how every visit to the beach by yourself becomes iconic, whatever object you pick up, as if the waves were lapping at your soul and saying remember...remember...remember... a rock, a seashell, a bird's flight, something in us secretly awakens and speaks to us... in my case this morning a rusted hinge with a spring along the centre like a butterfly with wings stuck open... I don't know what it means but it wanted to come home with me.... the post I was going to write was about Starbuck whos sits by the corner selling his newspaper of prophecies and revelations done he believes in the spirit of Isaiah, I met him a long time a go at First United in the downtown Eastside when he was younger and more cheerful; the last time he saw me he glared at me from behind his sunglasses because I nodded and smiled at him as if he was just one of us---even when he was young and cheerful he felt separate, special and this is a real problem I've noticed for people when they come into awareness of their connection with g_d, and something that scares a lot of people off---the fear that they will be separate, no longer belonging with everyone they know---and I think of something a guy named Ram Dass (formerly known as Richard Alpert, yes that one) wrote which was approximately that his brother was locked up in a psychiatric institution because he thought he was God whereas R.D. was free because he believed that everyone is g_d, and I suspect that Starbuck has suffered a lot probably even as a child, and that suffering is what made him believe he was separate and special so that even as his connection to g-d healed him, it cut him off from humanity, and this is what I fear about darkness is its cunning. For Starbuck to be the part of g-d that he is might indeed have involved special revelations, but g-d returns us to our humanity and to love or it becomes twisted, Luciferian. This is like the need to stay in alignment and ground the energy in action or it gets trapped in our heads and goes round and round and drives us crazy....