At 83 I'm almost past the pondering. When I think I can handle it, I read a few minutes of Eckhart Tolle's “The Power of Now”. It's on my bed.

I remember a period in my life (a short period). I had gone to a week-long family retreat at Asilomar, a yearly event for the Unitarian/Universalists. In a very large discussion group that had nearly reached it's end, I had a question. My question involved the family across the street from me, husband/wife/2 school kids/ 2 preschoolers. The man had a cleaning business and was reported to be an alcohol abuser, wife beater, child abuser. . . . My children and I were probably the last family to move into this street. At the time I had a full-time job as a medical technologist; my son was in kindergarden and at noon I picked up an elderly neighbor, a nanny for him for the afternoon; my daughter was in 2nd grade. Most of the time that I was home, I had my garage door open with a picnic table inside, plenty of wads of homemade playdough on the table, and plenty of “tools” for working the playdough. Once the garage door was open, the table was filled with kids on the block, say ages 3-13, pounding and/or rolling playdough, talking, talking, doing playdough. . . . I was seeing the families that lived on my street, not directly, but through the kids that came to play.

Back to the conference!. I had a deep concern for the children with the alcoholic father. I asked some related question of the leader, what could I reasonably do? Before he had a chance to respond, another person in the group, a black woman, gave a response, very deeply felt that I should definitely keep my nose out of their business. A considerable amount of noise rose up, meeting was over, people were leaving. But many people wanted to connect with me in the process. There were hugs; there were squeezes of my hands; there were little written notes placed in my hands. End of meeting. Somehow I was deeply affected. That afternoon I took a walk to the ocean beach, felt the mamothness of the waves, saw a few others in their beach wanderings; then I started back, somehow still feeling transformed. Someone came up behind me. I knew someone was there, but I didn't look around. The someone, a woman, reached around in front of me and put her hands over my eyes. Without jumping aside, I reached back over my head and squeezed her arms. A brief moment and she was gone ahead of me–names not exchanged. (later in the day I saw her and she said, “Thank you for being there.” . . . That evening I was able to go to the dance floor, music playing, and solo dance and encourage others to join in. . . .For the rest of the weekend I had this strange “out-of-body” feeling come and go, suspended and seeing others without being seen. . . . . . This feeling continued, gradually losing its frequency over the next 6-9 months. . . . . .In describing this to some, I have had it called a “peak experience”, here initiated by the “relationship felt” and likened to the peak experiences of Abraham Maslow.

If I hadn't been at that conference, I most probably would never have had that experience at all in my life. . . . . But consequently I value relationships more.