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.

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.

Contained within the atom is a power and force unknown to humankind until modern times. And yet atoms are the basic building blocks of matter. An individual atom is so small that it can only be seen through a special instrument. And yet, the power of an individual atom can destroy matter. That which we cannot see we often believe has little or no power. Hidden within the atom is an incredible power; power to create or destroy depending on how it is used. Hidden within each human being is a great power; a power to create or destroy depending on how it is used.

Two examples from history: Adolf Hitler was a small diminutive man, a failed artist and veteran from WWI. That single individual brought the German nation out of the oppression of the Treaty of Versailles and economic disaster, created a massive army, an impeccable air force and navy, created the Nazi Party and had ambitions to unify an Aryan race that he believed would carry humanity forward. He had designs for the extinction of Jews and carried out the murder of millions. He died at age 56. He built an empire of domination and fear. He left a legacy of pain and ruin. One man. One atom.

Mother Teresa was a small diminutive woman. She left her home in Albania at age 18 feeling the call of the religious life. She devoted herself to the poor, the crippled and the sick, opening hundreds of orphanages, hospices and sanctuaries for lepers and other diseased people. She started soup houses, family counseling programs and schools. She traveled the world, rescuing the dying, homeless and the forgotten from despair. She brought one of the poorest places in the world, Calcutta India, onto the international scene. She too built an empire, one of service and love. She left a legacy of hope and healing. One woman. One atom.

We are surrounded by billions of atoms and we are surrounded by billions of people. The powers within the individual lie dormant and many of us go through life without ever touching this wellspring within ourselves. We are shocked and awed when we witness someone who excercises this power, just as we were shocked and awed at the devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I  believe that a single person can make a difference and does make a difference. I believe that a single individual can change the world. I can only imagine what many could do.

There are a few experiences in life that are so powerful and life altering that it becomes impossible to conceive of the path that might have been taken without them. I had one of those experiences when I was eight years old. The first one of a few direct experiences with God that have been purposefully placed throughout my life like road markers guiding me down the path. Jesus appeared to me in a dream. We were together on a high mountain peak looking down at the treacherous gorge below. He took both of my hands in his and held them tight and gazed into my eyes and said these two words-”trust me.” He did not say trust your parents, trust your religion or trust your leaders; he directed me to trust him. I felt his love for me, an incredible love and acceptance that poured into my being and filled every bone and penetrated every cell of my body. I understood that I didn’t have to be worthy of this love, deserving it by performing or behaving in a certain way but that this love was unconditional and absolute. I also recognized that it would have been impossible for him to be anything less than this all encompassing love. I awoke the next day transformed by my experience. I could no longer accept that God was a withholding or demanding being that rewarded the good and punished the bad. It was this experience that anchored me to a higher truth than anything I was taught by man. And above all of that was the knowledge of the existence of God, of life beyond the body, beyond the bounds of time and space. The most powerful and life affirming experiences I have had are intangible, often indescribable and impossible to prove. Thus is the paradox of life, that hidden in the simplest and most insignificant moments, is the transforming power of God.

Memoir

I wanted to write my story. It was that simple. I felt driven by this desire for a very long time. It wasn’t until I was twenty eight that I bought me a computer and a typing tutorial and began the task of putting my words to paper. (Journals don’t count.)This turned out to be much more difficult than I realized when the notion of a book struck my mind. Aside from learning to type and taking a few online grammar courses I took up reading memoirs. I read waiting to be inspired; to read a book that was similar to the one I needed to tell, but I ended up disappointed. Don’t get me wrong, I read some fantastic memoirs along the way, including Angela’s Ashes, Blackbird and Finding Fish but I was left wanting. Ultimately it was another person’s story and I was no closer to my own than before.

About this time someone recommended a book by Margaret Atwood titled A Handmaid’s Tale. Before I finished this book, (a piece of compelling fiction by the way) I began writing my own book, the first sheepish attempt. It was fiction that freed me to write my story. Novels were so bold, taking risks and telling stories that demanded the reader to sit up straight and pay attention. While memoirs were bogged down with the passage of time, one event unfolding after another in linear fashion. I could almost hear the clock ticking in the background as I read to reach the finish line. The only exception was Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt. He performed some magic that I could not discover by mere reading, therefore a magic I could not duplicate.

When writing my memoir I asked myself continuously, what is the truth? I don’t believe I ever discovered that answer wholly but the book itself became the journey to uncover truth that was inside of me; truths that I had hidden from myself. The events in the book all indeed happened. I wouldn’t fictionalize an event to portray a truth but the truth must be in the event. I needed a theme, something that would corral my memories and force them to be sorted and arranged.

Throughout my book the concept of running away presents itself in many forms most obviously in the preface and in the epilogue. Why do we run from pain? What are different ways in which people run away? Does running away ever produce the desired result? Sometimes we run toward something and other times we are running away from something. All these questions were asked and never answered, for who wants the answer when the question is enough?

I did not know in advance which stories would surface, I didn’t know how I was going to end it or what climactic experience would emerge from the dusty pages of the past, I only knew that it would. I was surprised at every turn. I was delighted with the humor that arose out of the pain; humor that I didn’t know was there until I began the excavation. I laughed spontaneously and cried unexpectedly at the smallest provocation. I hoped the reader would also be surprised and laugh or cry when it was least expected.

The book was written in the present tense. I wanted to convey a sense of immediacy and timelessness. The passage of time contained within the moment, so that the moments unfolded in the here and now. I hoped the reader would grow up right along with the little girl making their own unique discoveries along the way and the child separated from others by a pane of glass would finally know she was not alone.

When the book was completed it had been six long years. My story was written. Except it wasn’t and never would be. Memories cannot truly be known, written or documented but only hinted at, viewed through the fuzzy lens of time. But I had told a story and I could continue telling stories tilled from the soil of my past and my experiences and all of them sprinkled with equal amounts of truth and fiction. And perhaps somehow someway my story is known through all the words that have been written and all the words that will be written.

Perhaps not.

Faith and belief were often interchangeable words in my vocabulary. Until recently I had not really taken the time to consider the differences. My discovery about faith and belief was simply this: A belief is an idea or a concept of the mind that one holds to for various reasons while faith on the other hand, is entirely outside the boundaries of the mind. Faith belongs to the heart. Beliefs can be altered and even abandoned when an experience challenges or repudiates them, while faith grows and expands with each experience. Faith is willing to act without the why, while a belief is a why without the accompaniment of action. When I hear someone expound on the validity of their beliefs whether religious or otherwise I wonder if their words are mere props for an idea that is not grounded in experience. To know something through experience is different than simply believing something. I don’t want to sound as though belief has no place but only that it has been given too much emphasis as if believing were the end accomplishment. Faith has come to mean something more to me in recent years as I have broadened my life experience; for life itself requires faith. Faith is a kind of knowing without having evidence or proof; the kind of knowing that comes from personal experience. Belief is the mind stepping toward faith. Faith is a word most often used in a religious context but in truth it has very little to do with religion and much more to do with living. Faith is not something I have, but rather something I practice. It is a profound spiritual tool while belief is the whetstone on which faith is sharpened.