My Unfashionable Existence

I’ve yet to come down from the incredible magic and insight and wonder that filled the pages of Philip Pullman’s Book of Dust trilogy since finishing The Rose Field last night. Beyond offering a scathing look at religious oppression and the cruelty of fascism, it offered incredible links between creativity, imagination and the soul.



In another world beyond the protagonists own they come to find that daemons, an externalized soul that takes the shape of an animal, are being purposefully ignored and even punished or allowed to die to keep up with the more fashionable reality taking hold that centers on money, productivity and the clean logic of transactions. This deadening world reveals money as the alkahest, a mythical universal solvent that can dissolve all bonds, including those of us to our own souls, our own humanity.

We live in a world that is fashionably ignorant. Information abounds, false, misleading and true, but beyond that noise there are incredible silences around what truly matters: Why don’t we remember how to take care of each other anymore? When did we forget that cherishing life is our birthright and gift as stewards of this abundant planet? When did we agree that scarcity was a reality to be reckoned with, rather than an illusion to be dismantled?

It is fashionable to be skeptical. To subdue inner knowing, to ignore and chastise wisdom achieved outside of charts and studies. It is fashionable to get a real job, to scrape away at a smaller and smaller portion of something vast, to limit yourself to early morning meetings, diet crazes and holiday stress. It is fashionable to be half alive and to proclaim loudly the cruelty therein without examining the incredibly vast patterns inviting, rehearsing and encouraging the painful conditions of life on Earth today.

And my gift was not being smarter, but getting sicker faster than most as I did those same things. The gift God gave me was a constitution unfit for pretending away the existence of love as the invisible binding of all creation and the spirits of the animals and plants that would communicate to me in a language all their own. A constitution that protested wildly through innumerable stomach illnesses, sleep paralysis, mobility issues and an early forgetting of why I was forced to be alive at all.

I have feared being loud about my knowings – that sickness is not a necessity but a sign, that forgiveness really can heal the deepest wounds in each of us and in society – because its easy for critics to claim I’m naïve, crazy or profoundly stupid. I fear being hurt or worse because I’m not convenient or appeasing. But that too, is my own half-seeing. I cannot forget that we call events to us that allow us to deepen our path, and to expand to our full potential. And I need to remember to create knowing there’s love out there to receive it, without editing, without fear.

I painfully and deliberately undermined my own sense of who I am and what I believe for decades in order to achieve something like a reasonable life. One that people could understand and wouldn’t draw too much attention.  Beyond that I wanted to be respected, to be admired, and to share the wisdom of my path with those who could use it most.

But I can’t hide and teach. I can’t profess freedom while living confinement. So here I am, stating loudly and boldly that I believe in magic, I know we can heal ourselves and this planet, and that the earthly plane we can see and taste and touch is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to what reality is really made of.

May the truth set us free.