"May I be the tiniest nail in the house of the universe"

From Mary Oliver -

"Sometimes the desire to be lost again, as long ago, comes over me like a vapor. With growth into adulthood, responsibilities claimed me, so many heavy coats. I didn't choose them, I don't fault them, but it took time to reject them. Now in the spring I kneel, I put my face into the packets of violets, the dampness, the freshness, the sense of ever-ness. Something is wrong, I know it, if I don't keep my attention on eternity. May I be the tiniest nail in the house of the universe, tiny but useful. May I stay forever upstream. May I look down upon the windflower and the bull thistle and the coreopsis with the greatest respect."

- from Upstream - Selected Essays by Mary Oliver 2016



I love the image of the many heavy coats - the layering of responsibilities building bulk. New layers pulled over old and not quite forgotten cardigans. I imagine what that would feel like - the stiffness of movement, the heat, the weight. We do choose these layers - maybe we aren't aware of what those choices entail or perhaps we can't quite see the choice given our social, cultural coat closet - but those old choices feel like layers that were given to us. Our arms were thrust into their context whether we liked it or not. To fault them is to cling to blame. Blaming solidifies those layers into a foundation of meaning. We grow use to defining ourselves - identifying ourselves - with those many heavy coats even as they weigh us down.

But neither do I reject the responsibilities that have claimed me - I'd rather simply peel off the coats, releasing their strangled hold on who I am right now. All that bulk, each layer seemingly predicated on all the other layers. Stripping them off takes time. I softly release what no longer serves. I run my hand across the textures of fabricated values and beliefs, the meaning I have made of each particular coat - are these truly mine or am I touching the social, familial vision of who I should be and how I should waddle forward, stooped and bound by all those many heavy coats.

Stripping off some layers gives me a sense of my own form. And yet, I am still encased in layers that have yet to be peeled back - some that never will be peeled away and others that will continue to come off as I age and release myself into the care of the universe. But still, a different awareness - to go lose myself in the world, to wander upstream as Mary Oliver writes, continues to help me shed what no longer serves me.

What kind of nail do I want to be, tiny but useful?

Out with the Old

I’ve kept a journal of one sort or another since I was about thirteen years old. I documented my first crush, the intricate social dynamics at the local skating rink, three or four boyfriends that I loved with lots of small hearts and capital letters, and leaving home for college. I wrote pages about the young man who would be my husband, documenting our first date and the subsequence angst of wedding proceedings. I told my journal about pregnancies, friendships, siblings, coworkers and parents. I wrote when I was mad or upset, late at night or early in the morning. I wrote a lot when my kids were teenagers. I named my fears and tried to untangle my past from my present. I vented frustration and pain; I celebrated joy and happiness.

Gathering all of these journals together, I opened a few to random pages and I was immediately drawn backwards into whatever state of mind I’d been in while writing. Occasionally I found some of the joy but for the most part my journals were a depository of struggle.  There were incidences recorded there that I couldn’t even remember – until I read about it again – which renewed the sensations of being hurt or frustrated. Oh hi, yeah, I remember you. Let's rehash that experience again, shall we?

Um, no thanks. Really.

Who needs to revisit angst, anger and pain from twenty years ago? Ten years ago?  Those feelings had stopped crowding out my other memories of laughter, tenderness and love – and here I was reaffirming the power of that angst.

I want to live forward, not backwards. I want to hold the story of my life as an ever-changing canvas that highlights love, light and joy – not despair, pain and anger. I don’t want to be defined by an outdated view point that doesn’t live in my experience now. There were years that I needed that journal to be the loving ears that could listen and hold my heart and soul. How amazing it is to realize that that isn’t true any longer.

I took thirty five years of journals and burned them on New Year’s Eve. Andy and my daughter were there to help pull off the bindings. I found a few things that were worth reading aloud – before I threw the pages on the roaring fire.

It was a cathartic release that also brought a stunning sense of relief. Those journals had gripped a particular story of life in a death hold. Watching the pages burn, I gave the past back to itself, releasing my vigilant need to grasp and hold on to a particular version of “truth.”  

I love writing, reflecting, and seeking the quietest voices within. I still have a journal, I always will.

Which means that in a couple of years I’ll pull them out and feed their stories to the fire too.

Back Down to Utah

This is where I've been.
Just outside of Capitol Reef National Park in southern Utah
With friends and guides; coyotes and a blanket of stars.
Watching the sun come up over distant mesas
Walking through cool canyon creeks
Arm in arm, singing new songs,
Sharing gifts and gratitude.

Fasting and Granola Bars

It is a month now since I headed down to southern Utah for a week long session with Animas Valley Institute.  It’s been over three weeks since I fasted for four days and camped solo out on a bluff overlooking a red rock canyon.

It was one of the most amazing experiences of my life.

And like all good experiences, my time in Utah is nuanced and still simmering.

I’m happy to talk to anyone about my trip – in person.  Written words are too limited and tend to bind emotions and actions into categories, labels and definitions. That wouldn’t help anyone understand what it was like to fast in isolated splendor.

Before I left, I wrote about paradigms and shifts in perception.  On my way down to Utah I listened to On Being with Krista Tippett. She was interviewing Barbara Kingsolver on The Ethics of Eating. It is an older broadcast from 2010 but beautiful and thought provoking. Interestingly enough, she talked about – you guessed it – paradigm shifts in regards to how she and her family chose to drastically change how they were living their lives.  “It's just a shift. You know, momentum in our habits can be enormous. And sometimes, it's just takes some sort of a formal vow to get us from one kind of thinking into another.” Barbara Kingsolver goes on to say that any paradigm shift takes discipline at first, but then – “I understood that sometimes you have to push yourself into a new way of thinking to get to a place where you want to be that's very comfortable, that doesn't even feel like work.”

I’ll say it again - it is very hard to evaluate one’s life when one is not only immersed in it but pulled by the currents and tides that govern it. Yes, another metaphor for all those influences of culture, family, community, work and ego.  Maybe better people then I can somehow tread water and take a 360 aerial view of their current lifestyle and circumstances. For me, sitting out in the wilderness and feeling those currents go slack gave me the space to think about what shifts I want to make happen in my life.  The literal act of fasting is ‘pushing yourself into a new way of thinking’ in the most visceral of terms. 

One of the outcomes I am sitting with is that I actually took control of all those voices that kept telling me to eat the granola bars I had in my backpack.  Talk about plowing headlong into the most basic of learned behaviors: Eating.  This is, however, strikingly significant. I now know that I have the discipline and perseverance to put my Self in the driver’s seat.  I now know that I can shift my thinking – and live into whatever growth and change I want to tend within myself.

Those granola bars are still in my backpack.

Have I known this before? Of course.  And I forget. I would hazard a guess that many of us evolve and dissolve through this process of clarity and wisdom all the time.  There are times that we need to fight the currents and we may think we’ve forgotten how to swim.

It takes an effort to strike out in the direction we want to go. Maybe we flounder a bit, getting our arms and legs to sync up. Perhaps we swallow some sea water as we begin to move.

And then… we remember…

that we’ve known how to swim all along.

Fasting in the Wilderness

I’m not exactly sure if I can tell you why I am on my way to southern Utah for a weeklong workshop that includes four days of fasting. This is something I signed up for as a four part program that – oh yeah – included a fast out on some butte in the wilderness.

What takes a 47 year old woman on an 800 mile trip to go starve herself out in the desert? I’d really like to put more profound, intellectual or new age language around this but really at the heart of this trip is a four day sojourn out in the wilderness with a tent, sleeping bag and water bottle(s).

I haven’t tried to explain this trip to anyone who doesn’t have the first clue as to what a fast in the wilderness is about. A vision fast is what it is called in this particular time and place.  Have I lost you yet?

I feel a little lost myself.

Do you know what a paradigm is? I bring this up because I think this is part of what has brought me to this particular adventure. One definition states a paradigm is: A set of forms all of which contain a particular element, especially the set of all inflected forms based on a single stem or theme. We each look at the world through our own paradigm – a framework built upon commonly accepted views on the subject. Science, perhaps, or religious faith. Eastern or western medicinal practices; christian or islamic faiths. We have a particular lens created out of culture, family dynamics and how the world impacts us. I look at paradigms as those underlying assumptions that we don't even question.

A popular paradigm that existed while I was growing up was that our world was filled with infinite resources. Everything built off of that particular paradigm is now being questioned.

A paradigm today might be that you can actually have real relationships over Facebook and that life wouldn’t exist without the internet. Technology now being that ‘particular element’or framework that weaves through how you relate to the world.

I think I’m having my very own paradigm shift because I've been asking myself some very hard questions about how I live my life. It’s very hard to deepen into what that means when I am immersed in “it” every day. “It” has something to do with our consumer driven, ‘the ends justifies the means,’ careening at 80 mph hour - society.

Four days out in the wilderness, allowing my body to quiet and then feel the quiet, makes me really curious about what will emerge – beyond the withdrawals from caffeine, anyway.  The art of slowing down draws me like a sunflower to the sun.

Perhaps the act of heading here in the first place is evidence that the shift started happening a while ago.

Diving in to Questions

The Journey Begins

First of all - if you want to know more about this amazing program I am involved in - check out the Animas Valley Institute website: http://www.animas.org 

I can't even begin to describe why this work is so powerful.  In some ways the questions are the simplest - and so deeply provocative.

How do you want to be in relationship to your soul - that which speaks with the deepest longing?

How do you want to touch the world - and how do you allow the world to reach out and touch you?
Where does your purpose and longing meet this earth/world's needs?
What moves you?  What terrifies you?

Sister Trees

Peel back the layers, feel your heart beat loudly as you sit beneath a mountain where grizzly bears walk and bull elk call for their mates. Immerse yourself in the yearning that makes your breath catch even as you dive head first into the cold mountain stream.
Sit with a community of seekers and together weave a collective dream of awakening. Let your heart crack open, find your footing before falling in to the shadows of what you do not know yet.
That's what this work does.  Here at the beginning there are questions with few answers. Possibilities and tears.

I'm touched and moved.  I can't wait to go back for more.

Heading back into the Wilderness...of me.

I'm headed back out on another wilderness retreat.  Camping in the snow last April wasn't enough for me - oh no - I want to really push my boundaries.  I signed up for a four part workshop. A session each season.  The first will be in northwest Wyoming.
At least there are cabins for this first foray into the immersive experience.
Did I really just have a nostalgic moment remembering my tent covered in snow?

 
God, I must be hooked.
As I head towards this workshop, I keep mulling over some of the questions I had to answer on my application.  What dreams am I having? What numinous encounters have I had?  What is the way in which I want to deliver my unique gifts to the world?
I've also been wondering about the men and women joining me on this journey - what do I want to bring to this group? 
The first set of questions are unanswerable at this moment.  Not that I don't know or have some inklings into my experiences; however, I'm comfortable letting them stay unformed for now.  Wrapping words around a process too early just might narrow my vision too much.  I want to explore and give space for all possible meanings, not just what I might think right now.
Hmmm - that way of thinking may just be one of the bonuses of getting older.
The second question is much easier and yet in line with what I just wrote as well.  This new group forming invites curiosity.  Not judgements and not anxiety.  Curiosity and invitation.
Another sign of aging gracefully: self acceptance and not needed to put myself 'out there' right away.
As I start at the beginning with a new group of people, I'm aware that I am also involved in an ending with another group of people - my coworkers.  This is brought home with more clarity each week as we edge towards the end of the year.  Beginnings and endings.  Transitions and change. 
That's just aging period.  Not always gracefully.
We'll see where this exploration takes me - on the other side.

A Quote from Plotkin

buffalo path through the reeds

"The Wanderer (of any chronological age) seeks to discover her ultimate place in life. Not just any place will do. Her authentic place is not simply one that someone will pay her to occupy, such as a job. Nor is it a task she happens to have the talent to perform, such as an art or a craft, of a career that a vocational counselor recommends for her, such as banking or social work. Nor is it a social role, such as caregiver, student, parent, servant, leader, whore, or rebel, which other people will accept her in. It's got to be her place, one that is in keeping with her vital core. It's a place defined not by the deeds she performs but by the qualities of soul that she embodies; not by her physical, social, or economic achievements but by the true character she manifests; neither by her capacity to conform to the masses, nor by her ability to creatively rebel against the mainstream, but by the unique way she performs her giveaway for her community. Her ultimate place is identified not by any social forms or roles but, rather, by the symbols, stories, and archetypes unearthed from the deep structure of her psyche and by the way the world invites her to belong to it." Bill Plotkin, Nature and the Human Soul; pg. 252

Job, career, profession

I'm wondering how to tell my boss that I think I want to leave in 8 months.
I think he knows something is up. Kind of like when you can feel someone starting to disconnect from a relationship. And suddenly he's asking me how I am doing, if I'm happy – if I want a promotion. One of the wonderful gifts of this retreat I went on was the clarity I feel around what makes my ego happy – and what is in my heart. They aren't really aligned at the moment. Ego loves the titles, the accolades, the feeling of satisfaction. I can do this work. I can manage other people well, organize a department, be a team member and lead at the same time. Ego has needed to bask in that and continues to see the benefits of the current career path.
"Do you love yourself enough to listen with the ears of your heart to what is spoken here?"
Yes, I think I actually do.
It's not easy because this is truly a heart decision. I like the people I work with. The organization is interesting and growing in some fascinating directions. I get to talk to people about their dreams and what calls them to make life changes. I have been able to learn so much about myself and how I relate to others. I could list all the cons – the stress, the messy moments, the dysfunctional elements – but, to be honest, none of those have been out of the bounds of my expectations. Like family, organizational systems are populated with human beings. Yes, those imperfect beings that just don't ever quite line up the way you think they should.
Which means that I have the harder task of leaving with a heart full of appreciation and love. It is always so much easier to leave when you can focus on all the complaints and bad stuff.
I'm not sure exactly what the outcome will be. I suspect that I am going to be learning more as I proceed with my plans.
Not that I have a plan, really. I just know where my heart is telling me I don't want to be. If there is one thing that I've learned over the years it's this: it is very hard to step up to a new door way when you can't leave the threshold of the old door.
My heart is telling me to take that step.

Antelope Island April 2011

Using technology was not really recommended while attending the five day retreat that I was on - but I couldn't resist a few shots:

How about waking up with these guys grazing next to your tent?

 

And then it snowed... after we had high winds and driving rain.  It snowed for three days - not always sticking, but the wind chill certainly dropped the tempurature down into the high twenties.

On the evening of our last full day - we got this beautiful moment:

I just had to throw in another picture of the buffalo wandering our campsite:

Camping in Utah…in April?

Tomorrow I accept a challenge that I have presented myself with. I will be camping for five days, participating in an Advanced Intensive with Animas Valley Institute exploring shadow work, sacred wounds and how to keep warm with a weather forecast of snow and rain.
Perhaps this is more of a dare – a double dare – that I took on. I dare you, Jennifer, to yank yourself out of your comfort zone and dive head first into an experience that has all the elements that you say you want in your life. I double dare you. Go on. Do it.
But I didn't think it would be snowing…
So what – are you backing out? Getting cold feet?
No…but what if it rains so much that everything I have gets wet….
So? Gonna pick up your toys and go home?
What if I – how about –
And then another thought (voice) enters the picture (I swear I'm not crazy!): Jennifer, this retreat is for you. To do what you want to do. To say what you want to say. To walk in the wilderness. To write, to take pictures, to listen – or not. You have a car and a credit card – if it isn't the right place then you have the choice to walk away. AND, you also can have some faith in your instincts and how they drew you to this program at this moment.
Oh yeah.
Sometimes I forget.

 

Gods are laughing…

Be careful what you ask for. Sometimes we plant the seeds of our visions in fallow fields with a dream of what they might bring us. That's what I did with a particular workshop through the Animas Valley Institute. I applied for one of their advanced intensives – was accepted and then had to wait for them to confirm whether the intensive was going to happen. Meanwhile my personal and professional world crack open and I've been off kilter ever sense. Today I found out that the intensive is on and I am going whether I want to or not. There was a non-refundable deposit. These folks aren't messing around – they understand how many 'excuses' can come up when faced with the work to be done.
I willed those seeds into existence with a deep yearning for nourishment and balance. I planted them in soil that I wasn't sure was ready to host new life. Spirit came in and decided to crank up the anxiety and pain like a heat lamp on steroids.
Okay, that's a bit of a weird image, but stay with me.
And now I'm going to get to go spend 5 days camping in Utah and do soul work. I can't even begin to describe the feeling I have right now of being caught in the headlights. I put out the question to the universe – what do I want to do with my one wild and precious life – and I'm being provided an opportunity to start walking again on a path that I've been absent from for some time now.
I'm excited, nervous and not making any excuses. I'm going to go. I'll give myself the opportunity to reconnect with my heart and then I'll come back and figure out the next piece of the story.
Spirit has a hell of a sense of humor.