GOD and My Major Appliances

I hear from GOD through the refrigerator.

Not really, but when I tell folks about this, I like to start off by saying that. It is marginally true.

Most of the time, GOD and I are in a very comfortable relationship. We have known each other a long time. I have talked, GOD has talked. We have been through a lot. GOD used to be there in my bedroom at night when I would hear my father break into an alcoholic rage and beat my mother. My sister, Julie, was not able to comfort me, but GOD stuck right in there. Most friends would run if they heard Daddy start up. I really appreciate someone who sticks around. We went to countless Sunday School and Training Union classes, even Wednesday night at church. No one will go to church with you on Wednesday night. I don't care how much they like you.

I really pitched a bitch, as we used to say, during my late teen years. By sixteen, I was drinking like I was my Daddy's daughter and smoking dope. By eighteen, I was having a lot of sex that didn't mean as much to me afterward as it seemed to promise right before. I blame the guys. ;) Hard as I tried to ignore GOD, I am humiliated to say, GOD was right there. Yipes. GOD is a sticker. GOD sticks.

By twenty, I had attempted suicide twice, been raped once, and had started to come around from the last wild years. I went to nursing school, graduated first in my class, left home and joined the Air Force. GOD went with me. I only own a couple of things from those years...a gossamer-thin gold cotton coverlet from India, a ring, some poetry, a few pictures. I left most of it behind, the rest was meaningless and got tossed. I tried my very best to ignore GOD. I stopped going to church, worked hard, played hard. I think GOD was wrapped in the fibers of that coverlet. Hidden among the scarlet and crimson paisley print, GOD could hug me as I hugged the coverlet. I was none the wiser.

Sometime after that, I met my husband, who was also in the Air Force. We married and grew up and had a child and GOD was welcome to hang out again. GOD and I went public. I talked about GOD. I prayed to GOD in front of people. I worked at Chapel on the Air Force base in Montgomery in Education. I told kids about GOD. It was the easiest job ever, talking to kids about GOD. All kids know GOD. They just do.

It was about this time that GOD and me and major appliances started being a thing. I was very open in communication with GOD, just like when I was little. Only now, the coversation expanded from pleas for help to how to help others. I was washing clothes when I received my first epiphany of the major appliances. It was pretty personal, so I won't divulge. Life went on. The second time was at the refrigerator. My husband had come home at lunch and just told me that he turned down a job at Randolph Air Force Base in San Antonio because he knew I didn't want to leave. He was right. I liked the area, loved working at Chapel and life was good. I turned to open the refrigerator and I just knew we should go. We did. Good move. We are still in the San Antonio area now.

Folks have asked me, after hearing about my Major Appliance revelations, what GOD sounds like. I still struggle to say. I definitely don't hear a booming voice like in the movies or a "still small voice" like in scripture. It's more the same way I hear my own self talking in my head as I am typing this tale. At MCP, Lexie once asked me how I know, if it sounds like when I am thinking myself, that it is not me, just saying what I want to hear.

Complex question. Simple answer. It sounds just the same as the voice in my head that said I would be ok while my daddy was beating my mother.

There are a lot of theories about the nature of GOD. I like to ponder them just as much as the next person. GOD is energy? GOD is in the bit of us people call the soul? GOD has an actual body and exists in some real place? Maybe GOD is magnetic waves and large appliances bring in the signal. Smirky grin here.

I don't know. I do know that when someone treats you well, even when all around you people are not treating you well and you are not treating yourself so lovely either, then you trust that. It's what I do.

My washing machine is seventeen years old. It has the knob broken off, so that you have to grab the leftover stub to turn it. Last night, it refused to spin. I had to bail out the water and put the dripping clothes in the tub. Then, I dropped the lid down with finality. ...and it started to spin. Several tries gives us the theory that the little switch that is pushed down when you close the lid is defective. If you smack it. It works. Whew! It is not only that I do not have the two hundred plus to replace it. That washing machine and I have history. We have been around the block and across the country together. It has seen my undies. And I was holding on to it when I heard a pretty startling thing from GOD. You just don't toss out something like that. I, as I said, appreciate someone who stays around. God talks...

...don't be afraid to ask.

Me, on Meditation

For me the symphony of sleep is played by an orchestra of thyroid levels and medication, depression medication and good sleep hygiene. When my orchestra hits a sour note, it is often at 3am. Perhaps I was too sleepy from low thyroid levels and went to sleep too early. After what my body considers enough sleep, I wake up...at 3am instead of 6am. At this point my mind kicks into high gear. I think of Algebra exams or tasks that need doing around the house or worry about some concern of the week. Zelda, my cat, knows I am awake and usually sits on my chest or bites my arm lightly to encourage some interaction.

About two years ago, I started trying to meditate at this time. Nothing extraordinary, just the discipline of silence and stillness. Mostly, I just listen. It's quiet, it's dark and if Zelda will not bite me, it works pretty well.

I keep my eyes closed and try to relax any part of me that is tensed up. I breathe. I close my eyes. I see the color black; I think about what I see. Now, here is where I had to work on some of this. I can't just think of nothing and look at nothing. I am a visual person. So, I see the color black. I just look at that. I try to see into the blackness. It sounds kind of boring, but my eyes and my brain start to make little ghostly patterns in the blackness. (Now, sometimes, here, I just fall asleep. Deal done. That's fine. I am supposed to be sleeping anyway.) If sleep stays away, sometimes I repeat in my mind some phrase. It can be anything...a bit of a song or verse, a motto, a question. Or sometimes, I am just as silent as possible in my own head. When I am like that, I just go with it. It is very relaxing. Sometimes I think I "hear" something. A problem unravels, a worry falls away, a peace is created in me.

So often, when we pray, we ask GOD a question. How can we hear the answer if we don't listen, quietly, expectantly? Sometimes, when I am quiet, I hear GOD. At the very least, I know GOD hears me. Listen...

...don't be afraid to ask.

May I Have a Moment?

I request the moon
and am humbled
by the faint
voice of a mother
in Darfur
asking for blessings
on her bread
and for her daughter
not to come back
from collecting
scarce wood
for the fire
with the tears
of the broken,
slashed by
the riders,
but oh, GOD,
if she is,
that she
just
come
back.

In the refugee camps, the women go out to collect wood, which is not plentiful, for cooking fires. There is danger from the Jangaweed who often ride on horseback, terrorizing the people who venture from the fragile safety of the camps. The women go, because, if the men go out, the men will be killed. If the women go out, they are only raped and left alive to bear the pain and shame and sometimes the children of their tormenters.

Read more here... Committee on Conscience and see the pictures from an eyewitness here... Darfur Eyewitness

Don't be afraid to ask....

So I asked to be a Prophet

Really. I prayed that. It came up one Sunday in my Mystics, Cynics and Pilgrims class. I fit into this class very well. You might say it was made for me...literally. Back when I was in a regular adult Sunday School class, I would ask a question. Then it would get very quiet. We got to practice the discipline of silence until the teacher would say... Well...ok...um, good question, now back to the Sermon on the Mount. My questions were not the ones that others were asking. They didn't understand what I was determined to discover. It seems I needed special education. So, we created a new class that came to be MCP. We started out as just Mystics and Cynics (misfits, too, to tell the truth). Just a few of us who wanted to ask those questions and not be afraid of the answers.

"How do I know there is a God?"

"How can I find God?"

We asked those and any other question. We looked for answers...sometimes in unorthodox places. We shared, we bonded, we became for each other a safe place. Then, we struck out on a journey of discovery. Contemplation. Silence. Disbelief. Pain. Reorientation. Rest. Struggle. We became mystical, cynical pilgrims who were determined to be on that journey together.

So, one day, we were discussing something about how we relate to the world outside of Christian community.

I asked, "What would happen if I prayed to be a prophet?"

John said, "How would we tell the difference?"

John's job is to be a quiet sage for most of the time and then say the one thing we all wish we had said. He is also a very witty smart alec. John thinks I am outrageous enough that no one would notice if I came out of the wilderness of South Texas one day sucking locust juice from my fingers and started prophesying.

So I prayed to be a prophet. Really. I realize that takes some hutzpah. With not a small amount of trepidation, I prayed it anyway.

"Dear GOD, I want to be a prophet. I realize that I have no qualifications except an unusually loud mouth...oh, and I don't care much for what people think of me, if I am doing what I think is right...and John thinks I am weird already. So, I want to be a prophet, if you please. AMEN"

So far, I am not a prophet. At least I think I am not. Going by John's theory, I would just segue on into Prophet status with no one the wiser. And I certainly don't feel any wiser myself. But I do hear GOD (appropriate pause...) and I bet you do, too. Divine intuition, conscience, the little white angel on your right shoulder. We have lots of ways of explaining it away, but it's GOD. You know it is. Stop being so busy and listen. Can you imagine a creator that would not say a word to the people he loves? We are not supposed to hear things. We lock those people up and give them pharmaceuticals. Imaginary friends are for children, we say. I say it's GOD.

I am Cynthia Huddleston, 47 years old, wife and mother. I am not a prophet, but I am a poet, have been since I was about 8 years old. I blog a little, write a lot. Currently, I am going back to college to get the degree I missed along the line. I am trained to work as a Victim's Advocate and hope to use that more when I graduate.

My intentions for this blog are simple. I will tell you what I think and wonder about GOD and listen to what you think. Mostly prose...sometimes a psalm.