I have had a ragged day; so, in search of inspiration I went to the web and just threw in the words “nothing to say.” It turns out there is a song with that title, who knew?  The song is a pretty dreary one, but it sparked a thought in me worthy of our time.

“The greatest story ever told” are five words in that song. I have no idea what the composer had in mine, but for me the first peace I have had today came from those words.  I think each of us is living the greatest story ever told. Yes, you and me, we are it. Who else is there? Do you really think it is someone from the past whose story has been distorted to the point of being unrecognizable by the very person whose story we tell?  Or perhaps you would argue that it is the story of someone yet to be born.

I think each one of us is the greatest story. It matters that we are here, living, breathing and being feeling. Even if some of us are throwing this lifetime away, there is a story behind that waste.

Our physical bodies are amazing. We breathe; turn plain air into life with our lungs. Think of skin, for goodness sake, it repairs itself. We rip it and it immediately does to work to repair itself. That is miraculous. Yet, these glorious temples are but a vessel of our “more real selves.”

Our real selves are the parts of us that are a reflection of what is good, beautiful and miraculous. You and me, we are the story. Our lives, how we live them, what we do or do not do, matters; who we love or do not love, matters. It is not the guys in Washington, or the celebrities on TV that matter, they are their own greatest story ever told, not ours.

They are just images somewhere off in the distance. They are not really a part of our story. No, our story is about what we dream and what dreams we weave into reality. That kid of yours that went to school for the first time last week, that is his greatest story. The young man who drove with his dad to college for his first day in a new kind of “first day of school,” that is his greatest story. The toddler who discovers a kitten for the first time and learns to touch it gentle and feel its fur, so soft on her face, that is her greatest story.

Day-to-day, minute-to-minute we are living the greatest story ever told. The real issue is: Can we be awake enough to know that this is it?  You life, and my life, is the greatest story.  What happens is that this story is totally up to us; you see, we are also the writer, the editor and producer. Whether the story ever has an audience that applauds is not as critical as the fact that the story gets told.

Sitting snug at home now, the sun radiates through the crystals and rainbows dance on the carpet. For the first time today I am at peace and I think about the greatest story every told that is mine. I drift and think about what I am going to write on the next page of my story.

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I am originally from the Midwest. In the Midwest we have rules as to how you conduct yourself. The child I saw yesterday in a restaurant that was shrieking much too loudly, and climbing onto the booth, would have been hustled out of the restaurant by a midwestern parent and probably left to sit alone in the car until he “could behave.”

Those rules have kept me in good stead my entire life. You could pretty much take me anywhere and I would know what manners to use. I am, in the vernacular, well bred. I am well bred and also a rule breaker. I don’t break rules for the sake of breaking them; nope, I break them when they are not part of “my rules.”

I think we should all have our own rules. I like good manners, and respect of others and myself, so my midwestern heritage fits into my rules, not the other way around. I have a picture, one of the very few I own, stuck in a drawer somewhere that shows me climbing over a barbwire fence somewhere in the hills of Georgia. As I hike myself up and over, the sign that my foot is on says, “Beware—Go Back,” then in fine print it reveals that three people have died going past this point.

Now, I just had to know what was so dangerous just ahead. So up and over I went. I no longer rememberd what the path was like up ahead, but I smiled at the picture. I have always made my own rules; it is fortunate for me that most of those rules fall well within the boundaries of our societal rules.

I have shared all of this so when I tell you about my latest, favorite, bumper sticker you will know why it tickled my fancy, “Well Behaved Women are Rarely Remembered.” How true is that! Trying to stay within the confines of our chauvinistic society hurts men and woman alike. It is too painful to try and do life by someone else’s rules.

So, though it is true that I am well bred, I am also a hellion. Not many people ever see this part of me because, after all, I only turn to her when the bonds of our society’s rules need to be busted.

So, I have been thinking, what does it mean to bust society’s rules? As I thought about this, I remembered what one of my dear mentors taught me years ago. He told me that in our society it was against the rules for a woman to be feminine, successful and powerful. This feminine matrix is not allowed and if some woman has the audacity to reach for this she will be struck down. If she, like me, added a fourth component to the matrix, i.e., visibility, then she would be in double jeopardy. She would be in jeopardy from all the people who live in boxes and who hate that you or I might not.

I hate boxes and the only ones I live in are of my creation. If you think about it, that is true for everyone who lives in American. Our boxes, once we reach adulthood, are of our creation and too often we defend them, to the chagrin of our Soul and Spirit.

I like the idea of being remembered not because I kept the rules or because I broke them, but because I had the courage to live life on my terms.  What say you?

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A nightingale is singing softly in the background. The waves are rushing to shore so they too may listen. The breeze is humming background harmony and it is still deep in this night.

The music changes the resonance and hope once again blankets the earth. The waves ,as they move back out to sea, carry what they have heard, the resonance of hope. The breeze lifts with the call of hope on its back and carries it to all it can caress; those who sleep with windows open, beneath blanket on park benches, in boxes in allies, in tent cities in streets strewn with humanity and in flood ravaged planes. The breeze gently caresses their cheeks as they sleep using its allure, willing them to allow hope to permeate their hearts.

All of these are Bringers of Hope. Consciously or subconsciously we know we can be touched and changed by them. If we allow it, we are lifted and comforted by them.

I want to be a Bringer of Hope as well. Lifting and comforting all whom I meet would be a glorious way to live my life. What is a Bringer of Hope? This serious question I ponder deep into the night. I know the answer is not to be found in thinking. Rather, it very well may be found in the in-between space, the space between thinking and feeling. It is that luminous space where magic and genius just happens.

Allowing the luminous means being still and moving into the essence of creation. The essence of creation is not found in action, thinking or even feeling. No, these things manifest the creation, but they are not the creators. The Bringers of Hope may be different for each of us. For me it is music that feeds my Soul, the call of nature and the stillness that allows me to drift into the in-between. There I gather what I do not know.

To be a Bringer of Hope I must start with myself. This, you and I know is always true. We must begin with self or we have nothing real to give. The “real” that I bring back from essence may not be known to me, ever. Or it may appear when someone tells me, “Boy, you have changed.” Or I may have an absolute knowingness as to what I gathered in the in-between.

Why slip the bounds and travel in-between? Well, because my journey is to always strive to be more. I don’t always know what that means, but those who are more than me and the Divine know. So I journey, deep into the night, to a place of stillness, to a place of essence, where parts of me that know beyond thoughts and feeling can gather what I cannot hear, touch, taste or be in any other way.

Nightingales singing in the background, nature calling, calling to me and the breezes caressing me like a knowing lover; these all are my Bringers of Hope. They create a resonance that allows me to slip the boundaries of the physical and go into the in-between. There I hope to gather more of the true essence of me so I too can be a Bringer of Hope.

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