Encounters with the Cosmic Messenger

If you have spent decades traveling, doing concert tours and taking every opportunity to engage with people along the way, inevitably, you will accrue a wealth of stories. What do they mean? Can these chance encounters with people, places and sheer happenstance be more than just a collection of anecdotes? Could crossing paths with, say, a tennis racquet-wielding monk, or making a trek to a mother river's headwaters, or witnessing a glorious pre-dawn salmon run offer something deeper? Perhaps an opportunity to discover Beauty? Insight? And finally, Wisdom? For years, Guitarist/Composer/Author Michael DeLalla has been sharing stories with his concert audiences that tell of this daily quest for Wisdom through these seemingly random meetups with an entity he calls the Cosmic Messenger, often variously disguised as ordinary people, places and events. This anthology of essays, part memoir, part windshield-framed musings, draws from these experiences and their subsequent reflections, documented contemporaneously in the writings and observations found in his blog posts and tour journals. All of the stories are true. They also reveal simple yet profound truths about how we can live each day as if it were an opportunity to reaffirm a sense of purpose. Acknowledging one's purpose offers insight; insight can lead to optimism and a sense of what's possible if we live with the intention of striving to embody our best selves. These encounters are available to us all, should we but open ourselves to them.