After I posted about a sea change in my writing, two people left the blog. It is already small and I sense that it could be ending. I say this because the silence in me grows stronger than the words that fill it. This is an old essay to fill space on this war-torn Sunday, the first day in May.

Snapdragons

The old keyboard will soon be changed for a new one. The letter “N” has all but disappeared on it. Why that one? I have no idea. But I like the idea of wearing a keyboard out. It brings to mind how I stood in my neighbor’s flower bed popping the snapdragons. I must have been 3 or 4 years old.The pods would open and tumble out black seeds. Somehow that sense of being one with nature disappeared and I have been primarily a mental being, sad to say.

But my voluminous amount of words is hopefully like those seeds. Some take root in hearts now and then, especially when I pull out all of the stops. I don’t mind doing that, for the heart is vastly under-served in our pathetically shallow society.

My loves know who they are and they are few in number. I have never been as profligate as those snapdragons were. I have treasured depth instead of width, for sure. I am not easy to live with, but some would say I mattered to them. I know we all feel that it is important to matter.
I remember a man with multiple myeloma visiting the website I started in support of Bob. He wrote that visiting it was like visiting a Zen temple. That mattered to me, for he was on the way home, just like Bob. It is hard to walk people home when the return journey will be alone. But we are choiceness in this.

Sometimes I am overcome with loss and at other times I am deeply grateful for having exactly the life I have. It is blooming in new places and I continue to pop the seeds at the keyboard. Fun, it is a lot of fun to share my words with all of you.

Love,
Vicki

P.S.
My heart remains the same, only the words change.

I am sensing a sea change in my work and it is hard to describe it, but I shall try. I have been writing to some of you for many years now and I sense that you trust me. Most people have fallen away and only the few remain. It has ever been thus, as there are seasons for everything.

Our country, and the world, for that matter, is turning into an autocracy. The signs are everywhere. We, who have had it so good for so long, will now be facing more and more evil everywhere. When Vernon Howard used the word “evil,” he meant mechanical. To become conscious is the goal of the Work. As Jesus said, “Straight is the way and narrow is the gate and few there be that enter in.”

Ukraine, that glorious free country, has been putting up a brave fight, but the outcome is unknown. The Democrats in the Unite States have also been putting up a good fight, but it is not enough to stop the Republican behemoth that consists of pure evil.

So where does the sea change come in? It comes in when I realize the meaning of the words of Jesus, “Judge not, lest ye shall be judged.” Vernon Howard rebuked evil in his students; that is why he had so few of them. Initially people would visit him and leave in a huff when he insulted them. They had no idea the nature of his rebuke. He represented truth and those that knew that remained.

You see, there is only one consciousness and a house divided against itself cannot stand. If we moan about evil, that is not a rebuke; it is a personal division within ourselves. If we would have peace of mind, we must not divide our consciousness any longer.

Clear insight is allowed, as long as it does not make you hate your brother, for then you are hating yourself.

So where does that leave us? It leaves us with more silence than we know what to do with. If we will but use this silence, it will grow and grow and grow.

Have a blessed weekend. Try not to divide your consciousness and watch what happens.

Vicki Woodyard

I am feeling blessed right now. It all started last week when I got my front yard cleaned up and pine straw put down. In the South, everyone keeps it on their flower beds or around their trees. Alma, who runs the business, is a beautiful Latina with a heart of gold.

“Do you know of a good painter?” I asked her. “Yes,” she said, his name is Rafael; I will give you his phone number.” I told her about having so many poor painters that I was almost afraid to have anything done. She said he was honest and my heart felt lighter.

When I called him a few days later, he said he could come out the next day. I hired him to paint the long deck at the back of the house and the short one at the side. He brought an assistant with him who didn’t do much. It was Rafael that worked long and hard.

On the second day he arrived promptly once again and finished the decks in about 8 hours. It took the first day for him to pressure wash them. During the time he was here, he never asked me for a thing, nor did he stop except for lunch.

I asked him if he could touch up the paint on my kitchen cabinets and he said he would. My next-door-neighbor called to see if I could send him over to their house to work on a few things. This man has something about him that is very special that had me rejoicing that at last the deck was painted properly. He got down on his hands and knees to put two sealer coats on the decks.

So this morning I am doing some housecleaning, washing and list-making. When Rob goes to Memphis in early May, I will have plenty of time to work on my 7th and final ebook. I have printed it out and now have to edit, edit, edit. That is a job most people hate, myself included.

There will be a tiny readership for the book, but that’s okay. Marketing is a bad word for me. I am just one woman doing her thing, which happens to be writing. I shall find a way to make it fun.

Vicki Woodyard

I got a lovely letter from Robert Brault in which he said, “I commend, Vicki, your Dumbing Down of America piece, which I endorse to the last word.  You are preaching, no doubt, to your own small choir, but it requires courage these days to do even that.  It was a cathartic read for me.”

Both Robert and I are wordsmiths and sadly, he is closing his website down. As for me, that thought crosses my mind frequently, but I have renewed my site for another four years.

My niece writes to my sister this morning that paramedics were called to take Jimmy, our brother, to the ER earlier in the morning. He was not breathing and they were quite concerned. We are praying for hospice to happen at this point; it is the humane thing to do.

On a lighter note, the two men replacing cedar boards, pressure washing and repainting the deck, arrived at nine. I was sound asleep and they had to pound on the door (We haven’t had a doorbell in ages.) I was up about 3 last night with awful neuropathy pain, so was sleeping hard!

They, thank God, are hard workers and seem to think they can finish by tonight. If I am satisfied with their work, I will use them again to do some inside work.

We must keep the faith, no matter how evil is doing a number worldwide. It is quite all right to see clearly while maintaining faith in what we know to be true. “Slava Ukraine.” And may God have mercy on our souls.

Vicki Woodyard

“The first casualty of war is the loss of innocence.”

I made a delicious pot of soup for dinner and ate two bowls. The painter is coming tomorrow and I walked around to the front porch and saw broken egg shells by the crape myrtle tree. At the base of the tree there was a very tiny nest from which the eggs had been stolen.

I called Rob out to take a look and he remembers seeing what looked like a cowbird in the garage. They steal other birds’ nests and maybe it was responsible.

I thought of Putin stealing Ukraine’s nest and murdering her innocent people and claiming victory. What kind of a sick person does things like that?

It is turning spring in our part of the globe and everything is greening and flowering. In Ukraine there is blood and there are orphans and widows left to deal with the aftermath of an unjust war.

Silence. Mourning. Moving on. The inevitability of it all….

Vicki Woodyard

Folks, we are living in a time when the dumbing down of America is at its height. Donald Trump knows how to bleed the gullible dry and they apparently enjoy it so much that they are willing to wear blinders on their eyes while he performs this “psychic surgery” on their pocketbooks.

I look at the people in their dumb red baseball caps and their dumb Trump signs and I shudder in revulsion.

But wait, there is something more sinister than Donald Trump and it is the fact that he has not been indicted yet for his many crimes. What goes here? What gives?

Why is the Justice Department unwilling to charge him? We know there will be violence on the part of his Dumb Devotees because they enjoy it so much. But is that a reason for the Justice Department to keep delaying charges?

Elon Musk has bought Twitter and will reinstate the dumbest “Twittler” of them all ASAP.

Twittler loves Putin; therefore he loves violence, murder and the cold-blooded poisonings of innocent people.

I am just sick at heart about what is happening in our country and in Ukraine.

Evil is running rampant all over the globe.

May God have mercy on our souls.

Vicki Woodyard

Another ordinary day has opened its arms to me and I return the embrace, for we are one as long as I offer no resistance. April is a month of hope and renewal and we can certainly use that.

I spoke to my dear friend T., whose husband is now in hospice care for dementia. She is thoroughly exhausted. I could hear it in her voice. We chatted about Rob picking her up in May and bringing her here for lunch. We’ve not seen each other in about a year.

I am praying that Rafael will agree to do the work on the house soon. He said he would email me on Saturday but so far he hasn’t called.

I have a loose memo to myself to stay here for another five years. As long as my health doesn’t deteriorate I can do this easily.

There are no guarantees in life, so it is good to appreciate each simple day in which no one is gravely ill. My brother’s only child writes that he has been home from critical for for about ten days. He can’t stand or walk and is confused most of the time. He has fallen in the cracks because his social security payment keeps him from being on Medicaid. He has some type of cancer as well as kidney and heart failure. We are amazed that he is still alive and his wellbeing is not great. She is taking care of him and her mother while holding down a medical job online.

But April continues to burst into bloom here, while in Ukraine, thousands have been murdered by Vladimir Putin. Evil stalks the earth and those who do not believe that are not willing to see this clearly.

At home, our Republican Party is now purely authoritarian and they are likely to take back the House and Senate at the midterms. If they do, the U.S.A. will have fallen and democracy will have disappeared here as well.

I do the Work one day at a time, sometimes falling from grace, but always picking myself up and going on. Miracles still happen if we are present to experience them. They may be small but mighty and gratitude is a given when they happen. Hallelujah!

Vicki Woodyard

“Living an ordinary life is the path to self-discovery.” Brendan Feeley

I cherish my ordinary life. I love it when the day beckons me to live it simply and as consciously as I can. A man came out to survey my deck, which needs repainting. He also will replace lots of boards on the house that birds have damaged. Cedar houses are costly to maintain. We didn’t know this when we bought one!

I have had good honest workmen and bad dishonest ones, so at the beginning of each new project I get quite anxious.

But April in Atlanta is a gorgeous month, what with dogwood trees and azaleas in full flower.

Rob may meet my sister in Memphis next month and that will give me a chance to work on the book. I have to have uninterrupted silence to get anything done.

Silence graces my life, but in sporadic amounts. We have to leap at the chance to benefit from it, do we not?

Last night I was swept up in bad dreams. They featured me being lost, questioned by the police and having an argument with my mother. Honestly, I don’t have many good dreams.

Ordinary life gives us healthy food, a bit of exercise and time to entertain ourselves in whatever way we choose. I am sitting in front of my new TV; that’s what I am doing….

Vicki Woodyard

I am working on my book and came across this photo that I actually like! I took it to show a new neck scarf that I bought in a boutique. I wore it for the picture that Rob took and it is now hanging on my bedpost. I never wore it again; it just wasn’t me.

I have never worn dresses unless absolutely necessary. I am simple in everything that I do. Eating on the same old china for 40 years, the same old silverware, etc.

You might say I am a creature of habit.

I did get someone to come out and weed and put pine straw out in the front yard. Next on the list is getting the deck painted.

I can’t do any serious work on the book until Rob goes away for a few days and I can work on it in absolute silence. Even then it is a very frustrating job. I am faced with hundreds of essays and oneliners to pick from.

The book will have no audience except for the few that buy it. I have learned my lesson about what it takes to publicize a book only to see it disappear on amazon.

I write for the few and that is a fact.

I feel I am putting this book together only because a psychic said I would.

Vicki Woodyard

April is a glorious month! Everything is taking baby steps or wild strides into shades of green. Even my yard looks tender and juicy. I could eat it….not!

I made a new salad recipe this morning with chickpeas, cucumbers, red onion, bell pepper, tomatoes and a dressing with oil and vinegar. Also made an appointment to get my Covid booster tomorrow.

I am taking a look back at what I used to post on Facebook; lots of funny stuff in those days. I will somehow put them to use in the seventh book. Right now it seems a long way down the road, but I am known to jump and leap into the void when I write, so who knows?

The world news is dire. We tend to forget global warming when we see the devastation happening in Ukraine, but it is nevertheless our future. Mankind is responsible for its own devastation.

Give up all hope of people getting their acts together; only awakening can change things and that is the last thing that people want. They prefer entertainment, division and a low level of consciousness.

It is too late to keep autocracy from taking over. Democracy is losing because there are more liars than truth tellers!

Let us lose graciously and return to a one-on-one relationship with God.

It is our only hope.

Vicki Woodyard