Wild Soul Journal

I awakened last night
To the sound of Shakespeare and God
Arguing in my living room.
God won,
And now it’s been decided,
You
Are the most beautiful poem
Ever written.

Doug Wilson

There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open.

- Martha Graham
(This excerpt has been offered here before. And it will be offered again. We can’t forget this.)

Dear Fellow Travelers,

When I was 12 years old money was so tight that my parents used credit cards for the first time. I was only vaguely aware of what they were, but I could se the effect it had on my dad to carry such debt. It weighed on him heavily.

That summer my mom took a job doing laundry for a local camp and asked me to help. Two nights a week we heaved 30 huge bags of laundry in and out of the machines. It was hard hot work, but every so often change would fall out of pockets and into the bottom of the dryer. We scooped quarters, dimes and nickels up with glee and shouted “Jackpot!” when we found a dollar bill. Over the course of the summer we accumulated quite a pile of tips. As the found money accumulated, I wondered what mom would do with it. Maybe some new clothes, a trip, some fancy shoes? During our last night at the laundromat I asked her. She dug out the pile of money she had rolled and secured with a rubber band and said, “We’ve collected over a $1,000 dollars and I am going to give it to your dad as an anniversary present to pay off the credit card.”

Even at my young age, I was stunned by this act of generosity. My mom had spent more than half of her 43 years making sacrifices so that her seven kids could have school clothes and braces. Looking back I imagine that she probably daydreamed of the pretty things she could finally buy herself. A store bought dress to replace her handmade ones. A new pair of fancy shoes instead of her worn out practical ones. My guess is it wasn’t easy for her to give that gift.

I think it was easier for my dad to give like that. My mom was a very generous, kind, and good person. But being selfless and kind, being the good and loyal one was more like a calling for my dad. It was his way of serving. I was in my 30s before I discovered that there are as many ways to serve as there are people. Some people ignore the rest of us and create beautiful art that breaks our hearts open. Others speak the truth that liberates us despite egos that might be bruised. And others light us up with their dance and song even as they show up an hour late for a date. And some, like my mom, serve by living as brightly and fully as she possibly can. Ever since I can remember I recall people saying to me, “Your mom is amazing! She can do everything!” Some were threatened by that, others criticized her for showing off, but more often than not her joie de vivre inspired others to join in, sign up, get busy, speak out. At 75 she still shines with infectious vitality.

I know these two things for sure: It is not our place to judge the type of goodness we have to offer the world, it is our job to find the courage to offer it. If you don’t yet know what shape that goodness should take, begin the journey now. It is a precious jewel waiting to be discovered. Second, it is our duty to sometimes give beyond what we think we are capable of giving. Despite our inner protestations, that kind of giving expands us, makes us bigger, moves us beyond the fear of deprivation or of being seen as weak or subservient. It clears the way for us to be filled with Love, to be Love.

Blessings, gratitude and love to you,

Annie

I love to get up early to swim or bike. The mornings are so quiet. Despite the cold and near darkness, I love to get up before anyone else. It makes me feel as if I am sampling delicious food before the guests arrive and it gives me the time I need without human interaction to check in with myself. I think about what John Calvi wrote about that.

One of the things I like to do first thing in the morning, before I even open my eyes is to say to myself, “Well, John Calvi, congratulations; you have another day in your life. What’s your gut response to that?” I know that I’m at the top of my spiritual health and emotional well-being if my response to that is “Thank you.” And if my response is not “thank you”, I know I have some homework to do before I offer anybody anything. It’s a good barometer; it lets me know how I’m doing. It gives me some words to let other people know how I’m doing, whether or not they want to know.

I came across this unfinished bit of writing tonight and felt it should be posted.

After we let go

The simpler we make our lives, the more abundant they become.
- Sarah Ban Breathnach

I had swallowed it hole—the idea that complexity equals success. The ability to discuss complex ideas implies intellectual success. The ability to manage hundreds of details without mistake is perceived as organizational success. The number of things we can get done in a day reflects successful time management. Breadth is favored over depth and busyness is mistaken for worth.

In this way, I could say that five years ago I was far more “successful.” I was editor, designer, and staff manager at a national publication with 34,000 readers. I edited and co-wrote a few books and led workshops across the country to inspire people to reconnect to their truth. I was married to and worked with a brilliant, creative man who never lost my interest or passion. We had a cabin and 15 acres in the country and a modest sized home near Burlington. I spent half the week with my two kids whose dad lived 16 miles away. My life was intense, complex, and never boring. The only problem was that I was falling apart.

To maintain my indispensability at work took at least 60 hours a week, sometimes more. To be what I thought my husband wanted required a careful management of my behavior. To maintain the intensity of our love affair required constant attention. To be the mom I wanted to be required never saying no and proving, without doubt, that I was a good mom. Once or twice a year my husband and I found the peace and simplicity we sought in the woods. Those few weeks of silence and beauty sustained us for the rest of the year. But after a while holes began to appear in my life. I got into small car accidents. I injured myself routinely. My hair began to turn gray and my bright light began to fade. My circle of friends, always small, shrunk more as I had no time to see them. And my husband became more and more distant.

At my workshops I felt my self, my truth, my wild soul shine like the sun. But upon return I would sink right back into the habits of complexity.

One day, after having studied the Enneagram for a while, I came upon a truth: I create intensity (a.k.a. complexity) to feel alive. I create stories about my life that are romantic and dramatic and then work to live into them. One story had me as the selfless, unconditionally loving person. Another had me as the perfect partner and lover. In a moment I saw how I was willing to do anything to maintain the story of my life as I wished it to be. I was willing to exert whatever effort to be the person I imagined myself to be. I wanted to be “myself” but denied the full breadth of what that meant.

I claimed to want simplicity, but when it came down to it, life needed to be “super special” to be worth my time. And, my ego had a very particular view of what “super special” meant. With this awareness created by the Enneagram the “gig was up.” I had uncovered the basic distortion of life that my ego maintained was reality: “Life is a waste unless I am seen as unique and special and my experiences are intense.”

After that realization, I could no longer maintain the story as I had before. I started letting it go. And it was scary. I did not know how to live without it. So, I lived day-by-day, moment-by-moment, trying to hear my truth underneath the story my ego had developed. The end of my marriage began with me speaking my truth more and more. “No, I don’t want to publish five books this year. It is too much for us.” “No, I am not willing to work 60 hours.” I dug my heels in and asked for real change. I tried to talk about the Enneagram because I began to see how his life was also caught up in a story that was not serving his desire to slow down. Finally, one day, after another new project was introduced, I said, “I would rather live in a shack then continue living at this pace and with this complexity.” And with that he left. Our marriage was over. And after another year our working relationship too.

I have come to realize that grief is less about missing the actual thing or person that is gone, but missing the person you had been in its presence. And the grief is not a thought, “Oh I miss being his wife.” Or “I miss being the Editor.” The grief is a sense of vacancy, of disorientation, of floating though your days without the anchor of “I am _______.” I did not miss my husband or my work as much as I missed the sense of knowing my place in the world. I had been Ann O’Shaughnessy, writer and editor, who received hundreds of letters a week from grateful readers. I was the woman other women envied for my role as the artist’s wife. The fact that he chose me proved I was special. The growing number of subscribers proved I was special. The books I published and sold were tangible proof of my worth. By losing all that, I lost the solid oak tree my ego leaned against to feel comfortable. Without the proof there was nothing but me and the intense discomfort of not knowing who that was.

The past two years have been a continual process of letting go. I have had to let go of all the definitions I held about what success and my own sense of myself as “special” means. I have had to celebrate the beauty of ordinariness all the while digging through and tossing out the stories I held to be true about life:
- Relationships aren’t good unless you feel “in love.”
- Life is not worth anything if you aren’t working hard to realize your potential.
- If you aren’t working really hard you are going to fail.
- To rest and relax and do what you want is selfish.
- If you aren’t stressed out with busyness people will think you are lazy.
- Telling the truth is not worth it if it invites conflict.
- To be valued you need to be the best, most unique one.
- To make yourself indispensable by giving selflessly is the only way to be loved.
- Other people get what they want.
- Other people are happy.
- Suffering is a required component of growth.

And I let it go…

The process of letting go led me to a place so empty it threatened to swallow me. I walked in this barren land for a year, resisting the urge to hop on some intense train ride to feel alive. By leaving behind my story and disempowering my ego, I removed the framework that held up my sense of self. And it frightened me. But there was no going back. Many nights I prayed to be able to operate as I had, to have the fierceness of my ego to guide me. Letting go of my habit to create tragic romantic stories to live by left me with real life to contend with and there seemed to be nothing romantic about it. I struggled to find a reason to live. The emptiness pulled at me daily. I did not worry that I would actually killed myself, but I faced each day trying desperately to create the will to live.

Some things I’ve been thinking about:

• Beauty shines through in the absence of fear.

• It is harder to write about happiness than suffering. It is easier to create connections with others via suffering than via happiness. Is the thoroughly happy person a stranger to most people?

• When we are thoroughly and properly loved, the body expresses in radically new ways.

• Sharing beauty with another person amplifies that beauty exponentially.

• Admitting what I don’t know is a surprisingly difficult and liberating practice. And it is more about the small things like, “Do you know so and so, the famous healer?” Old answer: “I have heard of him, doesn’t he… blah, blah, blah.” New answer: “No I don’t, please tell me what you know.” Why have I felt such shame at not knowing?

• Telling the truth to ourselves is the single most powerful act of love.

• We can’t tell the truth until we learn how to listen to our inner voice that speaks independently of ego.

Go in peace, speak the truth
by Gary Kowalski

Go in peace, speak the truth, give thanks each day.
Respect the earth and her creatures,
for they are alive like you.
Care for your body; it is a wondrous gift.
Live simply. Be of service.
Be guided by your faith and not your fear.
Go lightly on your path. Walk in a sacred manner.
Amen.
Source: 1997 UUMA Worship Materials Collection

Copyright: The author has given Unitarian Universalist Association member congregations permission to reprint this piece for use in public worship. Any reprints must acknowledge the name of the author.

Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes.

Mahatma Gandhi

The secret of happiness is freedom. The secret of freedom is courage.

Thucydides

Many men and women in their 40s and 50s are feeling the panic of confinement. By this time in their career they have made their way to a management position with many people directly or tangentially dependent upon them for their own livelihood. They have children who “need” ipods, cars, laptops, and as little contact with parents as possible. They have a spouse who seems a bit faded and jaded by the daily grind of work, cook, clean, TV and bed. They have car payments, and college savings payments, health insurance and orthodontics’ bills. They have a mortgage that demands two salaries to meet and property taxes that keep rising. They plan and save for the annual family vacation, but even that is filled with schedules, airplane travel, and disappointed expectations.

They daydream about waking up and having nothing to do and no one to answer to. In this free world they putter about the house and nap when they need to nap, they go for walks with their dog unleashed and free to chase the seagulls it will never catch. And in this daydream a lover usually appears who wants nothing but a few moments in our day to exchange pure physical pleasure, someone with whom they can ask for whatever they want without shame or fear. They want a lot of things. Their hunger is deep and scratches inside.

But they work their way out of this aching place by imaging the cost of that freedom. What would total freedom mean? It would mean uncertainty and insecurity. Nothing would be solid. Freedom has no boundaries to lean against or edges to fence around. It is fluid and open and limitless, qualities the human ego cannot abide by. And so, for those few who have prayed for freedom and walk towards it, know this: there is nothing so terrifying as sailing without the rudder of ego guiding us into safe and safer ports. And.. There is nothing so beautiful as to feel ourselves held and supported by something way larger than our ego can possibly conceive. It not only requires losing the rudder, it requires stepping out of the boat altogether.

I wrote this in response to a friend’s question of how I was doing after the death of my friend tarin:

It was an intense time for many of us. She demanded a lot from us in her life and in her death, AND we are all better for that. She called you to the plate and looked at your integrity. Sometimes it was hard to look and you wanted to scoot, but she loved with fierceness too. In many ways, with me, she let her softness through and I cherish those jewels she offered and I still hold. In the end she died with a kind of grace that seemed impossible — skinny arms dancing over her head as she lay in her sun room, on her old bed she probably found on the side of the road somewhere, sometime.

We suffer collectively to be so separated from death. Bodies are swept away and packaged up, made up and laid out in a silk lined coffin. tarin’s body was cleaned by women from her synagogue and then watched over for 24 hours until the burial, where she was laid in the earth above a waterfall on her property in a beautiful pine box her son made with holes in the bottom so she could more quickly return to the earth. When we get to touch, smell, sit with death, we don’t forget it so easily and thereby don’t forget to live so easily.

Every day or so my boyfriend and I joke about how we “milked” another day. We sucked every drop of life out of it. We showed up, played, laughed, made love, worked hard, cried — not in the busy, frenetic way — but in a life-ful, reverence.

I wish for everyone to experience such a revival as I have through tarin’s illness and death. And I wish for the grace to keep living as she would want me to.

She had four children in five years. The most significant that happened to her life, she told us, was losing one of those children to cancer when he was five years old. “I don’t talk about this very easily.” she said, looking down and speaking very quietly, “but it was pivotal for me. It changed my life — jelled it in a profound way. I have an image that comes to mind about that time. It’s of a white fire roaring through my life and burning out what was superficial, frivolous or unimportant and leaving a core of…. I don’t think there’s any other words for it than love. A core of love. It’s hard to convey what that means.”

The Guest House

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

Rumi

Dear Fellow Travelers,

Listening to the economic news it can feel like all the wells we dug are drying up and the “plenty” has left the land. The desert of scarcity widens in front of us. Some of us already have our feet in the hot sand –we’ve lost our job or our house. Others have only heard reports and stand steeled against the possibility of loss. There is no way to spin a foreclosure into something shiny. But I’ve been through enough to know two things: If we keep our hands, hearts, and hands open and ready there is more, more than we can imagine; and we are often changed for the better by losing what we thought we could not live without.

There are those who would simply ask me to get off of my cloud, but I write from the outpost of loss. Not the kind that landed me under a bridge sleeping in a cardboard box, but one that loosened all my anchors and left me adrift, broke, and renting a small, cold room. Out here beyond the clutching spasms of grief is a place where clearly, effortlessly, gratitude springs from the smallest things.

My words make the process sound easy but it is not. But, much of what loss inspires is decidedly not pretty, not spiritual, not evolved: hopelessness, shame, regret, and anger. That is why we are taught well to “get over” these feelings. There are thousands of ways to tune out or escape and I grew so weary of the sadness and fear that I tried a few. But Rumi’s precious words often brought me around to the essential work of welcoming all the “guests.”   And thanks to others who talked openly about their loss, I learned that I should prepare settings for other guests who had not yet arrived and might not yet imagine. They could not tell me who or what would come, because even if they could predict it, I would not believe them. So I diligently prepared the welcome even when I no longer remembered all the good reasons to live.

This past fall, two and a half years after who I thought I was disappeared and all ground dissolved, a “me” emerged who had little concept of self beyond what arose in the moment. I felt unhinged in a good way. I occupied a liminal space. I woke to each day expectant and supple aware that no day is like the last, every moment offers itself new. And soon afterwards all sorts of guests arrived until I burst daily with gratitude.

Blessings and love to you,

There are three women here at work who, when they walk by, make me stop and stare. It’s the way they walk with such sway and grace. It is dignified and sultry, sassy and powerful. I love this expression of the feminine—that I can be working and suddenly bowled over by the beauty of a walk.

The way I walk has been commented on. An old boyfriend used to tell me in not too gentle terms that I walked like a man—with determination, focus and speed. I felt a little picked on. But… ultimately, as is the case with all criticism, there was something to listen to in there. Since then I have been more aware of how I walk in the world and what it is I am communicating with my walk. Does it say, “Don’t bother me I am a woman on a mission” or does it say, “I am relaxed and open and have time for you.”

Anyone who has read my writing for a while, knows that I have had a rocky relationship with my feminine nature. When I was young, I did not see the benefit of being a woman. I admired the boys and men in my life and on the big screen for their courage, action, boldness and pure physicality. It took me 30 years to recognize the immense strength and beauty of the feminine. Now I try to infuse my walk with that energy. More and more I don’t need to try and the result is powerful.

How do you walk? What does it invite? What energy does it send out?

The Dance

A middle-aged woman, quite plain, to be polite about it, and
somewhat stout, to be more courteous still,
but when she and the rather good-looking, much younger man
she’s with get up to dance,
her forearm descends with such delicate lightness, such restrained
but confident ardor athwart his shoulder,
drawing him to her with such a firm, compelling warmth, and
moving him with effortless grace
into the union she’s instantly established with the not at all
rhythmically solid music in this second-rate cafe,

that something in the rest of us, some doubt about ourselves, some
sad conjecture, seems to be allayed,
nothing that we’d ever thought of as a real lack, nothing not to be
admired or be repentant for,
but something to which we’ve never adequately given credence,
which might have consoling implications about how we
misbelieve ourselves, and so the world,
that world beyond us which so often disappoints, but which
sometimes shows us, lovely, what we are.

~ C. K. Williams ~

(Repair)

With thanks to panhala