Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukah, Happy Kwanzaa to everybody. Christmas is the holiday I grew up with. I realize, as an adult, that there is no Santa Claus and that today isn’t the actual date of Jesus’ birth, but it is the act of setting aside a special day to celebrate both that still makes it real. Even though there are no children in my house I have pictures of Santa about.

So, what does it mean for me? The Santa part? It brings back memories of being off from school. It was always like a mini summer vacation. I didn’t count the days. I didn’t have to. There were so many of them. For many years I was confused when people would say to me, “See you next year.” The years for me were marked by the beginning of school, not with January.

I remember us all trimming the tree. I remember the huge box my mother kept all the decorations in that went with us from one set of quarters to the next. It was a source of continuity for us. It was a source of stability. No matter where we lived we could count on Christmas being the same wherever we were thanks to Mom. I remember the first ornaments she and Dad ever had were pictures cut out from greeting cards pasted to clothes pins. We still put them on the tree and they were 20 years old. It was always interesting to see the snippets of signatures and greetings people had written on the back sides of the cards.

The picture is of us five kids, Christmas 1969 in Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas. I was in the 8th grade. Chuck, the youngest was in the 3rd grade.

I remember my mother making Christmas dinner. I remember everybody sitting around in huge piles of wrapping paper unwrapping their gifts. I remember my father being relaxed for the first time all year. I remember going to church. Sometimes, as we all got older, we would go to Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve to celebrate, but in the early years it was always an early mass on Christmas day.

I remember each of us kids had a baby Jesus in a manger. For every good deed we did we got a pine needle to put into a shoe box to make a nice bed for Jesus. Turns out one of the boys, I think it was my brother Mike, went outside and collected his own to make a nice soft bed without also having to do the good deed part.

So, even though I don’t believe in Santa Claus anymore I have tons of memories of happy times, of times I cherish, that I bring out and look at as though it were a photograph album.

Today, Dennis and I celebrate a new Christmas. It’s just the two of us. Our neighbor Phil will come over for dinner. Actually, Dennis has a cold, so I’m not certain if all will go as planned, but we’ll see.

Seeing as how I’m a psychic I wonder if I should speak of how this day is for me on a psychic level? I feel the same as before but, I also sense this undercurrent of things happening that runs alongside of me 24/7. I’m not always aware of it, but when I close my eyes and seek it I can feel this river that flows.

It’s like me at a bus stop. Here’s my life, my awareness of the bus stop. That’s my world, my universe. The lady and her kid who sits next to me on the bench. The older man who is reading his paper standing next to the schedule. This is my world. But, if I increase my sphere of awareness past that immediate place of awareness I begin to see there is a road that runs alongside of the bus stop. There are buses coming and going. There are automobiles on the street and delivery trucks. There are buildings across the way. There’s a park over there. I know there is stuff going on I can’t even see. But, though I can’t see it I know there’s another town nearby.

So, I close my eyes this morning and celebrate Christmas. I’ll tell you what it is that I sense. Suddenly, my legs are freezing and I’m hungry. Go figure. This happens when I meditate too. It’s like you get this itch you cannot possibly reach on your back without the aid of a back scratcher, so you’ve got to get up and go find that too. There’s always this little bit of a resistance I have to diving into this psychic river. But, if I want to be there I have to ignore the body and its incessant demands. I can eat later. The itch will go away. My legs have been cold for the last 20 minutes. What’s so pressing about it now that I can’t dip here? Actually, this is like a person who is trying to talk while they draw. You’re pulling upon two different sides of your brain at the same time and it’s a little difficult. Hovering, recording, witnessing and yet, not completely gone deep.

Okay, enough talk. Dip again, Pauline. Oh, I’m also listening to Dr. Jeffrey Thompson’s Delta Brain Wave CD. It helps me.

Dip. Dip and talk about it. Just waiting to see what is there psychically for me to see and talk about. Writers. Sometimes it sort of hits you. Like that did. I “felt” writers. Lots of them. Okay, I’m getting my breath back again. That socked it out of me but quick. Nothing to be afraid of. They won’t talk. Or, not much anyway. Dip again. Hemingway. Louisa Mae Alcott. Not the same as they were. A family of writers. One with the universe. One always before. Reaching out to reveal the things they think are of note. Other writers. Many writers. Merry Christmas.

Okay, here’s a weird thing. One of the writers I sensed a minute ago is still alive. I wasn’t sure. I took her name off of the list. See, I’m not sure. What if she suddenly keeled over? She’s elderly. I don’t want anybody to think I’ve hexed someone. But, what I’m wondering is in psychically sensing a river of writers why did I not just tap into the dead ones? Maybe, and now that I think about it, why couldn’t there be just that great river of unconsciousness that everybody is a part of dead or alive? Maybe that’s what happened. I’m certainly no expert at this….that’s why I never quit my day job. But, that’s what I sensed just now.

Merry Christmas everybody.