When I was eight, I lost my most precious possession, a rubber ball I had purchased with the first dollar I ever earned.  It was the size of a volleyball, pink and smooth and soft. I liked to bounce it on the sidewalk and show it to everyone I met. I'd tell them the story of how I'd helped my mom with housework and she'd given me a whole dollar and I'd used it to buy my very own ball.

     A few weeks later, I was visiting Nana in New Jersey and we went to a military picnic and clam bake. Women in bright dresses and hats served potato salad and buttered corn on the cob at picnic tables.  A brawny man with a crew cut pulled clams out of a huge, steaming vat and opened the shells with a knife.  Nana showed me how to season them with lemon and dip them in butter and pop them in my mouth.  I liked the rubbery, ocean taste of the clams and went back for a second helping. 

     I met other kids by the lake and we played dodge ball with my pink ball late into the afternoon. Then, without warning, the sky darkened and a storm rolled in with gusty winds and rain.  We had to pack up and leave quickly, but I couldn't find my prized ball. I cried out in anguish while the adults grabbed my arm and shoved me into the car.  This was my first experience of how the winds could rise and carry away something precious to me.

     Back at Nana's house, I just couldn't believe that I had lost my most prized possession. "I'll buy you another one," Nana had said, but it would never be the same. That pink rubber ball meant more to me than a mere child's toy.  It represented independence and self-reliance-the belief that I could make my own way.

     With knots in my stomach and tears rolling down my cheeks, I bolted up to the bedroom and opened the drawer with my grandmother's Bible, a book I knew she regarded as holy.  At that young age, I wasn't quite sure what religion I was supposed to follow.  My mom had been raised a Catholic and my dad had been Moslem, but neither practiced nor taught me anything about the religious beliefs of their families.  Nevertheless, a part of me had always felt that a spiritual being I could neither see nor touch nor hear had created me and protected me.  

     I ran my fingers across the worn, brown leather Bible cover and asked for a sign.  Flipping it open, I pointed to a line on the page and read: In the Lord, put your trust. (Psalms 11:1)  Upon reading these words, a loving feeling washed over me, like I was being embraced by angel arms and reassured that everything would turn out okay.  Breathing a sigh of relief, I sprinted down the stairs to find my grandmother.  I informed her that my ball would be found, that the Bible said so.  Within the hour, a friend called and said her teenage daughter had found the ball and she would bring it to the house.  On that day, I learned to ask for help and to trust that it would be provided, but how or what or by whom was still a mystery.  

     In my youth and early twenties, I explored numerous religions, but nothing ever really stuck.  I always wanted to know what other groups thought or practiced or believed.  I couldn't accept the idea that one group had the whole truth and everyone else was wrong, or confused, or infidels, or a cult, or going to burn in hell for all time. I wasn't content with one book or one set of beliefs or practices.  To limit my thinking for religious purposes was like living in a cubicle and not being allowed to look over the wall and see what was going on outside.  I wanted to think for myself, to study, to analyze and to practice without inhibitions.  Why would God only accept the practices and prayers of one particular group and not others? An omniscient God couldn't be that petty, could he-or she?

     I finally concluded that I just didn't know and floundered in a spiritual void for a time.  But when I was diagnosed with a serious illness and reunited with a childhood friend, I cracked and fell to pieces.  Deep, buried emotions erupted to the surface, shaking me to my core. Propelled to seek answers and find inner peace, I tumbled into a spiritual adventure that exploded my concepts of reality and opened me to a brave new world where souls talk, trees emit energy fields, rocks have life, and God is everywhere.