"a voice..."

"Numbers and photographs
do not a person make.

I'm more than what
a page can say of me.

My identity is not
in my history..."

I was in the middle of writing another post when my friend, Scott - a brilliant musician - shared a new video of Kat Edmundson performing her hauntingly lovely  "A Voice,"and from that moment on, it was all I could write about.

Some songs, like Ellis' "Right Time," and Sara Groves' "Less Like Scars," stop me in my tracks and send fissures all along the fragile shell of what I think I know and feel at the moment.

This song was composure-shattering for me. First, it took my breath away -- literally. Once the last note sounded, I felt a shudder of air, and tears, and a tender tightness in my throat and chest. It took me by surprise. A good song will get stuck in your head. A great song will break your heart open so that all the world can fall in - and find hope.

I've been waiting for this moment for months now. I've tiptoed through my days like a once-broke teacup held together with flour paste and baling twine. "Don't bump into anyone who you know might see the cracks. Be the love -- don't let yourself be loved. Too much kindness and the tears might start falling and who knows if you will be able to make them stop."

I knew I was getting close to this moment when I hugged a friend goodbye on Sunday, and the warmth of her hug sent a new series of fine cracks through the veneer of my equanimity. I quickly excused myself, mentally touched up my mask of self-possession and hurried to the car. I knew I was postponing the inevitable, but at least it didn't have to happen with an audience.

Jeff is out of town. I've had wonderful days - and nights - in the office. Caring for others, holds the hounds at bay. But tonight, just when I thought I could take a deeper breath and not have it end in a sob -- Kat's song found me.

It wasn't just the words -- which are so poignantly beautiful. It is the sound of her voice -- the clear, raw honesty, her unflinching willingness to speak to the demon that "names us, and claims us, and shames us all," -- to quote James Taylor. And that demon is relentless.  It is the ego. The small "I" that screams we are not enough.

I don't know about any of you, but no matter how many wonderful people I am surrounded by, when that demon starts hissing its self-hate, the only voice that can truly silence its hideous sound, is the voice of The One that speaks from within. The Voice of divine Love. The Voice that speaks out from the fathomless depths of the kingdom of God - within us all.

It is the Voice of the Friend -- of the friendless. And it never fails to reach us when we think we are on our last leg, don't have a breath left to hold, and the rope is fraying at the edge of the abyss. It is the voice that says, "I love you, I've got you, you can do this hard thing..." And we realize -- we can.

In fact, we realize, we are. And we have. And we will.

I am so thankful for all the ways we are pointed to the Truth of this voice within. A song, a story, a hug, a beautiful sunrise -- it all reminds us that there is something within us that hears, listens, sees -- is aware of the presence God. This thanks is the marriage of divinity with humanity.

So. On an ordinary day, when the world might seem cold, unfeeling, dismissive, greedy, and sarcastic -- someone shares a song. And we listen. And we break. And through the cracks, the light shines through. And then we begin to feel the warmth of that light - the light of divine Love seeping into the darkness -- into places that, only moments before, felt cold and fragile.  And so, we go a little deeper.  And we discover a little more. We let the shell shards go.

We are humans. We sing to find the humanity in one another. And in ourselves.  And that thread of humanity leads us to our divinity -- what can't be shaken or taken.  The light within.

Thank you Scott.

offered with Love,

Kate

"beyond the chains of your story...."

"When some time has past us,
and the story is retold,
it will mirror the strength
and the courage in your soul..."

I'd left for my walk on the beach much later than planned. And although I was thrilled to watch the ribbons of dusk turn from blue, to lavender, to salmon, to pink to the last deep gasp of twilight before a blanket of sapphire cloaked the endless sky above the sea, I was a bit unsettled by the sheer aloneness I experienced there. Not another single, solitary person for miles in either direction.

That was when the chorus to Sara Groves' "It's gonna be alright..." came to me, "It's gonna be alright. It's gonna be alright..." It was a sweet reminder that no matter how deep the darkness, how vast the emptiness, how distant the light...I am never really alone. And, it is always going to be alright. I don't live in a house, on a beach, under a tree, with a family, or along a river. I live in Love, in God. And in Love, it's already alright.

When I got back to where I was staying, there was an email from a friend, with a link to the below post from 2009. I wasn't really so surprised when I noticed that Sara's "It's gonna be alright," is the song, I'd added as a link, at the end. God is so good...sigh..

offered with Love...



"beyond thinking..."

"Hello darkness my old friend
I've come to talk with you again...."

Simon & Garfunkel's "The Sound of Silence" speaks to me of a gentle darkness, a sweet emptiness, a delicate inner "void" I have learned to love, and am no longer unsettled by.  It is speechless.  And sometimes this silent voice of God comes so softly, almost imperceptibly, that I can really only feel Her touch if I am perfectly still, like a deer in the forest listening for the moccasined footsteps of an Indian princess as she tiptoes her scent through the fallen leaves.

When this divine whisper brushes against my heart, it is not in words, but in feelings, so tender, that I find my eyes closing unintentionally.  It is a moment of reverence so pure it takes my breath away.  And with this intake of breath, there is a shift in focus, my inner landscape takes on new dimensions, and what was once close becomes distant, while what was distant, draws infinitely near.  It is a touch that penetrates to the core place where there is neither time nor process, failure or accomplishment,  you or me.  It is beyond the chains of thinking...beyond reason.

What does freedom
look like
when you are
no longer
bound to
your
once-upon-a-time
beliefs
about
your life,
the
worn-out cliches
of someone else's story
about you,
the
fairy tale dreams
you recited
to yourself
...like mantras...
from beneath the covers,
long into the
darkness,
when
the world
was fast
asleep...

Can we ever...
is it possible
for us... 
to walk
beyond the
chains of
thinking,
wondering,
worrying,
if we might
just
be
the
product of
our own
worst
choices,
or
worse yet,
our own
best
thinking...

You are not
the outcome,
the offspring,
the effect
of
someone,
anyone
else's
rejection, neglect
abuse
abandonment...
or even,
their
love

you are
the breath of
Spirit
upon
an aspen leaf,
a drop of
holy water
on the tongue of
a saint,
the whisper of
forgiveness,
the sweetest song
to a mother
who
never meant
to
cause her
child's
tears

true
freedom
is to live
without want,
without
need,
without 
feeling
the dull ache
of thinking
there
might just be
something more...


it is
to
live
fully
within the
space of
having all,
in the
Allness
of
our
singular
relationship with Him.

it is
to be at peace
to be at home
to find heaven
in
a
closet,
a sepulchre,
a cell,
a cocoon,
a prayer....

In this space of spiritual surrender we discover that, as Sara Groves' assures us "It's Gonna Be Alright" And I believe...I really, truly, genuinely believe it is. In fact, I know it is.

""And when some time has past us,
and the story is retold
It will mirror the strength
and the courage in your soul
Oh, oh, I believe I believe,
that it's going to be alright...""

Especially when we have the courage to cast our cares on Him...for he careth for us...

for you...

Kate
Kate Robertson, CS

"I'm holding on..."

"...I'm hanging on another day
Just to see what you will throw my way
And I'm hanging on to the words you say
You said that I would...would be ok

I'm falling apart, I'm barely breathing
With a broken heart that's still beating
In the pain there's the healing
In your name I find meaning
So I'm holdin' on
I'm still holdin' on,
I'm holdin' on
I'm barely holdin' on to you..."
-     Lifehouse

Yesterday was not easy...for many reasons. But there were moments of grace...moments so pure and clear...that my knees buckle in remembering them.

One came, just after I thought I couldn't navigate one more heart-wrenching detour, in an already swirling day. I was able to stay above the storm...by the grace of God alone, but there wasn't a moment when a prayer wasn't playing its song in my heart and on the growing tip of my day.

I was driving, from one appointment to another, when the phone rang. Now this, in and of itself, is nothing new...at all. But it was the gift of this call that brought me to my knees.

It was a reader of this blog, calling from another part of the world, to tell me that he/she didn't feel alone because of the "space" that these posts provide for her. I wanted to cry. But I held it together. I really wanted to be there fore her. To listen deeply to what his/her story was, and how to be "just a friend." It was a blessing on my day, to be able to "just show up," without a role, a title, an office, or a history. His story was not unlike my own...filled with moments of heartbreak, confusion, doubt, sorrow, inspiration, questions. But because of that, I also knew it was filled with joy, and opportunity, and growth, and...yes, grace.

Little did he/she know, that I needed to "not feel alone," yesterday afternoon, just as much as she did.

Thank you, dear reader, for the gift of your friendship...someone else sent me this link, to a previous post (from 2009), later in the day because it had been helpful to her. Again, it was just what I needed. Funny how God sends us His "angels" of comfort...in the voices of friends...old and new, a passage from Isaiah, the demands of motherhood, and, sometimes, through something we've written, about an experience we've already had, reminding us that precedent has already been set in our lives...we just need to remember. Here is the post my friend linked:

"In Your name I find meaning..."

The other day I felt like I was "falling apart," in much the same way that Lifehouse articulates in this lovely, plaintive song of hope, and longing, titled "Broken."  But it was also just the reminder I needed.   When I heard it, I was feeling particularly lonely in the aloneness of a moment, and it immediately brought me peace. 

I love that line, "in your name I find meaning."  And the "you" in whose name alone I "find meaning" is the great "I AM" whose presence feels as intimate to me as my own hopes and dreams, sorrows and joys...the very private thoughts I cherish in the dark silence of the night. 

When I was still a very young woman, but thought I was all grown up and more than ready to fly solo, my mother and siblings...with whom I had been living since my dad's passing...moved to another state.  In some ways one might think I would have been happy and relieved.  I'd worked two or more jobs for a few years in order to help pay for our rent, utilities, food and family expenses, and this might mean a bit of a break from those demands.  But that wasn't how I was feeling.

Yes, I was excited to be out on my own.  I'd found a Manhattan couple who'd purchased a gentleman's farm in our rural community and talked them into letting me renovate the loft of their beautiful barn into a loft apartment in exchange for rent.  And I was thrilled by the opportunity to creatively redefine the space, by their trust in my twenty-one year old chutzpah, and for my first real privacy...I'd always lived in other people's spaces and had always dreamed about my own apartment.  But there was also a sadness about living away from my mother, sisters, and brothers.

I moved my few belongings into a small storage space in the barn that was heated, had been insulated for winter, and had a tiny bathroom in the corner.  I'd cook on a hot plate and use a tiny little dorm-size refrigerator until I'd finished the renovation.  I had a twin bed pushed under the barnwood eaves and a little table with two chairs. I'd brought three small paintings I done in high school, ones that the school had had framed for an exhibit at the local library.  I used my simple cedar hope chest for storing my clothes and I'd hung my three dresses (and two waitress uniforms I needed for my second job) on a nail at the end of the room.  An antique embroidered linen pillowslip folded over a wooden dowel served as a curtain on the one small window framed by rough barnwood.  I loved way the sunrise looked through the ripply green-tinted glass each morning and vowed to make that window a centerpiece in the renovation. 

That first night after I washed my mug and bowl out in the bathroom sink, dried them with the worn blue and white checked dishtowel I'd begged my mom to let me keep with me, I brushed my teeth and climbed between the soft white sheets and under the colorful quilts that represented the entirety of my dowry.  I'd always loved vintage linens and had gathered bits and pieces over the years from my grandmother, a generous neighbor who'd shared her treasures, and a dusty antique shop in the village we'd lived in while I was in high school.

I turned off the small lamp that sat on an upturned fruit crate that served as my first bookcase and lay in the dark.  I'd grown up in a family of eight children.  I'd shared a bedroom with as many as four of my sisters, depending on the size and number of bedrooms a house had, all my life.  We'd always lived in small houses.  Houses in which our rooms were so cozy, and close to one another, that I could hear my brothers whispering in their room while I read in my bottom bunk across the hall.  I'd never, ever, heard or experienced the kind of visceral silence I was greeted by that night once I'd turned the lamp off.  It was as if someone had sucked every bit of sound out of the room.  I was aware of my heartbeat, my own thoughts, the sound of my nightgown rustling against the soft cotton of my sheets.  I was aware of the unique rhythm of my own breathing, in and out, in and out, in and out. 

This was so new to me.  New, and lonely.  Soon I was aware of more than just my breathing, and my heartbeat.  I was aware of the sound of my own crying. I was alone in the dark, I was falling apart, and I was hyper-aware of everything around me.  And more importantly, everything within me.  I discovered that if you listen closely you really can hear the sound of tears dropping from your eyelashes, rolling along your cheek and falling to the pillowcase under your face. I discovered just how much I really did miss my family.  I missed all the sounds I'd complained about throughout high school when I'd thought all I wanted was "a room of my own."  I missed my sister purring in her sleep, my mother's tapping of her fingers on the kitchen table as she enjoyed a late night cup of tea in the quiet of her own house long after midnight.  I missed the mewing of babies and the turning of more than a half dozen children in their beds while I read.

I missed them. And I was aware of missing them.  It was quiet enough that nothing distracted me from the sound of the love that was happening in my heart.  

This missing them in the silence of the dark was my first awareness of the deep intimacy we each have with our God.  In my aloneness, I discovered that I was really not alone.  There were new thoughts coming to me every moment.  I was feeling the seeping in of a new awareness of my love for my mother, appreciation for my sisters, I could feel the presence of my dreams for the future, and my hunger for meaningful love and purposeful work.  I could actually feel my desire for my sister Nancy's bony spine against mine as we slept back-to-back in the double bed we'd shared at times during childhood.

This awareness of "me", my hopes, my desires, my thoughts, my sadness and longing, was rich with being, was full of the "I AM" of conscious being...God. For me, this is what Mary Baker Eddy is talking about when in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures she refers to:

"...the conscious infinitude of existence and of all identity..."

I learned to love the silence of that small bed under the eaves, because it introduced me to myself...the self that had an inner life.  The self that was no longer being drowned out by all the hustle and bustle of being one of many voices, movements, breathing in a big family.  The self that was conscious of the infinitude of her identity and was discovering that right there, within her own conscious being, lay all the important answers she'd been looking for. 

My silent life in a drafty barn didn't last long...but I have never forgotten it in the ensuing years, as the quiet spaces started filling in with husband, children, phone calls, patients, guests, dogs, washing machines, dishwashers, computers and babies. 

And to this day, when I am feeling most alone in the world, it is not people I seek to surround myself with...even the people I love the most...it is the silence of a darkened room.  My favorite time of day, the time of day - the space - that fills me, and satisfies me most...so that I have something real to give others...are those moments just after waking, when I have not heard a sound, moved even a single finger or probed a toe seeking to feel the sheets or rustle the bedclothes. Those are the moments before I have opened my eyes to see the light of day playing on the pear colored walls of our bedroom. And it is in this timeless time that I am aware, in that profound silence, of the "great I AM" that is me, my conscious being. 

In these moments of great intimacy with my God, I am most keenly atune to the "pain" of missing loved ones...a profound love that heals.  I am most appreciative of the joys of having thoughts that are beautiful and rich with purpose...even if just to me.   I am most conscious of knowing that I am never alone...but always filled with Him...with Her...with the I AM that is the only real oneness that matters...the only I or US that all other relationships spring from.

In the silence of a my first waking thoughts, I find God...the kingdom of heaven within. And this same infinite nearness of the divine is there for each of us...all the time.

with Love, 
Kate
Kate Robertson, CS

"Why..."

It seem like, every couple of years, I need to be reminded why I ever started posting to this blog. At the deepest level, the original reason is never far from my heart...but it's easy to lose sight of at times. Thank you, dear S., for your email suggesting that I revisit this post from 2007:

"You are not alone..."

"…you are not alone
For I am here with you
Though we're far apart
You're always in my heart
you are not alone…"
- Jackson

Someone asked me the other day, "why do you write these posts twice weekly?". 

Was I trying to teach readers something new about spirituality? No, the Bible and Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy...as well as countless other inspirational books, magazine articles, blogs and websites are lovingly dedicated to this kind of pedagogy. 

Was I trying to get my writing seen by blog surfing publishers? No.  Did I have an irrepressible urge to write? Yes, but this is not the reason I blog. 

I have been writing and journaling, at least two hours daily, for many, many years…I write a lot.  I didn't need another focus for my writing life. 

So, as I sat in front of this computer screen and really pondered her question: "Why do you blog?"

Then, the AOL icon at the bottom of my screen started bouncing, up-and-down, alerting me to a new email.  I shook myself from the deep reverie of self-examination to check the message...just in case there was an urgent need for attention.

This was the email that greeted me (shared with permission…all personal and identifying information deleted):

Dear Kate,

I had a difficult day and then read your web-log ("Sunrise, sunset") and nearly burst into tears. Of all the many things I have wanted to ask you is how you bear this very thing … this changing and growing and going. I feel it as sadness and loss. I can't seem to find joy there. My little girl, the world's very best baby, is turning (age deleted). I love to see what she is becoming, but I miss the girl she was even last year.

I have more birthday preparations and it's late. I want to thank you again for your writing and the healings on your website. I turn to it so frequently during the day.

Love...

In reading her message I remembered with such clarity why I post on this blog each Tuesday and Thursday…it is not to share my insights or inspirations, it is not to see my words self-published on the internet, it is not to receive notes of praise…it is for one reason…and for me, there is just one message:

"You are not alone."

Just before I sit down at my computer,  to write a piece for posting, I try to become very quiet and listen for a silent cry that speaks to my heart. I am listening for the tears of those who feel -  that in the darkness of their own private sadness or confusion – they are alone.  That somehow, they are the only ones who have every felt this frightened, angry, hungry for compassion or kindness. 

And then I listen for my own heart.  What in me is reaching out, from the posture of "experience," to try and offer understanding, compassion, comfort, and be a beacon of faint light in that darkness.  What can I share that will assure them that someone else has been there and that there is a way out. 

I am, in each posting,  trying to say…"I will sing this song, of God's amazing grace, loudly, so that you can know that you are not alone in the darkness. To remind you that God is there…right there in your own heart… impelling you forward.

"...Just the other night
I thought I heard you cry
Asking me to come
And hold you in my arms
I can hear your prayers
Your burdens I will bear
But first I need your hand..."

To know that we are not alone...that God is there at every juncture to take our hand and lead us into our own light...is a message so powerful to me.  To know also that God has appointed angels of kindness in our lives...friends, sisters, mothers, brothers...to be the hand we feel, the song we listen for...this makes me weep with gratitude.

Here is my reply to my friend's email (with some minor editing):

Dear...

I burst into tears sometimes too when I later read the raw nakedness of what I have felt about something and posted to the blog.  These issues of motherhood and of journeying towards evolving as a spiritual  woman in a world that is constantly inviting us to want, want, want...more, more, more...are such powerful catalysts for my own spiritual development (de-envelop-ment).  They strip me clean day after day of all pride and ambition and leave me childlike in my need for a divine Parent's embrace and care.

I often find that the ideas I have shared are so new to me when I finally read them. It is almost as if I wrote them without even thinking of them...as if they poured out of my fingertips without passing through the medium of this false mind that would like to call itself sovereign in my life….memory, speculation, imagination.  That they come from a more silent space – the heart.

But as for your question - I am realizing that the best thing I can give my daughters is HONESTY about the journey.  Allowing them to think that I have it even one bit more "figured out" than I really do, is cruel and sets them up for failure by comparison.  So...I am staying focused on integrity in parenting my children...integrity of heart, mind, spirit, actions, words...emotions.

It is sometimes very messy and organic...but it is true...and I like truth...alot...

love,
Kate

This is my truth.  I don't write from a longing to be heard, I don't write from a need to say something profound or pithy....but I do write from a deep desire to answer the call of  someone crying in the dark, to let them know that they are not alone. That their divine Father-Mother is there to comfort them, as She has been there to comfort me on so many long journeys through the wilderness.

"I speak from experience."
- Mary Baker Eddy

Here is a Youtube clip of Michael Jackson's"You are Not Alone":

"I have a need for solitude..."

"I have a need for solitude
I'll never be safe
in crowded rooms.
I like the sound
of silence coming on..."

It surprises me that this will be the first Mary Chapin Carpenter song I have used on this blog. But perhaps it says something about how much deeper there is to go in plumbing the depths of my own spiritual journey.  MCC has sung me down many a dusty road...sobbing, driving hard and fast just to get away from the sadness, and praying for nothing more than a song that will make me feel less alone. 

Her new CD "The Age of Miracles," was borne on the winds of her own "miraculous" adventure through a critical health-related wilderness experience, one that led her into a period of what she characterized as" painful depression, fear and anxiety."  Its content is masterful, sobering, intuitive, and deeply moving.  What it takes me hundreds of words to hint at, she hammers home with three verses, married to music that makes my heart weep, sing, and soar...but never feel alone. 

There are cuts on this CD that I can't help but listen to with my eyes closed...it is almost as if I am remembering how it felt to have lived the moment that gave the song birth...only it is not my life, but hers, she is singing about. 

There is one song though, that when I simply read its title, "I have a need for solitude," I couldn't help but wonder, once again, if we weren't actually "twin daughters of different mothers."

Solitude is not just a delightful interruption from an otherwise social norm of people and events, for me.  It is my natural habitat, like salt water to a sea anemone.  I need it.  It is the oxygen I begin to gasp for after a long day of truly wonderful conversations, and deeply inspiring interactions with people who I truly love.   But it has only been by the grace of God, that I have learned to appreciate the shifting levels of aloneness in my life with acceptance and wonder.

There was a time, though, when I seemed to need solitude in a way that was almost crippling.  And I apologize for the insanity I put my family through during this very confusing chapter.  I didn't understand it either, while I was in its grip.

There were days when taking our daughters to school, or having people come into our home was terrifying.  It was as if other people's sounds, smells, their shapes slicing through the changing light, the movement of air, the rustling of atmospheric ions as they stole from room-to-room, felt like someone was sucking all of the carefully negotiated alone-ness out of my perfect space of solitude, and I couldn't breathe. 

Unfortunately, my profession as a spiritual healer seemed to give me an endless supply of "get out of jail" cards...justifications for why I needed to leave, and one great excuse after another, for demanding it from everyone close to me.  And if I didn't get it, I would seek it out at great lengths.  There was a point in this chapter, when my favorite place in the world was a three foot by five foot windowless, cedar-lined closet under the eaves of our house where I had a little chair, table, lamp and fan.  I would take my phone, and go there for hours just to take calls and pray.  I thought it was a slice of heaven.  Until it became a self-imposed tomb I didn't want to leave. 

Oh yes,  I learned to cope with the need to be "out and about" as a mother, wife, professional, and member of my community, but the ache for solitude was never far from reach.  I took it with me wherever I went, and when society became too much, I would retreat.  I would leave.  I would excuse myself and find a place to hide...a bathroom, a closet, the backseat of my car, under a quilt, into my head...all alone.  Social gatherings felt cloying, dense, and paralyzing.  Solitude was like walking into a fresh, sweet, light-filled clearing...a high meadow redolent with the scent of chamomile and pine.  But it was not freeing or liberating, because I thought I couldn't be "me" anywhere else.  It had become a prison, instead of the open space I thought it was, and I was certain I now needed in order to feel inspired, and creative.  I didn't know how I would find my way out of the labyrinth of my own creating, or if I even wanted to. 

And then something happened. On a very normal day,  while I was sitting all alone in my perfectly silent kitchen, I suddenly realized that solitude was, in all spiritual actuality,impossible.  And in that moment,  it, solitude, was no longer the "holy grail" in my life.  Just like that.  As I sat there, I found myself asking, "Why would I ever, even want something that was really never going to be true in God's eyes."   Why, it was as clear as day to me:  I couldn't be me...truly me...all alone, without you.     And not just the "you" that is my husband, my children, my friends...but all the "yous" that I am blessed to have waft through my life, like the perfect perfume of hyacinth blossoms on a warm spring day...moment by serendipitous moment.  I cannot love without you.  I cannot be generous, kind, compassionate, honest, forgiving without you.  Each of you, allows me to be who I am. God's beloved and be-loving child.

Although it's been a struggle at times to remember that I really do want to be this "best me," and not the person who seeks out closets and solitude like a drug, I now find, that even in those lovely moments when the gift of solitude does descend like a divine surprise upon my day, I am no longer more at peace then, than in a crowded room or a noisy kitchen.  Why bother seeking something spiritually unattainable, since, in Truth, we can never really be alone anyways, we live together in Christ. 

We are not "isolated, solitary ideas."  We are members of the body of Christ, the spiritual collective called "man."  We are but individual saplings, branchings from the vast root system of a spiritual organism, even larger than "the aspen grove," that stretches its arms across the Continental Divide. We are one with "the earth and the sky, one with everything in life."  And I am "as much you, as I am myself."  We are His. 

Yes, I still love my solitude, that alone time when the house is clean, the silence is golden, lavender incense swirls with each shifting breeze, and  figurative notation paper hangs in the air waiting for poetry and music to find their positions, like birds on a wire, and become a song or a prayer.   But I no longer like my life better without people in it.  I no longer think that I need soliude to be myself, to breathe, to feel peaceful, or to hear God's voice. And yet, as my friend Mary Chapin Carpenter sings, I will always like "the sound of silence coming on."  Thanks MCC...welcome back into our company we have missed you...thank you for your words, your music, your heart that sings to us of miracles...

"My sense of nature's rich glooms is,
that loneness lacks but one charm
to make it half divine — a friend,
with whom to whisper,
"Solitude is sweet."
- Mary Baker Eddy

with Love,
Kate
Kate Robertson, CS

My friend, and editor, Maria has reminded me that I have actually referred to   Mary Chapin Carpenter songs in earlier posts. If you click on her name, there is a link to those posts. The first one will be this post, but if you scroll down you will find the others. Thanks, Maria xoxo


[photo credit:  Photo of Inis Mor, Aran Islands by Kesra Hoffman - artist, photographer, painter]