Christmas Eve, 2011. On Christmas Eve, 2004, my son, sister, cousin and I sat with a total stranger at the Marriott Courtyard in Memphis, Tennessee. My husband had been buried the day before and an ice storm had turned the town into a skating rink, preventing us from returning home to Atlanta. I always thought it strange that we were at The Marriott Courtyard across from St. Joseph’s Hospital.

A kitchen employee by the name of Mary (to amplify the Mary and Joseph thing) had taken pity on us and offered to bring her Christmas ham and the fixings to the motel and feed us. We were deeply moved. Makeshift stockings were hustled up from a convenience store and a drugstore. A stocking cap that read “Mary” in glitter was placed on her head.

We five sat in the otherwise empty lobby and feasted. Death and rebirth were one.

I could not ever go back to that time nor do I think I will have to. For the past seven years I have known peace underneath my usual daily challenges.

Writing is now what I do. I have, for the most part, given up spiritual books and teachings. I have become what I needed the most.

I have become someone who knows what I need.

If some of you are still struggling with being kind to yourself, you are not alone. It took five years as a caregiver for me to earn the time to take care of Vicki Woodyard. She was overdue for a rest.

She is smarter than I ever gave her credit for. She learned one day at a time how to manage what needed managing. She just kept putting one foot in front of the other. The walk up the inner mountain is ongoing but she is now pacing herself.

I hope that 2012 finds her in an even deeper peace. That way she can offer the so-called world a bit of it. Otherwise, what’s the use? She is trying to see through the bushel over her head. What she sees is nothing less than herself.

This essay makes no sense; that is how it should be. Otherwise it would be just another treatise. Cue the star, the shepherds and the wise men. A child is born.

The One Necessary Trait

“What is the one trait necessary to maintain a relationship?”

I was asked this question in hopes I would come up with an answer. I was married to the same man for thirty-eight years. And I am going to tell you something that will make me blush. We were both virgins when we married. Not only that, we remained faithful to our vows. It was not romantic love that drew this partner to me; it was karma, destiny, fate.

But it had no happy ending, not at all. I married him only to discover that our young daughter was destined to die of cancer at the age of seven. He died of it himself when he was only sixty-three. I was the weak one in the family, which just goes to show you that reason has no say in the court of love. As he told it, he saw me running down the stairs of our elementary school wearing a red skirt and a white blouse. I was only eight years old, but he saw me as an angel. He always called me that when he was feeling romantic. Being an engineer, though, he was not the greatest speller. I remember one birthday cake that read, “Happy Birthday, Angle.”

Although I wrote one-liners for Joan Rivers, he never laughed at my jokes. He was proud, though. He bragged on me knowing someone famous. Later, I added Phyllis Diller, Jeff Foxworthy and Jay Leno to my “sold to” file, but I hung up my shingle writing comedy some time ago. I really didn’t know I was an essayist until Bob was diagnosed with multiple myeloma. I said to him, “I am going to start a website to support you.” Someone else had done this and I knew I wanted to do one for him.

I had no idea how to build web pages but I taught myself slowly and surely during the first part of his cancer. I soon realized the satisfaction I got from stringing words together to tell our story. He seldom read any of the copy—he was living it—and I was strengthening myself for the inevitable day of his death. And come it did. Five days before Christmas of 2004, this valiant man took his last breath. I was not even with him. Our son and I were at home resting. We knew it was a matter of days before he died and we were letting go on many levels, as was Bob.

My sister had driven nonstop from Pennsylvania to be with us. She sat with him that long last day. As she told it, “The French doors to his hospital room blew open and a single leaf blew in, as if the spirit had come to get him.”

He was buried during a sleet storm two days before Christmas. Few people made it to the funeral due to the weather and the fact that everyone was busy. I stood beside his casket touching the only life-like part of his body, the hairs on his hand. “Easy,” my son whispered, fearing I would mess something up.

This is a long way to answer the question of what one necessary trait is important to maintain a relationship. That is a no-brainer. Commitment. And commitment grows into love. And love flowers in the face of death. He is the one I want to meet me when I cross over. I guaran-damn-tee you that he will still call me Angel. And I him.

*Order the book or make a Christmas Donation to the website. Every time a book sells, I get a feather in one of my wings 🙂 Bob Woodyard has been gone seven years now. He would be so proud. Give what you can to support the site. The DONATE BUTTON is to the right. Thank you!

This has been a great year online for me. My readership has grown as I have added new Friends on Facebook. Do me a favor and subscribe to my Notes there. Think about ordering LIFE WITH A HOLE IN IT. Know that an independent spiritual writer needs love and support to keep going in a world where commercialism runs rampant. If you can make a Christmas donation, please do!

If my notes have made a difference to you, consider buying the book if you haven’t yet done so. I don’t do this on my own and each of your comments adds richness to the pot. We are making tasty soup together. Oh, sure, tears fall in and may raise our sodium content but the heart is softened along the way.

A lot of us have learned that the script can be taken to a higher level. That is the challenge and the law. Grace arrives unexpectedly. The star rises in the east (inside of us) and awareness is born.

LIFE WITH A HOLE IN IT is on amazon.com or on booklocker.com in paperback OR ebook.

Thank you for your presence in my life.

Vicki Woodyard

Everything is in the hands of the guru; we just don’t know it or believe it. I am working on *a manuscript that consists of spiritual essays. As we all know, spiritual essays don’t sell unless they are in the hands of the guru. I know that for one reason. My own hands are split into left and right, success and failure, can and can’t. They are dividing machines. Only the hands of wisdom can hold one’s hopes and dreams and give them back to us rendered purer than they were before.

Life is about reuniting the opposites, letting ourselves be held in hope and love. Unlearned lessons on this subject keep recurring and each time, they are saying, “Give yourself to me and I will heal you.” And we don’t do it.

When my daughter died, she passed from my hands into the hands of God. I didn’t like that arrangement, not at all. For it meant I would no longer shop for pink dresses or have her children to hold when I grew older. It meant a hopeless feeling of empty arms. And yet the guru was holding us both in hands of love.

Life went on and my husband passed into the guru’s hands. She had held him through almost five years of pain and now she is holding him on high. His hands can no longer rub my back or open a door for me, unless it is into higher worlds.

He came to me in a dream recently and let me know that I was doing fine, spiritually speaking. He wanted me to be less passive toward life and so I am going to share my message freely from this point on with whoever wants it. It is so simple. Everything is in the hands of God. Everything given to God is returned to us on a higher plane. When I am reunited with my lost loves, we will not recognize each other for our beauty.

*The manuscript was published as LIFE WITH A HOLE IN IT. It can be ordered on the website. Or make a donation if you have already ordered the book. Just trying to pay for the upkeep of the site. All donations welcomed.

Dear Santa Claus,

I just want one thing for Christmas this year. I want Vicki Woodyard to get some stinkin’ faith in herself! She is moping around here like you wouldn’t believe. She doesn’t believe in herself. I wish you could have seen her before I moved in with her. She was like a shadow floating around this old empty house. She was looking out the window and I moved in through the front door. Oh, it was tricky getting her to begin writing me. I’ll give you that. I had to wait until she was actually at the keyboard before I could begin slipping the words into her hands. And then she had to move them over the keyboard while I hovered overhead. I had to make her look ridiculous while she was making me look like a cute little ass.

Every day I would bustle around her kitchen (her heart) and make use of it. I didn’t know what else to do but play like I was interested in baking. Through the years she began to draw me as a beloved character, little guessing that I was the Self come to revive her droopy, dopey little self. I have had to put up with Larry just to have the pleasure of introducing Ruin. (That will all be made clear when MY book comes out.) Ruin is the true guru, btw. No one is more surprised than I am about that. But what can you do?

Santa, I know you have a lot of toys to deliver for the good little girls and boys (LOL), but I know a woman that needs some trust in her own ability to make people laugh and cry at the same time. I can’t let her get too near the cookies because of that because it’s messy, but whatevs….

The kitchen smells nice and spicy and the gingerbread men are running like they have cast aside their crutches at Lourdes. I just need for Vicki to believe, not in you, but in herself. She’s actually a decent sort. She DID create me and now like Pinocchio, I am turning into a real live guru. Maybe I should be writing a letter to The Blue Fairy. Ya think?

Love and respect,
Swami Z

P. S. Make a donation by clicking the Donate Button to the upper right of this post. It’s orange. She needs something in her website stocking! Ho ho ho. Be Vicki’s angel this Christmas….help her keep the site up and running.

An online friend and I have discussions about our solitary lifestyles. Although she is married with two sons, she essentially lives a private life with them. I have always followed the same path. For one thing, the spiritual path is a demanding life. The farther you go, the steeper the incline gets and most people have dropped out along the way. If you are already grumbling, don’t read any further. I am not asking for people to chime in with comments about what an antisocial jerk I am.Trust me 🙂

Keep reading and I will let you in on a little secret. I am clairsentient. I read people’s energy fields naturally and instantly. I don’t do this for money. I do this automatically for my own sake. The reason why I keep to myself is that most people don’t vibrate on my wavelength. I don’t necessarily think it is superior; it is what it is.

My friend with whom I have the discussions emailed and said she had found me a massage therapist in the city where I live. She did not have my mailing address and I was amazed. She had found a woman whose office is mere minutes away! Not only that, but she and I clicked instantly. Don’t tell me it was just an accident. No, the wavelength thingie works. I just had my second massage from her and she is professional from tip to toe. Good character, ethical and all that.

I seldom have people in my house. I have been meditating, healing, etc. in it for many years now. It is a true haven for me. Why would I want to ruin it with bad company? And as Vernon Howard used to say, in so many words, if you’re not trying to wake up, you’re a lost soul. And most people are not trying to wake up.

So there you have it, my insight about why I keep to myself. My clairsentience tells me I am better off alone than with people who are still firmly stuck in the dream. Vernon made this pithy comment: “The only difference in sleeping people is how they snore.” 🙂

P.S.
Check out my book by clicking on its link. I could use a sale….

There is no time
and there are no edges.
This insight gives rise to
a thousand imaginary
cruelties wrought by
the deluded mind.
There is no deluded mind.

Vicki Woodyard

Thanksgiving. We got through it, my son and I. We went to a local restaurant for a buffet. It was crowded with people and we sat with strangers for almost an hour before they called us to a table. Before that, a couple of women I had been chatting with offered to share their large booth with us. I felt that would be uncomfortable, so we waited and got our own large booth.

The dressing was wonderful and the white chocolate bread pudding was outstanding. Good coffee kept coming and it was rather nice to be with friendly strangers as our family for the evening. One never feels complete on holidays after close family members have passed on. But you do the best you can. I took a long slow walk, the weather being almost balmy.

As I walked I addressed my husband in my heart. “Here I am, missing you as always.” The trees are almost bare now and the sky was cobalt blue, as blue as my heart. Clear blue emptiness of eternal love. Nothing to block out my view of love, love shining inside, love burning into the void.

Writing enlivens me. To share these lonely words with you is healing, for you have your own loneliness to deal with. Roy Orbison really had a handle on the lonesome style. So clear and true. I try to do that with my words. I want them to vibrate on the same universal chord as his. Phrasing should be musical; emotional intensity should build. I want you to know me, to know my heartache, to understand that is the path of healing for me. I have no intention of building a rose-colored palace of enlightenment in which to dwell. I am content with the simplest of things. A piece of pumpkin pie with whipped cream, sitting on my cozy green couch watching HGTV. They are showing how Rockefeller Center is decorated for the holidays. My heart is bare and that is how I like it. That way emptiness and fullness are seen to be the same. You understand, don’t you?

My writing is my passion and my calling. It rises from the ashes of thought and transcends my ego high jinks, hopefully. Yesterday was a day of irony and humor in my Facebook notes, but like perfume and wines, there are always different notes in each essay. That is just how I roll.

One of my favorite bloggers is Crazy Aunt Purl. She uses her daily life as grist for the mill. Her writing, like mine but better, is infused with inner angst and hope, peppered with confession and intimacy. We are alike in that way. I, however, have never caught on with the masses and likely never will. But I write because I write because I write.

I have been looking at my life and see that changes are forthcoming. I am acknowledging that the astral plane is real and that often we meet “somewhere out there” before we actually meet in person. This also happens with anything we create. We first come up with it in our heads before we share it collectively. I am watching my fingers hit the keys, trusting them to transmit what it is I am trying to say. They are my partners in crime and time and sometimes rhyme.

I have written about my friend David, whom I met in a dream before I met him in four-square reality. We both recognized each other immediately. I told a psychic friend about him and she said “You have known each other for eons.” And I believe her. Outwardly I am alone; inwardly I companion with a few rare souls who are tuned in to something higher than the everyday.

She also told me not to do an interview I was asked to do. So I said no and that proved to be the right decision for me to make at the time. I have often felt guilty for not living an outer life; I just do my writing and inner work and spend the rest of my time taking care of business, puttering, watching TV, walking, etc. She always says that I am learning to trust my gut and that my gut usually says to keep to myself.

So here we are together this morning. We are strewn all over the planet trying to make sense of who we are and what we came in to do. I loved the David Whyte clip that I posted yesterday. In it he says that when we feel estranged from home, all we have to do is acknowledge that. That IS home. So true, so deeply true. That is why my notes ring a bell with some of you. You who know what “not at home” feels like. You who are returning home via this very knowledge. Namaste.

David Whyte on YouTube:

I dreamt that Swami Z took me out beyond Planet Earth just for the night. I had to fall asleep first; that was a prerequisite. But then I awoke to another level, where it was all magical.Swami nudged me out of my body gently by rapping on my little round head. I popped out easily and we were off!

“The first thing I want to do is see Wynken, Blynken and Nod’s little ship,” I said, reverting easily to my childhood essence.

“Sure, anything you want, Vicki. We can even get pizza after we get back home. This is your night.” He pointed upwards and right overhead was their wee little trundle bed sailing so happily on a sea of stars.

“Oh, it’s just like I thought it would be,” I said, shivering ecstatically. “Can I see the cow jump over the moon?”

Swami just grinned happily. “Look down, because we are above the moon right now.” He was right; I was over the moon with happiness. I looked down and saw a gentle brown cow just clearing the surface of the moon. So it was all true!

Swami and I floated around the cosmos for what seemed like days; in reality I don’t know how long we were “somewhere out there.”

“Is the moon really made out of green cheese?” I asked him as we swung through the rings of Saturn.

“It sure is,” he said. “Wanna go get a bite?”

“You betcha,” I said. Soon we had made a moon landing and were happily eating dainty samples of green cheese being handed out at The Swiss Colony Store at the Moon Mall.

When the stars begin to go out one by one, I knew it was time to go home. I had one last question I wanted to ask Swami. I looked up at him with awe that he could have the power to take me on this galactic expedition so easily.

“I want to know if God loves me,” I said. “And does He know all about me?”

“He not only loves you,” Swami said majestically. He IS you. He is everything tied up with a bow. You can have it all. You can have your daydreams and your nightmare and your wisdom and your foolishness. You can have your suffering and your silliness, your loves and your hates, your wonder and your despair.It all belongs to you.”

I looked around the cosmos one last time. I thought I saw Santa Claus coming home from a test run of his sleigh. No, I know I saw him. Nothing is made up that hasn’t first happened on one level or another.

Life is good. We stopped at Domino’s and pigged out on cheesy pizzas that tasted almost as good as the moon. Now don’t tell anyone I wrote this. There is no scientific evidence that we are all God. None at all. But the last time I looked, there was no evidence to disprove it either.

Vicki Woodyard
Author, LIFE WITH A HOLE IN IT—Order it now!