they return to their humanity to be celebrated for their unpreparedness. Yet that door is something we shall all see, and it is something we shall all pass through. She was ready to pass through before she had actually seen it. She had felt it before she saw it, and it’s pull began to build as her pain increased.

As she reached the end of her humanity she recognized something. While her body was wracked with pain, her heart had jumped for joy. As she neared that door she ceased being completely human and became a part of her divinity. At the end she was ready to let go of being human and open the door. It was time.

She felt the tears of those she loved and the pain of those who wished she’d stay. This was, finally, her journey alone and she could no longer submit to the whims of others. Her soul called for home, her heart begged for love, her humanity desperately wanted to know its divinity. And so, with a final view of the forest she had planted, he closed the door and walked into eternity.

There would be sadness left behind, but joy would return. That’s the thing about both, the return in our human experience with equal vigor. Yet, what lies on the other side of that door leaves one of those behind.