2: More

Connecting with the Book, Living with a Wild God, by Barbara Ehrenreich

START ANY VENTURE AND YOU WILL EITHER FAIL OR SUCCEED. Success usually means achieving your goal, but when synchronicity occurs, you get more.

When someone takes steps to achieve a goal, they occasionally take a twist here or a turn there.

But in some situations, as I’ve shifted my direction a little, it’s as if a great cosmic wheel turns, then as I say a few words or click a button, the pins in the lock of a vaulted door align and it swings open to a view or an expanse, a knowing or a realization, of something spectacular that I never expected to find. I don’t always stop at that point thinking that is all there is to it because I am pursuing my goal, and occasionally, with another shift or click, I acquire another treasure—sometimes material, sometimes deeply personal.

In 2014 I began to think about making yet another challenging shift in my life because my oldest daughter didn’t need as much financial help in college and my youngest was almost finished with high school. I wanted to connect with writers, but I was uncomfortable with the idea of sharing my stories with people who knew my ex or that I knew from work, which is what I kept finding in the small town where I was living at the time.

I’d heard about Meetups in Seattle and decided to see if I could find one I could attend once in a while. On 4-14-14, I found a couple of options. I filled out the profile information for Seattle Women Writers, then I began to fill out the answers to a couple of questions requested by the group, Greater Seattle Women Who Write.*

While the answers to the first few questions flowed easily, as I read the last one my mind skidded into mental gridlock. It asked, “Which authors do you admire, and why?” I thought, “I love so many of them. How am I ever going to pick?” Then, a couple of seconds later, I thought of Barbara Ehrenreich.

I felt like it was important to see what she was currently doing, since I’d only read her book, Nickle and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, and when her website opened, it was as if the pins dropped into place.

She had written a new book, Living with a Wild God. I couldn’t have come up with a better way to describe my life.

I had to know what she’d experienced, so I ordered it that day.

When I picked up the book, I wanted to know how long it had been since Ehrenreich had written it. I looked at the publication date and couldn’t believe what I was seeing.

The book had only been available for about a week when I found it on her website.

While Ehrenreich uses the term, mystical, to describe her experiences, they are significantly different from mine. Our journeys, however, have been strikingly similar. We’ve both struggled with the idea of talking about the events. We’ve researched a variety avenues to acquire understanding, and we’ve spent years feeling terribly alone.

A few days after I read Living with a Wild God, I felt like I went through it too quickly. So I decided to re-read the chapters about her experiences, and I noticed something that other people might overlook. A little thing that is incredibly important to writers—a common, yet somewhat unusual, word.

In the chapter called “The Trees Step Out of the Forest,” Ehrenreich explains that her first experience occurred when she was looking at pine trees. A chapter that follows is titled “All, All Alone.” Then, in the next chapter, she describes another experience that occurred in a town called Lone Pine.

Pine. Lone Pine.

Pine doesn’t have just one definition. It also means yearning, longing. Living with a Wild God is the story of Ehrenreich’s solitary journey of yearning for understanding. It’s what I had been doing for years, as well. Yearning to talk to people about what has been happening in my life. Longing to find people who have been having similar experiences or who would understand mine.

The two pivotal events of her story revolve around a word that relates deeply to both of our journeys. When I signed up to participate in Meetups I was looking for meaningful connections with writers. With a shift and a click, Ehrenreich’s story seemed to travel with Godspeed across time and space, and it fulfilled my wish for a deep connection to a writer in a couple of remarkable ways.

I also received something I never dreamed would ever be a possibility—documentation of a couple of elements of synchronicity.

* Note: When I relocated I found other groups closer to me so I was only able to attend the writing group, Greater Seattle Women Who Write, a couple of times

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3: Becoming | Be Loved for Your Knowledge, Your Experience, and Your Faith