Some of my online peeps are speaking of -- or modeling -- going through a death process (metaphorically, not literally). Just as our old paradigm institutions are crumbling and can't move forward into a higher, love-based manifestation, we personally won't be able to move forward without letting old parts of ourselves die. Well, as ever, I don't really need classes or rituals for such things. That is my life, with all the changes I have regularly made. Most recently, there is nothing like weeding through a lifetime's worth of old photographs to mirror the expression, "having your life flash before your eyes." Even the pictures from before I was born -- my grandmother in a slim long skirt and broad hat in 1915, my mother standing near Arthur's Market in Schenectady's Stockade area before her marriage, my parents on their honeymoon in Quebec -- are part of my story. I'm holding onto most of these historic snapshots, plus ten or twelve from each phase of this lifetime.
And yet, this lifetime feels over. Absolutely done and dusted, as they say over the pond. I don't say this from despair at the collapse of our larger paradigm. Quite the contrary. For someone like me, the American experience was never fertile soil. A female mystic and English church musician? As someone I once knew used to say, I felt as welcome as a hair in a biscuit. The pressure to try to be anyone else, with any other core identity and passion, was so strong it nearly erased me over and over and over again. I see these snapshots -- the bemused looking "working girl" at Time Magazine, the overwhelming view out my window of Lake Superior making me feel miniscule, a heavier version of me caretaking my dying mom and later trying to stave off bankruptcy by selling my artwork. I hold my baby nieces, terrified that I will drop them, represent a small-town art association in a fourth of July parade, smile with friends at their Thanksgiving and Christmas feasts. I used to laugh at the fact that I had several "para" jobs -- paralegal, paraprofessional. But my whole life was trying to be "like" a normal American, and yet I operated literally alongside everyone, not genuinely fitting into any of these pictures. So It feels good to pare this collection way back, just to the number that I could show a future friend "who I was from 1-70".
Two major things have changed over the last few weeks. If you have been reading this blog, you know that I not-so-secretly and passionately love England and its cathedral choral music tradition. Over the years, it has been like a love affair, only unrequited, waves of love energy going out constantly, seemingly into the void. Part of my shame was the fact that with a few important exceptions, I felt no reciprocation. It became part of my knee-jerk reaction to assume that I never would.
But the other week, these incredible words came to me: "What you love, loves you in return." This may not always be true of people or institutions, but in my case, I suddenly felt that yes, there is an entire landscape, an entire soul of place, that loves me. For the first time ever, I have started to be able to watch videos and movies about the UK, and feel almost 100% warm, delighted, engaged and included. I'm no longer staring across an abyss -- I am in the picture. And in tandem, another related step forward. Yesterday I was on my own, and I turned on Parry's "I Was Glad" and Harris's "Faire is the Heaven" at full volume. I sang with total, loud, joyful abandon. No shame, no longing, no bittersweetness, no crying, no expectations. Just sheer joy, harmony, and unity. My landscape and my music love me back, and it is super powerful.
If this isn't a rebirth on the threshold of 70, I don't know what is.
