Introduction

Ever since ancient times when people gathered around campfires under the stars, they have been storytellers. Stories weave connection, inspire, and reassure us. We hunger for stories and for the connection that joins heart with heart.

In your hands you hold the story of a spiritual journey, one that started very early and remained persistent throughout my life. Now in my mid-eighties, I’m sitting around that virtual campfire with you, eager to share an assortment of stories I could never have imagined decades ago. Many are inspiring. Some are heartbreaking. Others are groundbreaking. All brought immeasurable gifts—including the dark ones. That would be an important learning—how to discover the gold that lies hidden in the dark ground of suffering.

The stories have an urgency about them. Why? We live in exceptionally dramatic, challenging, and frightening times. Our hearts break as we watch the destruction of our beloved planet and the cascade of other perils—totalitarian leaders, pervasive racism, climate catastrophes, war, and endless violence.

How do our stories hold the enormity of all these challenges? Besides the social and political actions that we might take, we need to come home to ourselves—to our core of basic goodness, resilience, and compassion. Only that can carry us through the storms that beset us. We need to tend the fires of the heart and find an inner refuge, cultivating qualities that nurture kindness and courage. This is the inner journey, urgently calling in ways that will be unique for each of us.

At the outset, I want to comment on the much-used wordspiritual, which should be differentiated from the wordreligion, which refers to the doctrinal and institutional forms created by different religious traditions. On the other hand, anything that touches on the mysteries of life, the invisible, or the exploration of consciousness might be referred to as spiritual in nature. Whatever our views, this is an inviting, wide-open subject to contemplate.

My story starts just before World War II and continues now into this second decade of the twenty-first century. I seem to have been born with an undying curiosity to understand the mystery in which we live: where we come from, including our ancestry; and the perennial questions of identity—who am I? Where am I going? And above all, what is the meaning of this life?

The seeds of spiritual curiosity were there in my early childhood, but the first big leap of my journey happened when I was seventeen and met my first spiritual teacher, a charismatic preacher, church founder, author, and mystic named Howard Thurman. I had attended various Christian churches and listened to many ministers, but I’d never experienced anyone remotely like Howard. With his warmth, hearty laugh, and great heart, he seemed enlivened by the stream of spiritual energy that flowed through him, permeating his presence and inspiring his words. Undoubtedly this came from his heritage. As the grandson of a slave, his rise to prominence was remarkable in the mid-1950s.

The next surprising milestone came in my mid-twenties when I was seriously on the prowl for a prospective husband. I was in graduate school at Columbia University. At a small dinner gathering, I met a man who, though very well dressed in a tailored suit, had secured his silk tie with a paper clip instead of with the gold tie clip more appropriate for his handsome attire. His dark, wavy hair was streaked with grey. He was good-looking with an expressive, exceptionally mobile face. His wide forehead had an intricate pattern of lifelines, suggesting that he had been through a lot in his forty-one years. I also noticed that he had beautiful hands with long tapered fingers, perhaps those of a musician or artist. To me, he was an older man, fourteen years my elder in fact, far too old for my taste.

Although our intriguing conversation about philosophical questions pi