A VERY PERSONAL STORY

A VERY PERSONAL STORY


Coping with pain and a sense of loss...a long ago memory comes to mind. In the middle of the day, I am taking a break and I am sitting on my bed, casually watching television—PBS, a program about Africa…the Kalahari. The images before me are of a campfire with small brown people sitting around as a family enjoying a meal. Apparently, in that instant, something triggered within me a completely different level of awareness and I began to see figures coming and going from this circle, leaving and returning to this campfire. My knowing and understanding in that moment was that I was watching the process of life….we come and go, we leave and return, often to the same family circles. Throughout the ages, we leave and return, leave and return, over and over again. Suddenly, I was suffused with such a powerful feeling of love for this whole process—a feeling so powerful that I actually thought, “Now I have learned everything there is to learn, this love. I must be going to die now.” With this thought came a kind of alarm, and another thought, “but I am not ready to go now.” I quickly jumped up and went into the bathroom and began carefully to touch the items on the bathroom countertop knowingly, in order to ground myself back into this earthly reality, into my body. I am not sure just how I knew that would work, but in a few moments I felt ‘normal’ again. The memory of this comes to me, from time to time, down through the years, since the autumn of 1987. As a special gift, it comes to me now as I write—in the early morning hours. Let us touch lovingly this earth, and ground into the fibers of Here Being that love from the Infinite. Let us continue.