Counterprogramming with Carol
My angel offers a tonic to the ills of the world
“In this ugly domain, full of disappointment and pain, you never see me frown.”
So sings the great Bobby Dylan, whom I quote frequently.
I quote him because he is a prophet, who can see and hear things that few people can.
Most of the time, I keep a smile on my face and try to honor the wisdom of his verse.
We all probably frown sometimes, but then I remember that I am surrounded with love, that God sent Carol, an angel, to me.
As I wrote in my last post, “Decompressing,” Carol, my wife, nurtures and protects me. And I do stay positive most of the time.
I also try to keep in mind that “we all wear the same thorny crown,” as per Dylan again.
Yes, there are elements of God in all of us.
Still, there are problems on the Earth.
Climate change is wreaking havoc with our planet. Blizzards and floods, tsunamis and extreme weather patterns afflict us with greater frequency and severity.
A.I. threatens every human being and all forms of art. Social media poisons minds, young and old, with its toxic and shallow stew of lies and comparison metrics.
The solipsist-in-chief, the leading purveyor of lies and false metrics, tells us that he “can destroy the country” and that he “can do anything he wants” on trade and all else.
His evil half, who owns him, keeps bombing and assaulting Ukraine, while our solipsist-in-chief may attempt once again to “obliterate” Iran.
In the midst of all of this evil, we should try to honor the wisdom of prophets like Dylan.
But sometimes we might all ask ourselves, what are we to do in this ugly domain?
How shall we cope with a world that seems to be careening into chaos?
It is worth remembering, as I have written previously, that in different respects we have been here before. We have faced numerous calamities over the course of history, through the Black Death, the Civil War, World Wars I and II, the Great Depression, McCarthyism, Watergate, to name a few examples, where we feared the world could collapse because we were in deep peril.
We should remind ourselves that we have always gotten through those traumas.
Of course, well before all of those events, chaos pervaded an empty void.
That was before God created the heavens and the earth.
And God is not going to let the world be destroyed.
As the solipsist-in-chief and the devil in Russia try to crush our spirits, God wants us to fill the world with love, and we can do so by being kinder to one another, while we still call out evil.
We, of course, need to speak truth to power.
Yes, we need to illuminate the truth.
And in being kinder to one another and illuminating the truth, we should link our souls, like Carol and I, who have found each other somewhat later in this life.
We are all just mortals and angels.
But like God, we are here to create, not destroy.
And we can create music, art, literature, alliances, friendships, as well as romances between soul mates in which we forge a bond of love.
If I can come back to Genesis, we might recall that God created man when He and/or She kneaded man out of the earth and then formed woman from man.
Or did woman precede man?
Yes, God is as much female as male, as the Kabbalists have long understood.
No matter what, we all do have a soul mate, whom we seek through the course of our lives, over the history of our souls.
Carol, my wife and angel, tells me that we have been married before, that in fact we have been married many times in the past. Perhaps, as my prophetess says, we have always been married.
Have we taken on different forms over the ages? Have we morphed in and out of each other’s lives? Have we played different roles?
Shakespeare famously wrote, “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players; they have their exits and entrances, and one man in his time plays many parts, his acts being seven ages…”
Maybe, we do have seven ages in this lifetime or through all of our incarnations. Maybe, we live nine lives, as cats are said to do.
No human, not even Shakespeare, may know.
Of course, there are prophets, like Carol, who do catch glimpses of God’s master plan.
Prophets are closer to God than the rest of us.
Some Kabbalists believe, as do some mystics from other religions, in the concept of reincarnation, which in the Jewish religion is referred to as gilgul haneshamot.
There are those who view reincarnation as a cycling of or perhaps a building upon our souls from the past, so that we can reach a state of grace where we may rise to the heavens and elevate.
Is it possible that God has sent each one of us a helper, a soul mate, who will aid us in achieving nirvana or an elevated state?
It is not right for man to be alone, God says in Genesis.
And as I have speculated elsewhere, this is also likely true of God, who, as I have written before, has a female essence.
So do we all.
Yes, Carol, who gave me a very charming goodie yesterday, one of her innumerable surprises, is indeed my soul mate, which is another way of saying that she is my better half.
And maybe she always has been.
No one really knows, except God, of course.
But, as already noted, it may be that some prophets do glimpse our past and future.
Is it the case that Carol and I are writing a new song?
King David, whom I hailed in my last piece, tells us to do so. And the shepherd boy, who danced with such joy when the Levites returned the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem, also said, “Do good, and delight in the Lord.”
We all should do good and delight in the Lord. We should want to do so.
And we can all sing a new song.
In my case, God has clearly sent me an angel, Carol, who is my new Muse, as we sing our new song of love.
It is worth repeating that Carol has told me that we have been married before, many times before, and that we lived in Scotland, by the Highlands, centuries ago.
As it turns out, Carol and I spent our honeymoon in Ireland, not too far away from Scotland, where we had a lovely time, as we undoubtedly did in a previous incarnation.
In our courtship in this lifetime, Carol and I have already had many epic adventures.
Besides going to Ireland and Sri Lanka, another epic journey, we have driven across our own country on several occasions, including to see a Bob Dylan concert in Richmond, Va., on Carol’s birthday; we also saw Dylan in Austin, Texas, a few days before a total solar eclipse, as I noted in a recent piece on Penny, our puppy, who is now in heaven.
Yes, Carol and I have a lot of fun, and we do go on adventures.
These may be a few of the secrets to a good life.
Of course, I would never claim to know all the secrets.
Some perhaps have been revealed to me.
Others remain hidden but prepared for us in every hour of our lives, to paraphrase Thornton Wilder, who said something similar about the history of a writer.
Indeed, Wilder, who lived not far from me when I was growing up in southern Connecticut, once said, in words I have quoted before, “The history of a writer is his search for his own subject, his myth-theme, hidden from him but prepared for him in every hour of his life.”
If we can forgive Wilder for using the masculine pronoun, a point that I have made before, we can detect elements of his wisdom, elements of mysticism, or the beginnings of an intimate relationship with God, a relationship that can be open to all of us.
Yes, Wilder, who wrote Our Town, The Skin of Our Teeth and The Bridge of San Luis Rey, among other luminous plays and novels, had remarkable wisdom. For instance, he understood the critical need to appreciate the little moments in life, as the Stage Manager says in Our Town.
This is another way of saying that God is love, and love is patient, love is kind, as Paul the Apostle wrote.
There are many mysteries that will remain mysteries to all of us.
Only God knows everything.
And God does work in mysterious ways.
But one thing on which we can all focus is love. We do need to appreciate how special it is to be with an angel, like Carol.
When you have been given the gift of love, the gift of a soul mate, an angel, you are truly blessed.
And I know that God has blessed me with Carol, an angel, and not for the first time.
Yes, Carol and I have morphed through the seven ages of this lifetime, or perhaps the nine incarnations in the history of our soul, until we have reconnected.
As Bobby Dylan, our great prophet, said, “Soul to soul, our shadows roll, and I’ll be with you when the deal goes down.”
