“I started a story one time about a woman who was living in a tree.  It seems she had accidentally moved there, having gone outdoors one day and just not wanted to go back in.  She liked living up higher and she liked that the tree cleaned itself.  She “grocery shopped” in her neighbor’s refrigerator when they weren’t home.

What she did most of the day is watch animals and wait to see what was going to happen next.  She also watched the people going in and out of the house she used to live in and from all this watching she realized that she didn’t know who she was.”

I wrote this in response to a prompt that spoke to me from Ann Tyler.  It was about a woman who woke up one day to find out she had turned into the wrong person.

In my job, I listen to people talk about what has happened in their lives. Some of it has to do with what they have chosen to do and some of it is stuff that happened that was not their choice.

They got married (or not), had children (or not), worked at jobs, went to school, made art, stole, traveled, laid around; all sorts of choices that carved a path that would not have been had they made a different choice.

They also got neglected, and abused, and misguided, and bombed and flooded and famined.  They got nurtured and instructed, bequeathed and blessed.

And all the while that this was going on, few realized they were becoming the person they were.

Until something happened.

I don’t know if it is immutably woven into the course of each of our lives that we will be presented with these moments of epiphany. Many believe that divine spirit operates in our life to provide such opportunities.  “Everything happens for a reason,” they say and perhaps it is so.  I have struggled with this as a useful faith especially in light of all the previously mentioned options that can send a person into a tree or into prison or into privilege.

But it does seem to be true that something always happens.  The rains come, we get arrested, we get elected (or defeated) and in those moments there are options for self-reflection.

I have had several times in my life where something happened and as a result my own internal engine held still enough to know something about myself.  It is how I came to know I was gay, how I knew I was an alcoholic, how I knew that while I was not the master of my own fate, I was it’s most avid participant.  I have called these moments grace not because I know where they came from but because I know they did not come from me.

These have been my moments of looking down from the tree.  Of waking up.  I am not certain they come to everyone, just as I am not certain if I will have anymore in my life.

But I can say my life is richer for them.