Back to Your Regularly Scheduled Woo Woo

M'kay, kids. It's high time we talked about G-O-D. Let me rap with you a bit about Jesus. No, I'm kidding. But I'm not kidding about G-O-D. Does it freak you out when I spell it out like that? We're going there. Oh yeah.

I told you my introduction to the world of higher powers was through the AA-version of the concept. Step 2 of the Famous Twelve is: Came to believe a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. Okay, so let's break that down. "A power greater than ourselves" – it doesn't say 'the little baby Jesus', it doesn't say 'the Heavenly Father'. It leaves it open to interpretation. Ye Olde Wikipedia suggests that some folks use the sun, Nature, their sponsors, science(!), gravity...anything bigger than you that is loving and caring. (I, personally, have not felt the loving and caring qualities of gravity recently, but perhaps I need to open my mind.)

So, you see, it's the higher power of your choosing, not a necessarily bearded dude on a cloud. But, I suppose the larger question here is: why should you care?

Why does putting one's faith in a Higher Power matter? Does it, in fact, matter? I think it does. But first, a little personal history:

I grew up in a family of scientists and business people. My mom has a framed quote from Charles Darwin on her wall. We spent three years, when I was little, in the Born Again Bible Belt of Rochester, Minnesota, where I experienced some weird Christianity as a young impressionable human. Blah, blah, blah, mistrust of organized religions. Some teen angsty experimentation with Eastern practices concurrent with Bad Boyfriend #1. And by 19 years old, I was a card carrying Atheist. I was known to snort at the mention of God.

Atheism served me well for several years – I felt, ironically, holier than thou, praying to the Church of the Know-It-All-23-Year-Old. And then I got depressed. Not like, 'Aw, I'm bummed' depressed. No. Like, 'Can't function, gonna off myself' style. A major depressive episode. Concurrent with Bad Marriage #1. For those of you who have danced with the Heavy D (as I like to call her), you know that it feels like the truth. It feels like life truly has no meaning. That we are born alone and we die alone and everything in between is a greyscale wasteland of pointlessness. That absolutely nothing happens after we die. That all, in fact, IS lost.

This is not an encouraging experience. Mostly because there is no bottom to this hellish abyss. Well, I suppose there is a bottom in the sense that one could always end it, but I never could. So, instead, it was like falling down a great hole for the better part of two years, futilely grabbing at the weeds and vines on the way down.

So, the bloom was off the atheist rose.

Marriage ended simultaneous to depression ending and *poof* at age 26, I became an unwitting poster child for the Young Divorcées 'You Determine Your Destiny' Club (of America). I got promoted. I started running. I was vibrant! happy! fabulously alive! I trained for a marathon and called it my Divorce Recovery program (the race itself was a 42.2 km victory lap). It was glorious.

While training, I discovered an interesting phenomenon: after running about 2 hours, the static in your head clears away and thoughts come in slow motion, one at a time. It was, in fact, the best meditation I had every experienced. All my years of yoga couldn't touch the clarity, peace and joy I felt at running long.

Then, I trained for Ironman. Why Ironman? Because it was the biggest, scariest thing I'd ever heard of (not involving snowy mountains in the Himalayas, that is). And if I was experiencing moments of clarity on a 2-hour run...imagine what a 6-hour bike ride could provide! I'd be Buddha by the end of this!

At that time, I met a very, very important friend. She was worldly and cultured and cool, she went to NYU and worked in film in San Francisco. We're talking my dream girl here. Occasionally, she'd throw around a word that sounded a lot like G-O-D. She also said she'd P-R-A-Y now and then. I'd have mini internal seizures every time she said these words, but tried to keep a fake smile plastered on my face so she wouldn't notice. I think it worked.

Also at the time, I met a recovering alcoholic. He was a super-smarty too. He was dancing the twelve-step and I did some reading. Went to some meetings. Hi, my name is Melanie. Hi Melanie. Heard that all I had to do was open my mind to the idea of a higher power. I didn't have to get on my knees and and be SAVEDPRAISEJESUS. Open my mind, I could do.

So, I'm riding my bike 10 hours a week and it's spring and we're in Alberta. And the hawks are hunting. Every time I ride, I see the hawks. They are graceful and elegant. They are solo hunters, completely self-sufficient. They are fierce as all hell. I'm out there in the middle of nowhere, alone on my bike, facing down the biggest challenge of my life and these hawks are guiding me. They become my talismans. My touchstones.

Hawks are considered to be spiritual messengers. In First Nations thought, they come from the spirit world to guide humans to their highest self. So, every time I saw a hawk, I knew I was on the right track. I still obsessively look for hawks whenever I am driving, riding, running, whatever.

And during this time, I'm reading and reading and reading. Anything I can get my hands on about personal and spiritual growth. (When I get home, and can look at my bookshelves, I'll put together a reading list for anyone interested.) I watch 'What the Bleep do we Know?' I get my mind blown by the concept of quantum physics, most of which makes no sense, but some ideas stick. Energy. Intention. Connection. I watch a weird little movie called The Secret. I realize that prayer is meditation and intention. I start praying/meditating/intending for guidance and clarity. Guidance and clarity. Over and over.

Gradually my intuition pipes up and my brain-static pipes down. Guidance and clarity.

I begin to open to the idea that we create our world, our destiny, our experiences. That we are working with the universe to build our lives as we go. Right now, I think of it as a conversation. I get clear, I ask for guidance, guidance is given in the form of insights, people, opportunities. I follow along and more messages await. The phrase 'everything happens for a reason' vibrates with completely different meaning for me now. Everywhere I go, I am looking for that reason...the lesson, the gift, the person I am supposed to meet, the word I am supposed to hear, the corner I am supposed to turn.

Now "prayer" is focused intention on guidance and clarity, and gratitude for the guidance I've already received. The hawks, the spiritual guides, are the messages from my intuition: go here, meet her, read this. "God" is that creative energy, that flow, that order, that intelligence.

And here I am, in Paris at 10 o'clock on a Wednesday. Guided here by intuitive messages that said: work on your creativity, write a play, get back onto the stage, get to Paris, it's a screenplay not a novel. Well, those are the broad strokes.

Mostly, it comes in the form of tiny, weird pushes and pulls in directions you don't expect, for reasons you can't fathom. You never get to know the end of the story, just what's happening right now. Which is good, I suppose, because it keeps you in the moment.

I don't yet know why I've met a visual artist originally from Canada who is working here and is incredibly successful. But I know I am supposed to meet her and know her. So I'm listening to that. I don't know what will happen with this screenplay or how it will happen. All I know is, my job is to be totally clear and open and write with absolute integrity and truth. What happens next will be revealed exactly when it is supposed to and no earlier. And that, I suppose, is what most folks call faith.