I've got to stop telling people I'm writing a poem about the Holy Ghost. I mean, I'd like to. The concept fascinates, and it's an apt metaphor for the next step.

I've been gathering up and reading my old poems — especially the ones difficult to speak, with killer in-line rhyme schemes and so many consonantal fisticuffs going on that saying them out loud is a challenge, let alone getting all the rhythms, phrasings and real and pretend rhymes to flow.

But I haven't set pixel to page yet. I haven't had as much as a solitary aural clue to this poem's sound, phrasing or development. No rhymes and no reasons.

I just like the idea of dealing with the spiritual aspect of all this Transitional hocus focus so much that the idea of a poem about the Holy Ghost seems to fit right in.

Although it could be this essay is that poem.

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Old Fashioned Ripple Window Glass Translucing Sunset
Light on my Living Room Walls and Richard Ray's painting

 

Twitches

One of my favorite quotes in literature is from Robert Penn Warren's political novel All The King's Men, in which he talks about the Holy Trinity as "The big twitch, the little twitch and the Holy Ghost, who's probably a twitch, too."

I can see why God might be thought of as a Father. That's easy. Or a Mother. A son follows logically enough from either, although nobody ever mentions Jesus' big sister.

Then there's a major ramp up to the Holy Ghost, who, for no reason I can grasp, is always mentioned last.

 

The Rippling Shadows of Translucent Objects
On My Parrot Green Living Room Walls

 

That pentacostal entity isn't made in anybody's image or likeness and doesn't even pretend to be related. It's pure spirit. Twitch big-time. So twitchy, in fact, that it's often expressed as tongues of fire.

I mean, if you're going to be both Holy and a Ghost, fire would be the obvious form. It is aether (the element that is in the betweens of everything), of course, but aether is invisible. None of the other elements — air, earth and water — cut it. It has to be fire.

Now, I hope it's not to far-fetched to devolve from talking about this pure, soulful spirit, down into a discussion of the differences between Falling In Love and Sharing Intimacy — falling verses being in love. But, as we shall see, they're related.

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Falling in love is a nearly twitch-free zone, despite many of the outward signs and inward sensations. Oh, it's got metaphors galore, projections, Speaking In Tongues and other physical manifestations of general chaos and confusion. But spiritual it decidedly is not.

It might well be the most fun to be had. Fun in its fullest physical aspect.

It is certainly my favorite. I've done it dozens of times, and I look forward to one more. But let's not try to fool ourselves into thinking it's got anything to do with being twitchy.

Once we get past all the goofiness of Falling In Love and move up into Sharing Intimacy with a fundamentally different and fully dimensional other human being, however, then, finally, we enter into the vicinity of some Serious Twitch.

The holy grail of romance.

Somewhere I've never got before. Or at least never stayed long enough to figure out where I was and how much I really wanted to stay. A where I always turned tail and ran from, whenever I got close.

A when the defenses take over, the shell grows crusty and the early glimmers of rage creep in. Where I enter and eventually always execute the velocity of escape.

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White dragon from my collection,
Portrait of Brooke by Georgia Stafford
and ceramic Georgia Stafford Self Portrait vase

 

Years ago, on the verge of my own intellectual understanding of spirituality, I struck fear into some of my fellow atheists, agnostics and other non-believers* — as well as many religionists — by saying that spirituality has nothing to do with noncorporeality (no body) and everything to do with connecting us physical beings to everything else in our universe.

* = I no longer consider myself an
atheist, agnostic or non-believer.

 

I was onto something there. Something elusive. Something difficult to wrap my mind around. Something scary and profound.

Spirituality is the connection between Self and Other. It is the understanding of who and what we are in relation to everything and everyone outside of ourselves.

Like art, spirituality is a power that flows from first-person singular, out into and onto our lives and everything that's out there beyond our Self. It connects us. Without this connection, people feel separate and alone.

Without the connections of spirituality, we are alone.

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Religion is a codification of the connection. But religion tends to be dogmatic and immutable, while true spirituality is self-defined and adaptable.

People do not have to believe in God, the Goddess, Jesus, Mary, the Holy Ghost, the Bible, the Koran, Buddha, Mohammed, Hare Krishna, Reverend Bob or anything else, to have a deep and abiding spirituality.

They know they exist, and that they are connected with other people and the universe beyond them. That's all it takes.

Oddly similar but only slightly metaphorically, that's also how Sharing True Intimacy differs from Falling In Love.

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Falling

To get further into this, I'll quote Dolan extensively.

So far, this essay has been my own understandings. But to get further down this road, I need Mr. Reality to show the way:

 

 

Hereinunder, Dolan speaks in dark blue type.
My few interjections in the next few paragraphs are in gray:

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originally written in early 2004 during the big middle (28%)
of my latest major transition, where it had many more hits,
but so what.

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