Ampersand Gazette #125

Welcome to the Ampersand Gazette, a metaphysical take on some of the news of the day. If you know others like us, who want to create a world that includes and works for everyone, please feel free to share this newsletter. The sign-up is here. And now, on with the latest …  

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I Want to Hold Her Hand

The subject is the holding of hands. You take my hand; I take yours. What does it mean?

My wife, Ginny, and I hold hands when we walk outside. Passers-by smile approvingly, thinking that what they’re observing is a gesture of love. It is. But it’s also a demonstration of necessity. If one of us stumbles, there’s always a hand to steady the other, like a listing ship righted.

Two of the things that count most in life are love and usefulness. Holding hands offers both. Take my hand. Keep me straight, protect me and warm my heart.

Holding the hand of another involves all the meanings of hands, which are multiple and various. Hands are essential to our being. Ever since God and Adam reached toward each other, a power, almost supernatural, has been ascribed to the touch of one hand by another.

In Scripture, the laying on of hands denotes healing. The word “hand” has been enlarged to mean help itself: lend a hand. Hands also represent work: all hands on deck. They are signs of approval: give her a hand. Or the basic gesture of surrender: hands up. The sealing of a deal? Put it there, pal. If you need self-control, get a grip.

You pray with your hands. Use sign language with your hands. Some read the lines in your hands as predictive of your life. Approval is indicated by a show of hands. To celebrate, you give a high-five. Extend your hand toward a baby, and it will cling to a finger.

The significance of hand-holding rests on how fundamental our hands are. What would romance do without hand-holding? The Beatles scored a massive hit with “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” The first gesture of love of a boy or girl is usually to reach for the other’s hand.

In old age, holding hands is a guide to the past. Ginny and I held hands in high school. We hold hands today. They are not the same hands. Today’s hands are discolored, with roads of wrinkles and blue highways of veins. They have been through the mill and through the wars. That we hold hands still is partly an act of pride—and defiance. We can last. Our hands prove it. In old age one looks for something reliable to hold on to.

Here we are, a shaky and weakened Hansel and Gretel, lost in the woods, wary of witches. Alone, afraid, yet less afraid for the touch of each other. Around us, the storms of the world. Within us, images of family and friends. Before us, life. Take my hand. 

Excerpt from an Opinion Essay by Roger Rosenblatt in the New York Times
“I Want to Hold Her Hand”
September 26, 2026 

One of the things my mom used to say was that after two kids, you may as well have eleven, because you can no longer hold all their hands to get across the street. It always made me laugh because it’s so obvious and so true. 

I loved the image of these two elders holding hands from high school onward, and that the hands they started co-holding aren’t the same today as yesterday. Of course they’re not. I’m starting to see in my own hands, as lovely as they are, the process of aging that touched my mother’s, my grandmother’s, and my great grandmother’s hands. 

I giggled to myself when I lit upon these words: “it’s … touching to see.” 

I think the thing about hands that is so special is that we just make the assumption that they’ll do whatever we ask of them. And, make no mistake, we, conscious or not, are doing the asking. 

When you think about it … a piece of runaway hair blows into your face. Simple enough, but … what actually happens when you move your hand up to get the hair out of your face? 

The real answer is miracles—and we forget that. Your brain engages, arm lifts, hand grasps the hair, and removes it to a more satisfactory location. Amazing, and we forget to notice. 

As Mr. Rosenblatt notes, hands are truly magical, capable of the ordinary, as well as the extraordinary, soothing, healing, helping. I’m sure there are a squillion more words. 

The thing that struck me about wanting to hold her hand is that we have to start to reach out to the hands of others. No, we get to reach out. This seems like just the simplest thing, but it can and it will make a huge difference in the lives of those to whom we reach out. 

A med tech the other day at dialysis exhibited an exemplary attitude repeatedly in the face of something that was not exactly causative of an exemplary attitude. I noticed, and reached for her hand as she passed my chair. I said, “Amanda, your attitude is exemplary. Brava.” She beamed. 

So on this, my 69th birthday, I offer you a gentle challenge. Every day this week, reach out to someone. One person. Each day. Reach for a hand … it’s touching—in ways you can only begin to imagine. 

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What initially feels inconvenient may reveal a better option, useful truth, or unexpected pleasure.

Leave enough room for the story to change twice.

Rick Levine, Daily Horoscope 9.24.26 

The Question: 

How can I leave enough room? 

&mpersand Answers: 

“… for the story to change twice.” That seems like it could be a lot of room. A lot.  

It’s great advice though, really, about flexibility. We all know people who get rigid when things don’t go the way they thought they should. My mom was a triple Virgo, and believe me when I tell you that she thought she knew exactly how the whole world should work. 

But read the first sentence again: “What initially feels inconvenient may reveal a better option, useful truth, or unexpected pleasure.” 

So play out a hypothetical: You have something planned. Something happens to mess with your plans. Now decide, if what happened is revealing a better option, a useful truth, or an unexpected pleasure. Just naming an inconvenience this way keeps you flexible. 

Underneath all this is an inquiry made of each one of us in life. Is the Universe on your side, or isn’t it? It was definitely not on my mom’s side, but it was totally on mine! 

Once the room for the first change has been used up, pause. Does the plan need to change again? You’ve already proven your flexibility to yourself.  

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Here’s a universal affirmation. It works every time, for everyone, always and forever …  

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 I’m delighted to say I’m well over the two-thirds mark, and into the denouement of Betrayed. Arriving there actually surprised me.  

By some grace, I had my usual Oh-God-I’ve-lost-the-days-of-the-week panic, and slowed down to make myself reread what I’d written. I hadn’t lost them at all. It’s just that this book goes to and fro some nf the most interesting places, and at least one of them lives on a different kind of time that we usually do. Phew. 

One of the other indicators that I’m coming to the end of the book is that research for book three keeps popping up in the strangest places. I’m glad I learned to listen to my intuition and pay attention to signs a long time ago. Of course, they’re subject to interpretation, ergo misinterpretation, but so it goes.  

I’m having more fun knowing the next one is coming to me. 

And, just yesterday, I knew how to end Book 2! 

The other thing is that this whole other series has been hanging out in my brain for a while, and the things that are happening in our world right now are fitting into that story line shockingly well. What that’s done is put some of my focus on this future writing. 

I’ve opened a document called Phoenix Miscellany, and when all’s said and done, I’ll probably end up with about fifteen pages of random notes, quotes, ideas, sketches, images—all of which will eventually show up in these books. This habit is why I can comfortably say I’m writing all the time—because I never know what’s going to show up when, and if I don’t pay attention, I could miss something important. 

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Please make this indie author happy. Choose one of my series, and read all of them. Then review all of them. That’s the way others find books. 

You could start with Mex Mysteries … the first one is Oklahoma! Hex. There are eleven of them so far, please, be my guest! Oh! And it’s still on the Metaphysical Bestseller List!!!

This is the original draft of a Mex cover; putting a pin on her lapel of the same image cracked me up. How meta. 

Or maybe your cuppa is one of the five butch-femme romances in Boots & Boas, which is an ongoing series with many more planned. There’s always The Subversive Lovelies, which is a completed five-book series about Gilded Age women who simply refuse to follow the rules. 

There’s always the option of starting with one series and reading them all! That’s what I do when I fall in love with an author. 

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Jorge Luis Borges wrote, “I have always imagined Paradise as a sort of library.” I agree, one hundred percent. It got me thinking the other day about my favorite editor, Tony Amato. 

He, too, is a kind of library. I started to notice how often he refers to different authors, different genres, different books he’s read or edited, and marveled at the breadth of his knowledge. At least once a day, I get to ask, “Who?” or “What book?”  

That’s part of what makes the man such a good editor—he’s widely (and I should add, constantly) read. How this plays out for his clients is magical. He always has a literary context on the tip of his tongue whenever he works with a client. 

Being able to speak to current literary trends is invaluable to an author who is just scrambling to find the time to finish Chapter Which Ever. If you have a book in you, banging on the door of your creativity to be let out, isn’t it time you reached out to the book-husband extraordinaire? The subject, the genre, the state of the draft don’t really matter. What matters is the work, and that’s what Tony Amato does so well.  

His first session is exploratory for you, and for him. Find Tony Amato here. 

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The Magdalene Revolution: The Return of the Sacred Feminine and the Birth of Radical Equality by Andrew Harvey  

A new book on Mary Magdalene is always a treat for me since I’ve read almost everything about her that there is to read in English. When a well-known Magdalene scholar dissed this book, I knew I had to read it. 

Here is an excerpt from the blurb: 

In a radically fresh reading of Mary Magdalene’s story, a renowned scholar of mystical traditions sheds new light on the Divine Feminine as a force for change and healing.

For more than 20 years, Andrew Harvey has trained his fine scholar’s eye on sacred texts and mystical truths to illuminate the message of inspired activism that they hold. Today, we need this message more urgently than ever. In The Magdalene Revolution, Andrew takes a fresh, impassioned look at the story of Mary Magdalene and Jesus to distill its meaning for our world and show us how to embody this truth in our own lives.
Andrew invites you to examine how Mary Magdalene is presented in the New Testament—sometimes splendidly, but also absurdly and even dangerously. He undertakes a radical reclamation of the Divine Feminine by recognizing Mary Magdalene as the bride to Jesus’s bridegroom—a female and co-equal Christ in her own right. Finally, the reader is escorted into a new paradigm of fully embodied divine and human love that each of us can live out in our daily lives
“We are in the time of the Second Coming,” Andrew writes. “The old story is dying, and a new story with Mary Magdalene’s and Jesus's love at the radiating center will be born.” In Mary Magdalene's great spirit of healing and transfiguration, this book offers you this new human story—together with sacred practices that will allow you not only to integrate its contents into your life, but to begin your own transformation. 

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I have to add: if you dare. Andrew’s take on the Magdalene is spot-on, refreshing (even to someone who has studied so much about her,) and thought-provoking, to say the minimum. His ideas are so radical, and resonate so well, that I already know I will re-read this book. Quite the kudos from someone who almost never re-reads.  

What if he’s right? What if the Divine Human Love that Jesus and Mary Magdalene came to Earth to show us is the way out of what he calls our “global dark night of the soul?” I think he is. Right, that is. If you are considering ways to help save our world right now, this book is a must. 

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Are you waiting for a sign?
How about this one? 

One of the things about having a
Birthday
is that it seems like a good time
to take inventory
of my life.
How about you?
Do you do the same? 

If not, or if it’s not your exact birthday
today, no matter. 

This image made me think immediately
of several people in my life
who deserve to be framed in
Jewels
because of how good to me
they’ve been. 

Truth to tell,
I was amazed at how
many there are. 

It has been said that friends are
the jewels in the crown
of a well-loved life.
They are. 

Take a moment now please
and put a few of your caring friends
in the frame.

Then call, text, or email how
much they mean to you. 

So much
that
they’re framed
in Jewels. 

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I am, without doubt, certain that And is the secret to all we desire.
Let’s commit to practicing And ever more diligently, shall we? 

Until next time,
Be Ampersand 

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P.S. There have been some inquiries about donations and tax deductions. Sanctuary, the organization which umbrellas all of my work is a 501(c)3, and donations are fully tax deductible. Donate here using this address via Paypal. Or send a check snail mail to: Sanctuary, 16 Van Gaasbeck Street, Kingston, NY 12401.