Dear Blog

I do not know how to write unless I know whom I’m taking to. It’s like I have to look into a pair of eyes and see who’s there. I am incapable of shooting blanks. Anne Frank addressed her diary as Dear Kitty. Jerusha Abbot, the orphan in Jean Webster’s famous book, began her letters to her unseen guardian with dear Daddy Long Legs. Never was I one who could begin a letter Dear Sir or Madam. I never knew how to write to someone I didn’t know.

At first I thought I would start this blog by addressing it to Dear Heavenreaders. Then I thought, Well, not everyone who reads this will be a Heavenreader. I thought of Dear Readers, Dear Friends, Dear Ones, Dear Love, Dear Someones, Dear Blog, Beloveds, Dear Children of God, Beautiful Souls -- nothing felt just right. Who is it I am writing to? To myself? Dear Gloria, Dear Myself, doesn’t work. So I am at a loss. Perhaps you can tell me whom I’m writing to and what I should call you.

Godwriting, that lovely communication with God, is easy as pie, easy to write and easy to address. When I do my personal Godwriting, which I do every morning, just checking in so to speak, I begin Dear God, and I have no hesitation. Even before that, I write down: “Gloria to God" to make sure I know who’s talking to God. It gives me a certain comfort. Maybe I don’t know who I am really. I found God before I found me. I may not have found myself yet.

Of course, it can be said that God and I are One, that we all are. And therefore God and I are One and the same, and you and God are One and the same, even though that’s hard to believe. Maybe I should call you Dear One, which covers every possibility.

When I write down Heavenletters themselves, which are God’s agenda, not mine, I begin God said, and then listen for all I’m worth and write down what comes. It is easier to write down God’s words than to write anything else. Easier than anything else altogether.

Dear One, having to begin somewhere, I might as well tell you a little bit about myself. I was born in Longmeadow, Massachusetts, and I was the youngest of five. I am the only child of my mother and father left. Somehow I wound up in Iowa which was never a possibility. In this way, you can think of me as a moon whose path has changed. You can tell I love poetry. When I taught junior high school, I was referred to as the Poetry Teacher. I am sure I was also referred to in other ways as well.

That’s enough about my secular history, for everyone’s life is the same, and no two are alike. So mine was just like yours and quite the opposite.

I may not be sure who I ever was, but I can say with confidence that I am not who I used to be. There was a pre-Godwriting Gloria, and a post-Godwriting Gloria. I am like the innocent person sitting in an old comfortable chair who gets caught in a tornado, and suddenly finds herself sitting on a tree limb miles away, scratching her head, wondering where exactly she is and how she got there. Heavenletters is the limb I’m sitting on, and I don’t know how I got here.

I am not the last choice in the world to write down Heavenletters, yet who would have given me a second thought? No one I know. And not I. I had no awareness. I didn’t have an inkling what part I would come to play and how stretched I would be until, well, there would be little left of me, the individual that is. Yet I must confess that, at the same time, too much of me remains, certainly more ego and past than I would like to own to.

Sometime I will tell you more about the Godwriting Gloria and how she grew.

To be Continued.