Why God Made Snails

Snail Trainer by artist Kelly Vivanco 

Love liberates the heart from cages of fear one latch at a time. 

What do you still fear… unless you have arrived?

There are phobias for everything from fear of heights…to snakes…to water…to fire…to spiders…to fear of committing the unpardonable sin… to fear of death…to fear of poetry – that’s right, fear of poetry, known as metrophobia. 

I had an aunt who developed keraunophobia from having witnessed a child struck and killed by lightning. She wasn’t just uneasy during storms; she was overcome with panic: shrieking, cringing, and ducking with every roar of sky, every crash of thunder, every bolt of lightning.    

My black lab is also afflicted with this – and a fear of fireworks too.  But he reacts by creeping up with anxious eyes and trying to hide his large self under our feet, akin to a dinosaur trying to hide behind a lamppost. (Remember Danny and the Dinosaur?)                

A girl we knew had an irrational fear of clowns.   At a birthday party we attended she dashed off and cowered in the next room… until the clown went away.  That’s when I discovered the meaning of coulrophobia.      

Tachophobia: the fear of speeds.

In my poem The Journey I refer to my distain for the fast lane.  The nightmare of fifty car pile-ups and ambulance sirens. By no means am I a clinical case; nonetheless I still feel anxious on the freeway.  With good reason…

Horns and motors, the rush of traffic, lights that hold you still in the middle of it all.  Your heart pumping while you breathe deep and say your prayers…and remember why you despise the fast lane… Cricket, your mother-in-law, was killed by a drunk driver.  July 31^st, 1993. 

Ever since you’ve loathed the whole scene, of being at the mercy of speed freaks.  And you won’t go there unless you must. 

Agoraphobia

Fear of open spaces

 or of being in crowded, public places like markets.

Fear of leaving a safe place.

A moment turned nightmare.  A wide open space swarming with strangers rushing by or walking aimless.  You stare down at your slow feet as folks whoosh past, bags in hand. 

Sunlight pours through sky roof, the bright part of the day.

Stores galore, elevators, escalators, restaurants and more.  A food court, an Apple Store, a thousand shops to browse.  You fight to keep your soul intact amid the madding crowd.  But you lose it at the escalator while the world steps aboard the magic carpet and soars away. 

You stand at the foot, rooted and still, frozen by a cloudburst of emotion.  Because you can’t keep up the pace.  Because you aren’t wired to race. 

So you know why God made snails: to take life easy, take life slow… and to stick to their shells until it’s time to let go.  

 

  What do you fear or feel anxious about?    

Creature Comforts

With age I meld with my milieu, bond with household treasures: a certain drinking glass for instance.  And when I misplace it, forget where it sits, you’d think I’d lost the Holy Grail. 

And there’s the simple glass mug embossed with lotus flowers from which I’ve sipped for years – a cup that turns each morning into espresso bliss.   

The favorite fork that feels just right in my hand...  and comfy worn-out clothes…

Like the old bathrobe I had to discard last year when the zipper finally gave up the ghost.  When it first began to show signs of sluggishness in gliding smooth along its track, I’d feel a vague sense of dread and would stop the world and pray for the teeth to realign, to ease on up or down - like it had done for the past decade.

Then one day I forced myself out into the bitter cold to dump my beloved in the garbage can.  It felt like I was burying a pet…almost that distressing.   

So for Christmas last year my two daughters bought me another lavender bathrobe as close to the original as they could possibly find: a warm fuzzy with a zipper down the front.    

It all goes back to childhood and the comfort I felt with a certain bunny.   They tell me I dragged it around until it became shabby as the Velveteen Rabbit whose fur had been loved off.  So my mother had to go and buy me an identical pal for church, the old one kept for everyday cuddling. 

I meant to go one place with this and ended up reminiscing about my sweet bathrobe and went down a rabbit trail (pun), so I’ll have to continue next time in hopes of getting around to my main point: phobias.   Please stay tuned. 

What small comforts in life would you dread parting with most?

Ways of Knowing

The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant.  

We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.

 ~ Albert Einstein

Whether you turn to the right or to the left,

Your ears will hear a voice behind you saying,

 “This is the way; walk in it.”  ~ Isaiah 30:21

All set to go.    The house has been selected for the week of July 4^th.    We’ll land on Ocracoke in time for the fireworks celebration and the parade.  Not to mention the sunset sail and pirate cruise with Blackbeard – or Captain Rob, who owns and skippers the schooner WINDFALL. 

source

An authority on Blackbeard, he is renowned for his nautical tales and was featured in the two-hour History Channel documentary True Caribbean Pirates.  National Geographic also produced an audio-visual of Capt. Rob reciting his poem, A Pirate’s Tale, about the only member of Blackbeard's crew to be spared execution in 1718.

The trip to Ocracoke seems settled.   Except for one thing.  I can find no inner peace about it.  Despite all our plans to vacation on the island, something seems amiss.  Going away at this time just doesn’t feel quite right to me.  

But how to explain that my gut is saying this is not good timing… Postpone the trip?  My daughter Abi is so excited about visiting her friend Emmet, Captain Rob’s son and first mate, and has already told him we’ll be there on July 4^th for the celebration.   

But after much prayer and contemplation I make a final decision. 

I tell Abi that we shouldn’t go because Uncle Hayes, who’s recently been diagnosed with cancer, might die while we’re away. For indeed it isn’t a hopeful scene, the cancer already having spread to his bones.   And so we stay home.  

Then, on the morning of July 4^th we learn that a fireworks truck has exploded on Ocracoke Island and all ferry service has been suspended to public travel and limited to emergency personnel only.   So we couldn’t have made it onto the island anyway. 

As it turns out, Uncle Hayes does die before the end of that week.  Which means we’d have had to cut the vacation short to get back home even if the island had been open to tourists.    

And after the fire a still small voice saying, I told you so. 

What is your most reliable compass in personal guidance?  

Trusting your instincts or “inner knowing,” or the “still small voice within?” 

Are You in Touch?

Over the past several years we’ve been urged to rediscover and embrace our ‘inner child’ – have we not?   So I ask you, when were you last in touch with yours?

 

 

Would you sing a song loudly, blow bubbles, dance the jig and twirl if a friend asked you to? Have you done anything spontaneous in the past week?

 

 

 

I don’t even need to take the quiz to find out if I’m in touch with my inner child.  (But I may need to take one to find out if I’m in touch with my adult).

“You can discover more about a person

in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.”

~ Plato

Yesterday I found myself really ‘into’ a game of Chutes and Ladders.   That exciting up and down board game for little people…that game with simple rules and instructions (just my speed)… the game where, if you land on ladders you can race ahead.

But watch out that you don’t chute back.   You only have to go down the slide if you’ve done something stupid.   Like eating ten out of twelve chocolate chip cookies… like pretending to read your history book when you’re actually reading a comic… like skating on thin ice.      

So yesterday I’m watching to see that Seth (age 6) is not cheating on me.   When he realizes that, if the spinner lands on a certain number, he’ll end up on a chute, he tries to discreetly sneak the arrow over to the next number.  Hoping I don’t notice. 

And I say with righteous indignation, “Hey, I saw that.  If you don’t stop cheating I’m quitting right now and I mean it!”

Then he starts stalking me.   And if I happen to land on a chute and fail to slide my pawn down and play by the rules, he nonchalantly reaches over and does it for me.     

How did you get in touch with your inner kid this week?

If you don’t know whether you’re in touch you can take this quiz.

Parting Gifts

On a hot June day when wildflowers spread their brightness across the countryside in Eastern North Carolina, when daylilies are in full bloom along every rural ditch bank, when butterflies swim through muggy air in slow motion, my father lies at death’s door. 

Thin as a skeleton – his flesh gnawed away by cancer. 

I stop en route to the hospital and pick daylilies by the dozen, carry them to his room and fill every plastic cup by the sink with water and wildflowers, hoping to brighten the place a bit with those wide-awake blossoms.  

But when darkness falls the lilies close like hands in prayer and my evening vigil begins.

 Source

The doctor had told me earlier that the last thing to go when one is in a coma is the hearing, so I utilize the lonely time with my unresponsive father to sing his favorite songs: Old Dan Tucker, When the Roll is Called up Yonder, and a hundred others.     

With one particular song he bolts upright in bed and moves his lips in effort to speak.  With every ounce of strength his frail body can muster he struggles to communicate with me. 

Next day my father is taken from sight and within days he’s laid to rest in the lonely family cemetery.   After his going I write this song of him.        

A dirt road weaves through fields and pines

And leaves a world of life behind

It leads on down past weeds of green

Where granite stones on graves are seen

Faces of the ones we knew

Have vanished like the morning dew

Voices that we long to hear

Like fleeting birds have disappeared

Weeping may endure for a night

But joy comes in the morning

All our darkness turns to light

When joy comes in the morning

My father tilled his land with love

In blazing sun the man would toil

And when his maker tolled the bell

We laid him in his native soil

But when that final morning breaks

And heaven and earth are made brand new

Our deepest sorrows he’ll erase

God is faithful and he’s true

All our tears like pouring rain

Will vanish when he appears again

No more nightfall we will see

He’ll be our light eternally

Weeping may endure for a night

But joy comes in the morning

God will be our endless light

When joy comes in the morning.

How would you describe your father?   What is/was he like?  Feel free to share your memory of him in the comments below.

Staying Awake

Under what circumstances have you been forced to stay awake?    Or willingly stayed awake?

Yapping neighbor dogs disrupting sleep and beckoning every canine in town to join the ruckus…

Sitting with a sick child or dying parents (as I did with both of mine)…Working the night shift…

Reading a thriller you can’t put down… Tossing and turning with ceaseless insomnia…  

Watching a red-eye movie, spellbound until the final credits run across the screen…

Waking from a nightmare you can’t shake… 

Quite recently my daughter wakes me up in the middle of the night.  She stands there crying in pain and fear.  I drag myself out of bed and return to her room with her.

Where I pray relentlessly, plead and intercede on her behalf.   At intervals I ask if we need to go to the emergency room.  Between sighs and tears she says no.

When tomorrow comes – if it ever comes – she is going straight to Immediate Care, I promise her.   But this night, dark as a tomb, won’t end.   No sleep or rest in sight.   

At last she tells me I’m doing no good sitting there.  And so I go into another room, park myself in a chair, and weep.  Feeling as helpless and microscopic as one of the unheard inhabitants of Whoville.    

Then a clear out-of-the-blue vision of Mary appears before my eyes.   She comes to me, not speaking words of wisdom as in the Beatles’ song, “Let It Be,” but in silence.

This is the face I see, the same one who portrayed the mother of Jesus in Mel Gibson’s film, The Passion of the Christ.      

Her expression is one of knowing – just knowing how it feels to watch your child suffer.   And I simply cry out to her in desperation, “Help us.”

 All I know is that both my daughter and I fall fast asleep soon thereafter and rest peacefully. 

But not until after the first gray light of dawn has crept through windows and birds begin to sing their morning-has-broken arias, joyful songs erupting from every tree.

                                             When did you endure a sleepless night? 

Dress Rehearsal

When we glance over our shoulder at our history we see ourselves playacting as children, rehearsing what we’d always known we wanted to be.  Role-playing our future…

The child who, for hours on end, shapes pies and cakes from mud or soft Play-Doh…and thrives today in the bakery business… another wields paintbrush and fills the space of her paper with every color of the rainbow… and now directs an art studio.

The boy who bangs on pots and pans in his mother’s kitchen and grows up to be a drummer… the one who plays G.I. Joe in the backyard and joins the military as an adult… the girl who sings along with her record player and becomes a recording artist herself…

Not everyone makes a living at what they love doing - even though they may live to do it  – but they still recognize their passions and pursuits as a call in life.    

 "Your profession is not what brings home your paycheck.  Your profession is what you were put on earth to do. With such passion and such intensity that it becomes spiritual in calling."

               ~ Vincent Van Gogh

Last week I asked the question here, “What did you want to be when you grew up?”   Most responses revealed that what we imagined ourselves to be as children is what we still are today.

Jessica did not become an astronaut, but she still seeks to explore the unknown and soar to heights unseen, metaphysically speaking. 

Orea did not become a nurse in a cool white dress and cap… or a nun.   But she’s still on the spiritual healing path.  

Kathy’s dream of living in a little stone cottage surrounded by hollyhocks and craggy rocks by the edge of a wild, windy sea never played out, but today she’s a writer who can live there - or anywhere she pleases - in her imagination.         

Corinne wanted be a housewife and writer.   And my response was… “It sounds like we are married to a house.”   Plus it makes us sound desperate!   So then we decide to come up with a better term: domestic engineer.   

Today Corinne is proud to announce that she is a recent graduate of June Cleaver College and is living her dream.   Give it up for the one and only Corinne Rodrigues!    

Chris is also following his bliss.  From a young age he’s known he wanted to be in the book industry.  And this is exactly what he’s doing today: reading for a living.  But he’s also a writer who is confident that the money will follow.       

Many of us are writers who blog.  Some publish in literary anthologies, journals, magazines, and some are authors of books.   But few of us have quit our day jobs yet.    

The vast majority of those who write are either little known

or unknown hoping to become little known  ~ Brian Doyle

So, given Van Gogh’s statement above that our profession is not necessarily our bread and butter, but rather a passion and a call in life, what is yours? 

What do you do out of pure joy?  And would continue to do if you never received a penny?