Paradox morphing into mystery

I've tried unsuccessfully to think of a single word to encapsulate 2019. Words could sputter out of me to describe the world scene this year, but my little individual journey through those events was -- what? -- "paradoxical"? For the moment that works best.

The year started in my beloved England, only a broken wrist left me so battered and timid that I couldn't run around and experience all the things I had planned. The visit included almost no church music, but oddly, many blessings and more of a sense of rootedness there than ever.

And yet when the time came to an end, I uprooted again, back to Duluth, my American "as close to home as I can get." I found temporary housing in a beautiful place that slowly revealed itself to be uniquely challenging. Blissful summertime walking on the beach probably led to a painful IT band injury. Then a series of severe winter storms made the city nearly unnavigable at times. Walking around and getting into city buses, etc., has been as challenging as at the beginning of the year, only in a different place and for different reasons.

Human connectedness has made all the difference in 2019. Yet in another painful paradox, I seem to have lost the long term friendship that means the most to me, and I really do not understand what happened. Thus Christmas brought a lot of grieving, the processing of losses and closed paths. I have too rarely allowed myself to reach, much less feel, the deepest pain of life, so perhaps that was a good thing.

I end the year house-sitting, a quiet being in the quiet frozen North, hearing the roiling surf of Lake Superior as it changes the beach landscape irrevocably with every wave. Perched, not planted, as usual, and yet something feels different. I feel somewhat more inwardly rooted, somewhat less dependent on conditions. Maybe the paradoxes and ironies of life are slowly morphing into "mysteries" as I hit my mid-sixties.

May the next year, for all of us, be "mysterious" or better!

Right and Wrong

It may seem odd that a non-dualistic thinker like me would write a post called "right and wrong," but bear with me. I've been influenced and formed in that paradigm like everyone else...

Writing my memoir has been revelatory. Hard, but revelatory. It has reminded me (if the news doesn't, each and every morning) that I have been fortunate enough never to have experienced war, physical or sexual abuse, direct terrorist attacks, or any similar physical violence at the hands of other people.

But my life experienced has been characterized by an unusual level of psychological rejection -- abandonment, condescension, shaming, ridicule, contradiction and push back. Perhaps the worst of all is just simply being ignored. This has been as hard to write about in my book as I imagine outright violence would have been, but I am beginning to see a clear trend; I think I may have explored this in a blog a few months ago, but I'm seeing it more and more clearly.

I was made to feel "wrong," I believe, the minute I was handed into my father's arms. He simply could not register the qualities that a beautiful young first baby represents, and as I came into my own (at least to some degree a person of love, beauty, wisdom, empathy, and creativity) I was kept further and further at arm's length. Soon I fell in love with English church music -- wrong again, it seemed. Over and over, I've had regular experience with being pushed back in almost a knee-jerk kind of way, particularly when I am being most "me." It never ceases to be painful; thankfully, there have been wonderful exceptions along the way.

The gift of writing all these events down on paper, and having survived long enough to do so (because, Lordy, that alone is a miracle!) is that I am finally seeing the consistent thread through them all.

In almost every case, I verbalized (out loud, or in writing) something that was, in fact, true, a "case" that was arguable, or something that time would prove true. I was, in effect, "right," but in a situation where people did not want to hear the truth so it was easier to make me feel "wrong." Until recently, I just couldn't completely separate people's reactions to me from who I was. Somewhere in me, I carried the shame of consistently being wrong. Maybe some of you have experienced this.

Of course this phenomenon is magnified by my being a woman "of a certain age" (we're all invisible and inaudible, right?) and by my having made the choice so many times in my life to live in climates that require months of "muffling" against the elements. My truth flies away on a brutal northeast wind the minute the words leave my mouth. My breath freezes to my scarf, my glasses. I still resonate with being near Lake Superior because she is endless, roiling, Nature-speaking-her-truth. I am inspired by her refusal to be tamed or made wrong.

I am so ready -- not necessarily to be told I am "right," because truly, I am trying to leave that form of duality, but...-- to have people say, "I'd like to hear more about what you have to say." I'd like to regularly feel what it feels like to speak -- or "be" -- and not hear all the shutters pulled down around me. I'd like to know what it is like to be fully welcomed for being in my fullest integrity. And, yes, I'd like that for everyone.

A Blizzard and a Book

Last weekend, Duluth had a serious blizzard, probably the worst since 1991, when I was also here. Technically, not as much snow, but such heavy, wet, stuff that digging out has been extremely challenging. In fact, it's definitely going to be one of those winters when those of us of a certain age avoid going outdoors. I was never into winter sports...my winter sport is looking out the window at the black and white landscape, I guess!

I ended up miscalculating one thing, which was how many books to have out from the library. I raced through the two I had, and was bookless. Disaster. However, a few weeks before, I had found Edwin Way Teale's Springtime in Britain (1970) in the library's own free book shelf. I am not a naturalist and generally have no interest in books about birds, ferns, nature. Sorry, but that's the truth! I had pretty much figured I would just keep this book in my collection of Britainia. But with nothing else to read, I got started, and it is wonderful. He describes his late-1960's springtime trip to Britain, driving with his wife all over the country. For the most part, they avoided cities, and his descriptions of the landscape and animal life are charming, beautiful, grounding.

My readers must be so tired of my England "thing" -- someone asked me the other day, "Why didn't you ever just get over there to live?" What's the answer to that? I simply do not know. At times I have tried and tried, at times I have given up. One likely reason is that my "relationship" with England (and its church music) has simply not been a clear, pure energetic signal. A few years ago, someone gave me a beautiful book of photographs of small English country churches. I tried looking through it, and it made me sob so hard that I have basically never looked at it since. It is too poignant, too hard to look from a distance and not be there. Similarly with listening to webcasts of choral evensong services...often I just simply cannot bear to listen from so far away.

So I see reading Teale's book as a victory of sorts, over my own belief in separation. I have been able to read, to picture many of the places that I also know, and simply smile and feel grounded and part of it. I drew a picture the other day of my feet rooted by long Jack and the Beanstalk vines to Britain. I am trying to get away from the notion of "homesickness" and lean into "home-rootedness." I'll try to use this winter's brutal black and white time to heal that lingering separation within me.

Health Care II

Well, in nearly 500 posts, I have never published a retraction, and I'm not quite doing it now. But concerning yesterday's post, yes, there was an error on the bill I received, in the sense that it didn't give me complete information. I still had to pay the amount on the invoice, but it turned out to be for three sessions of physical therapy, not one. That makes things a bit more bearable, yet still...

Do I believe in universal health care? Absolutely. But I don't believe it will be possible to institute under our current system.

I've learned to trust my body, and to believe that it can, and will, adapt to most outside challenges. It also aligns with my inner reality, which I try to stay very conscious of. I'm not afraid of my body or of illness...am I a little afraid of falls and their ramifications? Yes. That seems to have been my biggest challenge; I didn't fall last month, but the IT band problem might have stemmed partially from last December's fall. Clearly these situations absolutely require medical intervention. Ditto, dental work. So we all need something, sometime. I am grateful for good care these last few weeks, but why is it that the minute money enters into any scenario, I feel sick in the pit of my stomach? I just feel better about a love economy, a "I'll do that for you because you are another wonderful human being" economy. In health care and in other scenarios.

Health Care

OK, so I've rarely spoken about this touchy topic in too much detail, and I actually won't today either. However, I need to weigh in.

Six weeks ago, I went overnight from being able to walk normally, to having such excruciating pain in my left thigh that I virtually couldn't walk at all. It turned out to be an IT band inflammation. Age has caught up with me, as my fall last Christmas should have completely illustrated. Being over sixty doesn't seem to be conducive to having no health insurance, which has been my norm for most of the last thirty years. I have started the wheels in motion to do the inevitable, even though my spirit didn't do it lightly. What seems sensible to most people is painful for me. I don't know if it's possible to list all my objections to our current system -- so I'll just say that my main ones are that it is largely based on duality ("fighting disease") and on some people profiting from others' illness and accidents. I don't find any of it sensible or ethical, but then again, my thinking finds few reflections out in the world.

But to receive an invoice for physical therapy at what appears to be the rate of $600 an hour (minus a small percentage because I am paying for it) is so stunning, it's hard to fathom. I am so grateful for this therapy, and it has helped enormously. I can pretty much walk normally again, although I am still having trouble with some stairs. I have nothing "against" anyone involved. As always, for me, it's mostly the philosophy of the thing. How can anyone, anywhere, stomach asking a person who has rarely made more than ten or fifteen dollars an hour, to pay sixty times what they have ever been paid per hour, for one hour of anything? Sorry, folks in the health care world, this isn't "caring" for anyone.

Sure, I'll call, check to see if there's been a mistake, and if not, maybe I'll get some eventual reimbursement. I'm willing to eat ramen noodles from now till Christmas and all the other ramifications of a sudden financial shock like this. My life has been a succession of such shocks. People wonder why I don't "fight" for better wages or health care or housing. Well, it's simply this. I don't believe that any of the current systems in place around the world can ever provide solutions to this kind of thing, so fighting will never produce a better outcome. These systems are not based on love. They are not based on beauty, or wisdom, or any of the attributes that are important to me -- which is why I've not been paid properly, or cared for. It's as simple as that. It's a vicious circle, which will only spin faster if I "fight" it. The only way forward for me is to act as lovingly as possible, and as honestly as possible. Writing this blog was the honest part.

Christmas Shopping

It probably won't come as a big surprise to my handful of readers that I don't do much in the way of Christmas shopping. Something about the whole concept has troubled me for decades, certainly the way it manifests in modern America. I suppose if one is uncomfortable with notions like profit, ownership, and accumulation of superficial things, and if one has very little money, the season becomes increasingly awkward, peculiar, even traumatizing. It's like watching some kind of bizarre movie through pane glass that you are on the other side of. But at least until recently, the whole "thing" wouldn't start until after Thanksgiving. As I'm sure you've all noticed, it started the day after Halloween this year. The explanation I heard in passing on television news was that retailers were so concerned by the fewer days between Thanksgiving and Christmas in 2019, that they had to expand the season. I mean, it is surely obvious that this has little or nothing to do with celebrating the birth of Christ and everything to do with retail profit.

I guess I wouldn't mind so much if we re-named the holiday, and just called it "Present Day" or "Yearly Celebration of Stuff." And I'm a non-traditional enough of a Christian, indeed post-Christian, enough, that it might seem like I would simply ignore the religious roots of the holiday. But I care. I care enough about the life and values of the holy man called Jesus and the religion I grew up with and whose music is at the core of my being, that I just cannot square these two polar opposites: the frenzied rush to spend enormous amounts of money on technology, household goods, clothes and plastic-packaged toys, and a mystic who, during his ministry at least, appears to have had no home, probably just one robe and one pair of sandals. If he manifested in our midst tomorrow, what would he make of this whole phenomenon? I can guess, but it's not a question I can definitively answer.

In December, I will probably do what I have done other years, which is buy one or two locally- or hand-made presents for my dearest friends, wrap them carefully, and send or give them in person. I will probably send out about a dozen Christmas cards, the old fashioned kind. And I will probably make some cookies or holiday food for a few other friends -- and that's it. By some people's standards, my life is pretty sad. I don't have any young children in my life, and no family that I am close with anymore. Many people may be going through the motions for their family's or tradition's sake, but I cannot and will not do it. And on Christmas Day itself, I am likely to listen to some music from England, or sit in silence, watching what is sure to be a very snowy, wintry scene outside. (If I had my own home, I would invite people for a meal, but I do not.) It is not about rebellion, it is about aligning with my perception of the spirit of the season. Under this kind of social and retail pressure, all we can do is make our own choices.

Presence

I've reached the moment in my memoir when I am writing about my mom's death, eighteen years ago. Of course, it is impossible to believe it has been that long.

These major moments in my life have been hard to get down on paper. And I mean that literally, as I believe I have mentioned, this book is being written longhand, on index cards, because I don't currently own a computer. I can tell when I get to certain hard events, because all I can manage, emotionally, is to write a few cards' worth of narrative at one sitting, not a handful.

This is what I realized a few hours ago: even if I had done nothing else in sixty-three years -- if I had not earned three post-high school degrees, or contributed in various ways to jobs of all sorts, or pioneered as a woman in the field of English church music, or been a scout as a woman alone, trying to survive largely outside the current construct -- even if I had done none of those things, being a presence for my mom in those last three days of her life would have made my entire time on earth worthwhile. I was simply there, keeping my parents' household going, calling the doctor, calling the nurses, calling my brothers, etc. Holding her, talking with her even once she could no longer speak, trying my darndest just to be there. And I say this, even knowing that if the roles had been reversed, Mom might not have been able to be present in the same way for me. It's OK.

I don't believe we "earn" the right to be here on this planet, which is why I struggle so hard with our cutthroat economic model. The moment we have the courage to be born, we have already earned, if you will, our place here. So I don't see this as a scale, where that long weekend in 2019 tips the worthiness balance somehow. For me, it's about looking back at shining moments or experiences that make you proud, and human, and glad to have been alive. Two others, for me, are my experiences singing choral evensong at King's College, Cambridge and Canterbury Cathedral, and my regular contributions to this blog. And, of course, none of these three most worthwhile events paid me actual money. My whole life sometimes seems to be a reproach to our current system; I've finally (almost!) come to terms with that.

I guess I just write this to say to anyone reading this, if you have been a presence to anyone, in any hard situation (as someone was dying, undergoing health issues, making difficult choices...), your value is off the scale. Your time wasn't money, it was love. And eventually, that will be the only currency.

Old World/New World

A kind of interesting thought has been weaving through my mind the last two weeks, and the time near "Columbus Day" may be an appropriate moment to throw it out there.


I was definitely brought up with the old paradigm, triumphalist version of American history: that courageous Europeans, fleeing religious and social persecution in their home continent, risked everything to come to the new world and carve out an entire society from scratch. There is still some truth to that superficial telling of the story, but most of us now are conscious of the disturbing shadow stories behind this narrative. That isn't my focus today. Maybe another day.


But as I try to rise above my own strangely intense chronic homesickness for England, I've begun to imagine possible precedents. I'm a fly on the wall of an English couple in the 1600s or early 1700s in their original home, my ancestors. Perhaps they were anti-establishment in some respect, I don't know. Let's say the husband comes home and announces to his wife, "We are leaving for America. There are wide open spaces there, freedom, land to farm or do anything we want. Get packing!" In those days, what choice did the wife have? A woman had no autonomy, no ability to choose differently from her spouse. She would be leaving her social network, likely a nearby family, and everything that she knew. If she refused to go -- well, we can imagine the possibilities in many cases. How many women swallowed their terror, their disagreement, and simply went? And if they survived the perilous two month journey, what was their impression when land was sighted? I am talking about the earliest New England, New York, and Virginia settlers. Whatever town they landed in would have been extremely rustic by European standards, and then beyond that, trees, trees and more trees. And if she survived the first winter (probably at least 30 degrees F colder than she was used to) and the first summer (probably at times nearly 30 degrees F hotter than she was used to), did she ever really get used to her new environment, her landscape, her life of struggle against the elements?


Even if many of the women who came to America early on were dissident Puritans and Quakers, not Church of England, the fact is that in their old homes, they would have been an integral part of a landscape dotted with stone circles, Celtic crosses, churches, abbeys, and cathedrals. Centuries-old pre-Christian and Christian art and architecture would have at least been part of their daily visual experience. Literally uprooting from this land would have been heartbreaking on some level. It must have been. How many years did it take to acclimate? Or did homesickness get passed down to the next generation, and the next, and the next?


Many of us have been brought up to assume that these ties were simply broken, for some of us, up to four hundred years ago. That there shouldn't still be any repercussions. But what if somehow I've heard the echoes of women's tears through the ages, as they were torn from home? Perhaps the ache in my heart isn't only mine, but an inheritance from the women of my past.

Beyond Wondering and Wandering

It has started, the dark time of year that I don't think in the past I acknowledged finding hard, but I do now. And this week's earlier and earlier darkness seemed to coincide with several "dark nights of the soul."

I have had a rental right near Lake Superior all summer that was in ways simply idyllic, and perfect for working on my book. I can hear the waves on the big lake, and see sunsets and rowers and ore ships on the bay. I am surrounded by the water I love so much, hear lapping even when the window is closed. Unfortunately, this situation is not likely to last beyond November 1, so this wandering mystic will have to wander on, again, as the weather here is beginning to get brutal. I've been writing like crazy, hoping to finish at least the hand-written part of the book this month, although I find I have to pace myself. It's emotional, challenging writing.

And then all of a sudden last week, I was limping heavily on a very painful left leg, without even having fallen. A trip to Urgent Care told me that it was something called I T band syndrome, and rest, some pain relief and physical therapy will help. But once again, I lurched from feeling young-ish to ancient; reminded of what a total miracle walking is. Astonished that I've usually done it beautifully, ever more conscious of the fragility of that miracle.

I don't know, I just had a few days when I wanted my mom, even though she was never the nurturing type. If not my mom, then the Great Mother, a warm hugging presence in the sky who would go, "There, there, Liz. It's all going to be OK. Here's a fresh-baked chocolate chip cookie." Only She wasn't there either. I suddenly realized that She is in me, also exiled, wandering, trying to find safe shelter, trying to be heard in a world that appears to have lost its collective mind.

What has at least partially brought me out of this dark night was validating that I have known since I was about six who I am and where my home is. I am a mystic, and my home is in the choir stalls of English cathedrals. Period. When I root myself in this, I stop freaking out. I'm beyond wondering at the illogic of this, and needing to understand. It simply is, whether I am singing or not. I am also done trying to figure out how to get home. It will happen because it is now time to stop wandering. I am beyond wondering and beyond wandering. My legs and my soul are ready to be rooted. They are ready to sink into more permanent soil, finally a more unified person.

"AI" Again

Well, I wasn't going to weigh in again so soon, but I feel like I am almost jumping out of my skin these days.

So yesterday, I TV-channel-surfed through a headline about how Artificial Intelligence was going to "fight" global warming. By the time the reference registered, I surfed back through the channels and couldn't find it again, but a computer search just now indicates that it has been the topic of quite a bit of media reporting.

This is the intersection of two of my biggest frustrations. Frustration number one: the concept that any kind of fight is the solution to any serious problem on this planet. There may arguably be winners in sporting events, but I just don't believe there are when wars are fought in society at large. "Fighting" global climate chaos will just create more chaos, in my opinion, and I've said enough about this in the past so that I won't repeat myself and bore you silly!

And then, back on August 14, 2018, I explored how we humans are rushing headlong into "artificial intelligence" while the intelligence of women is still undervalued and, at times, totally ignored. It's just horrifying to think we are skipping such an important step. An AI "fight against global warming" is doubly unlikely to succeed, especially if women are under-represented. I hope all involved will gently try to steer the conversation away from "conflict" mentality and terminology, at the very least.

This is a little tangential, but I've become almost beside myself about plastic. Yes, I may use it less than the average person, having such a tiny footprint on the earth now; no home, no car, few belongings. But still, no matter how I try, most of my purchases have some kind of plastic packaging. I go into a big box store, and almost swoon from the (admittedly exaggerated) impression that the amount of plastic in that one store is enough to clog an ocean; when I think about the other millions of stores worldwide, I can barely breathe. Recycling isn't enough.

I imagine myself back in, what, the late 1940's or 1950's, being the sole woman (maybe a secretary) in a boardroom full of male executives. They are all excited by the prospects of what can be done with plastic, and the profits that will come from ever-expanding use of the material. I can see myself, timidly raising my hand, asking, "Ahem, I am not a scientist, but I wonder if you are considering whether plastic breaks down in nature, so that there won't be too much pollution." And I can almost hear it now (because I have been at the receiving end of phrases like it in real life); "Young lady, don't worry your pretty head about that. If it causes pollution, we'll worry about it later."

Well, we've reached "later."

My hunch is that if women had been allowed equal power as public co-creators of our world for the last few thousand years, we wouldn't be anywhere near as technologically evolved as we are, but we would also not be at the edge of such a steep environmental cliff.  Women might have helped steer a more sensible, gentle, respectful path in our interaction with Earth. Nature can't help but try desperately right now to return her planet to balance. Whether we like it or not, we may be tossed back in time to the moment where women stopped being listened to, and get a second chance to work together, men and women, as co-creators. Now that would be real intelligence, the human brain working at full capacity, no artificiality required.

"And"-a-two

The biggest "aha" from what I wrote the other day is this: I have been more responsible than anyone for maintaining a split down my middle. When I've been in England, I have done everything possible to "fit in" and not seem American. Oh sure, the minute I open my mouth, it's evident that I am a North American, but in every other respect, I have tried to disappear. I've tried to be relatively quiet, unobtrusive, colorless. In my encounters with the church music or academic worlds over there, I have tried mightily not to be too enthusiastic or self-revealing, because those things inevitably seemed to be conversation-enders. I've allowed myself to be corrected ("That's not how we say it") and subtly molded into a less outgoing, less visible presence. And I've liked that. I've liked walking down the street like any other middle-aged British woman, carrying my bags of groceries. I've liked people coming up to me on the street asking directions because they assume I'm local. It has always been somewhat of a relief to be in a more constrained, "civilized" milieu. My more independent/powerful/lively/vocal self didn't just take a back seat, she would almost dissolve entirely into the ether. The whole New Age/new spirituality thing is relatively nonexistent over there. A few years ago, I went into Cambridge's main bookstore, Heffers, and asked for their New Age Spirituality section. The clerk looked blankly at me, and walked me over to a shelf where there were, like, three books total. In an American bookstore, there might be three or four entire bookshelves.

Then, in America, how to be the more scholarly/restrained/mystic/England- and English church music-loving me? She has been literally and figuratively a ghost on the landscape. I might have fit in a bit if I had pursued a PhD and entered university teaching. But I just didn't understand back then that I might be good at that or that it was an option. And today there are a few churches in the US where I might be able to sing the music I love at a reasonably high level, but right now, I'm too exhausted to search them out and move to yet another new part of the country. Overall, over here, I've focused on a more outgoing, more "artsy," more New Age-y, more feminist "me," a "me" more rooted in the future, not the past. Virtually none of my women friends speak the language of choral evensong, so, not being able to figure out how to mesh these two contrasting worlds, I've left it out of the conversation entirely.

There is no doubt in my mind that the only place I'll ever fully feel at home, and in the milieu where I'm likely to thrive, is England. I need the possibility of daily choral evensong in my life, period. However, if I didn't understand it before, I understand it now. From this point forward, I can only go back for any length of time once I am willing to bring my most powerful, outgoing self with me. I have to proudly embrace my American energy on that soil, and bring my whole crazy story with me. And I'll only find happiness and wholeness in the meantime once I find a way to express my English side more effectively, even if it is through artwork or some other unexpected medium. I can no longer keep that form of beauty at arm's length in my American life because of the fear that if I get too rooted, I'll never get home. Because I think that's the crux of it all, right there. Fear.

I am the one who needs to dismantle this painful wall, one stone at a time. No one else can do it for me.

"And"

Saturday was a glorious day in Duluth. Sunny, maybe 72 degrees. I sat on a rock near the lake at Canal Park, looking out at nearly-flat water. A slight northwest wind propelled a single large sailboat. On the rocky beach, a couple searched for sea glass and precious stones, and children threw rocks back into the lake. The midday sun hung relatively low and pale in the sky, a sign that winter isn't far off.

I was grateful for this beauty, and I tried so hard to stay in the present, as wise ones tell us to do, just as I have from so many other U.S. ports-of-call over the years. And yet, like the prickling of an amputated limb, my consciousness felt London, felt and saw and heard the music lists (from English cathedrals, chapels and abbeys) that I've seen recently on social media. I saw the classic art in great galleries and the soaring cathedral structures and felt my feet rooted in another soil. I wasn't fully on that lake shore any more than I am fully anywhere over here, ever. It must be as painful for you, my readers, to read about as it is to be me sometimes, and I am sorry about that. I am plugging away at my book even though it may end up being a hard read. I don't know how to get permanently where I want to be, or to be fully at peace where I am, and, like the little kids, I just had to throw this lifelong conundrum into the motherly embrace of the lake. It remains far too big for me to solve.

Not surprisingly, the next 24 hours unrolled, if not a solution, then at least a new understanding.

As my regular readers know, I've spoken several times recently about rising above duality. I can see that our culture's addiction to division and conflict is killing us. All of us were trained to look at life this way, to "fight" crime, disease, global warming, homelessness, war, discrimination, hatred, evil. And yet none of these conditions is solved by that rigid wall down the center of life and our nonstop struggle. If anything, they are all simply getting worse.

I've seen this so clearly outside me, so why have I not seen the same situation within? I am a being of such contrasts: left brain (lawyerly, organized, managerial, verbal, "male") and right brain (artistic, spontaneous, spiritual, creative, "female"); American (by birth) and English (in spirit); upper crust and poor; passionate about a form of Christian music and Goddess-centered; civilized and yet wild; powerful yet powerless.

Each side of me has been at war with the other. I have wanted one side to win out and extinguish the other, just to make life easier to explain, to make a simpler narrative. I have been terrified of the possibility that I am big enough and all-encompassing enough to be all of these things. If I could consistently say as I began to do above, "I am __ and __," how would my life change?

Nothing in me is wrong or evil. There is no reason to kill any of these qualities -- except to keep me hobbled and small. Perhaps the only "evil"/source of pain in any scenario is the trained impulse to build a wall down the middle, to hunker down, and to start fighting.

This realization helped. A lot. It helped me embrace my reality here just a little, and fully appreciate that beautiful moment on the beach. I'll write more on all of this very soon.

Audition and Visualization

Last week, I plucked up my courage and put together a submission of my book to a literary agent. Within a little over an hour, I had received a rejection note. Now, this was my first effort of this kind, and I didn't necessarily expect first-time success or even moderate interest. But what felt like a kick in the stomach was the immediacy of the turnaround. I'm a "girl" of the pre-internet era, clearly, a "My Brilliant Career" writer of sending things off hard copy and waiting weeks to hear back.

Fortunately, I quickly realized that this had triggered a really powerfully painful response, and why. There has been a recurring theme in my life, arguably since birth, of me showing up raring to go and being rejected without, so to speak, "an audition." Of course, the older I get and the more I write and act from the heart, the more painful rejection becomes. I spent the weekend in a state of shock; but I've survived it; I wrote some more of my book this morning and am writing here as well. As I say, the fact of rejection is less painful than the knee-jerk timing of it. The kindest thing would have been for the agent to wait several days to give a potential author at least the sense that their work has been fully considered, but, ahem, our system is far from kind, the issue I have had with it my whole life.

I didn't watch the U.S. Open this weekend, but of course I was intrigued by the surprising win of the young Canadian player. I heard an interview with her this morning, and she indicated that she had been practicing creative visualization since she was a kid (yes, about a decade!) -- and that she had frequently pictured winning this tournament. Wow, what a sea change for girls born in the c.2000 era compared with those of us from the '50's. It's amazing that such empowerment was encouraged so early in her, when many of us of my generation experienced the exact opposite. I've been practicing visualization for decades too, but earlier negative messages too often seem to negate the progress I make.

Nevertheless, I persist. The courage of these younger women helps to keep me going.

Choir

A news report about the unsuccessful effort by a 9-year-old girl to join an elite German boys' choir has, once again, brought up this core part of my own journey, which I am writing about in my book.

On the one hand, I feel such solidarity with her. It is vindication, validating my own desire, starting 59 years ago, to sing the music of the English men-and-boys' choir tradition. I shouldn't still need to validate it, but strangely, I do.

And yet the fact that she was blocked in court causes a new wave of heartbreak. In the 1960's no one would even have considered suing. I am not big on lawsuits, but in this case I'm glad she and/or her parents had the courage to take that modern route. It brought into the public eye all the traditional arguments against girls in these choirs -- the slightly different sound made by girls and boys at young ages, and the limited time that the boys can sing soprano. Then there is the appeal to tradition; 500 to 1,000 years is a long time, and a huge barrier to even the slightest change. The court ruled for the choirmasters' artistic discretion and against the young singer..

Many English cathedrals have instituted girls' choirs which alternate services with the boys. But the most prominent English and American choirs are still men and boys. And while adult women have increasing numbers of opportunities in secondary and visiting choirs, full acceptance of us within the tradition seems to be almost as far off as ever. This makes it very hard for young women to pursue the related option of entering the field as organist-choirmasters or organ scholars...as I learned too well, if you don't have a solid network of older role models and a variety of welcoming opportunities, it is impossible to move upwards.

At my age, I guess I am more aware of what all this "feels" like than the actual intellectual, musical or legal arguments. It is, above all, about feeling welcome -- or not. I saw the words, "Never will a girl sing in a boys' choir" and I felt the punch to my stomach just as I have so many times before. When you are called to sing a specific tradition of sacred music at a high level, and you are not "allowed" to, your soul may never fully recover. Mine didn't. I pray that this young girl discovers some new, satisfying alternatives, or that her suit eventually opens some doors for her and others of her generation. I'd like her to know that I, too, tried my best! (As I write this, I am crying.)

Shifts

OK, so I remember when I first lived in Duluth in the 90's, I began to sense that we were nearing major shifts in both human consciousness and our cultural center-of-gravity. It just seemed to me that we were on an unsustainable path and that things were going to change quite substantially -- at some point. And then it seemed like the kinds of shifts I was envisioning weren't happening. I wondered for several decades if it hadn't just been a figment of my imagination...

These last few weeks, I'm becoming pretty convinced that it wasn't my imagination. What is happening is too big, too dramatic, too close to home.

I'm tired from working on my book -- it's an emotional thing to do. And the news simply becomes more terrifying and more grotesque by the minute. So how to continue on a forward path right now without losing heart? All I seem to be able to do is keep checking in with myself about who I am, what my values are, and what forms of beauty constitute my personal backbone. All I can seem to do is be that person in the world. Coming from the background I come from, such a self-focus doesn't come easily, and can be uncomfortable. But I cannot control anything, anything, outside myself. Beauty, joy, love and truth will certainly exist beyond these shifts, probably in even greater measure than before; those of us who can must consistently personify these positive qualities as events unfold, as kind of a golden path through the darkness.

Where I come from

It's hard to speak about the unspeakable, so I'll take a slightly different tack.

Putting aside all human-created physical boundaries, where do I come from?

I would like to think I come from Love. I would like to think I come from Truth. I would like to think I come from Harmony and Music. I would like to think I come from Beauty. I would like to think I come from Art. I would like to think I come from Good. I would like to think I come from Empathy and Generosity. I would like to think I come from Joy. I would like to think I come from Expansion and Spiritual Growth. I would like to think I come from Vision. I would like to think I come from Perfect Self-Expression. I would like to think I come from Wisdom. I would like to think I am as good a representative as I can be of the Divine Feminine.

And if there are days or even weeks when I am off-center, this is the general neighborhood of energetic expression that I hope to go back to.

Fragility

On this hot, exceedingly blustery summer day, I'll take a moment to muse about fragility. A few short years ago, I assumed that all my previous challenges would evaporate, and my sixties would be the apex of my own life and the lives of my female friends. I assumed that reaching the high points of careers, retirement, and power would put most of us in good places. Yet the reality is that many of us are either in extremely fragile places, or flirting with fragility in a way I don't remember in my mother's generation. My personal fragility is, as always, the transitional nature of my housing and a wavering sense of being able to fulfill my unique place and purpose. But my fall in England made me feel exceptionally fragile too, in a physical way. It cracked more than my wrist.

Friends in their sixties and early seventies are dealing with all manner of personal illnesses, challenges within their larger families, downsizing, disappointments. And of course so many of us are "freaking out" on some level about the direction our country seems to be taking. It is like there are storms blowing (more tsunamis?) and some of us, try as we might, are cracking, or breaking outright. Many of us are single, too, and as I've mentioned before, this brings up unique issues. If we aren't in close contact with birth family, who are our proverbial "loved ones"? And it's not like society at large loves its older single women. There's no, "Bravo, you! You've lived an unconventional life, you've contributed in unique ways (large and small) to our society, and we are proud that you are in our midst. Let's make the tallest and most elegant building in town its housing for wise older women"! (Hand to ear...still listening! No, I have never, ever heard words to that effect!)

My backbone right now, my counteraction to fragility, is writing my book. I am writing a blue streak, with index cards being filled up at an alarming rate. The "bringing cards to the library and typing" piece is going rather more slowly, but I'm not too worried. The book, in its early form at least, will be done by Labor Day, as I promised myself. Every word I write is empowering me, and I hope the ripple effect will subtly empower my personal friends and other women as well. I don't think it is possible to be empowered and fragile at the same time.

Atypical

As I move forward with my book, and with my life, I realize that there is nothing "typical" about me that I can discern. Nothing.

I guess this moment in Duluth is allowing me to fully appreciate this without totally freaking out. The circumstances of my life have been so wide-ranging and contradictory that I may never find a friend or community who I can hug and say, "You get this, you lived this too."

Friends who grew up in "typical middle-class American suburbs" at least may have been brought up with some shared values and experiences...type of housing, public high school, work ethic, etc. I have several friends who grew up on farms. On a very basic level, they lived a shared experience. They know what it is like to grow up in that unique environment. I have several friends who grew up in fundamentalist households. However different their circumstances might have been, there is a core spiritual experience that they could mirror to each other were they to meet. And of course, virtually all my friends married and had children, so no matter the dissimilarities in the other details of their adult lives, they know some of the "typical" trials and joys of partnership and childbirth and beyond (along with some atypical ones, surely).

It has always been hard for me to find a family of people who know what it is like to be American, but to have grown up with ultra-upper-crust "aristocratic" values but no money. To have family living in luxury one minute and dire poverty the next, and not even be allowed to talk about it. To be an American girl wanting to sing the English men and boys' choir tradition of music decades before that was possible. To have never settled down to husband or home because of those reasons and more. I have had so many friends over the years, and I love them and am so grateful for them. Right now, though, I am in such a different "place" than any of them that I feel somewhat panicky. Whether they are American or British, our actual day-to-day lives and struggles have had very little in common. I can rarely say, "You know what this is like." I wish I had more people with whom I had a specific shared mix of life experiences. From that standpoint, my life can feel outrageously lonely.

Yet this is all the more reason to increasingly tell the truth in my writing, the truth not only of what happened at specific moments, but also the truth of how things felt. I need to tell the truth of the evolution of my ability to emerge from numbness into human emotion. What I have experienced seems to set me apart from most other people, but how it affected me is the factor that may bring me back, closer to others. I may never be "typical" except on that deeper, feeling level. My heart has been broken over and over. That cannot possibly be atypical.

Midwest Miscellany

One of the visually intriguing things about Duluth is that there are a number of large grain and ore silos in the bay which the huge ships on- and offload from. In certain lights, in the fog, at night, and (ahem) if I take off my glasses, some of them look very much like English cathedrals. It is like there is kind of a semi-transparent film over my eyes, showing me something I love in another form.

Yesterday morning, I woke up and handwrote ten single-spaced, college-ruled pages about my dad. It was only later, after a friend asked me if I realized that it was Father's Day, that I made the connection about the appropriateness of the timing. It's amazing the way our brains work. I am not sure yet whether this material will end up in my book or here in my blog. But in a nutshell, I was grieving the fact that I never heard these heartfelt words from him: "Elizabeth, you are my beloved, wonderful daughter. I love you, I am so proud of you, and I want the best for you throughout your life. I would sacrifice almost anything to make your life easier and more fulfilling."

I think that Father's Day must be hard for many women, and men too (although perhaps the issues for them may be somewhat different.) Yes, there are some women who may have wonderful fathers who say this and mean it, and act appropriately and supportively for decades. There must be many women, like me, whose fathers were physically present, but not in any other way. There may be fathers who say such things early in life, then become monstrous predators, twisting the words into knots. And, of course, there are so many women who never meet their real fathers. When there is this gaping hole, it is so very hard to fill even in a lifetime of trying. My heart goes out to anyone for whom yesterday was painful or challenging.

Lilacs are just coming out here. It's so late. Gosh, I think in England they were coming out in March. Duluth's summers are so very short, and it's almost like a Saturnalia...each weekend is crammed with marathons, rummage sales, sailboat races, rowing regattas, farmers' markets, outdoor concerts, you name it. Most of it isn't my thing right at the moment (this summer being devoted to writing my book) but I'm breathing in the life energy and the excitement with gratitude.

Aha!

My readers know that my focus is on writing my memoirs right now, and it was my intention not to blog as frequently. However, I guess this activity is serving to spur my brain cells, generally, and this morning I had an "Aha!" moment that I have been waiting a lifetime for. So I could not wait to share it with my small group of faithful readers. If you've stuck with me this long, maybe this will resonate with you.

OK, here goes.

Over the years, I have met a handful of other women like me, single, strongly focused on their spiritual journeys, and, yes, living either in poverty or very straightened circumstances. Wandering (or stable-yet-hanging-on-for-dear-life) mystics. (There may be men in this category, but I just haven't met many yet!) And, of course, many artists, writers, musicians, poets, and other creative men and women share this experience, and have been made to feel intense shame at their lack of financial success.

I cannot speak for anyone else, but since the late 1980's, I have certainly been exposed to law of attraction teachings, and indeed, believe them to be absolutely true. I believe that "like attracts like," at the very least on this earth plane. For decades, I have tried to "attract" money, income, paid opportunities, gifts, whatever, not just so that I could barely get by, but to try to accomplish the hundreds of things I still wish to accomplish in this life. I've tried visualizing a permanent home and the means to make that possible because I am so tired of wandering. I've loved listening to my favorite law of attraction gurus, and knowing that for some people, affirmations, creative visualization and other tricks really do work. But they most assuredly do not seem to work for me. My life has proved sort of an inverse proportion to the rule; the closer I get to understanding who I am and to my core beliefs and understandings, the less I seem to function in our system and the further I seem to get from "abundance" (as expressed through money, anyway! My life has had other forms of abundance, clearly.)

This morning, it finally hit me. This is, in fact, the law of attraction at work. Our current economic systems and institutions are based firmly in a duality view of life; two planes of reality that are in constant opposition. right vs. wrong, good vs. evil, profit vs. loss, success vs. failure etc. This assumption is at the core of almost all of our societal structures, not just the economy. Think of how we fight illness, war, drug use, pollution and illiteracy. The other political party. You name it.

I think I came into this lifetime with at least a budding understanding of a post-duality worldview. I'm not sure if there is a better word to use..."unity"? "unity through harmony"? "Wholeness"? A world where everything is essentially one and there is no actual split down the middle. Personally, I'm coming more and more to see all Life as a single river of love and beauty, running, literally, in one direction. I feel it as a construct of the divine feminine, although it just may be that, as a woman, I need a more concrete, personal sense of identifying with divine oneness.

As of yet, I do not know of any economic systems based on this paradigm, although gifting and bartering may align with it somewhat more than making a profit. That's a question for another day.  But because our Western economy is based on duality, and my thinking is not, law of attraction is working (ugh!) perfectly. I do not easily attract "money" to my true self, and it is not attracted to me (nor, by and large, are people who are really invested in the system). Those of us who just simply cannot function in a dualistic fashion find all aspects of the dualistic world extremely hard to navigate, practically and spiritually.

This isn't about making excuses. But it was a wonderful "aha" for a Tuesday morning. I haven't done anything wrong, at least from the perspective of that unified stream of love, unity and beauty. Neither have many other people who haven't flourished. It's just that our essences are not reflected in our economy's essence. This won't make it any easier to function, gosh darn it, but it does make it a little easier to feel better about my life... not a bad thing when I am writing about it, finally!

My Life on Index Cards

As promised, I am well underway writing my memoirs. I tried to do this about four years ago, but really struggled with it, and then came the shocking, unexpected death of my little brother. Quite rightly, this brought the process to a screeching halt. And many things have happened since then...

So what I have decided to do this time is write short episodes and anecdotes by hand on 4x6 lined index cards. I've bought the multicolored ones, so that the cards can be grouped by rough time period. At least as of now, I don't intend this to be a "first this happened, and then this happened" kind of chronological account. Frankly, I have lost track of the exact threads of my timeline. What old datebooks and journals I had have either been tossed, or are in storage back east, and so I'm embracing the rather dreamlike aspect of some of the narrative and working with it, I hope.

One of the things that has become clear to me this go-round is the fact that, given my passion for English cathedral music, most of my life from the age of eight on was, by necessity, a Plan B. In the sixties, young English boys with musical talent would probably find their way into a cathedral choir and accompanying school. If this continued to be an interest, they would study at Cambridge or Oxford and sing in one of the college chapel choirs, and possibly even progress to sing countertenor, tenor or bass in a cathedral choir. This not having been an option for me as a girl and as an American, quite literally most of my life choices went wide of the mark, either slightly or spectacularly. The process of writing about the colorful journey that followed is thus rather bittersweet. I love what I have experienced, and yet I feel angry too at the utter waste of human talent in a specific field. I did my best not to waste divine time (and indeed, I guess my journey to help open up the field was a good use of that time!) but at 63, I can literally feel the pain of how distant certain activities were, and still are, from my core. I realize that this may ultimately be the source of my constant longing to "go home."

The phrase came to me, "my only home is my journey." So far that's been the case anyway! Let's see how many index cards it will take to write about it.

It's Strange

I returned from the UK one week ago, and I haven't even begun to adjust. Everything seems strange, from the quality of the light to the hues of the landscape (still largely greys and browns, with green in the process of popping). I appreciate the wider streets and increased spaciousness. I appreciate the mothering lake. But the actual energy of American life -- from the crime TV shows to the malls and retail strips to the evolving downtown to the news items on a weapons cache in L.A. -- feels harsh. But then it always has, to me. Increasingly, I realize that tuning my heart so early in life to music like Howells's Gloucester Service set an impossibly high bar, one that can probably be met only in a handful of locations and situations.

Still, somewhere in this unlikely stage set is the spot from which I'll write the book that is already taking shape. I may not write as frequently over the next few months, but I promise I'll keep you posted. (Hmm...a pun in the blog era?!)

London's Gate

Regular readers know that after my injury back in late December, I went through a succession of what I called "gates," processes that involved healing and new understandings prompted by being in recovery mode.


This week, I took my first solo trip to London by train. On past visits to England, this was par for the course, but this time, I had become almost phobic about the prospect of dealing with the big city, the crowds, the tube, etc. Indeed, it took me until only about two weeks ago to take the train to a nearby small city. Once I navigated that successfully, it seemed like it was time for London.


I was surprised to find that my big city, New York genes immediately took hold, and although I move much more carefully than I used to, I didn't feel actively afraid, even heading down those mile long escalators in the tube. The day involved seeing some beloved art at the National Gallery, a bus to St. Paul's Cathedral, and then, of course, choral evensong. There were amusing encounters with an exasperated gallery guard (run ragged by people leaning over the guardrails and nearly touching the paintings, and taking close-up photographs), a bus driver light-heartedly teasing me about my not knowing how to use my day travel pass, and a lonely soul on the city bus with a sadly inadequate blond wig, but lots of spirit and knowledge, who tour-guided the way up Fleet Street. The service, although evensong, was not one where they allowed seating in the choir stalls, so it was fascinating to hear the music from the crossing, near the modern altar. As at St. John the Divine in New York, there is almost too much reverberation. Oddly, I found myself less wishing I were singing in the choir, and more wishing I could give a "sermon" in such a vast space, to hear my echoing voice speaking to the crowds.


Several years ago, I wrote about how I've often felt that my soul has actually been residing in London, and certainly my day there only underscored the feeling that I could easily replicate that experience morning after morning for the rest of my life. As I reach the end of this visit, I haven't crossed that off my bucket list. But I have reached the end of the road in terms of trying to find ways to make "permanence" work. I've run out of  the "excuses" that I always hoped would bring serendipity ("I'm going over to study for a master's, to receive my diploma, to take an art course, to write about Herbert Howells, to sing or write about evensong"...) Now I think England will have to reach over across the Atlantic, and find its own excuse to want me here. Certainly for the short term in the U.S., my goal is to write a book, and get it out into the world. It will be rather different than this blog, which has only attracted small numbers of readers, but I'm not writing it differently to attract readers, just to give this post-63 path a little seasoning.


I am thankful for this portal journey and all its gifts. My life has definitely changed, in ways that I am sure will become clearer and clearer. I'll check in when I get back stateside.

Yeah...

So I'll be returning stateside soon, and despite all my promises to myself not to count down the days or feel bittersweet, I am, of course, doing both of those things. England has always felt like home to me, felt like the place I am rooted, and since reading Sharon Blackie's If Women Rose Rooted, rootedness feels so much more important than ever. I seem to be reasonably good at getting myself over here, touching the soil (and breathing in the expanse of landscape, the sound of birds, bells and choirs), but not so good at engaging deep down into the dark earth.


Yet when I rise (literally) above it all and observe the situation compassionately from a higher self perspective, it does seem that I am taking part in a deeper mystery here. Every aspect of my life has had a shamanic "between realities" quality, and this backing and forthing has to be part of it. Right now, I am much more aware of the need to be at home within myself, first and foremost. My few months here have rooted me more in that sense. I am not so much "homeless" or "between homes" but a universal home for some values that just simply do not yet seem to be well established in the world, leaving it hard to find my place. I have made a commitment to write a book this summer, and hopefully it will provide four walls (as it were) for those values. While writing the book, I may blog even less frequently, but I'll let you know about that in a few weeks.


Before leaving? I'm giving an informal talk, attending one or two more choral evensongs, attending one more physical therapy appointment for my wrist, and generally spending most of the days having a normal "go to the shops/make meals" kind of existence. We are living in such decidedly extraordinary times, it just seems crucial to grab hold of whatever feels normal while that's possible.


Yeah...

Smouldering

There was a terrible deja vu about turning on the news Monday night, to see the Cathedral of Notre Dame ablaze. It's hard to believe it has been almost eighteen years since New York's twin towers, but it came back as if it were yesterday, and frankly, for this lover of gothic cathedrals, watching this fire was emotionally much harder. Putting aside religion, even spirituality, these buildings do seem to be unique places of amplification, transporting human yearning and human music out beyond space and time. When a cathedral burns (and it happened a lot in the Middle Ages, evidently, and even York Minster had a serious fire in the 1980s), I wonder if the sounds of conflagration are also amplified. There was no real audio in the news images I saw, and for much of the time, even the observing crowds were silent, stunned.


You cannot help but kind of scan your own personal connections to a place. I visited Notre Dame on a school trip to France when I was 15...I remember being overwhelmed by its scale and beauty, although my "thing" about cathedrals hadn't quite taken hold yet. Monday night, a BBC interview with a prominent musicologist underscored Notre Dame's importance to western music. Many innovations in Christian chant and the development of organum and early polyphony took place there, with the specific acoustics of the building in mind. My own MMus thesis was about a piece of 12th century music that was written in Aquitaine, in Aquitanian neumes. I doubt that it was ever sung at Notre Dame, but I was fortunate enough to see the original manuscript in 1981 in Paris's Bibliotheque Nationale. And my other tenuous link is having met Notre Dame's current organist out at Helena, Montana's Catholic cathedral, when he gave a spectacular recital a few years ago. Notre Dame's was one of the largest organs in the world; organists are in shock.


The impulse to rebuild just as it was before is understandable, although to me, kind of foreign. I've had to drag myself out of the smouldering ashes of so many aspects of my life and focus on the future so many times, I have rarely wanted to return to how things were. But then, I seem to be an unusually "post-" everything kind of person. My life seems to have largely taken place beyond the structures and strictures of the present. Still, I hold all of us in my heart, as we try to decide what of the past to keep or rebuild, what to incorporate or re-purpose for the present, and what to walk away from. If this event is a symbol for nothing else, surely it is that.

Birds and Bells

Last night, I had what I guess you would call a transcendent experience.


The local church has change ringing practice every Tuesday evening. From 7:30 to 9:00, bells peal in that distinctive manner that I only associate with England, mostly down the scale but with interesting variations. Earlier in my visit, it was too cool to open the window to hear the music clearly, but last night was warm, allowing free access for each note to strike a chord, literally, in my heart -- as did the evening birdsong. The most distinctive birdcall was also one I don't believe I have ever heard in the US -- this bird was singing the equivalent of a glorious personal solo. I sat with my eyes closed. I truly couldn't breathe properly for the half hour or so that the two complementary songs interweaved.


I look back on the dozen or so visits I have made to the UK, and it can be hard to choose the most memorable moments: the first time I attended evensong at King's, walking toward Royal Holloway dragging my big suitcase, going in to London for classes in a train going "clickety-clack, clickety clack" down the rails, walking purposefully across Waterloo Bridge through the streets of London towards the British Museum, walking across the stage at the Royal Albert Hall to receive my MMus degree. Or more recently, singing an evensong at King's, visiting Herbert Howells's childhood home and church in Lydney, auditioning for a cathedral choir, doing Howells research at the Royal College of Music, singing a week of services at Canterbury...I have been blessed with an extraordinary path paved with nuggets of musical gold.


But last night, I realized that the England moment that may always stay with me into old age, from wherever I am, will be those birds and bells. They are simply sounds that are not part of the palette of America -- and even if they were accessible in the U.S., they would not resonate with the same history, sense of place, and sense of spirit.


Despite all the writing I have done about divine love, the fact is that all too often, I access that love through my intellect. As an Aquarian, and a woman with a genius IQ, that is my default setting for just about everything. But last night, the birds and bells pierced my heart, and were an experience of joy and grace. I could feel, as well as hear and intellectually understand, the stream of love and beauty around me, and the fact that I was part of it. I am very thankful.

A certain perfection

It may not seem that way from the outside, but there is a certain perfection to my journey, a certain perfection to the way things happen. Last time, I commented on how I was beginning to feel less like a cork (or, to use a metaphor I have used in the past, a rickety boat) bobbing on the water, and more like a more powerful, permanent island in the stream or ocean. And what happens within 24 hours of that? I discover the most wonderful book, Elizabeth Gilbert's Big Magic. I have underlined so many passages in this book that I cannot possibly do more here than scratch the surface.


Here, essentially, is her theme: "The universe buries strange jewels deep within us all, and then stands back to see if we can find them. The hunt to uncover those jewels -- that's creative living" (Page 8). I love the fact that by that standard, by fully engaging with the hunt, my life can be seen to have been successful after all.


The most thought-provoking stretch of the book for me was the beginning of the section entitled "Trust," starting on page 201. She tackles, head on, something I have touched on in one or two previous blogs, the issue of whether the thing we are passionate about is passionate about us. Basically, it has to do with how so many of us assume that the thing we want to devote our life to (her examples are nature and writing) are, in fact, indifferent to us, or worse. This is, in part, what leads to the classic artist's persona of suffering, martyrdom for one's art. We are willing to sacrifice everything to something that may well not care for us in return. Bless her, Gilbert's case is that inspiration loves us, and wants us to create and succeed -- not the opposite.


Having through the years devoted so much love to situations that seemed to be so indifferent to me, I've been a prime candidate for this kind of martyrdom in every possible area of my life. After reading this section of the book, I have decided that with the time I have left on this side of the Atlantic, I'm going to focus on discerning: does cathedral music love me in return? Does England? Even if I feel a special calling to be here and create some unique art form or spiritual oeuvre, is this an inspiration that wants to connect with me? Is there a mutuality to this? Or is my "strange jewel" actually something above and beyond place? Would it be possible for me to leave in a few weeks and finally let go?


If the latter questions should turn out to be true (and if in fact I have graduated to a whole new level of my journey), then some of the material late in the book will be as pertinent to me going forward as it is to anyone trying to discern their calling or gifts for the first time. She talks about letting simple curiosity lead you forward, potentially into a "raw new unexplored universe within yourself." At the very least, I am curious as to how to start really feeling the mutual engagement between my passionate life energy and a wonder-filled universe. I am curious about what it will feel like when the breath of inspiration moves back and forth.

The cork

In the wake of my last blog post, where I spoke of "home" being where people actually want to hear your life stories, a lot has come up.


Here's a life story. About five years ago, I made my first trip to the UK in many years. When I got back, family members scheduled a dinner meant, they said, to welcome me back. After everyone had gathered around the table, I waited for someone, anyone, to ask some meaningful question about my experience in England. When someone said, "Geez, Liz, how's the food in England these days?" I took an in breath, ready to report on the improved culinary options available, when the whole table burst into uproarious laughter and moved on to some other topic. So I did what I always did in my family, clammed up, watched, and tried to take in all the spirited conversation about politics, skiing, retirement communities, and other people's travels. At the end of the meal, I played my other usual role and cleaned up the dishes. Yes, I could have been the one to change the dynamic; I could have stood up and said, "Why did you bill this as a welcome home event for me if you had no intention of finding out how my trip went?" But then I would have been blamed for ruining a nice family dinner and as usual being the cause of friction, and after over half a century of this whole "story," I don't think I cared any more. It had been an extraordinary visit to England, thank you very much, and I guess I preferred to hold it close to my heart.


At today's rather mystical moment, where my hand is so much improved and all my energy doesn't need to be spent healing -- and where for a short time still, I am here in England -- I am finding all my life stories drifting through my consciousness like ripples on the water, yet I feel so detached from most of them. When you grew up with this kind of family dynamic and then developed a passion for a field that was completely inaccessible to you, you do rather become a cork on the wide ocean, drifting from buoy to boat to floating detritus to inlet, hoping not so much for physical safety, but to find the place you belong. You think, if so-and-so likes this place or activity, maybe I will too. If I listen carefully, maybe I'll hear a conversation that intrigues me. If I travel far and wide, perhaps a Plan B landscape will resonate inwardly with me. There have been so many such experiences, so many of these dinner table experiences (even not at the dinner table) -- in a way, it is a metaphor for my whole life! -- yet suddenly, it is as if I've climbed up to a new level and all these places and jobs and situation have almost gone down the drain, representing an old dimension that I can no longer see or feel. Of course, I don't quite know what makes up the new dimension!


But even over here, I have to be very protective of myself...just because something randomly exists in England, doesn't mean it is right for me. And just because I may hear the glorious music of a cathedral service doesn't mean my relationship to it hasn't changed radically. I haven't so much "retired" as graduated, and I don't need to go back to the old classrooms anymore for my lessons. If I had to describe myself this morning, it is not so much as a wandering, bobbing cork, but as a strong, hardy island in the midst of the turbulent water. If any lovely corks make it to my shores, we'll share stories, OK?

Another definition of Home

The other day, I watched most of an amazing documentary on BBC 2. Entitled "The Choir," it follows the staff and students of the school next to the Grenfell Tower in London (the apartment building which burned in 2017) as they create a concert/musical event to mark the re-opening of their school.


Here's what was so moving for me; teachers and staff encouraged the students to be themselves, to express as much of their emotion and talent as they could and wished to. Most of these 12- and 14-year olds were much as I was at the same age, pale and bespectacled, with frizzy hair and a school uniform. They were every bit as unselfconfident as I was in 1968. But the difference was that the teachers in this marvellous, diverse school were active in their encouragement and honest in their own emotions, their own eyes welling up with tears as the students created skits and songs about the horrors of that event. I tried to imagine such honest "presence" in my own early teachers, and couldn't. This isn't to criticize them, but it was simply another era.


Here I am, a 63-year old woman trying step-by-step to learn how to feel safe telling my own stories. I've made a commitment to moving beyond this blog to tell my story, which I have only scratched the surface of. I though this morning, maybe "home" is actually where people want to hear your stories, where your reality isn't pushed back and contradicted. Maybe home is where people say, tell me everything. Your story is safe with me, and it will enrich me to hear it. And where you feel safe in the telling.

The Micromanager

One of the most interesting things I have learned about myself in recent years is that I am a micromanager. That is, I have a tendency to try to control every little detail of what is going on around me. I did this to some extent before my fall -- I'm acutely intelligent and organized, have sharp visual and location skills, and am a good time manager -- so getting things done on the small, nearby level has never been a problem even with my rootless life. But since my fall, and in the wake of feeling my age and limitations more acutely, my tendency to scan the world for details and ways of smoothing my path (and avoiding risk) has increased. Once the initial shock receded and I became at least a little more mobile, I found that I was planning ahead, everything from the most efficient way to bring things upstairs, to how to do my errands in such a way that I carry an empty shopping bag uphill and a filled one downhill. I don't want to have to take extra trips. At times, I have been not just a little irritating, I am sure.


But I've been thinking about this as an energetic phenomenon, energy going into "x" when it could go into "y." Many of my female friends are superb managers (micro and otherwise!) And yet very few of my contemporaries made it into the higher echelons of management in any sphere, be it education, politics, finance, law, or medicine. We are women in our sixties, coming to terms with retirement from jobs or lower-level careers, our or our family's health issues, children's and grandchildren's lives, and how or when to continue with volunteer activities and earlier life goals. Are we so competent managing these facets of life because our real superpowers were not put to their best use?


I think of my grandmother Winnifred, the pioneering lawyer. She never really practiced law because in the early 1900's, once you married you were not allowed to work. She threw herself into her boys' educations, organizing her husband (probably unsuccessfully) and upper middle class household, teaching bridge and researching genealogy. But by all accounts, she became miserably unhappy, and died at about 61. Her extraordinary genius really had no outlet.


My own mom was extremely organized and competent in many spheres (from the Junior League to church), but she rarely had a job, much less a career. It was only several weeks before she died that she admitted to me that, based on the fabulous work of her hospice nurses, she finally believed that women should have careers! But the image that stays with me came from the previous summer, when she wanted to see and deal with all the boxes on the second floor of their garage. I brought a folding chair out onto the driveway in the shade under a tree, and one by one I brought down dozens of old boxes, many of which hadn't been opened in decades. Mom made decisions about all the contents, sorting things to keep, to give away, to give to the church yard sale, to sell in a family yard sale, to give to my brothers or myself, or for my dad to keep in the future. Exhausted from emphysema, she sat slumped over her knees, but she was "the decision-maker."


Even a few years ago when I lived in the YWCA in Montana, I was struck by how powerful the women were. Life had beaten them down, and their power was expressed in outrage about stolen food in the kitchen, or stolen boyfriends, or cattiness. But I just knew that if their lives had taken even one different turn, they might have been powerful members of society.


I can't speak for anyone else. I guess all I will say is that the more I micromanage, the more I wonder what my real form of management or leadership is. There is probably something bigger going on here, even now, if I let it.

The gate of self-forgiveness

Those of you who are regular readers know that I have gone through a number of symbolic gates since falling and breaking my wrist at Christmas. And at times, I am sure I repeat some information from earlier posts, now that I am nearing the five hundred mark! I won't apologize for any repetition, but just know that I realize that I am circling around the spiral and sometimes hitting old themes from a new spot.


I spoke last time about how I really accepted over the last few weeks that "trying to get myself (and other women) into the field of English cathedral music" truly was my career in this lifetime. Every major decision I have ever made had something to do with this goal.


All in all, I am an incredibly competent person. I am organized, brilliant, observant, and can get anything done when the passion is there. Yet considering most of my adult work life from the distance of this post-accident space I've been in, a lot of shame and embarrassment have arisen. I've been such an incompetent normal American person. Once I accepted that there was no chance that I and other women would ever have careers in my field, I tried to detour all my passion into other areas, hoping that some other field, some other place, some other group of people or goals would light me up. None ever did. With a resume with everything from an MMus in early Christian chant from the University of London, and Time Magazine, to waitressing, retail, and adjunct professor, I floundered. I haven't been able to sustain myself, and I'm thankful in a way I never had children because they would have suffered. My lack of even the most basic American "success" has weighed heavily on me.


But in this moment of retirement from what I was really doing on the higher level, I see that the qualities of the English cathedral scene -- glorious music, beauty, spiritual and artistic richness, majesty, ordered ritual, history and a thousand year tradition -- are simply not transferrable to America or its capitalist career world. The two careers that would have suited my intellect (law or academia) wouldn't have aligned from the standpoint of beauty. The art world doesn't have the tradition or the spiritual and music depth. And the handful of American churches and cathedrals following this tradition are in a different landscape, still have only men and boys' choirs, or have only recently added any options for girls or women. Back in the 80's, I just couldn't see any "jobs" that recreated the qualities of the milieu I loved, but I was young and hoped I could find a Plan B.


There was nothing equivalent, and in a sense what I was trying to accomplish was impossible. To the extent that I have felt ridiculous and incompetent, I think that is washing away now. I forgive myself for failing to "make it" because I have accepted that I was successful in softening the walls barring women in the world. I suspect some of the earliest women pioneers, including my own grandmother, Winifred in the field of law, had parallel experiences.


Some people talk about wanting to make the world a better place by bringing peace to the planet, housing and food. I guess my wish for the world is that no person, male or female, ever has to divert their true passions for any reason. I hope we will see a world where we recognize these passions as the voice of the divine, and cherish and encourage everyone's best gifts.

Service

Last week, I finally attended a cathedral evensong service. It seems crazy that it would take so long but there are distance issues for this suddenly hesitant traveller. The twenty minutes of listening to the choir rehearse and the subsequent service were glorious. The men and boys' choir has one woman in it, a countertenor/alto of course, and I caught her eye as the choir processed out.


If anyone ever writes the proverbial book about the entry of girls and women into this field, I wonder if I will be included. That there was a little girl from Schenectady, New York, USA, who was an early pioneer will seem improbable, but I do believe my role was significant. As some of you know, by 1960, I had fallen in love with the music (based on what I heard the men and boys sing at our Episcopal church.) I was heartbroken being consigned to the "girls' choir." By the time I was ten, I told people I would be the first woman conductor of King's College Cambridge, and I started listening and singing to recordings to teach myself Anglican chant and the canticle repertoire. I took up the organ, and majored in music at college. I am quite sure (based on the looks on the men's faces) that I was the first woman to attend St. Thomas Fifth Avenue's choirmaster's conference, in 1980. I sang with Royal Holloway's choir during my MMus year at the University of London, and only gave up on my dream in the early 80's when it seemed girls and women would never have a significant role. Ten years ago, I allowed the fire of my passion some oxygen again, and in that time, auditioned (unsuccessfully) for two British cathedral choirs, sang for nine months in the choir of St. John the Divine in New York, and wrote and published two articles on composer Herbert Howells. I have sung one service at King's, and a week of services at Canterbury, as well as gotten to know a number of my heroes and heroines.


These are all blessings way beyond what the tradition would have offered in the 1960's, yet I suspect if you add up all the choral evensong services I have actually sung, they would amount to about two months in the lives of the women currently singing as countertenors. Perhaps this might be easy to dismiss, but I cannot. I have said in the past that I had no career, but having reached 63, I realize, these efforts were my career. No, I never received a salary or benefits. I paid my own way (with occasional much-appreciated help from friends!) I've lived with almost unbearable unsettledness the last few years in order to take advantage of singing or research opportunities. And a case could be made (given that I was en route to cathedral midnight mass when I fell) that I've given my right arm to experience the music I love!


But on my birthday, when I caught the eye of the woman in the choir, I think I passed the baton. I feel at peace. I played the role I was meant to play, and did it as well as I could given that there was absolutely no "how-to" book. I did it with as much integrity as I knew how. I did it with all the love and passion that I have. Will I ever sing another service? I don't know. I'm not sure I have the energy, frankly. That's OK. As is the case with other people retiring from their careers, it is time for younger women and new situations. I believe I have been of service in a small but unique way. This recent injury has propelled me through a series of "gates," and looking ahead, the light is bright with no distinct landmarks. I do know that any future path will have to feature the level of beauty and spiritual resonance as church music, but I'm also hoping for a slightly higher level of acceptance, comfort, and ease. I want to walk through gates now, not break them down.

I do declare

This week involved yet another post-injury "gate," but I'm not quite sure what to call it.


OK, so as I have probably mentioned, the psychological fallout from this fall has almost equalled the physical fallout. The first few weeks, I was almost unbearably anxious about just going out and walking even a few blocks, into shops, or up or down stairs. Some of this was because I was so beautifully bunged up, but most of it was that everything loomed large and scary. Before walking outside, I would pray to every god or goddess there is that I would get home safely. "Please let me walk safely. Please let me navigate that stair or uneven sidewalk," etc. Asking for help from above is obviously traditional in these situations, but I think it added to my feeling of helplessness...it started to reinforce the idea that my safety was genuinely out of my hands. I think it started to make me feel more childlike than I really wanted to feel right now.


So the last few days, I have tried to make declarations: "I declare that I am safe today." "I declare that I am up to the task of getting back safely," etc. I tried to take it a little beyond new age "affirmations." I mean, who, historically, have made declarations? CEO's, kings, queens, magicians, governments. People in power, really. I guess I just wanted to feel what it felt like to have the power to state what I wanted and expect it to take place. I don't know that the outcome of recent days has been different (although I am experiencing some progress with my wrist and hand) but I do like feeling more empowered. That's a good name, the Gate of Empowerment.

Sparkles on the water

Today's post has no gates, although I've walked through some small garden ones this week.


It may be this strange half-light of recovering from an injury, or it may be just me being me. But over the last few weeks watching world news, I cannot help but just be stunned by the basic misunderstanding that is generating events. I believe that most of the people in this world belong to one "family," the family of sparkling souls who have chosen earth for our temporary home as we learn more about the celestial music, and the powerful stream of love that we float in as the sun warms us. All this stuff about dividing everything up and separating people and drawing lines is so artificial, so spiritually unsound. There's that whole thing about looking at the photographs of earth from space. There isn't a straight line anywhere in that image, is there?


Yes, there are a small minority of folks who cannot hear the music, never sparkle with joy, never feel at one with the other droplets of water, but we can try not to buy into their vision. It's not easy being fearless about the future (said by a woman who is barely fearless about putting one foot in front of the other these days!) but I do believe that in a generation or two, sparkles on the water, love and joy will be the norm -- not fear -- and that belief sustains me as I roll with the river.

Many Gates

It is now five weeks since my fall. I guess from this point forward I'll see my life in terms of "BF" (before the fall) and "AF" (after the fall, despite the religious connotations!) I think within minutes, I knew that I had, in effect, fallen through a gate, but what I am now realizing is that it has already been a succession of spiritual gates, almost as if I were on a Roman road going under archway after archway.


The first was, of course, the fall itself. You are shaken to bits, shocked, realigned, and rendered helpless. One minute you are planning to attend midnight mass, the next you are in the emergency room. Everything has changed. Maybe I'll call it the Gate of Change.


The second I'll call the Gate of the Angels. From that night, when all the doctors and nurses were in Santa hats, to now, everyone around me or on my path seems to have had it as their goal to help me. Perhaps this has been the case earlier in my life more than I realized (so many friends have been my angels!) but this has been a consistent thing and I see it, or more to the point, feel it. It's like the tide of my life seems to have turned around, and is going in the direction of buoying me up. My goodness.


Third has been the Gate of Empathy. I have been so fortunate vis a vis my health. So those first two weeks were so hard. I had bunged up both knees a bit was well as my wrist, and truly was rendered nearly unable to do anything, at least "normally." I was in pain, a bit angry, confused, humiliated. For the first time in my life, I can relate, to my friends who have had cancer or other diseases, my mom who I took care of as she was dying of emphysema, even the men and women on the street with walkers or canes. I am one of them, not looking on.


For the last week or two as you know from my last post, I've gone through the Gate of Vulnerability. I guess all I will add is this sense of wonder, imagining the thousands upon thousands of miles I've walked, run, bicycled, driven, taken buses, trains, planes, subways, ferries, rowed, sailed, and otherwise traversed with few incidents. Now, my courage seems to extend to getting the three blocks to the shops and back. I trust that I will regain a great deal of this day-to-day courage, but it's still early days.


I guess, as corny as it is, I'll refer to the latest gate as the Gate of Love. Have any of my readers watched "Great Canal Journeys," with actors Timothy West and Prunella Scales? They are, of course, the revered British actors who have been married over fifty years and share a love of narrow boating on canals. Scales is suffering from dementia, and the episode I saw this week was so extraordinarily touching. He is probably more aware than she that their time doing this together may be almost over. Their interactions are so poignant, loving, and in the moment. And what amazed me is that I related to them! I never married, have had no such consistent love or rewarding career. I think a few months ago I might have felt pain watching these sweet episodes, but instead, my heart seems to "get it." It made me so happy. Wow, five weeks, five spiritual gates. What will next week bring?!

Vulnerability

This last week or so, I guess the shock of my fall and injury finally hit me. I've done a lot of crying, and just wanted to hole up under some covers to allow myself to heal. A lot of this is, I am sure, the body's natural reaction to shock or injury. But I realized a few times that there was almost literally an entire lifetime of grief emerging.


I've come to understand that part of the fallout from having a dad who is incapable of love, is that you simply never learn what it is like to be the center of someone's world. The message, while probably unspoken, from that first moment, was, "You are on your own, little baby." Yes, I had a roof over my childhood head and food on the table, even perks like a private school and a family summer home. But I finally understand that these were not done to care for us, they were done so that he would appear to be conforming to a WASP norm. My mom, bless her, must also have learned that caring for a narcissist meant that emotionally, he was all there was. I don't think I have ever felt on a heart level what it was like to be cherished, protected, a focus of love and attention. I have just attacked life with the understanding that I would always be alone and scrambling to survive.


Oddly enough, I've rarely felt vulnerable. Even after I left the corporate world with all its guarantees and benefits, I just plowed ahead the best I could. I wasn't necessarily making a beautiful picture out of my oil painting set, but I took each step forward into (sometimes) hell and (sometimes) heaven with, I see now, outrageous courage. I had an inner compass, and I tried my best to follow it, and still am. And I've been free in a way that many people aren't.


Part of my weepiness is realizing just how vulnerable I have been all along, and just didn't know or feel it. Thirty years ago on leaving "time," I probably could and should have either conformed with another similar situation, or crawled into a cave and never come out. When I think of all the steps I have safely taken all these years, I almost literally swoon now. Isn't it strange that my dad's inheritance was a level of courage that perhaps a more loving childhood might never have formed? The biggest journey ahead of me will be restoring some of that day-to-day courage. It's going to be baby steps, baby steps.

Who am I?

It is so interesting that, on the heels of ten days or so of truly being aligned with myself in this place that I love, I would literally fall through a portal into a new reality. We are so defined by what we do, aren't we? And almost everything that I do, or have done in the past, has involved my right hand/arm. Not being able to write properly, type properly (this'll be short!), draw, carry, is like being a different person; even the staples of womankind through the centuries and my guesthood -- doing dishes, sweeping, mopping or vacuuming floors, errands -- all are out of bounds for the moment. I've been humbled knowing that there are so many people who may live entire lifetimes or parts of their lives unable to do these things. How overwhelmed I am by the good fortune of 62 years of mainly unimpeded activity, travel, work, carrying, driving, self-expression! But even I have had some moments of despair...when I can't even write in my journal, who am I? If for even a somewhat limited time I cannot do the things that have defined me, who am I?


I had to stop and remind myself, what can I do right now? I can just barely get dressed and do basic self-care. I can walk. I can think. I can sing. I can smile. I can see. I can love. I am grateful.


Of those things, who am I? Well, hopefully on my best days, these are also who I am. I hope most of the time that I am love. I am song. I am vision and wisdom and as much happiness as I can find within. Those things will presumably always be "me" no matter what I can or cannot "do."

All I'll Say

All I'll say is that I learned more about love this Christmas than I expected.


En route to Gloucester Cathedral Christmas Eve midnight mass, I fell and ended up having a cast put on my arm rather than singing carols in that glorious space. Medical personnel with Santa caps focused on getting me well cared for, and I felt some feeling of being the babe in the manger myself, if it's OK to say that! And in the ensuing week, I've learned to be more willing than I ever have to receive love, kindness, caring. So many have always been kind, please don't misunderstand me. But it has always been my instinct to jump up, do dishes, clean, and of course be able to at least do my own basic caring. To receive help with even those things is so new. I am profoundly grateful for the beautiful, wise angels and teachers at my side and on this path.


Yesterday I finally got to the cathedral, which has had a lot of scaffolding removed since my last visit. The sun was out, cold but bright. The building's exterior and interior were a bright honey color that I didn't remember. I cried almost nonstop for an hour, seeing the stunning Ivor Gurney, Finzi, Howells, Brewer and Wesley stained glass windows in a lady chapel so warmly beautiful I was transported. A quiet noon said service in the adjacent chapel was accompanied by the background babble of visitors, not the choir, and that was brilliant. The sun poured in the modern blue stained glass window and love was there too. I don't know what it is, but English cathedrals generally, and this one particularly, vibrate at my wavelength. I marvelled at how right it may have been to see the space in the sun, this way.


Life seems so poignant and precious to me right now. I'm trying hard not to look back or forwards. It's rather literally impossible for me to make of this trip what I expected to, so I'm in the moment "big time" and radically letting go. All I'll say is that with events conspiring like this, who needs a new year's resolution?