Moving forward, and occasionally stopping

A variety of factors personally and in the news have had me musing about the concept of freedom. My recent life has been a paradoxical blend of freedom and utter restriction; the freedom to be myself and to make periodic trips to England has been accompanied by its twin, financial instability and practical uncertainties of every kind. I seem to have figured out how to manifest opportunities to sing in cathedrals, but I have no car of my own with which to drive to a supermarket. I freely follow the stream of my life to new, more spiritually rich destinations, but often during transitional moments, I literally have nowhere to go and no way of getting anywhere. Eventually I breathe a thread of love out to the future and attract a growth-filled next step, and I am so thankful for having learned to do this, but it is like walking a tightrope across the Grand Canyon. I cannot stop, and I cannot, cannot look down.

Choices. Freedom. This weekend, I will be attending a women's retreat. Should the little bit of money I have to my name have gone to that, or to buying new glasses or supporting my physical rather than my spiritual needs? Should it have gone to job-hunting or networking or making a five-year plan or hiring a career counselor? Arguably, yes. But this event called to me. I don't recommend my kind of path -- our physicality is such an important part of our earth journey -- but I'm at that point where it's hard to imagine that I, Liz, could have gone a different way. And periodically, I stop and celebrate my power to have made other choices. At step A or B or C, I could have returned to the full-time work world. I could have made marriage a priority, or high income, or a house, or worldly success. I could have, but I did not. My impulse to understand myself and my world on a deep level seems to be too strong. My impulse to move forward spiritually (which often seems to involve physically) is too strong.

The good news is that I go into this weekend absolutely committed to the book that I have already started to write. Creating this blog two years ago was an important step; my fear of putting myself out there has largely abated. Several book attempts have piled up over the last few years, and been outgrown. But now I know that it's time to stop my forward movement just long enough to finish a real, substantial book. What inner compass I have been following? Which of my life lessons are ready to be shared? What aspects of my journey may help others, or speak (as Quakers say) to their condition? If I can gain an insight or two on how to approach the book over Saturday and Sunday, I will feel that the return on my small investment has been rich indeed, and that I've freely made the right choice. For me, and maybe eventually, for my readers.

Autumn

It is quite mind-boggling to remember the school clothes shopping I did with my mother back in the early 1960s. I mean, we did it at Schenectady's three (yes, three) downtown department stores -- malls didn't exist yet -- and for the most part, I remember wearing long-sleeved shirts, plaid wool kilts, cardigan sweaters and high socks with my brown leather-soled shoes. And this wasn't a uniform, just the kind of clothes girls wore to public school back when it was actually cool or cold in September. (In the summer I got to wear shorts or jeans, but I don't remember wearing them to school.) I remember my first trip on the school bus; all the first-graders sat on the long back seat, and somebody said, "let's tell everyone how old we are." So all the kids chirped up "six" or even "seven" until it got to me, and I said "five-and-a-half" and everyone stared at me like I had a dreaded disease. Being younger and often pushed ahead academically was an interesting dynamic all through school.

I thought of the heavy woolen back-to-school clothes this week as the northeast was suffering through another abnormally hot stretch. Most schools don't have air-conditioned classrooms in this part of the world, so I gather that 80's and 90's and clanking old room fans are a nearly unbearable way to start a school year. Some leaves are starting to turn, but the nights aren't getting chilly enough to really create a colorful forest palette. Maybe we are in for another year of shriveling brown. This is, of course, not something to shrug off...it is intimately connected to the floods in Texas and Florida, and the utter devastation in Puerto Rico. Someday, perhaps we will all finally wake up and say, "what was our first clue?" When kids stopped wearing wool to school.

In a few days, the forecast is calling for cooler weather. I'm praying that a lot of things cool off with the temperatures.

Location

If my next-to-last post was called "Dislocation," this one has to be called, "Location." It's funny, I looked up the word and found the geographic definition which involves the meeting point of longitude and latitude. From that perspective, there isn't any other human being at my same point right this minute -- what an awesome thought that is!  I guess in a city or in a skyscraper, one can rarely make that claim, but in much of the world, we each inhabit a unique locus at any given moment.

I'm proud of myself. While I may never approach a new American landscape with the same feeling of "home" as I do an English one, still, I find myself neutral but open right this minute. The inner "no" hasn't expressed itself. Just a somewhat muted "It's OK, I'm here to learn." For me, that's quite a step forward. I'm going to try to focus more on an inner "place" of resonance and acceptance and work outward. 

There's a dresser for my clothes, a desk to write at, and a small bookshelf that fits all my books, which run the gamut of my interests, from English cathedrals to women's spirituality to Mary Balogh romances. That's pretty much me in a nutshell. Nice to know that no one will ever be able to say, "she didn't know who she was." I totally know the "who"; the only thing that has ever been in question is the "how."

This is the bookend moment to that quiet one before my latest journey. The sun is streaming in the window, and it's blissfully still except for a few cars passing in the street. 

Checklist

Today is the day of your favorite wandering mystic's next move. For the last week, people have been asking, "Are you packed yet?" Well, when you own as little as I do, the process takes maybe an hour. The worst part of the process is the last five minutes, when there is a scattering of toiletries and scraps of paper and telephone messages lying on the floor, and I can't quite figure out what to do with them, so I just stuff them all into the closest tote bag, willy-nilly. I suspect for normal people with a normal move, the process involves tossing scattered final bits of furniture, bags and boxes into the moving van. Everything is relative.

I thought I'd share my little inner checklist of what to do before leaving any place, large or small, short-term or long-term. Perhaps it will help some of you with your next move:

• I touch base with the people I am closest with, have lunch with them, and let them know their presence meant a lot.
• "When in doubt"(if people are merely acquaintances), I just bless them and let go of feeling responsible to actively seek out their presence a final time.
• I send actual old-fashioned thank-you notes to anyone who has been particularly helpful or important in this phase of my life. 
• I change my address or do any bureaucratic stuff that I am ready to do. 
• I thank the house I've been in, and the person or people I've been with, face-to-face and with a hand-written note left behind. 
• This time, I bought all new 2017-2019 calendar, phone card, journal, and address book so I am literally starting afresh.
• I check that I have important papers, my purse, my computer, and my power cords.
• This time, I have also allowed myself to keep more books and other items than usual, to signal to the Universe that I'm ready to own more and find a more grounded situation. Some people might need to force themselves to get rid of more. It depends on what phase of life you are entering.
• Lastly, I spent a few minutes this morning simply being thankful for all aspects of my current step forward, with particular gratitude for my relative good fortune compared to residents of Puerto Rico and so many other places.

I have a few minutes of silence before getting my ride. I can hear people swishing through the fall leaves on the sidewalk, the screech of the garbage truck's brakes, cars hitting that pothole across the street, a leaf falling from the tree and loudly hitting the sidewalk. As I think I have mentioned, since I'm such a terrible meditator, listening to life's sounds and identifying them has become my version of that, and I am glad to have a few minutes of calm before I go. This definitely appears to be the end of the seven-year phase that started with bankruptcy in 2010-11, and I appreciate this lovely moment to inwardly wrap up the threads. The fall equinox seems to be a good day to move forward.

Dislocation

Once in a while, you read something that you feel was written just for you, to help you understand something important in your life. Nothing could be further from the truth, of course...it was written to help the author understand something. But the healing ring of truth, the "zing" (that word again) of truth, can be stunning.

The other day, in a little street library near me, I saw the book The Spiral Staircase by Karen Armstrong, and knew it was waiting for me. Armstrong is also the author of A History of God, and by the time I got about five pages into this memoir, I recognized a kindred spirit. She entered a convent in her late teens full of spiritual zeal, but left it around seven years later, wanting nothing more to do with religion. Her story mostly recounts the time between leaving the convent and writing A History of God, and all the false starts and seeming failures that beset her on the path to finding her true calling.

On page 23, I found these words, which may have just changed my life: "Looking back, I can see that during those first few months [after leaving the convent], I was experiencing something akin to the culture shock of those who, for one reason or another, have been forced to leave homes in Pakistan, Palestine, or Zimbabwe and migrate to a Western country...Exile is, of course, not simply a change of address. It is also a spiritual dislocation. Anthropologists and psychologists tell us that displaced people feel lost in a universe that has suddenly become alien. Once the fixed point of home is gone, there is a fundamental lack of orientation that makes everything seem relative and aimless. Cut off from the roots of their culture and identity, migrants and refugees can feel that they are somehow withering away and becoming insubstantial. Their world--inextricably linked with their unique place in the cosmos--has literally come to an end." Armstrong goes on to analyze how, despite her desire to leave the religious life, she initially felt this sense of disorientation in the secular world as well. 

These words describe to a tee how I have felt every time I have left England to return to the U.S. I am sure this sounds like hyperbole. After all, I am American. The phenomenon should work the other way around. But with me, it does not. My "home," however inexplicably, is in the choir stalls of an English cathedral, and in the orbit of these cathedrals and college chapels and that kind of musical and intellectual milieu. Yet I have spent about 59 of my 61 years outside that orbit, and this quote perfectly describes the ghostlike, surreal quality of trying year after year to function outside of my "unique place in the cosmos." Armstrong's words have validated something so enormous, so potentially tragic, that I have never quite wanted to fully articulate or face it. But the validation is also a relief. It's like having been sick for years and having a physician finally find the correct diagnosis.

A few years ago, a member of the clergy condescendingly told me that if God really wanted me to be in England at the heart of the world of this music I love, then I would already be there. At the time, I was outraged at his presumption. Yet now, four trips later and still finding the boomerang bringing me back to the States, even I have begun to wonder whether there may be some larger reason for my lifelong exile. I am dislocating yet again this week, to a space which will potentially allow me to make progress in discovering what that reason is. If nothing else, I will undoubtedly continue to explore in writing some of the issues faced when one is out of one's right place. This phenomenon is affecting growing numbers of people around the world; perhaps I am giving voice to something important. Indeed, social and technological change is happening so fast, even the most settled of us must be feeling pretty discombobulated. Where do we find our "fixed point," some small place within where we feel at home? It's hard to imagine a time when my writing will have moved beyond these topics.

I am grateful to Karen Armstrong for articulating my truth so well. I take heart from the fact that she eventually found her unique calling, which, of course, was simply a different iteration of her original passion. Hmm...

From Above

Not too surprisingly, television images that were mesmerizing before Irma hit land, and shocking during the storm, became overwhelming by about Monday. I don't remember whether we had the capacity for such extensive aerial coverage even ten years ago; these kinds of images from above are relatively new to the human psyche, and this storm's swath was so enormous that I don't think anyone can fully take it in. Picture after picture of destruction across the Caribbean into Florida and Georgia has seared its way into our collective consciousness. 

I am glad that overall, relatively few lives were lost. I resonate with people left adrift, although I cannot begin to imagine the suddenness and irreversibility of their experience; my heart goes out to all whose lives have changed. And first responders and workers restoring power and water are doing a heroic job. But here's the thing that haunts me in this video feed from above. Where (literally on earth!) is all the manmade trash, much of it toxic, going to go? I mean, this detritus represents untold tons of aluminum siding, acrylic paint, sheetrock, old asbestos, carpeting, roofing, and plastic lawn furniture. Countless cars, refrigerators, air conditioners, mattresses, rubber tires, and electronics have either made their way into the ocean or will have to be landfilled. Households lost invaluable personal belongings, as well as plastic items small and large, from toothbrushes to kitchen storage boxes to pet toys and table- and drop-cloths. Cleaning supplies. Toiletries. Batteries. And then there are the fiberglass boats. Little old north country me has mostly sailed in wooden boats on lakes which may host only a few dozen sailboats on a beautiful summer day; from that perspective, it is shocking to see enormous marinas filled with ruined boats, maybe tens of thousands of motorboats, sailboats, and yachts, either swamped by the storm or washed up on land blocks from their berths. Each boat represents a significant weight of fiberglass (polyester), not to mention sails, motors, gasoline, life vests...the list goes on. 

More than anything, it's the plastic. Somehow, not having a home of my own and being in a town where virtually all packaging plastics are recycled, I have been able to at least stomach my own plastic "footprint." I don't particularly like synthetic anything, fabrics, plates, cutlery or furniture, but my consciousness about it hadn't been fully raised. Since Monday, the thought of all our trashed plastic debris has made me feel sick.

The move to rebuild is starting. I understand the urgent need. But most of our modern building materials just simply cannot be fully absorbed into the earth this time or the next time. Nature cannot break them down as compost for future use. 

I stand in awe of the extraordinary power we just witnessed. In fact, as I said the other day, I embrace nature's wide range of expression, its own heroic effort to stay in balance. But gosh, now the ball is in our court. I really hope that all of us look at the bigger picture of what this storm was trying to teach us. I hope we all look at it from above, and from the perspective of the future. My hunch is that we are being asked to stop and think before rebuilding. Unfortunately, when you stop and think, other people interpret it as "doing nothing"...

Storm Surge

Despite myself, I was mesmerized by the coverage of Irma. I don't know if it was the suspense of it, or the spiral shape of the radar and satellite images, or the metaphor/life lesson aspect of it. And I don't know Florida at all. The only cities I would have been able to locate on a map before this weekend are Orlando and Miami, so I had no personal stake in the storm. It's just that it was monumental, and it was nature being nature. The storm's power was literally awesome. 

Human lives were completely upended, at least for the short term. This morning, the assessment begins in terms of property, life, and infrastructure damage. Yet something keeps gnawing away at me. And that is that what from a human progress standpoint is a disaster, or destruction, or devastation, may be, from nature's perspective, re-organizing, returning to balance, a simple release of energy. I don't see it as nature's anger, rather nature's attempt to keep earth habitable for future generations of plant, human and animal species, a simple attempt to keep conditions on this delicate planet within that narrow habitable range. 

I know I have an irritating (even to me) propensity for trying to see things a different way, but I guess there's this little part of me wondering, how do we spread our arms wide and say "thank you"? As storms surge over us, even in our individual lives, where is the gift? Personally, I don't want to hear one more comment about "Mother Nature's Wrath." I think, paradoxically, she is trying to keep us safe, and wake us up to what needs to be done to keep ourselves part of this unique earth picture. Yes, dear life force, I am watching and listening, mesmerized.

Waves

This probably isn't the blog that it was going to be. Maybe none of them ever are.

It's been a hard week for news about friends. Things seem to be coming in waves. I just found out that my best school friend from 11th and 12th grade died back in May. We had been rather out of touch (she was in the world of high finance living many states away, and somehow with all my moving around and my low-finance interests, we only occasionally saw each other at reunions). She was indomitable; it is inconceivable to me that she is no longer here. Another dear friend spent the summer fighting cancer, and she told virtually none of her family and friends. She's recovering, and I am so thankful. But it's hitting me in waves, these "life after 60" moments on top of the literal storms of water, fire and wind. 

Yesterday, I saw a wonderful Martha Beck video which I seem to be too inept to figure out how to share here. But basically, she was mulling over the chaos we are experiencing, and how, trying to find a video about Irma, she stumbled across a video of a surfer riding one of the biggest waves in the world. To paraphrase her, this guy looks like he's been swallowed up by the wave, but then he surfs right out from the middle of it with style. And it was a beautiful metaphor. OK, maybe we won't all survive these big waves (I don't really believe in death, which I guess it's about time I talk about but not today), and maybe we won't all surf in style, but maybe we can at least navigate our board fearlessly up to the wave and glide to safety as best we can. 

Tomorrow, I'm going to be giving a brief presentation to a group about my trip to England. Right this second, I can't think of anything that seems further away from my reality than the choir stalls of an English cathedral. But there are entire islands that have washed away in the Caribbean and people whose lives couldn't be more upended. All in all, I am as fortunate as they come. When the waves hit me, may I keep breathing, and keep celebrating life and love wherever I see them. 

Circles

This is one of those days when I feel quite emotional. When you are one of those people who just simply cannot imagine being deliberately cruel, cannot imagine deliberately picking up a weapon (much less using one), and has a hard time dealing with notions of profit, greed, or success at the expense of others, virtually every current event in the news right now is so bewildering in the extreme, you just cannot process it. I'm tear-y and feel very unsettled, even though I know I am inwardly strong. Strange to admit this to a circle of readers around the world, most of whom I have never met.

There is one thing I am celebrating right now. I have the most extraordinary group of friends; women of courage, spirit, wisdom, inner strength, insight, sensitivity, generosity, creativity and humor. All of us are quietly facing challenges, family and health difficulties, housing uncertainties, and questions about our post-60 life. For the most part, we don't blame, lash out, fight, or try to bring people down; we just get on with as much aplomb and integrity as we can. This is my dream, although it would be a near logistical impossibility: I would like to get my ten or fifteen closest friends together. We would sit in a circle and hold hands. No talking, no sharing, no singing. Just holding hands to feel the rush of love energy, life energy and respect flowing around the room. For me right now, the beautiful power of this far-flung circle of friends is one of the few things that is real, one of the few things not bewildering. 

A lot of the circles we are seeing (radar maps of hurricanes, graphics of world hot-spots) are scary. Perhaps if all of us just spend a minute today thinking of our own circle of dear ones, and take some deep and healing breaths, circles will feel a little more lovely and unifying. Just for today.

One whole

This is a rather challenging moment to focus on anything. 

The flooding in Texas, and even worse flooding in parts of Asia, is a reminder that we are part of one whole. I was horrified to read that Houston basically has no zoning laws. Despite a long history of flooding, sprawling housing developments and retail strips have gone up willy-nilly, covering up wetlands and greenspace. You can't "pave paradise and put up a parking lot" (thanks Joni Mitchell) and then expect no consequences. A story in Wednesday's New York Times spoke of how the city is having to face the notion of limiting unlimited growth; I hope that we all begin to understand that message in the broader context. There is literally an ebb and flow to everything in life. If we push our earth home too far, it has to push back. There's nowhere else for it to go either.

I was sorry to hear of the death of Louise Hay, who has influenced so many millions with her book, You Can Heal Your Life. While I didn't spin the mind-body connection quite the same way she did, I agree with her that health conditions and accidents stem from the quality of our energy within. Her publishing house and its authors are at the forefront of new thought in all aspects of health and spirituality -- and I gather that Hay's "career" in this area didn't start until she was 50. How inspiring is that?

When our spirit is out of whack, it affects our cells. When one cell in our body is out of whack, it affects the whole body. Doesn't it make sense that this is the case with our earth home? There's so much preaching out there, and I don't want to add to it...we are being given so many opportunities to sit up and take notice, though. I hope we will.