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We invite you to share your story, your journey. It is in your journey that you will find understanding, insight, camaraderie, and, hopefully, peace and acceptance.
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Tim's Story
Two Eagles
When we struggle to understand how to get to the other side, the eagles teach us how to fly.
Driving to see an elder on Wheeler's highway, cruising by Nehalem Bay side;
Two eagles locked in talons' grasp, rolled and somersaulted from the sky.
I slowed to see a sight meant to teach me how to fly; a half-minute earlier or later meant a lesson lost from my sight.
Wings outspread, then half folded, they descended between witness trees. My inner eye focused, as if were a spy glass: their eyes locked in a visual embrace with beaks closed and almost touching; one eagle above and the other below, they fell below my gaze.
Thinking they separated too late from their talons' embrace, I feared them lost on steep-grounded rocks, but in a moment, two white-ringed -- red bronzed teachers rose with easy beats of their wings; one followed the other.
The lesson not over, they gained their flight above the black asphalt trail and led me to the second lesson through their flight. For a mile I followed in wonder, watching: One was the material world, the other a companion of the unseen spirit world, leading me to understand: They were a mated pair, their unity their delight.
One followed the other, one material and one spirit; they were one when soaring on the same sea of light.
When there is unity in both worlds there is oneness through purpose and intent.
They flew off to the right to scale the mountain height to return to their true home nest looking over the sea of delight.
--Tim Hayes, June 28, 2006
A group of young boys knew of a wise man in their village and hatched a plan in order to fool him. They would take a small live bird and stand in front of the wise man. One of them would hold the bird behind his back and say, "Wise man, is this bird alive or is it dead?" If the wise man said the bird was alive, then the boy would quickly squeeze the life out of the bird, responding, "No, the bird is dead." If the wise man said "The bird is dead," then the boy would present the live bird.
The boys finally received an audience with the wise man. The one holding the bird asked, "Wise man, is the bird in my hand alive or dead?"
The wise man was silent for a moment. Then he bent down until he stood no higher than the boy. "The life you are holding," the wise man told him, "is in your hands."
from Building Your Field of Dreams, Mary Manin Morrissey (Bantam Books, 1996)
"God the Creator created creators; therefore, we are all endowed with creative capacities. We cannot help but create, and we can consciously use this inherent gift in partnership with God. This is how co-creation works --- it is a melding of human and divine effort toward a shared goal. When you co-create with God, you are guided to the manifestation of a dream beyond anything you could have imagined on your own."
Mary Manin Morrissey, Building Your Field of Dreams, Introduction, p xi.
Two Wolves, Fighting
This journey is hard today
Coming to a place to see my son—
He doesn’t know I am coming
But we must talk.
Hard to get in here, the waiting,
The needing of others to let me pass
Through the bars and find the place
Where we talk, but cannot hug.
We speak, both wanting the other to know
What is in our hearts, and what is troubling
Our souls as we walk through life together,
But wrestling with different demons.
We often seem to make this harder than it is.
Life, after all, is sweetest when it is the simplest.
Simple pleasures, simple gifts, simply living
Better than this struggle today.
Later, I am given the story of two wolves
Battling within one’s soul for dominance,
The timeless Cherokee story
Speaking to the very heart of our conversation;
Which wolf, love or anger, will win?
Which one will you feed?
The story is short, to the point, capturing the essence
Of what I wanted my son to hear, to take to heart.
Most of this pain he suffers seems unneeded to me
But then, I am not in his shoes, and I am not wise
Enough to know what his journey must be.
It is hard to be only the companion, and watch this journey—
To be silent, and sometimes only able to hold his hand
Or send him my love for him, knowing
This is his time, and his journey.
I sometimes do not like this job of dad—
Sometimes to be silent, and to wait, and merely listen
Is too hard for me, until I remember
His job.
--Neal Lemery, 2005
Both Sides of the Mountain Range
It is hard to know if the sun is coming up or going down.
The thought came as thoughts do, in a quiet and gentle way, that when we rise above the valley floor and mountain range, there is only the sun.
No up or down, rising or setting, or past or future more.
There is only light, too bright to see what it contains, until we remember it embraces us all -- on both sides of the mountain range.
----Tim Hayes, 2004