SPIRAL-ING

The spiral may be the oldest symbol known to man. It appears all over the world, through many MANY eras and cultures. You'd be shocked. You WILL be shocked when you take the time to look it up and find out for yourself.

Those who may be familiar with some of my work will know that the spiral's significance, to me, is deeper than simply a pretty design. 

In the course of my research have been many references to the spiral and what it may or may not have meant to those who have used it in their designs over the course of humanity.

We know it as PHI, a mathematical name for 1.618033988...; we know it as The Golden Ratio, The Golden Mean, The Divine Proportion, Fibonacci - they all mean the same thing.

The spiral is balance. Not too little, not too much. 

BALANCE.

It is also circular in effect although essentially triangular in the nature of its design. 

Now, me being me, I find this sort of thing fascinating. You, of course, probably don't. Bear with me anyhow for a bit here.

The wheel of time goes 'round and 'round. What has been will again be; what will be has already been; what is has both already been and will again be. The wheel goes 'round and 'round and 'round.

More often than a person would think, people ask me what I believe will happen, given current circumstances. Truly, they do. Don't ask me WHY they do, simply making conversation perhaps.

Regardless, I have no more answers than anyone else does. IF we had a complete chronicle of our world from the Beginning through the present, we MIGHT be able to make a stab at figuring out what might come next. We have no such records, although we do have some pretty smart people who are learning more and more all the time. 

Since obviously nobody KNOWS for certain, the next question is inevitably, 'Well, what do you THINK?'

I don't know what to think. I barely have a grasp on what's been going on in this world of ours as I try to avoid too much exposure to reports of all the horrors so many of us are doing our best to cope with. The few times I allow myself to 'feel' it all, the sensation is one of ... well, of horror. Being as that's not exactly a good feeling, you can bet your bottom dollar I do my best to not go there too very often. 

At the same time, there's an overwhelming tenderness that I DO try to 'tune in to' as often as I can. The good news is that it outweighs the horror - truly - it's just not as 'news-worthy'.

In 1927 Max Erhmann said, in Desiderata: With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. The words hold true today as well. Read the whole of Desiderata once in a while. You need it and it will help you. Trust me on this one.

Meandering around in my head, I find myself taking a path that leads into a double spiral. Where one leaves off the other begins. 

And I find myself wondering.

What WILL come next?

What will the rest of our lives consist of and what will the lives of our children and grandchildren be like, and those generations who are yet far down the road?

Again, I don't know. Nobody really knows.

But when I feel for the future, there's a sense of strength there, and of our children and grandchildren standing. 

STANDING.

My daughters have asked me at different times, 'Mom, how come WE didn't get your little feet? How come WE didn't inherit your thin little bones?'

And I laugh.

Then the laughter dies in my throat.

'You are going to need those 'big feet' and those strong bones. One day you are going to have to take your stand, and hold it, and you are going to need the stability those feet and bones of yours provide.'

Of course, it's entirely figurative, because chances are the stand they will have to take isn't going to have a whole lot to do with their ability to physically brace and balance themselves.

Me, I'm just a Little Old Gramma Lady who lives in a Tumble-down Cottage on Main Street of Small Town USA. I have no claim to fame and am not the smartest person in the world (for which I thank God every time I realize it). I'm just me and that's good enough.

The Baby Boomer generation barely includes me. I don't have to tell anybody what all that generation has done. It's all documented out there somewhere; all you have to do is go look. From some of the most astonishing advances to some of the most boneheaded stupid things in the history of mankind, the Boomers have made their mark on the world as we know it.

And the world as we know it is changing so fast it's impossible for this woman to keep up. Things that were science fiction when I was a youngling are now fact. 

I can't wrap my head around all the changes that are going to happen during the lifetimes of my daughters, let alone what things are going to be like for the generations down the road a piece. I hope and pray they pay attention and learn as they go.

I fear for them.

The wheel of time goes 'round and 'round.

The spiral, symbol of Balance, goes 'round and 'round. 

We get to choose, each and all, for our own individual selves, our reactions to the Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How that our lives throw at us. Most, if not all, of us have made some abysmal choices in our time. Me being the prime example. And no I'm not going to get into all of THAT right now. You don't have time and I don't have inclination.

The point is that we don't KNOW from one day to the next, from one hour to the next, sometimes from one moment to the next, what is going to be thrown at us. No matter how hard we try to control what happens in our lives, there's certain sure going to be times when we get taken by surprise and have the wits shocked right out of us. Me, I've only got one wit left to me so I guard it as carefully as possible.

If we knew ahead of time what was coming down the pike toward us, we could probably prepare for it at least a little.  

Pray for the best and prepare for the worst. That's something I've heard for most of my life - and I'm not too sure I've been very good at following it. 

Still, let's think on it for a minute.

Let's say we as a People 'get it' that the wheel of time, and the spiral, go 'round and 'round. We don't have ALL the information in the whole wide world, but we have SOME of it.

I'm no scholar and there's a lot of recorded history I've never in my life heard of, and don't expect I ever will hear of most of it unless it's somehow connected to the research I do for my books, or unless I come across it by accident (which has been known to happen and I tell ya there's some VERY interesting stuff out there that I never in this world could have imagined).

BUT - and here we are at the center of the spiral - my own world and what history I have made in this my own little life, makes up the spiral of MY life - just as your own personal history makes up the spiral of yours. See, there's that choice thing. We might not get to choose all of the Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How of our lives but we DO get to choose our reactions.

So my little life spirals out and intersects with yours in one way or another, right?

Right.

And our little spirals are part of bigger ones, which in turn are parts of still bigger ones, and so it goes ... the entire Creation is connected by the spirals of each and all - even the dinosaurs connect to my life and to yours when it comes right down to it.

What in bloody blue blazes is this woman going on about?

heh heh

I can hear the frustration - get to the effing point already, willya?

Okay, the point is that this spiral thing we're all living in/on is going to turn 'round and 'round and 'round; there's no way to stop it or change it. Good follows bad follows good follows bad and the balance is somehow maintained.

All we, any of us, in whatever time and place we exist, can do is the best we can do with whatever we have to work with at any given time.  

That's all that's expected of us, which is a good thing since we can't do anything else anyhow.

When it's time for us to choose our reactions, all we can do is the best we can do with what we have to work with.

The same goes for our kids and their kids and their kids and on and on and on.

Answers?

No.

Thoughts, feelings?

Yes.

I have been writing about people who lived a LONG time before our time. 

All they could do was the best they could do with what they had to work with at the time.

Some did good; others not so much.

It's the same with us.

It will be the same in the future generations.

We've seen enough changes in our lifetimes, created many of those changes our own selves as we went along, to have a mighty fine idea that there are a lot MORE changes coming up for those who follow us. Not all of those changes are going to be for the good.

Our world changes rapidly compared to a lot of the 'history' we know about that concerns the human race. In the USA we tend to forget that our nation is so very young. We 'learn' our 'history', or at least hear about bits and pieces of it, and think 'OH MY GOD THERE'S SO MUCH HERE HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO REMEMBER EVEN A FRACTION OF IT ALL?' - and spend even less time and effort giving even token interest in the rest of the world. 

Now you tell me: How self-centered is THAT?

Yeah I know, I'm one to talk. And that's true. Then again, I can only do the best I can do and am not going to go beating myself up over it at this stage in the game.

There are plenty of people in this world who DO know just about everything about everything, and I'm no competitor, never have been much interested in competitions. Let those who have the knowledge share it if they will. If they won't, oh well ... the rest of us will probably survive anyhow.

And the spiral goes 'round and 'round.

We choose our reactions.

The spiral is symbolic of Creation, did you know that? I just made it up so don't feel bad if you didn't already know. Of course, given that I keep finding out stuff that I thought I was making up is very old news, don't quote me as saying that I just made that up. For the moment, until I find out differently, I THINK I just made it up.

Regardless, it makes sense to me that the spiral should be the symbol of Creation.  

Where does a Universe begin? In the center of a spiral.

Where does a weather pattern that forms into storms begin? In the center of a spiral.

Where does an ocean wave begin? In the center of a spiral.

Where does a tornado begin? In the center of a spiral.

Where does a seashell begin, those roundy roundy ones? In the center of a spiral.

Where does human life begin? In our DNA, the double helix spiraling through every cell of our bodies.

Creation.

The center of the spiral.

We spend our lives adding turns to the spiral.

We will die at some point along the way, but the spiral will continue.

It goes 'round and 'round and 'round until the end of eternity, spinning and spinning and spinning.

We are, each and all of us, infinitely tiny little individual life-spirals making up our own part of the whole.

And does that make us insignificant?

Not by a long shot.

Each and all of us are responsible for our own part of things, no matter what our view of the larger spiral may be.

Don't you dare to think that there's anything the least bit insignificant about the choices each and all of us make every day of our lives. For good or for ill, every single solitary last one of those choices impacts not just you and me but many others.

You don't think so?

Find and watch some of the vids that are on line, the ones that show how one person's choice, one small moment, spreads like a center link in a chain reaction that fans out like wildfire. For good or for ill, my choices are liable to infect those around me. So are yours.

That's just the way it works.

Single moments can and do create spirals of their very own; your choice to give a smile to someone you don't even know might very well spiral its way along and make a dozen or a score or a hundred people smile in the course of one day, and you'll never ever know what you started. An impulsive act of kindness likewise. A grouchy frown the same. You get to choose your action but you don't really have much (anything, really) to say about what happens from then on as that smile or that scowl wends its way through the day.

Just sayin'.

All you can do is the best you can do with what you have to work with at any given time.

Think about the way a smile from someone makes you feel. That smile might be exactly what you need at the end of a painful day - and it might just be the smile YOU gave to somebody before your day turned nasty, come back to you. You just never can tell, can  you?

And so the spiral goes 'round and 'round and 'round.

It's been turning and turning and turning since the dawn of Creation and will continue to spin and spin and spin for Eternity, with our lives and our deaths marking our own little bits of it.

Yes I know this is a massive missive. It's been a long while since I've been able to just sit down and patter, so my mind is doing some spinning of its own. 

Actually, I'm procrastinating about beginning the next book I've got to write, the final of this set of five, the last of the Mamm Books. It's going to be a difficult one for me to write but I've got it to do and so I shall. But not tonight I think.

The stories of the books have a spiral of their very own, too. 

The times and places, and the People of those times and places, are set into fiction, but were very real. 

The choices they made, the stands they took, from the earliest memories of the oldest Character right through the present - each and all of them - have an impact on us today, just as the choices WE make and the stands WE take will have an impact on those who will come after us.

One of the most meaningful of the reactions I get from those who read the stories is, 'It makes me THINK.' Another reaction I get is, 'I feel as though I'm there and then,' followed by, 'When's the next one coming out so I can go back?' It makes me smile, because I understand.

What those who want to 'go back' (including me perhaps most of all) might not understand is that the stories, from the oldest memories to current events, are about now as well as then. Each and every person who reads them is one (or more) of the Characters and they will find themselves in the pages of the stories.

At any rate, it's past time for me to close this and try to get some rest. Tomorrow I will likely 'go back' - and will find joy, despair, laughter, grief, love, war ... who knows what they'll have in store for me, those Characters I've become so fond of? Yes they're fictional, but we are not - and ... you know ... they are US. One, or a combination of them, is YOU.

So be ready, stand steady - a moment is coming when you will have to take a stand. Choose your Song and when that moment comes, use your Voice. Your choices are just as important as the ones who came before us, and our united choices are going to set the scene for those who will come after.

We have a Legacy that is ours because others chose to live and to die to protect and preserve it. 

We are the Keepers now - and we ARE strong enough.

FAITH - FAMILY - FRIENDSHIP - FREEDOM - THE FUTURE

The Parts of the SONG

Choice

Creation, Life, Death, Eternity

Peace

Faith

Healing

Hope

Love

Unity

TOGETHER WE CAN STAND STRONGER.

MAKE YOUR CHOICE.

USE YOUR VOICE.

JUST DO IT.