A couple years ago I began a contemplative practice of creating SoulCollage cards. Each small card is a collage of images that represent different parts of who I am. One of my SoulCollage cards is an image of a group of men on a lifeboat looking out onto the night sky watching a ship sinking in the distance. In my mind I imagine the ship to be the Titanic with lots of people left behind, and I am the man on the lifeboat whose hand is outstretched. I painted a heart in that hand, an offering to those left to perish. I call this card “The Lifeboat”, a.k.a “My Guilt Card”. This card represents the part of me that feels like I did not do enough, give enough, help enough, that I am not enough
Just like everyone else I woke on Sunday morning to the horrific news of the shootings in Orlando. I was scheduled that day to talk at church about the effects of trauma on the brain. That morning I got to feel it firsthand. I watched the news with tears dripping onto my face. “How does this keep happening?” I cried. My heart ached for the people whose lives were lost and the family and friends left behind to feel the overwhelming emptiness of that loss. And then there were the rest of us watching behind our screens, shocked, angry, bewildered, deeply saddened. I am someone who is constantly trying to make sense of the madness of this world. I don’t know if I am ever successful. And y
In the 1980’s I was a typical teenage mall rat. Every Saturday afternoon my friends and I headed to the mall to hang out. We rarely bought anything, just walked around hoping for some adventure and of course to meet new people. I remember at times being in a place where I had to make a decision about which direction to go—down the escalator, straight ahead, to the right—and I would feel a tinge of panic. “Which way should I go?” I would question, “ Someone I am supposed to meet could be somewhere in this mall. I have to make the right decision or I could completely mess up my destiny.” This was my first experience with the idea of fate. Although I was much less dramatic about it as time
It happens in a moment. Maybe it’s when you are driving down the street with your windows down listening to your favorite song or when you are watching a child you love laugh and play or when you dip your toes into the cool water of a running creek or when you are looking into someone’s eyes and really feel present with that person. It’s that moment when you realize after all the seeking and the searching and the wondering, you are here, that moment when you realize you are awake in your own life. You are in the life you are meant to experience. You have stripped away the things that don’t belong to you. You have gathered up the things that do. And you know, this is your life. The life
