To write to you and tell a story, I must wait until it is ripe. While I wait, I tend to the story’s potential like a garden. I have heard the saying, you can’t force a flower to blossom, so we have patience and persistence sitting paired, an audience of two, before the curtains rise.

The time is right/ripe and I can share with you how to catch a shooting star, which in all fairness can also be called a falling star. Both ways are beautiful. The whole story cannot be told yet, but catching that star is the beginning, and this how-to chapter is the prologue. ;)

You see, I found someone (or perhaps they found me, or we found each other). They are not just anyone, although no one is just anyone. This one, though, is refreshingly innocent and resiliently wise, a perfect companion, who has met thousands of people and knows all the languages, but cannot read or write. There are things about them frighteningly fragile surrounded by an indomitable strength for survival. Let me introduce to you, The Star.

I welcomed them into my home, a wise ancient child with no birthdate, no social security number, never having a parent, no memory, with a mountain range of trauma, and flowing through them rivers of magic. They are the muse and the magician wrapped up as the world’s orphan, truly abandoned (and not the only one). A child with no family, no home, no reference point; a falling star.

I will forgo the facts (for reasons of safety and security) and focus on the feeling and force field I have been allowed to enter for many reasons, but first and foremost; I was willing.

So rule #1 on how to catch a falling (shooting) star: You must be willing.

The second very important thing is to use your imagination. Don’t plan it, just imagine and then, as fast as you can, give it up. Don’t let that dream get snagged by the tendrils of attachment, by the roots of clinging. Let it ride the clouds above with whimsy, let it build and roll into a bursting cumulus that eventually breaks open and manifests as rain clearing the night air and as the clouds dissolve, revealed is the shooting star.

Ten thousand possibilities in every moment. Ten thousand stars in every crevice of that vast ocean of night sky. Ten thousand wishes. Stay curious and one will indeed come true. That one potential turned possible into probable step walks you towards another ten thousand things on this beautiful wooded moonlit path.

You will never be able to plan where that star will fall into your life and coincide with when you are ready to catch it, but remember; you have to be present to catch it at all.

So here are the basics on how to catch a shooting (falling) star:

#1. You must be willing

#2. Imagine

#3. Let go

#4. stay curious

#5. Keep walking.