Twenty-five years ago, on September 11, 2001, I was in Paris with one of my dearest friends, Elynor Johnson.
I had arrived the day before after teaching at a conference in London, ready for a holiday in one of my favorite cities.
But when I woke that morning, I felt an unusual sense of anxiety and foreboding. Elynor was feeling it too.
Something called us into a small chapel, Notre-Dame de la Médaille Miraculeuse, dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary. We sat, prayed and meditated.
It was while we were there that the first plane hit the World Trade Center.
Suddenly, New York felt impossibly far away.
I desperately wanted to go home, but there was no way back yet. The borders to the USA were closed.
A few days later, during the Jewish New Year- I was invited to a Tibetan Buddhist Empowerment for The Green Tara in the Arab quarter of Paris.
Sitting there surrounded by people from a completely different spiritual tradition, I realized something I have never forgotten:
Spirit has many languages.
Sometimes, when our familiar structures disappear, comfort comes from places we never expected.
A week later, I returned to New York. The fires at Ground Zero were still smoldering, and I could feel the collective trauma everywhere.
But I could also feel something beautiful.
People were reaching for one another.
Strangers checked on strangers. Neighbors helped neighbors. People brought food, offered comfort, sat together and listened.
We were trying to make sense of something that made no sense. And underneath it all was a primal human need:
To see and be seen. To connect. To comfort and be comforted.
A few months later, I experienced another moment that has stayed with me.
On June 1, 2002, I had the extraordinary honor of officiating the wedding of Jules Naudet and Jacqueline Longa at Engine 7, Ladder 1, the firehouse in Lower Manhattan where Jules and his brother had been filming a documentary about a rookie firefighter.
The firefighters had transformed the firehouse into a sacred space.
At the last minute, we realized we had forgotten the bowls for the rose petals.
Then Battalion Chief Pfeifer took off his helmet. The other firefighters followed. They filled their helmets with rose petals.
I will never forget that image. Men who had experienced unimaginable loss were creating beauty.
In the midst of devastation, there was still room for love.
Twenty-five years later, we are living through another time of tremendous uncertainty. The circumstances are different, but many of us are carrying our own forms of grief, disappointment, fear and old wounds.
Sometimes we don't even realize how heavy they have become.
Lately, I've been thinking about the ancient Egyptian image of the heart being weighed against a feather—the feather representing truth, lightness and alignment.
It makes me wonder: What are you carrying that you're ready to put down?
An old resentment?A disappointment? A story about who you are? A fear about the future? A version of yourself you've outgrown?
Because when we lighten the heart, something else becomes possible.
There is more room for inspiration. More room for creativity. More room for intuition. More room for love.
This is the inspiration behind something new I will be sharing with you soon: Heart Like a Feather
A sacred journey of releasing what has become too heavy, reconnecting with our deepest source of wisdom, and making space for healing, creativity and what wants to emerge next.
May we remember without being defined by what happened. May we honor what we've lost without losing ourselves. And may we have the courage to release what is ready to be released.
With love,
Barbara