The other day I flew to Newark, New Jersey, to give a
benefit lecture on behalf of the Trenton Soup Kitchen. I have been involved
with the TSK for five years now and I consider the work this charity does to be
absolutely magnificent. Anyway, I arrived midday and was met by a lovely,
middle-aged driver. Within minutes we were in his immaculate car heading to our
destination, which, according to his GPS, was an hour away. My first reaction
was, “Ugh, that’s half the flight time from Chicago.” My second reaction was, “I
hope this guy isn’t a chatterbox because I need to make notes for my talk.”
Heading out of the airport, the driver and I both settled
into our normal routines. He got his GPS going and I pulled out my notebook.
Then he asked, “Is the temperature okay for you?” All he wanted to know was if
the air in the car was warm enough, right? That required a yes or a no and a
thanks for asking. But instead, something in me found his accent very curious. Why?
I grew up in a home in which half my relatives had foreign accents, as did half
the people in the neighborhood. People with accents are so common in my life
that I hardly notice them, but I noticed his. Then I noticed that I needed to
know where he came from – I mean I absolutely
needed to know. Why? I don’t know why.
So I asked him, “Where are you from? I am intrigued with
your accent.”
He smiled and said, “Where do you think?” I looked at his
face through the driver’s mirror and the deep lines around his dark brown eyes
blending in with his warm smile told me that this was a good man, a very good
man.
I said, “Persia.”
His eyes sparkled, “Very good, but not quite. Close. What’s
next to Persia?”
I froze for a moment. My mind went blank. I needed to bring
up the globe in my mind’s eye. I said, “Okay, just a minute. You’re not
Turkish. You must be from Afghanistan.”
“Yes, I am Afghani. I came here when the Russians invaded my
country. I had just completed my degree at the university in Kabul. You can’t
imagine how beautiful Afghanistan was before all these wars. Now I have two
sons and a daughter here.”
I put my notebook down and we began to discuss his life, his
journey, his world. He told me how the turmoil of decades of war in Afghanistan
has affected his family and the lives of so many people he knows. And then he
told me that he lost his job when the company he was working for let go of many
of their employees. As a result, he was losing his home. That struck him as
among the more overwhelming events of his life, as he did not think such a
thing could happen in America. I told him about how many people I knew in that
same situation.
Lest you think his man was complaining about the events that
had unfolded in his life or drowning in his sorrows, that was not at all the
case. Rather, he presented these chapters of his life with a type of “matter of
fact” voice that was devoid of self-pity or anger. I was the one pressing for
more details, asking him to expand on how and why events happened as they did
in his life. I was the one picking at his wounds. If anything, he should have
dropped me off at a bus station and told me to catch the next bus to Trenton.
Then he said, “I should be quiet now. I notice you have work
to do.”
He didn’t ask me why I had come to Trenton and as I realized
that, I hoped with all my might that he would not. And then I had this
overwhelming gut feeling, that unmistakable rupture I get when I know I am
right, “This man and his wife come to the Trenton Soup Kitchen for a meal or
maybe even a few meals each week.” I knew it.
I was desperate to change the subject now. I could talk
about anything – weather, sports, Hurricane Sandy – just don’t ask me why I
have come to Trenton. Then my phone rang. It was a family member calling about
another family member who was in a very serious crisis. We were circling the
wagons, as they say. He could hear me, not because I was speaking loudly but
because I was sitting directly behind him. For fifteen minutes, I discussed possible
treatment and outcome for a beloved family member. My voice had gotten tight. I
was shutting down, withdrawing into the silence of grief and tears. I hung up
the phone, staring out the window.
This lovely Afghan man said, “You know, when my daughter was
five, she was diagnosed with this rare illness. Her female organs matured
faster than her physical body and she started to menstruate at that age. We
were terrified. We took her to a doctor and he told us that she needed to take
this certain shot once a month. It cost $1,000.00. Insurance covered that while
I had my other job but then I lost that job. I did not know what to do. I
needed to provide for my family, for my home, for their health. I was never so
frightened. I told my wife that I needed to go away for one reason. I needed to
go and be with God. I needed to be alone to take my life, my problems directly
to God. And so I went away to pray for two weeks. I had to be alone, to do
nothing but pray.
When I returned, we took my daughter to a different doctor
and he said, ‘Why do you want to have her on this medication? She is perfectly
healthy?’ And she is perfectly healthy. She is healed. I know that God is with
me, even through these difficult times. Yes, I am losing my home. I can replace
that. I could never replace my daughter, or my sons. And so we will grieve the
loss our own home, but for how long? Perhaps three days. But how long would we
grieve the loss of my daughter? We would grieve until the day of our own death.
And so God blessed me by showing me that he is truly with me, with my family,
and that he hears our prayers.”
By the time this wonderful man finished sharing his story, I
could not stop the tears from pouring out of my eyes.
“Do you have any water?” he asked me.
“Are you thirsty? Here, I have a bottle of water,” I said as
I gave him my water.
“No,” he said, “I am not thirsty. I am going to pray for
your family member and I am going to put those prayers into this water and you
will take this water to her. It will carry the grace and light of God’s
response.”
I asked him if I could pray for his family, for his journey
through hardship and his return to right livelihood. And so, pulling up to my
friend’s house, my driver held the bottle of water in his hands and sang
prayers from the Koran. He rocked slowly back and forth in the front seat of
the car, falling deeper and deeper into an inner dialogue with God. I closed my
eyes and quietly entered into my own interior castle, holding images of this
man’s face and soul in my heart.
In the midst of this sacred ritual, I heard the sound of my
friend darting out of his home to greet me. I quickly came out of my prayer
space and signaled to him by holding up my hand, “Stay where you are. Don’t
come near this car.”
Still this dear man continued in his prayerful request that
healing grace be given to my family member. Tears now flowed from his closed
eyes as his body movements revealed that his heart beat closely with heaven’s
pulse. Finally, he opened his eyes and handed me what anyone else would take
for an ordinary bottle of Evian water. We held each other’s hands for several
seconds, thanking each other with nods of our heads and the tight grips of our
hands. Still appearing to be an ordinary Evian bottle from the outside, I
looked through the ordinary and into the extraordinary. I stared at this bottle
of water and for me it became the substance of miracles, the story of a man’s
life journey, and on the day I was picked up to do a benefit for the homeless
by a man losing his home whose very prayers I suspect may well have contributed
most to the healing of my family member. It became “holy water.”
We Breathe Together
There was a time when I would have been in awe by the
coincidence or synchronistic happening of meeting a man who was in the throes
of the crisis I had come to lecture about. Carl Jung named such happenings
“synchronicity,” a word very familiar to most of us now. He identified that
there seemed to be a phenomenon that united seemingly random events through
psychic or psychological links.
That’s all fine and good but I think that beyond that,
perhaps we are even more interconnected than the word “synchronicity” is able
to convey. I believe that in some way we breathe together; that is, that at any
given moment, the people we are surrounded by are all sharing some mutual
experience in some way. It’s of course not possible to ever really check out
this theory of mine but for me, the more I reflect upon it, the more I seem to
experience expressions of it in some way. Let me elaborate on it just a bit.
Refined spiritual teachings tell us that the perception that
we are separated from each other is an illusion; thus, we have the mystical
teaching that “All is One.” Mystical teachings are given the status of
“mystical” because they are beyond “reasonable.” That is, they cannot be
“comprehended” through the intellect. You can nod your head at the theory that
“All is One” because on paper, the idea makes good sense. But it is impossible
for you to actually “get” the power of that idea because it is not an “idea.”
It is a “truth” and mystical truths are not accessible through the mind. They
can only be revealed to you through the soul when your soul is mature enough to
handle the consequences of such a profound and enlightened revelation. Teresa
of Avila wrote that, “God invited me into the Fourth Mansion of my soul. I
could not get into this place on my own.”
A firewall exists between the mind and the soul, between
what is reasonable and what is mystical. These are two separate but parallel
dimensions of reality – one is literal and one is transcendent. That we are
interconnected in some way with each person we share space with is literally
incomprehensible to our intellect, but not to our soul. That is the reason why
when we have such moments as I did in the car with that wonderful driver that
open up and allow for a “soul conversation,” we discovered our shared lives. In
fact, all we discovered was what we had in common, but we had to go through our
souls to find those treasures. He is a devout Muslim. I am a devout mystic from
a Christian background. He prays his way. I pray mine. He is about to lose his
home. I am going to raise money for the homeless. Somehow our souls recognized
each other.
At the end of the day, my true theology is that all life
breathes together, moves together, heals together, and suffers together. How
can it be otherwise? The illusion is that we are separate from each other. We
are not separate, though we appear to be to our senses. I could just as easily
been driving him to his lecture and going home to pack up my belongings, soon
to move out of my home. And he could be the one raising funds for the homeless,
blessed enough to be returning the next day to a secure home. Life is
precarious and can change in the blink of an eye. Buddha teaches us that
wisdom. The only thing that was separating that wonderful man and me from each
other’s experience was the will of God in that moment in time in our lives.
Next year, our situations could be the exact reverse of that
very moment. Nothing in our lives stands still. Nothing remains the same. This
man thought his home was secure. I believe that to be true about my home right
now. He is now losing his home. I am sure that he at one point believed, as I
do, that such a thing could never happen to him. Our lives change in the blink
of an eye.
Miracles also happen in the blink of an eye – just like
that. He could be offered a way out of his situation with equal speed. One
phone call from a friend out of the clear blue offering him a new position
could happen. He believes that and so do I. Such a belief is more than hope.
It’s stronger than hope. It’s faith in the God he brought his problems to when
all other earthly avenues failed him. But his faith in God did not fail him.
His daughter was healed and the abundant grace that seemed to flow from that
miracle was now sustaining his family, reminding them each day that God was
with them through even their difficult times. But God, he believed, saved them
from what would have been not a difficult time but a devastating one had his
daughter died.
Breathing Life Through Your Soul
First, enter into the perception that “all life breathes,
moves, heals, and suffers together.” You are not separate from anything or
anyone. Take time to really observe the world you are walking in, breathing in,
living in. Look at the people walking by you and hold the thought, “I have
something in common with each one of them or else we would not be on the same
street at the same time.” More than likely you will never know what that common
thread is, but for the sake of this lesson, assume it exists. Perhaps you share
an experience, or an unusual place you’ve traveled, or the same high school, or
you have a mutual acquaintance, or you might discover you are working through
the same trauma. The only reason you will never discover what threads unite you
to all these people is the lack of opportunity to actually meet each of them.
Unless the invisible elements that actually design the experiences of our lives
intervene such as a happening of synchronicity, we never discover these psychic
bonds that pulsate through the dark matter world.
Next, listen to your world. Listen deeply to the sounds in
your environment and instead of ignoring them or being annoyed by them,
consider that they are talking to you. These are the sounds of the world you
live in and each day the sounds are different. Some days the world is loud and
some days it’s silent. Some days are filled with rain and others with wind. Is
there meaning to this? Maybe. Sometimes. But more significantly, the task is
for you to become more aware of the world you are constantly “breathing” with,
day in and day out. That itself has meaning.
Listen to the people in your world. No conversation is
without meaning. Heighten your senses. Pay attention. Don’t dismiss the
ordinary. In fact, see the most ordinary as the most extraordinary of your day.
Pay attention to what you are looking at in your world.
Pause for the beautiful and the not so beautiful. Take time to actually
appreciate what you can see and feel. Never judge the stranger who passes you
in the street. Instead, remember that you, too, are a stranger to everyone on
the street. You, as a stranger, are outnumbered. Walk on this Earth with the
attitude that you are breathing with all these “souls” as best as you can.
Sometimes it’s difficult but the truth is that breathing “kindness” into the
air is the purest oxygen of all.
Redefine your understanding of Nature. Nature isn’t “out
there” in the forests and woods. You are living on the Earth and all of the
Earth is Mother Nature’s creature. Don’t be fooled by the concrete of the city.
The city is built on Mother Nature’s soil and it is still an expression of
Mother Nature. Don’t tell yourself that in order to appreciate Mother Nature,
you have to go “out there” to the forest. Such an attitude shows that you are
separate from the whole field of life itself. The human community is part of
Mother Nature and the human community dwells in the cities of the many nations
of this planet. Mother Nature is everywhere.
Finally, walk humbly on the Earth. Do not burden yourself
with the attitude that you must be superior to the other people you see, that
you must somehow let them know you are better than them. For all you know, you
are walking past a great healer or a patient and loving mother caring for a
handicapped child, or a father who just found out he got the job he so
desperately needed. The stories of all three of these people may have threads
to your life one day. You don’t know that. This is a wondrous Universe, a
strange and mystical theater of life. We can only remain in awe of its
perfectly ordered structure that seems to move in mathematical perfection while
simultaneously being governed by an intimate God who seemingly knows each of us
by name. How is that possible? Who knows? Who cares? It simply is.
Breath is life. We breathe together. We live together. We
heal together. We thrive together. And, in this way, we survive together. With
such a creed for life, we should not be surprised to find ourselves seated in a
car with a man on the brink of homelessness while en route to do a benefit to
raise money for the homeless. And yet you need a healing for a family member
and he is blessed with the great grace of the healer. No, I am no longer
surprised at such “synchronistic” happenings in my life. I see them as living
proof that we even breathe together with the Divine. Somehow, in some divinely
mystical way, our needs are known and our prayers are answered, “If we have but
eyes to see.”
A Thanksgiving Thank you
I want to express my heartfelt thanks and appreciation to
all of you for being a part of my Salon. I want to thank you for “breathing
together” with me and for all the many lovely and supportive notes that I find
so encouraging along the way. I hope your holiday is a blessed one.
Love,
Caroline
