Dust to dust, ashes to ashes, the cycle begins again, the ancient whisper of our own frailty, slipping the fine clothes from our shoulders, taking the crown from our heads, bringing us back to that humble place where it all began and where it will surely end. We are the children of the Earth. Earth born, common as the ground we share, raised up by grace to breathe the mystery, laid back down to sleep the mystery deeper still. Dust to dust, life to life, the great cycle spirals our souls, sends us sailors of time, until we come to rest in our own humility, source of our true dignity.
All those days you felt like dust, like dirt, as if all you had to do was turn your face toward the wind and be scattered to the four corners
or swept away by the smallest breath as insubstantial—
did you not know what the Holy One can do with dust?
This is the day we freely say we are scorched.
This is the hour we are marked by what has made it through the burning.
This is the moment we ask for the blessing that lives within the ancient ashes, that makes its home inside the soil of this sacred earth.
So let us be marked not for sorrow. And let us be marked not for shame. Let us be marked not for false humility or for thinking we are less than we are
but for claiming what God can do within the dust, within the dirt, within the stuff of which the world is made and the stars that blaze in our bones and the galaxies that spiral inside the smudge we bear.
You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.
~Mary Oliver, Wild Geese
These famous words of Mary Oliver perfectly express my wish for this first step in remembering. We start with the body. Your body. Most of us, by the time we get to midlife, have lost touch with our embodiment.
Why is embodiment the first, most crucial remembering? Because your body does not lie. Your body is tuned to truth. Your body is your soul enfleshed. When you were born, your body was a pure, true expression of your wants, needs, and desires. Babies don’t tell falsehoods. Not at first. Over time we learn to hide our true selves as necessary to keep our caregivers attached and our little kid selves alive.
That’s why, of course, you lost touch with your body. It’s really hard to hold your body’s inner truth and the outer lies you learn to tell to survive. Especially when you’re a child.
Good news! Your original truth is still alive and well underneath all the faking you’ve had to do for decades. Your original blessing resides in your body.
Often when we start our work together, my clients tell me that they’re fluent in their body’s language. They do yoga. They meditate. They eat right and they exercise often. But as we dig deeper, they realize they really have no idea what their bodies are trying to tell them. What they’re actually fluent in is their thoughts about their bodies. Their ideas about their bodies. Their judgments about their bodies.
We’re often much more adept at mindfulness than bodyfulness.
So task one is to re-inhabit your body. Your beautiful, sweet, holy “God pod.” This marvelous “meat sack” that means you’re alive on Earth. Because this meat sack in which your mind has its being is the key to the garden of delights which is your life.
Remembering the beauty and original blessing of your body can take some time. And it will probably feel uncomfortable to return home to all the pain and memories you’ve stored in your flesh. Getting back in touch with your truth as communicated by your body will almost certainly create some havoc in your life as usual. Perhaps that’s why you’re here. Because maybe you know, deep down, that a little havoc is just what you need to reset your compass to your true north.
Sit. Take three breaths. Imagine a long cord extending from the base of your spine down into the Earth. You could imagine this cord like the root of a tree. (If you prefer to stand, imagine the cord extending from the soles of your feet down into the Earth.)
Now, as you inhale, imagine Earth’s energy coming up through the cord into your body, up and up with every inbreath. The energy flows into your body as it rises, and continues out through the top of your head. Do this three times.
Now, as you exhale, imagine that the energy of the sun and stars and planets is coming down through the top of your head, down your spine, infusing your body as it flows down into the Earth. Do this three times.
Now, be with both energies. As you inhale, be with the energy coming up from the Earth. As you exhale, be with the energy coming down from the cosmos.
Keep inhaling and flowing Energy up, exhaling and flowing Energy down. Feel both energies intermingle and flow throughout your body.
We are Earthlings, made of stardust. We are Earthlings, made from dirt.
Take three breaths to finish.
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I turned 64 a couple of weeks ago. Growing old has been on my mind a lot lately. It’s been damn stressful up in my brain. Here’s what’s helping me, offered to those of you who are also thinking about growing old and feeling stressed about it.
We were at the coast last week for our annual post-Easter rest. (My Episcopal priest husband naps. I walk.) As is often true of the Oregon coast in April, the weather was wet and windy. But every evening for a couple of hours, the rain would taper off and I’d drag Jed down to the beach to watch the sunset. On this particular evening, the sunset was subtle. A solid bank of clouds out over the ocean seemed set to block the sun’s rays as it sank into the sea. The cloudy sky turned a beautiful mauve and pink, mist gathered at the base of Mount Neahkahnie, and waves reflected the sky back to itself.
We passed a photographer with his tripod at the waves’ edge, long lens pointed to where the invisible sun might be. A family of five, their big black poodle bounding in the surf, walked up the beach toward Manzanita, occasionally glancing toward the western horizon. Jed and I were ready to go inside out of the wind ourselves, believing we’d seen all the show there was to see.
We were wrong. Suddenly the sun peeked out from a hole in the clouds and shone right at us. Immense. Orange. Stunningly beautiful—clouds above, below, and all around the one little hole. The sun had an entire limitless Pacific horizon to choose from, and she came down in the one place she could shine through. We were awestruck. Through binoculars we watched the curvature of the sun slowly sink behind the clouds like mountains. Words cannot describe.
I turned to see if the photographer was catching this, hopeful that he’d capture the shot of a lifetime. He was walking up the dunes, tripod over his shoulder, his back to the beauty blazing behind him. The family of five was likewise walking up the beach toward Manzanita, seemingly oblivious, black poodle still bounding in and out of the waves. We watched until the last burnished edge of sun sank below the cloud bank, and reminded each other to breath.
If we’d let the wind and the wet keep us inside, if we’d turned our backs too soon, if I hadn’t brought my binoculars … We would have missed it.
What does this moment have to do with growing old? Here’s my takeaway. If I expect my old age to be a long slide into mellowness and mist, if I turn my back too soon, I’ll miss many extraordinary moments. We see what we expect to see.
Show up. Get out on the beach, no matter what the weather.
Be present with each step and each breath. The future radiates out from the present like a wave.
The quality of your peaceful presence in this moment determines how your future will feel.
Your thoughts about aging—your thoughts about anything, really—will strongly impact your experience. You can choose different thoughts, if you want to and you do the work. (Learning to notice your thoughts and how to choose better ones is a core component of my coaching work.)
PPS. Interested in talking more about aging and how to think more helpful thoughts about this inevitable change? I offer free, no-strings-attached Clarity Calls.
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There’s a hidden creek in the Cascades west of Bend that we call “Fairy Moss Creek.” I spent an hour there a couple of days ago, in the company of an American Dipper. (Dippers, also called Water Ouzels, are North America’s only aquatic songbird.)
This dipper’s right leg appears to be useless. She drags it along behind her over moss-covered rocks and through the water as she goes about her dipper business.
The rills aggregating to form Fairy Moss Creek appear out of bare rock just a little way upstream from the downed log on which I’m sitting. An additional creeklet appears to erupt from the top of the ridge across from me, then bubbles down the ridge to join the main stem. It’s up this branch that our dipper moves, hopping from rock to rock, sticking her head into pools and under tiny waterfalls, evidently finding plenty to eat. She’s in no hurry, moving steadily up and up and up, dragging that useless leg behind her. No drama. No angst. Just whole-hearted dipper.
I hear her say that injured things can thrive. Hurt beings can be strong. Imperfect creatures have every right to nutrient-rich habitat. She tells me she’s whole, in spite of her injury. She tells me I’m whole, too.
Fairy Moss Creek is magical. This dipper is a shaman. And I am a mystic.
The world talks to me on the regular, as it does to all nature mystics.
September 17th is the feast of Hildegard of Bingen, hands down my favorite saint. Hildegard, who lived in the 12th century, was the Queen of Both/And. She was an abbess of a monastery in Bingen in the German Rhineland. She was a healer and theologian. She was an herbalist, a painter, and a writer. She instructed popes while writing music. And that’s just for starters. Hildegard was many things, some of them seemingly contradictory.
I think I admire Hildegard because I have seemingly contradictory parts, too. There’s the left-brained analytical biologist who geeks out on geology, botany, ornithology, and the intricacies of watersheds. And there’s the right-brained intuitive who loves art and poetry and healing, and who receives dipper messages.
For the longest time, I’ve believed I needed to choose between these two worlds. As a kid, I was told that the intuitive me who knew stuff about people, loved narrative and color, and talked to the trees wasn’t practical. That I needed to give her up in order to make my way in the world. That the part of me that would be useful to others and would make my living is the orderly, fact-based part. That we’d all be happier if I would just get over myself, accept the loss of my kaleidoscope life, and settle for black and white.
I’ve found a little “both/and” air to breathe occasionally, while mostly drowning in my inability to choose. My master’s degree is a Both/And: Conservation Biology and Communication. My coach training is Both/And: scientifically rigorous and firmly rooted in the mystical. (Martha Beck, who developed Wayfinder Life Coach Training, is sociologist with a doctorate from Harvard and one of the most mystical women you’ll ever meet.
Like Hildegard, I’m a biologist and a poet, a science nerd and an intuitive, a healer and a theologian. I contain multitudes. And I refuse to accept the culture’s message that I need to choose.
I know there’s more to this world than meets the eye. I believe in that deep womb-heart I felt on the Camino. I get messages all the damn time from rivers and rocks and birds. That I can also tell you the story of the basalt rock we’re sitting on at the time, identify the bird you’re hearing in the trees (and the trees), regale you with interesting facts about that bird, and tell you where the river’s headwaters are, only adds to my joy. I hope it adds to yours, too.
I’m claiming my both/and life. I’m choosing my integrity and wholeness, and to hell with the culture that says I can’t have both.
PS. Interested in more about Hildegard? The Abbey of the Arts is offering a retreat on Hildegard’s feast day. Here’s more information.
It’s another rainy day in Spain. May 22, 2014. Day 17 of what will ultimately be 37 days walking El Camino de Santiago, 500 miles across Northern Spain. I’m walking alone. Jed stayed behind in the last village to buy bocadillos for lunch. He’ll have no problem catching up with me. This rain is incessant. This rock and mud Camino feels endless, Santiago a fantasy. My feet hurt. I’m sick and tired of being wet and cold. I’m sick and tired of sharing sleeping quarters with twenty strangers. I’m sick and tired of anticipating another damn albergue bathroom, hoping there will be enough hot water to get clean and that the lights won’t go out mid-shower. I’m putting one sore foot in front of the other.
I am not having fun.
But then. Then comes a moment that changed my life, a moment I will never forget.
I’m suddenly aware of a presence deep in the ground below me. I feel connected to this presence. It feels like a heart. Or a uterus. The beating heart connection between my heart and Earth’s heart feels deeply good. I know that every single pilgrim around me, slogging up the muddy hill in the Spanish rain, is also connected to this deep wombish heart. I know this deep heart is supporting, nourishing, and loving each of us. I know that every single thing is attached through this deep uterine heart to everything else, and every single thing is loved. I know this is true.
Unfortunately, this God is not the God I meet in church. The patriarchal church God is male, unchanging, spiritual, “up there” somewhere, worried about sin, and far removed from that fiercely loving muscular presence down in the dirt that I felt on the Camino. Church God and Camino God are incompatible.
I have a choice. I can take my knowing seriously. Or, I can continue to try to make myself fit into the church box, and continue to give away my power and authority over my own theology.
I choose to take my knowing seriously. After decades of contorting myself and denying what I know to be true, I choose to leave church. This moment on the Camino isn’t the only moment of truth. It’s just the one that gets me to take action.
Leaving hasn’t been easy. My “coming out” story did not sit well with some parishioners. Since I want everyone to like me, their disapproval feels mighty uncomfortable. 🙂
(I want to say again that my loving husband has done everything in his power to make church not hurt for me and for women like me. Clergy can only go so far within the constraints of the church institution. And the institution appears unwilling to change.)
No one’s forcing you to accept the tradition as it’s been handed to you. You will not die if you choose to lay that burden down. Jesus will still be Jesus, if you want him to be. Sisters, religion has been invented by institutions which don’t prioritize our well-being. If they did, they’d listen to us when we tell them it hurts, and be willing to evolve. Religion is constructed. It can be critiqued, deconstructed, and reconstructed as necessary.
You are perfectly capable of doing your own theological work.
Here’s one way to begin. (If you’ve gone through my Coaching Intensive, this will be familiar.)
Step One:
Fill in the blanks of this sentence:
If “God” is ____________, then I am ____________, and my soul is ___________.
Some examples:
You’ll notice these examples are flesh and blood, dirt and rock. We are Earthlings, and our metaphors work best when they’re earthy.
If “God” is water, then I am a spring, and my soul is the connection the water flows through.
If “God” is a womb, then I am a child of God, and my soul is an umbilical cord.
If “God” is dirt, then I am a tree, and my soul is where my roots touch the dirt.
If “God” is an artist, then I am a work of art, and my soul is the part of me that grows and changes with each stroke of the divine paintbrush.
You likely have many metaphors for God/Divine Energy/Holiness. Use them all. Play around. Try them on. Feel into your body for the ones that feel true. You decide.
Step Two:
Choose one of your sentences and find or make a tangible expression of it. Put that reminder on your altar. If you don’t have an altar, put the reminder somewhere you will see it regularly. You could find a photo online of your metaphor. You could draw your metaphor. You could find or make a sculpture of your metaphor. Go beyond the word. Create something you can hold in your hands.
Step Three:
Visit your metaphor regularly. Sit with it. Ask questions, and listen for answers.
This work starts when you accept the responsibility to do your own theology. You are smart enough. You are brave enough. You have everything you need.
You get to do this work.
PS. Fall Semester is coming! I’m opening enrollment for all programs starting mid-September. Now’s the time to get on my schedule for a Clarity Call if you’re interested in working together. More information will be coming soon, so make sure you’re subscribed for weekly updates.
This is an inconvenient time for going wild. I have responsibilities. And it’s cold outside. …..
I watch my hand that holds the hammer that pounds me into a shape that fits the proper hole. I pound and pound myself, but I don’t quite fit. I squeeze a bulge in here, shave off a sharp edge there, and pound and pound and pound. I try to whittle myself down to nothing so I can disappear. Bop bop bop on my head hits the hammer. Square peg in round hole. Redwood into toothpick. I cut the inconvenient pieces off – limbed so I can slide smoothly into the mill.
Limbs are where the wild things live – where birds make their nests.
Limbs are an impediment to masts and poles. I will wield the ax for you. Let me cut off my limbs to make myself suitable for industry. I will make myself straight and rigid and useful to you powers. Let me read your mind and do what you want before you ask it, so you are blameless.
Behold the limbless handmaid of the Lord.
I will stop pounding myself into a hole that will never ever fit. I will regrow my limbs and branches so the wild things have a place to live. I will nourish my roots and reach out for others’ roots, too.
I am no longer espaliered.
I am a redwood. I am an old ponderosa.
I am a woman following a carnivorous cat across a narrow ridgeling, an arête, on a dark night, with only my senses to guide me, to follow her – I can smell her, I can feel her warmth, I can taste her scent, I can hear her breathing and the soft sound of her paws hitting the ground with each step, and I catch a glimpse of her every now and then, in the starshine. Her eyes glow when she turns to make sure I’m following her.
I am regrowing myself. I am undebecoming.
Deep kindness. Compassionate heart.
Put down the hammer and the axe.
Let go. Free fall. Trust.
Allow yourself to be who you are.
Completely here.
I am giving birth to myself. I am gestating myself. I am both mother and child. I am womb and embryo. It’s not rational, yet it’s completely true.
We are not a fiber farm. We are not a monocultured industrial forest. We are old growth. We are complex and we harbor secrets. Sasquatch lives here. We have stories upon stories. Our usefulness is not immediately apparent. Small numbers of unusual organisms live only in us. We are interwoven and interdependent. We contain entire ecosystems in our crowns. Marbled Murrelets nest in our upper limbs, bathed in the fog from the Pacific. Treelings sprout from leaf duff six feet deep a thousand feet up.
We are the old ones. The living ones.
You fear our fertile, fecund, wild darkness. We are at your mercy.
I am a seed on the wind.
I am an embryo in my own womb.
What’s necessary for growing a baby? Nourishment. Rest. Love. Patience. Strength. Peace. Vigilance and fierce protection.
