Spirit Gives Birth To Spirit

    When I was younger, I fell in and out of love with girls from high school through college and into my late 20's.  But it wasn’t love. When the initial exciting honeymoon period faded, I dropped the relationship like a bad habit. As soon as there was conflict or I saw something I didn’t like, I headed for the door.  And I was happy to be free again.  Until I realized I was lonely again, and started searching for someone else.  Finally in my late 20's, I stopped looking.  The minute I stopped looking, I was confronted with the young man in the mirror.  I didn't like what I saw. But I knew there was some good in me: I knew there was something of value. I had been writing poetry since I was in middle school.  I started to see myself poured out on those pages.  I looked at myself in depth.  I could see how I saw the world.  I wrote my feelings into concrete form.  I saw them on the page and I could see myself on the page. I began to grow. My spiritual journey began to take

     My dog died a week ago on a Monday.  It left this incredible hole in me.  I have spent hours on end sitting at the gas station chain smoking, trying to fill the hole. But this hole is much bigger than my dog.  When I got Izzy as a lonely bachelor of 29, I really had no concept of what love really was.  I cared for this little Australian Cattle Dog mix and she soon taught me to get outside of myself.  She showed true unconditional love for me, as I am, not as she would have me be, and we went through repeated hard times together as I struggled with an illness that has dogged me since I was seventeen.  She stood by me when other people couldn’t and in everything she did, she just wanted to please me.  Dogs all want a job to do.  Her job became to support me emotionally - to always be there at my feet to pet.  And to clean up after my sloppy eating.  (She loved both parts of her job equally.)  But it has dawned on me that I developed this deep mutual trust with her because of what sh