I am looking out my window at hundreds of starlings pecking at the earth for seeds and other nuggets dropped from the trees in my backyard. They look like a dark mass encircling the base of the tree. Others are in the branches and yet others observe from the roof of the shed nearby. I cannot help but think how much human society is like the starlings, each of us doing our own thing and yet we are all essentially doing the same thing. We want the same things, we need the same things.  I watch them fall out of the trees and descend to earth breaking the stillness with their chatter. The branches sway and bend under their collective weight. Suddenly as quickly as they came they all lift off simultaneously as if acting and moving to the direction of a single force, a single mind,  they are gone. The ground is littered with their presence and the trees still sway as an after shock but now there is silence. How fleeting is our moment, how long does our presence reflect in the soil or in air? Our lives like thunder and lightning, flashing a night sky and then gone. Just as I move my thoughts away from the birds I hear a rush of wind and the flap of a thousand wings and like a raven colored mob they descend and return. Are they the same birds? They lift off once more scattering sunshine as they break formation and disappear. I marvel.

Joseph Campbell wrote that mythology is the story of the human experience. I wonder about the mythologies of today. What stories are being born in your life, in my life? How is it that humans create the very mystery that we seek to understand? Mythologies aren’t logical or reasonable, they come from the mystical realm and are expressions of the expressionless. Form created from the formless. Here is an example of one of  my favorite myths: The story of Medusa the snake haired gorgon whose gaze could turn one to stone. Perseus is the hero that faces Medusa using a mirror to cut off her head rather than looking directly at her face. Out of the body of the severed Medusa arises Pegasus, the winged horse. I see Medusa as part of my shadow self, the snakes representing the many faces of the ego. Medusa lives in a cave and all who enter die there and become part of the fear that is associated with the darkness or the shadow within. When Perseus enters or rather my conscious self enters the dark abode of the unconscious he takes with him a mirror to reflect the gaze of Medusa. He could still look upon her in the mirror. I like the idea of reflection rather than confrontation. There is no battle of the wills. Perseus simply decapitates Medusa or severs the mind from the body. Once the two are no longer confused the gift within Medusa is a beautiful winged horse. The horse in traditional symbology represents freedom and stability. A winged horse is the embodiment of mobility and freedom as well as grounded stability. Pegasus is a dichotomy offering both sky and earth as its domains. Its white coat a symbol of purity. By entering the dark cave of our subconscious minds we can recognize and reflect our shadow selves. One can be free of the ego by severing our stories from the truth and out of the truth comes the eternal gift of freedom and security. One of the reasons mythology is so powerful and trans-formative is that it can be interpreted differently for each individual. There is no correct meaning to a mythology. It is only limited by the lack of imagination. Each person can see a different aspect of themselves in the Medusa story. In fact, the meaning of the story often changes as a person changes and has different life experiences.

Peace on earth. People want it, talk about it, write about it and believe in it. And yet we live in world of turmoil and conflict, pain and suffering and all things un-peaceful. I began to wonder about this, wanting something and having its exact opposite. Joseph Campbell wrote about the end of the world in his book “Thou art That.” Although I am paraphrasing, he says something like this: “When one finally sees God in all things it is the end of the world.” I think this statement applies to peace on earth. When one finally sees God in all things there is peace on earth. If heaven and hell are states of being then I believe that peace on earth is also a state of being. There is only one earth, the earth that I see and experience and only I can bring peace to the earth. There is no time other than now in which to know peace. If this is true, then what about all the pain and conflict on earth today? I only have two choices, I can be at peace with it  and add to the peace and love on earth or I can judge it, be angry about it and add to the suffering and chaos. I choose peace.

Be grateful for everything. This statement recently came to my attention. But how does one find gratitude for EVERYTHING? I mean, really. So I decided to look up the word grateful in the dictionary but that turned out to be rather unhelpful and redundant. It simply said, “thankful”.  So I took it to the next level and checked my etymological dictionary and found a more thorough definition. The word grateful is derived from the word gratus which means agreeable or pleasing. Hmmm. Not exactly thankful but something a bit more broad. When someone tells me they are thankful for something that implies that they are glad that that something happened. From what I had gathered so far grateful has more to do with acceptance than happiness. Piecing together the word gratus and ful, the word literally means full of agree-ability. The word pleasing comes from the Greek word plakos, which means “to make smooth.” This was getting more and more interesting. The word agree is from Old French and means “good will.” So putting all this information together the word grateful means something like this, “to be agreeable, to have good will.” Can I then be agreeable to all things in my life? Can I have good will toward all people, places, events and situations at all times? Yes I can do that. Am I always glad that certain things have happened? No, my personality is easily upset and disturbed but I am not my personality and I can choose to view life through a larger lens. I decided to take the word grateful one step further: There was another English word that is closely associated with gratitude and is derived from the same root word-gratus; that word is grace. Again, grace is one of those words that simply defy definition. The etymological dictionary helped out a bit by pointing to the words earliest meanings. From that the word grace varies slightly from grateful. It means, “given freely.” In a theological sense it means “God operating through humans.” Hmm. This certainly gave me much to consider. By agreeing to what is, I allow grace into my life. By being grateful for everything, in essence I am allowing God into my every waking moment.

I recently had a speaking engagement at an abuse recovery center in Oregon. It was the first time I have spoken to an audience about my book and my healing process. I was nervous at first as I stood at the podium and looked out at all the faces looking to me. Then something extraordinary happened. All the fear dissolved and I saw a room full of beautiful faces and I was connected to each person at some divine level. I realized then, the moment was not mine but ours, it belonged to us as a whole and not to all the fragments of individuals. I said a lot of things that I didn’t know I was going to say and many other things that I simply have no recollection of saying. There was a  pulse in the room, a palpable singular energy that united us. I was honored to have been apart of that. After the hour long speech which I found was not long enough I had women coming up to me to thank me or to say hello. I felt the oddest sense of seeing myself in each one of them and I wondered if they were feeling the same way about me. I felt their souls through the exchange and I was touched very deeply by the experience. I hugged these strangers with an openness of a family member for I saw at once that they were part of my family, my human family. I am grateful for the opportunity I had to see into so many lovely faces and witness so many lovely hearts and to know that I am that.

I am grateful for the books. They bring me comfort, entertainment, fulfillment and often illumination and elightenment. Each book I have read reveals one person’s story or some collective story of many persons. There are books that tell the story of nation, or a culture. There are books that tell the story of the future while others remember the story of the past. I write to tell a story, to reveal a hidden compartment within me to others, but mostly to myself. When I walk into the bookstore and see the hundreds of shelves lined with books, take the escalator to the second floor and see more shelves lined with more books each one unique in it’s own right, I might feel a sense of competition or hopelessness at the prospect of anyone finding my book amongst all these thousands but instead I feel companionship, comraderie with all those authors, all the storytellers among us. I thrill in the opportunity to see into the hidden compartments of so many of my fellow human beings. It makes me wonder then at all the stories that don’t get told. The millions of people whose stories remain within them or told only orally at the dinner table. I consider the stories told through paintings, music and sculpture and I feel better knowing that there are many ways to tell a story and even more ways in which to hear it. When I enter a beautiful building or wander through an elaborate garden I see the story of person. When I fly in an airplane or sit in front of a steering wheel and think of the inventors of the past and that their stories move, I can sit in their stories and their legacy is the sound of the motor in my ear. Teenagers wear their stories on their bodies, mothers in the worry lines of their faces, husbands and providers wear the story of their life on the faded back pockets of their pants where there is a faint impression of a wallet. Some stories are told through the eyes and others through the hands. Some stories are told through food, a well cooked meal yet others through a distinctive hairdo. Everyone has a story, what is yours?

The challenge of my life of late is just being. Not being something or someone but just being. It is so easy to get caught up in identification of titles, possessions and status. I have wondered if I would feel differently about myself if I were to suddenly become paralyzed from the neck down and be totally dependant on others. I would lose all the external attachments and be left only with myself as I am, the unchanging eternal nature of my soul. How much of my identity is attached to ideas, possessions and abilities? It is a good question to ponder. I enjoy living life, of being a partner to another person, the opportunity to parent children, the pleasure of eating out with friends, of being able to move and laugh and sing. I enjoy talking and listening, taking a walk, reading books and going shopping. I like to travel and wear cute clothes and get my hair done at the salon. I love soft blankets and good movies. I even enjoy working on occasion. All of these pleasures are part of my life and I am grateful for them. But if I lost each and every one of those joys not one part of who I really am would be lost at all. My inner joy and the pleasure I take in those activities exist inside myself as an insular and intrinsic part of my nature. While it is tempting to attach myself to the many wonders that are all around me the most freeing statement I can make about myself is this-I am.

What is the difference between falling apart and breaking open? It is a question I have been asking myself of late. Can I allow life to break me open? For example, one day  I was walking out of the portrait studio a few years ago and I had a baby on one hip, my purse over my shoulder, holding the hand of my five year old and trying to carrying a hundred dollars worth of portraits in my teeth. I was trying to keep an eye on my other children who were behind me and in front of me running through a busy parking lot. I was feeling a little overwhelmed and stressed. As I stepped off the curb I lost my balance and twisted my ankle falling hard to the pavement. I tore holes in the knees of my slacks skinning both knees to bleeding. I kept the toddler on my hip from hitting his head but it prevented me from catching my fall. It hurt, physically. But more than that I was embarrassed. I had this odd thought that adults are not supposed to fall. I decided to do something radically different than what I felt like doing. I decided to stay put, in heap at the curb of a large and busy parking lot. I decided to stay until I addressed the discomfort of the experience. I noticed several people looking at me oddly. I felt humiliation, shame, stupidity and several other extremely uncomfortable feelings. But that passed. I felt a strange sense of liberation as I sat there rubbing my knees and noticing how different life looks from down on the ground. I started to laugh. There was an openness as my fears about how I appeared vanished in the aftermath of my fall. By the time I rose and gathered my scattered items I felt renewed and opened. My knees hurt for sometime after the experience and I had to get my hip adjusted by a chiropractor but I have reflected many times on the inner experience that could have left me feeling raw and humiliated. Instead it was as if I endured long enough to enter a forgotten realm of freedom and self acceptance. Falling apart can be an opportunity to break open, let the light of what is fill the shadows of who we think we ought to be. That is true freedom; living in the truth of each moment no matter how painful it might be.

I often say that I don’t believe in coincidences but the truth is, I do. When two events coincide with one another that are seemingly random and unrelated we call that a coincidence. I believe in coincidence I just don’t disregard it as “only a coincidence.” I know that some force larger than myself is at play and I can only see a small part of it, so it appears random and unrelated. But learning to read life allows a greater appreciation for such events. Shamans refer to this kind of event as an omen. The Swiss psychiatrist, Carl Jung, in an attempt to come up with a new word for coincidence created the word synchronicity. For me, coincidences are reminders that there is an invisible hand at work in my life. For some reason, these kinds of events are thrilling and even emotional at times for they appear to be infused with the meaning and purpose of my existence. I feel the threads of connection literally played out on the stage of life. Each person is intricately woven into everyone else’s life so events too, are interconnected in much the same way. A coincidence is like coming to the space that creates a crossroad. It is the point of intersection and a place of tremendous opportunity, potential and  ultimately choice. Lately, my life is riddled with coincidences. It is a riddle, a puzzle that I want to solve. Sometimes it makes me laugh and other times it startles me; or it fills me with a deep sense of purpose and belonging. According to Jung, the journey of the human being is the process of individuation, the full realization of both the self and the Divine within. A seeming contradiction, one of life’s great paradoxes. Or perhaps it is a great spiritual truth where one realizes all parts meet together as a single whole.

Have you ever cringed while watching someone on TV getting beaten? I have, in fact, most times I have to leave the room because the trauma of watching the abuse of another person is still with me. The scene on the TV only triggers the emotions and reactions from my own personal past. It is one of the things I have yet to come to terms with entirely. That is due to the fact that I didn’t know that watching someone else be abused, was traumatic to me. Particularly when that someone was a person that I loved and cared about. As a child, abuse in my house was like a natural disaster; it ripped through the home causing waves of terror to the witnesses and screams of pain to the victims. All one could do was stand in horror, helpless to alter the power of the violence. It never occurred to me that it could be stopped. Like an earthquake I held my breath each day that the quake did not come, knowing that it was drawing nearer with every moment. When it did come, it was as terrifying as I had feared and the aftershocks rumbled on long after the event was over. The earthquake affected everyone, not just the person caught in its path. My own healing of this kind of trauma, this second hand violence, is not complete-if healing is ever complete. I have walked both paths, the path of the victim, suffering humiliation and violence against my own mind and body, as well as the path of the witness, suffering the pangs of helplessness and self-beytrayal. Time does not heal all wounds. I am not sure time heals anything except to make the wound familiar and even comforting. Healing requires time, but without the belief and hope that something greater than the pain exists, that all that has happened has a divine reason, then time just marches on leaving the wounds unexamined, untouched and unhealed. The witness must also walk the fiery path of truth and heal the invisible wounds of the mind and heart.