Best Laid Plans

I am writing from England. 

As some of you know if you read the last few blogs, my "plan" was to see this trip as a capstone of sorts, a time to thank this place and the music I love and not so much leave them behind as I did earlier in my life, as to release the ways that they arguably impede me from moving ahead. I have planned (and still do) to do a little ceremony involving creating a cairn and expressing huge amounts of gratitude.

After 24 hours of immersion in rehearsing the music I love, attending a cathedral choral evensong service, and being among a crowd of like-minded people (my "tribe" at least in this field), I'm wondering how successful this ceremony is likely to be! I think our souls know when we feel dead and when we feel alive, and the fact is, in this environment, I am alive. Singing Anglican chant and the canticles, I am alive. In a soaring cathedral space, I am alive. I've always known it, and I honor this ongoing process as a simple celebration of life, joy and passion. I may not need to be limited to this one manifestation of joy, and I am different than I was even a year ago, but it still feels like "life" to me.

Yet clearly I have never been successful at "trying to figure out" successful ways to be in this environment more than once in a while. My little brain and heart are simply not big enough to see beyond this short trip. This first day proved that once you place yourself in the stream, it will carry you best if you hold only loosely to the tiller. There is a bigger vision, a love power far greater than me, that knows how to do whatever is meant to be happening here. 

So I'll build that cairn all right, and I'll express enormous gratitude to the Divine. Then I'm handing it all over. A few days ago, I felt I needed a measure of closure, but the pendulum has swung ever so slightly in the direction of, "I am open, not closed, to whatever my best life looks like." Planning seems to want to give way to flowing. And so it goes, ebbing and flowing as it has for about 55 years on this unusual path. Hold me in the light, dear readers, as I will you if your best laid plans start evolving.

Moving Times

These are moving times. Literally and figuratively. It would be so easy to sink into despair and shock, except for one thing; it feels like an enormous worldwide growth spurt. The old and barbaric is being squeezed out, and somehow, somehow, love is expanding underneath. I really believe that. My housemate has one of those mini-libraries out near the sidewalk, which she keeps filled with books for all ages. People take a few and bring a few too. What with one thing and another, the box is always stocked. Today, as I was returning from work, a man came by and told me this library had literally saved his life when he was homeless; it gave him something to look forward to and some ideas on how to move ahead. He commented on the fact that now, some people have created similar sidewalk boxes for items such as toilet paper, deodorant, and soap: "You know, if only everyone just shared what they have, we'd all get along great." People know this. They understand it. While this man spoke to me, I was a little closed and reserved. I chatted with him, but fatigue and a lifetime of standoffishness with strangers kicked in. It wasn't till after his truck pulled down the street that I realized he had spoken the wisdom of the gods. I was so moved. I wished then that I had stepped off the porch and hugged him. I hope I'll learn.

Tomorrow, I'll be moving by bus then plane to England, for a week of singing and listening to the wisdom of my heart. Yes, that place is my soul home, but it is experiencing as much change as we are on this side of the Atlantic, and I am changing too. I'll tell you more about impressions of this visit once I get there. I am taking my computer with me, but regular readers may find I am on a much different writing schedule. Thanks for your patience!

The trick is to move with love. I'm just trying to see a welcoming path ahead of me at all times. And yeah, let's share what we can. We'll get through this growth spurt, one and all, if we can keep shaking off that darned snobbery, and just be kind to one another.

Grace

I'm getting ready for a trip late in the week to the UK, where I'll be singing a week of cathedral choral evensongs. I am happy, nervous, calm, excited. I am trying not to overthink the experience, even though I see this as a "bookend" of sorts after a lifetime of passion for the Church of England's unique service and musical tradition. All my life in the U.S., people have asked me why I don't like to sing other music. They have said this kind of music isn't a job (although for many in the UK and a handful in the US, it is). I have been at the receiving end of blank stares and confusion, perhaps mirroring my own. I never made sense of why Divine Love would have plonked me down in America under the circumstances, although just in the last year I've come up with a theory: perhaps being American helped me be just a bit more pioneering and persistent back in the all-male day.

Yet something has shifted just enough so that I don't believe I will count down the days miserably to my flight back to the US, as I have often done, even as recently as last year. This time, I am trying to emphasize to myself (and if necessary, to others) the "portal" aspect of the week. It is a doorway to something richer, better and more mature, wherever I eventually land. And it was in that spirit that I discovered the perfect, perfect quote, which I have taped to my journal. It is from Rob Brezsny's "Free Will Astrology" for this week (Aquarius): "A source of tough and tender inspiration seems to be losing some of its signature potency. It has served you well. It has given you many gifts, some difficult and some full of grace. But now I think you will benefit from transforming your relationship with its influence. As you might imagine, this pivotal moment will be best navigated with a clean, fresh, open attitude..."

The grace of the situation is being old enough, if not to laugh at the strangeness of spending a lifetime far from one's passion, then at least to come to openhearted terms with the phenomenon. There is grace in having the good fortune to hop across the pond for ten days to be in my element. And then there is grace in reaching that moment in life where you can step above it all and wonder whether there was an even bigger purpose to all this. And being just a little excited about that possibility, at least for today.  

A small step

Lots of small steps forward. I haven't been able to fully incorporate all of them yet, but I can tell this story because it is so straightforward, and it relates somewhat to what I talked about in my last post, just saying yes to the present.

Yesterday, I caught an hour or so of the broadcast of the "Tour de France." I'm not at all a fan of bicycling, but I do love to see imagery of the French countryside, which I visited as a very young 15-year-old. However, this particular day, the cyclists were going through the Alps.

Only a year ago, there would have been a running commentary going through my head watching the panoramic shots of these majestic mountains: "The only landscape that appeals to me is in England. I don't like this landscape." "I don't like the color palette of this landscape. It isn't green enough." "I prefer rolling hills, or flat landscapes." "I don't like mountains; they make me claustrophobic." "Mountains scare me." "Those mountains remind me (or don't remind me) of the Adirondacks or the Rockies in Montana." "I wish I were somewhere I love, but not the Alps." Words to that effect. Seriously.

Yesterday? "Wow, isn't that beautiful!" Truly. That's all I thought.

For once, I didn't compare. I didn't judge. I didn't wish for something different. I just saw beauty. For a moment just now, I almost judged myself quite harshly for who I was before now, but I'm not going to do that either. I am a woman on her path, taking a small step forward. C'est tout.

Saying Yes...

One of those books I bought at the July 4 sale, Martha Beck's Steering by Starlight, has already been worth twenty times the fifty cents I paid for it, and more so. What I love about Martha is that she and I are clearly on parallel paths, and yet she's just far enough "ahead" of me that her books serve as roadside safety barriers. When I'm starting to veer, her humorous but true words send me back onto the road.

On page 94 of the book, she says, "Say Yes to the Mess." Now, what's funny is that my mind went off on a whole 'nother riff than the text of her book, which at that point is talking about what to do when faced with seriously frightening situations. Instead, the words triggered one of those blissful "aha" moments when I saw the whole arc of my life, in all its odd juxtapositions and uncertainties, and felt calm. I said yes to the mess that is my life. I may be an aspiring mystic, but this kind of acceptance isn't my strong suit, as you have no doubt noticed. I envy, oh gosh, yes it's true, my friends with homes or posh apartments, husbands, kids, grands, family money, tenured professorships, you name it. Spirituality goes right out the window at 61 when "interesting" has gone on just few years too long. And yet, which of these friends has no mess? Behind the scenes are medical crises and family fireworks and financial meltdowns and depression. Some of my contemporaries may be ready to pack it in and drive a solitary camper around North America. And at the other end of the scale, I am living with untold bounty and freedom by comparison with most of the world, including local neighbors. I woke up in a bed. I ate breakfast this morning. I was paid for a few hours of helping out at a compatible workplace.

So it's saying "yes" to the mess that is "now," whatever mess that is. Part of what I love about my blog is that for the hour I am writing it, I am just about as "in the present" as it is humanly possible to be. Inspiration seems to come down from the heavens and through my brain and into these ten clicking fingers on the keyboard, and I am content. I'm saying yes to that, too.

Monday Moth and Miscellany

This morning, when I opened the front door, there was a Pandora sphinx moth on the outer screen door. Mind you, I didn't know that until later when I looked it up online. All I could see was the silhouette of the biggest moth I think I have ever seen, yet it stayed in place long enough for me to open the door and stand on the porch and look at it. Its wings were a full three to four inches long, and the camouflage was incredible...it looked like a slightly dried up green leaf.

I had to look up, too, who exactly Pandora was, mythology obviously being as weak a point for me as botany: she was the first human woman created by the gods. And the Greek sphinx evidently had the head of a woman and the body of a lion (some sphinxes are portrayed as male). So there was something rather powerful about starting the day with this beast.

Yes, it was one of those weekends. For a variety of reasons, including having read yet another piece about the invisibility of being an older woman, when I just couldn't help but wonder what an amazing world it would be if all powerful men turned to women proactively, respectfully and open-mindedly, and asked, "How would you solve this problem?" or "What is your perspective on this?" I so yearn to be taken seriously, to be a presence that cannot be ignored. Like that moth on the screen in the morning, announcing its amazing and very visible self. Here I am. Ready to serve, to be heard, to be seen. Maybe this blog is my best effort at that for now.

And then a partial non sequitur. As a denizen of the city buses, I hear the "f" word over and over again on a daily basis. Sometimes the bus drivers ask clients to cool it, but it's kind of a lost cause. Same at the bus station, and on the streets of my neighborhood. It's a word I never say, and don't particularly like to hear. Now, in two weeks' time I will spend a week singing the best of the English church music tradition in an English cathedral. I am going to sing as gloriously as I know how. I am unutterably thankful; a friend reminded me that many people with specific unusual dreams never even achieve a minute of them. So my multiple trips to England over the years, most of which involved singing, have been an extraordinary blessing. It's just so interesting that my launching pad has so often been, well, high contrast. Perhaps it's a form of alchemy, turning one form of energy into another. I'll try to represent us all, us ordinary humans. And my voice will be heard. Yay!

Lastly, I love that it is 71717. I don't know what it means, but it's neat.

Laundry

I just hung up a load of laundry. It is something I like to do; the image conjured up in my mind is always of a broad green expanse of back lawn, and clean garments blowing in a strong breeze. I am Laura Ingalls Wilder out in the Dakotas, or my own paternal great-grandmother on the table-flat farmland of Manitoba, white fluttering upon green in the hot son. Where I am currently living, however, the routine is rather different. The clotheslines are strung up on the front porch, crisscrossing one another on both sides, leaving a clear passageway in the middle from the porch steps to the front door.

When I first got here, I was almost physically incapable of putting up a load of laundry less than eight feet from a busy sidewalk. It didn't matter whether it was under- or over-garments, somehow giving passers-by such a clear view of my exceedingly modest wardrobe stretched me to yet another limit. And yet it was, "adapt or don't adapt," and for the millionth time in the last few decades, my ingrown WASP proprieties went the way of the wind. In this household, virtually none of the laundry is white. Turquoise, bright red and yellow washcloths and cloth napkins line up over the flowerboxes like prayer flags, and a rainbow of tee shirts, trousers, socks and skirts either hang limply in the calm, or fly horizontal in storms. All of this is clearly visible from the front room, a slow motion version of watching clothes in a dryer.

Yeah, talk about releasing. Not all of it has been dramatic, like what I experienced the other day. Much of it has been happening, itself slow motion, over the last three or four decades. Virtually everything that would have elicited the words, "I couldn't do that," I have done. Virtually everything that my proper great-aunts in their blue linen dresses and pearl necklaces would have shunned, I seem to have either embraced, or at least gotten used to. It's been downward mobility on a monumental scale or, looked at another way, a shift from the paradigm of one side of my family heritage to another side. Those stalwart Canadians on the trek west probably had few opportunities to wash clothes at all, and dried clean laundry anywhere it could hang free. Once settled on a farmstead near Winnipeg, an actual clothesline must have seemed the height of luxury. So it is in that spirit that I bless this front porch line and the fact that I have pioneering forebears. We may be heading into a time where their practical courage will stand me in better stead than the civilized niceties that I seem to have been slowly shedding.