Dear Substack Friends,
First of all, if you are paying for a subscription, thank you so very much and please convert it to a free subscription.
I have what I need in this life, I’m fine, and I am so sick + tired of the fees that all of these platforms take, how rich those folks are getting, not only here, but the money processor, too (Stripe). If you’re paying $5 for a subscription, $3.99 comes to me and that’s just one transaction. Utter BS.
Don’t get me wrong $3.99 is something, it’s not nothing, but truly … the fees.
The NY Times and other writing platforms are very sneaky about charging your card when your subscription runs out (it happened to me). Then, when you discover the stealth, they make you talk to a person in order to cancel the subscription then they tell you they can’t cancel it, you have to wait until your new annual subscription, the one you didn’t want, runs out.
So much sleaze. I’m just tired of it all. I have a sneaky suspicion Substack does the same thing.
The other thing I’m s + t of is everyone making money for every word that drops from their mouth — the modern gold rush to monetize thoughts.
Honestly, what everyone is saying is rarely worth paying for. Like everything in life, some people are good at writing (and speaking to the larger public) and some people aren’t. There are lots and lots of people out there who are making lots and lots of money saying things that are dumb. I don’t understand it, but it’s real and I’d prefer not to be part of the circus. I love writing, I do it sporadically when something hits me, and from this moment on, in this space it’s free. Please, cancel your paying subscription and sign up for a free one. Give the money to someone who needs a warm meal.
Understand I am so grateful for all of your financial support here, and for those of you who have ponied up for the Littles, which I WILL HAVE DONE WHEN I GET BACK FROM TAHOE on September 15. I had a great conversation with Chris Robbins about this the other, and he did a good job of holding me to the stone, so to speak, and making me clearly articulate what I meant when he asked how much time do you need to finish them and I said two weeks.
The first two weeks of September I spend in Lake Tahoe, in the company of 2/3 of my kids, where the light, the air and the water are my best friends.
After my daughter and I drive all the way across the country so she can start her new life there nannying a little dude with curly blonde hair with the same name as her brother, Nate.
OK, so that’s the business end of things here this morning.
The weather this morning is just utterly dreamy: rainy, we’re fogged-in here, almost as if we’re by the sea, only we’re on a hilltop in Vermont. I love this very much and think it contributes to the strength of the information I get from Spirit. I do believe that there are conditions that make it easier for Spirit/human connection. Sometimes it has to do with place, sometimes with desire and intention and sometimes the weather kicks it up a notch.
Which is probably why I was brought back to consciousness this morning with some incoming messages and knew I had to get to the keyboard to write.
It’s been a good ten years since I figured out that I could connect with Spirit. Like writing (tennis, baking, running, fishing etc), everyone can do it, but some people are better at it than others. I was really intrigued to discover that I’m better at being a medium than most people.
In the early days of fiddling with this thing, I did not trust what I was getting (for me it’s words and visuals). I thought I was making it up, which, I’ve had an over-active, creative mind my whole life, so of course I thought that was what was happening.
In time, with study and practice, I learned to trust what I was receiving and to use it in ways that made sense.
Sometimes I get messages intended for someone else, sometimes I receive something that contributes to my broader understanding about life.
That was the case this morning as I was coming back here, from Dreamland, which I love so very, very much. I’m just remembering that in a dreamscape this morning I was with one of the people who were involved in my becoming a spiritual conduit ten years ago, so that’s cool.
What I got this morning was this: they didn’t have the will to live.
This is something I understand absolutely and completely, but I do know that most people don’t want to hear it.
You and I, all of us, we carry a life force. And it’s ours to choose whether we want to be here or not.
You know people with a profound life force when you meet them: they have a lot of energy and enthusiasm; they have embraced the embodied condition, no matter what the circumstances, good or bad, and they are very present.
They might be humming through their regular days or they might be fighting like hell to rid their body of cancer. They have the force, they are harnessing the force, they are choosing life.
You also know a person with a weak life force when you meet them. They are sick a lot and often define themself by their illness(es). They might have an addiction to drugs or alcohol. The life force is leeching out of them.
I have been receiving this message a lot lately: they did not have the will to live.
I think that many among us are, indeed, very tired of the conditions of this world and losing hope that things will get better. It takes a lot of strength to counter-balance what the news feeds us each day. It takes a lot of intentional sleuthing to find evidence that things are OK. It takes intention to be present here.
I read obituaries daily, from the towns in which I have lived, curious to see who has made their exit. The other day I saw that a woman my age whom I had known peripherally for many years had died. She was so beautiful. So blessed with family and means, and yet during the decade or so she was in my realm, she was always sick. Needing care and attention, specialists, medications and alternative treatments. The focus was, had to be, always on her.
She seemed to not want to get well. And this is the essential difference. I have been very sick, very unwell, and it kicked in for me an intense desire to live. When I landed in the hospital with all kinds of internal and external medical issues, I realized for the very first time what it meant to appreciate life, to be alive. I did not want to die; I chose life every day, even though it was exhausting and scary and painful.
For some, this is the case: disease and physical set-backs (broken bones, etc) bring with them an intense desire to get well, to stay alive.
For some being sick is a modus operandi; they are afraid of who or what they will be when they’re not defined by their illness, their brokenness. Who will they be when everyone around them no longer needs to tend to their symptoms?
Others let the life force leach out via alcohol or drugs. Life is too challenging as it is and some kind of chemical reaction is needed in order to let some air out of the balloon. But each time it takes more and more of the substance to achieve the desired state, and over time the will to be present fades. Profound addiction is, of course, a clear choice of death over life.
There are many times as a pastor when I’m totally fried, tired of the weekly slog to the pulpit, tired of the petty grievances that crop up in the churchy realm. Just tired of having to get myself ready and get to the church on time every Sunday.
I recognize in those times that it’s a mindset shift that’s needed. I have to decide: I’m either going to be and act tired of this, or I’m going to see this as an opportunity to create and share joy.
Each Sunday morning people show up to sit and pray and sing and listen. Will I choose to see this as drudgery, or will I choose to see this as awesome?
It’s always, everything, a choice.
We are not character actors in a random play called Life. It doesn’t work that way.
We can either choose presence, choose to live. Or not.
A couple of things to note: Chris Robbins, Martha Rogers-Jordan and I will host an evening of conversation on death and dying on September 27, 5-7pm at the Crooked Ram in Manchester, VT. Open to the public at no charge. Chris and Martha have both trained as death doulas, we are all hospice trained and experienced. Martha has studied modern funeral and burial options, I am a medium and we have all studied the confluence of psychology and spirituality and are well-versed in the realms of the transition we call death. Drop me a line, melissa519@me.com, if you’re interested.
Tahoe-area friends, I will be at the Olympic Valley Chapel (formerly Squaw Valley) on September 3 at 10am, joined by my old St. Lawrence bud, Mike Reese, and his son, Aiden, both enormously talented musicians. Come just to see the cool architecture!
so much love,
mo
Happy trip west. "Chris Robbins, Martha Rogers-Jordan and I will host an evening of conversation on death and dying on September 27, 5-7 PM at the Crooked Ram in Manchester, VT." I would love to attend, but am too far away with no transportation. I wish the Wesley Community was open to this kind of even, but we are finding how how closed minded the spirituality is here.
Best wishes for a safe and happy trip with Coco. She is walking into her new world now. May angels surround her and you. Mary Ellen
Never miss a good chance to shut up.
Will Rogers