Sophy Burnham's Blog, page 9

MORE ON AMAZON AUTHORS READERS

I just got this comment from one reader, clarifying the Amazon terms, and if anyone is interested, it’s worth reading. Link to:  http://catherineryanhoward.com/blog-p.... (or look at Comments to yesterday’s rant.

Things are not as bad as I’d thought! (Because Amazon is almost the only game in town, they still have frightening and unprecedented power.)

blessings. (And, Oh yes! Yesterday, an angel appeared right after posting my blog yesterday–the phone rang, bringing hope, laughter, trust, generosity, gratitude, faith, joy. It’s all in attitude!)

AMAZON, AUTHORS AND READERS

For years, I have talked of angels and mysterious coincidences—those shivers of the spine that make you marvel that Something Out There is watching over us, loving, guarding, guiding, warming, healing, helping us—and that the world is essentially good and on our side. The current summer copy of the quarterly, PARABOLA Magazine, is devoted to the theme, Angels and Demons.

I need these anecdotes. Sometimes we’re all overwhelmed by the suffering and pain, the greed and malice around us, and sometimes by horror beyond comprehension (like ISIS and Boka Horan). I need all the reminders I can get that the underlying energy of the Universe is a humming of Love, that God is love, (what exactly don’t the atheists believe in?, that we are surrounded by Love. In my book A BOOK OF ANGELS, I tell story after story—true—of angels intervening in our lives. In my new novel, LOVE, ALBA, it is only the narrator, the little cat, who can see into other dimensions.

But today I feel discouraged and desolate. Writers have always been at the mercy of the take-it-or-leave-it publishers contracts, but I have just learned that Amazon, the monstrous megalith that sells everything from horse blankets to washing machines, has instituted a new policy regarding e/books which once again disfavors the struggling author. There is one thing that You, the Reader can do.

   If you believe in books, and writers, if you want someday to write a book yourself, PLEASE, READ ON.

The way it works now, the publisher (or author, if she self-publishes, like me) sets a price for the printed book based on costs + small profit. Say you decide to publish at $15.95 (my book, LOVE, ALBA, for example). Amazon immediately discounts the price to whatever figure they choose. Since the author receives a small percentage on each book sold, he is the loser. To make matters worse, Amazon advertises and sells used copies alongside of the new book. A used copy might cost ten cents (plus shipping = $4.10), but the author, who may have worked for many years researching and writing, receives zero. (No royalty is paid on used or second hand books, but used books used to be sold separately from new books: not on Amazon!)

Now turn to e/Books. Starting July 1, Amazon will pay e/book royalties to its self-published authors and small press, independent publishers based on the number of pages actually read, rather than the number of times the book is downloaded or “borrowed.” (Remember, you don’t own an e/book—you “borrow” it on your kindle, and Amazon can delete it at any tine).

The new policy leaves intact another unfortunate Amazon practice of paying indie authors out of an opaque royalty pool, which pits self-published and indie authors against one another in a zero-sum scramble for readers. I’m not sure how this works, but I understand the company pools all receipts from self-published authors and pays them, not on the number of their books downloaded but on a bell curve against all the other writers. With a finite amount of money to go around each month, one author’s gain is another’s loss.

Amazon’s contracts with its indie authors are non-negotiable and may be changed at any time; changes become binding within 30 days of posting. Even with Amazon’s monthly tinkering with the royalty pool, under its per-borrow scheme authors could at least count on a rate of somewhere between $1.33 and $1.40 per borrow. Writers of children’s books, particularly for young children, will see that rate go down significantly.

WHAT YOU CAN DO:

If you read on a KINDLE, make sure that rather than stopping in the middle, you scroll through to the very end before closing the book! I don’t know if skimming counts as “reading” but maybe . . . maybe . . . .

Exactly how this new program will impact books in the long run is hard to know. What happens to long nonfiction that might take years to write and that add to our culture and knowledge but are rarely read in full by the lay reader? Will skimmed pages count? How long does a reader have to spend on a page for it to count as “read”? Will Amazon share any of its reading statistics with writers to help them have more pages read? Will they eventually foist this payment method on major publishers, starting with the smaller ones who have little to no negotiating power?

Announced just weeks before it takes effect, the change is a reminder of Amazon’s power. It’s never been more clear that indie authors who publish with Amazon’s KDP Select are dependent on Amazon’s business decisions, including how much money Amazon chooses to distribute via the monthly royalty pool.

My own book, LOVE, ALBA is published with a California press. But both the paperback and e/book will come out on Amazon with these terms. I’m glad that I’m older. I’m glad that I’m getting out of the writing business, and will write hereafter only for myself. It makes me sympathize with J. D. Salinger, who never wrote another book after CATCHER IN THE RYE but treasured his privacy, his isolation, and his independence from the publishing industry. Today I’m looking for angels. I’m looking for the love in my heart that can counterbalance the discouragement of reading the news, the tears that well up as I hear of the pain that comes with living in a human body. I’m whistling in the dark. I’m looking for angels. Today.

The Pain of Creativity

Recently I saw two movies about creativity, I’ve come away in awe of the human spirit. One is SEYMOUR about a classical pianist names Seymour Bernstein, and the other LOVE AND MERCY about the life of Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys. Clearly, the artist (writer, musician, painter, sculpture), who is listening to inner voices and requires huge doses of solitude, is driven almost mad by living up to the public expectations. Seymour Bernstein gives up a career as a classical pianist, because he can’t stand on-stage performing, and Wilson has such panic attacks that he finally bows out of the big gigs and stays home, isolating and writing music. A Big Book tour sounds fabulous. I’ve heard it’s what all writers and authors think they want—with interviews on TV and talks in book stores. Let me tell you, the reality is horrible. I’ve done it, and once I got such back pains I had to use a wheelchair! I felt I was a monkey dancing at the end of a chain, a rhinestone collar round my neck and a cocky little red hat perched on my head.  After a week you don’t know what city you are in, whether you’re talking to the same audience, and for that matter you can hardly remember anymore the book you are talking about, because now, a year later, you’re in the middle of writing something else! So seeing these movies was . . . liberating! A young admirer asked Sarah Bernhardt before a performance for an autograph. Seeing the famous actress’s hands shaking, she commented, “Why are you nervous? I never have stage fright before I act.” The older actress looked at her, and said, “When you learn how to act, you will.” If you are going to give a good performance, you will have stage fright. I remember once that Bill Kreutzman, the drummer, invited me to a Grateful Dead concert, where Jerry Garcia sat alone and miserable, shaking with stage fright.   I’ve heard that the Buddhists say that everyone has five major fears: first is fear of death, and fifth is of public speaking. Back to the two films. Here the lives of two musicians unfold, one a classical pianist and one a rock star, both accounted as musical geniuses and both at the mercy of their art, and both unhinged by the pressures imposed. See the films. This is what it means to be an artist. To hear Seymour Bernstein talk about creativity lifts you to new levels of aspiration and joy.

In Praise of a Cat

I even praise the cat,

Its savage patience and quick paws

            Stephen Dobyns

My mother was an intuitive, a kind of white witch, close to the earth; and, like all good seers, she always had a cat, black with one white patch – a spot on the breast, or paw.

My mother’s cat had nothing to do with other members of the family. She held allegiance only for Mummy. She was often seen (when she was seen at all, for she was a retiring, modest, rather introverted, and noise-averse animal) cleansing herself daintily beside my mother’s chair. The remarkable thing is that when one cat died of old age, my mother never replaced her. She didn’t need to. In a few weeks a little black kitten would walk, mewing out of the woods, wrap herself around my mother’s feet, and boldly enter the house, to replace the one just lost.

When Mummy died at the youthful age of 68 of lung cancer, the cat, who slept at the foot of her bed, vanished. I’ve often wondered what happened to her. It would not surprise me to discover (when I pass over myself) that she had found a way to join my mother behind that Impenetrable Wall. That’s the love of a cat.

Now here is something curious. No cat is mentioned in the Bible. No cat leapt onto Jesus’ lap. Or arched its sinuous back for the stroking fingers of King David. No Mary or Moses bent to feed a plaintive mew. Yet cats have lived with humans for 9000 years. Today 90 million domesticated cats live in 34% of homes in the United States; they are the most popular pet. Cats hear in the ultrasonic range, and with low-light vision, they see in the dark. They can spring many times their height. They like to perch on high places. The purring of a cat rumbles at the same frequency that your doctor will use to send electrical current into a fractured bone. Cats are known (like dogs, I admit it) to travel hundreds of miles to find their way home.

In ancient Egypt the cat was considered the incarnation of the Goddess Bast, and when one man killed (by accident?) a cat in Alexandria, the angry mob tore him limb from limb.

Why is no cat mentioned in the Bible? Cattle, sheep, donkeys are reported, even pigs. (Remember Christ sending a demon into a herd of 100 pigs? They launched themselves off a cliff—and you can bet the owner of those pigs was mad!). But no cats.

Six hundred years later, a cat was the Prophet Muhammad’s favorite animal, and he extolled his followers to love cats and treat them well, as they are “of those who go around among us.” It is said that because the Prophet Muhammad loved cats, they have four stripes, the marks of his fingers stroking their heads. So beloved was his cat, Muezza, that seeing the animal lying one morning on his cloak at the call to prayer, and not wanting to disturb the beautiful creature, he carefully cut off the sleeve, and put it on, minus a sleeve, to perform his prayers.

           During the last illness of Jalaluddin Rumi, the famous poet, his cat kept vigil outside the cell, and when he died, his cat walked with all the mourners in the funeral procession, following him to the grave. Later, it sat at the threshold of Rumi’s meditation cell, refused to eat or drink and did not survive its master by more than a week. Rumi’s daughter wrapped the cat in a winding sheet and buried it beside the saint.

            Modern day Sufis, like the Hindu Jains, take great care not to tread on an ant or caterpillar or to kill a fly or bee or spider.

So why is no cat mentioned in the Hebrew Bible? Why none in the New Testament? It grieves me. Even dogs are mentioned (though derisively—as in, the dogs ate the body of Jezebel). Is it because the cat was considered a goblin?

In one Buddhist story, the cat rebelled against the Lord Buddha and did not receive his blessing. But I have a book at my bedside, The Cat Who Went to Heaven by Elizabeth Coatsworth, winner of a Newbery Medal award. In this Japanese tale the impoverished artist is commissioned to paint the Compassionate One, together with a parade of all the animals he has loved or whose incarnations he lived—the snail, the swan, the horse, the dog, the tiger, the elephant. Only the proud and self-reliant little house cat (thought to be a goblin) is purposely left out of the painting. But the artist has a cat, which sits watching him at work, and finally with his heart breaking, knowing he will lose his commission, the artist paints, the last in the parade, a cat. I won’t tell you the ending. Buy the book. I defy you to read it without tears pricking your eyes.

Cats love our prayers. Cats wallow in the energy of Reiki, and whenever I gave Reiki or taught Reiki, my cat would lie nearby, rolling onto her back in ecstasy. (The dog would have to leave the room, panting, unable to bear the excess of energy.) You can see why the Egyptians might elevate a cat to the level of a goddess.

You can also see that I love cats and why I chose a cat to narrate my latest novel,d LOVE, ALBA. If this blog is about wisdom, surely it must bow before the beauty and wisdom of a cat. Even though no one thought to write about it, I like to think that Jesus bent to scratch the ears of a cat or heal its hurt paw, that his Mother let her cat sit on her lap, purring, while she sewed.

Here are three old books about cats, each still worth reading:

The Personality of the Cat: its many-sided nature as revealed in stories, pictures and poetry, edited by Brandt Aymar.. Bonanza Books, 1958.

The Cat Who Walked by Himself, and other stories, by Rudyard Kipling.

The Cat Who Went to Heaven, by Elizabeth Coatsworth, Aladdin Books, 1958.

Love,❤️ ALBA, rejection and the Writer’s Despair

Well, the time has come to talk about my new novel, LOVE, ❤ALBA which comes out August 10, and why I wrote it, and why I decided to self publish, and how dismayed and discouraged I became when I found that my agent could not find a publisher: because there must be many writers, successful or just starting out, who can benefit from my experience and boy! have I learnt a lot!

I had just published The Treasure of Montségur, a pretty serious novel set in 13th century France. This is a period that makes living in the 21st Century look like a piece of cake! In that book, I was exploring how you find hope and joy under sickening circumstances. This is always the way with writing: “We do not write in order to be understood,” wrote C. Day Lewis. “We write in order to understand.”

Afterwards I wanted to write something light-hearted, fun, sweet, because this is truly a beautiful world.

I wanted to write a simple love story, which actually turned into three love stories intertwining—and it would have something to do with aging, with illicit or forbidden love, with friendship, sacrifice, and breaking the cultural conditioning that keeps us from meeting our true potential. And it would be told by a cat.

Why? Well, my beloved cat, Alba, had recently died. I thought about her a lot, the most beautiful and perfect cat, thoughtful, loving, playful, observant. I thought a witty, wise little cat as narrator might see into dimensions that the “2-leggeds” could not; she could offer commentary and advice that we humans need.

Like: It always surprises me when the 2-leggeds hate themselves… who would you like, if not yourself?

After I finished Love, Alba I discovered my agent could not sell it. Whoa! I was shocked! Is it that bad? Good gracious, 1, 052,803 books were published in the US in 2009, and each year since more than a million books are published! With my track record (thirteen books, three on the bestseller lists) no one would publish Love, ❤Alba?

My agent sent it to twelve publishers.

“I can’t think of anyone else to send it to,” she reported. I was shaken. In my book, For Writers Only, I have a chapter on rejections: Robert Pirsig received 120 rejections before publishing his bestseller, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. The bestselling novel Jonathan Livingston Seagull went to forty publishers; John Creasy, an English mystery writer racked up 734 rejections before selling his first book, and went on to write 600 more books under 28 pseudonyms. The list of rejected bestselling authors is frightening (or hopeful).

For the writer, though, it’s emotionally damaging. You doubt yourself. Doubt your work. (“Not to have an audience is a kind of death,” wrote Tillie Olsen.)

Then last summer I picked up the manuscript that I had put away for more than two years. “But this is really good!” I thought. “They’re wrong.”

Here’s a quote from Saul Bellow (also found in my book, For Writers Only)*: “I discovered that rejections are not altogether a bad thing. They teach a writer to rely on his own judgment and to say in his heart of hearts, ‘To hell with you.’”

(*For Writers Only was written for myself during a particularly dry period, when I could get nothing published. I wrote six books in eight years. I wrote FWO to encourage myself in the lonely days of creating, when I cried a lot and fell prey to fear, despair, and the critical disdain of my Inner Judge. I wrote it to remind myself that it is the business of the writer to WRITE! It’s available at bookstores and at Amazon.  I recommend it for anyone creative: it’s “Not For Writers Only.”)

Now I’ve talked enough for my first blog. Later I’ll tell you what LOVE, ❤ALBA is about and how different it is from a lot of books being published now: (Which could be why it could not find a publisher) and in a later blog I’ll tell what I’ve learned about self-publishing.

Right now, my advice to all new writers, and to all those writers today who are discouraged: Keep on! Trust yourself! Write every day. Remember the French proverb:

“Only he who does nothing makes a mistake.”

Or this, from Samuel Beckett: “Ever tried? Ever failed? No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”

Letting Go. Guided by Angels

This afternoon (Friday, 4.17) I was listening on the radio to Metro Connection as I drove back into town, when a story was told of an artist who one day was looking for floor tiles to repair his house. He asked. “God, show me where to go,” then felt impelled to get in his car and drive left and right and left and right and right and left, having no idea where he was going in Baltimore, but feeling guided, when he found himself at a dead end, face to face with a sign: FREE GLASS TILES. Metro Connection reported the story without comment, and I am thrilled.

When I wrote A Book of Angels (published 1990) NO ONE talked about these little guides, these “miracles,” and if you did, you weren’t sure you were judged quite sane. I remember having it come into my head one day that I really wanted a slab of onyx, that beautiful green and brown marble, to put on top of a shoe-shelf in my front hall. How the thought came to me, I have no idea. I could see it in my mind’s eye. I started phoning marble and stone companies, and no one had onyx. Moreover were I to find a piece, it would have to come in a slightly odd shape to fit. I’d given up hope, when suddenly I came across one last marble company out in Virginia. “Do you have any onyx?” I asked on the phone. “Only one small piece. Let me see,” said the man on the other end of the phone. He came back moments later with measurements—“It’s the only piece we have.”

It fit perfectly! Perfectly! It didn’t even need to be cut, and I gave thanks to God, or angels or my spirit guides first for giving me the idea and then for finding the only piece of onyx in Washington. Golly, it was beautiful!

(Giving thanks is necessary, by the way; recognizing guidance when it comes increases the chance of having more. Also, it’s only courteous.)

Two other editions of A Book of Angels have come out since 1990, and it is no longer the massive best seller of yesteryear, but that’s because we live in different times—times when an artist can speak openly on the radio of being guided by God, and no one questions or laughs or even comments anymore.

Let me quote one important passage from A Book of Angels (and there are lots of good parts, if I do say so myself)! But this one paragraph sums up one important Rule of the Universe, the Path to Happiness.

I was writing about the 17th century mystic, Emmanuel Swedenborg, an inventor and scientist, who spent the last twenty years of his life writing down his clairvoyant communications from angels.

“Swedenborg’s angels stayed with him always, whispering and singing to him. He writes of their communicating spiritually—by thoughts flashing into his mind, and in one of these instructions he learned that angels look on all events as proceeding from God—not as men or evil spirits do, who want everything to come out their way and, when it doesn’t, give way to doubt or even deny the existence of God, but rather in an outpouring of faith. His angels repeated again and again that we poor beings should not worry about the future but only trust to Providence. For Providence will bring all things that we desire—not necessarily while we desire them, but yet if it be for their good, they obtain them afterward, when not thinking of them.“

            Have you had that experience? Have you suddenly received an unexpected gift and marveled to yourself: ‘I remember wanting that! I’d forgot!’ It’s all about Letting Go. About trusting the Universe or Providence or God or whatever we want to call it. About keeping a light heart.  It’s hard when you’re feeling “down” and fearful, but these are just the times when you have to practice Letting Go. Give yourself a break. Dare to be weak. To fail. And then most likely you’ll feel a gentle Guiding Presence walking by you, whispering words of hope? Angels, everywhere.

Ah Mysteries!

Well, don’t anyone try to convince me there’s not life after life. I’ve had too many experiences to believe in the silence of dark mouldering eternal sleep. The world is too full of life—and mystery. And by the way, of LAUGHTER! At one level it’s all laughter!

My first cousin died recently. On the Saturday morning before I had heard of his death, I found myself staring at the books in my bookcase, reached out and plucked a book I hadn’t noticed before. “Where did this come from?” I thought, regarding a volume of Italian short stories, in Italian, printed in 1999. . . .and then from the pages fell a yellowed invoice of long ago, with handwriting in faded ink. . . revealing something bought for $5.00. The name at the top was that of my Uncle, and there was his address in Cumberland, Maryland–except he had died decades earlier, long before this book was printed. And where did the book come from anyway, not to mention the invoice?

A few hours later, the phone call came through saying that Bill, his son and my first cousin, had died. Was my uncle waiting for him on the Other Side? Was this a message to me, to be forewarned? To rejoice?

At the funeral, I told Bill’s wife the story, and she laughed. “That’s nothing!” she cried. “The night he died we were woken up all night long with the smoke alarms going off, one by one. It was just like him!” (Oh, funerals are so much fun!)

We all agreed he was probably at there with us, having a grand time and filled with pride as he watched his handsome sons memorialize him.

And while on the subject of Mysteries and Strange Protectors, here’s another one, told in a news clipping by Louise Hick of Durham, N.C. I don’t know when it happened, but I found the clipping (also mysteriously) among some old papers where it didn’t belong.

It was after midnight when the young girl (Louise?) caught the bus at the end of her shift at the bakery. Nobody else was on the bus. She took a seat toward the back.

“Mind if I open the window?” she asked.

“Go right ahead, Miss,” said the driver. “Maybe the breeze will give me a peek at your pretty legs.”

As if that weren’t enough to raise her hackles, the driver then announced, “Know what? I’m going to take you for a little ride!”

He veered off the usual route and pulled into a dark country churchyard. She was terrified. Lord, help me please, she prayed.

The driver turned off the ignition, removed the keys, and rose to move toward her, when suddenly there was a knock on the door.

Cursing, he stomped back to the front, and switched on the lights. An elderly white-haired couple got on.

“Had some engine trouble,” the driver lied. “We’ll be on our way now.”

The couple took two seats across the aisle from the trembling young woman, as if it were the most natural thing in the world to board a bus in a churchyard after midnight.

The driver resumed his regular route. At the next stop as several people got on, Louise jumped off, but not before turning to look back at the elderly couple. Apart from the few people entering at the front, there were no passengers on the bus.

Now what in the world are we to make of things like that? And how is it that in novels or even nonfiction (too often in our own lives) we don’t notice that gifts are raining on us all the time.  Apart from “Jane Eyre,” which was written in the 19th century, after all, when people were more attuned to intuition, the spiritual, mysterious Voices and coincidences, I hardly know a single novel where the spiritual plays any part (except, of course, for ghost stories–it’s all right to read or write about the dark side). In modern novels the characters never enter a church or synagogue, wouldn’t dream of praying, don’t even seem to be aware of anything beyond the material and their own self-reliance. (This may be why my forthcoming novel, “Love, Alba,” where Alba, the cat, sees into realities that evade the 2-leggeds whom she loves, had such a hard time being published.  But more about that another time.)

Meanwhile, let us share our stories: when was the last time something wondrous, delightful and unexpected landed in your lap.  We all need to remember the Rules of the Universe: It’s not that nothing bad will ever happen in our lives; it’s that when it does, we’re not alone.

or this one:  Gifts are poured upon us all the time. Do you notice and remember to say thank you? The more you give thanks, the more wonders happen to you.

and this one: Sometimes “No” is God’s way of saving us from something frightful. Give thanks. Always and everywhere give thanks. 

Signs of Angels Watching Over Us

Well, I’ve just posted a few words about how the Universe sends us gifts and roses, the little grace notes that affirm we’re not alone. Here is another story, quite different, that I told about in one of my books, though I forget which one just now (maybe The Path of Prayer?).

I was walking on the canal in Georgetown, and once again I was in a funk (You must think I’m always down, but actually I’m usually courageous and upbeat.) On this day, however, I was at the end of my rope. “God, give me a sign,” I spoke silently to my angels, my guides, “and don’t make it one of your subtle signs that I can’t read. I want something that will hit me over the head, because I’m not in a good place today. I need to know that  everything is going to be all right.”

Just then a flock of pigeons rose out of the waters of the canal, sweeping up in the air, swooping and circling, the light flashing from their white wings. I was startled. You expect sea gulls on the water perhaps, but not pigeons. At the same time, they were so beautiful that I stopped in wonder to watch them fly. Just then PLOP! One shat on me, right on top of my head.

What could I do but laugh? I’d asked for a sign to hit me on the top of the head, and here it was. It broke my foul mood. I went home light-hearted and back to my desk to work.

The ways of the angels are mysterious. But remember, children, we are not promised that nothing bad will happen to us. We’re promised that when they do we’re not alone!

May you have a lovely day. Winter is nearly over. Spring is coming. The light is returning (one more month to the solstice). Watch for signs. Be happy.

Roses and Grace Notes

I wrote last time about the Dark Side – an aspect of the spiritual that I don’t like to think much about. Today I want to write about the LIGHT. And since we’ve just finished Valentine’s Day, it’s appropriate to think of roses – and of all the little ways that the Universe (another of my thousand names for God) pours affection onto us.

One day I remember being blue. I wished for a sign that everything would be ok. A minute later, I walked out of the house (I lived in a house then), and there on the sidewalk lay a red rose. Laughing at myself, I took it as my “sign.”

It turns out that roses are often a sign of an answered prayer. St. Therese of Lisieux (1873-97) is the Roman Catholic saint of the rose. “What matters in life,” she wrote, “is not great deeds, but great love.” After her death, she promised to “shower roses on her little ones.” She believed that like a child we should be enamored with what is before us, totally attentive to all the expressions of love. I’m not Catholic but I have heard that if you pray a novena (nine days for one wish) to St. Therese, and if the wish is granted, you will receive

on the ninth day a rose. I wrote of many such stories in A Book of Angels. Here is a new one from my friend Charlotte. Notice that she says thank you afterwards. That’s important. The Universe adores to be noticed and thanked, and if you do that it will turn itself inside out to give you more.

My sisters and I made many novenas to St Therese in our childhood, and we always  expected to receive a rose. Our uncle Charlie was drafted into the Army at age 40 despite the fact that he really couldn’t see well, even with his glasses. But it was the middle of the war and because the Army needed men, they lowered their standards! We children adored him. We wanted him home. We began our novenas to St. Therese, asking that Charlie be discharged and come home.

         On the ninth day I was walking home from school alone. I was on the sidewalk, surrounded by concrete and the empty tarmac street. There were no cars at that moment, either, and no other people around, when suddenly a red rose fell from above me and landed on the sidewalk. It was a beautiful, fresh, full-blown, long-stemmed rose. I looked about. Where had it come from? The three-story apartment buildings on either side of me were set back a good 20 feet from the sidewalk; it could not have been thrown from a window. Moreover, I had glanced up and seen the rose falling straight down from the air above.

I picked it up and said “Thank you” to St Therese. I showed the rose to Mother and my sisters, and we all accepted it as our sign that Charlie would be home soon. We were very pleased and grateful. A short time later, he was released from the Army. I’ve had other rose episodes over the years. I just wanted to affirm that these ‘grace notes ‘ do occur.

 

The Dark Side

The Dark Side

 

I rarely touch on the Dark Side in this optimistic, light-filled angel blog, but recently something happened to me so unusual that I share it, in case there are others who feel lonely and lost, “beside themselves,” or “not themselves.”  It’s not that we don’t all fall into a trough sometimes, feel blue, or even, god knows, become depressed, but what hit me last week was so coarse and unpleasant that I found myself hating whoever was living in my skin.

I went to New York over the weekend, where I met family and friends, visited the Exciting, Noisy, New and Different; yet even in the midst of loved ones, I felt lonely, fearful, awkward, anxious, lost.

Back home, I finally had time to sit in solitude and howl to God, my angels, my inner Higher Self. “Oh God, help me, help me. I can’t do this. I can’t do it alone!” (whatever “it” was.) Then I picked up a pen and began what I call automatic writing. It’s easy.

You go into a slightly altered, meditative state, make a prayer for insight, hold your pencil poised over the pad… and then watch the words flow out. I feel they come from angels, or God, or some Higher Wisdom, and not from little me, for always they speak words of comfort, quiet, calm, and knowledge beyond what I know.

When I finished, I wrote Thank you (as one must courteously do) and set down my pen. Despite the comforting words, however, I still felt that anguished sense of not belonging, of being lonely, lost, uneasy, fraught. (One word for lonely in Italian is abbandonato.) It is my experience that all prayers are answered, and often answered soon.

And so it was this time. I left to meet a friend, Wendi, for tea. She had brought along an Episcopal priest, who wanted to meet me, and suddenly the conversation turned to mystical and spiritual experiences, and then to the age-old question of evil. Is there a force of evil? The demonic?

It’s not a question I like to discuss, first, because in our secular society it’s considered quite batty even to ask the question, but second because if there is the demonic, we shouldn’t give it weight. I go with St. Theresa of Avila, that it’s best to laugh at the devil: “ ‘Oh, the devil, the devil,’ we say when we might be saying, ‘God! God!’” (she wrote) “I’m quite sure I’m more afraid of people who are themselves terrified of the devil than I am afraid of the devil himself.” (More about this in The Ecstatic Journey, about the mystic’s way.)

On the other hand, twice I have experienced the demonic, and both times were horrible. Once I was simply reading in bed when I was physically hit in the chest, WHAP! by a vicious black imp. Paralyzed, terrified, I couldn’t move. This thing was the embodiment of loneliness, anger, malice, fear: it was mean, frightened, dark.

I could not move. With one fingertip, I made a gesture so small that I’m not sure my finger even moved—the sign of the Cross. At which, WHOOSH! It fled. I was free. Was it my imagination? I don’t know, but I think not. Afterwards I went to the bathroom and washed all over.

But back to tea with my friends. As we talked, I realized that I had become infected. Some uninvited influence had entered my energy field, my aura. I’d been in crowds in New York. Perhaps I hadn’t protected myself, perhaps I’d picked up someone else’s anguish or sorrowing. How does it get in? Through the chinks. What is it? A spirit? An energy? a force of evil? I don’t know, but I don’t want it.

Now at tea, talking with these two beautiful women, I remembered what to do— It’s simple. No one noticed; it takes no time.

“I belong to God,” I whispered. Speaking directly to this thing, speaking silently, as I would to my angels, I said, “To all uninvited influences and entities, you are created of love and light. You are whole and healed. There is a place of light for you to go. I ask my angels to take you into the Light. Leave me, in the name of Jesus Christ.”

There was no WHOOSH of blackness gone. I didn’t notice any immediate difference, but a few minutes later, as we gathered our coats to leave, I realized how happy I felt, how clear, how clean, how full of energy and light.

Are there entities or spirits, imps or demons that infect us? I don’t know but I believe it behooves us to clear our energy field, the aura, every day, particularly if we have beenin sad and despairing places, where we may inadvertently pick up the sorrows of others, or their wretchedness, anger, loneliness and fear.

I said that twice I have come into contact with the demonic. I won’t tell the other, but both were black-black-black with the impression of claws, beaks, talons, and each was itself the embodiment of fear and loneliness, poor thing, and of malice, wickedness and wrong. They writhed with violence and suffering.

Send it into the Light. You have only to make the sign of the Cross, even with one fingernail, and it will go. I think even the demons would like to feel good. I think it is good to pray for the demons, as we pray for all suffering creatures, known and unknown, visible and invisible—to pray for forgiveness for them, pray to forgive, pray to the very birds in the air to be forgiven of our failings. We can do much worse than pray. O suffering Earth! May all sentient beings go into the Light.