^{I am a Tao follower.  Not the tao of pooh, or the tao of leadership, nor the tao of needlepointing.  I understood the rough, unhewn edges of Tao when I was a small child.  I did not know its name.}

<sup>The Book Appears

I was eleven years old, walking with my family through Chinatown in San Francisco with five dollars to spend. We were drawn into a small shop by its strange, exotic smells; smells of ginger, smells of musk, smells of the deep red roses grandmama kept in her potpourri jar.

Amidst the little Buddah statues and the straw pointed hats was a tube with Chinese writing on it. Inside were yarrow sticks, and a small book called the I Ching. I found the litugy confirming my beliefs. The woman at the cash register smiled shyly for the first time since we had entered her shop.</sup>

^{Mother, an atheist, was unsure of the purchase and tried to talk me into getting one of the pointy straw hats. She must have recognized it to be an "unscientific game of chance" and would not have allowed me to buy it, had I not had my own money. She called it a "Parlor Game" and made fun of it, yet somehow I knew it would be a key to my spiritual growth.}

^{I read the little book and touched the sticks with Chinese characters engraved on them, feeling the smooth, varnished wood with the tips of my finger, wondering what they had to say to me. I felt their strange energy as we traveled through Oregon, Idaho, Utah. Wyoming, and finally to the Black Hills (Pahasapa) — where we called a large house overlooking Hot Springs our home.}

^{Mother insisted I keep the "game" and the little book in her closet, under the auspice that I might lose them and then want to buy more.  We were not allowed in each other's rooms, the Big Rule, so I needed to ask her when I wanted to "play" with my newly found answers.} 

<sup>Learning The Way

I had known the answers before reading the book and it was so wonderful to find them written down, like discovering the recipe for the butter cookies your mom makes only at holiday; but knowing and craving the taste in your mind throughout the rest of the year.</sup>
 

<sup>Rubric

Sick children with near-fatal chronic illnesses do not have questions about spirit.  We know it and have seen it with our very eyes.  My Knowing came in form of a winged white horse. She appeared at mother's window whenever I was hooked up to the oxygen tank and gasping for breath.</sup>

^{Mother didn't notice when I flew through the window and on the back of my beautiful horse, forgetting the oxygen, never feeling fear, flying over the sacred Pahasapa — breathing air through gills instead of lungs.} 

^{Later, I was told that I blacked out from not enough oxygen. ( My beautiful flying horse had dropped me off and told me to be strong and stay ready for our next adventure.) I would be in a see-through oxygen tent watching distorted images of people in white rushing around me, my mother on a chair fast asleep with a weary look on her face.}

^{I saw those spirits, those views of shimmering people who were not in other people's line of sight. Sometimes people would walk right through the shimmer, and come out with a glistening aura around them for a few minutes; only to return to their same empty shells a bit later.  I had no fear of going "over" because then I would get to be the sequined people with no stitches; the clear jello images with sparkly things on the inside and out.}

^{Why would one fear being so beautiful and getting to make people glow when they stepped through our light?}

<sup>Knowing Spirit Without Fear

I follow the way as if there were no other road, no turn signals, no exits.  This path is mine.  Putting the words for it in mother's closet was no deterrent to learning non-action and listening to the wind and snows.</sup>

^{I watched my oldest sister plan to go off to college, mother beaming and other sister crying; it was not my way.  I knew I would learn and grow and change and follow the only path, that I would study and teach and love and hurt and always stay on the path.  No scholarship, no babies at age 18 for me.} 

^{When the way shows itself, I step in its direction.  I do not call this "following the Tao."  This way has been my life.}  

^{Lao Tzu wrote the Tao Te Ching, the book has been translated by many women and men in many languages in the world.} 

^{My translation is the vision of the river — always changing, always flowing, finding source, always filled with life.} 

^{Is there nothing more simple?}

find your way home 

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