The Soul of Me

Doux Reves

Sweet Dreams

By Firmin Baes

The Soul of Me

Oh, Mother,

The soul of me!

The first angel on Earth

I see;

In my home,

Thy beloved womb

You've given

All nurture & love full-bloom;

Gratitude springs

From my Spirit heart;

I picked you, Darling, from the start;

We are held by God,

The very heavens;

So we grow together:

Life-purpose

Midst Angel feathers;

Thus I’m blowing kisses

Even before I’m born

I’m yours forever,

And ever more.

©2013 Connie Nelson Ahlberg

All Rights Reserved.

Taking Shape: Skies over Blue Spruce

NASA image V380 Orionis within

Reflection Nebula NGC 1999

He said who are you today?

And she answered:

I am Tevye!

I am Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof--

who has lost a sister

and rails at God

for taking her

and causing her 

to suffer;

So let me rant, 

I say!

What do you take me for,

a fool?

 I am not a fool;

I see all the suffering

as if my eyes were Yours;

but after my 

stream of words I kneel

by a blue spruce

like the ones 

in her yard 

overlooking the lake, 

You see,

Both she and the trees

grew together,

but now there's 

just the trees

And she is a star--

and my rant

turned to tears

and my breath 

breathed in

the awe

in the night.

Not An Ending, but a Continuance

Ascension of Christ

I've been absent from my blog as a beloved family member has been very ill. Now she has flown up. I say flown up vs died as I think it more aptly describes what happens to such a wondrous spirit.

In one of my books a nephew who happens to be a physician, sits at his aunt's bedside as her life comes to an end. He sees a form rise from the bed and lengthen into an elongated shape. Then the shape shifts again into an upright or sitting position. He can make out a the face of his aunt. She is smiling. Her face is Luminous.

I love stories like that. After sitting by an aunt's bedside before she died/flew up, I asked a nurse if she had ever seen a shape rise from the bed. She said no, but I know nurses who have.

My favorite, or one of my favorite, other stories of after-death communication is about a man with Alzheimer's who is in a near-vegetative state. Fifteen years had passed since his children last heard his voice. The man and his two sons are watching a football game. Their father is seated in a chair where his sons can watch him. 

The mother of of the boys bids them good-bye; she is off to the grocery store. They know what to do to take care of their dad.

Suddenly they see their father - looking very ashen, topple out of his chair and onto the floor. The eldest brother says: Quick, call 911, to his younger brother.

Then a voice they hadn't heard in 15 years says: No son, don't call 911. I'll be okay. Tell your mother I love her. 

The youngest son ends up pursuing a medical career as a heart specialist. He said there was nothing in a scan of his father's brain that would give credence to the fact that this man still possessed the cognitive abilities to speak at the time of his death. 

To me this isn't the "typical" (indeed if there are typical) movements or speech a dying person may utter or perform a bit beyond their current capabilities. This goes beyond a burst of energy before a life "ends." Some will call it bias, but I feel the father's soul spoke in a consciousness beyond the brain. 

If there is no logical medical explanation, what did happen? I feel his soul spoke.

When my mother died suddenly in 1995 I confess I wondered: Where did she go--her precious life essence? Did she get where she was going? And, how will I know? Then five years later, in the wee hours of the morning while I was between sleep and wakefulness, I heard my mother's voice telepathically. She called me by a nickname only she used. 

The date was May 10th, her birthday, five years after she died. I called my dad and said with tears: It's happened! I heard mother's voice! When it happened, my body went into an instant near-electrical charge of awareness.

And, no, I wasn't engulfed in grief over my mother at the time. A long time after that, I stumbled upon a speech I gave to a grief group in the winter of the same year before I heard my mother's voice. I had written--my mother hasn't gone this long without calling me. I remembered saying it, with the words in front of me on the page as a reminder.

I smiled, enjoying the whole spiritual happening...as if my mother had "called" to prove me wrong!

With a Dieting Pledge

My Pledge

Being of sound mind within a body fat

I solemnly declare

to avoid the following foods, I swear:

Butter, gravy, and all sauces;

sugar in any form won't be my bosses;

apple pie topped with ice cream--

from now on

I'm aiming toward lean;

Chips and munchies 

and words like, "more--"

will be obliterated

from my kitchen store;

chocolate cookies,

including the batter,

is only going to make me fatter!

Health will be my final diet:

(I'll chew my carrots

and break the quiet;)

I can get through 

Monday just you wait and see;

Nutritionally 

there's going to be

a brand new me!

Written by 

Connie Nelson Ahlberg

 Too Long Ago!

A Mother's Voice

  

Doux Reves - French 

by Firmin Baes

Sweet Dreams - English

A Mother's Voice

Though there will be a day when each of us joins the angels

or forms a light beyond Venus; yet today, to call and

have you answer your phone, an ordinary thing,
you with quiet joy saying my name, even now I know,
 this ordinary thing, is most sacred--and cherished. 

By Connie Nelson Ahlberg

All Rights Reserved.

                                      

A Mother's Voice was written and given to my mother before she flew up. 

Take Heart: The Weeping Willow Comes

Willow tree with woodbine honeysuckle

by Roger Griffin

Signs of Spring

'Neath our last impatient days of spring, we wait for the sun. But yesterday I was

cheered by the beginnings of hanging green, hanging green on a weeping willow tree. It

cheered me all the way home. And the grass, too, held hope like open arms. 

A neighbor used to have a weeping willow tree. To me it marked her yard. But then it 

turned noisome with all the long branches lying about in needed of picking up. I forget 

what else was wrong with the tree. But one day the tree was gone and a garden in it's place.

Weeping willows, (or weeping "willahs" as they're pronounced in the South), have captivated me. Enough to push me to write:

Prayer of the Weeping Willow

A weeping willow is grand

because it has wept

where it stands,

turning experiential sorrow

into a seasoned grace;

Lord, bless this moistened face,

for these bows of grace

simply bend to honor Thee. 

I do know of people who have turned sorrow into grace. They become your mentors. 

Heavy-Hitter Saints

"Pray, hope, and don't worry." 
"I can do more for you in heaven than I ever could on Earth." St. Padre Pio

Thought to be:

Mystic Marriage of Christ and his Church

When a beloved high-school friend told me she had breast cancer, she learned about
my heavy-hitter Saints. From the onset of the disease through her radiation and beyond,
I became her prayer advocate.

At one point she said, you really should speak about them. She found my prayer life,
my inspiration from the lives of the Saints, and my prayers to them...strength-giving.

As a little girl in a parochial school, there wasn't a lot of money in the parish coffers for a great library. But we did have books on the Saints and martyrs on a bookshelf in the back of the room. My mother feared that between daily Mass, prayers the monks say three times a day from our St. Richard's Breviary, religion class, Lent with Stations of the Cross, visiting brothers or priests, and a swing-through by our pastor, Rev Alfred Longley, there was little else than religion.

But my introduction to the Saints began there. How to explain the Saints to a non-Catholic? Here is my simplistic explanation. I view these men and women as exemplary. And just as magnificent religious art can lift you to prayer and a vision of goodness and dedication to God, so too, the lives of the Saints as intercessors, guides, and protectors.

When we pray, when we ask the Saints to intercede for us, to me--it's a spiritual tug on the sleeve. And just as it works on Earth, I feel it must work in another dimension.

Learning more about the Saints as an adult gave both information and inspiration. The Catholic cable channel Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN) sometimes shows movies on the lives of the Churches' more prominent Saints.

Here is a list of My Heavy Hitters Saints - the list can vary, depending on the need of the supplicant.

Blessed Virgin Mary
Mother Teresa
St. Theresa of Avila
St. Theresa of Lisieux
St. Joseph - Protector
St. Francis of Assisi - Model of holiness in poverty and devotion; St. Francis had the stigmata (the wounds of Christ)
St. Michael the Archangel - Protector
St. Rachael the Archangel - Healer
St. Padre Pio - Healer - Stigmatist
St. Dymphna - Mental Health
St. Peregrine - Cancer
St. Maximilian Kolbe (newest addition) - Saint for the Addicted who started the militia of Mary

One of my favorite heavy-hitter Saints is Italian Capuchin priest, St. Padre Pio. I read The True Story by C. Bernard Ruffin and was swept-up with this compelling narrative. St. Padre Pio wore the wounds of Christ on his hands and his body. Non-believers can say: well, the mind is an incredible thing, meaning his religious fervour manifest his wounds. However, Padre Pio bore the wounds for fifty years.

Pio also had the gift of bilocation: he was seen in two places at the same time. We all have days we wish we could be two places at once. But St. Padre Pio actually pulled it off! He also knew sins before they were confessed and corrected the confessor. (He really knew how long it had been since your last confession.)

The Pilgrim Statute of Our Lady of Fatima came to San Giovanni Rotondo in 1959 while Padre Pio was quite ill. He cried out to her as it departed, pleading with the Blessed Virgin Mary not to leave him. The helicopter is said to have circled the building three times. The pilot claimed he didn't know what happened. Following that mysterious flight, Pio cried out that he had been healed.

Saints can be immense comfort in hard times. I have found them so. What is happening when a holy man leaves the scent of roses behind him? It must be grace.