this is it...

my six-hundredth post. i can't quite believe i've written six hundred blogs in just about two and a half years.

unlike a lot of writers, a lot of seekers, a lot of women, i've never kept a journal. i don't do Morning Pages, i don't record my endless ruminations with Spirit. most of what i think about flows in and out of my consciousness as easily as water flowing downstream. what sticks, sticks, and what doesn't, doesn't. i've never been one to navel-gaze nor to spend a lot of time worrying about things that either may never come to be or over which i have no control.

and then i opened a fortune cookie and the scrap inside said, "no one will remember you for your secret thoughts."

ripeness, as shakespeare wrote in king lear, is all.

i'd reached what felt like a pivot point in my life - i was moving my grandmother up to be closer to me for the last year of her life, my first grandchild was poised to be born. my best friend had died just a few months before, and i missed her (and still do) quite sorely. and even as my own ability to connect with the dead, to hear their voices, was developing, i was becoming acutely aware of what it was to miss someone who wasn't ever coming back, not in their familiar form, anyway.

and so, i turned to blogging. not for myself - i don't often go back to read my blogs, though i love to read my books :) - but for my children, my grandchildren, for my great-grandchildren, who might wonder someday, as i so often have, who the people really were who made me who i am. that i have made connections that span continents and oceans is a benefit i wasn't expecting, that i have "met" so many delightful kindred souls is a blessing i didn't think to receive. that i have inspired more than a few to start blogging tickles me to no end.

because blogging, as i pointed out to my brother john the other day, is about expressing. it's not necessarily creative - not as i think of it, anyway - though there are surely a lot of very creative bloggers - it's primarily expressive. it encourages people to step out of the shadows, to shine their Light in the dark void of the internet, to share, if only in a few paragraphs, the Reality at the center of their souls.

thank you to all the lovely people who've played in my superawesome giveaway by posting comments and becoming followers, adding my button or posting about the giveaway. i hope you'll keep coming back. i've loved finding your blogs and reading about your lives. i enjoy getting to know you, and learning about all the amazing people out there all over the world. you make me laugh and cry and everything in between, and mostly stand in awe of the incredible diversity of what it means to have this human experience. thank you so very much.

and now... the winner of last week's ten-things-you-like-about-you is...(drum roll, please)...MARITZIA!!!!!! please email me your snail mail address so i can send you your purple fingerless gloves!!!

i will announce the winner of the SUPERAWESOME GIVEAWAY in the next post or two - im still counting up the entries to see who had the most for the runner-up prize!

hugs and kisses to everyone who came and played... please come back and play again! and in the meantime... blog on!

and furthermore, the war WILL end. blessed be.