Life does not happen in tidy, well-organized intervals. It is messy. But sometimes, in exploring where our intentions smash up against seemingly conflicting situations, we find a treasure chest of meaning. The title of each chapter mimics this. In every one title, there are actually two. A message in the margin of the main idea. An apparently random relationship ripe with possibility.
By finding one word inside another and delving into the mystery of how and where and why they intersect, by smashing them together, spontaneity is born. Serendipity arises. Something entirely new, greater than the sum of its parts, sparks into being.
It is the smashing up of our history with our present, our experience with our beliefs, and our faith with our imagination that gives rise to personal alchemy. It is this friction that fuels our soul’s purpose. However, it works according to its own schedule.
By finding one word inside another and delving into the mystery of how and where and why they intersect, by smashing them together, spontaneity is born. Serendipity arises. Something entirely new, greater than the sum of its parts, sparks into being.
It is the smashing up of our history with our present, our experience with our beliefs, and our faith with our imagination that gives rise to personal alchemy. It is this friction that fuels our soul’s purpose. However, it works according to its own schedule.
Here is a short anecdote four decades in the making.
Between the ages of one and three I invented a new language. It was a pre-cognitive language—not spoken or written, not music or art, or dance, or theatre or carousel making, but the intersection, the integration of it all.
Pure expression.
According to my mother, no one spoke to me until I was three. I heard no TV, no radio, no conversations. We joked about it for most of my life. She said she was excited to speak with me when I began to talk. She just hadn’t done the math on how I would learn to speak. An innocent mistake.
It wasn’t until thirty-nine years later, after losing my mother to cancer, that I began searching for that early part of myself—suspended somewhere in time. I had to become her mother now, to help her find what we had lost.
Pure expression.
According to my mother, no one spoke to me until I was three. I heard no TV, no radio, no conversations. We joked about it for most of my life. She said she was excited to speak with me when I began to talk. She just hadn’t done the math on how I would learn to speak. An innocent mistake.
It wasn’t until thirty-nine years later, after losing my mother to cancer, that I began searching for that early part of myself—suspended somewhere in time. I had to become her mother now, to help her find what we had lost.
At three, before I learned the language, I lived by my own language. Once I became verbally aware my soul fell asleep. As I found the ability to communicate with others, I lost the ability to connect with myself, until I was seven.
At seven, I knew, the way only a child can know, that I would invent a language like no other. I did not remember I already had…
…until i was forty-four.
It is the language of inner listening, of remembering how the soul wants “to be” in the world. You cannot hear it with your ears. You cannot achieve it with good acts and hard work.
At seven, I knew, the way only a child can know, that I would invent a language like no other. I did not remember I already had…
…until i was forty-four.
It is the language of inner listening, of remembering how the soul wants “to be” in the world. You cannot hear it with your ears. You cannot achieve it with good acts and hard work.
It is a different kind of language than the spoken ones we learn. It is filled with the topography of imagination, the geography of play and the alchemy of being. It requires a different kind of listening. But, if we pay attention to how it speaks to us, within us and around us we can always find our way home.
