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Quiet corners of the mind sometimes contain a tiny bit of humility.

Often they are filled instead with humiliation. When terrible things happen to a child, humiliation is often what we feel. When my dad was three years old, his job was to milk the cows. His family lived in southeaster Colorado in a dugout. They had no money to hire farm hands. That was a huge responsibility for a three year old. Then the dust bowl came. Great waves of dust as high as the sky rolled across the plains, burying everything in sight. My dad’s pet calf was one of them; the calf died of suffocation in the storm.

We were making pancakes in the kitchen. The syrup was almost made. The pancakes were sizzling in bacon grease. I was jumping up and down, eager anticipation rippling up my spine. At four and a half, pancake breakfasts required an extraordinary amount of patience.

Age ten brought a different story. We were gathered around the kitchen table drawing pictures. I needed a certain color of crayon. One of my siblings was using it. I waited awhile and they were still using it. Awhile longer, still using that color. I snapped something awful at them. Mom snapped back at me: “You are so impatient! You need to learn to be more patient.” I was humiliated, furious, then humiliated some more because she was right. I did need to learn patience. I hated it when Mom was right.

What is a soul gift? Soul gifts hide in the tangled web of life. My soul gift took the form of prayer. I prayed for help. I prayed for guidance. I prayed to get through exams and mountains of homework. I prayed to be a good person, to become a better one. These were my prayers in my teen years.

I prayed in my later years as an adult, too. I prayed for help to know who I was to be or what I was supposed to make of myself, for my path. I prayed to understand myself. I prayed for help with the problems I found there. I prayed to be a better person, the person I always meant to be.

Where do you go for silence?

The forest was quiet. You could hear a pin drop. Yosemite Valley was blanketed in a heavy layer of freshly fallen snow. A sound buffer had fallen on the valley, and we were the only human beings to venture forth that morning – such a rarity in Yosemite where the voices of fellow travelers mingle with the wind, with thundering falls, with birdsong. But this day was different.

I once lived in a cobbled state of being. I worked 11 hours a day, then worked some after that when life so required. My weekends were a structured affair: gardening on Saturday, laundry on Sunday. I spent some time with my family on the weekends, never quite sure that I had the time to be doing so, but feeling that it was important.

I came to see that this did not work out so well . . . this cobbled way of living . . .

The Sugar Pine Café, 2011, was just a block from our hotel.  I had been up in the early hours of the morning meditating.  I was learning about the energy system, learning how to find my own.  I learned something that morning, and I was eager to tell my husband.  The air was cool as we walked to the Sugar Pine Café.  Why do I remember this moment some fourteen years later?