Seeing Your Story from Behind and Ahead

Today I am working on my book proposal for the book I've been writing for about 8 years, The Blessings Ledger. There are so many parts to a book proposal, it's easy to get overwhelmed. I am trying out bringing my deep life into every aspect of my work, so this too will be touched by a deeper prayer than just "getting it done" or "I don't want to do it but I'll force myself." I know how to write from the deeper Self, listening, nurturing, trusting it to unfold. What I want now is to live from the deeper Self, every moment's worth, everything I need to put my precious attention to.

I have chosen, of all the parts of the book proposal that I need to address very soon, to write synopses of the unwritten chapters. Being who I am, there are a lot of chapters. It's a long story. Happily for everyone concerned, I've parceled this story out into three volumes. But I still need to indicate that I know where the whole story is going. Thus, the chapter synopses for chapters I have not yet written.

I procrastinated a bit--it's 2:30 in the afternoon, and I did other things this morning, where I suppose I could have made myself take a flying leap into the book proposal straight off, still in my bathrobe. But I'm here, and I'm willing to be here. The difference between how my sometimes less than kind mind holds what I am doing, and the reality of what I have already done, is a teaching for me today. That is, I've already synopsized many of the chapters, written and unwritten, both. And as I look at what I've done already, I am moved, with great compassion as well as interested, by my own story--where I began, what I have lived out and lived through, and where I am now.

This book is about a journey to bring compassion into my dealings with money, out of a soul need to have all of me available for loving as well as financially surviving. It was a long journey. It starts with early childhood, and at some point touches on my being on the Board of Directors of my Credit Union, and a juror whose learnings from keeping what I call a "Blessings Ledger" helped me tip an unfairly weighted case in favor of the defendant. And more, much more.

Perhaps the short of what I'm saying right now is that seeing the trajectory of your journey from behind--from where you are now, looking back--can breed amazement and compassion, not only self-criticism and regret. Looking ahead--the forecasting required by the convention of book proposals (What will you write about that you haven't yet written? Where is this book going?)--is a guess and a prayer, and, for me, a realization that things can change utterly in the doing. But looking back with kindness is a blessing. It shows me how something within us--call it the divine, God, our deepest caring--manages to come through and take us, throughout all the seeming failures and fallings, closer and closer to who we really are; further away from the image we seek to present, in order to prove we are worthy, and closer and closer to who we are. And in that intimate process--the same as for writing from the deeper Self as for living from it--we have the openness and yearning and capacity to bring us to a place of holy gratitude just for being alive, for being this unique expression of the incarnated divine, falling and learning and sharing the journey, and giving of our hearts as we go.