“Trust I Must”: Another Act of Surrender
There’s a scene in my novel The MoonQuest where the four protagonists stand in a circle in the middle of the ocean, held afloat by the magic of the “kolai” stones they clasp in their linked hands. Their situation is precarious, yet as long as they hang onto those stones and remain physically connected, it seems they will be safe.
Clearly, though, something has to shift. After all, they can’t hold that position indefinitely. Besides, they are urgently needed elsewhere, at the far-distant Castle Rose, under siege by brutal forces.
Then, something does shift. M’nor (the moon) tells them that the only way they can get to the battlefield in time is by flinging their kolai into the center of the circle. Unfortunately, as soon as they unlink hands, they begin to sink. They immediately grab for each other’s hands again and, relieved, bob back to the surface.
Their relief, however, is short-lived.
“You do not trust,” M’nor said. Disappointment shaded her voice. “You must either trust or abandon the quest. The choice is yours, but time is short.”
Yet how can they trust? One of their number can’t swim…not that it would help if he could. There is no land in sight.
“What will happen?” Fynda asked. …
“You either trust or you do not,” M’nor stated. “There is no halfway in between.”
Trust. It’s a key theme in The MoonQuest. It’s a key theme throughout The Legend of Q’ntana fantasy series that kicks off with The MoonQuest. It’s key theme in my Sara Stories novels. It’s a key theme in my writing courses and workshops and in the Muse Stream technique I teach writers, so it’s a key theme in my books on writing. It’s a key theme in my other books too.
Not surprisingly, it’s a key theme in my life. It has been particularly key in recent days, which is why that MoonQuest scene has been playing in my head pretty much nonstop.
It has been so long since I’ve shared an update about this open-ended odyssey of mine, the one that started in January 2023, that you could easily have assumed that I’d landed and that my life had returned to something less mobile.
I haven’t, and it hasn’t.
In the nearly 28 months since Kyri and I drove out of Sedona, AZ with most of what I own in the back of my Prius, I’ve logged more than 70,000 miles, traveled through 15 states (most, multiple times), and called three of those states my legal home. If most of my nights have been spent in hotels and motels, I have also done a bit of housesitting and pet-sitting and spent five months negotiating water outages, wonky heating and various other challenges in a parked travel trailer in Payson, in the heart of Arizona Trump country. At this writing, I have been in the Phoenix area for two weeks.
I can’t even begin to chronicle the countless miracles that have kept me going through this time of financial and pretty much every other kind of uncertainty (although I expect to in an upcoming book I’ve tentatively titled A Lifetime of Miracles: A Memoir of Magic and Manifestation). My friend Sander keeps reminding me that the most dramatic miracle of all is that I’m still going.
He’s right, of course, although that overarching miracle has been nearly impossible for me to acknowledge this past week. I’ve been too busy freaking out. You see, just about all the money I managed to save during my low-rent months in Payson is gone, and the specter of losing everything and being forced to live in my car has felt paralyzingly real.
If you’ve read my Pilgrimage or Acts of Surrender memoirs, you’ll know that I have experienced many financial crises over the years. Somehow, I’ve managed to navigate to the other side of every one. Somehow, I have always been taken care of, even if that “care” has often shown up in ways I would not have consciously chosen for myself.
How? Miracles. Lots of them.
This past week, though, it felt as though I had run out of miracles. Not the smaller ones…like the free month of the Acorn streaming service that showed up just as I was about to cancel for lack of renewal funds, the generous Starbucks card gifted to me by the friend who also took me out to dinner, or the $100 hotel deposit that found its way back onto my credit card many days before it was meant to.
Mercifully, those smaller miracles keep showing up. And I have to continually remind myself to be more grateful for those than to be fearful at the lack of the visible big ones that I’m counting on to keep a roof over my head.
Those reminders were harder to hear, and heed, this week.
This week, I kept seeing myself as The MoonQuest’s Toshar, Yhoshi, Garan and Fynda sinking into the sea. This week, I kept wondering how far I would have to sink before I would be “saved,” as they are in my story. And would I be saved? Just because I wrote it in a story didn’t meant it would translate into real life, my real life.
“You must either trust or abandon the quest,” M’nor tells my protagonists.
“I trust,” Garan shouted. He pulled his hands free. Again, we began to sink. Water lapped at our shins as we aimed for the light.
The stones hissed then fizzed as they hit water and disappeared. It seemed we were destined to follow them. Water splashed around our knees, our thighs, our waist. Fynda and Yhoshi clutched at my hands.
I shook them off.
“No,” I said. “What will be will be.” I was no longer afraid. Warm and womb-like, the water massaged me and I relaxed into it, even as it rose up my chest, past my neck, mouth, ears, eyes… I held my breath until I could hold it no longer. And then something solid beneath my feet pushed me back up. When it broke the water’s surface, I saw that we stood on a black marble disc veined with red: the Kol Kolai, the Table of Prophecy.
Toshar, Yhoshi, Garan and Fynda find a way to trust. But as I told Sander earlier this week in tears, I wasn’t sure I knew how to follow their example.
Not long after that conversation, two conventionally inexplicable delays triggered a lightning flash of an aha, and the beginning of my own shift.
Here’s the first…
For days, a technical glitch had been preventing me from cashing in rewards points for Visa gift cards. I had earmarked those cards to pay for Kyri’s heartworm medication, to get the stitches in my finger removed and to renew my Albuquerque UPS Store mailbox (my only mailing address)…all of which needed to happen before the end of this week. What was odd about the glitch was that, apparently, I was the only one experiencing it. The folks at tech support were trying to fix the problem, but they were stymied.
And the second…
An instant Zelle transfer appeared to have vanished in transit. It was sent Monday (the day I began trying to get those Visa gift cards); by Wednesday morning, it was still MIA.
My initial reaction was fury. I felt abandoned and betrayed. Even the little bits of money that could buy me a few more days were being held up. WTF!!
Then, I got it, and my anger evaporated.
It was my fear that was blocking those “little bits of money” from getting to me. It was my lack of trust that was holding up both the Zelle transfer and the gift cards.
You either trust or you do not. There is no halfway in between.
No halfway in between.
I took a deep breath, then another, then another. There was no halfway in between. Somehow, I had to find the courage and inner strength to trust. Somehow, I would. I felt my panic melt away and, like Toshar, I felt calmer than I had in days.
That was Wednesday morning. By Wednesday evening, the Zelle funds were in my bank account. By Thursday morning, the gift card issue had been resolved and I was able to pick up Kyri’s medication.
The renewed flow didn’t stop there: By Thursday evening, I had my first registration for my June Writes workshop series.
You must either trust or abandon the quest.
Look for The MoonQuest on my website, in paperback and ebook from major online booksellers or as an audiobook (narrated by me) on Audible and Apple Books
The call to trust is clear, as clear as it has been through every day of the past 30-plus years. Yet the problem with trust is that it’s a moving target. Every new time we are called to trust, the stakes are higher. Of course they are, or there would be no need to trust.
In my life today, the stakes have never been higher.
Of course, I have said that before. On many of those occasions, I doubted my ability to keep going. Each time, though, I managed to transcend my fear…if only barely enough to muster up the required level of trust.
How? I didn’t think I knew, even as I typed the question. Now, maybe, I do…
By continuing to be grateful for the small miracles (another showed up as I was writing this).
By continuing to remove my focus from tomorrow’s worries and return it (as quickly as I’m able) to today’s gifts.
By remembering that “trust” is not only what I teach but how I have lived for nearly half my 70 years.
By recalling all the fears I have transcended over the decades, and by recognizing how far I have traveled — from the boy who ran from his creativity and hid from the world, to the award-winning author of more than 20 books and to the coach and counselor publicly lauded as “a master, one of the great teachers” by the Unity minister who was herself a great master and as “the best friend a writer ever had” by a writer whose work I respect and admire.
By following Step 6 in my book The Way of the Abundant Fool: "Act as though and make it so.”
By remembering that it is less about affirming that "I can do it" and more about recognizing that I am doing it.
Moving forward, I may not manage to remember even some of those points in every moment. Yet having written these words, at least as much for me as for you, I know I’ll remember them more often than I have in recent days.
Even with that, can I sustain the level of fearless surrender I gave to Toshar? I’m tempted to say no, but that can’t be right. If he has it, so must I…somewhere. For I cannot give my characters a quality I lack, however deeply it might be buried..
I’m reminded now of two more lines from The MoonQuest. They occur early in the story. Toshar has been told that it is up to him to initiate the prophesied MoonQuest that will restore story to a cruelly silenced land and light to its darkened moon.
“What if I fail?” I whispered.
“What if you don’t?” O’ric replied.
And, a short time later…
“Feel your fear. Then pass through it to the other side, where your destiny awaits.”
Toshar does, and he grows into a magnificent destiny. If he can do it, so can I. And whatever is going on in your life, in these disturbing times so eerily foretold by a MoonQuest I began writing 30 years ago, so can you.
As I mentioned above, I have now been in the Phoenix area for two weeks, and I’m feeling pulled to stay...at least for a while longer. Landing here (or anywhere), though, will take one of those big, visible miracles I talked about.
There are many ways you can be part of that larger miracle…
through your thoughts, ideas, suggestions
through your words of encouragement
financially by buying my books or courses, signing up for a coaching series or workshop or making a financial contribution **
in some other ways that I haven’t even considered
Whatever form your support takes, it needn’t be the “big miracle.” After all, a whole bunch of smaller miracles could easily add up to a big one!
Regardless, do reach out. Through all the challenges and joys of recent years, your expressions of support and encouragement have always been among the miracles that have kept me going.
** I accept donations through Zelle (via my cellphone number), PayPal, Apple Cash (iMessage via my cellphone number), Facebook Messenger or credit/debit card (contact me for details)
