Matthew Levine
Sunday
Inspiration piece

Squirrel…Lark…Lucky.
by Robert  Haydon Jones
Response

A very small, very young squirrel’s frozen profile froze my glance into a
long look and held that pose so god damn long that I banged the half‐open
screen door to my roof deck just to get it going – and, boy, it skittered and
it shocked me with its bushy tail that felt more burly than bushy ‐‐ and I’m
telling you the squirrel was very young.

And then a red-breasted lark somehow flew in the open downstairs door
(our dog is very, very old) and my wife was shrieking like it was a mouse
or me with a fresh sin ‐‐ and the lark flew right on up the stairs and my
shrieking wife  followed ‐‐ and the happy ending is the lark pecked at itself
in my bathroom mirror and then flew away out that same screen door that
I  had rapped to scare the squirrel. I remember the red breast on the lark
made it seem very vulnerable.

I went on back to my chair and started to finish my morning coffee
when it occurred to me that I was very lucky that the men who
molested me, all those years ago, when I was a boy, didn’t kill me.

The more I think about it ‐‐ the luckier I feel.
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Matthew Levine
Clear
Response

The Story of My Healing Hands
by J.P. McKenzie
as told to Robert Haydon Jones
Inspiration piece

Exactly a week ago today, I laid my hands on the left breast of Sally H, a 40-year-old mother of two with breast cancer. This afternoon Sally called and told Betty, my assistant, that she had an MRI this morning and the tumor has vanished. She said her oncologist is mystified. Sally was crying.  She said it is a miracle. She said I am a saint.

Believe it or not, events like this are pretty much routine for me these days.

But let me get one thing straight right off: I am definitely NOT a saint. In fact, I am NOT at all religious.

In fact, I often wonder how a miracle worker like me could be as skeptical as I am about spirituality. But that’s the way it is. There are literally hundreds of people who will swear on a Bible that I do miracles and yet the fact is I don’t have an ounce of faith in any deity or religion.

That’s not to say that I don’t have a yearning for faith – for a spiritual connection. Boy, do I ever! An old friend refers to it as “The Holy Yearning”. But I have never found it. I am very up-front about this.  And people are very surprised to learn that I have no specific belief – that I yearn for a firm, fixed, faith.

Even the people I heal are puzzled. “How can you be such a wonderful Healer,” they ask, “and not be a True Believer in some thing? That’s really hard to believe.” These are people I have just healed! The fact is my gift is hard to believe. Some times even I have a hard time with it.

Actually, the fact that I have no faith isn’t the biggest problem that the skeptics have with me. When 60 Minutes did a story about me, “Postman Mac’s Magic Hands”, a couple of years back; they got an avalanche of protest mail. The big complaint was from people who said it was totally impossible for a retired Letter Carrier to have such power!

So in response to thousands of requests, I’m telling my story out to my old friend, Robert Haydon Jones. The healing I am doing is real. You could call it, “miraculous” as defined in the Webster’s Dictionary: “Highly improbable and extraordinary and bringing very welcome consequences.” I want to set the record straight.

I definitely wasn’t born with my gift. In fact, I can tell you exactly when I got it.  Five years ago, in April, I decided to file my papers for early retirement. I had been a Letter Carrier for 25 years. My wife, Gloria, was dead set against my retiring.

She said she didn’t want me around all the time. I didn’t see how that was a problem.  The fact is I was hardly ever at home. On most nights and weekends from March through October, I work as a Baseball Umpire; and all year long, I attend four or five 12-Step meetings a week.

So, even though Gloria was pleading with me not to do it, I put in my papers. I couldn’t take the bullshit they put you through at the Postal Service any more.  My first week into retirement, I came back from umpiring a high school game a couple of towns down I-95 and my house was half empty. Gloria was gone.  So was her car and all of her things.

She left a note. She told me she was filing for divorce – that she was driving out to Del Mar, California to start a new life with Phil Brown, who was our insurance agent. She said she was sorry but that she and Phil had been an item for twelve years and now that his kids were grown they could be together. (Our two girls were done with college and living in New York City.)

It hurt and it hurt and the drug-addicted alcoholic in me cried out for my favorite, anesthetics from my bad old days. But I stayed close to my Sponsor; I doubled up on my meetings. I stayed sober.

But just barely – just by the skin of my chinny-chin-chin. So, when the second weekend in July rolled in, I was greatly relieved to be attending the 12-Step Weekend Retreat I had been going to in January and July for the last 15 years or so at a Retreat Center run by the Jesuits in Morristown, New Jersey.

My Sponsor was there along with 200 other crazed drunks and drug addicts from the New York Metro area. Usually, it is just what I need. But on the first night, I felt lost in the crowd at dinner and at the 12-Step meeting we had afterward.  When I went to my tiny room at bedtime, I felt a crushing emptiness.

I had always thought love was enough. It had never occurred to me that I could love Gloria as I did and lose her. And be played for a trick in the process!

I mean I know she had loved me back. She said I had a special way about me that she loved being with. We had our two babies within the first three years and we had wonderful times raising them. But Gloria had left me to be with another man.

That first night at the retreat, I didn’t get much sleep. Just as dawn was breaking, I got dressed and went down to the kitchen and got a cup of coffee. It was two hours till breakfast, and I really felt like using. So I got my jacket and cap and gloves and went for a walk.  I really like walking – hey, remember, I was a Letter Carrier for 25 years.

About half a mile out, I turned off the road and took a steep dirt path up a small cliff.  Near the top there was a small bench carved right into the cliff face.

I sat down on the bench and watched the rising sun’s beams creep toward me through the shadow.  I remember thinking dully that perhaps the sun could fill the utterly empty vessel I had become.

Then the sunbeams reached me and I think I grunted in appreciation as I was suffused with warmth –- and then as the sun shone full on me – an orgasmic rapture suddenly welled up and cascaded in me – as if every atom of my being was reveling in the warmth and the light.

The rapture subsided after about two or three minutes. I felt transformed. I felt serene and spent like I did after Gloria and I made love. I did not know exactly what had happened, but I knew my life would never be the same. I was no longer empty. I was certain I would never be empty again. The sun had filled me up forever.

I felt a sudden ravenous hunger for the institutional pancakes and sausage the Retreat features at breakfast. I was brimming with energy, so I started to jog on down the path down the cliff.

Well, I took a bad step, twisted my ankle and fell down heavily on the edge of the path. I was lucky I hadn’t fallen further off and gone down the cliff. That was the good news. The bad news was that my right ankle was very badly sprained. It was already grossly swollen. I wondered how I would be able to get back.

My ankle hurt like blazes. I took off my sneaker. The swelling made my ankle look deformed. I was certain it was a Grade 11 even possibly a Grade 111 sprain. It hurt!  I rubbed the swelling with my hand. To my astonishment, the swelling immediately began to subside. I kept rubbing. In less than five minutes, the swelling was gone and so was the pain!

I jogged on back to breakfast. I never had a happier meal. There was a new warmth and a burgeoning light in me that are with me to this day.

The first time I healed someone by laying on my hands was the day after I returned from the Retreat.  I had to see my lawyer, Dan, to sign some papers on Gloria’s divorce action.

Betty Watrous was Dan’s secretary. She had been struggling for months with severe pain from chronic Carpal Tunnel. She had on one of those ugly braces – but it wasn’t doing much good. So, on the spur of the moment, I asked her to take off the brace so I could touch her hand and wrist. After some hesitation, she did it. I rubbed her hand and in about ten minutes the Carpal Tunnel was gone, never to return.

I was very lucky that the sequence of my life as a Healer began this way.

Dan, my lawyer saw me heal Betty and he believed his own eyes. (You would be surprised how many people don’t!) Dan knew I had lightening in a bottle – but from the start, he counseled me to be very, very, cautious with my miraculous gift.

So, right then, Dan helped me to file on-line and create an LLC corporation.  I called it Healing Hands, LLC. Betty agreed we could use her name as Secretary.  Little did I know, that Betty would end up managing every aspect of Healing Hands.

Betty and I became lovers and soul mates. She manages my Healing Session schedules and my support staff, as I never could. At home, Betty and I have a truly blissful life. My two daughters really like Betty. Everyone does.

By the way, when Betty moved into my house, she insisted on replacing my extra big King-Size bed with a Queen-Size. “That bed of yours is too damn big,” she said.  “I’ve slept alone for 10 years since my husband died. I want your skin on my skin all night long.”

Dan suggested that Healing Hands follow some “Ground Rules”– and we have done so faithfully, letter-for-letter to this day.

We schedule Healing Sessions on the basis of order of receipt of the request.  We book a maximum of four Healing Sessions daily, Monday through Friday.

We never promise a cure. When people call, we tell them we will try our best, but that we never know what will happen.

I never see a client by myself. Betty, or one of my other assistants, is always present in the room when I lay my hands on a client.

We never charge for our services. We do accept and acknowledge donations made after the fact. These are voluntary donations. We have never asked for payment or issued a bill.

We keep meticulous records and file promptly to the State and the IRS.  Healing Hands averages well into seven figures of annual revenue. We have never owed a penny of penalty or interest on our business or personal tax returns.

I have laid my hands on thousands of people in the five years since I healed Betty’s Carpal Tunnel hand. I have healed more than 850 individuals. We have notarized Case Histories and Affidavits on nearly all of these Healings.

Unfortunately, as noted, I never know beforehand what the outcome will be.  So, sadly, there have been all too many clients who I haven’t been able to help.  A few of these disappointed folks have accused me of a being a charlatan and a faker. All I can say is I empathize with their dashed hopes. I tell them I am sorry. I tell them to please remember that I never promised them anything and I never charged them anything.

I was almost a year into the process, when I thought to offer my Sponsor a Healing Session to help him with the chronic pain he has suffered with for years from a badly mended broken leg.

I am happy to report that after I laid my hands on his leg, his pain abated within ten minutes and soon was gone for good. My Sponsor, who is a droll sort, says he still likes me even if I am a friggin witch!

This gift is as much of a mystery to me as it is to any one. Every Healing Session is exciting for me. I never know for sure what will happen. For the record, it doesn’t seem to matter if the subject is spiritual or not. Outcome is not influenced by age, gender, race or income.

I do not “channel” anything or anyone. As I lay my hands on a subject, I think back on that time on the cliff when the sun filled me – and then I hope for the best.

Every time a Healing occurs, the palms of my hands suddenly heat up and throb.  This lasts for no more than 10 seconds or so. Then my hands are totally normal.  When my hands heat up, I feel a wonderful, skin-to-skin bond with my client. Believe me, it is ten seconds of utter rapture. The best reference I can give you may be in your memory.

Think back to when your kids were real little and you nuzzled a lot with them and your spouse in your nest of a bed. If you and your skin have that memory, then you have a solid handle on the rapture I’m talking about.

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Alixandra Martin
London Dreaming
Oil on Canvas 40″x30″
Inspiration Piece

Umbrella Path
Amy Ludwig VanDerwater
Response

Like old stones in a river
…..one by one
……….these bright umbrellas
……………form a path across the water
………………..keeping people warm and dry.

But today I long to tiptoe
on the tops of each umbrella
green and orange
red and yellow
in soft silver tears of sky.

I want to dance across them
from umbrella to umbrella
tippy-tapping
pitter patter
as the people wonder why –

why they hear a sound
like footsteps
on their colorful umbrellas
as I whisper to this wet world
It is I.
It is I.

Note: All of the art, writing, and music on this site belongs to the person who created it. Copying or republishing anything you see here without express and written permission from the author or artist is strictly prohibited

Ruthie’s Town

by Marla Deschenes

Response

RUTHIE’S TOWN – a story excerpt

by Lisa L. Leibow

Inspiration

It’s an industrial city, centrally located – an hour from everywhere. On Main Street, a railroad
bridge spanned a steep incline heading north.  At least once a week,
a semi misjudged the clearance and jammed underneath it. Traffic
would back up beyond the Searstown Mall as far as St. Leo’s, while
everyone waited for the driver to let enough air out of his tires to
escape the clutches of the trestle. Once loose, the trucker would
re-inflate all eighteen wheels and carry on.

The trucker could have been headed to Pete’s Coffee Shop, where thick-necked guys with rolled-up sleeves,
sat at the counter. They worked at Foster Grant making sunglasses,
Alpha Rho making plastic boxes of all colors and sizes, and Union
Products making pink flamingos. They sat at the counter and
complained about the Bruins in winter and the Red Sox in summer. The
trucker also could have been headed to Whalom Park, home of the Flyer
Comet, where teenaged townies had a whale of a time. They would cling
to their dates and scream, while rattling down the wooden roller
coaster, or sit on the hoods of their parents’ station wagons at
the edge of the lake, passing around joints.

On Sundays, most of the population filled St. Leo’s Cathedral to the rafters. They were Catholics of
Irish, Roman, and French Canadian descent drawn together by the
parish. The rest of the Sunday morning worshipers could be found at
the United Methodist Church over on Hall Street. But Ruthie Kahn
worshipped on Saturdays, with about twenty others over at
Congregation Agudas Achim.

A block or two away from the synagogue was Doyle Field, where religion didn’t matter. All that mattered
was rooting for the high school football team on Thanksgiving
morning. Citizens filled the stands, everyone waving banners and
cheering on the Blue Devils against the Red Raiders. In those days,
few commuted any distance to make a living. Teachers, doctors,
pharmacists, and lawyers were all part of the community where they
worked. They joined students, parents, and factory workers, whistling
and whooping for the blue and white.

During the dark days of winter, evergreen garlands wrapped the street lamps glowing along Main
Street. Anyone driving toward the high school could see skiers riding
up t-bars and slaloming down the lighted slopes of Pheasant Run.
Winding through the residential neighborhoods off of Merriam Avenue
and West Street brought views of trees wrapped in blinking lights.
Flashing Santa Clauses and animated elves decorated yard after yard.
A car might pass a hundred houses blazing in red, green, and white
before reaching a split level lighted only by a post lamp at the edge
of its neatly shoveled walkway. Sometimes the bare homes would run
three or four in a row, but then it would be one-hundred-fifty before
another unadorned house came along. This was the easiest time of year
to pick out Ruthie Kahn’s and the few other Jewish homes in town.

October Trees
Marla Deschenes

Inspiration

MELTING OCTOBER SNOW –  a story excerpt

by Lisa L. Leibow

Response

Bettina waited for the elevator, picking at the edges of an old wallet-sized photo in the pocket of her brown leather coat and hoping she’d finally tracked down the one person who might know what really happened to her mother. Her father’s, “She’s singing with the angels, now,” may have satisfied the girl in pigtails, who had skipped to the kindergarten bus stop, bounded onto his belly every time he had read Hop on Pop at bedtime, and simply had asked, “Why I don’t have a Mommy like the other kids at school?” She didn’t understand why her father couldn’t trust her with the truth. After all, she wasn’t a child anymore. That morning last month, when blotches of red on her underwear surprised her, proved she was a woman.
She might have screamed when she saw the blood if it hadn’t been for Connie from Girls On The Run, bragging about the Coach purse her mother bought her to tote tampons, and for Ms. Johnson’s health lessons the year before, in fifth grade. There was something final about Bettina’s period. It killed the childish notion that when she grew up, she’d have to slather shaving cream all over her face and shave her chin like her dad.
She pressed the call button for the elevator for the third time and looked at the indicator above the door. The light for the eighth floor didn’t waver. “Slow elevator,” she muttered under her breath and pulled the picture from her pocket. On the back, curly letters in faded blue ink read, Troy, Love will keep us together. Yours forever, Tammy. A smiling freckled face with voluminous auburn hair feathered to the margins smiled at Bettina from the old yearbook picture. She’d never met this woman. Yet, she had more in common with her than she did with her dad.
The only reason she had the snapshot in the first place, was because she’d been working on a timeline of events related to civil rights for social studies class and had run out of glue. She had rummaged through every drawer in the house for tape, a glue stick, anything to attach the last photo of Rosa Parks to the assignment, finally winding up in the top drawer of Dad’s bedside table. She raked her hand through the layer of pocket change, pencils, and old receipts to find blue eyes like hers staring up at her. Bettina examined the square jaw and upturned nose – an older version of Bettina with big hair. Stuffed into the same junk drawer, a ceramic frame with a heart-shaped mat held a photo of this same woman in a white gown fit for Cinderella, walking down a white carpet toward a thinner version of Bettina’s Dad in a tuxedo. Bettina held her breath and squinted, trying to remember if she’d ever seen her father without eyebrows pinched together and shoulders cinched up to his ears. This guy with the effortless smile and smooth forehead meant that her father either had a long-lost happy twin, or had a life before Bettina that gave him joy.
In the photo, an older man to the bride’s left clasped her fingertips. He leaned toward her. Thick gray hair and full cheeks framed a bulbous nose. She’d never met her grandfather or any relatives on Mom’s side of the family. This was the moment Bettina came up with the idea to look for them. She couldn’t bare her father’s glossy distant look and clenched teeth each time she questioned the slightest detail about her mother, like whether Mom had planted the tulip bulbs that popped up around the mailbox every spring. Once she asked a few simple questions about where they went on their first date? Did they have a song?  He’d headed straight for the cabinet over the refrigerator, pulled out the black-labeled bottle, and kicked a shot of Jack Daniels. No telling what he’d do if Bettina asked him to delve into real memories of their life together, or worse yet, how she died?
The elevator signal-bell rang, the door opened, and she stepped in. When she reached the sixth floor of the nursing home, she followed the signs to Room 918, took a deep breath, and knocked.

A gravelly voice, said, “Come in.”

The door squeaked as she pushed it open. “Hello?”

A bed dominated the room. It was one of those adjustable beds she always wanted to fold in half at the mattress store next to Dippin’ Donuts. In a chair next to it, sat an old man who looked more like a crumpled brown pair of pants and sweater with wrinkly face glued to the collar. His white hair had streaks of gray, like muddy tire tracks through an unplowed winter road. He opened his paper-thin eyelids and looked in Bettina’s direction, widening his eyes, dropping his jaw, and reaching for the aluminum cane leaned on the windowsill beside him.

“It can’t be… Tammy?”
Until now, every bit of colorful past had been hidden like a forest after a blizzard in October. Vibrant burgundy, mustard gold, and warm cinnamon brown of autumn joy, wind-whipped and buried in heavy, wet snow of grief. She’d found her grandfather. This would change everything.
(To be continued…)

Ainsley Allmark

Inspiration piece

moon dance

by dani harris

Response

.

.

if  not for the Moon

would there be no tides?

no gentle surf to wade in

or raging seas to fear?

.

if  not for the Moon

dancing with the Sea

would She retreat

or unleash Her greatest fury?

.

the Moon will always be

companion to the Sea

pulling Her closer to Him

if  ever She tries to break free

.

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Ainsley Allmark

Waiting

Response piece

.

Shekhinah Ballerina
By Jewel Beth Davis
Excerpt from novel, Crisis Becomes You
Inspiration piece

Chapter Three

Irene Plax 

Inspiration Piece

Irene Plax

Response

My tia asked me why I didn’t dance with anyone at the New Year’s Eve party. She told me it’s bad luck not to dance, and whatever you’re doing at midnight is how the rest of your year will be.

Everyone knows I like guys, even if they don’t talk about it. My tia doesn’t know that I talked to seven different guys, or that I shimmied up two different palm trees early that morning to collect as many coconuts as I could, or that I kept the sharpest machete for myself so they would have to ask me to cut them open and I could watch them drink. Even if they only stayed by me a short time, I know they liked being watched.

So maybe I wasn’t dancing like everyone else, but I was making my moves. This is my year.

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The Matrix Blues (click link to play music)
By John Lewis
Response
The Matrix
By Helen Lewis
Inspiration piece

You know that bit

in The Matrix

where Neo wakes up

on a bunk bed,

head shaved,

cheeks like rice paper?

Remember how his fingers

scan the back of his skull

like a child reading Braille

and stop

when they find the hole?

That’s when he knows

for certain

he’s no longer dreaming.

I keep on feeling

the back of my head

but so far,

nothing.

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Note: All of the art, writing, and music on this site belongs to the person who created it. Copying or republishing anything you see here without express and written permission from the author or artist is strictly prohibited.

——————————————————

Note: All of the art, writing, and music on this site belongs to the person who created it. Copying

or republishing anything you see here without express and written permission from the author or

artist is strictly prohibited.