“Where are you from?” we’re always asked. “When?” I want to say. “Today… yesterday…? Or when I was born?” Washington, capital of the US, was where I happened to take my first breath, my mother having just arrived from Denmark and my father from Holland. Danish and Dutch became the first languages I spoke. In preschool, I learned English. Later, French and Spanish. Now, I’m venturing into Italian, rich with vowels like a song.

Recently in a dream, I found myself in the cavernous, bustling hall of a monastery where a prayer was being offered in various languages, one after the other. All of them named the single reality that holds us all. Each language, with all its words, was simply another name.

My name is Karin, but when this word is meant to distinguish me from all else, I can’t connect with it at all. It has no more meaning than the adhesive label I peel off as soon as a meeting is over. Only when I think of Karin as a way of calling to what’s deepest inside, does the name resonate. What if every time our name were spoken, we felt called in that way? It would sound like a prayer. We’d be named anew.

As a child, I traveled in and out of the country, living in Malaysia and later, Swaziland.  We always returned to the same house in Virginia, ensconced in a forest of mountain laurel, oak, and pine. I grew up in the embrace of those trees. Standing still and erect, they infused the air with their gentle wisdom, transforming the sound of my footsteps, the rhythm of my breathing. They spoke a language as palpable as the light dripping through their leaves. Along with my human family, they raised me, made me who I am.

After high school and college, I kept traveling. Drawn to city life, I studied and worked in the lively cities of Lyon, Boston, the Hague, Toronto, Brooklyn. Then, I found myself on an island in the middle of the Pacific. No other place is more isolated, surrounded by more of the vast ocean that covers our earth, than Hawaii. This is where my daughter was born. Her coming into the world—that threshold—struck me with awe, and I still haven’t recovered. Meanwhile, the land was also newborn, lava pouring into the waves. To live on that shore, both literally and figuratively, to breathe the air there—this is what I crave above all else. I continue to live near the water, in Seattle now. On one side lies Lake Washington; on the other, the Salish Sea.

I chose to devote myself to writing because in the end, I couldn’t bear to choose. I’m driven to connect the most disparate things—to bring home the sheer reality of all that’s here, to bring myself home that way. I never want to stop learning and experiencing.

Teaching, too, is about constantly pressing into the unknown. Guiding another as best I can, I keep to that vibrant, moving edge. Aligning myself with someone’s abilities and inclinations and then helping them move forward makes for one of the most intimate connections I know. Side by side, we ride that remarkable wave…