Our local Friends of the Library in Blackstone hosted an author, Nancy Wright Beasley, an active creative woman in her 70s who was life inspired to write about the Holocaust from her heart felt center, from the inside, from the subjective view of those who survived by being hidden in basements and holes in the ground. Izzy’s Fire and The Little Lion are about the hero’s of the holocaust and the indestructible spirit of man in the most unimaginable horror, the Holocaust. Both books are read in schools, honored by Holocaust museums, and on Amazon paperback and ebooks.

But I want to talk about her work as metaphor because this morning I’m suddenly grabbed by a greater meaning of the author and her books, one that is OUR meaning, the heart truth meaning that is universal, a meaning that grabs me and won’t let go. Metaphor as I use the term (see Joseph Campbell) transfigures the objective meaning of the author and books  to YOU as YOU. We feel that the author, the books and I are One. This is the Lion’s Roar of the Buddha, the Awakening of the One that has no second. 

The author describe the moment when she was literally grabbed or possessed by the power of the holocaust and her life changed. She burned with  “Izzy’s Fire” to write these stories. Pacing the floor at night until she found the voice of Izzy. Then the book began to write itself

This Subjective, or metaphorical story is that life itself is a holocaust. Everyone alive now is dying and is going to die, shot by the Nazis of death.  Life is death (all life dies and is dying) but the creative Heart can leap forth and create heart felt truth out of any holocaust in our life. The author herself is a Metaphor for being “grabbed” by life, this flower that will grows through a crack in cement.

The Nancy Beasley as Metaphor points to her work as content, but also at the same time points to her universal message as the awakened Heart of us all. Je Suis Nancy Beasley rings the metaphor when we suddenly are grabbed by her heart awakening as our own heart awakening. I and Nancy Beasley are One in that awakening…yet at the same time we are two, she and I, yet she is two, the author and her work.The One is the Many at the same time—but logic says this cannot be.  In the truth of the Heart we are all One in this burst of joyous laughter in the cold face of the Horror, the Horror of the Holocaust of life. .