a handful of glitter

Also. 

Also, I feel people's energy. When I was young, I was an odd duck, and I think it was because it was very easy for me to get tangled up in the energy around me and misfire my own self--if that makes any sense. In time, and with age, I learned to regulate it. Learned what time I needed to take to rinse myself clean of all that connected energy pulsing around me. 

But, in the quiet of morning, I still attend to it. And it may sound crazy, but I cannot say how many times I call the spirit of someone near me, who I can feel is struggling.

And in the pre-dawn hours, right after coffee, I call their spirit to me. And mostly it's my kids. My mom. Dan. My friends. And sometimes it's people I don't like. Or people who are not nice to me. The opportunists, the gossips, the world weary meanies.

And to those who don't give a fig about the energy they receive, perceive, and send out into the world, it probably sounds foreign or scary. But to me--it's just love. And not even entirely my love. Some of these people I don't love at ALL. But the universe loves them, God loves them, clearly somebody loves them. So, this? It's just the work of my hands. 

The truth is the greatest power you have is between your two hands. Palm to palm. The first thing you do with a skinned knee, or a fever, or to love someone is to lay your hands on them, right? Don't you think that is the power you add to prayers? Palm to palm, you complete the circuit of you, and you add the power of you to the power of the one who sent you--which is way more powerful anyway. Right?

Anyway, the point is this. In times of struggle I sit, meditation style, and hold my hands, palm up. And I wait to feel (I swear, I can feel it), the companion hands of the person who I need to join me. And once I do, I start at the crown, the head, and work my way through the energy centers. Some people have a lot in front of their hearts, heavy and present. Some people have a lot behind their hearts, hidden and unknown, but super-duper driving their emotional bus. Some people are blocked in their voice, their stomach, or the root of them. And I pull chords, where I feel them. And people's chords (cords?) Feel like phlegm to me--isn't that weird? That's how heavy and clingy and suffocating they are to that person. But once in my hand, its lighter than air. Because its not my burden, it becomes a fistful of feathers. A handful of glitter. Then I blow it off my hands. Literally, physically, I blow it off like blowing out a candle. These cobwebs of things we carry, I fling them back to the universe they came from, with a prayer that they be replaced with something much more useful and clear. 

Then I close everything that I have opened and send all the love I can imagine the universe has and all the light that we cannot see in our wandering aimlessness. 

And it's made up. A compilation of things I have learned. It's not magic or me saying I have the power to heal anything--spoiler alert: I don't. But I'm willing to add the power of my hands to the effort. I'm only called sometimes to be the hands of something greater than me, not the solution. I am asked to serve others in some small way. 

And as I go about this quiet work, I do sometimes hear people say they woke up just feeling hopeful that day. And that is a good, good thing. A little infusion of love never hurt a soul. 

I don't do it every day. It is nowhere near a discipline of any kind. But only when I feel compelled to do so. 

Everybody on social media is saying their words for the year, or their goals and hopes--and I love that. A goal means hope is alive, and hope is a powerful dream--the engine of all goodness. But this quiet work is my goal. I want to do more of it this year. So just know that. If you need anything that this practice may have to offer, let me know.