Soul’s Code

About the rotating panel of very personal experiences to your lower right

BY SOUL’S CODE — Have you heard a question that goes like this from competitive friends, motivational speakers or, say — the foremost practitioners of American reality TV, Oprah and Donald Trump?

“Where do you want to be five years from now?

Which reminds us of a joke . . . How do you make the Gods laugh?

Answer: tell them your plans.

Laid-off, foreclosed, going broke, ill, stressed, lonely or sad? The Novena to St. Jude is tailor-made for times of troubles

BY SOUL’S CODE — Call it a Catholic meditation. Call it a koan of loving kindness. In the 19th century, the Novena to “the forgotten saint” Jude was known as a prayer for desperate cases, or when a miracle is needed. It now seems perfectly scripted for this century.

With almost one fifth of the U. S. workforce unemployed or under-employed — and five million Americans losing their jobless benefits between Thanksgiving, 2010 and March, 2011 — is it any wonder that a new study estimates that one-fifth of the population of the last ‘superpower’ suffered from a mental illness last year?

So if you’re feeling in any way left out at the turn of this new year and new decade, we reproduce the Novena to St. Jude below as a spiritual prescription.

Like the Earth itself, we are all vulnerable to the energy within us

GUEST COLUMN BY HEATHER GREAVES — The Earth in all her pain (toxicity) and glory has faults.

Likewise, we human beings with all our broken dreams and victories, have faults.

As below our feet. . .so it is above.

The year 2010 has begun with Earth releasing energy causing its area known as Haiti to quake and tremor. The energy was released by the rupture of a geological fault without a warning, and definitely without so much as a by-your-leave.

Will soul evolving strength and beauty emerge from the rubble of Haiti?

GUEST COLUMN BY CHELSEA LANGAN — It’s been a tough couple of days for Haitians, their families, and sympathetic souls around the world. The devastation that has unfolded in such an already grief stricken island seems catastrophic.

But on a positive note, I believe they’ve acquired a rare opportunity to rebuild their nation from the ground up with a new, uncanny, unprecedented strength and perception that has the potential to spread miracles to the rest of the world.

One might consider the damage from the earthquake a free demo, a courtesy, rather, from God himself.

Although many of the Haitian structures deemed sacred have been leveled, or re-leveled in some cases, I don’t question God’s testaments to the ephemeral.

A spiritual teacher’s meditation and affirmation for this anniversary of fear and terror

GUEST COLUMN: RONDA LARUE — 9/11 is, and was, a big wake up call to witness the internal machinations of fear, and its multi-faced projections. And as with all tragedies, it is a call to dive deeper under the ruble of suffering, shock, and reaction to reclaim an ecology of the heart.

Spinning on a Prayer…

In our greatest imaginings
who could dream a world such as this?

Despite his transgressions,  Edward Kennedy was a model of grace and forgiveness. His legacy outshone Chappaquidick and the shadows cast by assassins Lee Harvey Oswald and Sirhan Sirhan

BY PAUL KAIHLA — In our anxious world the news of a Kennedy death has an archetypal effect: shock and awe, a collective “pain body” experience. John F, ’63; Robert F. K. in LA in ’68, by the first post-war Arab terrorist in America.

But this time, there was no “Kennedy curse.”

Let’s celebrate that Teddy, who ran for president like his brothers, died of natural causes — not an assassin’s bullet or bomb. Let the mainstream media call him an American icon. Or conflicted whatever.

Soul’s Code calls him a person who took a leap of faith. He didn’t retreat into wealth, like Jackie. He didn’t become Jackie’s lover, like Bobbie. He cathected in not only his uncle-role with his family and tribe, but in a larger role with our global village. He worked his (energetic) anatomy 0ff to change the world:

Family man, related: Most American men somehow, find some way, to be at odds with their mothers. Please find an instance in a book, or in a newspaper, or a YouTube rip where Ted ever said a single negative word about his mother.

A small business owner writes about returning after the storm

BY SKIP MARTIN — After weaving my way through the maze of road blocks and debris that is Galveston County post-Ike, I finally made it to the Galveston Police checkpoint.  It was more than a week before residents would be allowed to return permanently — just two days after the storm ripped through — and officials were letting property owners back for a five-hour-period that was known as a “look and leave.”

Look, I did. What I saw resembled a city, post-battle. I drove along the causeway past piles of debris — mangled boats, crumpled washing machines, the bloated corpse of a dog. State and National Guard troops, in their crisp BDUs and driving Humvees, were only outnumbered by reporters and news trucks.

As I traveled down Broadway, a main thoroughfare,  I thought how timely the demolishing of the Taco Bell had been. A small victory.

The near-category three storm ripped across the Texas gulf coast last night

Gone with the wind: Murdoch’s Bathhouse (1910), The Balinese Room (1929), Hooters (2006). Still standing, we hope, is UTMB’s BioSafety Level Four lab, one of only 13 in the country equipped to experiment with avian flu, hemorrhagic fever and other highly infectious organisms. But how would we ever know? 

Residents flee storm that recalls the worst natural disaster in American history

BY BEVERLEY WOOD — 9:00 am one fateful Saturday in September, a storm began to make landfall in Galveston, Texas from the middle of the Gulf of Mexico, where it had tossed and turned all night. By 10 o’clock, the severity of the wind had gathered force — and with it, the size and speed of the waves. People began to notice.

The next 14 hours would count more than 6,000 dead in what remains (at least, today) the largest natural disaster in American history. Dateline: Galveston, Saturday September 8, 1900.

Saturday, September 13, 2008 is upon Galveston — and so is Hurricane Ike . . . 

We offer our prayers to Jayne Schaffstein Veld (June 6, 1969 – September 1, 2008), and the two young sons and husband she leaves behind in San Francisco. May her soul be sanctified, and joined by the voices of angels and archangels.

We, in turn, pass on Jayne’s spirit to you. This daily prayer sustained her through a six-year battle with breast cancer, a feat which defied the prognosis of medical experts.