I'm excited to share my new book, The One Life We're Given: Finding the Wisdom that Waits in Your Heart, which will be published July 19. Retrieving this book has made me a better person. I share my story and the stories of others as examples, not instructions. For everyone has to uncover the lessons of their own journey. My hope is that, through the threshold this book opens, you will deepen your conversation with life. That through your own path of obstacle and surprise, you will be opened to your gifts and become somewhat freed of all you carry. My hope is that you will begin to discover and experience the particular expression of your own nature.
Touching the Water
A troubled widower made his way to ask a wise old woman about his troubles. The old woman received him and they walked along a stream. She could see the pain in his face. He began to tremble as he asked, "What's the point? Is there any meaning to life?" She invited him to sit on a large stone near the stream. She took a long branch and swirled it in the water, then replied, "It all depends on what it means to you to be alive." In his sorrow, the man dropped his shoulders and the old woman gave him the branch. "Go on," she said, "touch the branch to the water."
As he poked the branch in the running stream, there was something comforting about feeling the movement of the water in his hand through the branch. She touched his hand and said, "You see, that you can feel the water without putting your hand in the water, this is what meaning feels like." The man grew tender but still seemed puzzled. She said, "Close your eyes and feel your wife now gone. That you can feel her in your heart without being able to touch her, this is how meaning saves us."
The widower began to cry. The old woman put her arm around him. "No one knows how to live or how to die. We only know how to love and how to lose, and how to pick up branches of meaning along the way."
A Question to Walk With: In conversation with a loved one or friend, describe a time when you experienced a branch of meaning.
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