Poetry Station Confirmation!
The other day, recovering from another episode of depressive sleeping, actually hiding in dreamland to avoid working on my latest business possibility, it hit me.
I was sleeping because something about this business agenda was scaring me.
What was it? I turned to meditation.
Shut the lights off and turned to the Lord, my one and only Savior.
What was it God? Why was I determined to sleep my life away? I realized I had been pursuing the wrong dream; it was not that I wanted to approach disability insurance companies and present workshops on spiritual practice and daily meditation as the secrets to a spiritual grit that would embolden the dispossessed to reach for their dreams.
No, it was simpler than that: I wanted to become a therapist.
It just felt right.
Oh, I awoke today still wanting to sleep, but there was something hiding in today that filled me with vim and vigor and forbade me slipping back under the covers as I had done yesterday.
Today I was to man the Poetry Station at the Long Beach Time Exchange's 4-Year Anniversary Celebration in the yard at First Congregational Church.
From 2-4:30 p.
m.
, I would write poems for anyone who came up to my table, and from the moment I agreed to do it early Friday evening, I prayed that God would meet me there and write every single poem with His words, not mine.
It has long been a belief of mine that my poetry, prose, essays are not my own words, but those of My Maker.
When I write it is a profound listening; I hear the first words and I am off, denoting the words I hear that "come over the transom" from the heavenly realms.
I asked God to heal with my words, uplift, soothe and inspire.
I wrote a total of five or six poems today, and I swear that I was the one who benefitted most.
There was the family of three, shutterbug scrapbooking mother, reader of non-fiction father, and a delightful four-year-old who could have passed for 5-7 any day.
The woman suffering from a brain injury that filled her with hidden fears, yet who pushed past her prison to sell her art from the 1980's until today.
Her profit from that work, in a multiplicity of artforms, will fund the cure in which she steadily believes.
The Vietnamese woman, born and raised here, who helps others in her free time ascertain their identity by helping them write memoir and poetry, letting art help them solidify who they are.
The veteran of the homosexuality wars whose mother thought the only way to stop her son from having boyfriends and girlfriends was to place him in a mental institution and subject him to electric shock and lobotomy.
The psychiatrists refused to do it and pronounced him imminently healthy.
His father's belief saved him from his mother religious ferocity.
No Iraqi war hero would deny him the title, "veteran...
" There were many today, but it was the war veteran, for so I view him, who said that it was the way I listened that got him.
"It was like free therapy!" he exclaimed.
I beamed in delight and recognition.
For yes, it was about listening as people talked about themselves; their desires, their shortcomings, the activities that brought them utmost pleasure.
Not a one stalled at telling me what they did that brought them joy; what they would do whether they were paid or not.
I came away the one blessed, for giving them my words and letting them go away blessed and smiling...
Every one said of my words, "this is beautiful...
" The war veteran said, "This is my life in a work of art; this is a work of art!" He wrote a poem for me about my listening and I was moved almost to tears.
To give really is the secret of life.
If you are stuck, stymied, at a screeching halt? Take a break and help someone you love.
Help a stranger.
It will bless you and give you a new perspective on your own problem.
Today God blessed me with confirmation of my new profession.
I will eagerly volunteer at the next festival to man the Poetry Station, and as the prospect of my third career rises to the horizon, I know therapist will be the job title I seek with many willing clients ready to avail themselves of my listening ear.
I am a natural and people, strangers even, appreciate it.
Why? Because everyone has dreams, and dreams deserve to be listened to.
They must be listened to and affirmed before they can be achieved.
Love and blessings until next time, Dr.
Ni
I was sleeping because something about this business agenda was scaring me.
What was it? I turned to meditation.
Shut the lights off and turned to the Lord, my one and only Savior.
What was it God? Why was I determined to sleep my life away? I realized I had been pursuing the wrong dream; it was not that I wanted to approach disability insurance companies and present workshops on spiritual practice and daily meditation as the secrets to a spiritual grit that would embolden the dispossessed to reach for their dreams.
No, it was simpler than that: I wanted to become a therapist.
It just felt right.
Oh, I awoke today still wanting to sleep, but there was something hiding in today that filled me with vim and vigor and forbade me slipping back under the covers as I had done yesterday.
Today I was to man the Poetry Station at the Long Beach Time Exchange's 4-Year Anniversary Celebration in the yard at First Congregational Church.
From 2-4:30 p.
m.
, I would write poems for anyone who came up to my table, and from the moment I agreed to do it early Friday evening, I prayed that God would meet me there and write every single poem with His words, not mine.
It has long been a belief of mine that my poetry, prose, essays are not my own words, but those of My Maker.
When I write it is a profound listening; I hear the first words and I am off, denoting the words I hear that "come over the transom" from the heavenly realms.
I asked God to heal with my words, uplift, soothe and inspire.
I wrote a total of five or six poems today, and I swear that I was the one who benefitted most.
There was the family of three, shutterbug scrapbooking mother, reader of non-fiction father, and a delightful four-year-old who could have passed for 5-7 any day.
The woman suffering from a brain injury that filled her with hidden fears, yet who pushed past her prison to sell her art from the 1980's until today.
Her profit from that work, in a multiplicity of artforms, will fund the cure in which she steadily believes.
The Vietnamese woman, born and raised here, who helps others in her free time ascertain their identity by helping them write memoir and poetry, letting art help them solidify who they are.
The veteran of the homosexuality wars whose mother thought the only way to stop her son from having boyfriends and girlfriends was to place him in a mental institution and subject him to electric shock and lobotomy.
The psychiatrists refused to do it and pronounced him imminently healthy.
His father's belief saved him from his mother religious ferocity.
No Iraqi war hero would deny him the title, "veteran...
" There were many today, but it was the war veteran, for so I view him, who said that it was the way I listened that got him.
"It was like free therapy!" he exclaimed.
I beamed in delight and recognition.
For yes, it was about listening as people talked about themselves; their desires, their shortcomings, the activities that brought them utmost pleasure.
Not a one stalled at telling me what they did that brought them joy; what they would do whether they were paid or not.
I came away the one blessed, for giving them my words and letting them go away blessed and smiling...
Every one said of my words, "this is beautiful...
" The war veteran said, "This is my life in a work of art; this is a work of art!" He wrote a poem for me about my listening and I was moved almost to tears.
To give really is the secret of life.
If you are stuck, stymied, at a screeching halt? Take a break and help someone you love.
Help a stranger.
It will bless you and give you a new perspective on your own problem.
Today God blessed me with confirmation of my new profession.
I will eagerly volunteer at the next festival to man the Poetry Station, and as the prospect of my third career rises to the horizon, I know therapist will be the job title I seek with many willing clients ready to avail themselves of my listening ear.
I am a natural and people, strangers even, appreciate it.
Why? Because everyone has dreams, and dreams deserve to be listened to.
They must be listened to and affirmed before they can be achieved.
Love and blessings until next time, Dr.
Ni
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