Sensing our connection

I have this cool thing called an energy ball. It's my favorite prop. 

Innocent looking ping pong ball

 

Picture this*: a group of people is sitting together in a large comfortable room, mostly strangers, uncertain about what's going to happen. An instinct drew each person to this place: an awareness that something is missing, a hollowness perhaps, a curiosity maybe, almost always a longing to get out of the schedule-driven expectations that dictate their life. They want to make contact with their own inner self, to see if there is comfort there, a recognition of what they used to know before life got so crazy. But they're nervous because this is so personal and here they are with people they don't know. This is when I pull out the energy ball. 

"Ok, everybody hold hands with the person next to you." Tentative obedience. "Now...", I pick up a ping-pong ball and hold it, touching a little metal contact strip: "you touch it here" I say to the person next to me, indicating the other little contact strip. Suddenly the ball lights up and flashes making spooky noises. Delight surges around the group, the reality of energy flowing through us dawning on them. We really are connected by energy. It is one of the fundamental things we want them to take away from the workshop: we are all connected, influencing each other and being influenced. Awareness of this brings a great wealth of resources, from sensitivity and understanding of others, to insights into challenges, to patience and even love for oneself. 

I felt it this morning when I took the dogs out to walk through our fields. They were on my list, and I needed to get them out so I could get to the other things.

It hit me mid-field: the light was filtered, the tree leaves copperish, the air cool but soft -- nothing was breath-taking. Then through my unseeing self-absorption I heard the crickets doing their late summer "ch-ch", maybe for the last time now that it's November. I heard them with something deep inside, that memory place that sounds and smells can evoke: "ch-ch". And my whole body relaxed, my mind relaxed, and I saw the beautiful trees in that soft light and gentle air and felt myself sink into connection with where I was. 

This is when it's time to drop the explanations. I felt it. Is this what it's like to have roots that reach through the soil, supporting and nurturing me, holding me steady? Is this what it's like to be one of many grasses in the field, feeling the same air riffle through us? If the energy ball was here, it would light up.

And it's not a "oh that's nice for you, Libby, but I'm here in the real world" thing. Being outside is my easiest pathway to connect with our inter-relatedness. There are other ways. Meditation, creativity, love, for example. What is important is that we cultivate that awareness and keep it with us as we navigate our task-driven days. When I come back to "the real world" with that inner sense alive in me, I see the people I talk to and the work I'm doing with something like a cushion around them and me; it's a little easier, a little more spacious, and I'm more open to what is possible. 

I forgot to say that in that moment of hearing the crickets "ch-ch" and feeling the return to my senses, the words that came out unbidden were thank you. Thank you. We are not strangers to each other. We are among life everywhere, participants together. Connecting. 

 *this describes a moment from our Opening Pathways LLC workshops

Sing with me?

I've got some things to say.

The first is I'm not going to wait until I've written them "perfectly" to say them.

The second is I've decided to live my life out loud. Not that I'm a particularly noisy person, but I'm consciously working to be done with those 1960s voices that told my young self not to put myself forward in public, and those college professor voices that said only perfect writing is acceptable. I'm leaving them behind.

What's going to change? This blog, The Coming Season, which has been something I love. I hid my identity, mostly to protect my children. I always asked their permission before I posted anything about them, and I used pseudonyms. But they are all more public than I am now, and only one is left at home. So I'm updating my bio info, and using real names -- (big breath) I'm going to be honest, exposed, genuine.

Also, I am going to put labels on all my posts so you can search them more easily. Want to see my bird posts, or find all the posts with audio, or look up the one about singing with our children before bed? I think there's even a recipe in here for an easy pie crust. Be patient, this will take awhile.

Trying to feed the wild birds by hand

When I started writing, I was giving voice to three things that dominated my soul: the coming season nature-wise (spring of course my favorite!), and the coming seasons of growing a family and of living in a world of climate change. I will still write about those things, but now I have more to share. 

Deep inside I've felt the movement of my spirit, jumping up and down saying "you know stuff and it's not because of your brain". This has led me on a winding journey away from church but exploring various religious and spiritual practices and traditions, always looking to learn what is at the core, and I will write about that. I'll write about what I'm doing because of that: I'm teaching Guided Autobiography classes to help people discover the stories of their lives, I've started a business with my friend Hilary called Opening Pathways LLC to help people discover ways into their own inner wisdom, and I've got a manuscript for a children's picture book about what happens to love when a person dies, called The River of Birds, which will become a book -- one way or another!

So there it is. I'm trying to give more to you and expect less

(perfection) of myself. Dear friends -- and dear strangers (those people I've met in wonderful podcasts and books) -- have urged me on: what is there to fear about putting my ideas out there? That you might not like it? Ok, then I'll see you somewhere else. But I'm not going to leave this earth with the song in my heart unsung. Sing with me, maybe?

Soul Spa

For anyone in the area, we have a couple of spaces open. This is going to be a refreshing day: consider yourself invited!

Nina's name

     When Nina was little, we had a special name for her. It was more like her true name, not a nickname or label that she was known by. She was a determined little girl, focused, intent. She'd set up her game in the living room with the small table, a book to read to the doll and the dog, her stuffed animals ready to listen, and if the dog didn't behave according to expectations, he would get the stern reprimand "Gunner NO." She insisted on dressing herself in her eclectic style, proclaiming “My do-it!” with a glare. We had to keep an eye on her especially at the beach, because spying a gull on the sand, she'd follow it without ever looking back at us as it hopped further and further from her. “Nina's gone walk-about” someone would say, and one of us would trail her at a distance down the beach.

      When we whispered our goodnight words in the dark, always ending with the same phrases we'd strung together over time (“See you in the morning when the sun comes up/ sleep tight don't let the bedbugs bite/ nihao nihao*”), we used her special name: Fierce Spirit. It felt like an acknowledgement, as well as a gift. She was Fierce Spirit, but she needed to know it.

      One week ago, Nina got on a plane after a mind-bendingly hectic week in which she graduated from high school, scored multiple goals in intense lacrosse play-off games, packed for her summer job working on a trail crew in the Tetons, and tried to organize her life belongings for us to bring to her at Whitman College where she will begin her freshman year straight off her summer job. In the airport on that quiet Sunday afternoon, we hugged and laughed and cried as she walked away from us, through security, and out of sight to her gate. I couldn't trail her this time. She was on her own.

      At home, I sifted mindlessly through the detritus of mail and notes on the kitchen counter, trying to put order to our nest, and I found a manila folder. I flipped it open, and caught my breath. It was the drawing that Nina had done in the aftermath of the second suicide at her school this past year. She turned to one of her deepest soothing habits: drawing birds. But did she know she drew herself, her Fierce Spirit? Did she know that she and two friends would rise up from that tragedy to organize a day of community play to raise awareness and funds for suicide prevention (link), to publicly declare that mental illnesses need to come out of the shadows and not be stigmatized but treated as other illnesses where we rush to help our friends with support?

      A Kestrel is a fierce spirit, focused, beautiful, deft. Nina knows her true name, and it is more than the words we used. It is this, the wholeness that an image helps us to understand. Nihao, Nina. Nihao, Fierce Spirit. Safe travels.

*"nihao" is a Chinese word that we now understand means hello, but back then we thought it meant both hello/goodbye, and I love you.

Telling stories

     Ospreys, White-throated Sparrows, the first Yellow-rumped Warbler, a Hermit Thrush, and soon the Monarch butterflies -- these small beings have traveled heroic journeys to return to this land we share, and I have been waiting for them. They have stories to tell, and I wish so much that I could understand them. 
     I love stories. Telling stories is  the way we share experiences, and if we listen with awareness, it is the way we build wisdom.  We tell stories around a dinner table, on a walk or bike ride with a friend, when meeting up for coffee or a beer. We listen, and a natural response to that listening is to respond with our own story.  
     But do we listen to ourselves? 
     Each of us has lived a life that is its own heroic journey. We have the jewels of our own inner wisdom in our life's stories. Sometimes they are buried, sometimes we just never looked at them clearly. A few we tell over and over. We are rich with beautiful stories. But we often need a little prodding, a supportive community, some structure, to help us bring those jewels out.
      When I first heard about Guided Autobiography (GAB), I recognized it was something I wanted to get involved in. A few months and an intensive training class later, I became a GAB instructor. I love that this way of guiding people to rediscover and tell their life's stories doesn't use timelines, but instead uses evocative themes. That you write in your own voice to tell the story, not to have a perfect product. That the group becomes close, and everyone listens to everyone else. That it's fun. That every person's life is rich with jewels of wisdom. And I love that I get to witness these stories every time I run a class.
     I am about to start a nine week class that runs Wednesday mornings from 9:30-11:30 at the Merrill Memorial Library in Yarmouth. The first class is April 27. A couple of openings remain: if you are interested in one of them, contact me directly or at guided(dot)memoir(at)gmail(dot)com. Cost is $150.
     Meanwhile, I'll head outside to listen to the bird songs. This is my favorite time of year, and I want to be in the midst of it all.
    
     

Surviving

     This is week two in which sorrow walks into our house, takes off its shoes, sits on the couch, eats dinner and goes to bed with us. Its darkness has substance, sometimes like a second skin, sometimes like a separate being, sometimes like an opaqueness that colors the river we swim in each day. Time is changing it, for me. I can look at it with less fear now. It is different for Andrew and Anna and Bob; they are managing it in their own ways.
      Ten days ago, a young woman in Andrew's class took her own life. She died from an illness for which she was being actively treated and supported: depression. Her many friends played different roles in keeping her afloat for as long as she lived, from laughing and playing soccer and hanging out with her as lights in her life, 
to those who were willing to get into the muck with her and help her swim back towards the light. They showed her the many ways she could, and did, access help for her illness. Her singular choice ten days ago when her illness overcame her instinct to survive drove spears of shock and pain through our community, with ripples well beyond. 
      The stickiest layer of sorrow I have been carrying comes from watching Andrew. Stripped to the core of who he is, he has become a rock for his dear friend who was one of the ones who repeatedly got into the muck to swim the girl to the light. This work, even born of love, is exhausting. In his love and grief and strength, he is exhausted. I am exhausted.
     And I am inspired. Anna and a large cohort of her classmates are responding with a conviction that illnesses like depression should come out of the closet, released from the stigma that keeps them hushed and hidden. When a friend is in pain from an illness like cancer, we support them with friendship, community, offers of assistance, and by educating ourselves about the illness and various treatment possibilities. Anna and her classmates are planning programs and events, within the school and out in the community, to talk about depression and other mental illnesses so that likewise when a friend is in need, they can ask for help and we can support them through the hard times.
     In my meditation this morning, a very helpful image came to me. It was of a bubble becoming detached from the bottom of a lake, and rising to float lightly on the surface. I decided to be that bubble, and to feel first the mud of sorrow around my feet, then wiggling them free, swimming up and feeling the substance of water around me, and finally breaking into the sunlight at the surface. I floated there, asking my memory to pull forward the smells of water and the feeling of the air's coolness as water droplets evaporated from my skin. Above me was blue sky and sunlight; all around me was the rim of the lake, where pine trees held the community of birds and squirrels and mink and moths and all that live, as I do; and beneath me was the lake's water holding me. Even the lake itself was held by the earth. Everything was there, the mud and the sunlight, and all life. 
     I offer this as a story that needs telling. It's my small way of helping to bring this illness into the fresh air. To say "I have an illness" takes courage, but less so if we understand that many people struggle, and we have company. We can be medicine for each other, if not always to cure, at least to relieve pain, and often to heal.
     There is no neat ending to this, no tidy wrapping up of a metaphor. But there is a way through it that flows with time, and I know it is easier when we walk each day open to the hard stuff, the beauty, the stories and each other.  

 

Spring's heart beat

     Anna's text came in yesterday afternoon: "I saw a turkey vulture!" My heart leaped.

     By now, if you've been following this blog, you know my  great joy when the first Turkey Vulture is spied. It means spring migration has started. I've been checking my birthday calendar where I keep track of signs of the season, marking a sighting (or sounding) on the date and accumulating data year after year. The earliest Turkey Vulture sighting I've had was February 17 in 2012. So I've been waiting.

     The other bird I've been listening for (usually for me its song precedes the visual) is the Red-winged Blackbird. The best way I can phonetically describe its song is a "bordl-a-dee" coming from the brown puffed cattails of a late winter marsh (the books say it is "conk-a-ree", but that doesn't work for me). Generally, male scouts arrive first to start setting up a territory. My birthday calendar records the first Red-wings arriving on February 26, and that was in 2002.
     Guess what I saw today, in my backyard, on and under the suet? A small flock of Blackbirds, male and female, mixed in with a grackle and some starlings!

    Be still my beating heart: spring is verifiably on its way, winging northward.