Best Laid Plans

I am writing from England. 

As some of you know if you read the last few blogs, my "plan" was to see this trip as a capstone of sorts, a time to thank this place and the music I love and not so much leave them behind as I did earlier in my life, as to release the ways that they arguably impede me from moving ahead. I have planned (and still do) to do a little ceremony involving creating a cairn and expressing huge amounts of gratitude.

After 24 hours of immersion in rehearsing the music I love, attending a cathedral choral evensong service, and being among a crowd of like-minded people (my "tribe" at least in this field), I'm wondering how successful this ceremony is likely to be! I think our souls know when we feel dead and when we feel alive, and the fact is, in this environment, I am alive. Singing Anglican chant and the canticles, I am alive. In a soaring cathedral space, I am alive. I've always known it, and I honor this ongoing process as a simple celebration of life, joy and passion. I may not need to be limited to this one manifestation of joy, and I am different than I was even a year ago, but it still feels like "life" to me.

Yet clearly I have never been successful at "trying to figure out" successful ways to be in this environment more than once in a while. My little brain and heart are simply not big enough to see beyond this short trip. This first day proved that once you place yourself in the stream, it will carry you best if you hold only loosely to the tiller. There is a bigger vision, a love power far greater than me, that knows how to do whatever is meant to be happening here. 

So I'll build that cairn all right, and I'll express enormous gratitude to the Divine. Then I'm handing it all over. A few days ago, I felt I needed a measure of closure, but the pendulum has swung ever so slightly in the direction of, "I am open, not closed, to whatever my best life looks like." Planning seems to want to give way to flowing. And so it goes, ebbing and flowing as it has for about 55 years on this unusual path. Hold me in the light, dear readers, as I will you if your best laid plans start evolving.

Moving Times

These are moving times. Literally and figuratively. It would be so easy to sink into despair and shock, except for one thing; it feels like an enormous worldwide growth spurt. The old and barbaric is being squeezed out, and somehow, somehow, love is expanding underneath. I really believe that. My housemate has one of those mini-libraries out near the sidewalk, which she keeps filled with books for all ages. People take a few and bring a few too. What with one thing and another, the box is always stocked. Today, as I was returning from work, a man came by and told me this library had literally saved his life when he was homeless; it gave him something to look forward to and some ideas on how to move ahead. He commented on the fact that now, some people have created similar sidewalk boxes for items such as toilet paper, deodorant, and soap: "You know, if only everyone just shared what they have, we'd all get along great." People know this. They understand it. While this man spoke to me, I was a little closed and reserved. I chatted with him, but fatigue and a lifetime of standoffishness with strangers kicked in. It wasn't till after his truck pulled down the street that I realized he had spoken the wisdom of the gods. I was so moved. I wished then that I had stepped off the porch and hugged him. I hope I'll learn.

Tomorrow, I'll be moving by bus then plane to England, for a week of singing and listening to the wisdom of my heart. Yes, that place is my soul home, but it is experiencing as much change as we are on this side of the Atlantic, and I am changing too. I'll tell you more about impressions of this visit once I get there. I am taking my computer with me, but regular readers may find I am on a much different writing schedule. Thanks for your patience!

The trick is to move with love. I'm just trying to see a welcoming path ahead of me at all times. And yeah, let's share what we can. We'll get through this growth spurt, one and all, if we can keep shaking off that darned snobbery, and just be kind to one another.

Grace

I'm getting ready for a trip late in the week to the UK, where I'll be singing a week of cathedral choral evensongs. I am happy, nervous, calm, excited. I am trying not to overthink the experience, even though I see this as a "bookend" of sorts after a lifetime of passion for the Church of England's unique service and musical tradition. All my life in the U.S., people have asked me why I don't like to sing other music. They have said this kind of music isn't a job (although for many in the UK and a handful in the US, it is). I have been at the receiving end of blank stares and confusion, perhaps mirroring my own. I never made sense of why Divine Love would have plonked me down in America under the circumstances, although just in the last year I've come up with a theory: perhaps being American helped me be just a bit more pioneering and persistent back in the all-male day.

Yet something has shifted just enough so that I don't believe I will count down the days miserably to my flight back to the US, as I have often done, even as recently as last year. This time, I am trying to emphasize to myself (and if necessary, to others) the "portal" aspect of the week. It is a doorway to something richer, better and more mature, wherever I eventually land. And it was in that spirit that I discovered the perfect, perfect quote, which I have taped to my journal. It is from Rob Brezsny's "Free Will Astrology" for this week (Aquarius): "A source of tough and tender inspiration seems to be losing some of its signature potency. It has served you well. It has given you many gifts, some difficult and some full of grace. But now I think you will benefit from transforming your relationship with its influence. As you might imagine, this pivotal moment will be best navigated with a clean, fresh, open attitude..."

The grace of the situation is being old enough, if not to laugh at the strangeness of spending a lifetime far from one's passion, then at least to come to openhearted terms with the phenomenon. There is grace in having the good fortune to hop across the pond for ten days to be in my element. And then there is grace in reaching that moment in life where you can step above it all and wonder whether there was an even bigger purpose to all this. And being just a little excited about that possibility, at least for today.  

A small step

Lots of small steps forward. I haven't been able to fully incorporate all of them yet, but I can tell this story because it is so straightforward, and it relates somewhat to what I talked about in my last post, just saying yes to the present.

Yesterday, I caught an hour or so of the broadcast of the "Tour de France." I'm not at all a fan of bicycling, but I do love to see imagery of the French countryside, which I visited as a very young 15-year-old. However, this particular day, the cyclists were going through the Alps.

Only a year ago, there would have been a running commentary going through my head watching the panoramic shots of these majestic mountains: "The only landscape that appeals to me is in England. I don't like this landscape." "I don't like the color palette of this landscape. It isn't green enough." "I prefer rolling hills, or flat landscapes." "I don't like mountains; they make me claustrophobic." "Mountains scare me." "Those mountains remind me (or don't remind me) of the Adirondacks or the Rockies in Montana." "I wish I were somewhere I love, but not the Alps." Words to that effect. Seriously.

Yesterday? "Wow, isn't that beautiful!" Truly. That's all I thought.

For once, I didn't compare. I didn't judge. I didn't wish for something different. I just saw beauty. For a moment just now, I almost judged myself quite harshly for who I was before now, but I'm not going to do that either. I am a woman on her path, taking a small step forward. C'est tout.

Saying Yes...

One of those books I bought at the July 4 sale, Martha Beck's Steering by Starlight, has already been worth twenty times the fifty cents I paid for it, and more so. What I love about Martha is that she and I are clearly on parallel paths, and yet she's just far enough "ahead" of me that her books serve as roadside safety barriers. When I'm starting to veer, her humorous but true words send me back onto the road.

On page 94 of the book, she says, "Say Yes to the Mess." Now, what's funny is that my mind went off on a whole 'nother riff than the text of her book, which at that point is talking about what to do when faced with seriously frightening situations. Instead, the words triggered one of those blissful "aha" moments when I saw the whole arc of my life, in all its odd juxtapositions and uncertainties, and felt calm. I said yes to the mess that is my life. I may be an aspiring mystic, but this kind of acceptance isn't my strong suit, as you have no doubt noticed. I envy, oh gosh, yes it's true, my friends with homes or posh apartments, husbands, kids, grands, family money, tenured professorships, you name it. Spirituality goes right out the window at 61 when "interesting" has gone on just few years too long. And yet, which of these friends has no mess? Behind the scenes are medical crises and family fireworks and financial meltdowns and depression. Some of my contemporaries may be ready to pack it in and drive a solitary camper around North America. And at the other end of the scale, I am living with untold bounty and freedom by comparison with most of the world, including local neighbors. I woke up in a bed. I ate breakfast this morning. I was paid for a few hours of helping out at a compatible workplace.

So it's saying "yes" to the mess that is "now," whatever mess that is. Part of what I love about my blog is that for the hour I am writing it, I am just about as "in the present" as it is humanly possible to be. Inspiration seems to come down from the heavens and through my brain and into these ten clicking fingers on the keyboard, and I am content. I'm saying yes to that, too.

Monday Moth and Miscellany

This morning, when I opened the front door, there was a Pandora sphinx moth on the outer screen door. Mind you, I didn't know that until later when I looked it up online. All I could see was the silhouette of the biggest moth I think I have ever seen, yet it stayed in place long enough for me to open the door and stand on the porch and look at it. Its wings were a full three to four inches long, and the camouflage was incredible...it looked like a slightly dried up green leaf.

I had to look up, too, who exactly Pandora was, mythology obviously being as weak a point for me as botany: she was the first human woman created by the gods. And the Greek sphinx evidently had the head of a woman and the body of a lion (some sphinxes are portrayed as male). So there was something rather powerful about starting the day with this beast.

Yes, it was one of those weekends. For a variety of reasons, including having read yet another piece about the invisibility of being an older woman, when I just couldn't help but wonder what an amazing world it would be if all powerful men turned to women proactively, respectfully and open-mindedly, and asked, "How would you solve this problem?" or "What is your perspective on this?" I so yearn to be taken seriously, to be a presence that cannot be ignored. Like that moth on the screen in the morning, announcing its amazing and very visible self. Here I am. Ready to serve, to be heard, to be seen. Maybe this blog is my best effort at that for now.

And then a partial non sequitur. As a denizen of the city buses, I hear the "f" word over and over again on a daily basis. Sometimes the bus drivers ask clients to cool it, but it's kind of a lost cause. Same at the bus station, and on the streets of my neighborhood. It's a word I never say, and don't particularly like to hear. Now, in two weeks' time I will spend a week singing the best of the English church music tradition in an English cathedral. I am going to sing as gloriously as I know how. I am unutterably thankful; a friend reminded me that many people with specific unusual dreams never even achieve a minute of them. So my multiple trips to England over the years, most of which involved singing, have been an extraordinary blessing. It's just so interesting that my launching pad has so often been, well, high contrast. Perhaps it's a form of alchemy, turning one form of energy into another. I'll try to represent us all, us ordinary humans. And my voice will be heard. Yay!

Lastly, I love that it is 71717. I don't know what it means, but it's neat.

Laundry

I just hung up a load of laundry. It is something I like to do; the image conjured up in my mind is always of a broad green expanse of back lawn, and clean garments blowing in a strong breeze. I am Laura Ingalls Wilder out in the Dakotas, or my own paternal great-grandmother on the table-flat farmland of Manitoba, white fluttering upon green in the hot son. Where I am currently living, however, the routine is rather different. The clotheslines are strung up on the front porch, crisscrossing one another on both sides, leaving a clear passageway in the middle from the porch steps to the front door.

When I first got here, I was almost physically incapable of putting up a load of laundry less than eight feet from a busy sidewalk. It didn't matter whether it was under- or over-garments, somehow giving passers-by such a clear view of my exceedingly modest wardrobe stretched me to yet another limit. And yet it was, "adapt or don't adapt," and for the millionth time in the last few decades, my ingrown WASP proprieties went the way of the wind. In this household, virtually none of the laundry is white. Turquoise, bright red and yellow washcloths and cloth napkins line up over the flowerboxes like prayer flags, and a rainbow of tee shirts, trousers, socks and skirts either hang limply in the calm, or fly horizontal in storms. All of this is clearly visible from the front room, a slow motion version of watching clothes in a dryer.

Yeah, talk about releasing. Not all of it has been dramatic, like what I experienced the other day. Much of it has been happening, itself slow motion, over the last three or four decades. Virtually everything that would have elicited the words, "I couldn't do that," I have done. Virtually everything that my proper great-aunts in their blue linen dresses and pearl necklaces would have shunned, I seem to have either embraced, or at least gotten used to. It's been downward mobility on a monumental scale or, looked at another way, a shift from the paradigm of one side of my family heritage to another side. Those stalwart Canadians on the trek west probably had few opportunities to wash clothes at all, and dried clean laundry anywhere it could hang free. Once settled on a farmstead near Winnipeg, an actual clothesline must have seemed the height of luxury. So it is in that spirit that I bless this front porch line and the fact that I have pioneering forebears. We may be heading into a time where their practical courage will stand me in better stead than the civilized niceties that I seem to have been slowly shedding.

Release

Many years ago, I read a book called "The Secret of Letting Go," by Guy Finley. (Have I mentioned this before? I couldn't find that I had.) The book's opening story has stayed with me as a metaphor for its thesis. A man digs in a cave for many years, convinced there is treasure. He creates a whole infrastructure from which to chip away at walls and floors, yet day after day, year after year, he finds nothing. One morning, he hears the ear-splitting noise of falling rock; the cave and all his scaffolding are starting to collapse, and he realizes with horror that all his efforts are about to go to naught. As huge boulders fall from above, he thinks he's going to die and he gives up completely. Yet a few minutes later, he realizes that he is still alive. Once he dusts himself off, he looks up to a brilliant gem-encrusted ceiling. It wasn't until he gave his dream and himself up for dead that he found what he had been looking for.

Something like that happened a few days ago. In the spring, I had started to plan a short August trip to sing in England, but by last week, it was not coming together and I realized that my last seven years (or strictly speaking, a lifetime) of trying to manifest a life devoted to English church music was simply done. I had run out of steam, and even a short trip over there seemed beyond my grasp. It was time to release, to let go of the whole enterprise for the second and final time. In fact, releasing was the only thing that felt like relief. I realized that to love, to be loved back, and to inspire, were even more important to me than this specific place and musical tradition. Yet literally, literally, the minute I somehow found the words to say "I give up and it's OK," the minute I gratefully embraced the possibility that I had done all I could in this lifetime, the pieces fell into place to make this short trip. A snippet of my gem-encrusted ceiling revealed itself. I still see this as a bookend trip, an "I love this beautiful musical world but I have to move on" trip, but I am going.

When you are a creative person, it is so hard to give up before you see your creation fully realized in front of you. When you are in a culture that values success, it is so hard to accept that you have been a big-picture failure. The reality of acknowledging, at 61, that you really never created what you spent a lifetime focused on is humiliating. And yet...maybe allowing the ceiling to really, fully crash is creating an unexpected opening to an even broader success. I'm dusting myself off and wiping the gook out of my eyes and pinching myself. I'm still alive. Good first step!

A Week of Revelations

Recently, I've spoken about how pieces of my life's "puzzle" have been slowly and steadily falling into place. Over the course of the last few days, that pace increased crazily, as if the Universe decided to download a lifetime of understanding in one week. It has been intense. I know that I have been a bit vague with the details, and to some extent this is unfair to my small but loyal clan of readers. But I'm just trying to sort it all out and decide when and how (through this blog? a book?) to articulate it.

But as I write this, on this humid, grey Saturday morning in July, I feel emotional yet at peace with myself in a way I don't believe I ever have. I think maybe I'm finally looking at my life completely through my own eyes, and from the prism of my own values, and feeling a kind of divine love and acceptance that just wasn't possible when I looked through the eyes of others. I am not, in fact, a mess; I have been really true to my own inner core all along. It is so liberating to realize that, not in my head but in my heart. I don't know that I can really articulate this except to say that my heart is smiling. Yes, it is smiling.

Book sales

On July 3rd, I had an outing that took in so many contrasts. A local town was offering a huge book sale, then an "ice cream social" and band concert. A friend and I decided to go.

There is nothing like a used book sale to help you figure yourself out. I mean, think about it. If you go to a book sale with five or ten dollars, you will only buy those books that really, really draw you to them. There's almost this mysterious attractive energy where, out of thousands of titles, your eyes light on exactly the books that most appeal. I came out of the sale with Martha Beck's Steering by Starlight: the Science and Magic of Finding your Destiny, and Louise Hay's classic (and perhaps now, particularly timely) of the metaphysical approach to health, You Can Heal Your Life. I also found two books about English cathedrals, an atlas of medieval history, a book about the Druids, and another medieval mystery novel. What was fascinating is that in the cathedral books (which must have had a single owner) there were post cards and brochures from the owner's visits to the various cathedrals. It was fascinating, the thought that two Americans passionate about these structures found each other, indirectly, through these old books. And then it turns out my friend's purchase of some other, totally unrelated book had old brochures from Salisbury Cathedral in it, which she immediately handed over to me. This still doesn't help me figure out my linking of these various manifestations of spirituality, but it's just so quietly affirming. What you love is what you love, and my book sale purchase of about $6.50 illustrated it perfectly.

Then sitting on a bench on the town green, watching a band gathering for their bandstand concert was just so lovely and poignant. The setting sun reflected off the tops of the instrument cases that were lined up around the bandstand, children chattered and ran around, grandparents held their grandbabies, and well-organized old people brought their solid folding chairs while younger folks easily jumped up and down from blankets on the grass. The band was too big for their bandstand and I am not quite sure how the trombones managed, but the music was celebratory and even I nearly cried as various service members stood for their branch of the military's tune in the musical medley.

However, later in the evening I did not join the throngs heading to the fireworks. I didn't quite cringe under the covers, but almost. They were so loud and sounded more like cannons than ever, but I tried to remind myself that most people don't seem to react this way. I guess it's just simply OK to say, fireworks are not something I love. It's really OK to say that. Phew.

Independence

It is a little hard to know what to say on this Fourth of July extended weekend. Perhaps it is one of those times when the less said the better.

So what I will say is, there is one thing that continues to give me hope and courage in this strange era, and that is the inspiration I derive from America's most brilliant, independent, wise and creative female thinkers and writers. I've mentioned some of them in past blogs and undoubtedly will mention more in the future. When I hear something on the wind, a whisper or a tune of loving visionary beauty, it is almost always articulated in a higher register. I may hear American women's voices more clearly because of proximity; this is surely just the tip of the iceberg of women worldwide, women who want the best for all humanity.

I don't usually attend fireworks these days. I'm like a dog, I guess, hiding under the covers. It reminds me too much of war. But I will always honor that small inner spark of true independence within myself, and in everyone.

Learning, learning

This is my 300th post! I guess that officially makes this almost the equivalent of a book, which does give me a sense of satisfaction and achievement. And what a gift that readers are out there, reading! Please know how much this means to me.

It makes sense, I guess, that in a time of almost unprecedented learning about our outer world and about my life, that I would have one of those small moments that help me to learn something simply about "me," although the reflection back wasn't entirely positive.

Yesterday, I bought a few things in the rather hip and trendy downtown supermarket in the town I'm living in. Like many large towns and cities, the "normal" grocery stores are out in the suburbs, only available to us city folk by extra bus rides, and making it rather hard without a car to carry groceries home. So I rely on this store for small, short food-shopping trips. My cart consisted of a small package of two chicken thighs, about a pound of potatoes, about a pound of squash, a bottle of seltzer water, and a frozen item to help me keep the chicken cold on the way back. I stood in line, informally dressed on a very hot, rainy day, my dark but greying hair probably dripping with...perspiration. The line was moving rather slowly. Suddenly the lady behind me kind of circled around with a single small bottle of fruit juice in her hand and asked if it would be OK if she went ahead of me, since all she had was one item. My knee-jerk reaction was to say rather cheerily, "Sure, no problem." (Yes, the dreaded "no problem" which I hate but find myself saying all too often.) So she ensconced herself ahead of me. She was slim and about my age or a little younger, but appeared far more prosperous, with perfectly highlighted hair and lovely clothes and loafers. Once she was ahead of me, she looked more carefully into my cart and realized how little I had, and she started apologizing, which I tried to deflect by commenting on the unending rain, and hoping that she would enjoy her drink before getting poured on. All good WASP mannerly stuff. Yet I could feel this knot in my stomach. The fact is, my inner self was not in a state of blissful generosity. I was being, ugh, passive-aggressive.

I realized as I walked away from the store that there were so many factors here. A perfect storm has made my life what it is, not what it "should have been" with my education and background -- more like what hers would appear to be. And yet, I cannot know anything about her life, really. Who knows? Perhaps I am the only person to act kindly to her this year, and if so, I'm glad in the end that I responded as I did. But I think what it triggered is how quickly I sweep other people ahead of me, sort of like I know I'm a slow moving boat in the stream that people need to race around. In my own context, spiritually, I may be way downstream from the pack, but in terms of feet on the ground, I'm easily bypassed. I've been left in the dust, and I am the one who has actively waved people past me. "Sure, no problem."

It's hard to imagine having said "no" to this woman. And yet, I suppose if I had closed my eyes for just one minute, I could have tried to feel whether I was saying yes from the heart, or whether I could have said, "You know, I need to get to a bus so just this once I'm going to keep my place in line." I could have gently held my ground. Because I had a choice. And who knows, being really honest with her might have been an even bigger gift to both of us.

So on this anniversary, this is me, warts and all, still learning on "The Liz Path."