THE JOURNEY BEGINS WITH "STORY"

​“There's always a story. It's all stories, really.
​The sun coming up every day is a story.
Everything's got a story in it.
​Change the story, change the world.” 
Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky

    ​Your life story is like an intricate tapestry woven from ancient spools of colorful thread. Each fine thread, spun from star dust, is woven on a cosmic loom which, when the time is just right or 'once upon a time', is fated into the world as you.  Shimmering strands of DNA come together in a beautiful and unique masterpiece that contains the Universe's imprint, now incarnate in the jagged edges of family, race and cultural, ready to unfold as your life, your story.

    The tapestry that comes into the world as you, though intrinsically beautiful, is far from complete.  If you were able to look back at the early version of your life, you might not be able to recognize yourself.  Loose threads dangle in every direction as if waiting for you to pick up the shuttle to pass though the loom of your days to continue the story.  Slowly, over time, in spite of many fellow weavers tugging on the loose threads, an image of you begins to take shape.  

    There comes a time when you stand back from the tapestry, feeling that you may be nearly complete in creating the image of you.  Suddenly it seems that, when you weren't looking, some invisible force has tugged on the frayed edges of your masterpiece reveling a tangled web and distorted image.  All those years spinning yarn from the wool of ambition, weaving a career, borrowing more and more thread from the local thread bank, falling in and out of love, leaves an indelible impression that there much more to be discovered. 

    Then you remember that underneath the storied layers of knotted and frayed yarn there is one golden thread.   In order to untangle the web that has become your life you must follow that golden thread that was secretly woven before the beginning of time and is now fated or concealed within the corporal surfaces of the unlikely narrative of your life.  The golden thread now shimmers with a luminescence that leaves your once colorful story faded in the background.  This is the golden thread of purpose that when followed will lead to your deepest joy and ultimately to your destiny.

    Secretly woven, partially hidden in each of us, perhaps before we are born, is a story. This story holds an orientation and a purpose for each of us and for all of us. Though many feel like we are born with no story, like a blank slate (tabula rosa), written on the essence of each one is a core pattern and vital shape that can be "remembered" and lived into.  This story-thread can be sought and found within as well as encountered in the outer world as your story is interwoven with other's.   The Journey is field guide or weaving guide for this next part of your Journey.

    I love Mary Oliver's question that touches the age-old human inquiry, "Tell me, what will you do with your one wild and precious life?" “Who am I?” and “For what purpose was I born?” and “What should I do with my life?” The insights, or the way, can be found inside the questions themselves, inside the one asking, and inside the story already already being lived. The quest, or journey, begins with your story.

TLC