Synchronicity is a term I have come to cherish since being introduced to it by my favorite psychologist, Carl G Jung. It refers to deeply meaningful coincidences that mysteriously occur in one’s life. Jung proved by the law of probability that they were not mere coincidences but insights into our rich and worthwhile lives.
Continue readingTag Archives: Brewerytown
‘Brewerytown Way’ Brought Back to Life
I see my life through the eyes of a kid who grew up in Brewerytown, swashbuckling my way through fights on the streets and later the jungles of Vietnam before finding my true calling as a spiritual clarion who wants all North Philadelphia children to return to their God-given Nature of Love. Continue reading
Serving graciously as a St. Ludwig altar boy
“Ad Deum Qui Laetificat Juventutem Meam!”
That’s one of the prayers I’d recite as an altar boy at St. Ludwig’s Roman Catholic Church, and I’ll never forget it ‘til the day I die. Don’t ask me what it means right now. I never figured it out as a kid, but I loved to say it!  Continue reading
The Ice Man Cometh for Me and for Thee
It was the ice on the truck that beckoned to me when I was six years old and playing on the one-way street near my home in North Philadelphia. Continue reading
Brewerytown never too far behind me
No matter where I go, Philadelphia will always go with me. I’ve taken the old neighborhood to combat in Vietnam as well as to the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem. I let it shine in the courthouses of Philadelphia and the one and only house of pleasure I visited in Panama.
Yeah, I’m from Brewerytown, an old German-based section of Philadelphia that families of beer-makers settled in a small enclave of the City of Brotherly Love. Brewerytown is near the Philadelphia Zoo on Girard Avenue and not too far from the Eastern State Penitentiary, where Al Capone once lived in a section called Fairmount.  Continue reading
A ‘Lot of Heart’ can go a Long Way in Life!
Kids I grew up with in the tough section of North Philadelphia said that I had “a lot of heart.” I cherish that statement more than any I later heard as a teenager, a young adult, or someone older looking back on what made him the proudest in his short lifetime. You’d have a “lot of heart” if you didn’t care for the consequences when sticking up for a black kid when a white “friend” called him the “N” word and then classified you as a “N-gger lover” for coming to his defense.
Contentment: Learning to be Content OK
“Good Enough” is the lazy man’s way to enlightenment . . . There’s nothing more to do . . . Your job is good enough . . . Your spouse is good enough . . .Your life is good enough . . . Your meditation practice is good enough. . . You don’t need anything more, and what you now have is good enough. — This is all according to a young monk, – Ajahn Khemavaro, who spoke on Impermanence, in a 2008 presentation, “Everything Will Be alright. Continue reading
Growing up with Catholic Sisters (Nuns)!
While growing up in a Catholic School, I met all kinds of nuns. Some I liked more than others. I was kind of like the class clown, or a class-clown wannabe, and got called out by many of the good teachers wearing the black coverings with the bullet-proof white vests covering their chests. I went to Saint Ludwig’s, a church school in what was then a predominantly German neighborhood of North Philadelphia called “Brewerytown.”
Graduation Highlights Father-Son Ties
One of the most wonderful moments of my life occurred without my knowing it. Had I the presence of mind to be more present for things that mattered, I might not have missed it. Recalling what this once-in-a-lifetime occurrence must have been like, however, is the second-best way I know of memorializing it. Continue reading
Recalling childhood angels with dirty faces
I can think of no worse place to be than in a church, a temple, or a synagogue when an unbidden and involuntary giggle would invade my psyche and take control of me. A “giggle” is too mild a word: uncontrollable laughter would rise to the level of guffaws and downright knee-slappers, right at the most somber parts of a religious service. Continue reading
These are the True Signs of Our Times!
When I read the Occupy Wall Street demonstrators were unfocused and without a coherent message, I took a closer look at them in Philadelphia, and discovered some were disheveled street persons looking for handouts, and one was a graduate school political science major spouting Marxist teaching.
They Represented Only One Percent.
The remaining 99 percent of the other protestors were mostly young, highly educated, unemployed or underemployed men and women who got tired of the debt-ceiling fiasco and took to the streets to mobilize against the Tea Party followers.  Continue reading
Kabbalah To Mingle With Buddhist Jaunt
Short Stature Grows Larger With Love
A taste of heaven offered here on earth
Pizza pie and chocolate milkshake.
Each drew me like an oasis to a man walking alone in a desert.
Injustice should make us all ‘go berserk’
“Going Berserk” has always had a wicked appeal to me.
For brief moments, I’d go “mad,” and not care for my safety or well-being, but focus instead on the object causing a “crazy re-action” on my part. It was as if a volcano had erupted and I wanted to punish those perceived as evil-doers. Might have had a bit of “religious fervor” involved, as I saw myself correcting a wrong or an injustice with a quick upper-cut to the jaw.
Going AWOL helps a boy grow into a man
Went AWOL while a private in the US Army in 1968.
Continue readingThe Great Awakening can be hard on a guy
Ashamed. Impure. Dirty.
All these feelings flashed through me as I slowly came out of what seemed like a trance, halfway between sleep and wakefulness, only to notice growth at a part of my body where there was none before.
A tough road makes journey a little easier
When my father spoke Greek with the disciplinarian of the Catholic High School where I played hooky at age 14, I thought I had it made.
Continue readingBestowing spirit & essence to a new friend
I told someone I’d give up my life for them. And, I meant it.
I was so low, I was willing to forego this body and offer my spirit to someone, anyone who’d have a greater chance of gaining enlightenment than me. Give to someone who was nearing to what Kabbalists call the final “correction” of all of one’s egotistical desires.
Pitching pennies provides pinch per police
Radio Plays to My No. 1 Heart’s Desire
College Life repeats itself each generation
Sat next to a long hair, skinny, “Hippie” guy at an orientation in a community college yesterday, and felt thrown back to a time years ago, sitting cross-legged on the floor across from a similar fellow wondering what the hell I was doing there.
Act of Contrition Helps Regain My Purity
Got Blanket Absolution yesterday. And, it felt so good, I became a 12-year-old again. Ready to face the world with a clear conscious and a pure heart.
‘I confess!’ I cut school with Franny O
When coincidence occurs, look out & in!
‘Five Jaunts’ create a life-long harmony
Monkey see, and, alas, Monkey will do
Soft pretzels, a Philadelphia comfort food
Goin’ to farm; pick blueberries barefooted
Cousin Rosemarie Lieb.
You opened my heart to something I closed years ago.
Not ready to look inside. Almost, but not just yet.
Your words touched me with a warmth I haven’t felt in a long time. They caressed me, and I liken it to a mother’s love and pride I couldn’t handle at the family reunion last Saturday.
War stories penetrate a family gathering
The knife “broke skin” and went an inch into my back.
I felt the pain all the way to the emergency room, believing the knife was still lodged there. I could not tell . . . I dare not turn to try to see or touch it.
The Gospel According to Bobby Darin
Wasn’t sure a Gospel Song would fit in with Highly Sensitive Persons (HSPs) at a music appreciation meet last week.
Still can’t understand why I chose Bobby Darin, the “Splish Splash” originator, to represent my musical taste. We were encouraged by the hosts, a young couple, to bring music that meant a lot to us, perhaps meditative offerings and/or those pieces that represented a special time in our lives.
City differences create a variety in my life
Cherry-Chocolate
Soda
I’d give anything to taste the flavor of a that drink again.
Not the ones from a bottle. A soda fountain drink! Nothing compares to the delicious mixture of “realchocolate” and cherry syrups combined with that seltzer-like substance that produced a drink that could have originated only in Paradise.
Continue readingAl Brown Taught me a Lesson of a Lifetime
I always looked up to Al Brown. I met him when I was only eight-and-a-half years old in the 1950s. Nowadays, I guess you would call him a “community organizer,” someone in the neighborhood a person could turn to with questions about the block, the new and older people who lived on your street. Like that section of Brewerytown where I grew up in North Philadelphia.
‘Do the right thing’–do what’s right for you
Part II from Escaping-Brewerytown
The moment of truth came down to one question: “Who else was with you?”
I looked to the floor and didn’t answer until the head of a juvenile aid panel from Philadelphia Family Court asked me to speak up.
Escaping Brewerytown in 1 piece not easy
I never took my eyes off the gun. The man’s hand shook. I was afraid it would go off. Raising my own hands, I prayed that he would not shoot, and said “I’m coming out,” slowly climbing out of the window, placing one foot on the ground and then the other as I exited the ACME supermarket warehouse building two blocks from my home. Continue reading
Love generates within for no reason at all
I tasted Love before I ever “entered” an Age of Reason.
I had not reached 7, but I remember it as if it was yesterday. I was attending a birthday party for a friend of my brother, John, who is two years older than me. Her name was Carolyn, and the love I felt came from her sister, Regina Gross, who the older kids enjoyed “fixing up” with me, her school classmate.
Courtroom awakens karma understanding
One of the most humbling times in my life occurred in Court.
Philadelphia Police Sgt. Washington motioned to me that he wanted to talk. This was odd, I represented the “other side” as a public defender whose client was the defendant charged in an auto theft case. Washington was the arresting police officer whose testimony would ensure a conviction.
Going back home sans the Maidenform bra
What’s the biggest lie you ever told?
I’m talking “whopper” now. None of the “little white lies” kinda story. But one that would qualify as a Bold-Faced LIE!
Mine was to an ex-girlfriend. Not a lie to hide, I had been with another girl. Or why I forgot an anniversary or her birthday.
Values don’t change in impermanent world
I was 18 when I asked Janet to marry me, and she turned my request down flat.
We were never romantically involved, even though I’m sure a mutual love would have grown out of our teenage friendship.
Dance floor good place to learn to play ball
Two girls fought over me once.
Well, it really wasn’t me that caused the fight. It was my dance steps.
Hit upside the head provides a life lesson
The detective hit me across the face with a back hand, and I knew I was in trouble. Blood formed on my lower lip. I let it flow, not taking my eyes from this man who gained my immediate attention with a force he evidently knew how to use on some wise-ass kid not being straight with him.
Hopping Trains Fools No One but Myself
I’ll Never Hop a Train Again.
Got dragged and nearly fell beneath a train before finally letting go of a freight car’s metal handholds. Don’t know how far my legs scraped and bumped along the wooden beams and fistfuls of rocks strewn from track to track. Don’t remember how long I lay on the ground, long after the train rolled by, thanking God for letting such a foolish boy like me continue to live.
Dream of Swinging on a Star Rings Out
Part II Smith’s Playground inspires years later
Reaching out with my right hand, I’d grab the metal ring. I would stand on my toes to pull it closer to the wooden platform I was balanced on. Gotta pull the ring back. Pull it so I can get the proper swing to the next ring. If you glide out without an extra pull, you’d fall short and drop to the ground, a failure.
Dream of Smith’s Playground Inspires Me
Childhood long gone, I’d dream about the “monkey swing” at Smith’s Playground whenever I wanted to achieve something worthwhile in my life. I’d see myself climb from one achievement to another, always going forward as I stretched out an arm to grab one metal ring and then the next one on down the line.
Getting ‘Fired’ up for Singing Debut on TV
Mister JR Johnson fired me when he caught me “entertaining” friends at his place of business.
He waited until the end of the shift on Friday and told me my days (actually, nights) as a stripper were over. I tried to explain, apologize for my actions, but that evening it was to no avail.
It hung over me that weekend. But did little to dim one of the brightest moments of my life.
Remembering the Greatest Time of my Life
Name-caller gets his butt kicked in the end
Originally Cont’d from Name-calling can get you kicked in the end 1-28-10
Calling a kid names could cause a lasting scar one may have to deal with later in life. It’s either that, or you learn to “toughen up“ as I did, and let the wise-cracks, the slurs, the hate-filled and ignorant remarks simply glide over you.
‘Shining Moment’ sends me ‘Soaring High’
Originally Cont’d from Youth recaptured through football hurdle 1-22-10 Continue reading
‘First Love Found’, never lost a Heartbeat
Orginally Cont’d From Love’s First Kiss) 12-2-09
What was it like to be a pre-teen, meeting a person who’d, maybe one day, be the Love of your Life? And what did you do when someone turned down the lights in the cellar party . . . and you were alone . . . finally. Your hands touched, and your eyes melted while looking at the other’s face, their smile, their warm and inviting eyes.
* * * * * * * * *
Rooster helps open path to miraculous day
The rooster crows outside my kitchen door. Not once, but several times. Wait a minute! It’s 7:30 in the morning. He’s supposed to be up the hill in the shed converted into a chicken coop. What happened?
You forgot to lock the trap door, Michael J. Forgot to close it. Or simply forgot to round-up the four feathered critters and herd them into their warm wooden environment. That could mean they spent the night outdoors.
Are you the one from a path not taken?
Mc572 – who are you & how can we talk?
Name-calling can get you kicked in the end
Patty DeMarco made me cry. He called me names and wouldn’t stop as I tried to walk away, with him following me on the North Philadelphia street we lived. On and on he went, badmouthing me, until he saw my brother, who helped me into his little red wagon, and pulled it home, me sobbing all the while behind. I was four years old.
Love’s ‘First Kiss’ Lasts . . . For Ever More
Thanks for a Path that Preserved my Life
Ever wonder what life would have been like if you made different choices years earlier?
Choosing a Different Path May Have Hurt You
I was 19 when I felt “separated” from most of the people I hung out with and called friends. I wanted to be so much like them; not to care about such things as “love,” “compassion,” other people’s “feelings.” That was “sissy” stuff; stuff that only a “wuss” would think about. I saw these aspects of myself as a “weakness.“
Contoveros 