THE INSPIRED HEART

The following is an article I wrote for Issues Magazine reflecting a visit with a dear friend, Jerry Wennstrom.

I stayed with Jerry Wennstrom, for a week, at his home on Whitby Island and was moved with how, Jerry, the author of the Inspired Heart, lives his life in profound simplicity filled with joy, love, playfulness, and delicious meals. Jerry says, “it’s not so much about knowing, it’s about living into the love we feel for other people.” I love this and loved experiencing this for myself...it’s not so much about knowing, it’s about living into-breathing with-the love we feel for other people.

n Jerry’s life, incongruity was experienced I believe, as a message from God a profound message manifested over fifteen years. As his book and film portray, Jerry left his life in NY— leaving everything he knew behind. He burned all of his art, gave away all his possessions and spent the next fifteen years in a state of surrender. These years changed the way Jerry experienced himself, the way he experienced others and the world around him. It changed the way he engaged his art, his life, and the way he began to engage his spirituality-through creating and living his art, through relationship with himself and through relationship with Marilyn, as well as through his openness to community and community with all sentient beings.

My favorite Parabola author, Helen Luke, wrote, “Each of us, as we journey through life, has the opportunity to find and to give his or her unique gift. Whether that gift is great or small in the eyes of the world does not matter at all— not at all; it is through the finding and the giving that we may come to know the joy that lies at the center of both the dark times and the light.” After spending three days with Jerry, I believe that his gift to the world is himself!

Jerry Wennstrom’s experience and his life are extraordinary. Jerry is capable of sustaining and living within unconditioned awareness - he is living and breathing with the mystery. Since my visit with Jerry, my new mantra (borrowed from him) whenever I come face to face with a challenge, a judgment, a desire, a pain, or a longing is, “This too is God.” Over the entrance to my home I have a plaque quoting Jung, which reads, “Bidden or unbidden God is present.”

For more information on Jerry Wennstrom and his wife Marilyn, please visit his website at www.handsofalchemy.com