Dahti, These are wonderful sharings. Your diversity of experiences makes your explanations not only easy to grasp but exciting too. It continues to affirm my hope that there is so much more of the essential that we share than divides us.

Meredith I loved your visual of the great spiral...what I see is that there is a place for everyone and no way for anyone to be left out.

Fiftyandfine, we've seen for too long how refusal to understand each other leads to hateful intolerance and deadly violence. Being willing to explore what in the diversity unites us has to be a better way. Like you, I find myself absorbing so much from so many, integrating into my own spirituality and finding a greater stability and more profound joy in doing so. It's as if there's no limitation to where our hearts and souls can soar if we dare to unchain them from our fear of the unknown and unfamiliar.