The word stranger denotes a living embodiment of that which is strange. But the word strange means more than being odd and unfamiliar. The word strange comes from the Old French, estrange, which means extraordinary. Ultimately, the stranger functions as an unexpected messenger who can embody or mirror what is extraordinary within us, what is possible but yet unlived.

The strange messenger is an extraordinary completing agent that disrupts what is familiar in order that we might grow; sometimes by mending us and sometimes by breaking down our walls. And whether it be someone who finally loves you for who you are or a fire that destroys all your paintings or the sudden appearance of a deer staring at you in the wet snow, the strange messenger serves as a catalyst that opens us to a deeper way of living. Whether embodied in an event or in a person or in a break in our comfortable way of thinking, experiencing the extraordinary brings us closer to the ongoing Unity of Creation of which we all are a part.

The strange messenger can arrive as a cloud or a brick: as a lyric of truth piped over your head in a restaurant, drifting into the center of all your confusion at just the right instant, or as a sudden wind that relieves you of a certain map, forcing you to find your way by other means. But inevitably, the presence of the extraordinary, whether harsh or kind, will reconnect us with the rest of the Universe.

In the twenty years since having this dream, I’ve been visited by many strange messengers, and each has been a bridge that has brought me closer to life. Each has turned me inside out in a way that has revealed the extraordinary waiting in the ordinary. Of course, there was my cancer. But there was, as well, my wheeling of Grandma Minnie into the sun in the courtyard of Kingsbrook Medical Center in Brooklyn, just months before she died. And the way Ann and Robert and I helped save each other’s lives. And the mysterious bridge by which Robert and I have stayed friends and Ann and I have not. And for my wife Susan and me, there was the strange messenger that was Mira, our furry dog-child who was a wordless angel for thirteen years. Mira bridged me more deeply into nature where I met my older self. And the blessed strange messengers that have been my books, teachers leading me across many canyons into a more wakeful life. And the long, delicate bridge that I have traveled with Susan, so real and sweet and long that the bridge itself has become a home.