"i am a mental traveler..."

"A mental traveler
hasn't the need to eat or sleep..."

The experience I am sharing today includes another person's insights and words.  But this is really about my experience with what she shared. I am not attempting to interpret her experience or her conclusions.

That said,  years later I asked her if she wouldn't mind my sharing how her example had impacted me. That permission was given in hopes that it would lead to less judging of another person's experience, and a deeper trust in the presence of God. This is my best recollection of conversations that took place decades ago:

Today's inspiration isn't a song -- it is a moment from one of my favorite films of all time -- "Out of Africa." Karin is entertaining Denis Finch-Hatton and Barkley Cole, when Denis asks her about her life travels. She responds that she is  "a Mental Traveler."  I remember seeing this film for the first time in 1985 and falling in love with Isak Dineson as a writer, a woman, a dreamer -- and yes, a mental traveler.

I was madly in love with everything about this film -- especially its characterization of Karin Blixen. "Me too, me too" -- I wanted to say from my theatre seat. I, too, am a mental traveler. I, too, dream of Africa. I, too, have no need to eat or sleep -- just to dream in stories.

I didn't know how precious this insight - about mental traveling  - would be for me, until later. I'd grown up having known a beautiful active woman of my mother's generation. She was the kind of wife and mother one dreams of having or being. Hiking, riding, leading campfires -- she was someone I admired and loved. Her family called her blessed -- and so did everyone else I knew.

One day - after only having spoken by phone for years - I saw her at an event, and she was in a wheelchair. I was heartbroken for her -- and her family. I could only imagine all the things she would no longer be able to do. I also knew her as a devoted spiritual healer, and her situation seemed to scream -- to me, in my immaturity -- that there was something she had not healed.

In the meantime, I was also aware that her husband and children remained extremely active -- mountaineering, world travel, concerts, trips to see friends. I was so sad that she was not able to join them in many of these activities.

She was also someone I looked up to professionally as an experienced spiritual healer, and over the years, I had often called her to talk about our shared love for this work. One day, when we happened to find ourselves alone together, I asked how she was doing. She must have sensed my sympathy, and pressed me to be more clear about my concern. So I did.

I asked her how she was coping with being trapped in a wheelchair, and if she was disappointed that her "healing" hadn't happened yet. She looked at me as if I had absolutely lost my mind.  I could tell that my sense of her situation, was completely inconsistent with what she herself was experiencing.  When she realized what I was asking, she smiled, and then, leaning into the space between us and said, "Oh darling, I am exactly as I need to be. I love what I do, and now, no one expects me to do anything else. I get to be still, take calls, and pray all day."

I asked her if she didn't miss traveling, hiking, going places with her family. She was even more gentle with me as she explained that she was "a mental traveler," and that she prayed with her family - through every activity and adventure. She wasn't missing anything. And in this she was firm. She was content and happy. I was the one who was projecting my concerns about what I was seeing, onto the screen of her beautiful, peace-filled life.

I immediately understood that I had been mal-practicing her joy. Disappointment hadn't touched her at all. But it had distorted my own view of her situation, and what I thought happiness should mean to her. I was the one who was trapped in my version of things.  She was satisfied, free of concern, and at peace.

She would later explain to me that she had fully enjoyed her chapter as a physically active mother and wife. But that this was her current calling as a mom and life-partner -- to be completely focused on the spiritual support that she was giving to her family -- and the people who called her for that same spiritual support each day as a Christian Science healer.

I have never forgotten this conversation. What actually needed to be healed was my sense of what I was seeing -- not her sense of her experience. And I could not be manipulated by a false sense of things. I had the right  -- and the responsibility -- to see that God was with her, and that nothing had touched her ability to be true to her purpose.

In referring to Paul's epistle to the Romans, Mary Baker Eddy writes:


"It is ignorance and false belief, based on a material sense of things, which hide spiritual beauty and goodness. Understanding this, Paul said: “Neither death, nor life, . . . nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God.

This is the doctrine of Christian Science: that divine Love cannot be deprived of its manifestation, or object; that joy cannot be turned into sorrow, for sorrow is not the master of joy; that good can never produce evil; that matter can never produce mind nor life result in death. The perfect man — governed by God, his perfect Principle — is sinless and eternal.

Harmony is produced by its Principle, is controlled by it and abides with it. Divine Principle is the Life of man. Man’s happiness is not, therefore, at the disposal of physical sense."

This statement always makes me think of my friend. She taught me that nothing could have ever separated her from her right to be loving, grateful, satisfied. She taught me that it wasn't my job to assess a situation through the lens of what I believed things "should" look like, but to simply see God's hand in every moment. To trust God's all-power at every juncture in Life's beautiful, unfolding journey. To see only His love at the helm of each unfolding opportunity.  Opportunities that would serve to draw me high unto Him. And, above all, to do His will -- which we learn in I Thessalonians is:

"In everything give thanks;
for this is the will of God
in Christ Jesus concerning you."

I can do that. I can be grateful in every moment for the only thing that is true -- God is with me. I am not alone. Wherever I am, whatever my circumstances are -- God is there. For, as the Psalmist asks, "whither shall I go from Thy spirit, or whither shall I flee from Thy presence..."

I am a mental traveler -- whether that traveling is articulated in movement through geo-physical space or by leaps and bounds through the pages of sacred texts, through time zones and across continents or bridging the abyss between human hearts -- I am satisfied, complete and my life is divinely fair.

offered with Love,

Kate