Episode 1: Spiritual Beginnings with Jonathan Livingston Seagull

Today I’m going to talk a bit about my early experiences with spirituality outside of church and I’ll share details of a book that has influenced me from my teen years through today. As you may know from my Episode 0 about my life, I was brought up Catholic. But my parents were very open-minded. They taught me never to hate, or look down on anyone, and they were very loving. My uncle was a math teacher and deacon in the Catholic Church. During my 9th grade year we lived with him and my aunt as my parents searched for jobs and a house to buy. While there, my uncle introduced me to the ideas of the mystic Edgar Cayce, described as a clairvoyant who understood the connectedness of all things. He could apparently enter a trance state during which he would answer questions related to healing, past lives, and dreams. I found this all very interesting, but never followed up on it, as one of my teachers told me that Cayce wasn't considered someone to be taken seriously. 

During this time I also read Jonathan Livingston Seagull, a novella by Richard Bach. It's a story of unconditional love and learning to find the joy in life. It's the tale of a seagull, Jonathan, who experiments with flying in ways that no other gull of his flock does. Most gulls fly to eat. Jonathan eats to fly. His parents and the rest of the flock disapprove as he spends more and more time alone, pushing himself to fly higher, lower, faster, slower, and with more style. When he finally surpasses the fastest speed a gull has ever flown, he finds he cannot control the landing, crashes into the ocean and is knocked unconscious. He awakens floating, humiliated, wanting to die. He resolves to return to the flock and be one of them, giving up on his dreams...but on the way, inspiration strikes and he realizes how to control his flight at the end of a speed run. He actually ends up flying right through the flock at top speed and roars back into the sky. With a renewed spirit, he flies higher, dives faster, makes mistakes, learns from them, and pushes on, discovering new, exhilarating aerobatic moves. Thinking his flock will be happy to learn from his discoveries, he returns to them, eager to share what he has learned, to show them that there is so much more to living than squabbling over fish. Instead, the elders of his flock shame him for his "reckless irresponsibility" and "violating the dignity and tradition of the Gull Family," whose only purpose is to eat and to stay alive as long as possible.  Banished, Jonathan goes off to live alone, but keeps practicing and learning new things, like how to dive for fish, climb above heavy sea fogs, and sleep while flying. At the end of a long, fulfilled life, Jonathan is taken by two radiant gulls to a place where there are gulls who think as he thinks, and have skills beyond even his own. Jonathan suspects this is Heaven. After a time, he gets up the courage to ask the eldest gull if this IS Heaven. The gull replies that Heaven is not a place or a time, but perfection. He says that when Jonathan finds the perfect speed of "being there", he will have touched heaven. He must come to know that "his true nature lives…everywhere at once across space and time." Jonathan quickly learns the skill of moving instantaneously from place to place, goes on to moving between past and future, and then is exhorted by his elder, whose time has come to move on, to master kindness and love. Jonathan stays on for a time, teaching others what he has learned. Then, with love and kindness in his heart, he returns to his earthly flock to help a new outcast reach his spiritual potential. 

That is where my book ends. I hear that the author wrote a final chapter many years after the book's initial release, but you'll have to discover that on your own. (You can find the new version on Amazon . As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases made through this link.)

This book really touched me. I kept it for more than 30 years. Last year I found it on a bookshelf and re-read it and realized that I've come full circle. My life had taken me from my teenage years full of love, curiosity, and wonder, through anxiety and despair, and back to discovering the connectedness of all things and the truth of a life of love. 

My message to you is: Never give up. Be yourself. Find what you love and do it. Share what you have learned with others. And always do so with love. 

Do you have a favorite story that has stayed with you or affected your life in some way? If so, please share!