Meeting New Neighbors

Life can feel like it’s all too much for us to handle. The days are too hot or too cold. We feel bombarded by the daily news or suffer from the drought of a news desert. All we want is for life to stop. We feel like life is off balance and our equilibrium is shot.

Whatever it is that’s going on in the world, sometimes all we want is a bowl of cereal and to go back to bed. Maybe not even the cereal.

Physically, spiritually and emotionally we want to catch our breath.

Some people feel like they are losing their sense of balance.

It’s not always an external barometer that will throw us off balance. Our internal barometer, whatever it is that makes us feel we can meet the day, takes an unexpected vacation.

On top of it all is dealing with other people. For me, there are the new neighbors.

The city and the neighborhood I now live in are all new to me. For most people this is no big deal. We move and we adjust to our new surroundings. We become familiar with the buildings and the locals.

Yet, are we ever truly ready for the surprises of newness?

Each day when I take the dogs out for our morning walk I meet a few humans. I meet many more ghosts. They walk out of the front doors of their houses the same as they did one hundred fifty years ago. The majority are men in dark suits. They are heading off to their offices in the city. On some days I see their carriages pull up. Other days the men’s’ spirits and I see each other just as they are setting foot out the door. Walking down the side streets I see the rear of the houses. There the servants hurry in and out the doors with their bundles. Some of the male servants are pulling horses and carriages out of the carriage houses behind the main houses. At some houses there are no neighboring houses, no carriages driving along cobble streets. The houses disappear and the countryside of two hundred years ago reappears as it was. Men and older boys come out for their morning rides around their farms.

That may not be what most people expect to see in the twenty-first century Bos-Wash megalopolis.

It’s normal for me.

I adjusted to seeing the ghosts of the American Southwest only to be uprooted back to the East Coast. Now, living in a city where I’ve never lived before, there is so much to discover. There are the ghosts who sit on the front steps of houses, appearing and disappearing while I walk by scarcely paying attention. There are the prehistoric figures, the people whose ancestors came from Africa followed by those whose ancestors came from Asia thousands of years before the Europeans.

Africans, Asians, Europeans and Hispanics of the last four centuries pass me on the streets. They sit in front of houses and in parks.

There is no difference between an epidemic or any other time in the spirit world.

Spirits are always here.

There are always more spirits than there are living people. The math is very simple. More souls have already lived than there are of us living.

The spirits can surprise me. I will see them and then they will disappear before I reach the place where they were. After I have passed I feel their presence behind me. I turn around. There the ghosts are. Sitting where they were before I walked by.

Naturally, not all of the spirits are ghosts. Some of my new neighbors are angels. They are the angels who were put here as spiritual guards. They protect us so long as we display the willingness and wisdom to be protected. They are always present for those who choose good.

Every moment in human history is a good time to choose spiritual protection and care. It’s always smart to reach out to allow our angels and all healing spirits to feed our souls.

If the Spirit wants nothing more than to protect us, who are we to say no?