The Pennies From Heaven

being spiritual is a tough thing when you are a human with six senses all working at the same time. yes, six senses. the sixth one is the intuitive one, the one least developed and recognized by most of us. i believe we all have this sixth sense, and we have the ability to develop it. not all of the first five senses are equally developed. we rely mostly on our sense of sight and sound, which gives the other three (touch, taste and smell) a bit of a break. but when robbed of one of these major senses, our other ones over compensate to make up for the difference. and so the blind man can hear a pin drop in another room and the deaf person can feel sound through the floor.

developing faith in a world where things are tangible and immediate is difficult. the very factor of our bodies is a huge roadblock to believing in things that cannot be proved, touched or verified. and this is where my penny stories come in.

there have been many dear abby columns devoted over the years to the stories of people finding simple pennies and seeing them as signs from those passed or angels that we are being looked after and thought about. ( click here to go to the actual column of may 3, 2001 http://www.uexpress.com/dearabby/?uc_full_date=20010503). i really grasped this concept. i feel it is upbeat and a way to develop some communication with those beyond and also to develop faith that there are things out there we can't always touch and see.

my communications with these spiritual beings began years ago, but in recent months has become more frequent as i start acting upon my sixth sense. while i have always had this, i has waxed and waned in power due to my devotion or lack of it to its growth. i have worked in places where i was in the company of other "sensitives" whose presence heightened my radar so to speak. in those cases, this was not a good thing for me, and rather than embrace this ability, i tried to ignore it. however, you can't run away from what is part of you.

i have taken to talking out loud to these angels. i don't know who they are, but i have spoken and told them i want to deepen my relationship with them and to come to know they are always with me. i have landed on the penny exchange as a way of communication. when i need one, i ask out loud for it. usually this is in the morning when i anticipate a bad day, or if i have been in a troublesome spot for a number of days and need some divine light to get out from under.

the angels are not failing me. as a matter of factor, it is getting to be like penny email! i look for them everyday! this week has been fun. i went into WaWa last sunday looking for the penny. i knew it was there, but didn't see it on my way in. while i walked around picking up my stuff, i had my head down looking for it. it appeared as i was leaving, right in the doorway that i had passed through yesterday. i have found more than a few of my angel pennies at WaWa. yesterday's penny was no different. i had actually been in the store, out and back in again and was finally headed home, but decided to fill the car up with gas while i was there. i pulled the van in on the wrong side of the car. i got out to fuel it, discovered this, and then discovered the penny next to the passenger side of the car in the bay next to me! the date on it was 1974, the year i graduated from high school, which made this particular penny over 30 years old. i had a good laugh.

the day before i was shopping in Wal-Mart and was looking for the penny, although i was thinking i probably wouldn't get one that day (my grandmother had appeared to me in a dream the night before, only one of about 5 or 6 times she has done so since she died in 1997. i thought that was likely to be my sign of the day). i was putting my shopping cart up in a place that was further away than i needed to go. as i had been walking around the store and parking lot, i had been peering up and down aisles and between cars. just before i got back to my car, i noticed something that looked like a penny roll to me next to a car. i walked back after glancing at it, and then bent down to see exactly what it was. it was a half-eaten vienna sausage and immediately i said YUCK! but then noticed, right next to it...a penny. i really laughed out loud then and said "thanks guys!"!

there have been pennies next to cars and in and out of the FasMart this week when i stopped for coffee. i have found them in the cafeteria at school twice this week as i did my lunch duty. last week, after telling a staff member about my love of the pennies, i found one on the floor of the teacher bathroom. it was so coincidental that i asked her the next day if she had put it there for me to find (no). i found one in austin's room yesterday after i had broken the cat water dish in his room and was mopping up the water from the rug. it was under the edge of his dresser. that made two yesterday!

today it is snowing and pretty outside and i have been happy to watch it come down and to watch the cats viewing the birds and squirrels feasting at the feeders. i have had cups of chai tea, made a crockpot stew, and have yet to pick up my ny times and richmond sunday papers out of the driveway yet, but i will. the pennies make me happy and make me feel more connected, and in the flow. they slowly and surely have helped me start to believe in what i feel inside, and i am coming more and more attuned with relying on my inner guidance system, and not just on the touch, feel, see, hear and taste world.

the pennies i find are turned over to an old red dinosaur piggy bank that was austin's. it is my hope that eventually i will have enough to give each one of my students or people who are special (i have given two away this week to people i thought might need them). the concept is so simple...you gotta believe.

saving fish from drowning...a view on the parable

A pious man explained to his followers: "It is evil to take lives and noble to save them. Each day I pledge to save a hundred lives. I drop my net in the lake and scoop out a hundred fishes. I place the fishes on the bank, where they flop and twirl. 'Don't be scared,' I tell those fishes. 'I am saving you from drowning.' Soon enough, the fishes grow calm and lie still. Yet, sad to say, I am always too late. The fishes expire. And because it is evil to waste anything, I take those dead fishes to market and I sell them for a good price. With the money I receive, I buy more nets so I can save more fishes."

I really like the story above and it has a lot of relevance to my life. i think it means that we are all well intentioned in what we do, but we are single-minded in our enthusiasm to make things turn out the way we want them to. society is the fish market...we "make a profit" through its endorsement of our actions. we then go back out, flush with the "cash" of this endorsement, and proceed to expand what we have done before...spreading our version of the truth. we are well intentioned, but blind. we aren't concerned with the status of our "fish." we are fixated on the rightfulness of our intentions, and thus don't see the proverbial forest for the trees.

i see this happening around me with parents and their children. the pious man states that it is evil to take lives, and noble to save them. so he saves them from themselves. the parents i see, including myself sometimes, take away our children's life choices by making things "right" when there is trouble. we think by fixing it for the kid, we are being noble and doing the right thing. actually, i think we are being evil by robbing them of the opportunity to grow through dealing with adversity. the fish, of course, die out of the water and they become "calm and still." well, kids do that too. they stop fighting for themselves and become dead to the possibility of dealing with their own problems. all these dead fish go to the market, or out into the world, as examples of doing the right thing. but they have not improved the world a bit by becoming pawns. those who consider this action a success are buoyed by the others around them doing the same thing. if everyone is saving the fish kids from drowning, it must be a noble action. the fish become the vehicle by which we continue to ruin the society we live in. at some point, there will be no fish left and we will have to face the consequences of what we have done...we have killed off the independent idea gene pool, the very place that is the heart of what makes us human.

a gripping morality tale about the consequences of intentions-both good and bad-and about the shared responsibility that individuals must accept for the actions of others.

god's law vs. man's law...ANTIGONE lives on

i am currently teaching sophocles' play ANTIGONE and i have started my discussion of the play with the theme of god's law vs. man's law. the major players, creon and antigone, represent the two sides, and the end result of the play is that no one wins when you are trying to win. in this case, everyone loses. antigone kills herself to make a point. creon's son, haemon, is engaged to marry antigone, but kills himself because she has, and he does so after trying to stab his father for having driven antigone to her death. creon loses his son and his wife, who kills herself and curses him for having driven their son to his death. all of this comes as a result of pride, and our inability to admit we are wrong.

what i taught my students today was that this play is worth reading because we are living this same conflict. certainly the current crisis over the mohammed political cartoons is a point in fact. the islamic law calls for no pictures or portrayals of mohammed. man's law says we have the right to draw, publish or question anything. nothing, however, is mentioned about respect for another's opinions. man's law says we can, so we do. another issue of god's law vs. man's law is unquestionably the ongoing debate in this country over abortion. a few truly crazy christians believe it is quite ok to uphold god's law by killing off the abortion doctors. they are no better than the islamic terrorist who flies a plane into the trade centers to avenge allah. the issue of the death penalty rages on, with conflicting "god's laws" being debated. on one hand, thou shall not kill. on the other hand, and eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. then we have the even more controversial issue of gay marriage/civil unions. the religious right say that we must make man made laws prohibiting gays from marrying or having civil unions because it is against god's law. clearly, there doesn't seem to be much in the way of separation of church and state in that one. in virginia, this will be put to the vote in november. our state is likely to join the ranks of 19 other states putting the ban on the books. but is it god's law to deny a certain element of the population the ability to have what all other people have? very interesting how people's "truths" get changed and twisted to meet the needs of the day.

the u.s. government, and likely the population for the most part, seem to be culturally ignorant in our zeal to let everyone in on our great gift: democracy. however, not every culture needs or wants to be democratic. why do we need to put our belief system upon others? if the saudis suddenly bought the u.s., would we be angry at having to worship at a mosque and wear the burka? yes, i imagine we would. so why are we so suprised when other cultures rebel against our presence and our insistance that our way is the right and ONLY way? why is our truth the ONLY one?

i am predicting that within a week those political cartoons are going to find their way to the front pages of some american papers, and likely on the television because the american "need to know" is going to trump over the respect for the religion. so far, only ABC news has briefly flashed a picture of the cartoons, and that was back in september before the controversy got out of hand. with more and more protests and riots breaking out all over the world, the american public is going to put pressure on the media because we want to SEE what all the controversy is about, and someone will make the decision to give in. i am hoping that smarter heads will prevail, and we will not be exercising our man made right to know and see everything. a little discretion would be a very good thing right now. at least if we want to stay out of the line of terrorist fire.

chicago hot dogs and tangelos...all in one day!!!

one of my students, nick c., is from chicago. his mother has been going back and forth to visit her mother (i think she is ill) and nick asked his mom to bring me back some chicago hot dogs! and she did...nick showed up after school on tuesday with a package of vienna beef hot dogs and the poppy seed rolls they go on! i immediately canceled the date i had with the exercise machines at american family fitness and went instead to the grocery store to buy the things needed to make a real chicago dog.

so what makes a chicago hot dog different from any other? start with a vienna beef hot dog, which is only native to chicago. add yellow mustard, bright green relish, 2 slices of tomato, a kosher pickle slice, onions, a dash of celery salt, and 2 sport peppers! sounds awful, but it sure does turn out to be fun! they say that when you bite in to all of the ingredients at once, you are supposed to experience a "snap" and you do!

i didn't fix all of them, just half, and saved the rest for a rainy day. but it just wasn't the hot dogs that day...i also got my shipment of honeybells and mini-bell tangelos! deeeeelish!