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!
Tuesday, December 31, 2019
Friday, December 13, 2019
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.
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.
Friday, December 6, 2019
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.
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.
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