Humanity's Team Canada - July 2006 Newsletter
The summer is upon us and we are feeling the pull to enjoy the warm weather while we can. Tending our gardens, taking vacations and relaxing in the sunshine. As a result, the newsletter crew will be taking a break for the months of July and August. In place of our regular assortment of articles we will be a two part story by teammate and Group of 1000 Information Coordinator Nannette Kennedy. The first part will appear in the July newsletter and the second part in the August newsletter. The story is about her recent experience of synchronicity while planning to attend and attending a Wayne Dyer lecture. A wonderful account of how everything that happens, happens for a reason. And how we may not understand at the time why things happen, but if we look closely are blessed to see why they do. Enjoy! See you in September and back to our regular format.
Synchronicity (Part 1)
January 6, 2006 Not every experience in our lives bears repeating-by a long stretch. Human nature, however, is such that we all are often compelled to remain noisy about those things that are inconsequential, at times even malign-the stories that should probably be kept silent. This experience though, is one that begs me for music and a voice to sing it loudly. This is a story of synchronicity. Many people believe our world happens in a random fashion. For me, this is incomprehensible, not to mention frightening. Fortunately, my mother raised me to believe that everything happens for a reason and happens just as it should. She would often remind me that this does not necessarily mean I will always know the reason. The thing that happens to me that I may not understand now, I may understand later, or maybe never. The things that happen to all of us are always a part of the bigger picture and not seemingly part of our own smaller picture-there really are no ordinary moments. In order to know this, we must all realize that if we subtract one instance, one moment, from our lives it would change everything. I think about Jimmy Stewart and his role as George Bailey in It's a Wonderful Life as a glaring example. When he is down on his luck and disappointed with his life, he wishes he had never been born. And just like that, Clarence, his guardian angel grants George his wish. The beautiful lesson here of course, is that George's life does matter and without him in the world he touches no ones' lives-nothing remains the same. One throw of a pebble in the water does change everything. It may take some time to feel the effect, but the ripples in the water carry energy, and that energy cannot be destroyed. I long for the time when everyone on this planet recognizes this fact. This is not a story of a string of disconnected coincidences. Simply, there is no such thing. This is a story of perfectly orchestrated synchronicities and how raising my awareness and truly seeing these instances as part of one fluid masterpiece have profoundly and forever changed my life. I know that anyone who reads this, will be left with a permanent imprint of the mystery in our everyday lives-and by "chance" you don't agree with the premises of this story, the question of the possibility will forever be with you. And that by itself is good. I suppose this story begins with Wayne Dyer, inspirational writer and author. One of his books, There's a Spiritual Solution to Every Problem "happened" into my life about five years ago. My brother-in-law had called me and told me that another brother-in-law of ours had just been diagnosed with a serious and rare form of cancer. He was only forty years old and the prognosis was grim. I received this phone call in the evening and I was away from home, alone at a friend's house high up in a remote area of the Rocky Mountains. I happened to be sitting on a bed and watched myself in the mirrored closet doors as I listened to the details of my brother-in-law's illness. My shoulders raised, my posture sagged, and I looked as drained of color as the white walls around me. After hanging up the phone, I pushed myself from the bed and began to pace. Within seconds I felt sick to my stomach, scared, anxious, and dark-that inevitable outcome of feeling boxed into a corner. "Go outside and breathe," a voice in my head pleaded. I stepped outside into the chilly November mountain air, inhaled deeply, closed my eyes, let my neck fall back, and lifted my arms from my sides, palms up. I opened my eyes, exhaled a visible plume of breath, and searched the sky. The stars' distance seemed further than I remembered. It was deadly quiet and this only exacerbated my helpless and isolated sense of doom. I walked back inside the unfamiliar house and rapidly felt as if I were sinking, that my brief attempt at treading the proverbial rough water was pointless. I sat down. I stood up. I wore a path from the kitchen to the living room genuinely not knowing what to do with myself. I cried. I turned on the television and wondered how even an actor could be laughing at a time like this. I turned off the television and headed back toward the kitchen. In the dining room on the table lay a book: There's a Spiritual Solution to Every Problem by Wayne Dyer. Oh is there? I thought cynically. I picked it up and "randomly" opened it up to page 143. The bold print read: Chapter 7, Lord, Make me an Instrument of thy Peace. This first sentence of the well-know prayer by Saint Francis of Assisi, caused my shoulders to drop. Instead of reading below the chapter title, I looked at the last paragraph on the previous page: Spiritual solutions mean you are an instrument for giving peace rather than demanding that you be given peace. This means coming to grips with the ultimate irony of a problem-free life, as expressed in the conclusion of the Saint Francis prayer. "For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life." Yes, we receive by giving, and this turnaround in thinking is essential to finding spiritual solutions. It begins with becoming an instrument of peace (142). Because I was raised in a household with six children, it should come as no surprise that my mother constantly pled with us children to become instruments of peace. Consequently, my feelings of some relief from the recent news about my brother-in-law, was two-fold: the mere familiarity of the message and the message itself. In order to find peace, I was going to have to be a conduit of peace. This was my introduction to Wayne Dyer. This was a new start and I heard the message. Over the next five years I read and reread this book and another Wayne Dyer book, The Power of Intention. I purchased the CD's of both books and listened to them so much that I actually had to replace them both. I made back-ups so that I wouldn't go broke replacing them. I have introduced so many to people to these books and CDs that I've been asked if I work for Wayne Dyer. My pat answer, "I work for God, as does Wayne Dyer." So last spring, I finally made the decision to attend a Wayne Dyer lecture. I'd first chosen the October Wayne Dyer conference in Dallas. For a myriad of "everything happens for a reason" reasons, I ended up changing my reservations to see Dr. Dyer in Scottsdale this past November. I need to backtrack a bit and add some history here to demonstrate the synchronicities which occurred prior to my arrival in Scottsdale. In August of 2003, I moved my then 8 year old son, fifteen year old daughter and myself from Fort Collins, Colorado to Kansas City, Missouri to care for my dying best friend, my mother. It is a decision I will never regret. My mother lived just short of a year after our arrival. Six weeks later we were preparing to return home to Colorado when my son was diagnosed with a serious kidney disease which caused us to stay on for another year in Kansas City. My young son was on 70 mg a day of prednisone for seven months-a fate, in hindsight, worse than the disorder itself-and the doctors told me the next step was chemotherapy. What put my son on the road to recovery was him talking to his kidneys and demanding that they heal and me deciding to wean him off this terrible drug. He believed that if Wayne Dyer's daughter could get rid of a chronic skin condition by talking to her "bumps" (p94, Spiritual Solutions) then he (along with prayer) could make his kidneys well. He has been in remission for several months now. During this extended and unplanned medical stay in Kansas City, is when I decided that I would somehow or another see Wayne Dyer in person. I needed a live "Wayne Dyer" fix, as it were, to get myself back into the spiritual swing of things. Just before moving back to Colorado this past October, I ran an estate sale for my mother's possessions, going through every closet, piece of paper, file, drawer, box, etc., in her seventeen room home to separate the seed from the chaff. This experience in and of itself is one I don't care to do again, but the actual selling of the family home of forty years was one of the sadder good byes I ever made. While I am the oldest of my mother's six children, I was the only one who did not permanently reside in the Kansas City area. Therefore, the trustee and executor of the estate fell into the lap of my brother-the next eldest. Quite unfortunately, my brother is an alcoholic, and consequently, has not dealt well with the death of my mother, the selling of her belongings or ultimately the family home. In a nutshell, there were many disagreements over the handling and sale of our family home. This caused a major division of the family-something none of us foresaw at all. For my part, I was deeply hurt through words, actions, and seemingly complete disregard for the fact that I uprooted myself and my family, not only with the intention of caring for my mother, but also of making sure we all stayed as close as we'd always been despite any familial "dysfunctions." In the end, I left Kansas City, angry and prepared to never speak to half of the family, particularly my brother and my godmother, again. November finally arrived, and my fiancé and I could hardly wait to get to Arizona to see Wayne Dyer and several other inspirational speakers at a conference called "Celebrate your Life." We also looked forward to a much needed respite away from family trauma/drama. Three days before we left, my laptop computer caught a heinous virus-I'm a writer and, silly as though it may sound, I wondered how I would survive the Celebrate your Life conference without my laptop-the repairman told me it was highly unlikely that he could get it up and running before my departure date for Arizona. Pens and a pad of paper would have to do-I somehow suspected the world wouldn't end without a laptop. Two days before we were to leave, the woman who was supposed to take care of my seventeen year old daughter while I was away, had a death in the family and could no longer help us out (my daughter has been struggling with drugs/alcohol and the law, and could not stay home unattended). I called my ex-husband out of state and asked him to please come up and stay with the kids. I re-explained how long I'd been planning this event. I reminded him that previously he assured me he would help out if anything fell through. He would not come. I became furious. He doesn't work and has the means to get to Colorado. I picked up the phone, called the airport and bought an expensive instant airline ticket for my daughter. I was not going to miss this event. I needed to take care of myself for a change-as is suggested by all airlines, I needed to put the oxygen mask on myself first so I could then help those around me. The night before we left for Scottsdale, the computer repairman showed up at my door with my fixed laptop. Delighted at this surprise, I placed it next to my luggage and smiled at how things worked out. On the morning of November 10, we stood in the baggage security area at the Denver airport. With my shoes going through the x-ray machine and my feet freezing, a guard asked me to empty the contents of my computer bag. While I was removing the computer and other miscellany, I noticed something sparkly in the bottom of the bag. It was a blue crystal rosary-origin unknown. It is true that I was raised Catholic, and am still very grounded in the Catholic Church. The rosary for me has always been reserved for wakes and funerals, and as a matter of habit, I never carry one. I repacked my computer case and didn't give the rosary another thought. We arrived in Scottsdale, Arizona later that afternoon. My daughter, my fiancé, and I checked into the Doubletree hotel, dined outside by the pool, and then returned to our room. My daughter and fiancé settled into a movie, and I unpacked my computer, turned it on and prepared to let the energy of the spiritual conference guide my writing. The computer turned on, but that's all it did. After nearly an hour of exercising the opposite side of my brain, trying everything to cause the computer to operate, I surrendered and put the computer away. My thought: I wished I'd turned it on at home because had I known it still wasn't functional, I certainly wouldn't have bothered lugging it with me. The next day was the day of pre-conferences. I had signed up for one, but my fiancé had not. My daughter wasn't registered at all. I told them they'd have to bond and bask by the pool while I was raising my energies with John Holland, another inspirational speaker. At lunch break, I returned to the room and my daughter was sitting on the bed wearing a conference badge around her neck. Honestly, my first thought was that she had stolen it. She explained to me that my fiancé had taken her to the registration desk for the conference and asked about the possibility of signing her up. The woman behind the desk told them they were sold out and on top of that there was a very long waiting list. They small-chatted for the next minute or so and during this time the computer beeped at the woman behind the desk. There had been a cancellation. She looked around, "Nobody will know you weren't on the list." With that, she sold the ticket to my fiancé and signed my daughter up for a weekend of seminars. My daughter was ecstatic. After a full schedule of conferences the following day, and the three of us floating around on spiritual highs, we had dinner in the room and then headed to the main ballroom with 1600 others to hear Wayne Dyer speak. Within a few minutes of him being on stage, he asked if there were any teenagers in the room. Naturally, I elbowed my daughter into coming forward, where he gave her and four or five other teenagers copies of 10 Secrets to Success and Inner Peace. She returned to her seat and was elated, "I can't believe I touched Wayne Dyer." Then Dr. Dyer began speaking about the 1994 Rwandan genocide-a wholly unexpected topic on my part-I was fully prepared to hear him speak on all the things I knew he had addressed in his books and on his CDs. At first, I quit listening. I was trying to figure out why I didn't recall this event. I realized that this was when I was pregnant and had lost my son's twin. My pregnancy was shaky at best, and I was consumed with continuing to carry my son. I tuned back into the story and the deeper Dr. Dyer delved into the story-I have no adequate words to relay the experience which ensued-the more I felt enveloped in a cocoon of mystery. It was physical, emotional, soulful-very "other" to any experience I've ever had before. And little did I know, that this was just the beginning. Along with many in the audience that night, I wept as I listened to Dr. Dyer speak. I felt his passion, absorbed his compassion. Because this lecture is so powerful, and the content such a critical part of this overall story, I include excerpts of it here: Wayne Dyer: Back in 1994 on the 6th of April, the president of a country in Africa called Rwanda, was in an airplane, and the airplane crashed to the ground. The president was a Hutu. The country is divided into Hutus and Tutsis. Ninety percent of the country is Hutu and 10 percent is Tutsis-it's a racial divide. On the radio the Hutus begin announcing and blaming the Tutsis for this plane crash and the killing of the president of Rwanda. They encouraged something that began a genocide, one of the ugliest things that has happened in the past twenty years, perhaps the last 1000 years. On the 7th of April in 1994, every Hutu over the age of 14, was issued a machete which had already been shipped in crates and was available . . . it turns out [Dyer had evidence from the UN and has read it thoroughly], that all of this was done prior to [the plane crash] in preparation to do this killing that was to take place over the next ninety-one days. The Hutus later went on the air and took responsibility for this plane crash. The machetes were issued. The spears were issued. And for the next ninety-one days in a country the size of the state of Maryland, with ten million people, the banks closed, all of the grocery stores closed, the schools closed and, the business for the next ninety days was killing. Women, babies, grandmothers- if you were married to a Tutsis, you were to kill your wife and your children and if you didn't, you would be killed, hacked to death. The encouragement was broadcast over the radio every hour on the hour. It was going on in the most hateful kind of description you could ever imagine and after ninety days, one million people, think of this now, and when you think of 9/11 and three thousand people dying, when you think of the tsunami, or the hurricane in Louisiana, a million people were slaughtered. Every dog in Rwanda had to be killed in July of 1994 because they had been doing nothing but eating human body parts for the previous ninety days. In the midst of this horror there was this young woman, named Immaculee, who was in college, 200 miles away from her village. She called her father, and her father persuaded her to come home for Easter vacation. She didn't want to go. She insisted that she not go because she had too much to do at school. Her father insisted she must come home. She took the long bus ride home. Now, traveling 200 miles in Rwanda is not the same thing as traveling 200 miles here in the United States. She got there on the 7th of April when the killing began and all the Tutsis began to head for the borders, and as they headed for the borders, massive numbers of Hutus were just out there hacking people to death. This was going on eleven years ago in our lives. And we knew it was going on. Not only did we know it was going on here, but in Europe they knew it was going on. Almost nothing was done, in fact nothing was done until ninety days went by and the French came in ultimately, and president Clinton called it the greatest failure of his administration that they didn't go in and do something-not that it was anyone's fault in this country or anywhere else. The killing was taking place. Immaculee was told by her father that she had to go into hiding. She went to a pastor's home and they had a little bathroom in the home about three feet by four feet. Immaculee and seven other women were put into this bathroom and hidden behind a clothes valet for the next 91 days. She was not allowed to say one word, not to say anything. The pastor had ten children and didn't tell any of them that they were hidden in this bathroom. The same clothes she was wearing in April, she was wearing in July. No one bathed. No one spoke a word. She went in weighing about 120 pounds at five foot nine, and came out weighing sixty-five pounds. In that time she was hunted by Hutus with machetes that she could see five inches from her and they never found this bathroom. There had been two to three hundred people searching this room over these 91 days and they never found her. She survived by something called faith that is beyond anything I had ever heard about. She has written a book about it called: Left to Tell, How I found God in the midst of the Rwandan genocide. [Wayne Dyer begins to read from Immaculee's book.] "I heard the killers call my name. They were on the other side of the wall. Less than an inch of plaster and wood separated us. Their voices were cold, hard, and determined. 'She's here. We know she's here somewhere. Find Immaculee,' they were saying. There were many voices and many killers. I could see them in my mind, my former friends and neighbors who had always greeted with me love and kindness, now moved through the house carrying spears and machetes. 'I've killed 399 in cockroaches, and Immaculee will make 400. It's a good number to kill.' A coward in our tiny bathroom, huddled in a corner, without moving a muscle, like the seven other women hiding for their lives with me, I held my breath so the killers wouldn't hear me breathing. Their voices clawed at my flesh. I felt like I was lying on a bed of burning coals, like I'd been set on fire, a sweeping wind of pain had engulfed my body, a thousand invisible needles were ripping into me. I never dreamed fear could cause such agonizing physical pain. I tried to swallow, but my throat closed up. I had no saliva. My mouth was dryer than sand. I closed my eyes and tried to make myself disappear, but their voices just grew louder. I knew they would have no mercy. My mind echoed with only one thought: If they catch me, they will kill me. They were just outside the door and any second they would find me. I wondered what it was going to feel like when the machetes slashed through my skin and cut deep into my bones. I thought of my brothers and my dear parents, wondering if they were dead or alive, and if we would soon be together in heaven. I clasped my hands together, clasped my father's rosary in them and began to pray, oh please God, please God, please help me, please don't let me die like this, not like this. Don't let these killers do this. You said in the bible that if we ask we will receive, well, God, I'm asking. Please make these killers go away. Please don't let me die in this bathroom, please. Please God, please. The killers moved from the house and we all began to breathe again. They were gone, but they would be back, many times over the next three months. I believed God had spared my life but I'd learn over the next 91 days, as I hid trembling in fear, with seven women in a 3 foot by 5 foot bathroom that being spared is much different than being saved. But I did learn it and it was a lesson that has forever changed me. A lesson that in the midst of mass murder, taught me how to love those that who hated and hunted me and how to forgive those that slaughtered my family. My name is Immaculee Ilabagiza, and this is the story of how I discovered God during one of history's bloodiest genocides." Ladies and gentleman, please welcome Immaculee Ilibagiza to the stage. Tears streaked my face. My mouth dropped as the mystery grew. This very beautiful woman came to the stage. I couldn't believe she was standing before me, and all I could think about was the line about how she learned to forgive those that slaughtered her family and that it made me feel that if she could forgive and not harbor anger about an issue of this magnitude, I needed to forgive my family-in essence, I had nothing to complain out. The mystery encircled me deeper into its folds. To Be Continued (Part Two next month)...