Sharing a little mysticism from days of old

I experienced the Presence of God when I was 12 years old but didn’t know it until some fifty years later when I meditated and realized how much the Divine had filled me when I was praying for a girl I had just met on that glorious pre-teenage weekend.

I was smitten by Geraldine McFadden, a 12-year-old who lived at Second Street and Allegheny in North Philadelphia. We kissed ever so gently at first and before I knew it, she showed me what it was like to kiss as an adult. In other words, she taught me how to “French Kiss.”

I wanted nothing more in life than for her to like me, I mean “really like me.” And so early Sunday morning I went to Church. St. Ludwig’s Roman Catholic Church in a section called Brewerytown and I dressed up as an altar boy with a black cassock and a white surplus. II went to the kneeler in the Sacristy and I knelt and closed my eyes, envisioning what it was like on the night I had met this heart throb. I began to pray that she would feel the same way toward me as I did toward her.

I prayed and I prayed and then something that has never happened to me occurred.

Little altar boy experiencing the Presence of God while seeking true love

I went into some sort of a trance. Looking back, I believe it was a meditative state of mind where all thoughts are diminished and you obtain a clear sight into the place of “Nothing” that I read years later that mystics often tap into.

I experienced a joy I had never felt before. Peace and calm descended on me and I had no worries, no thoughts of any past sins and I enjoyed myself being alive in the here and the now. I felt unconditional love from the Universe and Geraldine McFadden didn’t seem to matter to me as much anymore.

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What I experienced was the Presence of God, but I didn’t realize it until some eight years ago when I began to write a Blog and I started to remember some of the events of my life. In A Course Of Love, we’re “taught” to remember who we were in the past. To remember who our true self was and to see life in a way we might have never looked because of the “busy-ness,” the stress of work, and the mundane trials and tribulations of daily life.

I was fearful of sharing this with those I grew up with in the working class neighborhood I was raised. I felt vulnerable and I thought they’d ridicule or make fun of me as someone “different” and too weird to be accepted by them. I still feel that way sometimes. At least the kid in me feels that, the little “Macie” inside who is a still sensitive  despite his bluster and creds from street fighting and later as an infantry platoon leader in the war of his generation.

I am grateful that I can share my mystical experience without worrying what my old friends and school mates would think of me. They might have had similar experiences and are only now feeling comfortable to share it with others. I want them to know that I am listening and will enjoy their story no matter how crazy they think it might sound. Being present for the Presence of the Higher Self is all that matters.

What would you buy if you could afford it?

I’d like to buy peace for the world even for just one day. To see Muslims hug Jews and Protestants smiling and shake hands with Catholics would be a wonderful site.

Have Greeks and Albanians forgive and forget what the Turks might have done. Let the Irish march this St. Patrick’s Day with British royalty in the streets of New York.

Peace would return to Syria where a guy named Paul found his true calling on the Road to Damascus. And Democrats would understand America would not be great without the support of Republicans and those who didn’t vote for Bernie Sanders.

There’d be more smiles shared and people would forget for one day all of the differences while focusing only on what brings us all together. Who knows? Maybe we could reach an agreement to make peace a reality the next day and the next and and then forever for the future of children everywhere.

Here’s my five bucks toward the cause. Anyone else care to pitch in?

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(Prompt provided at Just Write weekly gathering)

Wounds of Love Still Hurt this Soldier Boy

I took a deep breath and knocked on the door.

Peggy’s mother, Mary, answered and said “Hello Michael.” She didn’t invite me in, but smiled and I kind of smiled back.
I had dated Peggy for three years, starting at age 14. We had gone steady, but broke up a half dozen times, but I always thought we’d end up getting hitched someday. Particularly, after I was drafted and became an officer in the army.

And then I got that fateful message from my mother. I was in Ft. Polk, Louisiana, when I called from a pay phone back to Philadelphia and heard the devastating news.
“Peggy got married,” Mom said. I asked her what that meant and soon I learned Peggy McPeake married a fellow who operated a pizza store in the old neighborhood. He might have been an Armenian and not a Greek like me, I seem to recall.

I also recalled how I felt a stake was shoved through my chest. I couldn’t breath and I felt I was going to pass out right there.

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Young Love never dies. Like an old soldier, it simply just fades away into time and space!

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“How is she?” I asked Mary as she opened the door to her house, my heart in my hand. “Oh, the baby’s fine,” she said. “The baby’s just fine.”

“That’s great” I said finally realizing she was talking about her granddaughter. Not my Peggy. My Peggy no longer lived there. The Peggy I knew got married. That new Peggy was now a full-fledged mother and the wife of someone other than me.

I was never invited into the house where I had spent so much of my teenage years. I wanted to see the inside one more time, but I knew it would have been inappropriate for me to ask to come in.
It’s over, Michael J. The romance is over and the door is about to close on it for good. Walk away with your pride intact, young man. Don’t look back because she might see you crying. And a soldier in the United States of America on his way to war can’t let anyone see how wounded lost love could make him feel.

Veteran discovers self in feeding squirrels

You can’t know what pleasure you get in feeding a squirrel, until you open yourself to nature, and of course, feed a squirrel. Daily.
I didn’t understand that while waiting at the Philadelphia VA headquarters several months ago. A great big African American vet sat across from me as we made small talk about what branch we served, our MOS (mine was: 11 Bravo — Infantry), and of course our disability rating.
He was soft spoken and intrigued me when he confided how much joy he gets in feeding “his squirrels.” No, he didn’t raise 'em, nor keep them as pets. He spoke of the everyday, climb-down-the-tree critters that appear in wooded areas and back yards.
The fellow spoke with words of a poet, and I could feel how much he enjoyed providing nourishment to them, his visiting friends. How they'd come running to the North Philadelphia rowhouse yard. Scramble down a tree, then slowly approach having overcome fear of this huge man. He'd serve them before, and they knew he'd care for them again.
I thought of him back at my Conshohocken, PA, home after noticing a squirrel had come mighty close to me twice in the same week, clutching in its mouth a shell containing peanuts I'd place out. Scampered some 75 feet to where I was now rested. I don’t know if it was the same one, the same squirrel. They all look alike to me. (Shoot, never should have written that last phrase, but when it comes to gray squirrels, you never get a chance to see them up close; to see distinguishing features and different facial aspects. When you do have contact, when you look into another’s eyes and share your self with them, no matter how briefly, you can see a difference, you can see the individualistic traits, you can see your brother, see your sister; see all as one.)
The squirrel stopped some eight feet away, the same distance the other squirrel halted. That time, the animal climbed a small rock decorating my upper lawn. Looked straight at me. I said “hello” using that friendly tone of voice, almost a high pitched child’s voice, — you know, the kind of girlish voice dog obedience classes tell you to use to show friendliness.
Once again, I felt ”blessed.”
Too religious for you?
I felt “gratitude” to the Power Above that allowed me to somehow “touch” a creature with such caring. The kind of happiness of "being one" with others around me. Just like that football-player-size vet, this small Greek had learned to start each day in serving God’s creatures and expect nothing in return