Character Essay

Feb 8 2011

Death of former spouse has exposed me to the reality of financial/security lack.

But the true issue is my character.  Do I have courage?  It’s true I have been loathe to give myself permission.  Given the emphasis on paternal culture which rewards a woman’s precociousness with shunning or worse, I find myself leaning harder into my Celtic roots, farther and farther from the children of Abraham, wondering what it is like to be a Druid.

Or a Bard.

To refresh the minds of those who need to remember who they are; that they cannot be valued with currency or clothing or style of life, but there is a priceless value to their souls.

Jung states, without the foundation of the past, we are in chaos.  

This is the chaos I have grown up in.  I have had a cultural foundation that is not congruent with my soul.

Workshop On Potential Destiny

Feb 2, 2011

I’m good.  I’m smart.  And people like me.

Write 10 pages on how you want your life to look.

Draw a picture with yourself in the middle.

Fill in these blanks.

The only thing holding me back is..

What message are you sending out to the Universe?

****************************

The comment that actually made sense to me was made by a Zen Buddhist.  He said,

Rivers of Living Water

Rivers of Living Water

We have lost magic and the holy wells.

I cry in an ordinary room.

Hope, which swims in Holy waters, slips out of my hands like a slick fish,

Even as I struggle to keep it from landing in the dry gritty sand of the rational life.

I will never be content here.

Here, the worst reality is the knowledge that you are limited.

A vining legalism twines around your potential. Here, the worst trial is the triumph of fear.

Anchored in doubt you sink to darker waters.

The end.

At least I am still shouting and cursing the day I was born,

 like Job.

Even with no magic; no Holy wells no hope, no wonder..

Job stopped short of cursing God.

Me, also.  I will not curse God.  

My life may be lost but I Am That I Am remains, 
And that is the ground of consolation.

But, blind faith is a cursing affair

Especially when one walks alone.

I look into night skies and see milky roads

Stars, pin pricks in dark paper

Letting light through by specks that would overwhelm us

Unveiled.

Satellites creep in every direction, 

Evidence of man’s ascension to realms of power

That turns magic to mere equations and wattage

Distracting the eye from the magnitude

And the mystery of profound wonder.

I am starving.

We are a conquered people, colonized and governed by machinery

Having traded art, music, ceremony, love, family, tribe,

Custom,, provision and enlightenment

For some mandated entitlement and big screen media flash.

We surrendered both community vision and solitary revelation

Our talents and gifts, turned aside

Because we are both too diasporic, and too local.

But, we are free, you say.  What is our slavery?

Loss of language, heritage, elders, ancestors

Our children,  who cannot stay here 

All swallowed by cities

All this limited to overreaching paperwork, 

Substituting economy for relationship.

I thirst.

My gritty little fish is gasping for Holy wells.

I stand upon dry sand.

On impulse, I open my mouth and the fish leaps in

Diving for my belly

And the rivers of living water.

Point of Stasis

Dec 28 2010

So many conflicts tumble through my soul

I dodge and try to focus on what must be done

Voices burble up through new bruises

Revealing deep wounds

Which still wring out tears

And the shock of old fears.

You spoke today

But I was transported to a place

Decades past with different faces

Where a proposal was offered

On the silver plate of a threat

And my lacework unravelled.

I am not looking for adversaries this close.

Are you willing to befriend?

I am head shy.

River

What would I do if it were not for You?

How I trust You, day by day.  How I trust You.

With my fears, with my panic, with my hopes and dreams

With my laughter and tears.

You are within, experiencing life as and through me

Not me, yet with me, yet my life.

The appropriate question then is, What is it that You are doing?

Life is fluid, and it doesn't snag itself on the logs in the river bed. 

We need structure; like the fish need the logs in the river bed.  Life devoid of structure would move at blinding speeds, and we ourselves are creatures of structure.  But our structures are merely containers for the water of life, which doesn't snag itself on the logs.  

I'm bobbing along in my own current sort of snagged on the incidents of my life, slowly realizing the magnificent proportions life can take on if I can imagine that there are other logs downstream.  Whole landscapes, even.  Having the freedom to let go and float down to an entirely different landscape is the hope I have of the future; of life.  Not that I want different structures or views, I want the freedom from nagging worry and sheer panic, which is not in the best interest of peace of mind.  

We seem to have wildly differing opinions about the nature of the universe.  Some of my people think the universe is not a friendly place, but rough, unpredictable, and dangerous.  Some think that the universe is not conscious, not unconscious, not anything but mechanistic.  Some think it is a Disney movie.  Well, I know it is rough, unpredictable, and dangerous, but I cannot be convinced that it is not conscious, neither unconscious, nor a machine.  Rather, I am aware over and again, that it is very very big.  Also, extravagant, generous, and benevolent.  My experience.  

You cannot make people be or do what you want, and sometimes they really hurt you, intentionally or not.  But the universe, or however you grok God, there is a possibility for a connection that makes anything possible, and anything endurable.  When I think like this, then there is comfort for me.  There is hope.  I need these things.  Without them, there is really hardly a reason to live.  I am alive, and I seem to need the reasons. 

Lately, the states of mind I need have to do with the vitality of water, the ability of water to flow, to engender life, to conform to any barrier and slowly overcome it, the ability of water to take on the virtue of whatever is infused in it, and then impart that to whatever it irrigates.  Water is not impeded by structure.

Rivers of life are promised as we put our faith in powers greater than ourselves.  A baptism into a life of spirit promises an infusion of eternal life.  Slowly, the language is beginning to sink in and the realities, may they show as evidence.

Labor

Morgan Man died June 5th. His aggressively re-growing brain cancer resurfaced in January after four solid years of intermission, and it grew aggressively until it disabled him, until it sent him to Seattle for desperate treatment, it sent him to Health and Rehab for chemo which only bled him, and finally, it took his language, and then it took him. 

He didn't die alone; on the contrary, many of us died with him. We died of heroics and logistics and details and exhaustion. We died praying, keeping the vigil, at bedside and memorial service. We died of letters of remembrance and long distance. I died. I died of dreams hamstrung and hope obscured, of 30 years of service that seems to have been lost somehow in the shuffle, leaving me a refugee, out of place. 

Well, it is a tumultuous time for many people; so many of us are treading water, hoping for a lifeboat or a shore before we are too wooden to move. 

It's a transition, we know this. Transitions are life and death matters. It's not simply a developmental stage, where, for example, all of a sudden now you can manage riding a bicycle. This is a wounding to the bone; cleaving between joint and sinews. Like Jacob, we wrestle with an Angel, and though we refuse to let go, and we demand a blessing because we are despairingly brave enough to be desperately optimistic with God, the encounter leaves it's wounding scar, and henceforth we are halt and not swift of foot.

It is the same with carrying to term. How vulnerable, the closer to deliverance one is, the more vulnerable. I know enough to cry, and to laugh, and to panic, and to soothe my own fears. But it is in full sight of my weakness and my dependence on Grace. At some point, in this hard labor of transition, you have to scream and push.

Oddly, the more relaxed you are, the easier it is to go through. Learning to relax into loss, into pain, into uncertainty, into vulnerable compromise, (into screaming) into the possibility (and inevitability) of death, and that this is normal, this is what we can expect here, it is common to all people throughout history forwards and backwards, this is the transition. 

What shall deliverance be? 

I still hold so much tension. I have strongholds of hesitation and frozen feet, of reticence and emotional shut-down, of behavior loops that go nowhere like an old TV with a malfunctioning horizontal hold. I am called on it daily. My body reacts to this interior/exterior tension with nagging complaints and physical expressions that will not lie for me, which make it very clear that I am under siege and taking flak. I want to heal, but I am hyper alert.  I want to rest, but there is still the hardest work to be done. I want sanctuary, but here is only now and the rest I seek must be taken as a host, as a pledge. 

Well, I have not broken faith with You, but I'm sure I have broken all my suppositions and many of my boundaries.

Phoenix Transforms

May 16 2010

It was very plain

Of course, as I request entry to your heart

You would have me leave my shoes outside

Also my luggage

Also, my purse.

Leave them behind

Oh yes, and the form, too

As I wriggled to enter, it became very plain

My body is too big and clumsy for that portal.

It wasn’t about going in, leaving off something, and coming back

It was about leaving off everything 

To go deeper.