This small work measures a great distance covered.
I like to think my life is about service. Perhaps it began when I first experienced mystical visitations and flights into other worlds when I was very young, or further back, in my mother's womb, awaiting entry, when the entire world was at war, with so much death and destruction. Why incarnate at such a time if not to serve humanity, all life, the planet? They surely needed servers, apparent from endless conflicts finally escalated into lethal twentieth century warfare. Had we 'war babies' (as we grew up knowing ourselves, being called) foreseen the explosion of the atom and later, the hydrogen bomb, as later children foresee space wars?
How to serve?
Raised a lackadasical Protestant, I tried to turn into a Catholic nun. Denied, I understood God wanted me to enter into life whole-heartedly. I joined the Navy but bolstered myself with two and two thirds academic degrees, got pregnant at 23, married a sailor, bore my only child into the love-drunk sixties, and cunningly landed a university lectureship - just to keep the balance. Transforming into a political activist and feminist and teaching throughout the following years fulfilled my need to serve. I put academia aside and went for more radical alternatives, joining the educational-cum-spiritual Findhorn Community in Northeast Scotland in 1975, dedicating myself to cooperating with nature, treating all fellow humans as family, living love in action in a small community.I travelled a lot, freed myself from customary boundaries, making global contacts. It's been more than worth it, however insecure the lifestyle.
At Findhorn I discovered the Network of Light, people, places, communities, around the globe where a 'higher consciousness' was forming, encompassing Christian and non-Christian alike. A gathering of servers. Led to Glastonbury, England, the British cradle of Christianity and before that, Celtic religion, I met my present partner. Together we served in the community for a magical seven years.
When I landed in Bell Buckle, Tennesee, recently, I sensed the Soul of Turtle Island (North America) had called me home. Almost twenty years abroad had dissipated my Canadian identity; what remained was distrustful of being converted into an 'American', somehow associated with a seductive accumulation of wealth or a terrifying decline into poverty, a land of dreams and nightmare. My patriotic father's traditional dislike of Yankees had been a potent force in my youth. Memories cling. We had taken a shortcut to the Maritimes; when we crossed the border we kids were obediently sick to our stomachs. Not to speak of Dad's near fatal interchange with an American border guard when he confiscated us kids' Florida (!) oranges.
A few years previously, my guidance (intuitions received from my Higher Self in contact with Universal Mind) suggested my partner needed to make a serious career shift with my support. Else, possibly, would we be tempted to to take our involvement in Britain's environmental politics too seriously? Service has many faces.
When I got to Bell Buckle, scouted by my worthy pardner, I found a whole welcoming community of wild independents, eccentrics and good plain folks. This was not the America I had been raised to uselessly resent. Anyway, as it turned out, many of my best friends in Canada were Yankees converted to nominal Canucks.
But this was The South. Another Country. What would Dad have thought? Every day I see men in pickups who are the spitting image of him - so potent is the Scots-English gene pool. Britain supported the South in the Civil War. In the Revolutionary War Native Americans and unlucky 'United Empire Loyalists' supported the British; many of the latter fled to Canada, especially Ontario, where they make up a substantial backbone of Canadian society (thus the traditional distrust).
I had come home to Turtle Island with my heart open. The vow of service to Spirit ensures great adventures.
People have always been my priority. I am an eager catalyst for change. Producing my own work has always come last - after serving friends, cooking, cleaning up, paying bills... Literature has been a part of my life ever since I was wee bluenoser (Nova Scotian). It was always just beyond me, to really make it happen. Afraid of success and failure ? A demonic voice would intercede, "Another book? There are so many. It's all been said before."
But not by me to you, is my answer now.
Living here in Bell Buckle has proven to be a second birth - midwife to my second half-century of service. This little volume of grassroots poetry comes from my immediate response to you, the people and environment of Bell Buckle, Tennessee, the South and that mysterious and ever-shifting chalice that barely contains them, the USA.
I hope it serves you all as well as you all serve me.
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