A Writing Question From a Facebook Friend

"How do you get started with your writing and keep going with it? I've tried but always end up quitting?"


Tonight, I was catching up with my beloved Facebook Family and up-dating my author fan page, when I noticed a new e-mail in my in-box. The above question awaited me from a lovely friend.

Immediate and heart-felt, it spoke to my soul. I couldn't move on to other tasks I'd set for myself on this peaceful Saturday night. A quiet resolve softly encouraged me to answer it right then. And, with a bit of editing, this is my response...

***

I got started in the business of writing at my mother's feet, as she read to my siblings and me nightly before we bathed and went to bed. A reading mother, she adored books. Perhaps it stemmed from her love and respect of school. She was Miss Tennessee State and an excellent student throughout her schooling.

Under the music of her voice bringing my favorite stories to life, I was imblued with a passion to write my own stories to satisfy my soul's desire to weave a yarn that tickled my fancy. So I put pencil to notebook and came up with female heroines who did what I wanted to do...travel the world, love deeply, stand and fight (if need be), and bow to a greater power in the Divine.

Not only that, while writing juvenile stories I recorded in spiral notebooks, I learned to tell a good story, feeling the ebb and flow of an intriguing tale, with nuances of sound and gestures to match. My audience, my cousins and siblings, sat around my grandparents' fireplaces and heaters, enthralled, their faces glowing. Oftentimes, they begged me to continue the storytelling, one night after another.

Years later, while teaching high school English and raising a family, I continued to write...only it trickled into the summertime. Thus, I lived for Friday evening, so that I could immerse myself in novel writing. My first novel, "Dolly: The Memoirs of a High Schoool Graduate," appeared in 1986. I was charmed. How did it happen? I'd sent a short story to PLAYERS magazine and the editor loved it, asking me if I could make the main character live throughout 250 more pages. If so, he'd publish it. Turn to his word, he helped me publish it via Holloway House Publishing Company in Los Angeles!

***

Then it seemed my writing time waned and became harder and harder to come by. My soul wept. But I persisted. It was a sweet persistence that carried me through the up's and down's of my life at that time. The more difficult times got, a shift appeared in my writing. Poetry stepped in and picked up where novel writing could not go, when I moved through divorce. Poems were immediate. They snapped pictures of my inner landscape. They gave me to myself. I like to say poetry saved me. Welding a melodic pen and performing at Atlanta's open mics, I wrote myself out of the closet of my life. The bulk of these poems I now cull and record to create my coming Spokenword CD/poetry collection, "Soft Tsunami."


Newly single, I returned to the marriage of Claudia and novel writing! I began the story, many years ago, that would become the novel I now promote, a novel that has received rave reviews. Thinking about it, I smile, my heart singing the same proud melody a new mother croons at a newborn's first smile.

I wrote that novel. Stopped. Got derailed. Started again. Got picked up by a New York literary agent, the best in the business, Marie Dutton Brown. Life flowed in on me like a tsunami. I could not write, similar to other times--the best of times, the worst of times, in my life. When I could though, I continued to write, a lovesick woman trailing her first love.

The persistence gradually paid off, even though I was no longer represented by the Marie Dutton Brown Agency. "The Marie," as she is fondly known in the business, had praised me and the completed novel royally then asked me to edit it from 600 pages to less that 350 pages. Publishers simply did not want to take chances on a new author whose manuscript boasted that many pages. That's when other waves washed over me. How was I to cut a manuscript I adored? Was that possible? The tale demanded each chapter to arrive at its memorable ending...or so I thought.

Years swept in. I determined if I were to witness the book's publication, I'd better learn to edit. After all, I was an English teacher by profession. My red pen dashed across student essays artfully, opening veins and restoring faith, simultaneously. I cut it. Then learned that Marie Dutton Brown had cut me and moved up shore. New writers could not be counted on, most times, to finish writing and editing, a common consensus.


But I did. Now I write and publish independently. I no longer wait on others to save me. That Power Within guides me, and I come into this realization each time I pause to let Peace be Still in meditation. Sometimes I am saddened and discouraged, thinking I should be further along than I am. I compare myself to other writers. Before an inner inquisition, I flog myself for not banking millions, like Amanda Hoecking and others inducted into Amazon's Millionnaire Club. I wonder if my work is enough, the thought chasing me to desist and get off a rollercoaster my pen is obviously not fit to ride.

Then I remember to go within, where I am reminded that the Divine Is Enough! This never fails to unleash the magical. Once cloudy and murky, my eyes and heart clear up. I invite judgment to the front door. My horizon manifests an eggshell blue clarity, and again I turn to this keyboard, renewed. Refreshed. And invigorated.

I write because I cannot NOT write. I have tried it. A cessation of all writing. When I do it, guess what? I write in my head. Snippets of stories and characters take shape, and I am back at it...in time.

There are times I read to stop the love/hate passion I have with writing! Yet in the act of giving myself to reading, I find myself inundated with ideas to fuel my own writing. HERE IS MY ADVICE TO MY FACEBOOK FRIEND: Stop trying to do anything. Give yourself a pink slip. Just stop. Go within and determine what your soul wants to do. And do that! If Spirit returns you to the writing, you will do it with a REJUVENATED fire! That is a promise. I have done it many times.

But when you know deep within that you are a writer, ask the Divine for the strength neeeded to birth your gifts. Whether your own or from others, rejection can slice your heart into red ribbons. Make you drop the pen. Run from the sight of sheaths of paper or a vacant computer. Despite that, if writing is your talent, lift it for FREE...and simply write for you. Whatever you come up with, loving it, someone else will love it also!

I hope that was helpful!

Love & Light,

TheGoldenGoddess

On Bullets and Sunsets...

"To be awake is to be alive."
---Henry David Thoreau, Walden


"For many people in modern cultures, the reality of life and aliveness comes most vividly when they're outdoors experiencing nature. The more unusual and extraordinary the natural sight (waterfalls, mountains, canyons, redwood forests, oceans), the stronger the feeling many people get of spiritual reality."
---Thom Hartmann, The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight


This past weekend I slept, moving through my precious moments minus a palpable connection with the natural world. Like so many of you, I am conscious, truly aware, far less often than I am unconsciousness. Of course that varies for us, the details shifting and changing like the mellifluous music of a Caribbean seashore.

"What do you mean? Were you a zombie," you might ask, "walking in the Now like the walking dead?"

And I'd be forced, with all humility, to answer yes.

My week and weekend shape-shifted into what appeared to be duplicate days of weekends before. I rise in the early afternoon, from sitting at my desk during the day and all night, toiling away at rolling my creative boulder uphill, trying to make "it" happen. As I toil, my fingers skipping across the keyboard, open books and notebooks and scattered papers and stalked envelopes adorn my desktop. My blinders fit perfectly. I "see" only what I see: manuscripts requiring editing and formatting, lists of things to do, a desk calendar of meticulously written goals and unopened mail.

I am so locked into this picture, until I leap out of bed to step back into it, zombie groomed, like a cut-out doll stitching herself onto the page, so an unseen, little girl's hand can cut me out anew. Daily.

"So what?" you could say. "I get 'lost' in what I'm doing, too, sometimes. What's wrong with that?"

What's wrong is I sit at my desk without pause...through a full bladder, a hungrily screaming stomach, stiff limbs, a parched tongue, muscles atrophied and sun spilling through the blinds and pooling at my feet, beckoning and golden, inviting me to walk Stone Mountain and just be. To remember how once not so long ago, I dwelled in balance and awareness and Presence.

When you think you are racing Time to circumvent a disastrous misstep in a future moment, you plunge outside of the Present Moment---voluntarily.

On this past Saturday, I gave thanks for a beloved writing friend, who delicately chided me about opening an e-mail I'd neglected for days. When I finally opened it, I had one day, Saturday, to get to the arts center off Cascade Road and submit three of my books for a December 2011 Book Fair. Ripping and running, I made it! Elated, I returned home to plop right down to this desk, except I knew it wouldn't be for long. My poetry CD producer would be arriving shortly. We were set to record a poem for my spokenword work-in-progress, "Soft Tsunami."

Behind the mic, my emotions raw and alive, I loved giving each rendition, delivered over and over, everything I had. Without pause, we discussed and recorded, recorded and collaborated. Finally, my producer and I were proud of what we'd accomplished several hours later.

Satisfied, I closed my office door at 7 P.M.

This was unusual for me. I am rarely satisfied. Nothing is normally "enough." On other occasions when the recording ended, I ushered my producer out and returned to the writing or editing or planning, rolling up my sleeves for hours more blood, sweat and tears. However, something within, a gentle knowing, praised me, invited me to rest, to relax and to recline across my bed down the hall from my office. And bask in the beauty of the sunset.

Not a bad idea, I thought, considering my curiosity charmed me into putting a Facebook friend's voice with her text messages. So I bowed to that Inner Voice, lay atop my white feather comforter and pressed her number into my cell.

A compendium of information, she epitomized a great conversationalist! I enjoyed her genial way, engaging wit and wealth of resources she freely shared. Hours waned. As we shared, our love of poetry uppermost in the confab, I noticed, gradually, the sun drifting from the sky, coloring the horizon a resplendent tapestry of layers: blue black, dark blue, navy blue, a dark cornflower blue and, eventually, a burst of saffron orange, where a pot of gold seemed to simmer off in the distance, beyond the apartments behind my condo complex.

The sight celestial, I stared. Awestruck! How did I miss such beauty nightly? Inside, while I listened to a poet verbalize how to make poetry pay the bills, clarifying how to 'make paper make paper,' I imagined painting the magnificence of the sunset in words and oils! Somehow, some way, the glory of that moment required its own ink.

But I said not one word about the majesty to which I'd treated myself. I cradled it to my breast, stored it amongst my keepsakes for the moment it would be dropped into one of my books.

With the poet, I shared poetry. Praise. Encounters. Audience reactions. She'd recited throughout the States, Europe and Central America; I'd graced my share of stages in Atlanta. Our revelry interrupted by my beloved writing friend, the one I alluded to earlier, she called to invite me to a party, free admission, her attitude ebullient. I wavered. Suddenly, I wanted to dress up and go. Outside, the hawk howled in the night. Inside, I preened in my vanity mirror and strolled inside my walk-in closet, selected a pair of skinny jeans and flapped them across the foot of my bed.

Then the same gentle nudging returned. Tacitly, it spoke to me, repeating its earlier message. Wordlessly. Sweetly. Encouraged me to return to bed, to slow down and continue admiring the pageantry of the night.

I did. Redialed the poet's number and resumed our conversation. And continued to marvel at the Divine's handiwork outside my back, third-floor windows.

The next morning, Sunday morning, about 11 AM, unconscious once more, I walked into my office and opened the blinds. A zombie, and not from sleep, I overlooked the sparkling fabulosity of the early-morning sunshine, the striking mountain-top view of Stone Mountain off in the distance, and plopped down at my desk. The lights of my PC's screen illuminated the over-sized screen, and I began mechanically editing the manuscript from the day before, softly chiding myself for being away from it that long.

A jagged shard of glass winked in my peripheral vision from the carpet, near my left foot. I frowned. How had that happened? I must be slipping, I precluded, upbraiding myself. Shoeless, my grand babies were always about, in and out of cords snaking to my printer and up to my PC's speakers. Gingerly, I trashed the glass in a waste basket under my desk, my gaze re-buttonholed to my document.

Then it happened! Again. A feeling rose up inside me, prompting me to "look" at the sun-splashed window. That's when I saw it. Two holes the size of golf balls in the double-paned glass. My startled gaze fluttered to the white wounded wooden blind, observing for the first time a bullet hole. Disbelieving, for how could it be, I called my sister Glenda and informed her that someone had thrown a rock through my office window.

"Nobody threw no rock that far up!" She practically hurled the words through the phone. And as she spoke, I scrutinized the carpet, wide-eyed, mouth agape.

There...at the foot of my swivel chair...lay the top portion of a bullet! The sight woke me instantly! Only then did I become aware of a spray of glinting bits of glass everywhere: in my cushioned chair, scratching my bottom through my pajamas and Kelly-green robe, sprinkled over my dream board and books resting on the printer's glass tabletop behind my desk, atop the hardback books and magazines under the window, splayed across the small navy blue and floral sofa on the opposite wall and glass mingled with bits of the wooden blind on the baseboard near the sofa!


Had I been in the room I could have been in the path of the invading missile. Had I not bowed to that gentle knowing I might not have had the blessing of writing this blog. Had I not been Present to Spirit, I would've missed the prompting to become one with the natural world, with the omniscient understanding that everything is already all right. That the Divine is ever Present.

That in order to live the golden wonder of this life, I must be awake! I must remember daily that the sole moment in which I access the Divine is the Present Moment, not the past or the future.

Finishing this writing this morning, at 2:19 AM, on Friday, November 11, an arm's reach away from that Sunday, I understand a bit more of why it took a bullet and a sunset to wake me to the beauty of my existence. My life is so much more than I have reduced it to. Whole slices of life await me! The love of my life! My speaking career! My performances! Blessed opportunities to be Present with family and friends! My travels worldwide! My thresholds to feel and see and appreciate! My desire to love and be loved! The manifestations of my dreams! My inevitable introduction to Oprah, Ellen and Toni!

I want to be Present for it all, and I will experience all of it awake and aware! I will change the world by changing myself. Each day I will rise and witness something of wonder in the world. I will be filled with awe and amazement at the Divine's golden masterpieces awaiting my exultation. And I will Trust with a child's exuberance and anticipation, knowing my steps are ordered.

Living a Golden Life
The Golden Goddess

BOOK BLOGS

Visit Book Blogs



Ever treat yourself to a dream site for writers? If the answer is no, I recommend you visit Book Blogs to whet your appetite for a plethora of writing tips and resources, writing advice and priceless tips on marketing/promoting and connections with an audience of writers from around the world! Come share the love of books. Read fabulous book reviews. Immerse yourself in interviews.

You'll thank me for it after one visit.

Wishing you a golden, productive and creative day!

The Golden Goddess

SPECIAL OFFER Extended To "A Golden Life" Followers

Saludos, My Beloved "A Golden Life" Followers!

Good evening! Buenas noches!

On this lovely rainy evening, I am scintillating with the glad tidings of the arrival of my new e-book, "Wanda B. Sings the Bailout Blues." Above is the Kindle cover. Am I ever proud of it! In my heart, I am getting better and better with formatting my books and designing my covers. Especially my paperback covers, which I create with the aid of Amazon's CreateSpace's free cover designer for independent authors. If anyone knows of a cover-creator program for e-books, please share, as it behooves me to learn all that I can about new publishing software, considering I wear all the hats of my trade: writer, editor, book designer, marketer and promoter.

Mind you, I do not begrudge the variety in my hats. I am too grateful for my innate and learned abilities from a life-long love of reading, writing and English Education degrees. One day, I know I will have professionals, same as the ones in traditional publishing houses, to join me in bringing my stories to the world! Until then, I thank the Universe that I AM enough!

On to your SPECIAL OFFER, Beloveds...

I, Claudia Moss, the Golden Goddess, extend to you a FREE copy of "Wanda B. Sings the Bailout Blues" for being a cherished follower of my blog. If you are interested in receiving your copy of the third book in the Wanda B. Wonders series, please write me here or communicate with me at my private e-mail, MissClaudiaMoss@gmail.com.

Once I receive your communique indicating your confirmation that it is okay to send you the story collection, I will send you a PDF of the work or a Kindle e-book! (Remember...no Kindle, no worries! Just go to Amazon and download the FREE APP, and you are on your way to e-reading revelry.)

I pose this Special Offer to you not only because I adore you for joining my blog but also because I need your HONEST FEEDBACK. If you will, after reading the work, please write a REVIEW on Amazon. In all sincerity, I crave reviews. Simply put! Many readers pan for reviews before they purchase a work, curious about what others thought about the book, seeking to glean whether something in the reviewer's feedback will strike a nerve or throb a chord within them. And that's dandy, for the reader who requires that!

Now this is the cover of my softback book. It isn't available on Amazon yet, but if you'd prefer a copy, please let me know in your e-mail. I will send you a PDF so that you can begin the reading while awaiting a copy of the book.

Taking nothing for granted, I thank the Universe for your presence. The series was over a decade in the making, with me trusting and believing it would be shared with others one day. That said, remember this...NEVER GIVE UP AND HOLD FAST TO YOUR DREAMS!


Te doy mucho amor ahora y siempre....
Besitos

TheGoldenGoddess

A Wealthy State of Mind...

Yesterday, if someone had asked me what wealth, true wealth, looked like, I might have answered: "A six-figure job that allows you leisure and the freedom from worry, financial worry. Or a writing career with one New York Times bestseller after another coming hot off the press. Today that answer is a notion of the past. True wealth, I now know, is a mindset, an inner belief that I possess the divine ability to draw to me the things, the people, the situations and the experiences that I desire on this journey that is my life.


True, a six-figure income is a treasure, a find, in many minds, and especially so in our taxing times. But if it suddenly went the way of so many foreclosed houses, then what would you have? Nothing? Or a healthy, wealthy state of mind that accepts things come and go, with the next opportunity around the corner, present by Divine arrangement?


Same with the bestselling writing career. If it dried drier than the Sahara, then what? Do you crumble? Banish anything that reminds you who you once were? Detest other successful authors? Or do you go within to know what your next greatest adventure will be Spiritually?


With a rich, Empire State state-of-mind, I understand that my present circumstances are a result of my past thinking, my prior conditioning. Circumstances are a smoke screen of images. Drifting like clouds across the horizon of my life. Truly, they come and they go. Attempting to hold one any longer than it is supposed to dot my skies would be begging for rain...from my eyes and my soul. So today I cultivate peace, Presence and Stillness. I sit or lie quietly, as alert as your heart when waiting for the words, "I love you," from a beloved's lips.


I sit and practice being aware of my breath and thoughts. I step out of the mental waterfall at times and leap into them at others, desiring the coolness of their spray. I channel them to caress whatever I have chosen to bring to my Everyday. No, I don't have to physically see the experience. The Divine handles that. My part is to stand in my bathroom mirror and admit to myself that I know not the way...on most days! Yet I know that by believing and asking, it will come. Exactly as the Divine wants me to experience that for which I've asked...but more majestically than I could ever imagine!


Words. Thoughts. Wishes. Beliefs. They are as real as the clacking keys under my fingertips. As tangible as the after-midnight treats I shall uncover in the kitchen in a few minutes. (Uh huh! I eat whenever my tummy speaks. Don't care the hour or what the latest health guru thinks.) I practice "feeling" the power in my beliefs.


From time to time, I believe it's paramount to give oneself a Belief Check-up. The very thing that might be holding you back from experiencing what you really want to experience might just be an "underlying belief" in an unexamined belief system. Why not join me by scanning yours now?


What do you believe about YOU? I'd love for you to speak to me. To step out of the blogsphere---at 2:40 AM, which is my time now---and engage me! I don't mind. Be anonymous if you like. Just come off the roll and be. Exchange is a beautiful thing!


I believe I create the wealth and beauty of my world.
I believe I am a lovely, talented woman, with a magnanimous Spirit.
I believe my experiences make me a richer person.
I believe my perception of any situation can mean the difference between the mountaintop or the valley floor.

I believe the people in my life are precious and purposeful, not a happenstance, even the ones who came to teach me seemingly "hard" lessons.
I believe I am equip with all that I need to soar.
I believe gratitude takes me where I want to go with lightening speed.
I believe all that I desire is already present, waiting patiently for me to align myself with it vibrationally.


The photo above is from my cache of photos from my 2010 Christmas in Saint Thomas. It is an inner view of one of my ideals of Paradise. Whenever I require a repeat visit while sitting here in my comfortable, quiet and ordered writing space, I silence the lights. Invite moonlight to recline across my desk. Tickle my candles' wicks. And sit crosslegged on a navy-blue paisley sofa and dream for seventeen minutes or so. I "feel" again the kiss of the ocean...the smog-free breeze draping my shoulders and nuzzling my earlobes...hear island music in the trees..."feel" its rhythms in my feet...adore the passing wind in my locs and taste the island's pulse on my tongue.


O what a luscious place to be...mentally, before I spread my arms and twirl in Cayman Island sun.


TheGoldenGoddess
October 28, 2011

Dear Goddess of Miracles...

Dear Goddess of Miracles:

Under a sea of tropical sky
that canopies a tree whose name
I know not to note, its orange
petals, soft and sensual, lush
like the orange in the material
about my hips,its pattern of leaves
twin to the green above my head,
on branches splayed majestically
at the crown of the path leading
to a hidden postcard of a view,
I pose and primp,
my third eye open to the Universe
to bow to my bidding,
as I lay my request here, before
thee, O Goddess of Miracles.


Send me a love with whom to share my
nights and days, her presence shining
brighter than the gems in my tiara,
for she will recognize me as her Queen
before our hello. From her lips, the
stories of her past will sketch the
mystery of who she is and where she's
been since the last lifetime we
made love in a myriad of ways and places
across the ages, deep in the lushness of
tropical rainforests and under the
shade of skyscrapers dotting Parisian
skies. She knew not to look for me,
knew we'd meet again, when you, O Goddess
of Miracles, deemed it be in the Now of
Today.


I will pose for her photographic eye,
as she spreads our colorful repast
on tables, lining dishes she's
perfected throughout her travels
and her days of readying herself for the
bliss of our togetherness. The tender
touch of her hand, of her words, of her
intentions will reign down on us, and we
will blossom a forever love for the poets
to commemorate in hymns, odes and serenades.
O Goddess of Miracles, lace our dreams,
thoughts and families. Alone, we will
stand together like stalwart red oaks
centuries old, insurmountable, inviolable,
indestructible, as I patiently await the
music of her melodious stride.

Living the Golden Life,
The Golden Goddess

Embracing Change

I am and will forever be an outre woman, an outlaw woman.

Common knowledge it is, I do and say things my sisters and many of my friends would never fathom. I could disclose a list of the unmentionables for those outside the loop, but it's late or, for some, early, so I will make maximum use of my blogging time and just admit that I am proudly, in countless ways, such a woman.


Several years ago, I walked away from teaching English to pursue my passion for writing. Some of my colleagues were tacitly curious, I know, figuring I'd lost what was left of my mind. Others shared their feelings at every opportunity, and still others commended my courage, slipping me inspirational notes. No, I didn't walk away without prospects on where the road would lead next, in the way of income. The Universe made that part palatable. I'd live frugally on an inheritance left to me by my childless aunt, who nursed full-time and painted in her leisure time, for several notable figures---family lore having President Carter as the recipient of one of her paintings, which was once on display at the Carter Center.


In my outre heels, I have learned to embrace CHANGE. There is no other way around it, no other fathomable fashion in which to live my life. Having been there before, I do not choose to flee change, and hurt myself in the flight; hence, I can only welcome change, seeking its company willingly and thereby deepening the quality of my life. Admitting this, I must also admit that I am in transition.


There are some who would describe the space I'm in as being stuck. Plausibility exists in the view. But I prefer to reference it as recognizing that I have broached a crossroads, not an impasse, in my life. In a very real sense, I am open to this place as a blessing. It prompts me to lay bare something inside me, something had this crossroads not appeared, might have gone unexamined, might have remained faceless. So the Universe gently nudges me toward another plateau of my journey.


Possibly, had my inheritance been bottomless, I might have worn out the comfort of my present pumps, never seeking to sashay into my favorite shoe store to purchase another pair of stilettos. When one has been on frugal autopilot, sometimes one becomes comfortable on that setting and, invariably, imagines it perfectly acceptable to continue strolling in a perfectly good pair of pumps...because they've now worn themselves into a second-skin, a complacent fit.


Change and time, therefore, have taken to sitting at the foot of my bed, in the amber-honey of sunlight. I am not taken aback by their presence. I do not fight. I embrace them. For I am happy, still, in spite of the uncertainty of not knowing where the road will lead nor what will be removed or added to my silo.


Happiness, an integral part of my way of being in the world, takes me by the hand and guides me to action and meditation and insightful exploration. Last night, after cleaning the kitchen, I returned to my office, where I yet am this morning at 6:21 AM, to determine what jobs are available in Oprah's network. If I must be employed, I may as well seek in an intriguing arena. Since I've always loved Oprah and the manner in which she uses her voice for good in the world, I started with her website. And although I'd love to report otherwise, my foray there didn't unearth plentiful positions in the talents I weld: writing, organizing and speaking. Same as the Turner Broadcasting site, Oprah's OWN and Harpo Career sites beckoned for applicants in Communication and Broadcasting, with experience of which I could not boast, not to mention most of the positions called for relocating to Chicago, Los Angeles or New York.


Reading and taking notes, I languished over a few of the job descriptions. Wondered, were I employed in them, if I'd have the energy, disposition or creativity to write. Maybe it wasn't all bad there weren't profiles easily earmarked for me.


Then I began reading the online articles from O Magazine. And realized why I was on the site.


The articles watered my soul.


In one piece, Oprah had written about the crossroads she'd come to when she made the decision to take "The Oprah Winfrey Show" on a different course from those of her competitors. Here she was asking the Universe two simple yet powerful questions: "What would you have me to do? Who would you have me be?"


Oprah's questions lined up with what I was feeling. They reminded me to do what I'd mentioned yesterday to a beloved sisterfriend in England. I'd told her I go within, to ask the Divine what I needed to do whenever I didn't know. And last night, here were Oprah's words whispering in my ear: "When you don't know what to do, get still. The answer will come."


I know. I practice it. Know it like I know the smile in my morning mirror. Yet sometimes Spirit reminds me, like it does you, in its constant attempts to let us know everything is just fine...even when the way is unclear.


No one, I realize all over again, saves me but me and my connection with the peace and Stillness within Claudia. So I relegate time alone, to hear the tiny voice that never leads me astray. I flip the switch on that incessant chatter that reminds me I've got to do SOMETHING NOW. That Chicken Little was right. The sky is falling. That my parachute is on aisle four, and I'm at this desk.


As I continued to read, feeling my heart lighten and become near weightless, I came upon an interview showcasing my favorite author of all time. Toni Morrison. Her words tossed me another lifeline. One with "On Writing" painted on the life jacket. Her words reminded me that what I loved, rooted deep within me, could and would save me. In so many words, she advised me to be easy, to remain open, to flow.


No one can express the thought quite like Toni Morrison, so I quote her proudly:


"It's that being open---not scratching for it, not digging for it, not constructing something but being open to the situation and trusting that what you don't know will be available to you. It is bigger than your overt consciousness or your intelligence or even your gifts; it is out there somewhere and you have to let it in."


And with that, I strike another outre pose, flexing my desire to remain open to Spirit and its knowing, as I walk forward, with the innocence of a child, like my fearless grandson, Nazir, and trust that the way comes indeed out of no way. I submit my plan for the Divine's masterpiece for my life. As Oprah so aptly put it, "Use me, God. Show me how to take who I am, who I want to be, and what I can do, and use it for a purpose greater than myself."

Living A Golden Life....

The Golden Goddess