manifesting

I've talked about this new-agey clearing course by Stephanie Bennett Vogt I'm working through...she talks about the human ability to manifest things, to imagine our way to different realities. Which resonates with me: I have the sense that we (in which "we" I mostly include myself) are far less rational and far more creative - in the sense of creating the realities we experience - than we are sometimes comfortable admitting.

All this deep thinking I've been doing feels so important, and at the same time often just deeply weird, confused, uninformed, and lonely. And when I wrote about this loneliness on Saturday and Sunday it felt awkward and over-sharing-y and my daily page views since then are like, 2, and I'M FINE WITH THAT (no defensiveness to see here, move along) because why am I even looking at page views, I'm doing this for me right? Although in that case, why don't I just write this all in a journal and drop the pretense of talking to some imagined reader?

Today my American friend Mike came over to have a coffee and talk. This is always great, though it's kind of a crazy exercise in talking past each other - he tells a story and it reminds me of something so I tell him a story back, and in the middle of telling my story I realize that it's totally off the point he was trying to make and I should figure out how to correct course, but by that time he has another story, and so on back and forth until one or both of us absolutely has to get back to work. On my end at least, this is a release of pent-up communication energy that builds up in all the parts of my life where storytelling is just a ton harder because of language and cultural barriers (and of course my talking issues in general). I love this time with Mike. I love being able to tell my stories, and I love hearing his - not least because from him I get the perspective and the wisdom of someone who has been fighting the Swiss integration battle for a lot longer than I have. The ironic thing is that if we were both back home in the US, there is zero chance that we ever would have met. But as it is, I feel like he's going to be a friend for life. Which is an enormous gift.

Then tonight Daniel put the kids to bed while I did the dishes and listened to Krista Tippet's conversation with Richard Rohr. I'm totally into On Being's "unheard cuts" lately. Sometimes they add to the lonely feelings because I hear these conversations and I think yes! that! and then as soon as the headphones are out, I'm back to my real life where no one has heard of any of this goofy non-dual vulnerability stuff. But it's so good to know that it's out there.

Post-dishes I watched my new friend Gina's weekly church service for the first time. Gina is an ordained minister but also a spoogler (the dreadful term someone coined for partners of Google employees), which means she's also here in Zurich and I can talk to her in the flesh sometimes (yay!). And her service is all sorts of brave and cool. She had me at "a little snacky snack for Eucharist" (lol, if only we Catholics could take such a relaxed and joyful approach to the Eucharist!). And she talked about her theory of the blood sacrifice of Jesus, which is different from my own thoughts on the crucifixion and yet we come to the same place: Jesus's death as the focal point for a deeply personal decision about how we want to lead our lives. More on this tomorrow, if I can herd my thoughts into some sort of coherent form.

But this is all to say, today didn't feel nearly so lonely. Because it was an exceptional day? or because by publicly naming my own need I was able to more clearly see the things in my life that could meet it? I think maybe the latter. Maybe those companions I've been wishing for so desperately are in fact already here.