all paths lead back to a mid-point

Posted on February 23, 2011 by Dr. Jenni

Recently on NPR there was an interesting story about how human beings, when blindfolded are never able to walk in a straight line.  Oftentimes they’ll walk around in circles without even realizing it. The reasons for this phenomenon remain a mystery.

Being a depth psychologist, I found this impossibility fascinating – the fact that we are not linear beings – that ultimately we give way to our circular nature and circular rhythms.

The psychologist Carl Jung spent much of his life studying mandalas, the Sanskrit word for circles. He believed that he “had to abandon the idea of the superordinate position of the ego…seeing that everything, all paths he had been following, all steps he had taken, were leading back to a single point –namely, to the midpoint. It became increasingly plain to him that the mandala is the centre. It is the exponent of all paths. It is the path to the centre, to individuation.”

In our Western culture, we spend much of our time attempting to walk in straight lines — yearning for success, being overly goal oriented, self-driven, self-directed, desiring to be perfect, driven to acquiring all the answers, etc.

After many attempts at “walking straight,” we ultimately fail, because this linear motion defies our true nature, giving credence only to our egos and not to our souls, which in essence are always transforming, circular and desiring wholeness.

Today, instead of checking off your list of things to do and worrying about what tomorrow brings, take some deep breaths, close your eyes and contemplate your circular nature, spinning like a magical top with nowhere to go, nothing to see but the beauty of your inner self.

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unus mundus

Posted on February 15, 2011 by Dr. Jenni

Yesterday on my way home from driving my son to Sunday school, I was thinking about the character Feather in my novel The Gossamer Thread. As I turned the corner and pulled onto my street I saw the above image that the clouds had formed at that instant in the sky. The Feather! The Feather! My son and I stopped to behold the very image of which I was just thinking.

As Jung states “psyche and matter are two different aspects of one and the same thing.” This is called “unus mundus,” which translates in Latin as “one world,” referring to the concept of an underlying unified reality from which everything emerges and returns to. Jung’s concept of synchronicity is related to the unus mundus — the meaningful coincidence being made possible by the fact that both the observer and “connected event” ultimately stem from the same source, the unus mundus.

Whatever ideas are flowing through your mind right now will be evidenced in your exterior environment. You must only work on training yourself to become more aware of both your psyche and the matter, which surrounds you. Quite literally, the more you exercise your internal mind to become in tune with the external world, you will begin experiencing these synchronicities on a daily basis.

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fitty/fitty

Posted on February 15, 2011 by Dr. Jenni

I’ll never forget a couple that I saw years ago who came into my office stating plainly that they were getting a divorce. They had selected me as the future therapist for their seven year old little girl (who I’ll call Chantelle). At opposite ends of the couch the couple sat, their arms decidedly crossed, their backs turned toward one another, their eyes staring off into a future, which with any luck offered a better life than the one that had come to pass.

As a litany of complaints about their dismal, failed relationship began, daggers whizzed across the couch, both mother and father staring me down, highly suspicious of any collusion or conspiracy on my part. The mother said with anger flaring from her nostrils: “He was never home enough.” “He tried to control me.” “All the burden of raising our daughter was on me.” He pipes back with contempt: “I was never good enough for her. “What does she want from me?” “No matter what, all she wants is MORE, MORE, MORE!”

Their conversation jumped to how their relationship slowly disintegrated — she fell out of love, she never gave him what he needed, then toward blame, a “he said/she said” back and forth, then on their darling daughter whom they both dearly love.  At this point, a wealth of anxiety ensued about custody, financial arrangements and what the future held for both parents. Each had sought out an attorney, but nothing had yet been officially signed.

As this angst increased, the man turned toward me, stood up and motioned with his hand, a line down the middle of the couch. “From now on it’s fitty fitty,” he said in his accent, staring at me, spit spraying from his mouth. “Fitty/Fitty, split down the middle. That’s fair. Everything’s divided evenly – money, house, custody. Everything!”

I sat staring at both parents and thought about their little girl sitting at home with her grandmother. Is this fair? I wondered.

Too often, when we react out of abandonment, blame, anger or hurt our first response is to become defensive and selfish. This self protective behavior only creates more of the feelings that we are defending against and unfortunately it is those that we love that end up getting hurt. Whatever situation you are in right now, try to step out of this “fitty/fitty” mentality and recognize that whatever you give you will get back.  It is important to set appropriate boundaries, however it is also valuable to be generous with one’s thoughts and actions.

In my practice, I try to help my clients understand that whatever thoughts or feelings that they are putting out there in the universe, this is what they are going to get back. If they treat their mother, partner or friend with disrespect, in one form or another they will be disrespected. If they move beyond the “fitty/fitty” mentality and give more of themselves, they will always get back much more then they expected.

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“beautiful things are transitory and fine times never last long”…

Posted on February 11, 2011 by Dr. Jenni

Like the Herman Hesse quote above suggests, everything one witnesses, touches, creates or takes part in…is only…temporary. The intricate pattern on a luscious leaf has a short life span before its edges harden, it turns colors and it falls to the ground. The memory of two five year old girls laughing and doing cartwheels on a bed of green grass fades into memory as their faces quickly mature and suddenly they are teenagers driving off in their fast cars. The coo of a newborn baby, her toothless smile and glimmering eyes staring at her adoring mother is but a snapshot that all too quickly is over in what seems like seconds.

What memories will you hold for a moment longer in your heart today before they slip away without any reflection or appreciation? What extraordinary things did you behold today that you can take pleasure in and revere? As I call her in my novel The Gossamer Thread, Source offers endless gifts that we can experience as miracles, or that we can simply overlook as commonplace, allowing them to exist without our gratitude. A man cleaning his window knocks down a spiderweb in a few seconds, which took the spider days, weeks, months to complete. An exquisite rainbow appears after an endless storm as two business men argue, completely missing the momentary splendor outside their office window.

Don’t miss the beauty outside your window. Look outside right now. Stand up. Breathe. Recognize that whatever moment you are in right now, whether it is one of grief, beauty or joy — it will be gone as quickly as it came. Each moment is one to be experienced. Most of us have gotten so caught up in the earthly world, driving from here to there, checking our emails, listening to the daily news, trying to survive, that we have forgotten how to really feel, sense and sink into our experiences.

If you take just a moment to back away from the chaos that surrounds you, the precious moments and hidden bits of  beauty will crystallize and become one’s to be celebrated and remembered.

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it’s the barks that one day we will miss most…

Posted on February 3, 2011 by Dr. Jenni

Wherever I go, she goes — her golden eyes tracking mine with supreme adoration and never-ending worship. Her name is Talula. Weighing in at ninety pounds, she curls her body into a tightly wound ball, sleeping between my husband and I, believing somewhere deep in her soul that she was not born a labrador but a devoted lap-dog.

When guests approach the house she goes ballistic — growling like a verocious pit-bull and barking like a mad dog.  After all, it is her job to ward off potential bad guys and keep her family safe.  My husband spends what seems like twenty minutes at the door attempting to train her. “No barking, Talula!” “Good girl.” “No Talula!” “Sit Talula!”  Visions of our guests falling asleep in front of our house drift through my mind.

Yet when all the play-dates scurry in, she is ready with three or four stuffed animals drooping from her mouth, waiting to jump into the fresh afternoon air and experience the thrill of being alive.

The other day when I was walking her (or rather she was walking me) I thought of a client of mine whose labrador had recently been put to sleep. She was suffering from cancer and there was nothing more the veterinarian was able to do.  It occurred to me as Talula pulled me passed the familiar houses in our neighborhood, that one day her zest for life would slow down and we would long for those crazy barks and leaps into the mid-day air.

As pet-owners, as parents, as people in a rush, we are often irritated by barks, tantrums, overly wild or inappropriate behavior, anything that interrupts us, slows us down or cannot be properly trained . “tiktok downloader” Yet these cries of enthusiasm, these moments of passionate emotion and flashes of endless laughter are the very things that one day we will miss the most.

In my novel The Gossamer Thread one of the main character’s, Steven is struggling with esophageal cancer. In the following excerpt, he takes a hike with his son Jordan :

Continuing up the mountain, they saw an adorable puppy running toward them, full of a keenness and zest for life that is only bestowed upon the youngest of creatures.  The dog ran right up to them, wagging his tail and burrowing his wet nose into Jordan’s hands. Giggling, Jordan patted the puppy.  They watched him run down the mountain just as quickly as he had sprinted up, his lanky legs pulling him forward as he parachuted past  the blustery sky at the edge of the trail.

Smiling, Steven closed his eyes, imagining the angel had sent this puppy straight from heaven to remind him that every moment should be experienced with such gusto. For the first time in a long time, he felt certain that he was meant to undergo his trauma to understand the joys and tender moments that one misses when they are not fully alive and present to life’s hidden delights.

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empty space

Posted on January 31, 2011 by Dr. Jenni

A baby cries. Her busy mother is unable to pick her up – right away. The cry intensifies. It fills the empty space around the infant with a pressing urgency. The mother rushes to finish her chores. The baby whales become more intense. This emptiness – it teaches the infant to tolerate frustration. And when her mother picks her up it shows her that she can trust, that she is loved and that the empty space is her teacher.

This empty space follows the baby as she grows. Either she learns to embrace and understand  it or she runs – filling the space with chaos, noise, distractions, addictive behaviors – anything to fill the void in which she (and all human beings) live.

What is empty space? It is the deafening quietness that hangs, that hovers around us. We feel it in those still moments as the motion of daylight drops, peels away and we are left lying naked, unmoving, silent before sleep overtakes us or as we awaken to the tangerine glow of morning.

If we can learn to embrace these empty spaces, we gradually discover the quintessential magic and teachings contained in this silence. And when we embrace these teachings, we can have an incredible impact on the world.

There is a passage in my novel The Gossamer Thread where the main character Feather is left lying in Isabella’s diary for many years, forgotten.  All of us experience this feeling of abandonment, neglect and loneliness at one point or another–and the empty spaces become black holes that tug at our psyches,  draw us into what could become a deep depression. Within this passage, the diary has traveled with her owner, Isabella to Johannesburg, South Africa during the Apartheid years . Feather becomes privy to radio broadcasts where she hears news of Nelson Mandela being imprisoned on Robben Island.  As she lies in the diary, she begins to draw parallels to her own imporisonment and that of Nelson Mandela:

Like Mandela who would remain in Robben Island for eighteen of his twenty-seven-years jail sentence, confined to a small cell with the floor as his bed and a bucket for his toilet, Feather lay for months on end between the empty cold pages.  Mandela, forced to do hard labor, was only allowed one visitor a year for thirty minutes and only permitted to write and receive one letter every six months. But he never gave up, somehow believing that one day he would be instrumental in creating a new democratic South Africa.  Inspired by Mandela’s determination and strength, Feather began to feel a renewed sense of purpose and conviction about her mission on earth.

***

Lying in this quiet place, Feather realized that part of her mission was to help human beings find this treasured still point of silence.  And once they had rediscovered it (for originally that is the place from which we all came) her task was to direct them toward delivering a message of peace and freedom—to respond to the call from the rabbi pinned up against the firing wall, to assist the political activist forging the road toward liberty for all races, to not sit idly by like her brothers and sisters and watch the blue-green planet spin and gyrate toward its death.

Feather thought: We must be active in our stillness. We must meditate and reflect and then act upon our reflections.  We must understand our role on earth and never take it for granted. We all possess the power of the gossamer thread, the ability to weave opposites together.  Yet, like the thread, we are sheer, delicate, fragile—our minds and bodies susceptible to negative, harmful messages, to damaging and destructive diseases.  And thus, we must be easy on ourselves.

It was at this moment that Feather relaxed, that she stopped wondering when Isabella would open her diary, when someone would rediscover her, for day-by-day and thought-by-thought she was finally discovering herself and her purpose. Each idea that she produced renewed her, making her delicate mind and body strong and robust, ready for whatever came her way.


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in every moment there is a web of possibility

Posted on January 28, 2011 by Dr. Jenni

Subtle Bodies by Dr. Jenni

 

 

 

 

 

One can sit silently in their thoughts and write a musical masterpiece, design a magnificent palace, paint a beautiful work of art, invent something miraculous, invite endless amounts of love, happiness, creativity, and inspiration into their lives. Or, one can sit silently in their thoughts and allow the vast, immeasurable ocean that occupies their psyche to slowly desiccate and whither away into nothingness.

Every moment that we are alive presents us with a web of possibility. Imagine yourself as a spider filled with endless proteinaceous spider silk extruding from your spinnerets, just waiting to create something magical. Will you let your precious silk sit idle within your body, mind and soul – tightly wound up inside of yourself with no chance of release? Or will you open up your spinnerets and let whatever juices are flowing in that infinite ocean create something magnificent  – whether that creation is a child, an idea, a creative work, a friendship, a fascinating conversation — in essence, something of which you are infinitely proud.

Do you know that when a baby girl is born she possesses one to two millions egg cells (oocytes) in her ovaries? At puberty these egg cells drop to about 300,000. Only about 400 of these eggs are released during a woman’s reproductive life. The many thousands of oocytes that do not mature degenerate.  Degeneration progresses more rapidly in the 10 to 15 years before menopause. All are gone by menopause.

Unlike the reproductive cycle, if we keep our thoughts active and alive, they will continue to grow and regenerate. However, if we spend our days staring into our television sets or computer screens, if we ingest addictive drugs and alcohol and numb and deaden our psyches, if we complain to our friends and partners day after day about the same, exasperating problems in our lives that we are unable to fix, these possibilities, like the oocytes gradually die.

In the painting above, Subtle Bodies there are what appear to be full-faced, colorful oocytes, jailed oocytes and blackened oocytes. Think of the full-faced oocytes as the ideas and creations in your life that have materialized and come to pass. The jailed oocytes as the ones that are still caged inside of yourself, that you yearn to birth but are unable to access. And the black oocytes as the ideas or creations that will never occur.

In my novel The Gossamer Thread a Holocaust survivor, Isabella houses hundreds of images of the Holocaust and Apartheid South Africa in her mind. She goes on to paint a wealth of paintings that are never discovered until after her death. And her whole life, she lives with these black oocytes haunting her soul.

What are the subtle bodies housed within your psyche that are waiting to be unleashed? Will you keep them jailed within your mind, body and soul your whole existence or will you have faith in yourself and release them into the world? In every moment, there is a web of possibility waiting to be discovered and shared. Do not let them degenerate and deteriorate before they have a chance to be born.

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What makes a relationship sustainable, connected and enjoyable?

Posted on January 26, 2011 by Dr. Jenni

illustration from Soul Mates (www.jennisart.com)

I have been seeing couples for over fifteen years in my private practice, the Center for Creative Psychology. During our first session, all couples sit on opposite sides of my couch, their arms crossed, their eyes averting one another, their focus – ME. From the get go, each person is desperately trying to convince me that their side of the story is right and their partner’s is just plain wrong. I watch this “back and forth battle” for a while, nodding silently to myself, knowing that the secret here lies not with my impressions of who is right or wrong, but in the couple’s ability to connect with one another, to become intimate – to emotionally touch.

We all have the innate need to be heard, appreciated and understood. In any relationship we are not going to feel 100% of these things all the time. I remember a client who came to me who had been married for about seven years. She had just recently had her first baby and was distressed that her marriage was not a happy one.  In one of our sessions she asked with much anxiety in her eyes, “What are marriages supposed to look like? Feel like?” Part of the reason she was so distraught was that she had the impression that being married meant you were supposed to be “happy” most of the time. During this session, we discussed the truth about marriage – i.e. it is not happy all the time. Both husband and wife come from different backgrounds, are navigating different career paths, have different emotional, spiritual and physical needs, possesses different parenting styles, etc. Finding one’s way through these differences without having the communication skills can create much unhappiness, anxiety and anger.

With Valentines day on the horizon, I felt the need to clarify some of the cultural hype (that we view through TV shows, the internet, music videos, etc.) that creates these false impressions about marriage and relationships. When we see these artificial images as well as other couples around us that “appear” happy, we immediately think that something is wrong with our relationship.  Instead of jumping to these conclusions, we must remind ourselves that marriage is not easy – it is a daily challenge.  Like a growing garden, it  is something that needs to be tended to on a daily basis.

When pruning our roses or planting new growth, we must treat our seedlings, flowers and plants with the utmost love and care. We must wonder: What do you need today? More water? More light? More attention? More care?  In the same way, we must look toward our partner and ask these crucial questions.

We are a narcissistic society, always needing and wanting what is best for us. From the time we are infants we crave affection, love and care. This yearning for comfort continues and is projected onto our relationships, onto those who are closest to us.

In my novel The Gossamer Thread the main character is a psychologist who is struggling with her own relationship issues. The following is an excerpt of her own thoughts after a difficult session she had with a couple:

I stare at the clock as they continue their assault on one another. They are both tired, worn out, depleted of their energy. All I can do is reflect back to them what they are telling me, empathize with how hard it is for both of them and try to reframe the negativity that is completely consuming their relationship.

I wonder if this is what I have to look forward to — this bashing, this condemnation, this never-ending judgment and blaming. I wonder if this invariable witnessing of unhappiness is what has kept me from getting married. The more couples I hear bickering and struggling in my office, the more I want to be single, solitary, traveling around the world, with no thoughts of ever settling down with another human being.

This psychologist has much to learn about herself, about her own soul and journey before she will find happiness in her relationship. As I always tell clients, “You can’t find your mate, until you find your soul.”

Thus, instead of staring outside of your relationship and complaining about what is WRONG, think about what it is that would make both you and your partner smile today. How can you enlighten your own self, your own soul – so that you are seeing the glass half full and not half empty? How can you provide your partner with more light, more attention, more care? This slight shift in your thinking, away from those things that are broken and toward those things that are potentially satisfying and whole will bring you closer to your soul and gift you back with the love that you so deeply crave.

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the smallest of creatures

Posted on January 25, 2011 by Dr. Jenni

The other day while taking a shower I noticed a small black spider hiding behind the calking, struggling to survive. Any slight splash would end his brief existence, pushing his ever so slight legs into the strong surge of water from above. Clinging onto the damp corner, he nervously waited for my shower to end, his fragile life waning before my eyes.

Turning the shower head away from his spindly body, my thoughts traveled to my father, a man with a similar philosophy to Mahatma Ghandi. A strict vegetarian and animal lover, my father would go to extreme lengths to ensure that all animals (and people) were treated with the utmost respect and admiration.

I can remember many times driving down a highway in the Midwest, watching my father pull over to the side of the road to remove a poor beetle or grasshopper that had unluckily flung itself against our windshield. If you were a bug lucky enough to cross paths with my father, your life would be wholeheartedly spared.

In my novel, The Gossamer Thread one of the character’s is based on my father, a man that I feel we all can learn more from. Growing up in South Africa he observed his mother, working in her rose garden, cultivating and caring for those gorgeous roses with the love that only a mother posseses for her young child.

Here is a passage about the character Michael from the novel:

Watching his mother cultivate her rose garden, Michael also developed a love and affection for the smallest of creatures, whether they were winged beings or creatures that hugged the earth. The birds, butterflies, bees, ladybugs, crickets, beetles, flies, ants, caterpillars, snakes, spiders, worms, snails and slugs all became his dearest friends as he attempted to see that none of them ever came into harm’s way. And if nature managed to work in her sometimes cold and indifferent way—a spider enveloping her prey in her delicate web, a helpless beetle turned on its back, he tried his best to bring order back to his mother’s rose garden, knowing that while he could never save every creature’s life, he would make his best effort to try.

Perhaps this subtle appreciation for and awareness of the fragility of life he developed as a young boy drew him toward becoming a pediatric radiologist, scanning for the tiniest of fractures in the delicate bones of infants, always striving to save their lives. From the inside out, his sole aim as a doctor was always to mend and repair, put what was broken back together, correct the problem and make it right.

Perhaps this love of putting things back together stemmed from all the things that fell apart in his world when he was a child.  He had watched his parents’ marriage slowly split apart, crumble and come undone. He had seen his country gradually collapse and break up, as the violence escalated and the racial tension mounted. And yet the rose garden continued to grow beautifully, the deep burgundy, pale peach, dark pink, yellow, red and white petals of the roses bloomed and flourished, magnetizing hundreds of winged creatures—butterflies, bees, hummingbirds, insects, birds. Beholding their splendor, the young boy learned that no matter how difficult life appeared—even if you were being threatened by a scorpion or attacked by a rattlesnake—there was always beauty and hope resting somewhere. Order and balance could always be restored and a connection to spirit attained.

But you had to be still and mindful to reach such a place. You had to attend to the subtle cracks and ruptures hiding beneath the unbroken wholeness of the garden—watering, fertilizing, planting, nourishing and paying close attention to the plants, flowers and creatures as if they were one’s own sweet and imperfect children.  Tending to nature from this place of non-judgment and stillness, one beheld the secret of creation—allowing imperfection to find its way, to grow, manifest, expand and thrive.

And then, backing away from the small details of the imperfect garden, as if he was a winged creature flying many miles above the plot of land, he gained a certain perspective, recognizing the importance of beholding the totality of the garden. From this vantage point, every damaged leaf or yellowed blade of grass blended in with every other flawlessly shaped leaf and perfect green blade and the image of the garden appeared magnificent, extraordinary.

From his time spent in the garden and his innate love for winged creatures, Michael began to learn the importance of observing details as well as the art of knowing when to release himself from the particulars, soaring far above the garden, the boy, the country.

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The Race of Innocence

Posted on January 25, 2011 by Dr. Jenni

The other day my five year old asked why different people have different colored skin. Ready to give my best answer to this innocent question, she followed by asking, “Why aren’t people’s skin blue, green, purple or red?” Her comment was so sweet it made me smile.

Shrugging my shoulders, I responded, “You know Bella – that’s a really good question!”

Perhaps she saw the above illustration to my story The Race of Innocence (you can read this story at www.jennisart.com) lying on my desk. Perhaps she thought this question up all by herself without the above image.  Either way, her simple question confirms the message in my story, The Race of Innocence:

The race of innocence stands still

And does not really know

Why  the world runs back and forth

With no real place to go

The children in their innocence

In their unknowing ways

Know more than we could ever hope

In all our living days

Part of my novel The Gossamer Thread takes place in South Africa during the apartheid years.  The character Isabella immigrates to South Africa after being persecuted in Germany during the Holocaust for being Jewish. Here is a short passage depicting Isabella’s worldview as she visits an “all white” restaurant where her husband works:

As she watched the white customers breezing in and out of the restaurant, and then noticed the two black teenagers outside staring sorrowfully in at her through the window, she had wriggled uncomfortably in her seat.  She was having a flashback of two Jewish teenagers in Auschwitz looking at her moments before they were gassed. One of the girls had slept above her the night before her death, and she had heard the young girl praying. Please let me see Mama again. Please let me see Mama. She was gone now, that beautiful young Jewish girl. Now as Isabella stared at the two African girls pressing their pinkish palms against the thick glass, she realized that the dead girl’s legacy of pain continued.  All around her in this conflicted country, the spirit of that Jewish youngster walked—a glassy-eyed rag-doll, her sallow face now russet and brown, calling out to those who had murdered her, and to those who continued to put her to death.

Rubbing her hand back and forth against her newly grown hair, Isabella silently winced, as she often did, thinking of how many Jews had been murdered, and now how many Africans were now being persecuted.

The novel deals with this difficult contradiction of being the Persecuted and then the Persecutor.

In the Race of Innocence a Purple boy innocently plays with an Orange girl until his father comes over and yells:

We must race, we must race

With people of our kind

Can’t you see little boy

You must not be so blind!”

The novel also covers the American Civil Rights movement, depicting the character Alice who is persecuted by white Americans for being an African American.  The message in the novel is similar to that in my children’s story:

Their blindness gives them honesty

Their laughter gives them hope

Their simplicty and truth tells us

The human race can cope

One day my daughter will grow up and learn all of the atrocities that have occurred in the history of the human race.  And as her education slowly unfolds. her child-like question will fade into her memory, replaced with the weight of our hatred and hostility for one another.

It is up to us in the education of our youth to uncover the truth of what has occurred in our history while at the same time offer other perspectives, other ways of interpreting and shifting these views.

At the end of the novel, the character Feather meditates on her journey thus far:

She now felt certain that it was her mission to take part in what she had heard Rabbi Isaac praying for before he was murdered by the Nazis: “tikkun olam, tikkun olam,” a Hebrew phrase that meant “repair the world, repair the world.”

Feather was just a gossamer thread, a sheer and gauzy feather that one would pass by unawares or step on if they were not ready to grasp her majestic powers.  Yet, through her journey on earth she had realized that it just takes one tiny feather to slowly make an impact on the world.  And if she was acutely listening to the pleadings and prayers of others, she would repeatedly be called upon to become part of the earths’ reparation, its tikkun olam.

Feather remembered how terrified she had been to leave her mother’s wing and how Isaac’s prayer had been more powerful than even the safety and warmth of her skin.  Isaac’s soft voice pulled her downward, magnetizing her toward his pure heart that had been so wrongly soiled and mistreated. And the tiny feather knew that if she did not act at that moment, tearing herself away from all that she knew, she could not live with herself. The time to act was now.

Through the earth’s atmosphere she fell toward his pleading soul, risking everything to come to his aid, chancing the very existence of her own being to provide him with reassurance that his dying prayer had been heard and honored. For Feather now knew that if any being did take the time to pray, to reach out beyond the earth’s surroundings into the realm of mystery, her mother and all the other Angels of Prayer who were watching over this tormented and abused planet—doing their best to maintain peace and balance in a world full of hostility, anger and hatred—would hear them.

And when she had looked into Isaac’s eyes before they went blank, she knew that he had felt that even in such an unthinkable Holocaust, there was still a power higher than himself watching over him.  And in the bony hands of Isabella, the feather realized that even in the most dire of circumstances, one must continue to hope and pray, for if they do they will eventually move out of such unthinkable conditions and be saved.


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