Grace can come in many forms, but is especially welcome in the form of our friends. For many years I have had a friend with whom I would go into and out of touch. A couple of years ago she re-entered my life as a consultant in my business at a very difficult time for me. I was hitting the wall in my life. After having had many wonderful spiritual experiences in my youth, I had turned toward the world, raised a family, and built a very profitable, but stressful and personally unrewarding, business. My life was as dry as the Sahara desert; my marriage was gradually disintegrating, my kids had grown and gone. My life had no center, no well of joy, no touchstone for my soul. When she reappeared in my life, in August of 2006, my friend was very valuable in completing a long-postponed project; but what she brought to the table, more than her tremendous intelligence and ability, was a great big heart. A few months after coming to work with me she met a spiritual teacher in Maui; she asked me if I wanted to come and meet her also. I was unimpressed, thinking that I already knew pretty much everything there is to know about spirituality, and everything else. Her energy, though, was intoxicating, and as I watched her transform over the next year, I began to wonder if life might still have light, and possibility.

In the midst of this, a little over a year ago my wife of 28 years gently but firmly asked me to leave. At the same time, my business began to fall apart. I felt myself slipping into a place where my life, regardless of how many years were left, was feeling over. But my friend, in her gentle, and very persistent, way, kept asking me to come to Maui to meet her teacher. Finally, last April, I came, and I found myself truly reborn. I moved to Maui in July, and I began to live my life in a very different way. I appreciate the grace in each moment for the first time in many, many years. I have an opening heart, and a very wise and wonderful spiritual teacher from whom I learn something every day.

It was my friend’s grace and love that brought me here. It was a miracle that she re-appeared in my life when she did, and a bigger miracle that she had the grit and the tenacity to bust through the wall I’d built around my heart and get me to wake up and live life again.

Richard–Maui, Hawaii

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