by Margaret Dulaney
My grandmother studied the writings of the Austrian mystic Rudolf Steiner most of her life. Her child-friendly notions of nature spirits, angels, water sprites and dryads opened a door in my imagination which has never shut. After leaving home, I was to go on a lifelong search of the mystical writings from people of all faiths, mainly to discover that the mystics around the world and throughout the centuries all seem to walk the same ground. Which ground seems to me to boil down to an understanding that behind all of life there is a truer world of more life, a world of perfect Love and perfect Wisdom. And more, that a personal connection can be made between the individual and this Grand Spirit, often through the love of and attention to nature.
Most of the mystics began their early lives in the religious traditions of their family, learning from authority figures, but at some point walked away from the confines of organized religion to establish their own connection to this Spirit. Two of my main mystical squeezes are writers who would not necessarily be considered mystics. One is Ralph Waldo Emerson. If you have yet to encounter the mystical in Emerson’s writings I would invite you to read the Over-soul. If you question his passion for personal spiritual connection, read Self Reliance. George MacDonald is another favorite. Writing near the same time as Emerson, he completed over fifty books for an audience hungry for mysticism, (whether they knew it or not). His fairly tales are pure mysticism, and his novel for children, The Princess and the Goblin, remains one of my favorites. MacDonald wrote of his audience, “I do not write for children, but for the child-like, whether of five, or fifty, or seventy-five.”
In 2000 I began to write essays, musings on my studies of the mystical. In 2010 I took these musings and launched a website called Listenwell.org, where I have continued to offer one ten-minute recorded essay every month for those who might have the same hunger for the mystical as I do. These are story-based, metaphor-rich explorations of subjects that we will never truly understand from where we stand, but that I believe deserve our attention. I have since published three books of these writings: two collections of essays, To Hear the Forest Sing, and Spend Some Love, and a memoir, The Parables of Sunlight.
In 2020 I thought I would take all of my love of mysticism and write a book for children, or as I like to think of it, a book for child philosophers (most children are) and earth-loving elders (many of them are). This is when Whippoorwill Willingly came to me.
There are certain books that I have returned to again and again since I was a child. I have mentioned MacDonald’s The Princess and the Goblin. I would add C. S. Lewis’s Narnia series – C.S. Lewis was also a lover of MacDonald’s writings. And finally The Secret Garden, with its focus on the transformative powers of Nature. These books still hold the power to reconnect me to the mystical.
I hope to take my readers to a similarly mystical place in my novel Whippoorwill Willingly. Young Whippoorwill is invited to visit an enchanted lake high in the Swiss Alps. There are ancient trees, wise beasts, healing waters and hints of angels. I loved being emersed in the writing of this book. I hope some of that love will be felt by Whippoorwill’s readers.
About the Author
Margaret Dulaney
Margaret Dulaney has been writing essays on mystical themes for over a quarter of a century. In 2010 she began offering these writings on ListenWell.org, a website featuring once-monthly spoken word essays, exploring open-faith ideas through story and metaphor. She has authored three books: To Hear the Forest Sing, The Parables of Sunlight and Spend Some Love. She lives in Eastern Pennsylvania with her musician husband Matt Balitsaris in an old stone house filled with animal companions and surrounded by the company of long-loved trees.
About Whippoorwill Willingly
Whippoorwill Willingly is a novel about a young girl who receives a mysterious invitation to visit an enchanted lake high in the Swiss Alps. Once there she will meet kindred spirits from around the globe, some two-legged, some four-legged and some with wings, each meant to remain in her life forever. The book is a mystical tale told by a rather practical girl, for those between the ages of nine and ninety-nine.
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