I guess I had had a long time to prepare for my dad's death, but nothing has prepared me for the energetic blow to the system that I continue to experience three weeks on. At the only comparable moment earlier in my life, when my mom died seventeen years ago, I immediately sprang into action to start the process of helping dad get the house ready for sale, and his life downsized and ready to move. There was a job to do. This time I am not playing a similar role. The entire experience is purely emotional and personal, trying to make heart- and head-sense of the death of the patriarch and all its complex ramifications.
Of course, in many respects I released my male-focused family a while ago, and on a bigger level, for decades I haven't been on the same functional wavelength as any of our traditional social, economic, spiritual, educational or health care systems; it was all I could do to barely use any of them, much less to work within them or represent them in higher- level leadership or managerial capacities (ergo, "no career"). As I have probably written previously, a friend of mine once called me a "scout," and that description is rather apt. I was better suited, it seems, to cutting through the undergrowth of future paths, bushwhacking and canoeing through "the wilderness" of the post-everything world to try to understand where we are headed, to understand what it would look like if a culture were not fear-based. As we all know from our history books, when scouts return to quote-unquote civilization, they can be looked on rather askance, with their shabby looks and rusty social skills. From the scout side of things, it can be tempting to react to the funny looks and just say, the heck with this, I'll return to the wilderness. I'll disappear again. But coming at this from the perspective of the divine feminine constantly reminds me that, ultimately, none of this is about me. It is about relationship. It is about the intertwined energies of all life, human, plant and animal, the earth, and all the galaxies beyond us.
I am ready to fully use what I've learned as a scout, but to do so less solitarily, in a human tribe or community. The last few days (to mix my metaphors yet again!) I've created a lot of inner angst about the new stretch of my life's river; where am I going? Will I recognize the right harbor when I see it? How will I get there? I am exhausted. Can I even get the boat repaired enough to head back into the water? How can I be "re-born" when so many of the old superficialities have washed away?
This morning, though, I'm feeling somewhat calmer. It isn't "about" any of that. I need to keep returning to the powerful core that continues to stand statuesque on the beach, the only truth I know; I am a woman mystic, writer, musician and artist. I am learning to love and to follow only the thread of love. If I stay focused on who I really am, the return to the river will happen effortlessly, and the destination will sing to me. All I need to do is keep my ears and my heart open.
