Shiva Lands Anywhere You'll Let Him

Due to my friendship with her good buddy, Jerry Lee, Greta, a quite stout, yet deeply kind-hearted woman from Springfield, Illinois, invited our fledgling Oriental import company to hold an “Oriental Garage Sale” at her home one summer about 15 years ago.

During the weekend sale, Jerry informed me that Greta was a nationally known psychic who'd been enlisted 100's of times by police forces across the country to assist them in solving crimes that only a “gifted” person like herself could (finding missing persons, etc.).

As the Sunday morning of that weekend wore into the early afternoon, what I'd observed about Greta was that she was really anything but “weird” or “unusual”… in fact, she was about as “normal” as they come.

It got to the point--what with her regularly serving us pie and lemonade, and helping us clean up whenever she could--that I could hardly believe she was “gifted” in any way at all, other than being a sublimely sweet and way easy-going human being.

At about five o’clock that Sunday afternoon, after the last crowd of buyers had disappeared and most everything had been boxed up, I was walking through the living room when I noticed Greta sitting on the couch, looking straight at me.

I paused, and she asked, “Would you like to sit down and talk a little, now?”

How she knew that I’d been quietly incubating on a single question, I’ll probably never know (since she passed away a few years ago).

“What am I supposed to be doing?” I humbly asked her, innocently going straight to my seemingly ever-prevalent longing to know my “dharma.”

“You’re a writer. You’ve enjoyed writing throughout your life, haven’t you?” she casually replied. Mind you, she knew nothing about my life from my lips, nor from Jerry's (I asked him later).

I balked. “But I’ve never done it professionally, or made a living at it before… but yeah, I do like writing quite a bit.”

“You will touch many people with your writing, more through that than through anything else you’ll do,” she stated rather bluntly. And although it seemed sort of cryptic and somewhat spooky to me, at the time, I sensed, even then, that she was somehow right. 100% right.

“And you know what’s the best of it all, Sweetie?” she added with a twinkle in her eye. I stared silently at her, waiting for the sound of trumpets or kettle drums to magically appear out of nowhere.

“You don’t have to write about anything particular at all. You just sit down and write your truth… what’s true for you. Because that’s what people will get the most out of from you… the truth.”

And then she smiled bright as the sun, got herself up off of the couch, and went into the kitchen to make dinner for herself. (Yes, she “knew” that Jerry and I’d be leaving momentarily).

Well, I am here to tell ya’, folks, that ol’ Greta really was psychic as they come… because my life has continued to turn, more and more, toward writing . . .

As I've continued providing writers with my book editing services (for ten-plus years), I've recently begun preparing various writings of mine for publication . . . stories about my experience, about what’s true for me . . .

Yesterday, I sent one of them, a feature-length screenplay, to a "TV/film producer." In my last blog (“The Roaring Begins Now”), I chronicle what a "huge deal" that was for me. As my old guru used to say, "Something good is happening."

And I've continued writing, more and more . . . a creative act that comes so easily, and yet is, still, ever so challenging.

For example, telling “my” story through the screenplay I mention in that last blog took me ten grueling years; and yet, in the end, the writing came out of me like a sigh or a breath.

Taking me out to where she sees people from, Greta helped me to see that I’ve always been a writer… I just needed to believe it myself… just needed to start putting it—and myself—out there.

Thanks, Greta, wherever you are, for the opportunity to gaze into the mirror… to see the light of what’s true and dispel the darkness of what's not. May Shiva bless you a thousand times, my Dear!

Writers are not just people who sit down and write. They hazard themselves. Every time you compose a book, your composition of yourself is at stake. ~E.L. Doctorow