Another August Weekend

Late this afternoon, as the sun is setting and the nearly-full moon is rising, about 50 friends and family will gather by the lake to celebrate the life of my brother.  Like so many humans before us, we will try to make sense of an untimely death by not really making sense of it at all.  We’ll eat and drink, and listen to the music of sailboat lines clinking against masts and the wind blowing waves into the rocks.  The timelessness of this place will be a reminder that there really is no death.  Individual lives and “life itself” are eternal, incomprehensibly so.  Yet it’s still hard to grasp this when a familiar face (and unique personality) is simply no longer in front of you.

Tomorrow, too, will be alive with the rhythms of our childhood summers.  There will be a sailboat race, a hastily-gobbled sandwich lunch, then sunbathing and swimming.  It will be fun, but probably quite surreal.  A lot has felt surreal in recent months.  I have the distinct impression of having outgrown every place, but one, that has ever been part of my life.  Walking through landscapes that feel “ghostly” is unnerving until you realize that what has “passed on” or “moved on” is what is inside of you.  There’s no judgment in this.  It’s just that your energy is no longer a match to old surroundings.  Making spiritual growth your highest priority seems to have required periods of almost unbearable flexibility and change in terms of place, and yet paradoxically, right now I feel more powerfully than ever the “feeling” of home, a home where I can settle in one physical place but still continue to grow as a person.  It feels alive, current and easy.  What a delight to begin to get a whiff of it, and to believe that it is possible!

So this long weekend will be charged with memories, adjustments, and yet more transition.  Readers, I’ll be back September 1.  I’ve learned one important thing since starting this blog.  It is a crucial, regular step on my way home to me.  I don’t want to leave it, or you, for long!

The Word Bank

When I was young, perhaps six or seven years old, I had a rather odd belief.  I got it into my head that each person was put on this planet with a word “bank” or storage space.  We were limited, in this lifetime, to speaking only the words in the bank.  We had unlimited access to words like “a” or “the” or “and.” However, fewer and fewer more complex words were in the bank.  There might be 1,000 uses of the word “train,” and 500 uses of the word “participation.”  And forget about bandying about a word like “antidisestablishmentarianism!”  There was only one of those in a lifetime!

According to this notion, what would happen as I got older is that I’d go to speak a normal sentence, and a word here and a word there just wouldn’t come out.  There would be dead silence.  Gradually, over time, there would be more and more silence, verbal Swiss cheese, until eventually my statements, particularly complex or interesting ones, would be unintelligible.  So, looking ahead from my second or third grade vantage point, I determined that I should stay as silent as possible early on, so that at least I’d have some ability to speak in an emergency once I was older.

There is no way my parents explicitly told me such a thing, so this has to be a case of seriously misconstruing something they, or a teacher, said.  I had misunderstood other things.  For years, I was sure that the Episcopal service of Holy Communion was referring to “meat and rice,” when in fact it was “meet and right.” 

And yet other childhood messages seemed to support my word bank belief.  My brothers and I were to be “seen and not heard,” particularly when there were adult visitors in the house.  We lined up, came into the living room to meet Mr. and Mrs. Smith, and then disappeared out in the yard to play.  Even with our parents, we were to “speak only when spoken to.”  It seems positively Victorian from the standpoint of 2015, yet my parents’ own parents were born in the 1800’s.  These childrearing truisms survived two World Wars and a Great Depression, staying intact into the early 1960’s when they were passed on to me.  I think it was probably the social upheaval of the late 1960’s that finally did them in! 

There’s much more to be said about the long journey toward self-expression, but for now, I will only say that I was astonished a few years ago to meet another woman of my generation who had had a similar childhood idea. The feminist in me has to wonder whether a young male, even then, would ever have been able to formulate such a self-silencing belief.  At the very least, boys of the 1950’s and early 60’s must have seen the adult men around them in positions of power, and known that eventually, their own words would carry weight.  Why did I, a girl, see an ever-diminishing power to speak in my future?

Blogs have existed for a number of years, and yet only recently did I drum up the courage to write one, and still, deep down, I find myself wondering whether I’ll go to write something important and the bank vault will close on me. 

Breathe, Elizabeth, breathe.  It’s not going to happen.  Yet another inner hole in the ice to skate around!

 

 

Ripple Effect

Yesterday, I read a major newspaper for the first time in ages.  I don’t normally read the newspaper anymore.  Sometime, I’ll talk more about that.

But the top headlines – about stock markets plunging, fears about the health of the economy, instability around the drop in oil prices, etc. – seemed so perfectly conducive to creating a public ripple effect of anxiety, I had to take notice.

One of the main messages of all the law of attraction reading I have done, by a variety of authors, is that the only way to achieve happiness, ease, and contentment is to focus on (and encourage) their existence within ourselves.  Outer conditions do not “cause” our happiness, sadness or anxiety – it works the other way around.  If we are inwardly unhappy, we draw to us events or situations that reflect that.  How that happens globally, I can barely get my head around, except that I suspect that when enough people experience personal dis-ease, events with that same energy do seem to materialize in communities, in nations or globally.

This is the kind of moment to be very aware of when and how we allow an outside condition to have the power over our happiness.  In two recent blogs, I wrote about letting other people’s opinions influence our sense of self, or expecting other people to conform to our opinions, two sides of an ultimately very unsatisfying coin.  Well, hinging our happiness on world events (economic or otherwise) is a second cousin to this. If we are happy when the stock market goes up, and sad when it goes down, we are really allowing something outside of us to control our emotions. We become puppets. Such powerlessness is a breeding ground for fear, and a vicious cycle ensues. 

I have come to believe that the only power I have in this world is over my own inner self.  Indeed, in moments of global stress, the best way I can help is to stand firm in my alignment to the divine energy of the Universe, and be as joyful, love-filled, and full of exuberant passion for life as I possibly can be.  Even if I see the system as deeply flawed, and can envision the gaping hole in the ice that the Dutch child is happily skating toward, I must just take a deep breath, and try to be a source of love, not fear or criticism.  I can also just try to envision the skater happily navigating around, not into, the chasm. 

What most people fear the most when they read these headlines is homelessness, joblessness, instability, lack of financial and health safety nets – and hey, that has been my life for several decades.  It hasn’t been pretty, and there have been moments when I couldn’t have survived without at least one friend encouraging me or reaching out to me at the moment I was most scared.  Yet I have survived with my body and spirit intact (another topic for another day!)  Finally, I “get” that things out of kilter within were creating things out of kilter without. Scary life scenarios can be "survived," even “thrived,” if eventually we dig deep enough to shift the core energy we are sending out.  Ripple effects go both ways; the moment we feel ripples of fear gaining momentum around us, we can join the growing tsunami – or choose to love even beyond our comfort zone, and see if we can observe any ripples spreading out from us. 

"Yes, but..."

There is absolutely nothing original about my topic today, and I am indebted to Abraham-Hicks and other spiritual authors.

Absolutely the worst word to use when you are trying to change your life around and become a more powerful person, is also one of the shortest in the English language.

But.

Many of us on a modern spiritual path have tried to train ourselves to see -- and more to the point, to feel -- the many things in life worth celebrating.  The more we celebrate, the more there is to celebrate.  As I mentioned in a previous post, making appreciative lists has helped me:

• "I appreciate the fact that I just picked up a temp job."
• "What a gorgeous, cloudless, sunny day it is today!"
• "I really have begun to believe that things are always working out for me."
• "It feels good to notice that my headache has gone away."

And yet, almost without fail, a "but" tries to formulate itself in my mind:

• "I appreciate the temp job, but I'll sure need a lot more income if I am to survive."
• "What a gorgeous day, but they say tomorrow will be really stormy."
• "Things are always working out for me, but I wish it were not at the last minute!"
• "My headache has gone away, but my mosquito bites are itching like crazy!"

And that "but" clause (grammarians, do I have this right?!) literally neutralizes the power and the beauty of the positive thought that precedes it.  It is the spiritual equivalent of the Sisyphean task of rolling a boulder up the hill, only to let it roll back downhill again, making it necessary to start over again.  Every "but" sends the rock down the mountain. 

My generation's Depression-era parents passed on subtle messages of uncertainty, even hopelessness.  In their childhood, food on the table one day didn't mean food would be on the table the next day, and that kind of "check" on enthusiasm or certainty certainly characterized my formative years.  We had a plate in the kitchen with a picture of a smiling Dutch child skating toward a huge hole in the ice -- the motto "Pride Goeth Before a Fall" circled the plate's rim.  I was often cautioned against being "full of myself" and before long, that morphed into sensibility, then excessive caution and negativity.  It was better to face the "fall" first, and not skate happily into it!

"Buts" were also an important, and academically valid, part of college essays, which thankfully I finally got the hang of.  It is important to support your thesis with quotations by qualified experts, and also to present "the other side" -- opposing voices.  This is crucial in journalism, too, if it is to be considered balanced.  If you have a strong academic and journalistic background, it is almost second nature to find the "but" in any situation!

And for many of us, it was a triumph to be strong enough to face the "truth" of a given situation.  It made us feel better to face the reality of life than to "pretend" things were better than they were.  And sometimes checking positivity and enthusiasm was a way of being empathetic around friends whose lives weren't going well.  It is hard to be effusive in that context, so a well placed "but" helps allay the guilt a little bit: "Wow, things are going great for me right now...but you know how that is, tomorrow may be the pits."  It sometimes feels better to be at the level of people around you than to stand out as too happy, too "full of yourself."

This is an issue I'm sure I'll return to.  But I remember hearing Abraham-Hicks saying, "do you want to face reality, or do you want to create reality?"  Another friend of mine used to say, do you want to be right or do you want to be happy? I know that after years of facing reality and "being right," I want to create reality and be happy.  And I know it is all somehow tied in to breaking my near addiction, in my personal expression, to the word "but."  I guess for now, when I hear myself about to say it or thinking it in a way that starts the boulder rolling downhill, I'll just at least be kind to myself and give myself a gentle reminder that there is another way; smile sweetly and end the sentence early.  I just need to get used to what that feels like!

The other joy of 59-and-a-half

Of course, if there’s joy to learning to focus only on my opinion of my life (and that of my Source), the flip side is also true.  My opinion of others’ lives may well be similarly irrelevant to them.  It's so tempting to focus on the lives of friends and family, or society as a whole, and wonder why the heck other lives don't resemble ours.  It's even tempting to give advice, to counsel, to plead.  And yet, in the end, each person on the planet is responsible to their inner guidance and their Source. 

Yeesh.  That’s a drag! 

I have caused myself enormous pain over the years trying to convince people and institutions to change, to become something I wanted them to be.  I have often channeled my inner grandmother, the pioneering woman lawyer, and written heartbreakingly eloquent, passionate, and “well-argued” letters to people or institutions, making a case for my point of view.  Often, I was, of course, right (!)  It infuriated me no end that they did not see that I was right. Not only was my vantage point often rejected, it was sometimes totally ignored. Indeed, this still happens.  Why can’t they see what I see?

Well, of course, it’s because they have a different set of eyes.  Different values.  Different religion or nationality.  Different astrological chart or Meyers-Briggs type.  Different gender.  Different age. Different “energy.” If it is an institution or community, the situation is even more complicated.  It may have a certain mission, but that mission may be muddied or watered down by the different personalities involved.  There is a Quaker expression, “the angel of the meeting.”  If I understand it correctly, some Quakers see certain meetings-for-worship as having a certain "personality" that just doesn’t necessarily change with the arrival of new personnel or new opinions.  How can we all work together with so many perspectives and backgrounds in play?  It's a challenge.

I don’t know if the urge to change, or at the least, teach, other people ever completely goes away.  If we become aligned with our own natures, and believe in our own truth, it’s hard not to take that a step further and “exude” a bit.  And there’s nothing wrong with that.  Many of us cannot "not" advocate for women’s rights, the environment, social justice, or peace, or other causes we believe in.  The tricky piece – whether it involves family, close friends, or society – is expecting or insisting on change.  That’s the thing that may break your heart. 

If I’m a daffodil and someone else is a rose, the fact is, they are not going to become a daffodil no matter how hard I want them to.  They are beautiful and have different qualities of beauty, and they are on this planet at this time as a different kind of flower than I am.  Indeed, there are 7 billion of those different flowers, which is an astonishing testament to the unlimited power of creation.  Just as, at 59-and-a-half, I am too exhausted to keep trying to follow 7 billion other ideas on how to live, I am also too exhausted to try to convince 7 billion people to do it my way.  There is liberation in releasing both of these efforts!  With the ten, twenty, or thirty years left of my life, I only have energy to focus on the best path for me.  I hope that this will lead to a more effective transmission of my gifts to the world, and renewed verve!

August Weekend

Dear readers, it's a hot August Saturday morning, and my brain has turned to mush!  So I think I'll sit in the shade, look at the lake, read a book or write in my journal, and I hope you will do the same!  I'll be back Monday!

The Joy of being 59-and-a-half

The joy of being 59-and-a-half is that you finally "get" that the only opinion that matters is your own, and that of the Divine (however you name it.)

OK, well, that's the joy of being me at 59-and-a-half!  From talking to friends, I know that many of us are in this place, or arriving at this place,  but I don't know for sure if it is universal. 

My particular journey seems to have been set in motion in order to make darned sure that I learned this lesson; when you are trying to make an 180 degree course correction in the shortest possible time, and you literally don't always know from day to day or week to week where you will be living or how, exactly, the current situation figures into the bigger picture, then believe me, you are a magnet for other people's well-meaning opinions, advice, suggestions, fears and even overt criticism. The younger me took all of these things to heart.  I assumed that just about everyone else on the planet was right, and that I was wrong, even about my own life. 

I so wanted to please others that the slightest criticism or indication that someone thought I was on the wrong track used to make me sick to my stomach.  Even when I watched TV, with its glorification of a whole, to me, bizarre set of values and lifestyles, I used to question why I couldn't like what other people liked.  Slowly, though, as I have begun to trust my link to the Divine and my inner knowing and instincts, I have begun to recognize and embrace who I really am and what I love.  Now, when I experience rejections, failures, relationships that get rocky or strange, or things around me that seem out of kilter, I just try to breathe through and ask myself, in this interaction, did I remain (relatively!) love-filled and fearless?  If the answer is yes, then it's possible the other person or institution or situation is just simply on such a different wavelength from me, that we might never in a million years be expected to see things exactly the same.  Or I may be outgrowing something,  The challenge, of course, is not to focus too much on what is fraying around the edges, but rather on what my inner guidance is telling me about where I am headed.

I'm human.  I still get frustrated with people, and with situations that I dearly wish I could "blame" on someone else. But we are all unique expressions of life energy.  All 7 billion of us.  I cannot make 7 people happy, much less 7 billion people.  I can make myself happy by gradually aligning to the activities, places and situations that reflect the happiest side of me, and I can make my creator happy by loving the real me and my honored place in the Divine world.  And it's actually a good thing that, at 59-and-a-half, I just simply haven't got the energy to attempt to please everyone on the planet.  That makes me joyful today!

Serendipities 1

Sometimes, when it's harder than usual to sort of "stay aligned with myself and the Universe," a serendipity occurs to remind me to keep breathing!  Yesterday, I experienced one that still seems truly remarkable.  I'm in a tiny town in upstate New York, and was with out-of-town friends from another state.  As we ate cones at the ice cream shop, a couple came in, and the woman looked vaguely familiar but I could not place her.  But in a minute or two, she came up to me, and addressed me by name.  I still couldn't quite make the connection, but we had one -- she and her husband had both been work colleagues of my brother who recently died, and had been at his memorial service five weeks ago, over eight hours away!  (She remembered me better than vice versa, because I had spoken at the service.)  They had no idea that our family had a deep, nearly 55 year connection to this village; they were simply enjoying a summer vacation a number of miles away deep in the Adirondacks, and had wanted to feel the wind off Lake Champlain on this hot day.

But this couple and I realized that this was really quite a "coincidence."  All of us (separately) had been thinking about my brother over the last 24 hours, and this encounter would never have happened if anyone had delayed or pushed ahead the satisfaction of their ice cream cravings about 15 minutes!  It truly seemed meant to be.  It meant a lot to them to see a part of the world that had been special to him, and it meant a lot to me to realize how much people were still missing him.

Yet for me, the lesson in this wasn't specifically about these people, who I doubt I will ever see again.  It was about how quickly life can change -- you can meet someone, have an experience, or have a life-changing inspirational idea literally "on a dime." In less-than-uplifting moments earlier in my life, I used to become even more rigidly "realistic" and schedule-oriented.  Such-and-such "will" happen on such-and-such a day, kind of thing. I held on, for dear life, to what I "knew" was scheduled over coming weeks.  If serendipities were blooming all around me, I was less likely to see them.  Now, my eyes have adjusted to the light, and I often recognize the moment, and identify it not so much as a miracle, but as "evidence."  Of course.  There is a divine hand. It is not humorlessly pushing messages, learning and coincidences on us.  Rather, serendipities are simply being scattered joyfully in our path for us to notice and allow. I wonder how many I'll see today?!   

"The Perfect Paragraph"

I arrived at Smith College in 1973 feeling reasonably sure about my writing skills.  After all, I had been accepted early decision, and had attended private college prep schools.  My freshman English class was with Professor Frank Ellis, and he had an interesting approach to his syllabus.  Every week, we read one book.  By the following week, we were expected to hand in a paper about the book.  The first week of class, that paper was to be in the form of a "perfect paragraph," and in the following weeks, students were to work their way up through two paragraphs, a page, two pages, and so forth, to, I think, 10 pages the last week of class.  I had no concerns about this, and earnestly sat down to write that first paragraph (by hand! I don't believe I ever owned a typewriter at college!)

It was a horrifying shock, therefore, to get the paper back with a huge red "F" at the top of the page, and covered with red circles, arrows, and expressions of dismay in the margins, punctuated by exclamation points.  It took my breath away.  I had never, ever gotten an "F" in any class, for any reason.  I tried to re-write it, and to do a better job of the second essay, but this time he simply wrote "See Me!" across the top.  When I spoke to him, he didn't have any suggestions (and at that time there wasn't a writing lab to turn to) -- essentially he just said, you simply have to write better.  And until I wrote a perfect paragraph, I could not go on to a longer paper.

All semester, I was stuck in one-paragraph limbo.  I tried over and over.  I spoke with my freshman dean; she had to hand me a huge box of tissues because I couldn't stop crying.  I was beginning to grasp that a certain lax approach to the teaching of writing had characterized the late 60's and early 70's. Society was falling apart, and we were given permission to express ourselves with not much guidance on how to do it.  To this day, I barely know the parts of speech, and I know nothing about sentence structure, or the difference between a dangling participle and a hanging chad. I would later embarrass myself, the only music major in a Chaucer class, when I publicly asked the professor for an English grammar cheat sheet to use in conjunction with the Middle English grammar sheet he had just handed out.  That is, I was embarrassed until he asked the assembled English majors if any other "spoii sports" needed this elementary help, and one by one, the entire class raised their hands!

In that first class, I don't think I ever moved beyond one paragraph, and I scraped through with a C-. But the "sound" of good writing would eventually guide my pen as I wrote other English, history, religion and music history papers, and by senior year my writing and self-confidence had improved substantially.  What is interesting is that I would go on to be a Time Inc. Letters Correspondent for over a decade, a job which absolutely required "perfect paragraph" writing, and then I went on to teach essay writing at the college level, and publish several articles of my own.  Fifteen years ago or so when I went back to Smith for a reunion, I sought out Professor Ellis, who was quite elderly by that time.  But he remembered me, and I thanked him, in effect, for being so hard on me. I appreciated that it stemmed from a love of the language, and that he had been trying to help me.  To this day, my paragraphs remain "imperfect," and I still don't know anything about English grammar.  But I love to write, and can't imagine a day without it.

Kestrel

In recent months, I have become more and more aware of birds, hummingbirds, moths and butterflies.  I am not sure why.  I think it may be partially because there is something so extraordinary about flight, and it has helped me feel some connection with the Divine to contemplate this facet of the richness of creation.  But it's also that I relate to the idea of flying...certainly, if I could have any (currently!) non-human physical attribute, it would be the freedom of flight.

Today, I saw a kestrel. According to Animal Speak by Ted Andrews, kestrels signify "mental speed, agility and grace...the kestrel is often a symbol for recognizing opportunities and acting upon them at only the correct moment."  Kestrels operate from a perch. He goes on to note that people with kestrels as their totem prefer to be where they "have a wide vision of everything around them."  This resonates...several of my happiest homes have had open views, either of the skyline of New York City, or Lake Superior or Lake Champlain, and I have up until now tended to think of my homes as "perches," rather than true permanent homes.

That may well be changing, and I'm not sure if there is a deeper lesson to kestrel showing up in my life today.  But I do appreciate being reminded that there are moments to perch, and moments to soar, and moments to grab opportunities and sustenance. Every day, may I become more and more sensitive to which moment I am "in"!

 

Reversing course

If you have spent many years, or even many decades, heading away from your dreams, then the process of reversing course is not a quick one.  You may naturally want it to be, as I did.  Indeed (to use a metaphor from an earlier blog), it may seem as if it should be as simple as pushing the tiller away from you, and just bringing the boat around and heading in the opposite direction.  Jettison the house, change careers, divorce a spouse, move cross country -- do something radically different, and a different result will be achieved.  And yet, at least for me, it wasn't that simple.  First of all, I didn't have a house, a solid career or a spouse, any of those markers of success or illusory success.  There wasn't much to jettison.

I eventually came to terms with the realization that outside factors were not keeping me from a course more in keeping with my true self.  Inner beliefs, and crossed wires of thinking, sent me consistently "over there" rather than "over here."  Whatever your dream may be, if you have believed it was hopeless for any reason (forces of history, funding, the impossibility of getting people to understand or support you, or even "just" logistics), chances are that a whole palette of hopeless thinking has been at work, leaving your boat drifting and directionless, even when major outer changes are made.

My ultimate crossed wire was believing that the Universe was not on my side.  I certainly believed that there was a God/ultimate Source/Universe/Goddess.  It's just that for whatever reason, I felt separate from that force.  I was the perfect wandering mystic, but my focus was on a distant Divine, not one within me or available to me.  I saw that the wind existed, and it was blowing across the lake and other boats were sailing flawlessly in it, but in my little bay, my little eddy, there was no wind available to me, no power to draw from.

A few years ago, I realized that this was at the bottom of everything, and I just couldn't stand being stuck any more.  And it was too much, at first, to even address the issue of God, so my instincts told me just to start small, and start to notice appreciatively whenever even the tiniest thing went well...whenever there was even the most imperceptible puff of wind, you might say. Borrowing somewhat from Abraham-Hicks' "List of Positive Aspects" and similar suggestions in many other books, I regularly wrote a list (often of ten, but sometimes several pages long) of things I was thankful for, happy about, amused by -- anything positive and uplifting in my life.  These lists usually consisted of simple positive sentences ("I appreciate the roof over my head," "I really like the fact that it is sunny today.")  Some days, I could barely struggle through even two or three appreciations, blurting out half-hearted things like "I'm glad the bus was only ten minutes late today." Yet some days over the last year, the list was glorious ("I appreciate that my plane just landed safely in London.")

Different teachers give different reasons for making these kinds of affirmations: in a law of attraction universe, the more you focus positively on your life, the more positive things will happen;  when you focus on the positive, you cannot focus on the negative, etc.  For me, I think it was just a question of silencing my inner "Eeyore" for just long enough to start to believe that it was OK to feel happy, appreciative and joy-filled.   It was OK.  I was OK.  It was even OK to appreciate that the other boats' sails were filled with wind even if, at that second, mine was not. I had in fact had a blessing-filled life, but I just hadn't been able to "feel" that at my core.  Slowly, over the last two years or so, I've begun to make the connection between that power and me, even when there is no wind blowing in my face.  My lists have helped me to see the big picture -- to appreciate the power behind the wind, and its manifestations, big and small.  Anyone who takes their boat out into the lake has the force of the wind around and in them, and it will benefit them as long as they stay on the lake, expectant and prepared for that first gust.  Anyone who has the courage to be born into this world is part of its ultimate power, and divine power is all around us and in us, every day. We just need to see and feel it more and more, and be similarly expectant of its bigger and bigger manifestations.

So my course reversal has so far come more from "seeing," "noting" and "being ready" than from "doing," per se (although there have been some fabulous exceptions) -- but when a steady wind does come up, there will be much to do, and it will be fun and exhilarating to do it!

Sunday

It's great to be back within hearing of Vermont Public Radio's "Eye on the Sky" weather forecast with Mark Breen.  Oh, his use of language!  Yesterday, he referred to a "dissipating cold front, now little more than a wind shift line and dew point discontinuity..."  Then, later in the forecast, "bumptious thunderstorms" showed up, as they would in reality in the afternoon!  I don't remember ever hearing that word before, but I love it.

One bright red leaf

It is early on a Saturday morning in mid-August.  It feels like the world is holding its breath.  For most of us, except possibly farmers, is there a time of year with less momentum or pressure than this?  Entire countries are on vacation.  Summer camps are finishing up, but school hasn't started yet.  If you work in a seasonal summer business, traffic is slacking off.  If you work in the academic field, the new term is still a few weeks away.  If you work in the corporate world and you are not on vacation, chances are a lot of your colleagues are.  I remember August weekends in New York City, when I felt as if I had the entire city to myself, there were so few people on the streets or in the subways.

In the northeastern U.S., it's that moment when a certain wispy dread begins to float into your consciousness.  You see one bright red leaf on a tree, and you dismiss it.  But then you see a second, or a third, or an entire branch of flaming crimson, and suddenly your entire psyche has been lurched kicking and screaming, fast forward through yellow school buses and the smell of burning leaves and frosty nights, through the first gentle snowfall in November and Thanksgiving turkey, and beyond, to the -20 degrees F of December or January and the treacherous ice and four foot snow drifts and days with only six or seven hours of decent light, to the cars that won't start and sidewalks that must be shoveled over and over and over again, and you break into a cold sweat.  It is all you can do to keep from tearing boxes open, searching for winter parkas, snow boots, gloves, mittens, scarves and hats.

Then a mosquito buzzes at your ear, you swat it away, and thankfully you are brought back to the present.  Look, the leaves are (mostly) green and they are still on the trees.  It is already 72 degrees outside.  Butterflies are flying from flower to flower.  The doors and windows of the house are wide open, not shut tighter than a drum.  You ate fresh corn on the cob last night, and will attend a cookout tonight.  Your breathing returns to normal.

There may be no better life lesson for staying in the "now" than August 15.

Joy

The death of John Scott, organist and choirmaster of St. Thomas Church Fifth Avenue, has rolled over the world of English church music like a steam roller.  He was one of the brightest stars (some might say, the brightest) in the whole field, and Facebook tributes poured in all day yesterday from around the world, and are continuing to.  I had only met John once, briefly, after a service at the church, but everyone who loves this genre of music is family on some level, and feeling a sense of disbelief.

Of course, many of the tributes making the rounds were YouTube videos, and one was of the 1997 Christmas concert at St. Paul's Cathedral, London, where he directed music for many years.  The cathedral is filled to capacity, and a full orchestra and the men and boys' choir are at the crossing, with John conducting everyone in the Christmas carol, "Hark the Herald Angels Sing."  It is the matchless Sir David Willcocks setting, with the descant on the final verse.  As that verse opens, the camera scans the choir, and at the 2:40 point in the video, happens to catch one of the choirboys in a moment -- and attitude -- of pure joy.  The look on his face is indescribable, more joy-filled than any I have seen on another person in my life.  He couldn't have "tamped down" the joy if he had tried (although an adult might have done just that!)

I recognized the feeling, because I, too, have mainly felt it making or hearing music in the resonant space of a cathedral or chapel, yet I have never seen my own face at those moments.  This young man's expression will long remain with me as the "true north" for joy.  Whenever I have decisions in front of me, I will always try to pick the option with the best potential for leading to that look and that feeling.

It occurs to me that, although you can plan, strategize, work, or construct your way into a setting or situation that promotes beauty or joy (that young chorister, the conductor and the choir and orchestra had undoubtedly worked tirelessly leading up to the performance), it may not be possible to "create" joy.  It is, I believe, our natural state within; under the right circumstances, it erupts like a volcano, exudes out of us, and even a steam roller cannot keep it down permanently. How wonderful to be reminded of that on a hard day!

Meteors

Last night, dearly wanted to see the meteor shower, but it was too cloudy.  I thought about the old saying about a tree falling in the forest and no one there to see it.  If meteors are lighting up the night sky and can't be seen, are they really there?  Of course they are...

The Epiphany carol, "We Three Kings," has been in my head this morning.  "Star of wonder, star of night, Star with royal beauty bright; Westward leading, Still proceeding, Guide us to thy perfect light!"  I remember talking with students at the Community College of Vermont about "epiphanies" -- those sudden moments of insight or clarity that change our lives.  They may or may not be accompanied by stars or meteors, but a sky filled with falling stars taps into our ancient sense of foreboding but also of happy anticipation.  Something meteoric may be happening, or about to happen!  Such sudden twists and turns have influenced the lives of humans all through history.  We are not alone, and there is nothing to fear.  Life will go on, but changed.   

The last 48 hours or so certainly have been filled with the unexpected, small and large.  The most stunning news of all was of the sudden death of one of the most prominent musicians in the organ/choral music world. I barely knew him, yet I find I cannot breathe.  Breath-taking.  Our breath is taken away by news both great and tragic. 

So, today, keep breathing, in and out. There is beauty in the meteors, when they show up brilliantly before our eyes, when they disappear into the darkness, and even when they are obscured by clouds.  There is magnificence in all of it.

Fugue

Last night as I was preparing supper, out of the blue, I started singing the Bach organ Fugue in D major.  Well, at that moment, I wasn't completely sure which of the Bach fugues it was, because I am so rusty and haven't seriously played in years, but I "sang" the music with gusto, trying to pull in as many parts as I could, even the distinctive pedal, which I boom-boom-boomed with as low of a bass as I could.  A tree frog outside the window joined in with me, clearly an animal with excellent musical taste!

As soon as things were simmering on the stove and out of danger of burning to a crisp, I ran to my computer and went on YouTube and confirmed that, yes, it was the D major.  After sampling several performances, I settled on Diane Bish.  Talk about the captain of a ship! I've never been able to conceive of performing a big organ piece without the music in front of me, yet there she is, playing with confidence and perfection, from memory.  She's wearing concert attire, a sparkly, colorful dress, with diamond rings on her fingers and gold organ shoes, which glide up and down the pedal keyboard with breathtaking effortlessness.  That glitzy concert scene would never have appealed to me, yet, as I continued to sing (and "play") along with her, I recognized that we were kindred spirits.

I studied the organ from about the age of 15 through 21, when I gave quite a fine senior organ recital at Smith College that included two big Bach Preludes and Fugues. The personal high point of my organ career was teaching myself to play the glorious "St. Anne" triple fugue.

Around the age of 27, with two music degrees under my belt, I made a rash decision -- to leave the world of church music entirely.  Certainly part of this was the fact that there were simply "zero" women in the specific field I was most passionate about, and from the get-go, I had held myself back from wholeheartedly focusing on organ, voice or conducting.  But there was more to it than that.  I had no family models for professional prominence, leadership or mastery, and even my exceptional grandmother, a pioneering Canadian woman lawyer, was forced to drop the law entirely the minute she married.  It was 1919, and married women simply did not have careers.  By the 1980's, society certainly had moved forward, but a generations-old melody was still lingering on in me.  I was afraid that the real me (cathedral music-loving, scholarly, intense, spiritual and serious) was unmarriageable, and it's embarrassing, but that terrified me.  I was good at art.  I'd remake myself into a freelance artist, which would be easier than music once I married.  My studio would be in the home, I could keep an eye on the kids, and I would have the flexibility to do errands, make meals, and be there for my husband.  All my organ music was given away to a college library -- except for the one book containing the "St. Anne" fugue and my organ shoes, which were deposited, yes, at the bottom of a cardboard box in storage.  It was a great plan, except that I wasn't being who I really am, and I never got married! 

There may be only one thing in the world I love more than Choral Evensong services, and that is listening to the big organ postlude at the end, echoing off the fan vaulted ceilings and the stained glass windows.  Over the last few years, I have taken tentative (though dramatic!) steps toward reincorporating this world back into my life, but so far, I haven't quite aligned with the unique related role or "home" that will work for me long term.  The fugue breaking out of me (at odd moments like when I'm making spaghetti sauce) reminds me that, in 2015, the song has not gone away, it will not go away, and I just need to keep following the joy of it, for the joy of it.  

Ashes

Several nights ago, I burned old tax records and other papers from the 1980's and 1990's.

The really satisfying part had come earlier in the afternoon, when I rolled each individual sheet of paper into a ball to make for better "kindling."  It was fun at first, almost like making snowballs!  Yet the process forced me literally to bring into the light (if only momentarily) parts of my life that have been piled up in the dark.  After having determined the age of the material and the fact that this process was long overdue, I didn't want to linger over it.  However, balling up each sheet, and seeing, if only for a second, the dates, numbers and addresses on them, forced me to revisit old jobs, homes, decisions and activities that in most cases I hadn't thought about in years.  There were receipts from the college loans I finally paid off (with great joy!) in 1989. There was quite a bit of carbon paper, something I haven't seen in years.  There, in black and white, was evidence of the years of ever-increasing income when I worked in the corporate sector, followed by the precipitous decline the second I left it.  Big life decisions and small, all neatly summed up by a yearly number or address.

Of course, the big question is why, through many moves and changes and downsizings, I had kept a brown cardboard box labeled "Taxes" intact in the first place!  I think the short answer is, because every time I saw it or moved it, I said, "Oh, that's important!" and waved it through without opening it.

But the longer answer may be, so that I could avoid the waves of second-guessing and shame that inevitably surfaced.  What if I had stayed at my corporate job?  What if I now had hundreds of thousands of dollars in retirement accounts?  Why wasn't I more successful later on as a freelance artist?  What if I had stayed in that city?  Would I have married or had children?  What if, what if, what if...

When you go through old photographs, at least you see the human face of your decisions.  "Of course," you say, "when I lived here, I had such great friends!  A great view from my apartment!  I loved my travels in my little red car, or moving to more beautiful rural areas, or entertaining!"  Tax and bank statements strip away the color and are starkly honest.  In such-and-such year, you did great!  In such-and-such year, you may have done great things, but heck, girl, could you have made less money? What is wrong with you?  Perhaps other people can scan these materials dispassionately, but they bring out my harsh inner judge and critic.  So, of course it was far preferable to leave that cardboard box untouched through the years.

Now, having finally blessed, balled up, and set fire to these papers in a wood stove and seen them reduced to ashes, I feel so much lighter.  I certainly won't go so far as to say that carrying this box around caused my subsequent inability to thrive, financially.  That came from a perfect storm of beliefs which I am sure I will touch upon in future posts, as I move into new ways of thinking.

Yet do not underestimate the power of the box (or closet or basement or attic) that is taped shut.  We all have them.  It may be deep down in our soul, or cluttering our outer spaces.  If you listen hard enough, you can probably hear it saying, "please, open me up and deal with me!"  Or your response, "I just don't want to go there."  But there is liberation in finally opening up the box and dealing with it.  Let the hard feelings or questions surface, and forgive yourself, bless everything you or anyone else did -- then take a deep breath, ask for guidance (from the Divine, friends, family, or experts) and do whatever is appropriate for each individual item; burn, shred, recycle, take to a thrift store, or -- if necessary -- simply throw it out.  It is empowering.  It brings you back into the present.  It frees you up to move forward.

Sailing

A month ago, my youngest brother died unexpectedly.  Talk about transitions.  A friend, in a condolence note, said this must be a "bewildering" time, and that is the perfect word for it.  Hard and bewildering.

He was an avid sailor, and it must be the confluence of his death and my return to the lake on which we all sailed as children, that makes sailing -- and its life metaphor -- suddenly quite powerful.  I have done little sailing in recent years, so experts, please forgive first attempt ever to write about it.

Of course, the thing about sailing is that, unlike human powered vessels, it is all about the wind: is there a wind?  Where is it coming from? How strong is it? Depending on the size of your boat, you may or may not even go out on any given day.  The wind is your "higher power."

For a sailboat to head into the wind, it must perform a series of zig-zags (tacks.) It's the captain's job to determine the strategy for doing this, and when the boat needs to "come about" (or tack), he will ask the crew, "ready to come about?"  He (or she) needs to know if the crew is ready for this transition, not fumbling to open a can of soda, because the boat is about to make a 45-or-so degree turn and the boom and sails are about to swing right across the boat.  The boat's ability to make this turn, not to mention your safety in ducking your head to avoid the boom, depends on your alertness to the captain. So you spring into action, taking the line out of the cleat and getting ready to let it go and move your body to the opposite side of the boat and set the jib in its new setting.  You must respond "ready" out loud before the captain will proceed, and then he says, "hard-a-lee" and the whole boat swings around and heads in a new direction.  But only for a short time -- in order to head into the wind, you may make many of these tacks back and forth.  It may seem counterintuitive to a non-sailor that any progress could be made up the lake by such backing and forthing, but it is the only way to go in the general direction from which the wind is blowing.  A boat heading directly into the wind cannot catch any wind in the sails, and will flounder.

When I was young, I had frequent summer opportunities to crew during races.  The captains were always men, and "the captain's word was law."  Literally.  A good crew followed commands.  You didn't strategize, you didn't offer your opinion, you didn't make suggestions, and you didn't think for yourself.  You waited for commands.  In the frenzied moments before the start of the race, we might come about a dozen times as the captain jockeyed for the best position coming over the line.  It was exhilarating, stressful, and frustrating as crew, because often you really couldn't see what was going on, crouched, as you were, with the huge main sail blocking your view.  So you just did what you were told, and hoped that your captain got across the line first.  Once the race was underway, the boats generally tacked toward the north if it was a north wind, to the first buoy.  Once we rounded that buoy, there was the delightful stretch where we sailed "with the wind."  The north wind was behind us, and we were heading south.  No tacking was necessary.  We just brought up the centerboard halfway, adjusted the sails wing on wing (the main sail all the way out to one side and the jib all the way out on the other) and, if the wind was strong, wailed down the lake.  Even the captain could put down his guard at that point, because there was little to strategize heading downwind.  Boats' success gaining ground on that leg of the race depended more on the state of the boat itself (and perhaps the weight of the crew) than any actual skill.  But once we reached the next mark, and needed to head north again to the finish line, all of us (captain and crew) returned to a state of alertness, readiness, and attention.

As a teenager, my brother would wake up early on summer mornings and study books about sailing and sailing strategy, then on Saturdays, he'd get in a boat, take charge, and win the race.  He loved to sail, and quite literally and fittingly, sailed for the last time the day before he died.  Sailing was his passion.  I loved it too, and still do.  But it is interesting to consider: my early expectation was, of course, that I would never captain a boat.  Only men did that.  I didn't study sailing, only trusted my own in-the-moment intuition about how to be a good crew and handle the jib. I was great at watching and feeling the wind, and if I took a tiny Sunfish across the lake on my own, I was confident and happy.  But to captain a bigger boat, you need powerful assurance, leadership and clear communication skills, a huge body of knowledge about sailing terminology and quite a bit of physical strength.  An expensive boat and several lives are in your hands.  By the 1980's, in this little sailing club, more and more women captained boats during races, but as I had moved away and would just come back about once a summer. I never got up the courage to do anything other than serve as crew.  It's not an excuse, just an observation, about how I just never quite moved into believing I had the option to excel or lead in that area, or some others.

And this morning, I'm taking the metaphor a bit further.  I've been the captain of my own ship for decades and decades, but I wonder if I've been doing it with more of the "energy" of a crew member, not the leader.  I still cannot quite believe I have the right to strategize, to question, to make suggestions -- much less to powerfully take the tiller, set the course, and even ask for, nay, demand, the assistance of others.  Yet that "crew" perspective on life is  gradually fading away now. I long to be the leader, and to be more effective at the tiller of my own life.  Up until now, I've been somewhat successful at avoiding the shoals, or the nasty gusts of wind that could have blown me over entirely, although there have been some very close calls.  Until now, I've only had the courage to attempt the smallest boats, and try not to draw undue attention to my inexpert sailing style.  It terrifies me, but it does seem that the time has come to align with the real, gut knowledge that the tiller (the power to make it happen) is in my hands now and always has been.  Working with the Universe, I can be a tall, proud sailing ship in good hands in even the roughest seas.

Cathedrals

Sometimes a cathedral is a cathedral.

Sometimes a cathedral is several hummingbirds whirling around a feeder in the sun.

Sometimes a cathedral is the long set of steps down to the lake or river.

Sometimes a cathedral is the top of a mountain.

Sometimes a cathedral is sailing in a brisk wind.

Sometimes a cathedral is a walk down Fifth Avenue.

Sometimes a cathedral is listening to a Choral Evensong webcast at exactly 4 pm on a Sunday afternoon.



Sometimes Sundays will be like this!

Transition

Welcome to The Liz Path!

My original plan was that my blog name would have the word "transition" in it, but the one I wanted was taken.  So this blog is now called The Liz Path.  Today's entry will be about transition, because it sometimes feels like I have been in transition my entire adult life!

That wasn't how it was supposed to be.  When I graduated from college in 1977, my 1950's-60's upbringing was still very much in place.  I assumed I would work (perhaps teaching at a private school) for a few years, then marry a guy who would be the primary breadwinner.  Better still, he would be English, and we would have children, I would work only part-time, and it would be a fairly traditional, quiet existence that was family oriented.

But even then, I was forgetting an earlier imprint on my life.  Back when I was six, having been exposed to the Episcopal Church's men and boys' choir tradition and a family story book (published in England) about the saints, I envisioned being a nun, mystic, scholar or saint, consecrating myself to God and church music.

In most respects, I have ended up living my earliest self.  I never married.  I've both pursued and (for long stretches) run away from the English cathedral choral tradition which was until recently closed to girls and women.  My concept of God has evolved and evolved over time, but at just about every step, my focus has been the spiritual search.  And after a rather stable stretch from my mid-twenties to mid-thirties, when I worked in the corporate world and lived in the same apartment, I have since been in almost constant transition.  Have I been looking for the divine? Myself? A home? All of the above? Probably all of the above.

And as my journey has spiraled, I suppose you might say, "up and up," it has clearly been more spiritually sound than materially!  I have lost and gained possessions over the years, mostly owning very little, and living on little.  Many of my friends are just now heading into a period of downsizing -- my challenge now is to try to move in the other direction.  How do you "transition" from nonstop transition to stability?  How do you create a stable home base for your later years, from next to nothing?  Can I be both spiritual and more solidly on this planet, successfully?  I hope so. I am ready!  I hope to start to figure this all out in the coming months, and it will be a real pleasure to have you along with me!