Movement and Miracles

As the registers were ringing like crazy the other day, a customer came up to me and kind of knowingly said, "Moving merchandise, eh?" I tried to be equally knowing, and said, "Yup." But inwardly, I was, like, is that what I'm doing? I guess so! I guess the whole point of retail is to "move" things, into the store (or website warehouse) and then quickly out again into the customer's hands and home. There's a lot of "movement" before an item makes its way into an American store, and then eventually movement from the customer's home through some form of recycling or second use (ideally) then into a landfill. In the landfill, some materials will continue slow evolutionary movement, some will not. Too many will not.

I found myself thinking, "Where is the Love?" (Yes, I see there are several songs by that title, but it's Roberta Flack's voice I hear singing those four words.) In this whole process, where is the love? I know some people love to be in this business, and I'm grateful for that. Since it doesn't turn me on at all, all I can do is be myself at the "point of sale" -- just a tiny little ray of light when a harried customer hands the item over and I scan it and ring it up. I try to say something lighthearted, or funny, or to compliment their choice, or something. I try if possible to look them in the eye, although with all the little processes going on at once and the need for accuracy, that can be nearly impossible.

Yesterday was a day where I was at the receiving end of a few miracles, not the least of which was that a friend brought over dinner. After almost eight hours on my feet, I am genuinely not sure I could have stood up long enough to make something myself and it was one of the nicest things I could possibly have imagined. I saw the photograph of a beautiful baby who only exists because of a modern medical miracle. The local library found a book for me (interlibrary loan) from several states away. And I may have been able to help someone else's small miracle. So all in all, to answer the question, love is here. I must never forget that.

Retail Reality...

I am thankful for the soft-ish landing, and retail work is at least somewhat neutral. I can turn my brain off long enough to do it. But boy-oh-boy my feet can't take the hours of standing any more! Once this temp job is over, I need to try for the five millionth time in my life to find some better solution to the ongoing challenge of being Liz in the world.

Of course, my mind never completely turns off, and when I am in a retail environment, I find myself wondering whether in fact I am missing some key gene or something. In the rare quiet moments when I can watch people walking around, looking with interest at all the goods, comparing prices, gathering up piles of items, something in me just cannot relate at all. I wonder, what if things had been different? What if I had had family money? What if I had found a good paying career? A rich husband? What if, what if? Would I ever have become a consumer? Would I have ever grown to love buying things? Would all this ever have mattered?

The answer is probably, no. I'm a mystic. By definition, I'm more interested in the interior world. The powers-to-be have geared so much of our culture to the purchase of stuff, and people like me just don't fit in. Hmmm....even if the proverbial million dollars came to me tomorrow, I would use it to get where I want to be, and find a modest home with some antiques and books. I might ensure that I have more than one pair of summer sandals and one pair of winter shoes, and a few new clothes. I might give a party for the people I love and who have helped me. But after that, how much time would I spend every week shopping? About one hour. And that would be on food.

People say, "dream on," but I am dreaming on and have been my whole life. I want to be paid to be what I am, a writer, singer, spiritual thinker, mystic and visionary. Every "job" I have ever had over the last 45 years has been but a temporary place-holder for that wonderful day, which my throbbing feet can't wait for either!

The Queen of the Soft-ish landing

I have become the Queen of the Soft-ish Landing. That is to say (to mix some metaphors!) when I am hurtling out of an airplane with no parachute -- in my effort to bushwhack through uncharted, post-old paradigm territory -- I seem to manage to land in a tree or a nice little pond more often than "splat" on the tarmac. Why is this? Well, I personally believe the Universe cannot even spare one person who grasps what is happening right now with humanity's evolution toward love. And secondly, as I am wailing through the air, complaining mightily that I shouldn't have to go through this yet again (and yes, I know I was somewhat peevish the other day, but darn has it ever been a long, strange journey!), somehow my feisty energy translates as "Please, dear GUS (God/Goddess/Universe/Source), may my life just get a little bit easier and less melodramatic for a while!" And somehow that intention brings about a soft-ish landing.

So this is how it transpired this time. After a few days of being on my feet nonstop for over six hours, and returning utterly and totally shattered, incapable of walking, I gave passing thought yesterday morning to quitting the job. I was in tears and literally didn't think my feet would survive two weeks of this, money or no money. Yet early in the AM, I learned that I was being offered a ride in a car to my workplace, thus cutting out about a mile and a quarter of walking. I looked up to the heavens and gave a big thumbs up. When I arrived at work, I was told I had to talk to the big boss. Lordy, I think to myself. What could I have done so wrong so quickly? Well, it turned out that in fact they wanted to know if I would be willing to work for the next few days at a small satellite location where they are short-staffed. It's nearer where I am staying, and so I said an enthusiastic yes. Another thumb's up.

After work, I met some academics who are medievalists (and who bless their hearts welcomed me with open arms based on my MMus in early Christian chant.) I also learned that a Cambridge University college choir is going to be in the area next weekend, doing a series of workshops, concerts and services. Really? Really?

For the moment, I am basking, gratefully, in the soft-ish landing.

Look at me

When you have had a lifetime like mine, you hope (literally, "pray without ceasing") that at least you will be a source of, if not inspiration, then at least deep thought about our world, our institutions, the condition of women (especially women alone in the world), new possibilities, etc. I've hoped it might spur people to envisioning a new way of doing things. And yet more often I simply make people uncomfortable, confused, even upset. I mean, I suspect that's why I have a few dozen readers a day, not hundreds or thousands. We're living in such a traumatized world that people with even a small iota of safety or security literally cannot bear to look at people with none. What has sometimes felt like huge rejection at my end isn't really that, it's just fear at the other person's end.

This isn't a "rah-rah-you-too-can-manifest-millions-of-dollars-en-route-to- enlightenment" blog. I wish it were. Those folks are doing well. Mine is more a "rah-rah-you-too-can-survive-while-trying-to-operate-in-integrity-as-the-traumatized-world-starts-to-shift-towards-love-not-fear" blog. It's the blog of a person who still owns nothing to speak of, but would rather be in that place in alignment to herself than most of the alternatives. It's the blog of a person who defies all expectations about "the poor." In a sense, I've chosen this but not as a Poor Clare would. In fact, I have finally "gotten" something about monastic vows of poverty which I'll talk about some morning when I don't have to be out the door so early.

But perhaps that is the point. I have the ability to write, and I need to keep writing. Yes, I'm privileged to have got a temp job at $11 an hour (I am seriously excited to have broken the $10 an hour ceiling that I've been bumping against for years!) A commute that would take about five minutes by car takes 45 minutes to an hour walking to the bus, waiting for the bus, then walking again. I have a half hour lunch break and am on my feet the rest of the time in a very high stress retail environment. Does this make even the slightest sense for a woman with a master's and a passion for English church music? Of course not. I am just the tip of a huge iceberg of people all over the world with mind-boggling talents and skills which aren't supported by our current paradigm. I guess my prayer for today, to my brothers and sisters who are "doing better," is this: don't try to save me. (I'm not lost.) Help me, sure, if you think I'm brilliant and extraordinary, but not if you think I need charity. Don't judge me. But also, don't hang on for dear life to what you have. The paradigm is shifting. You may well be in this situation before long as the world continues to evolve. Look at me, and don't be scared. Imagine "having" nothing. As this process continues, there will be less to fear in that scenario. If I didn't believe that, I wouldn't have wanted to survive. But I do. I know there is more love in the world now than there was when I started on this path, and there is more every day. The more love there is, the less it will matter how much stuff you have. Yes, I believe that to be true.

Time to put my walking shoes on.

"It's time"

Yes. It is.

The joy of all this transformation stuff is that, as I become clearer and clearer on "what I would do if I had the power," as my signal becomes stronger so to speak, I draw to me more and more resources and evidence of people on my wavelength.

This weekend, synchronicity brought to me some words by Brene Brown, a scholar and writer on topics like courage, vulnerability and shame:

Midlife is not a crisis. Midlife is an unraveling.

By definition, you can’t control or manage an unraveling. You can’t cure the midlife unraveling with control any more than the acquisitions, accomplishments, and alpha-parenting of our thirties cured our deep longing for permission to slow down and be imperfect.

Midlife is when the universe gently places her hands upon your shoulders, pulls you close, and whispers in your ear:

It’s time. All of this pretending and performing – these coping mechanisms that you’ve developed to protect yourself from feeling inadequate and getting hurt – has to go. Your armor is preventing you from growing into your gifts. I understand that you needed these protections when you were small. I understand that you believed your armor could help you secure all of the things you needed to feel worthy and lovable, but you’re still searching and you’re more lost than ever. Time is growing short. There are unexplored adventures ahead of you. You can’t live the rest of your life worried about what other people think. The time has come to let go of who you think you’re supposed to be and embrace who you are. (Wholehearted, 2009)

Goodness, I'm beginning to think I could have just quoted Brene Brown a year ago and spared my readers 150-some-odd blog posts. She says this excruciatingly well. What is so interesting is that 2009 is exactly when my unraveling started, and while it continues still, the fact is that it has entered a new phase. Seven years ago, I had no sense of who I was. Now I know. If life goes in seven year cycles, then I suspect the next one, from now until the age of 67, will be a doozy.

Abraham-Hicks (in many of their books and videos) offers an "emotional guidance scale." At the bottom of the scale are feelings like fear, grief, depression and despair. At the top, of course, is joy, love, empowerment and freedom. About five steps from the bottom is anger, and a fascinating point Esther Hicks makes is how many of us gravitate up and down the scale from despair to anger and then back again. She suggests that many of the people we know would frankly rather have us down in a despair and powerless mode rather than moving through anger into genuine power. But that's the point. Anger isn't a good place to stay. It's kind of the brick wall to break through en route up the scale, but it's a necessary step. I've felt a lot of it the last few weeks. I am so, so energized and feeling so, so stuck in an old pattern, that I get angry mostly at myself, but also at the people I perceive as having blocked my forward progress. Anger has been my armor, but also the wall that has sent me boomeranging backwards. So the path to embracing who you are involves somehow gently moving beyond that anger into the slightly higher emotions of disappointment, frustration and boredom. And from there, eventually, further up to hopefulness, enthusiasm, passion and power.

Midlife unraveling is terrifying. As you unravel, your absolute worst personal fears may well come true. My life is proof of that. And there is the risk that it may be hard, once things have fully unraveled, to turn around, break through the anger barrier and move up the scale again to new, genuinely joyful adventures. But "time is growing short" and there is no other option for those of us of a certain age. Once you have unraveled, it's a moment-to-moment choice to love oneself, to focus exclusively on the things and people you genuinely love, and to express gratitude and wonder for the things that are going well. 

Like reading that Brene Brown quote just at the right moment. Seems I have a little power after all. 

 

Title IX

The extraordinary success of American women in this year’s Olympics is being credited on TV and in the media in large part to Title IX, the law passed in June of 1972. This law, in effect, ensured that women would be granted equal educational (and athletic) opportunities to men. It took several years for the law to completely take effect and for its ramifications to be felt, and clearly, women like me (high school class of 1973) never fully benefitted. Basically what commentators are saying is that the London and Rio Olympics are the first Games where four decades of legal, educational and social momentum finally bore fruit. Evidently, in 1972, only 90 of America’s 428 Olympic athletes were women. This year, 292 are women and 263 are men (August 16 article in the LA Times, “American Women are Dominating the Games…”) I’ve watched these powerful young women win event after event, almost as if I am watching an entirely new species. I’m not sure my generation could even have imagined such a level of accomplishment, confidence, visibility and strength.

It makes the exercise I have continued to play with – the one where I consider what it would be like to be powerful in my own right – seem rather pathetic. And yet I must press on. There was a sea change in the 1970’s, and those of us who came to adulthood before it have been playing inner catch-up ever since. I’ve been looking again at the list I wrote the other day of things (both silly and serious) that I could do to express my power. Virtually every single one of them involves making my gifts visible, audible, or grounded – and in a context where I operate lovingly and independently. That is, I’m not fighting or dominating others, just simply saying, singing, creating, writing, loving or living in the way that would be best for me. Period. What is so interesting is that in the day or two since writing this long list, huge inner resistance has risen up. If I did that, this person would be upset. If I did this, that person would hate or make fun of me. If I did that, this institution would oppose me. If I did this, that institution would fight back. In other words, I can feel the energy of millennia of opposition to women’s self-expression, and even now use it to sabotage my own personal forward progress. I use it to continue to imagine whether other people would approve. I use it to continue to do things I don’t want to do, so that I’ll remain invisible and powerless.

I am so proud of these young women. They don’t seem to stand at the starting line thinking, “If I win this race, people will hate me.” They don’t seem to pick up their bow and arrow or their oar or their pole or their tennis racquet and hear an inner chorus of criticism or contradiction. They know that they have trained. They pick up their equipment. They know they can win. And they play their sport. Period.

Wow. Wow. Wow.

New Energy

Over the next few weeks, I will probably be posting a bit more regularly, but sometimes more briefly, because from the 22nd until Labor Day, I need to get to a temp job by 8 AM every day. However, there is so much percolating, so much energy, that I need to keep writing about things. I am so appreciative of my small band of followers; you are stalwart and amazing, that's for sure.

Just as a follow-up to my link about the invisibility of middle-aged, childless women, many of you have probably also seen some of the uneven reporting about women's successes at the Olympics. Here's an interesting read from The Guardian:

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/womens-blog/2016/aug/17/normal-society-means-male-andy-murray-venus-serena-williams?CMP

In the news as well are accounts of all the thousands of people being left homeless in the US by floods and fires. These kinds of news events undoubtedly prompt different kinds of analyses in different people, depending on their life focus: there's the political angle, the environmental angle, the economic angle, the purely public safety/rescue angle, and the logistical angle (where do these people go next?) I guess my "angle" is feeling so acutely the spiritual journey that is "homelessness," and if my words reach anyone affected by what is happening, please know that you still exist even if your belongings don't. Hang on to that as best you can.

Lastly for today, I think I have latched on to an exercise to do when feeling absolute hopelessness, which I touched base with for a short time yesterday.

Too many years of trying so hard to be me, and still ending up with just $20, takes its toll. But as all the New Age gurus say, in these situations, you must find something that makes you feel wonderful. And for me at that moment, it was to ask myself the question, "What would I do if I felt powerful?" I created the most amazing list of ideas, most of which were absolutely silly and out-of-character, but that's the point, isn't it? I've been serious and downplayed myself for 60 years. In my list, I was silly, and glorified myself, with ideas like building a statue of myself in the desert, and deciding to dress like Queen Elizabeth I for the rest of my life!  By the end of a half an hour, I was feeling absolutely marvelous, and, hey, I'm not ruling most of it out. I promise I'll figure out how to post the pictures here if I do either of the above!