My sister gave me Paulo Coelho’s new book, Aleph. It’s a good book. But the first page blew me away. As I travel this path, this soul promise of working with what Anthony Murphy   calls” the original and divine race of Ireland” …  well, let me just share what Coelho wrote.

Oh, no, not another ritual! Not another invocation intended to make the invisible forces manifest in the visible world! What has that got to do with the world we live in today? Graduates leave university and can’t find a job. Old people reach retirement and have almost nothing to live on. Grown-ups have no time to dream, struggling from nine to five to support their families and pay for their children’s education, always bumping up against the think we all know as “harsh reality.”

The world has never been as divided as it is now, what with religious wars, genocides, a lack of respect for the planet, economic crises, depression, poverty, with everyone wanting instant solutions to at least some of the world’s problems or their own. And things look only bleaker as we head into the future.

What am I doing here, trying to make my way in a spiritual tradition whose roots are in the remote past, far from all the challenges of the present moment?

What am I doing here?
What am I doing here?
What am I doing here?
What am I doing here?
I’ve asked myself this question so many times. But I don’t ask it anymore. And it turns out birds had the answer…