“In our first moment, we truly realize what it is to be alive./…We are more than connected.”

–More Than Connected, by Tito (https://store.cdbaby.com/cd/tito4)

On Sunday, I thought that my sudden need for caffeine and craving for a peanut butter cup mocha had drawn me away briefly from a family lunch to the café across the street. Really I should have known better. The intense pull came because I had to hear the song.

In the corner of the café, a singer from a local band, Tito, played guitar and sang “More Than Connected.” I ran to the bank for cash for the CD, paid for it and grabbed my mocha. Then, I went back to the family lunch, and after lunch we drove to Nicasio, a beautiful country drive, listening to the CD.

I have continued to play the song “More Than Connected” all week, even as I come back to complete the final edits of my first novel, in which Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” is a main theme. In my life, just as in my novel, the connectedness of everything and everyone in life comes together, in the great Hallelujah of it all. Our connectedness is a great miracle, from the smallest atoms to vast expanse of the Universe, so intricate and considerable, with most of it beyond the understanding of our minds. Yet, we understand more of it with our beings, and we have to listen to that intuition. It brings us to the right moments and the right people.

In listening to my intuition, I come again and again to the right moments and the right people. I also make many mistakes along the way, but I keep myself open to being, as the song says, “more than connected.” We don’t have six degrees of separation, we have what may be nearly infinite degrees of connection. That is what it means to be alive. More than connected.

Several times in the past few months this has proved true for me, just as it has all my life. It reconnected me on a deep level with a college friend, an editor who has now edited my novel. It brought me to meet a new friend who has become an inspiration to me as I write and who introduced me to an expert source for my novel. We went together on an incredible road trip to see wild horses at a BLM facility as part of research for my novel, causing additional connections. Writing my novel has brought about so many amazing connections, for which I am extremely grateful. Thank you to everyone who has helped along the way.

Being more than connected has additionally led me to, with what seemed to be a random coincidence, be in the same room with the daughter of my late mother-in-law’s best friend. The best friend who had dedicated her own novel to my late mother-in-law. Another connection is arising because of that one, or perhaps several connections as my world continues to expand.

Then tonight, I met a woman whose house burned down in the Santa Rosa wildfires. We shared our grief, since my son’s school burned down in the same wildfires. We spoke about the connections most of us in our community have to someone who has lost something or someone precious in the wildfires that tore through Northern California this month.

I did not tell her yet, but wildfires also feature in my novel, and wildfires had recently burned near the BLM facility that I visited with my new friends. On the other side, water features in my novel, as well. Two powerful elements that we rely upon, but which can also cause so much destruction. The world can be chaotic at times, and that chaos is as real as the connectedness of it all. We live in a reality of opposites, and of paradox.

What I did tell the woman whom I met tonight is that I would like to introduce her to another woman I know. They are both textile artists and couture seamstresses, and share further, more profound connections that I believe will make them great friends.

We can use our connectedness–indeed, our interconnectedness–for good. Let’s use it as bridges to help each other and heal each other. Let’s use it to help and heal our world.