Pieces of
work, we are. As I listen to the news
these days and the debates about peace, war, weapons, dialogue, pressure,
messages, children, women, men, humanitarian motivations, communication,
persuasion, support, choices- I am reminded of the amazing thought that we are one
body of and as humanity on this Earth. Think of all that makes up a body: the
chemical interactions, the ingesting, digesting, eliminating, the pleasures of
each nuanced move and play and touch and taste and joy of breath. All that
makes us a dynamic system we call a body, even though we may think or know so
little of its intimate workings. We are constantly creating, challenging, constantly
changing.
Each mind
makes its own environment, its own landscape in which to learn what it wants or
seeks to learn. This is our gift. Think of W. G. Sebald. “…They combine memoir,
fiction, travelogue, history, and biography in the crucible of his haunting
prose style to create a strange new literary compound.”
Our minds
are our crucible in which we digest all elemental information which makes us
who we are. What we choose to eliminate as we digest, just as what we choose to
ingest, reveals to us the magnitude of our knowledge and appreciation of our
gift of life to learn and expand our true sense of who we are as spiritual
beings. Sebald’s theme of memory, loss, the fragments and pieces that a mind
must open itself to in order to feel truly “whole,” is a key theme for all
human minds. For me, a key is understanding and celebrating the trinity of
minds and our trinity design – as I was born one of triplets who were taught to
think of life in terms of both the and “a” Trinity (as Us, and as “God the
father, son, and holy ghost,” or mother, father, child) – ever present in our
visible lives and how we live and choose to live. My melancholia was my version
of My Antonia (Note, Willa Cather's "prairie trilogy"). Sebald and Cather have places at my table of tour guides, as do many others.
One body.
Now, I’m
turning pages as I see new images of life and our body of human work and art.
Kathy Oddenino’s Ancient Storybook, which we have recently published, has
brought new satisfaction to my soul in exploring our human landscape and
creation. My storybook, at some basic level, is your storybook. I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.
What fun we can have as we share our stories, as we begin to see them and to
see ourselves, together, as one body of work-in-progress.
