I have had the great honor, in the past few months, to have worked closely with a most remarkable man -- one of the most courageous, resilient, tenacious, and committed people I have ever met -- Joel Metzger.

Some years ago, Joel was involved in a horrific car accident -- one that turned his life completely upside down (see his deeply moving story below). No one thought Joel would survive the accident and, if he did, that he would spend the rest of his life as a vegetable.

Against all odds, Joel proved them wrong. Summoning deep powers of will, intention, and healing, Joel was not only able to make it through this terrible trauma, but came out the other side with a gift for humanity -- his Peace We Need series of videos -- a heartfelt, creative expression of what it takes for human beings to access their own inner strength.

And now, Joel is looking for other people who have also found their inner strength so they can share their insights -- the message of their story - the gem -- via short videos that he will upload to his PieceWeNeed website.

Joel knows, from his own experience, that there are a lot of people in the world who have had to overcome all kinds of obstacles in order to get on with their lives. Tough stuff. Very tough stuff. And so, Joel is on the hunt for those people to come forward and, on video, talk about how they have been able to find the strength they needed to live their best possible life.

The preferred way of creating these videos is not by recording a selfie on your phone (i.e. lighting, framing, and timing issues), but via a Zoom or FaceTime session that Joel will conduct with you. Then, he will edit/excerpt the best 60 seconds of your interview. Joel is open to showing you his edited video and securing your approval before he posts it on his site.

If YOU can relate to Joel's journey and his quest to honor our very human ability to find the strength we need to thrive, against all odds, please contact Joel for details -- joel@pieceweneed.org

This is YOUR opportunity to speak your truth, share your insights, and be of service to countless others who, we hope, will be encouraged, comforted, and inspired by what you have to say.

JOEL'S STORY

"Imagine yourself in an unknown, unlit place. You are restless, but unable to move with control; alone, but unaware of what surrounds you. You have no desire to know where you are, your concern is of immediate senses. More than the pain you feel is the intense discomfort you suffer. You try to move to relieve the distress and need to move again. And again.

You are an infant, just born, but with a body full-grown. You are beginning life -- no past, no memories, no knowledge. Every sensation is all-encompassing: there is your body, and that's all; there is your arms, and that's all; there is your discomfort, and that is all. You do not know the day; you have no concept of time. You are not in blissful ignorance -- far from it, all awareness is of the physical. In the physical exists only physical pain. The mind which could know of any other thing is lifeless.

Anyone else would see you are in a hospital bed, bandaged and barely conscious. Tossing. Groaning. A nurse walks in the room. The nurse leaves. Time stretches on. For you, there are no thoughts and little awareness outside of total concern for body. You have no purpose, nor do you wish for purpose. There is only immediate distress.

Yet part of you is safe...

This is where I have been. I know only what others have told me: a late summer night, driving alone down my street, going home, my car passing over a bridge. I was going thirty-five, the other car ninety. I must have seen it coming, they have said, as I crossed over the bridge.

Perhaps I slammed on the brake, perhaps I had no time. The other car jumped the median, flew across the bridge, and collided with me head-on, tearing off my roof, and dragging it a block. The other driver was killed instantly, along with his passenger. I was pulled from my car -- broken jaw, lacerations, and severe head trauma.

An existence without conscious thought was the best my family was told to hope for, "The rest of his life in a nursing home ... irreversible brain damage ... never speak again ... no functional activity."

My mother was told, "Pray for a miracle."

One friend fainted on seeing me lying amidst the medical instruments, tubing, and support systems. The brain injury would most likely be fatal, coupled with the high fever and brain fluid infection. There was little hope. My wife was given the remains of my wedding ring -- bent metal, glass, and blood.

For two months I lay unconscious, while my wife lived in the waiting room. People brought her meals and comforted her. Friends gathered around my bed and sang songs to wake me. The small party was an unusual sight for the ICU.

So people tell me, but I recall nothing. Once my home was in another city, I know, and my career was different. There are even vague memories of that past lifetime: my wife and daughter, my job, our house and backyard pool.

Again, imagine: you are alone, far alone and solitary. There is sadness here, with no thought; pure emotion, with no concerns. Here is heartbreak without the story, a single frame from a movie. Every second gauges your distance from every person and every care. Far from you is the mass which is your body. All has been taken, you are left with nothing, and you are impotent to act. You have no thoughts, and cannot know of the lack. The cry from a sad song is heard with no music or lyrics. You are left with only your life's skeleton. The flesh that had filled your moments is gone and you are in a vacuum, unable to think even one comforting thought. Each thing that has given you joy, and all you cared for, has gone, but the caring has not.

Imagine: you are sightless, falling from an airplane. You do not recognize the contents of the large pack on your back. It is heavy and massive; you are far too frightened to wonder.

You are a lone diver, deep in the sea. You are in the black, with no glimmer of light. The ocean's floor stretches without end, and water fills all space in all directions. Your depth underwater is not known. Life hangs on a tether stretching to the surface, the thin line carrying air.

You are lowered further into the unknown darkness, leaving the cares and the people who have accompanied you every minute of your life. You cannot cry. Your heart sinks as if weight pressed your chest. Slowly you are dropped to the ocean floor, and there you are deserted.

This is the bedrock, where each person will come, as the movement of life winds down. Here the action turns slower until its motion is imperceptible and all else is taken away. Once you were happy that people befriended you. Now you have no company. The people are over there -- far away. You stand alone as if abandoned. But it is not they who leave. It is you. You go where no one can follow. You are alone.

Yet a baseline remains that can never be taken, the common ground of all moments and events. A part of you is safe.

I slowly recovered. The miracle came. After two months my coma lightened and I drifted in and out of restless dreams. I was flown to another city for rehabilitation and there my earliest memories begin. They are not the recollections of a joyous blessing. I remember pain. In my memory, I was pushed and dragged. In reality, I was nursed and cared for.

I could not sit in my wheelchair. I had to be tied into it so I would not roll out onto the floor. I hated that -- unable to speak, accustomed only to bed, forced to sit. Nurses left me to go about their business. Frustrated and furious, I banged my feet against the floor. Let me out! Let me lie down. I beg you.

I could not drink. I had no swallow reflex, so doctor's orders: no liquids. A spelling board was brought to me, to point out letters. My first word: "THIRSTY." That spelling board was my only communication. Once I asked a visiting friend to pass the urinal. He interpreted the letters as, "You are in a hell?" I laughed so hard that my request was almost too late.

My condition improved. I learned to speak and would soon be walking and learning a new career. Finally I was to go home to live with my family. The seven months in rehabilitation had seemed forever.

Then came a second tragedy, as devastating as the car accident: two months later, my wife left me. To her I was a different person. I was awake by this time. Wide awake and conscious, and I remember it. For weeks I wept. I was a new person, alone and barely recovered. More than ever I needed help.

But the crying was not endless. Mine is the opportunity that everyone wishes for: "If only I could do it over again knowing what I know now!"

Now I can walk. This is new, a dance of triumph -- hard to learn, harder to relearn. I must consciously synchronize weight shift, gait size, foot placement, balance control, and arm swing. How many people recall the delight that is every baby's? I remember the day I took my first three unaided steps. Now, every step is a celebration.

The prognosis was wrong. Never speak? No functional activity? More than ever I talk and function. They said I'd live in a nursing home the rest of my life. Ha! One friend said, about the prognosis that I would be like a vegetable, "You're doing better than any broccoli I've seen." No one who sees me has any idea from where I have returned.

A favorite joke of mine: "You only live once." Truthful is the sentiment, ironic is the statement. I have lived twice. I began my second life after the two accidents: of my car and of my emotions. I have come to the edge of death, then to the brink of emotional ruin -- closer than almost anyone to experiencing reincarnation in the same lifetime.

In my life, suddenly, the rug was pulled from beneath me and life was stripped of thought and action. There remained only the necessary: myself alive. I was without a body I could command, a personality I could call my own, and a memory I could retain.

And all the while, a cord held me. I watched life rebuild someone, myself almost dead, into a real living person, my new self fully whole. I fell to the bottom, where I lay flat, and saw time stretch out in the distance, and said, "No one can go lower. From here one can only climb uphill." As I ascended, I knew this lifeline. Now I have returned.

Once again, imagine yourself: a newcomer to this life, isolated and vulnerable to surroundings. You are exposed, open to harm, yet part of you is safe...

Along with your fragile condition imagine the vital thread that will continue. You feel its unbroken cord sustaining you. You stand on a foundation of stone, the life in your body, but now without the physical and mental capabilities that were yours. Still you feel the power that will persist. As you fell, you recognized the massive pack on your back to be a parachute. It broke your fall, letting you down gently. In place of your identity, you now lie on ground common to all. A bed of rock supports you, warm and smooth. You are able to stand and walk.

Here you go, right to the edge of existence. That thread will follow you to the end, as always. The thread defines safety: that which survives intact. Now, for all your days, for all you do, for however long you exist, you will know. You are held by life and you are safe. You are safe."

Joel's PieceWeNeed website
Joel's email address: joel@pieceweneed.org

Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 09:35 PM | Comments (0)

There are three kinds of storytelling in the world: oral, written, and visual. Of the three, oral storytelling is the most common, having been around since the beginning of time. That's how our ancestors ensured their survival and passed on their wisdom to the next generation. In time, oral storytelling morphed into written storytelling -- not exclusively, of course, but as simply another way to convey vital information and wisdom that needed to be shared.

In the 1800's, for example, two brothers, in Germany, collected more than 200 folk tales from their homeland and published them in a book we now know as "Grimm's Fairy Tales." In the process, however, the two brothers, Jacob and Wilhelm, edited the stories quite a bit, according to their own values, and the stories changed.

This is not at all surprising. All stories morph when told and retold. Stories constantly change, based on the memory, mood, personality, interpretation, values, and the communication style of the storytellers who tell them.

The facts upon which a story is based? Changing all the time. And that is not a problem. Because story telling, as a communication medium, is less about accuracy than it is about meaning. Indeed, as Frank Lloyd Wright once said, "The truth is more important than the facts."

And so, dear storyteller-in-waiting, know this: As long as you are not in a court of law vowing to "tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth," it is perfectly fine to tell a story you've heard (or read) in a different way than how you originally heard or read it. That is, as long as you honor the underlying message/wisdom of the story. You see, the main service you are performing, as a storyteller, is bringing water to the thirsty. The shape of the container is secondary.

In the spirit of the Grimm's Brothers and millions of storytellers since the beginning of time, it is my great privilege, now, to share a story I heard, three years ago, in Mexico, from a tour guide named "Carlos" -- one of the most animated storytellers I have ever encountered. The story Carlos told me blew my mind so completely that I was certain it must have been a famous story and written down somewhere. It wasn't. Googling revealed nothing except a few icy cold, biographical facts about the story's hero -- none of which even remotely sparked the power and glory of the tale I was told.

Can I say with 100% assurance that Carlos' telling of the tale was a perfect recounting of the historical facts? No, I cannot. But for the purpose of your own, future storytelling, it doesn't matter in the least. What matters is the message embedded within the stories you tell and the impact they have on the people who have good fortune to be on the receiving end.

Ready?

In the 18th century, in the heart of Mexico, there lived a small group of priests in service to Jesus Christ. Like most men of the cloth, these priests had a hierarchy -- an organizational structure that helped them get things done. The eldest were the organizers and decision makers. The youngest took their orders from eldest. One of the younger priests, an especially animated young man named "Felipe," was rather troubling to his superiors, insofar as he was always asking questions, looking up to the sky, and had an unexplainable smile on his face most of the time.

He was, in a phrase, a thorn in the side to his elders, serious fellows who were always, it seemed, more interested in the letter of the law than the spirit.

And so, one day, the elder priests hatched a plan to get Felipe out of their hair. With great gravitas, they called him into their office and explained that he had been selected, out of all the priests, to perform a very important religious function -- one that would honor the life and teachings of Lord Jesus Christ himself.

Every day, the priests explained, Felipe would be given a large wooden cross to carry for a distance of many miles into the wilderness. Upon arriving, he would stop, pray, and then begin his way back to where he had started that day. This journey, the priests went on to explain, would be a re-enactment of what Jesus had endured and would help Felipe and, by extension, all the priests of his order, get more deeply in touch with God.

Of course, to the head priests, this exercise was nothing more than a way to get rid of Felipe for the day. But for Felipe, it was a gift from God. He was totally ecstatic that he had been chosen and couldn't wait to begin.

And so he did. Each day he would pick up his cross and walk for what seemed like forever into the wilderness -- just him, his sacred mission, and the hot sun overhead. A lesser man might have collapsed under the weight of the cross and the seeming monotony of this spiritual practice. But not Felipe. He loved it, gaining strength and inspiration with each passing day.

Two weeks into his mission, a band of breast-plated Spaniards, on horseback, approached him, having noticed his daily cross-carrying ritual and the undeniable fact that, unlike them, he had never once been attacked by the Chichimecca, a ferocious indigenous tribe that was picking off the Spaniards, one-by-one, and decimating their numbers.

The Spaniards had a deal to make with Felipe. Each day they would give him a few gold and silver coins if he would protect them from the Chichimeccas -- a deal that sounded to Felipe as if it was coming straight from God, especially since he recently had a vision of building a church in the wilderness and had no idea how he was going to pay for the materials.

And so, he accepted the Spaniards' offer, using most of his sudden good fortune to pay for building supplies, giving the rest of the gold and silver to the priests when he returned home at the end of each day.

And so it went. Months passed. Years. The priests got richer and Felipe's church grew taller. All was right with the world. Except one thing. The lack of water in the region made it impossible for Felipe and his indigenous helpers to build the church year-round. With no water to make adobe bricks, they were forced to wait for months until the rainy season began -- not an ideal scenario for a man on a mission, a cross on his back, and a constant smile on his face.

A problem? Not to Felipe. Guided by unseen forces and his trusty divining rod, he soon discovered an underground spring nearby. With nothing but his bare hands, a few primitive implements, and his Chichimecca helpers, Felipe dug until the water was found. Not just any water, however. Mineral water. Healing water. The kind of water that people travel hundreds of miles to bathe in.

Now, with no more need to wait for the rainy season to begin, Felipe and his helpers moved into high gear and, in time, completed their project -- a beautiful church, hand-built, a testament to the power of love, faith, collaboration, and fearless dedication.

Imagine, if you will, the look on the faces of the priests who had originally sent Felipe into the wilderness, when they joined him, one fine Spring Day, on his cross-carrying walk. There, rising up from the ground in the distance, rose the church now known as the Sanctuary of Atotonilco -- the church Felipe had painstakingly built with his own two hands and the help of others drawn to his mission -- a glorious testament to faith and virtue, built one brick at a time, in service to God and the transformative power of love.

Today, the Sanctuary of Atotonilco is a World Heritage site, a sacred destination for as many as 5,000 people per week who come to pray and do penance. And some of these pilgrims, the lucky ones, get to listen to Carlos the Tour Guide tell the story of the priest who found God by leaving his place of worship each day, cross on his back, to build his own.

FOR YOUR REFLECTION: What does it mean to be "man of God" or a "woman of God?" Who knows? Different people will answer the question in different ways. But one thing everyone can agree on is the power of STORY to provide the kind of pregnant pause to even consider the question in the first place.

The story of Felipe, I am sure, has gone through hundreds of changes since the first time it was told -- each storyteller embellishing it in their own way. What I can say, with great certainty, however, is that the version Carlos told me is not exactly the one I have just told. And if you decide to retell this tale, it will, undoubtedly, change again. So be it. Such is life. The facts and details of the story may change, but the wisdom embedded within it will remain the same -- how a single, inspired human being can make a profound difference... how love, faith, and perseverance are three of the most powerful forces in the world... and how surrendering to one's true purpose can work miracles against all odds.

Jesus Photo by Fatih Ozdemir on Unsplash
Hands Praying Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash

The Sanctuary of Atotinilco
Excerpted from this book
The author

Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 03:46 PM | Comments (0)