The Meteor Shower

I was seven-years-old the first time I traveled aboard a commercial airliner. My parents had joint custody, so during the summer of 1986 I flew out to visit my father in the quiet little town of Medford, Oregon.










We went camping at a beautiful state park on the river and I had a lot of fun playing with the other children who camped in the trailer next to ours.

When it was time to go, my father drove me to the airport and put me on a plane headed for Los Angeles. I would not see him for another 23 years...

Eight months into sobriety, having moved out of the Oxford House, I was living with a friend of mine. We were homeless together and we got sober together.

I was sitting comfortably at my computer desk one night as I typed my mother's maiden name into the search engine. I pressed enter and there she was.

I can't remember how many times I had tried this before with no success. I hadn't talked to my mother in four years. It was a miracle. I got in touch with her in no time. She had been searching for me everywhere, chasing leads all over town.











Before long my relatives were emailing me, sending me heartfelt messages and helping me get in touch with other members of my family, including my older sister who left home when I was thirteen.














Turns out she lived just five minutes away.



Sometime later, I was reunited with my father, who lived on the very same street as my sister! Can you imagine? The whole time my family was right here in Portland waiting for me. That got me thinking.

His whole life, Einstein asked himself and others if the nature of the universe was random and chaotic or if there was a natural order?



Well, I'm no Einstein, but I'll say this...














Life is chaos. We bump into one another like small particles in a meteor shower, and the choices we make can do great damage. But when the dust settles, there we are, polished like a smooth stone that's been lying motionless for hundreds of years at the bottom of a river. Out of the chaos, a natural order unfolds and defines our lives, until the next meteor shower comes along and wipes it all away.