Pattern & Presence

A reading in June 2022 set a thread in motion. Following it brought me to the Gedatsu Spiritual Center in Sacramento and into a relationship with a family spiritual history I had barely known.

What emerged was a new way of seeing the connections among ancestry, attention, and my own unfolding path. This extended story includes photographs and links to recorded readings, offering more of the experiences explored in Pattern & Presence.

Just when I thought the dragon journey was complete, another invitation appeared: Chikubushima, a small island in Lake Biwa, Japan.

This second story follows that thread to Japan, where travel and spiritual inquiry meet. It continues the exploration of ancestry, relationship, and the ways a symbol can change what we notice.

Elaine is part of the spiritual explorations recounted in Pattern & Presence. Her offering here brings attention to the relationship between personal identity and family history.

In What’s Your Real Name?, Elaine and a collaborator created a video for a discussion of the intergenerational effects of the Chinese Exclusion Act. Through her original artwork, photography, and family archives, the video invites us to consider what a name holds—and what we discover when we listen more closely to the stories behind it.

Watch Elaine’s Video

Artwork, photography, and family archives: Elaine Chan-Scherer. Music: Dionne Kohler, “Beloved” (2024) and “The Sun Rose” (2019), www.spiralmuse.band.

The button below opens the full panel discussion.

Brynn was the one who first thought of the Center for Spiritual Life. Her idea helped open a place for the explorations and relationships that would become part of this book’s story.

As a poet, Brynn also explores ancestry, memory, and the lives we inherit. Her project Dear—“You Are Missing,” created in collaboration with Densho, brings together letters and poetry addressing the Japanese American incarceration and intergenerational healing.

Her work offers another way of listening to the past and considering how it continues within us.

Don proposed that we go to Hawaiʻi to look at his property as a possible retreat site. On that trip, I dreamed of the Integratron—a moment that helped inspire the journey to Joshua Tree.

An invitation to explore one place had opened a path toward another. Looking back, I can see how a practical conversation about a retreat site became woven into a much larger story.

Don also appeared in my dragon journey through artwork he created before I had told him that story. His images offered another unexpected point of connection.

An architect, artist, and storyteller, Don explores consciousness and the mythic imagination through The Shaman’s Doorway. His work invites visitors into the creative world of Cyclops and its questions about family, play, and how we inhabit our lives.

One of the pleasures of this season of life is discovering where old friendships can take us next. Peter Wenner is married to an old college friend of mine. When they joined me on a trip to Joshua Tree, our shared journey opened another avenue of curiosity.

Peter was particularly interested in the story of a rock musician who had died at the Joshua Tree motel. Amid the desert landscape and our spiritual explorations, he was drawn to a piece of musical history attached to this particular place.

I appreciate how people can visit the same place and find different doorways into it. Peter’s curiosity offered another way to encounter Joshua Tree—through music, history, and the stories a place holds.

Since retiring from Silicon Valley, Peter has been exploring history and music through his writing. His interest on that trip offers a fitting introduction to his work: an invitation to follow curiosity into the past and consider what it might illuminate about community and our lives today.

Tammy Langowski has been one of the most valued intuitive resources in my spiritual searching—and a friend. I have returned to her many times for guidance, often leaving with a phrase, an observation, or a possibility that became a clue. What I did with those clues remained part of my own work of attention and discernment.

For more than a year, Tammy came to Aldersgate through the Center for Spiritual Life. She taught meditation, invited us to explore intuition, and offered brief readings. Some sessions brought together as many as fifty people. I saw how deeply her encounters could touch people; for some, they became life-changing moments. She was also the primary presenter at one of our first Gatherings of Community.

One memory still stands out. During a workshop Tammy led, Cyd—a Nisei with a deep interest in metaphysics—volunteered for an intuition exercise. She left the room while an object, a crystal as I remember it, was placed for her to find.

When Cyd returned, she walked directly to its location. Then she stepped away, apparently unsure what to do, before returning to the same spot. The room filled with excitement. She seemed to have found the object by following her intuition.

I cannot tell you exactly how that happened. But I remember wondering which surprised me more: that she had found it, or that Cyd had been willing to try.

That question has stayed with me. Sometimes discovery begins with a small willingness to step beyond what we already know about ourselves. Tammy helped create a space where that willingness could emerge.

This story did not make the final cut of Pattern & Presence, but it belongs to the lived world behind the book: friendship, curiosity, an unexpected moment, and a question whose meaning continues to unfold.

If you have read Pattern & Presence, you have already met Tiffany. Her full name is Tiffany Klemz, and her presence in those pages reflects an ongoing relationship that has been deeply helpful in my spiritual journey.

I have returned to Tiffany regularly for readings and guidance. The dragon story includes several of those encounters, but the story of a journey can sometimes draw our attention toward what happened next. Here, I want to pause and acknowledge the person who has helped me along the way.

Tiffany offers psychic mediumship, card readings, and intuitive coaching. In my own experience, her guidance has offered clues and possibilities to consider as I continued searching. A reading is one moment; what follows may unfold through reflection, another conversation, or an experience whose significance becomes clearer only later.

That is part of what makes a continuing relationship meaningful. I have been able to return as my questions developed, bringing the experiences of one season into the conversation of another. Her help has been part of the journey as it was being lived, before I knew how its many threads would come together in a book.

The dragon journey is one expression of that relationship. It brought attention to ancestry, symbols, and connections I had not previously recognized. Tiffany appears throughout that account because her readings were woven into the unfolding exploration. Yet my gratitude for her extends beyond that particular story.

As with the other experiences in the book, I hold the guidance and my interpretation of it with room for discernment. The value of an encounter need not depend on having every question settled. Sometimes it helps us notice what we might otherwise have passed by.

When I look back, I see both the clues and the people who helped me attend to them. Tiffany is one of those people. I am grateful for the ongoing guidance she has offered and for her place in the lived world behind Pattern & Presence.