Welcome to my World

Welcome to the domain different--to paraphrase from New Mexico's capital city of Santa Fe which bills itself "The City Different." Perhaps this space is not completely unique but my world shapes what I write as well as many other facets of my life. The four Ds figure prominently but there are many other things as well. Here you will learn what makes me tick, what thrills and inspires me, experiences that impact my life and many other antidotes, vignettes and journal notes that set the paradigm for Dierdre O'Dare and her alter ego Gwynn Morgan and the fiction and poetry they write. I sell nothing here--just share with friends and others who may wander in. There will be pictures, poems, observations, rants on occasion and sometimes even jokes. Welcome to our world!

Wednesday, May 2, 2012

Promises to Keep

I have promised two things and today I will try to do them both but it will be in two posts instead of my ususal one. First, my special weekend.

My birthday was Friday, April 27, and I was a bit depressed at the stark numbers staring me in the face. I was not ready to be there yet!! Finally, to shake myself out of the doldrums, I decided to make a trip over to Grant County, where I had lived briefly from August 2008 to April 2009. While there I had made some special friends and continued a relationship developed earlier with someone who now lives there.

Friends are sacred and special to me. I have a fair circle of standard garden variety friends and enjoy them all. Then there is a smaller inner circle of what I might call "True Friends" or folks you can count on to provide honest advice, help, and the needed things that make life so much better. And last, there are a very few Friends-of-the-Spirit with whom you share a bond so profound it hardly seems it could have developed in just a few years.Maybe the soul mates or soul groups some have written of are real and this applies here.

One such friend I had not seen face to face for over two and a half years but we had finally managed to plan to get together. I was a little edgy, not sure how it would be. The first time we met, back early in 2008, I felt as if I had known this person forever and we had always been at ease and comfortable with each other and always had a good time together but then things had gotten complicated as we both had problems and issues that seemed to push their way into our connection and force us to choose new and diverging paths.It left an ache that never quite went away and we managed to keep in contact a bit but so far apart...

Well, I can truly say I received a great blessing--we saw each other, walked into a strong hug, and then began to talk as if it had been merely weeks instead of years. That, to me, is the measure of a real friendshp and one which I feel has to result from other lives shared in the past, memories we cannot quite access but which have built a gossamer web of links and connections, a measureless and enternal bond. We spent several hours together over the two days I was there and every minute of it was precious. I hope now we can avoid such a long space between together times but I am assured now the shared connection will never sever..

I then went to the home of another friend and spent the night with her. We met through the unlikely vehicle of Freecycle--more on that another time--when I was trying to get rid of things before I moved from the small town of Hurley, NM to Colorado for awhile. We are very different and poles apart on politics but we respect each other and share a love for books and an intellectual curiosity among other interests and never seem to run out of things to talk about. She loaned me a book which I am currently reading and I will review it when I finish it--perhaps a week or so. A literary novel, I suppose one would call it, of which I do not read a lot but this one is unusual.

The next day, Saturday, I caught up with another friend. She is a bright flame of a person, a non-denominational minister and an actress, singer and dancer, a magnet for trouble and always in a circle of drama on a mad roller coaster ride of highs and lows. But this time was different. When I called, she told me where she was and I managed to find my way there. And I was invited to take part in a simple and informal worship service she and some new friends were holding. It turns out they were Messianic Jews, an offshoot of the Jewish religion that accepts Jesus. They danced, sang, read some prayers and scriptures and welcomed me into their circle, even after I explained my Celtic pagan/Druid beliefes. It was a truly uplifting experience! I came away wtih a conviction that all the many paths lead to a single place--call it God or Godde or whatever you wish--the creative force of the universe and all the good that's in it. As I think a verse ran in Simon and Garfunkle's Wedding Song--"Whenever two or more of us are gathered in His name, there is Love." (perhaps not perfect quote but close). And how true that is! When people come together to share in worship and faith so long as it is loving, open and accepting, there is an incredible energy to be found; all that is Holy and Sacred is there and I define that as Love, which I call "the One True Thing." Needless to say I came home later that afternoon feeling completely uplifted and at peace with myself, the world and those I love. It was a real gift, the whole two days, and I am so very thankful that I went and experienced it all!

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