Hello Dear Fellow Spiritual Sojourners…hope your trip is going well.
Long time no blog…
Ran into circumstances that forced me to practice what I preach (ugh!)
I am reminded that spiritual values are actually felt… thought you might appreciate this reminder.
“The universe is fondling you in ways you can’t possibly imagine.”
We don’t often think of the Universe fondling us exactly…often as not. the “fondling” can feel like rusty Brillo pads rubbing up against our psyche…that is, if we feel anything at all. But most all of us do long to feel good…and in a higher conscious moment to actually feel “the goodness” itself.
Be that as it may, if you stop for a moment, you can actually feel the fondling going on. And if you need some help, here’s a poem I wrote over thirty years ago. I was driving on Highway 70 from Denver to Steamboat Springs when I was struck by…well…I think the poem says it…
Touch by Errol Strider
I want to be touched.
I want the barren, cold hardness
of fear chromed sensations
to be transformed
Into willingness,
Embrace,
Excite
And velvet, soft burlap nudging me.
I want signs with their opaque hard letters,
stranded in two dimensions
To become infused with Softness,
with pliable space
The present
to be filled
with cubed transcendence.
I want the shrubs left alone,
the trees to sprout and fly
sometimes in winter,
And I want snow to kiss me more often than it does.
I want the suckling.
I want to suckle the real universe,
to find the nipple of God,
place my lips on it,
caress and hail him/her/it–
To no longer be deceived by irrelevance,
sameness
or theft ….
My own,
Stealing me from the Now
Stealing myself into Time
and its singular vision
and linear dryness
Away from my corrugated self.
THOU SHALT NOT STEAL THYSELF
I want to get off this bridge of polarity …
To arrive in wonder
beyond this dotted reality
like halftone picture in a newspaper
This patched perception I call my world
unkempt and concretized
defined by separation
trying so hard to misguide me
As I give it credence unwilling to unlock its waiting arms
or embrace my prepubescent self
with seminal fluids
Instead, I’m swallowed by some old dry sterile wind
bouncing off lifeless textures on the road
plaintively asking me for a lift
or at least a quick feel.
I long to stand naked in a real breeze with virgin oxygen
to unmask myself
and reveal my ignorance gyrating
hoping it will breed innocence, birth, plenty
and saturation with all natural ingredients.
So, I lie in this fallow field
with my seeds in my pocket
waiting to plant myself
waiting to be unearthed
waiting for harvest
to reveal the sprouted essence of
my unquenchable desire for
Touch!
© 1980 Errol Strider