Memoir Handbook #1: God Courage
How did we get to this moment? It still feels like a movie matinee. I used to attend them alone in Nashville with a notebook, looking for song titles. Popcorn was a suitable early dinner before a long solo writing session once I was home.
Since then, I’ve found out a lot about the Hollywood stars who were delivering the lines I scribbled down. How did I get to this place, living in this dreamspell city of Los Angeles that seems to be a “testbed” for a socially surveilled, corporate medical complex of authoritarian order? Why am I here? Planted, a stepmom who thought her new husband’s home was her last move, with the spirit of a gypsy who would’ve left yesterday if it were up to her?
I have been seeking answers to that question in myriad ways, one of which is a correspondence with the truly ageless and downright hilarious Dr. Christiane Northrup.
Dear, amazing Christiane, who has graciously guided me while managing her own public fall into grace (as she so accurately puts it). We stay in touch in a way that I liken to 2am at the retreat, still up, one more dot connected or personal awareness to share. Maybe we can help you crack open your own case and find peace, meaning and healing in what has been an arduous and confusing journey for so many. I’ve been envisioning a published “memoir handbook” and noodling through essays since June of 2021, but I am an impatient soul, and suddenly Substack seems like a good fit for the experiment of writing a series. Memoir handbooks may not exist as a literary category now, but perhaps they will become necessary as more and more of us “wake up”.
I am equal parts suggestible and suspicious. I have a mother who discovered during a pediatric eye exam that she needed glasses, and when she tried on empty frames with the ophthalmologist, she gasped with awe at suddenly being able to see perfectly.
My father, on the other hand, suffered so much poverty that he entered any civilized social experience by seeking the safety of categorization. He could often accurately identify who was paying, who was paid for, and who got paid. This has provided a nice balance in my personality. I’m simultaneously open minded and somewhat guarded.
I also happen to have been born intuitive and have been meditating for decades, I’ve been learning to trust God regarding my intuition instead of praying for it to go away, out of fear. My brother used it as a party trick when we shared an apartment together in our 20s, asking me to blurt out details on someone. My family of origin has rolled their eyes but on occasion sought use of what I call my “vibes”. (Same goes for my husband now.) My kids appreciate having someone around who can sometimes accurately remote view a lost item. My Dad used to say “you have the gypsy in you, like my mother”, because my grandmother Marie Malone knew, from Chicago, the moment her father passed away in Ireland.
I was raised Catholic. Reverence for Christ but often friendly dismissal of the sincerity in studying scripture you’ll find in evangelicals. Ritual and family matter most. Surrender that leads to a personal relationship with Jesus and does not require a priest is frowned upon. You’re swiftly shuttled into a dismissed category of “Praise the Lord types” and if you share openly on that, you guarantee becoming the topic when you leave the room.
In that crowd, my devoted soul showed up as the odd one. Talking to Jesus, angels, writing songs, choosing to live in a van, avoiding expected milestones, eloping with a Jewish man on the beach when all my college friends already had kids in middle school, these were reasons I was the odd one. However, being odd was my preparation for 2020. I was ready for it. I thoroughly enjoy helping others onto the path that has sanded my ego down and liberated me from attaching to approval from others. I simply trust God.
I do not speak “Christianese” to prove my allegiance to a religiousness construct that can often be largely influenced by other fallible human beings. Christians virtue signal with certain words too, and I don’t like it. I dial direct to Christ and focus on relationship over rules. I reject “New Age” thought and I think one of the most disastrous teachings to come out of the New Age movement is the denial of evil, that Satan is a “concept”. “There’s no such thing as evil” is a scary sentence. The devil is all over New Age, hiding in plain sight and prolific, because no one is looking for him.
I notice that I don’t expect to be approved of by any group. I focus on my own actions. I pray the rosary, read the Bible and practice belonging to God. As soon as I attempt to qualify or quantify that, the connection suffers, so I don’t. This kind of silent commitment and accountability to God has offered x-ray vision into a culture that wants me to serve a finite master by submitting to injection into my God given DNA, or experience intense dismissal and persecution.
I’ll pass on that shot, and not only does Jesus love me anyway, I believe He loves me for my stand for life. I don’t have to be a member of a church to know He loves me. I am simply awake to His love. Everyone is included, no one has to show their proof of being “saved” papers. You are already saved by standing for your right to not defile your God given sovereign being. Declining the offer of the serpent shot and exercising free will with consciousness and without condition is now available to all, and has proven some agnostics to be deeper devotees than long-suffering, now-inoculated churchgoers that bowed to false idols in the end, in a vaccination tent on a captured church parking lot.
I heard my friend Kevin Jenkins say “God courage” recently at a health freedom event. Perhaps by sharing a memoir style collection of my experiences, optimistic outlook, disciplines and conclusions, together we can be windshield wipers to see a new future, fueled by our shared God courage. Let’s go!
This is the Best article I have read this past year. I read a lot, and almost ever day, God Bless you !