2001, the Year in Review

Hey there, you ~

2001 has been an exceptionally eventful year (but you already knew that, didn�t you?), and, despite worldly appearances, it�s been a pretty good year for me (especially compared to last year). Here are the highlights and lowlights of my year. (I�ll warn you that I meant this to be short, but, typical of me, it turned out to be pretty long anyway. I swear I was suppressing my storytelling the whole time, or else it would have been a lot longer yet. I�ll also warn those of you who�ve been familiar with my funny holiday letters that this one isn�t particularly funny. I apologize, and I just haven�t been inspired with humor for it.)

HARRY POTTER: While my computer was being repaired during late December, 2000, and early January, 2001, I borrowed the Harry Potter books from the library and read all 4 of them in about 3 weeks. I loved them, and I became a real Harry Potter-phile. Is J.K. Rowling married? When the movie was released, I was very eager to see it, however, as of my writing this, I still haven�t made it to the movie theater.

NANCY: In January Nancy called me. �Who�s Nancy?� I hear you asking in my mind�s ear. Making a long story as short as I can and have it mean anything, I first met her in a class in college in early 1969, fell madly in love with her (but didn�t let her know about it � I was married at the time. and she was seriously involved), and then lost touch with her at the end of the school year. I found and reunited with her in 1983 (I think it was) in Portland. (I learned that she hadn�t suspected that I was in love with her all those years before. Wasn�t I good at keeping it hidden?) However, before long she left to return to Anchorage and subsequently got married. We wrote to each other a few times, and in the last letter I received from her in the late �80s, she spoke for the first time of having a young son. Figuring back his age plus 9 months, I wondered if he might not be my son. So, I wrote asking Nancy about that and didn�t hear from her again until this past January. When I got her phone message, I thought maybe her son had gotten old enough to want to know his birth father and that was why she was calling. Well, it turned out that he isn�t mine and she was calling for a totally different reason � to renew our friendship. That was both a relief and a deep disappointment for me. (You know about simultaneous experiences, don�t you?) Anyway, we�ve stayed in touch all this year and have become much better friends. She even came to Bellevue to visit and to attend Leap of Faith.

VISITS: So, speaking of visits, several people visited me from out of town, and I stopped to visit several more on a couple of my cross-country trips. First Bobbie, who I�d known for several years via e-mail and telephone but had never met in person, came from Denver to visit and to take Leap of Faith. Then Shelli, who I also had never met in person, came from somewhere near L.A. for a different workshop and spent some time visiting with me. And as I said, Nancy came from Anchorage to visit and to take Leap of Faith. Then, on my trip from Santa Fe back to Bellevue (more about that shortly), I took somewhat of a long route and stopped by to meet Niara, who I had only known via e-mail, in Durango, CO, and Rob, who I had known in my e-mail community, via telephone, and as a friend of Bobbie�s, in Denver. On my way back to Santa Fe in December via the �low snow route� through OR, CA, and southern AZ, I stopped in Eugene and saw my old friend (since 1976) Dawn, who I hadn�t seen for a couple of years (but missed her husband Tom, who was out of town for work), and in Sacramento and met another e-mail friend, Susan (and her 2 � year old son Vincent). I enjoyed all of my visits a lot.

LEAP OF FAITH: I worked on staff for all of the Leaps of Faith this year, including one I came back for from Santa Fe. Every time I serve in that way, I�m more deeply impressed by the value of the Leap of Faith. And every time I�m present, I feel honored to be in the presence of the heroes who participate. For information about the Leap, see http://www.warriorspirit.org. I highly recommend it to you. For more about what the Leap means to me, see the letter I wrote shortly after the November Leap by visiting http://forums.delphiforums.com/ThisIsMyLife/messages and then clicking on �11/12/01 � Another Leap & an invitation� in the heading �Michael�s Letters, 2001� in the left-hand column.

EARTHQUAKE: I took the Ash Wednesday 6.8 earthquake in the Puget Sound area as mostly another wake-up call. It rocked the house around me, but didn�t damage much of anything nearby. It just told me that things were being shaken up (like so many other signs have told me). We�re in a time when lots of things are being shaken up and prepared for a dramatic leap forward in evolution. Jeff Alexander calls it a time of perturbation (a term coined, I think, by the Nobel prize winning scientist Ilya Prigogine to describe how systems often change). Get ready. We�re in a time that resembles water beginning to boil before it transforms to steam.

ONLINE WORK: I�ve continued with my online work, begun a bunch of new lists (for example, Enlightening Movies for reviews and recommendations of movies with some spiritual theme and/or characters who demonstrate spiritually-admirable choices and actions), and terminated some other lists and e-zines. If you�d like to know about some or all of my online projects, a list of them is available by going to http://forums.delphiforums.com/ThisIsMyLife/messages and clicking on �My Online Projects� under the heading �Information� in the left-hand column.

BOBBIE: Bobbie was planning to move to Santa Fe about the same time I did, to be part of the Heart Song Community, and to share some work with me. We did a lot of talking and e-mailing preparing for that. But Spirit had other plans for her. In an interesting story that�s hers to tell, she reunited with Bill, who she had dated 20 years ago, moved to Florida (across from the space center), and is preparing to get married in February. I�m happy for her and simultaneously experiencing some grief that we won�t fulfill the visions we had for our work in Santa Fe.

VISTA: In late June I jumped at an opportunity and took a house and petsitting job for a couple of weeks in Vista, CA (near San Diego). The woman whose house and pets I sat paid for me to fly down and also paid me for the job. Then I got to stay in her fabulous house with a small orchard and swimming pool (that was mostly used by her Lab) and her wonderful menagerie of pets. I had sat for her before when she lived in the Seattle area. She moved to Vista to work with Jewel and Lenedra Kilcher in their Clearwater Project. While I was there, Jewel�s brother Shane stopped by and chatted with me a couple of times before I realized who he was. I took the opportunity to have dinner with several Leap grads while I was there, including Robert, whose house I lived in between jobs during the first half of 2000. His wife Marcia (Mar-SEE-uh) is also working with Jewel and Lenedra. The only down side to taking that job was that I missed the annual Warrior Spirit 4th of July bash.

THE GAME: Jeff and Laurie Alexander offered me the perfect opportunity to confront some of my ancient fear in July. They invited Leap grads to participate in what they call The Game. Describing it briefly, the men all go together, and the women all go together to a place where there�s dancing and act out meeting and connecting. Everyone gets into his or her sexiest, most flirtatious self. The rule is that everyone must dance with at least 5 other people before connecting with their real partner (if they have one). So, there it is, folks � one of the things that, for a large number of reasons that I won�t go into (in a gesture toward brevity), brings up the most fear in me that I can imagine. Suffice it to say that I�d rather face being attacked in the street. I could give you several really �good� reasons that I chose not to go, but the bottom line truth is that I chickened out. That, however, was a learning experience in itself � of course. I await my next opportunity. (Who else do you know for whom something he didn�t do would be a highlight of the year?)

WHITEWATER RAFTING: On the other hand, I did take the opportunity to go whitewater rafting on the Suiattle River with a group of Warrior Spirit people. Some of you know that I love whitewater rafting. It was quite a day. Do I have some stories I could tell! But, of course, I�m being brief, so you won�t hear about the human water cannons or the woman who showed us the tattoo on her butt at our table in the restaurant.

MARINERS: Hey, how about those Mariners? This was definitely my year in baseball. Well, up until the playoffs, that is. I won�t say what happened, because if you�re a baseball fan, you already know, and if you aren�t, you probably wouldn�t care. Does this merit mention here? I think it does, which tells you something about my interests.

RETREATS: I attended 3 retreats this year that were all significant for me. In August, I went to the annual Western Unity Regional Retreat at Crystal Mountain, WA. There I experienced don Miguel Ruiz, Heather Ash, Sheri Rosenthal (2 of his former apprentices), Sallye Taylor (Unity minister who has an alternative ministry), some wonderful musicians, a great band that I don�t recall the name of (unfortunately), and lots of great people. In September, 6 days after the terrorist attacks, I attended Jeff Alexander�s The Invitation on Vashon Island at Camp Sealth. It was another profound adventure, and because of what I experienced, I changed the course of my life. And finally, at Halloween, I participated in Mary O�Malley�s group�s retreat at Wellspring Retreat Center, just outside Mt. Rainier National Park. It was another powerful experience for me, all the much more so because I had known most of the other participants for years. For information about Mary�s work, see http://www.maryomalley.com.

9/11: 9/11 changed all of our lives in the matter of minutes, didn�t it? I spent much of the following 6 days working to promote a peaceful, spiritual, and carefully considered response and to promote treating the acts of terrorism as crimes rather than as acts of war. (Then I attended The Invitation, and it influenced me in other directions with my energy.) Now it appears to me as if we�re recycling through the �60s and the profound divisions in this country caused by the war in Viet Nam. I�ve become a peace activist again � only this time on a much more spiritual level than I was in the �60s and early �70s.

MOVED: Yes, in case you haven�t heard about it yet, I did finally move to Santa Fe (after talking about it for 4 years) in early October. When I drove into the city, I immediately felt like I had arrived at home. Within 2 days I had a mailing address and a new home, sharing with a woman I met at Unity of Santa Fe. In case you don�t have it, here�s my new contact information:

223 N. Guadalupe St. #404 (mailing address, not where I live)
Santa Fe, NM 87501
(505) 473-0952
ohanamd@earthlink.net (not new, but in case you don�t have it)

By the way, that�s NEW Mexico. New Mexico is one of the 50 states. Some of you would be surprised at how many people don�t know that New Mexico is a state or even part of the U.S. I had someone in the Seattle area say to me that she had heard that I was moving out of the country.

BEGAN TO GET INVOLVED: As soon as I arrived in Santa Fe, I began to get involved, including adopting Unity of Santa Fe as my church home and joining the labyrinth building team there. There will be lots more as I get settled.

RETURNED: 3 weeks after I arrived in Santa Fe, I left again to return to Seattle. No, I hadn�t decided it wasn�t for me; I�d planned to do it that way from the beginning. I called my first trip down there my �practice move.� I went to establish a home base and then returned for several activities (Awakening group retreat, Invitation group reunion, and Leap of Faith) and for phase 2 of my move. It turned out that I got some jobs in the Seattle area, so I stayed longer than I had planned.

NEW NAME: You may or may not know that I�ve been planning to change my name (not Michael, the rest of it) for a long time. I�ve just never had the sense that I had my right name yet � which I believe meant that I hadn�t yet fully realized the new consciousness that it signified. On my way driving back to Seattle I think I was given my new name. I�ll hang out with it for a bit and see how it fits and what it inspires before I announce it, though.

FOLLOWED SPIRIT: Through my entire year (and my life in general for the past 5 years at least) I followed Spirit without hesitation as much as I was aware of the promptings. It�s been a pretty insecure (from the point of view of the world) path, and I�ve consistently been amazed at how things work out for the best, sometimes in quite unexpected ways. It�s a path I choose to continue, no matter how many people think I should do more that the world traditionally expects.

KEY RING STICK CLASS: One of the things I�ve said many times since 9/11 is that if a terrorist were ever to try to take a plane that I�m on, I know that I could use the self-defense skills that I�ve learned to stop at least one or two of them. I took Jeff Alexander�s Key Ring Stick class in November largely to have an experience of it so that I could promote it in Santa Fe, Denver, and Sedona. It turned out that it significantly added to my self-defense skills and physical self-confidence. If any of you is interested, it�s being offered again in the Seattle area on Tuesday, January 15, 2002. See http://www.warriorspirit.org/Keyring.html.

MOVE #2: I finally headed back home on December 5 with another jam-packed car full of my stuff (mostly books, videotapes, and clothing this time). I pushed it at the end of the trip to get home earlier, and recalled why I don�t drive that way (like I did when I was younger) much any more. I don�t mean fast. I mean with little sleep. I�m still trying to find a place to put all of my boxes full of my treasures. And I still have one or two more carloads to move.

WORK RENEWAL: I�m putting a lot of work into preparing to get busy with my work in New Mexico � including getting back to some of the work that I�ve done in the past but had taken a vacation from. If you�d like to see my plan for my work here, go to http://forums.delphiforums.com/ThisIsMyLife/messages and click on �Planned Projects in Santa Fe� under the heading �Information� in the left-hand column.

FRIENDS: I want to acknowledge the friends who have been especially important to me this year: Ginny (who I�ve known since 1978 and who is like part of my family); Barbara (who I�ve known since 1957 and who is like another part of my family); Parker (who shared lunch with me nearly every Thursday and who offered his home for me to stay when I needed a place); Tammi (my 29 year old friend who feels to me like a contemporary and who has one of the gentlest ways of kicking butt that I�ve ever experienced); Conie (who referred me lots of my housesitting and petsitting jobs and who went above and beyond the call of duty in being helpful to me in a variety of ways); Nancy (who I wrote about above), Bobbie (who was a frequent part of my life until she reconnected with Bill); the members of Mary�s awakening (meditation) group (with whom, on most Thursday mornings and at our Halloween retreat, I shared a lot of meaningful experiences); Leap grads and, most of all, staff (who are another of my families); and the members of my Invitation group (who shared a profound 5 days with me). A special acknowledgement to my new friend and housemate in Santa Fe, Katherine (who helped make my transition easy). I�m deeply grateful to all of these people for being such an important part of my life this year. Leaving most of them behind when I moved was a source of grieving.

MY INVITATION TO YOU: If you have any interest in visiting Santa Fe and me, I invite you to come. We have an extra room where I live if you want a free alternative to a B&B or a motel, and I�ll be a great resource and guide if you wish. Please just give me as much advance notice as you can and understand that I�ll be working or out of town sometimes. If you�d like to see my recommendations for a great visit to Santa Fe, I�m writing them, and they�ll be posted at the Delphi Forums web site sooner or later.

So much for (most of) 2001. On we go into 2002. It will be a year of more dramatic events, I predict. I wish you love, peace, health, happiness, and abundant awakening and growth.

I�d love to hear from you.

Love and peace,
Michael