Please Don't Rob, Jail or Shoot Us, Because We're. . .

"The Lord is My Shepherd," "I Can Do All Things Through Christ," "Grateful Thankful Blessed," "I'm Not Lucky, I'm Blessed," "Saved by Grace and Faith," "Worry Ends Where Faith Begins," "Corinthians 13.7," "Trust in the Lord," etc. etc. in an establishment owned by folks with Hispanic surnames who appear to be Hispanic too. Are you thinking what I'm thinking?

When I was in Branson, MO for an overnight I saw similar sayings papered all over, worked into the shows, Jesus this and that, at a size and volume new to me, and I've been alive and a Missourian for quite some time and I'm an Aquarius so I analyze everything.

When you love God or Jesus and are truly sustained by faith or keep wise sayings and verses and gratitude close to your heart, you don't need to blare that all over, do you, unless 1) You want everyone to know, which is the opposite of how Jesus said to handle it; and 2) You want everyone convinced that you believe these things; 3) you want make it plain you belong to the same Jesus Club most other people around here belong to and know enough not to offend the club's ruling class by displaying graven images; and 4) you think these decorations have power beyond their decorativeness, or you think others believe that and want to keep them comfortable and pacified; 5) you wish to make the point that you speak and read English and not any of those offensive "other" languages except for the bit of Spanish everybody speaks, consisting of "Mi casa, su casa"; 6) you are somewhat concerned that other Jesus Club members will bust your door down and deport you whether you're a citizen or not, or rob you or spray your place with an AR-15 because they are bothered by your surname or skin color, and you are doing your best to establish yourself as entirely non-threatening supporters of the home team who only hope to make a living selling really good food.

Emphasis on #6. In fact you don't even have to be brown for that to happen to you.

Going to the Chapel

....the tin-roofed, open-air chapel at the Black Madonna Shrine not too far from here, and St. Joseph' head served as a perfect perch for a singing Barn Swallow, cheerful since I've been coming here rather often lately to discuss with God some painful things undergone by friends, family, and myself (pinched nerve, yow! making it impossible to sit and write, and grounding me for three weeks) and lighting eight-day votive candles for those, alas, whose candles are going out, like my mother and father, ages 83 and 98, both deathly ill. There is no death, though. It's an illusion. The bird said so.

I Eat Christian Food

Google forced some changes and I couldn't reach this blog until today, but you were in my thoughts while my adventures included a stop at McDonald's in House Springs where I learned that McDonald's is Christian food. At the suggested website there's nothing unusual or even Christian, just a button to start applying for McDonald's employment.

Christian Foods is a St. Charles-area company and it apparently started a Christian restaurant or business directory which has two area McDonald's listed (St. Peters and  Fenton) but not House Springs. The company Facebook page has no information on it. What, I wonder, is required for a McDonald's to be so designated? I wondered also, where would Jesus eat? I believe in the Law of Attraction. Does this mean they wouldn't hire me?

Some People Have Faithful Dogs. . .

I test-drove some shiny new Toyotas--a new-car showroom feels like prom night--but with big ugly grilles instead of solid-metal front ends, and despite their backup cameras and  four-wheel drives I found I had to yank and redirect their transmission levers--just as hard in the Corolla as in the RAV4--like I was Speed Racer or something, and these were automatics. MPG stunk and that's just how it is with four-wheel drive: nice to have in the country, but less so if country living means driving a lot of miles.


The young salesman said he'd managed a restaurant for 10 years and it was a relief for him to sell cars. I asked him about the big ugly grilles and he called it  "more aggressive styling." Yeah, right, aggressive Toyotas. . . what were those people smoking. . .I hated to tell him no sale because I had been ready to deal. "Is pricing an issue for you?" he asked. I said if a vehicle was perfect for me I'd pay whatever, but these were nowhere near.

I drove home in my '07 Corolla with 150K miles ("she'll go double that, easy," my mechanic drawled) and was stunned and humbled by how quietly and well it handled by comparison. The first brand-new car I ever bought, I called her "The Bride," and we have been through camping, weeping, poverty and riches, driving over a boulder, skidding off the road, encased in ice, and many wonderful faraway places and carrying fascinating passengers, faithfully and reliably, and I apologized for even thinking of cheating on her. This is Divine Post #1000, by the way. I haven't changed a bit.

The Second Saturn Return

Astrology believes human life has "Saturn cycles." Every 29 years, slow-moving planet Saturn completes a journey around the zodiac and returns to where it was at your birth (in my case, at 11 degrees of Sagittarius). Our first Saturn Return, around age 29, typically has us rethinking what we've been doing, and many people at this time enter another stage of life or another line of work. At 29 I left the office world to go to grad school where I discovered a discipline and a career I'd never dreamed of.

Astrology says that at the second Saturn return, about age 58, one begins to detach from the worldly life and becomes -- ancient Indian astrology says --"a forest dweller" with an increasingly different set of values. I've watched friends go through this. Some are successful: They quit drinking, survive a layoff, sell a house and move, become a missionary, go back to college, parent their grandchildren, write a book. The transition isn't easy: It's two steps forward and one back. Others aren't successful. Their circumstances change, but they aren't willing to do or see anything differently. They decide the world owes them or that life's been disappointing. This leads to consuming bitterness. Maybe you know the type.

Saturn Returns mean change, and change means "out of the comfort zone," but 29 years is enough time in any comfort zone. It wasn't exactly peaches and cream, at 29, to cut my income by 75 percent and move hundreds of miles to a place I'd never been and where I knew no one -- but I ended up here, and how great is that? My second Saturn return is coming up. I feel its challenge already and intend to meet it. Happy and healthy 2015!

Every Feather Tells a Story

On the gray-brown carpet of fallen oak and hickory leaves, flashes of blue caught my eye. Treasures! Feathers! Iridescently blue; how lovely and refreshing on these cast-iron January days!

I picked one up and admired it, then saw more of them and couldn't help but collect them, and then grew uneasy. One feather on the ground, all is well, but this many feathers in one place always signifies a fight to the death. I hoped otherwise, but sure enough there was one bloodied feather as evidence. Nature has taught me not to feel sorrow over dead anything, but I became solemn realizing I was at the spot where a beautiful creature parted from the earth, to serve some greater purpose, I hope, or at least I want to believe.

Church of God, Goldman, MO

From roadside memorials to shrines built of native stone mortared with costume jewelry, Missouri's expressions of faith are the most fascinating anywhere. Name the faith and it has a history in Missouri--or invent a faith, build it a church, and how cool is that. This chastely designed house of worship is in Goldman in Jefferson County, wrongly called by the Internet a "ghost town" despite the functioning gas station/quickshop across the road. Where Goldman Spur Road meets Old Lemay Ferry Road, a classic Phillips 66 sign still stands although the station has faded from view. But you and I know it's there in spirit.

Venus Retrograde

A little bit of grief this spring over a relationship that was long-term and long-distance. After two years and ten months of being together, I totally faithful and trusting the man completely up until the last few months when I got mildly suspicious, he admitted he was seeing a married woman, and another woman, and maybe yet even another one (he knows how to seduce the lonely ones), and offered me a deal: We could keep seeing each other just as we had been, maybe a little less often, like every five to seven weeks. Translation: I could stay on his string. "I've never thought that love was finite," he said, not realizing that what he'd just offered me was very finite indeed.

The torch in my heart flamed out instantly. I was calm and composed. I said, "I'm so disappointed in you." I asked him what if I'd been messing with other men. He declared he'd be happy for me.

No normal man thinks that way. And anyone involved in adultery isn't very smart. If that was his chosen relationship I had no choice but to leave him.

He'd given me his mother's brooch, an amethyst surrounded by beads of millefiori glass. It was an unusual costume piece and went with everything. Unfortunately I never photographed it. I wore it near my heart as an emblem of love. I was wearing it and removed it and handed it to him, saying, "Give this to someone you love."

"I did!" he said. But his definition of love wasn't mine. I like honesty.

I wished I did not have to, but I packed up and walked out into the night and got into my car for the two-and-a-half-hour drive home. He was upset. He wanted me to stay. We could have dinner or something. I said, "Only a foolish woman would stay."And I stand by that. I drew the line. It feels much better to be the dumper than the dumpee.

In the future I will trust less, and will love less deeply. And that's what I've got to say about the planet Venus going retrograde on Tuesday.

Meet Farmer Bob

He'd just got there and parked, because his truck bed was full of dozens of eggs, in miscellaneous cartons. (Who decided eggs should be sold by the dozen? It's the perfect number: a brilliant, immortal idea.)
I screeched the car to a halt. The brown-egg man on the side of the highway again!

This time approaching him I did better. He said, "Hello, young lady." (Always the salesman.) I smiled and said hello, and we exchanged how'er you, good morning, i'n'it a pretty spring day, and shook hands. He held my hand in his own cold hard hand and looked me square in the face. He said, "I've seen you before." I said yes. (My rare and elegant Turkish nose is unforgettable.) He got around to asking me how many dozen eggs I wanted.

"Just one," I said.
"Just one?" (Always the salesman. He isn't standing on the road shoulder for his health.)
"I only need one. There's only me," I said.
"Only you? You mean a lovely young lady like yourself i'nt married?" (Always the salesman.) "Why is that?"
Keeping things simple, I said, "He died."
"Sorry to hear that. There's only one place to take those kind of troubles," he said, "and that's to the Lord." He said more and I just said, "You gotta have faith." It's a sentiment that nobody in Missouri objects to. (I've discovered only one other such statement: "Freedom isn't free." When I wear my "Freedom Isn't Free" t-shirt, people from all walks of life, in the bank, the drugstore, the street, read it and say, "Damn right," or "That's a fact.")

I thought about the friend I was on my way to visit and said, "Better make it two dozen; I know someone who'd like some fresh brown eggs."

He said they'd been laid just yesterday and crowed, "Any fresher and you'd have to be standing in the henhouse."

It took a long time for him to count out change in dollars and fives worn thin as toilet paper. "Can't see without my glasses," he explained. I asked his name. It's Bob something (a truck was roaring by and I couldn't hear the last name.) I asked if I could take his picture because I knew you'd like to see it. He's holding a carton of eggs he's bagged for me. He promised in the summer he'd bring his truck back full of homegrown tomatoes, pickles and more eggs.

The Healing Spring

Back in the woods, off the Infirmary Road, under this little tin roof, is the Healing Spring. I have stuck my whole head into the spring and breathed the water in, and was cured of sinus infections for several days. The trees along the quarter-mile path used to be decorated with pictures of the Pope and signs saying "Silence" and "Thou Shalt Not Covet Thy Neighbor's Wife," and there was even a wicker gate, very narrow, with a sign tacked to it that said "Strait is the gate and narrow is the way," but the path has undergone flooding and the monk who decorated the path and kept it nice died some years ago, and now there's a chain and a sign saying "Keep Out," but my business was too important. I had many choices and needed to ask God what I ought to be doing. So I went and knelt at the spring (which is behind the stone railing) and then lay down on a wooden bench looking up at the sky hoping to hear a directive. After a while I heard Him say, "Do SOMETHING. ANYTHING." Got up immediately, feeling energetic, and started for home where I began doing things, not paralyzed by fear of choice anymore, walking by faith and not by sight.

The Shrine and Brother Matthew

Down the road a piece on 100 acres is a Catholic shrine to Our Lady of Czestochowa, a place in Poland. The "chapel" part is just open-air with a tin roof over it, plus some pews and banks of eight-day candles, usually deserted except Sundays. I go there occasionally on Mondays. I listen there for messages from God. I figure He hangs out there, listening to prayers. I must say that in Missouri, messages from God seem rather more common than they did when I lived in Boston, Mass.

Not far away is a path to a healing spring. Along the path were strewn and nailed up all sorts of signs, plastic flowers, photos of Pope John Paul II, stations of the cross, warnings ("Silence"; "Straight is the Way and Narrow is the Gate," nailed above an actual narrow wooden gate; "No Dogs or Horses") and all sorts of spiritual sayings as in the photo.

The path to the spring was once well-kept by Brother Matthew, a hermit from the nearby Franciscan community; it was he who painted, decorated, pruned, rebuilt, restored. Around age 70 when we met, he invited me to his hermitage one day. Brother Matthew had been to art school sometime in the 1940s, and the hermitage was full to the ceiling with canvases. All sorts of subjects, not just religious. Used to see him around, in his brown robe, occasionally in town; he was a presence and a character. He is gone now about four or five years, and the path to the spring -- flooded, vandalized, broken-down with time -- is about ruined, with no one to keep it. Here's a photo of something of what's left. There's been ads in the local paper looking to collect Brother Matthew's paintings. I wonder where they are now.

Very Superstitious

Propane tanks have gauges that go from 0 to 100. Higher means fuller. Lower means it's running out.

But rather like the belief that broken cookies have no calories -- I believed that IF I DIDN'T LOOK AT THE GAUGE the gas level would not change. Because life is a matter of faith and belief.

In October I filled the tank, expecting 8 to 11 months of heat as always. And was carefree. Then a friend called yesterday and said, "Checked your propane tank?"

I said, I don't need to, there's plenty. He said, Check it anyway, please, the weather's going to be cold. I said, I know what I'm doing, and Why are you trying to make me anxious?

Back and forth for a while until I said, Okay okay, just to shut you up. So I go out and check it and guess what? The needle was on the ZERO!

Oh, I had to eat serious, major crow -- raw! -- and phone the propane company at once and pay their squeeze-the-turnip winter rate of $2.84/gallon. But their delivery truck didn't come today. Maybe because it's too cold.

I shut off my furnace so it won't suck air, and now I'm sittin in my parka, stocking cap, leg warmers, etc. in my 49 degree house, believing the truck will come tomorrow.