What am I called to become?
Who will it outrage?
How will my destiny cause pain? 

When St. Paul says, 
“I have fought the good fight, 
I have finished the race” 
I think he is a Jungian
in spirit
knowing that the Divine Call is to become
oneself.

His friends must have been outraged.
Just like the families of the disciples who left. 
The promising young men who said -  
“Gotta go. Sorry. I know you want something else 
for me. But I’m called to this.”

In my deepest Self
what am I called to be 
or do?
Who wants to talk me out of it? 

© Lewis-Barr (2Timothy 4: 7-8)

I cling to enthusiasm (1) 
but let go of brutality toward 
my imperfections. 

I hold onto inspiration (2)
but let go of only seeing
what is lacking.

I pray to be released from
this worship of 
always more and better -
that I should be 
more and better - 
instead of celebrating what I am. 
“If only I could achieve”
this milestone 
in my health
in my wealth
in my art.
Then I would be satisfied. 

It is a devil’s bargain. 
Those targets pass to be replaced by 
new goals. 

I walk an inner tightrope
and pray 
to keep my motivations
but release my
relentless
condemnations. 
-----------

1 the Greek word enthousiasmos, derived from entheos, meaning "divinely inspired" or "possessed by a god"

2 from the Latin inspirare, meaning "to breathe into" or "breathe upon". It combines in- ("in") and spirare ("to breathe"). It originally carried a, spiritual or divine connotation, implying a holy or supernatural force breathed an idea or divine grace into a person, appearing in English in the mid-14th century.

I’m in the prayerful embrace
of a new spiritual director.
I introduce myself 
with one of my most entrenched
neurotic woes.
Why waste time?

Then suddenly
I have a vision.
A chance for active imagination!
We enter the scene.

I’m on a narrow bridge
crossing a spectacular gorge.
I’m in the middle of the passage. 
Too far down to go back.
I know my task is to keep walking 
toward the land ahead. 

A brilliant sapphire sky, wispy clouds
and craggy desert hills surround me. 
I am alone in this magnificent place.
The bridge feels secure.
I am not afraid. 

Now all my daily worries vanish. 
How could I waste a moment of this vista
brooding over petty obsessions.
This is the time to cherish
my unique view -
created from all the choices I’ve made.

I’m between two worlds –
the collective one I’ve left
and the future I seek. 

But now, there is nothing to do 
but take one step at a time and
gaze with wonder and gratitude 
at my inner landscape. 

This is my counsel. 
There is no need or place for fretting.
This is a time to appreciate
each scene, each step.  

I am unprepared.
I am on an adventure. 

I wander the transit station
and pray to find a pen.

I could buy a pen, in a local shop
but those are meant for tourists
and I’m cheap.

Instead I wander and
I wonder 
about God.

I could be like these corporate travelers
multi-tasking every moment
efficiently maximizing my productivity.
I know this path.

But today I’ve traveled by train
and have arrived with a spare hour.
I’m suddenly seized with a need 
to write. 
Not dictate on my phone. 
I need to push pen across paper.
But my tiny purse holds no tools
for the hunger of my soul.  

A small voice in my head tries to 
object about “wasting time.” But instead
I wander around the terminal 
and think about God.

An adventure is a time 
without agendas. 
Being unprepared 
begins an adventure.
Adventures always bring me closer to God. 

I wait in line for a small tea
and think about God.

I wander and look for some stray
forgotten pen
and think about God.

Then I go to a shop and ask:
“has anyone found my lost pen?”
The kind woman hands me a cheap pen!
Then I go to the ticket stall and take a free guide.
It has almost no black space but 
my soul is doing cartwheels.

I sit at an outdoor restaurant table.
Will they make me leave?
I sip my tea and scribble across the
train schedules.
I won’t be able to read this but
I’m hugging my soul so hard and 
She is hugging back. 
Bliss. 
(Then I find that my teeny purse 
was actually 
already holding 
a pen!)

Now I walk to the theatre 
to wait another hour. 
Then usher. 
Then watch a brilliant play.
Then walk back to the train.
Then wait
and ride home.

It is a long “unproductive” day of 
waiting
adventures
and thinking about God. 

To be an artist
is to sit with God every morning
and tinker with words or clay or crayons.

What if the entire world played this way?
Everyone sitting with God in the morning 
and listening?

Imagine if all adults and children
for one day
played. In earnest
with their hearts wide open. 

Some souls are blessed -
their work is truly play.

But for others -
their vocation may never be recognized
or recompensed. 
May they find time for their  
sacred contemplation.

Age and then illness
finally freed me from the treadmill.
I loved the challenges of my paid work
but my soul sings now
and everyday rejoices to work hard
at play. 

Like Icarus I fly across the world
and “meet” a new friend
in Australia. Brother Lawrence also explores 
mythic stories and his faith. 

I visit with creatives over zoom
and build a community 
outside of geography.
I access the knowledge of centuries
from a phone in my pocket.
I transcend space and time.  
It is a blessing but only when linked with 
the smallness of my life. 

I watch the squirrel outside
gather leaves for her nest. 
She puts them in her mouth and
runs along the tree limb.
Then disappears at the 
top of the neighboring pine.
She works all day this way,
enhancing her home,
looking for seeds.
Her daily rhythm.

I too have rhythms of 
laundry and dishes and groceries
and editing and journaling and poetry.

I’m happiest when playing on 
a human scale –
moving in a tempo my great grandparents
would recognize.

Still, I love the new 
miracles of science 
and technology.
Even if I don’t understand 
Ilia Delio and her reassurance that 
AI will help us in our journey 
toward Teilhard’s Omega Point.

These contraries
churn in me. 
I want to be the hermit
silently weeding my garden.
I want to be the preacher
conquering algorithms 
and engaging the world.

What a strange time of opposites.
I breath into them and know that 
a third mystery
beyond 
my comprehension
rises
like a seed in the ground.

At the grocer a shiny seed packet beckons.
Zucchetta Serpente di Sicilia
“Serpent of Sicily”
promises sweeter zucchini.

I hedge my bets
and plant the new seeds
alongside my reliable heirlooms
the Tromboncino – 
who each year gives 
huge boa constrictor sized fruits -
green summer and orange winter delicacies
from the same generous vines.

But this year one Tromboncino dies. 
Then another.
Though they are generally immune
from disease
I find an infestation –
the lethal squash vine borer!

Had the “serpents” brought on the disease?
They remain unaffected.
The remaining Tromboncino’s struggle on
producing a few fruits
while the serpents grow long tangled branches
blocking out other plants and
attaching themselves
to the struggling milkweed.

Do the bees not recognize the 
strange white flowers? 
Do they refuse to pollinate? 
The flowers fall off.
Then small stumps appear 
but fruit does not grow.

I jealously watch as 
my neighbor’s vines grow heavy
with endless squash. 
I had given him seeds the year before 
and now he has a massive harvest.

But for me it is too late
to start over. 
I watch the serpent crawl and crawl, 
now crawling on my neighbor’s fence.
But still no fruit. Only mocking flowers.
The serpent crawls along the sidewalk 
and into the lawn. 
More and more flowers
but no fruit.
Our freezer waits for the accustomed 
harvest but there is none.

Should I rip the serpents up?
They are messy 
and unproductive.
I wait.
Perhaps the harvest will still come?
I examine the many flowers
and attempts at fruiting
and think of my own 
artistic efforts. 

It is also late 
in the season 
of my life.

I will wait and
be patient
with the mystery.
Perhaps the harvest will still come. 

My short-term memory is shot.
Or my soul has decided that 
She’s unconcerned where I put that 
lid, or receipt, or charger cord, or
special tincture I tucked away.

I joke that “a poltergeist” has stolen
the gardening tool, the box of chocolates, the knife.
As disappearances increase it seems 
that I live in a haunted house. 

Spookier still is that I
HAVE a memory of putting the 
pepper grinder HERE in the cabinet.
Later, after much searching, we find it
on the couch? Slowly we rehearse events
and it makes sense.
But not always. 

Is it normal aging? Or is my unconscious
left hand not letting me know what
the right hand is doing? 
Either way, it’s eerie to 
not be fully in charge. 
And humbling. 
And, if I have the right attitude, perhaps fun
to know I’m not alone and 
there is a vastness
within and without.
Many parts, lives, multiverses? 

First morning light
a nagging tug from
some unconscious realm
inside.

A sadness?
An anxiety?
Something left undone. 
A duty calls?

I sit in the morning
closed eyes soaking in the new 
sunshine.
What is my work today? 
What adventures loom?

Wordless
I offer up my mind 
my heart 
my soul.
My work is to praise
and to witness
the emerging Self. 
To separate the wheat
from chaff within.

I sit
“doing nothing.”
It’s all I want to do. 
This communion.

I worry something’s wrong
with me.
The more I pray
the more I want 
to pray. The inner 
path is endless. I walk along 
it toward the Sun. This is 
bliss. And work. And meaning.
But mostly mystery. 

After contemplation
poems are the closest way
to this sunlit path of grace. 

It seems like I’m not doing anything.
But I’m 
listening.

The sparrows, nuthatches, woodpeckers and starlings have 
eaten all the suet in one day.
I put out another entire cake but 
a day later 
that is also gone.
This is not sustainable.

Now they come to the empty cage.
They look
fly away
and come again
to look and fly away.
Throughout the morning they come and sit near
the empty feeder. Hoping. 

Even if I give them another package
Spring is coming and 
we’ll soon stop this ritual.
Are they ready to search for bugs and seeds
from my native garden?

We are like the birds.
Devouring the planet. 
Coming back to old institutions
over and over again. 
But we have bigger brains than
grackles.
We should be smarter 
than the birds. 

At a film festival last week
we watched 6 hours of independent shorts. 
Stories I remember: a family hides mold in their home
and shoots a beloved songbird to help their loved one,
two paintings talk to each other on a wall,
a father chides his daughter for not cleaning well but then offers up 
confessions of his own shame,
a mother sees images of a son she lost,
a ghost becomes afraid of the people visiting his “haunted house.”

I kept wondering: Why tell THAT story?
Some films were more professional than others but 
each offered a unique, new world
to explore. 

Then yesterday at church
I held the plate as each seeker
came forward for communion. An array of 
tall, tiny, old, grizzled, silly, sincere, doubtful, 
afraid, bold, frail, eager, affectionate, shy, muscular,
locally born, and from far away.
Each soul a galaxy of mysteries 
that will never be fully known. 

The line moved forward and each received the
Body of Christ
Body of Christ
Body of Christ.
They received and they were together 
the Body of Christ. 

I am a cosmos within.
I strive to connect to the other
universes that surround me. 
Much of the time I don’t make a real connection.
But every so often - a novel, an album,
a heart felt conversation bridges the gap 
between me and you. And  
we make contact. 

the tops of the trees dance
against a grey-white sky.
I send my heart 
out to them
and we sway. 
If only I could stay 
in this embrace
forever.

I’m sitting behind a man
together we ride a horse 
through the sky
heading toward ancient Athens.

I love flying dreams like this one.
Although Jungians warn of Icarus – 
falling from hubris. 
Do I have such inflation
I must be warned in a dream?

In Greek myth, Bellerophon rode 
the flying horse Pegasus. 
Like Icarus he tried to fly too high
and was shot down. 

I search for ancient art, 
Bellerophon and Pegasus 
on vases and sculptures and mosaics.
One shows the hero killing
the monstrous Chimera.
Circa 2nd century AD it looks
identical to the icon of 
St. George and the Dragon that 
I bought in Athens last year, 
just before my troubles began.

It was the only icon I bought.
I didn’t know why. 
The room was filled with hundreds of saints.
But St. George felt familiar.
The shopkeeper asked if I had 
a connection to the saint
but I shook my head 
as he wrapped up the small wooden painting.

Now the image returns a year later
in a dream. 
I’m with the hero, 
on the horse of inspiration.

Was Medusa the cause of my facial palsy?
Half my face paralyzed
after staring at her image in
museum after museum.
Afterwards I worked on the symbolism
of the Death Mother 
inside me. 

When Medusa was slain
from her throat came Pegasus
source of creative inspiration,
pal of the Muses.

So, last night, I’m riding a powerful source
of creative inspiration. 
I’m riding toward an ancient civilization 
within myself. 
And I’m reminded 
to watch out 
for inflation.

You’ve decided to withhold again.
I’ve learned
to recognize the signs.
Our talk becomes superficial.
My body feels sad
and sick.
I wonder what’s wrong
with me.

But today I trust myself more.

Yesterday I visited Carla
to have a heart to heart about
why our friendship had suddenly died.

Carla explained her side.
Shortly before our ending
she had grown tired of our deep talks.
She had decided 
she’d revealed too much. 
She decided
to go back
to lighter topics. 

Such a gift to hear those words!
A validation!
I had not been crazy
when
unexpectedly
during our times together 
I felt despondent
desolate
queasy.
My body knew the truth
but could only tell me in 
symptoms.

Carla had enough problems at the time.
I couldn’t bring up this hidden 
dis-ease.

After a few more visits I pulled away.
I didn’t know what was happening. But my body
kept repeating - 
our meetings weren’t good for me.  

Carla said 
she wanted me as her “walking friend.”
One that would help her 
maintain her exercise regimen.

But I didn’t want to be 
her walking friend.
I wanted to be 
her friend.

When you heard your own trilling
played from my recorder
you flew in a rage
straight toward the song.
Defending yourself
against yourself 
as I do
when I hear the quiver
of my own Shadow.

Weeks ago I bought a pillar candle
to help me in my constant prayer
for justice. Supplications for a miracle.
To draw water from the 
impenetrable rock of
a family betrayal.

Strange. So strange. I had also bought 
a flameless candle
run on batteries. 
It seemed incredibly lifelike.
It would be more sustainable for the months
or years of prayer ahead.

But I felt a pull and turned it off and lit the pillar.
This crisis deserved the real wax.
But strange, so strange. Was it seeing the real flame
or did the candle-maker add her own prayers?
I felt such angst, seeing that candle burn.
My longing, my pain increased and I wanted to 
blow the candle out.

Strange, so strange, 
this went on for days. The I ching counseled
that I endure it. So I did, although
the flame seemed to burn my heart.
Was it an invisible rattling of chains to the ancestors?

The pillar seemed to last forever and I surrendered
to whatever invisible
personal or collective magic
might be burning
dissolving
old patterns.

Finally, the candle burned itself out. 
No outer miracle had happened
but I had survived whatever inner calcinatio 
had turned part of me to ash.

Now a battery lights my altar space.
Now when I wake up 
in the middle of the night
I see my altar and connect my intention. 
My prayers feel much cooler now.   
Quieter and less demanding. 
This flameless candle will last and
I can trust that these prayers can lead to changes
I may not see.
Lead to justice in its own time. 
I make the prayers again and again, that the impenetrable might be
softened and that justice would come. 

Strange, so strange. Real or imaginary?
This plastic candle is all I can handle
for my cosmic supplication.

Abraham followed a call
into a wilderness.
Cut off 
from his lineage. 

How terrifying to leave
all 
he knew
to believe
he was worthy 
to start something new.

How lonely was he?
Did he doubt or
blame himself?
Did he often 
think he was crazy?

Then, after many years
did he find an oasis
within himself?
An “amor fati”--
a love of his fate. 

Like Abraham 
I followed a call
into a wilderness.
Cut off 
from my lineage.

I sink deeper into my 
singular 
fate.

I haven’t died early, like my brother.
I’m not consumed with rage, like Dee.
I’m not surrounded by 13 siblings, like Judy.

No, my fate is to wander
in the desert.
Most of my family 
now gone.

A small victory –
I remembered some dream fragments from the night!

I’ve been on a quest for supplements
that will help me sleep but 
not reduce my dreaming.

I've been experimenting with essential oils 
(Lavendar and Rosemary - "for remembrance").
I’ve tried different herbal combinations. 
But I haven’t yet solved the puzzle. 

My life is filled with the concerns
of a mature person 
of privilege.

I feel embarrassed by this.
But perhaps I can only 
really attend 
to my own daily mysteries.

If I was the President or a billionaire
I’d have the staff and the agenda
to tackle the world’s distress.

But I can only do small things. 
Help the animals in my yard
guard the health of my family
offer goodness to neighbors
and pray for what I cannot affect 
directly.

And make art. 
Making art has taught me to attend to 
the moment
the word
the impulse
the stimulus.

But making art can feel so trivial.
Why bother 
when the world falls apart?

I don’t know.

All I know is that 
I was made for beauty
and love
and work
and to dedicate myself to living my own truth.

Jung, Lao Tzu, Chardin 
each tell me that invisible right action 
can change the world.
My goal is to make each day a 
work of art. 
Filled with as much truth 
and compassion 
as I can discover. 
Filled with 
faithfulness to my own
strange destiny.

That is how the world changes. 

So I research herbs
and record my dreams
and write poems that few will see.
That’s my small life and
I live it 
the best I can. 

I imagine my father, brother, and now mother
sitting in theatre box seats or maybe
tv control panels.

You watch my adventures
from above, like spectators viewing 
soap operas or sports.
You cheer me on, and 
witness my struggles and sometimes
even my complaints 
against you.

What are YOU doing these days?

I like to think of the cords that connect us.  
Do you feel my inner work? 
Attending to my broken parts, I hope it flows back to you. 
Perhaps we work on the lineage together? 

These days you are everywhere Dad, 
and I’m often startled to see you reflected 
in my daily quests.
I carry your doubts, your hunger, your unlived life.
I take it forward in me.
in my scripts, my films, my poems, and 
a peculiar podcast. 
In the recording studio 
I hold a space for people like you, Dad --
Holy atheists.

I like to imagine other folks too -
a requested clan. 
Marie Louise, and Carl, and Robert, and Helen, and
others I don’t know. I feel this
tribe of invisible support.
I am grateful. 

But it is you Dad and David (and now Mom) that I imagine
watching, 
cheering me on, 
and finally understanding my soul.

How lucky to have you forever 
in my heart 
a balm of love.

I lived in church -
for lifetimes? 
My comfortable home
until exiled. 
Then I wandered with artists
learning new scary paths.
and all the forbidden fruits.

Their God searches 
showed me the shadow 
I'd long denied. 
I learned to speak 
with rougher language
that showed the gamut of life’s range.
I learned about astrology, tarot, 
drugs and sex. 
I found an expanding universe
and my own limitless grief. 

I became more whole. 

But theatre artists hated the church.
(they had been killed 
for their art only centuries before).
I was alone in my hunger for the 
Christian God I had known. 
Year after year
I endured my split – a hunger for a God
I couldn’t talk about. 

Jung gave me the words again. 
He offered me a place to stand. 

My split self 
is under construction.
I'm a bridge for those 
estranged from 
their Shadow
and those 
estranged from their 
inner Light.