A Godparent

We have new residents in the house right now, people come to get the kind of healing which you can’t get at a distance. I forget, because this is just what I do now, what it looks like.

Up and down the stairs. Midnight, three am, eight am, noon, cup of cold coffee or water clutched in my hand, pockets bulging with Florida water, fula (the handkerchiefs we use), lighter, cigar cutter, cigars, candles—all the little accessories of the trade. Stopping mid-word in a conversation because the spirit has dropped in to tell me about someone’s problems. Head drooping suddenly as my consciousness is jerked up and out to deal with someone or something.

I forget what it looks like until they say something. Then I tell a few little stories: about a car wreck someone didn’t get into. About a loan someone would never have gotten. About the miraculous way someone made it to someone else’s side before they pass.

Never with names.

Somewhere, if they have one, their godparent puts a candle down and goes back to cooking dinner. Or sleeping. Or whatever they were doing.

I tell those stories about my godfather. He is, after all, why I started doing this.

Recognize this: the divine loves us. Our spirits love us.

I was asked, yesterday, if I really love my godchildren. I was sitting in the altar room, where I have spent hours over a candle fixing this or that for people. Unpaid, unacknowledged hours. Hours I will never tell this or that one about.

The spirits ask me, every time, if I am willing to love the new child. Every time there is a connection, they’ve asked: “And this one?”

What do you suppose I say?

It is so easy. This is my heart, children. It is for you.