One Day My Altar Blew Up

One day my soul just opened up and things started happenin’
things I can’t quite explain
I mean I cried and cried like never before
I cried tears of ten thousand mothers
I couldn’t even feel anything because
I cried ’til I was numb.

One day my soul just opened up
I felt this overwhelming pride
what I was proud of only God knows!
Like the pride of a hundred thousand fathers
basking in the glory of their newborn sons
I was grinnin’ from ear to ear!

One day my soul just opened up
I started laughing
and I laughed for what seemed like forever
wasn’t nothin’ particularily funny goin’ on
but I laughed anyhow
I laughed the joy of a million children playin’ in the mud
I laughed ’til my sides ached
Oh God! It felt so good!

One day my soul just opened up
There were revelations, annihilations, and resolutions
feelings of doubt and betrayal, vengeance and forgiveness
memories of things I’d seen and done before
of places I’d been, although I didn’t know when
there were lives I’d lived
people I’d loved
battles I’d fought
victories I’d won
and wars I’d lost.

One day my soul just opened up
and out poured all the things
I’d been hiding and denying
and living through
that had just happened moments before.

One day my soul just opened up
and I decided
I was good and ready!
I was good and ready
to surrender
my life
to God.

So, with my soul wide open,
I sat down
wrote Her a note
and told her so.

Gemmia L. Vanzant
From the book “One Day My Soul Just Opened Up, by: Iyanla Vanzant

I absolutely LOVE this poem…except…it didn’t quite happen for me like that. In fact, instead of my soul opening up – my altar literally BLEW up. Yep, burst into a ball of flames in my bedroom. Flames, water, smoke detectors, neighbors doing ‘health and wellness’ checks. Don’t believe me? Here’s the before pic:

*yes…I can see that the flames are a tad high… at least I can see that NOW…shut up…*

And then the after pic (all evidence of burned walls and melted wax have been blurred out to protect the humiliated) :

I can laugh about it…now….kinda…

So before I tell you the story about how my altar blew up, let me try to explain how it all came to pass.

DISCLAIMER: One of the things that I wanted to do on this site was create a separate page that would be a candid documentation of my spiritual journey for 2010. A lot of people ask me specifics about the programs/practices that I do.  I figured what better way to introduce it than to let you guys know that you’ll probably be reading more than one of my ‘exploding altar’ stories before the year is out.  These particular posts really won’t have any type of beginning or ending.  They’ll kind of  just pick up where I left off the last time, so if you’re searching, just use the category “Soulful Sojourn”.

Anyway, as you guys know , my name is SoJo – short for Sojourner…Sojourner Verdad. I’ll pause and let you marinate on that for a sec.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTFWPkHtvfY&hl=en_US&fs=1]

Yes, Sojourner Truth. As in someone on a journey of neverending truth or enlightenment…or in my case…really a pursuit of authenticity – or trying to (as the old folks shake their heads and say) “find myself”. Except that, the more that I travel, the more I begin to realize that I’ve never really been “lost” …just always subject to change.

So at any rate, where was I?  Oh yeah, I was supposed to write about about my spiritual journey.

Well, I’ve beat around the bush long enough. Would you like to hear about my Firestarter story? Well here goes….