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.
