Power: Alive in the Roots of the Very Nature of Things
“The God whom I know dwells quietly in the root system of the very nature of things.” — Parker J. Palmer
It is 2002. I’m sitting on a bench, just outside the Peet’s Coffee in Berkeley that sits directly across from the Claremont Resort. It is a beautiful spot in the world. I’m just out of school, still finding myself unwinding from three intense years of school. Having gone back to school and transferred to Stanford at 42 to finish my undergraduate degree, I find myself in a new world, seemingly miles away from my previous life prior to school. Everything has changed. Kids are grown. It’s been seven years since my husband died, suddenly, and the dark night set in motion those seven years ago is beginning to break toward dawn, one I feared would never come. Yet, it is coming.
I’m sitting on this bench, reading Sylvia Perera’s classic, Descent to the Goddess. I’m almost finished with it, that point where you aren’t quite yet done yet also beginning to savor the whole of the book’s message. I look up from my book out across the brick courtyard where I‘m sitting. As I look out, I begin to feel this pull to go down and in from deep within me. It’s a definite pull…
