Drawing Close...

 What do you want or need from a relationship with Marcus? She asked me. I was sitting in a camp chair in the spacious stall of a horse named Marcus, stewarded by a woman trained in sacred listening and translation. I first noticed embarrassment with the question, which was interesting. Like to want or need something was something to be embarrassed about, even ashamed of. My mind raced into practicals, probably out of safety. I don’t know how to care for a horse, I began, even to groom or be safe with… I faltered a bit. Something in me shifted in the awareness that the practicalities of horse grooming were perhaps not the sacred invitation here. I could access that stream of knowledge in other ways, most likely. I guess I want to practice drawing close, honing connection and freedom, and offering space, I said finally. (Or some words to that effect…)

The time with Marcus up to that point had been gentle and sweet, uneventful even. We entered into his stall while he was munching hay out of a net-hay-sack. His beautiful brown eye caught sight of me, and he paused a little bit, assessing this new person coming into his space. Beckie invited me to put the camp chairs wherever I wanted to in the stall, but I didn’t know how to do that! Never walk behind a horse, I had heard or learned somewhere. Walking in front of him would interrupt his midday meal. Come behind, like this, she said, showing me how to keep my hand on his back and then haunches while I walked around him to the corner of the stall, closest to the window, the wintry sunlight coming into the space. She wrapped some warm pads around his legs, to soothe some of his own discomfort she had noticed. I sat and watched him, them, content to be close but not too close.

We began our conversation, both of us attuned to his movements as they arose. He stepped over to draw close at one point, when I had named my fear of not being present enough to be with him as I was this day. I became increasingly aware of the socialized voices rising in my head, my body: I’m not enough. I won’t do “this” right (whatever ‘this’ is), I’m too much. Entering into the herd of horses had become a familiar thing to me (which is worth noting, with raised eyebrows, actually), but beginning to be present and connected with just one horse felt vulnerable, fearful. I could feel the old energies of fear and unsafety arising…

...found myself reflecting on times when my mother had been angry with me, when I had been scared of her anger. Times when I felt alone and unprotected...so heightened all powers of perception and awareness to provide for others’ needs, so to be safe myself. Little girl energy, to begin. But then it wasn’t just little girl energy…

I could also feel some movement connected to my relationship with Brian, some of our recreating marriage and being-present-with one another in this pandemic pause. Both of our habits of busyness have been shifting in the extensive time we now have with one another. Windows are opening for different kinds of intimacy, which still continue to surprise me (probably us both) in our 21st year of dancing our dance of marriage. But I could feel some of the grown-woman wonderings about ‘doing this right’--being myself, being a good wife, being a preacher’s wife, blah blah blah. Approaching a relationship with a horse brought up both little girl and grown woman stories within me…

What do you want or need from a relationship with Marcus?

I guess I want to practice drawing close, honing connection and freedom, and offering space…

What do you sense Marcus might want from a relationship with you? Came the complementary question. I could feel the bomb go off in my stomach. A sense of overwhelm and inability to answer a question of what another might want, or what I might offer another… She invited me to draw close, to listen in for an answer… I appreciated that, as it brought me into my body more readily.

I drew close to him again, putting my hand on his cheek, his neck. I felt gangly, like I didn’t know how to draw close but wanted to listen to what I might learn. “You can move closer in, you know,” she finally said. “You’re safer, the closer you get to a horse…” She encouraged me to put one foot on either side of his foreleg, which put more of my body against his, like a big hug around his neck. I could feel the tears come… The slightly sour smell of his mane was yet like incense. I felt my tears and snot connect with his mane, feeling a little bad about that…

...what could he possible want from me? What could I possibly offer him? Began the words in my belly. I felt once again the deep woundedness within me, which I have held and honored for so long these last several years--I am not worthy, I don’t have much to offer, I’m not enough, I’m too much, I won’t do this right anyway... Marcus stood gently by, steady, receiving, relaxing… “He’ll move away if he doesn’t want to hold it, or cannot hold it. He’s not moving away…” she translated. More tears… I just laid my head on his mane, arms around his neck...connected, connecting…

Finally, I stood up straight again, looking into his right eye. He arched his neck in a big stretch, and licked his lips, moved his mouth to chew a little, and farted. Beckie laughed, translating: “He rarely does that, so this is what he wants. Authenticity. Being with you.” We both laughed gently, and I nuzzled his neck a little more. 

It was time to take off the heating pads and walk him back to the pasture, with his herd. We moved slowly, and I felt my energies rise and fall with anxiety about walking too close, not walking close enough, looking at him, looking ahead… It was beautiful to see him walk into the field, nuzzling and munching, gentle in his horse-ness so graciously shared with me.

I’ll see him in a couple weeks, or maybe sooner, after the holiday at least. I’ll be listening for this invitation to draw close, to stand connected, to give and receive space as we may. I took a picture of the herd once again, on my way down the drive. I narrowed my focus in, to get a picture of him, too far away for a good picture, but one good enough for now. 

I find myself wondering if I might dream of a Marcus in the next days… Wouldn’t that be a sweet gift to invite...

Meetings... Cody & Cappy

Cody raised her equine head

Four of them formed a circle with an opening for me

Wide perimeter, three horses facing me

One behind me, sentinel-like.

I was drawn to the first one, the first-responder,

but the circle invited me more.

I have held circles of women for years

These mares, tending the grass, held me.

Unsure of this language, I inched closer to Cody,

curious, grieving, feeling my way

She let me touch her, and then walked ahead,

but it did not feel 'away' somehow

I moved back to center, standing sentinel myself

Beckie asked, "Is she the one?"

I felt relief to know more about 'her,'...She.

Yes, I said. "First responder."

"Like you?" she asked me. "Yes...like me."

Cody moved her large body down to earth.

Beckie and I sat down too.

"Lying down is the most vulnerable thing

a horse can do," she said to me.

We sat while the horses drew closer.

Later, Cody even laid her head on the ground.

We did too, learning from her as we went.

"Do you pray?" Beckie asked me.

I smiled inside. "Yes and No," I said.

"I don't pray as I was taught to pray anymore.

More opening my belly and heart with intention..."

But then I remembered how I pray in a circle of women.

Or mares, in this case. 

I sing. So I sang. 

"Woman...Woman...Thank you for showing up..."

The world shifted.

**********

"You can take pictures," she said to me as she led Marcus to be groomed.

I left the engine running and approached the fence with my iPhone camera

Velvet looked at me, walked the fenceline between us

Close, yet bounded. Olive followed her.

Cappy, standing further behind them

waited for them to pass by.

Then he walked directly toward me,

his dark eyes finding my own.

He put his nose close to the fenceline,

within reach. I brushed his face with my fingertips

He gazed at me, into me, for a long time.

As tears welled up in me, I whispered

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

He looked into me some more.

I wondered if he was smiling at me.

Do horses smile? I don't even know.

He shifted his hooves and meandered over

toward Olive and Velvet.

I may have bowed. I'm not sure.

I returned to my car and shifted into gear.

Fifty yards up the road homeward, I stopped, 

weeping deep belly tears of long years gone by.

Home.

Something in me had been welcomed Home.

Crossing the Bridge...A New-Ancient Journey

“I’m going to meet a horse!” I called over to my CrossFit buddy. “Beat?” she asked, with an impish grin. “No, for Pete’s sake. Geesh. MEET.” She laughed, having successfully teased me before our workout began.  Driving home from my experience at Divine Equines with Beckie Boger, I realized how remarkably incongruent my opening gambit was that morning. Horses are first and foremost herd animals...to really meet a horse, you need to sit with her herd. I got to meet Cody, Olive, Velvet, Cappy, Marcus, Mosey, and Regal. There may have been one more whose name I no longer recall, if I ever knew it. I’m mostly wordless and blessedly overwhelmed by my first encounter with new spiritual companions, and their translator, Beckie.

A frame-drum opened the space for us to slow down, as we walked toward the pasture.

Beckie and I sat in light but sturdy camp-chairs, becoming present to one another and the space around us.

She began with a poem, first line “I am a horse…”

I was in tears by the second stanza,

Feeling the words deeply, but also something more

Something ancient

Something sad and opening for me…

Not a fearful or fiery sad like I sometimes know in my belly these days

A gentle grief unlocking something deep within me.

I have had a deep longing for horses, for as long as I can remember, I began. My parents couldn’t hear it, or see it, amidst our suburban life of church, school, achievement. I would press into it, naming my desire. I would get plastic models of horses, or a placemat for the dinner table. ... None of which touched the hunger, of course. Whenever we’d go on camping vacations as a family in the summer, though, we’d always go horse-back riding. “Lisa loves horses,” they’d say. I’d look forward to it every summer, my one chance. Yet I would always come away so very sad. The horses were usually bored and sad. I didn’t have someone tell me that. I just knew it. I could feel it. And we would leave after the hour long trail ride, and I would feel this sadness I did not understand. By the next year, I’d have forgotten the feeling and could only anticipate the opportunity to be around horses. 

Over the years, I have drawn close to this yearning in the ways I knew how. I have read a lot about the relationship between women and horses, in particular. I’ve read up on horse whispering and explored horse things at State Fairs. I even got as close as ‘taking lessons’ when we lived in New Jersey, but that didn’t touch the yearning in me, really. I visited with a ‘barn-rat’ she called herself in maybe 2010 or 2011, someone who knew someone I knew from Brian’s church. I felt the yearning but nothing that could reach it there.

As Beckie invited us to meander into the pasture, as the horses had begun to draw closer to us, she asked me, “Have you ever wandered into a pasture with horses roaming freely?” I smiled. “Nope. Never have, to my recollection.” “What are you feeling?” she asked me. I paused, checking in with myself. “Curiosity, for sure. But more strongly, a sense of finally. There is a relief in me right now. I’m not afraid or anxious, but simply feel a curiosity and a relief. Finally.”

Poetry is becoming the language to point to the overwhelming and blessed hour I had there in a new circle. But I was deeply moved, with lots of tears. I didn’t know what all the tears were connected to, but I’m getting better at letting them come without needing to know. I did have a refrain rise up in my awareness, “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.” I spoke it aloud to Beckie, along with my unknowing of what it referred to. She invited me to consider the horses saying that back to me, as they were drawing closer and closer. More tears...

When the ‘first responder,’ a mare named Cody, laid down on the earth close to me, Beckie invited us to sit down with her. Another horse about 30 feet behind me had already laid down. I sat, held between two mares, resting. The sadness shifted in my own body. It didn’t disappear, but it was different. Held, somehow, between all of us. Another mare approached us from behind, coming to stand directly over Beckie’s shoulder. “What is she doing?” Beckie asked me. “Well, she has your back,” I said with a smile. “This is Velvet,” she said. “She has the most difficulty with humans, but she wanted to draw close here.” 

Slowly, Beckie began to interpret the body language of the herd, now gathering around us both, sitting on the ground. She invited me to name was I was observing. I was mostly overwhelmed with the beauty and size of these companions. The gentleness. The coordination too, between them. She began to interpret what she was sensing, seeing. “The mares have all gathered around you,” she said with a smile. I almost giggled inside. “Of course,” I thought to myself. “Of course.” “And lying down is one of the most vulnerable things a horse can do. There is an ease and a presence here with us...and for three horses to lie down?” She smiled at me. I got a sense that this was rather unusual, though I don’t know horse-speak yet. 

At one point, Beckie asked me if I wanted to draw closer to Cody, resting there on the ground. I considered it, but I realized I didn’t want to move away from the horse lying on the ground behind us. “I wanted to move closer,” I responded to her finally, “but I didn’t want to move further away.” Beckie heard something in that rather paradoxical confession...she mirrored it, expressed a bit of wonder about it.

When Cody moved even further to resting her head on the ground, Beckie moved to lying down as well. It was wonderful to lie down on the ground, my head resting on the crook of my elbow/arm. “Do you pray?” Beckie asked me. I smiled, though she couldn’t see my face. We both were attuned to Cody while speaking softly to one another. “I suppose the most honest answer is Yes and No,” I said, laughing a little. “I don’t pray as I was taught to pray, if that’s what you mean. Sometimes I’ll listen to Pray as You Go when I’m driving to CrossFit.” Beckie laughed. “Me too! I just listened earlier today!” I also laughed. “St. Josaphat!” I said. “Who knew?” We both laughed. I mused aloud about how my prayer life has changed over the years, and how I am sometimes envious of those who seem to have more traditional habits around prayer. “I’m envious,” I confessed, “I often wish I could return to the practices that seem within the mainstream of things...but I open my belly and heart with a sense of intention...I listen more than I speak anymore. I don’t have a ‘name for God’ anymore, mostly because every name of God I’ve gotten attached to gets broken open. So I trust in the hum of things…” We laid there a while longer, and I could feel tears come in waves. 

As we stirred, needing to move this time toward a close, I remembered a way I do pray when I’m in a circle of women. Or in this case, mares. I sing. So I sang Woman, a prayer of gratitude for women who show up for one another. Back by the camp chairs, I chose a ‘horse card’ whose picture I really didn’t like--a horse in a wagon’s harness, with blinders on. The prayerful musings on the back spoke of this being a time to pull, not push. The words helped me bear the image. And we meandered back to the barn, where my car (and the large tabby named Frank) was waiting for me. Beckie and I said our goodbyes, too briefly for her taste but fine by me. I already knew I’d be coming back.

As I drove down the lane, Beckie was walking with Marcus, for him to get groomed. “You can take pictures if you want...” she called to me. I was glad for the permission, as I had already realized I needed pictures of my new friends. They drew close to the fence, and I took pictures of them in pairs and groups. 

Then one of them I’d not had much interaction with--Cappy, I’m told his name is--walked directly toward me, his deep eyes finding my own. He raised his head close to the fenceline, within my reach. My fingertips brushed his nose, his cheek. He gazed into my eyes, into me, for a long time. I could feel the tears well up within me… Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, I whispered, my eyes not leaving his. He looked into me some more. I’m not sure but he smiled. (Do horses smile? I don’t even know). He eventually shifted his weight and began to move toward Olive and Velvet. 

I returned to my car, engine running, and closed the door. I paused a little while longer, then drove up the lane to the County Road. About 50 yards away from the farm, I pulled over to just stop, pause, weep. I made a phone call to a spirit friend out West, simply wanting to name it in my own voice, even with the wordlessness I had. I texted another spirit friend, in case she had time to call before her appointment I knew was shortly ahead. I wept some more, and then I smiled.

As I drove home, mostly in silence, I checked in with my body senses, my bodysoul and spirit. I felt a fullness I’ve not felt in a long, long time. My life is different now because I know Cody, Olive, Velvet, Cappy, Marcus, Mosey and Regal are in this world with me, with us.

I think I’ve been led into a new time of sacred listening, though a rather non-traditionally-styled sense of it. Can a herd of horses be a spiritual director, if they have a willing translator? And to the Universe then: why show me this when I've never been a horsewoman or had access to such a life? Why "remember" a life with horse-people in this life, a suburban Ohio seminary professor in 2020?

'Tender' -- She Hears Me Well

I love that she hears me so well in the word ‘tender.’

 

We had a beautiful, gentle, spacious day of being together. We rested with one another, which is often hard for both of us to do in our actively inner and outer lives. She named her own reminding, how busy inside and out she can be, can love being-doing, and how delightful it is to land with me, to stop, to breathe deeply and be.  It was a smiling, listening pause for me too, in which I felt a release or an absence of my ceaseless fretting, have to do more in the world so on fire, need to do more to confront all the suffering around us. I loved feeling her body relax as we hugged hello. So familiar, so oxygenating within, even as there is usually a deep exhale too.

 

About an hour after she left, I realized I was in a wave of something, a tenderness inside. Was I sad she had left? Maybe a little, but I had had United tasks that had arisen that I really needed to tend. So I was tending to them before Brian arrived home. Had I not received something I had hoped for? Not that I was aware of… Yet I recognized the tenderness and sat with it, tried to listen it into speech somehow.

 

With Brian, I could name one paradox that touched the tenderness deep inside. I miss the generative, collaborative rhythms Lis and I shared for so many years. A shared task. A community birthing and our similar yet different relational energies brought to it, in tandem, in distinction too. We lived a richness together that nourished and stretched my own life so very deeply, broadly. I miss seeing her leadership presence, offered without thought or self-consciousness, being who she is in a circle. (Of course now I know there was a whole lot more thought and self-consciousness than was apparent to me, but we both nod to it as a natural and even beautiful part of this journey…). The paradoxical part of this is that I also don’t want to be holding circle twice a week, in addition to everything else that is active in our lives. I am leaning into the silences in my life right now, the open spaces, the uncertain “fallow” that these weeks seem to be for me. I am (largely) free of the fear of disconnection or being left behind, more content to be ‘in the moment’ than I’ve been in a long time. Perhaps ever.

 

Maybe I want the generative, collaborative rhythm feeling and connection without all the practical tasks and energies it took to live our circle lives into being, in the world. Except I do have access to that, I do receive it, seen clearly in how quickly Lis hears me in the word ‘tender.’ She called on the way home from her vespers offering, and it was a gift to breathe into what I was becoming more aware of...gently...inside me.

 

I think, at first, she was woven into a fear of ‘not being or doing enough’ presence with me while feeling the weight of her Facebook Live Vespers leadership that night. I smiled as she found words for her experience, wanting to assure me she was there, present…in which I had not experienced her as ‘not present’ or lacking in any way. I was touched deeply that she carved out the spacious time for us to be together. I thoroughly enjoyed our easy being time, landing on the porch, tending to a couple things as necessary, meandering over at the preserve. I cannot find my way so immediately, so quickly, to that kind of soul-space, that depth of breathing time with anyone else in my life. I receive this as pure-gift, at least when I am most present to my Self.

 

But she heard something I did need to come to speech about in the word ‘tender.’ And it did take some excavating that a voice-touch with her could provide.

 

For the first time in a long while, I was entangled in a self-defeating, fearful voice that I don’t often allow to come to speech in me (anymore?). You are no longer interesting enough, or good enough, or attractive enough for her to want to be with you. Our lives are so very different, with different choices and landscapes and experiences...why would she want to be around me? Or Do you think that she’ll love you if you don’t insure she needs you? Provide for her? Tend her needs?  I was aware of the accusatory fear, the internal judgments. I could hear the early-ness of them, of a little girl constantly insecure and uncertain whether she would be safe or seen unless she tended, served, insured… I knew the taunting tone and harsh words were unfounded and coarse for who Lisa and I are, who I am now in my more whole, tender, raw self. But wow, the power of the voice, the fear, the feelings of ‘not enough’ had me bound all the same.

 

One of the hidden gifts of this time, I’m coming to see, is learning, over time, that Lisa and I stay connected without my providing a function or reason for connecting. I don’t have to do anything to insure this connection, to earn her affection, her love. As a matter of fact, there really is nothing that I can do to fill any perceived gaps. Her life is full. My life is full. We are in a season of richness I cherish for us both. I have always valued this unearnable-anam-cara-spirit-friendship way of us. This way of knowing in real-time that I am worthy of love and belonging regardless of what I may or may not provide for another.

 

But still it is a tender and tough thing for me! (Us? Human beings in general?) The ego can so easily slip into the spirit-flow, after all, feeling what I have done or how I can do (xyz) is the cause of our connection.

 

I have been learning the hidden gift of this time in some new ways with Brian too, only possible because of being together over more extended time in a pandemic-required, quarantine proximity. Neither he nor I would have known how to relax into ‘simple presence together’ as often as we have been beginning to learn how in these months. He and I both are attuned to functional spaces, providing-for spaces, highly intentional time together, ‘doing’ our marriage more than being our marriage. My family of origin lived and breathed in functionality. So…I am living in the soup of that transactional way unconsciously and most often in my worlds…and bringing a more present way into my own home. Brian is receiving and learning, deepening in it, without my agency of course. Despite my agency. We find our way somehow...

 

Life with Lisa over these many years has been a much broader world of primary-P/presence, deep re-connecting, then moving into circle-birthing and mothering tasks/function. Both/and. As the last years of WWfaC circle-tending grew in number and then leadership things, the functional-tending naturally grew. Neither of us lost the P/presence yearning, reconnecting depths, and yet…my own ego and soul dance a lot of frenzy in the less-vulnerable, provision-work-function connecting. There were assurances in this functionality for me that I no longer have access to, or need, to be honest. Except when I get afraid…or fears like ‘not being enough’ from of old arise within me.

 

It was a gift for me to come to words about all this last night, to hear her gentle tone and understanding, her own learnings (fears?) coming to speech alongside my own. To be able to speak this vulnerable side of me, this fearful yearning side of me who sometimes can’t find herself seen and heard in all the other worlds I am blessed to know.

 

I am a cherished woman, this I know. And I love that she hears me so well in the word ‘tender.’

Noticing Unfreedom...Wondering

 Rachmaninoff Concerto #1, first movement. I was on my way to CrossFit last week, enjoying the random shuffling of my iPhone/iTunes. This piece came on, one of the Top 100 Piano Pieces of All Time, or some such collection Brian had downloaded at one point. I rarely listen to classical music anymore, for some reason. Usually, I hit the ‘advance’ button, as soon as I hear orchestral anything. This time I didn’t. I let the familiar bombasity of the piece wash over me—the stately piano chords, the rising waves of the orchestra and lyrical lines as the piano and orchestra danced together in sound. Something deep within me was touched, curious, remembering… Later that day, purging and reorganizing my downstairs office space, I took out of storage the electric keyboard we have—grand piano-weighted keys, fine sound. A wedding present to me from my new husband, twenty years ago. It rests now in the corner of my refreshed office space. As soon as I find the headphones required, I’ll finish connecting its wires and power and sit down to play, privately. In the privacy of my own ears. Maybe.

The piano bench is one of the most unfree places I know, for me.

 

I know some of the reasons for this, though I’ve not given it much thought for years now. Musical inclinations within me resorted long ago to vocal expressions, first in seminary choirs then in song-leadership in my various leadership callings. I’ve loved leading large gatherings of seminary students into singing-in-parts, particularly when most in the room think they cannot sing. My musicality has found good expression in these ways, though now largely relinquished with online teaching and pandemic isolation. Holding circle for women writers, then conscious feminine leaders, has offered spaces for song-leading. Red Tent and leadership sister circles have welcomed a newfound women-centric song for me, my own singing in circle and in leadership. My voice has soared in these settings of women’s voices joining together—Woman Who Loves Herself, Woman, a River of Birds, and more. I’ve not really needed any musical outlet nor considered the piano bench, for years.

 

Then Rachmaninoff comes on, and I found myself reveling in the sound, the timbre of the piano, dancing with an orchestra. I was reminded of a good friend, so at home at the piano bench, speaking to her own finding home there, then inviting us into a beautiful, demanding, lyrical rendition of Troubled Waters. I spoke of this to a spirit-friend this week, and was surprised at the tears that arose for me. Something here in me wants to be free, I said, but I don’t know if that’s even possible anymore. I don’t know what I would want here…

 

All the discomfort, shame, fear and more that comes when I sit at a piano bench has a long incubation in my early life, of course. I began with musicality lessons when I was in nursery school. These moved to actual piano lessons when I was in first grade. Mrs. Warner’s piano studio was the most respected in my small town. She was known for being disciplined, a bit severe, with an established program of individual lessons, regular studio ‘performances’ of her students for one another, yearly Auditions assessments of progress, and more. Her studio had two baby grand pianos in a living room off to the side of her farm house, at the end of a long lane. I can still remember the kelly green carpet and the scent of her space. The bathroom with the rusting rings in the sink, well-water smells. My sister and I took a lesson with her every week from first grade to senior year in high school.

 

Sometime when I was in junior high, well into 7-8 years of piano lessons with her, I learned that her severity lessened if I cried first. Writing these words out, part of me is a bit horrified for my little girl self, but it was a matter-of-fact discovery that made piano lessons less scary or shaming. Part of me is impressed I found a way to make these weekly lessons more bearable. I was a talented girl at the piano, after all. I learned good technique from her early on, and was fairly disciplined in my practicing habits for a young girl. At least to start. I learned that if I practiced immediately after my lesson, I would find practicing easier that week, more frequent, less fearful. I enjoyed learning the pieces that were set before me—most of them—though they were all classical and never pop-music of any kind. I’m not sure how much the enjoyment arose from the music, or from the affirmations-sought, and received with successes demonstrated in learning tasks and improvements in difficulty-levels. I always excelled in the spring, receiving evaluations of Excellent in each ‘end of year’ Auditions assessment. Ten years of Excellent ‘earned me’ a Paederewski Medal, which made Mrs. Warner simply beam. I remember my final piano lesson with her, in the Piqua Presbyterian Church where she served as organist. It was a formality more than a lesson, really, as I had been coming to her studio since I was in nursery school. I was sad to leave her, to say good-bye, but I don’t think I cried.

 

Sophomore year of high school, something distinct arose in my piano lessons. Mrs. Warner put Schumann’s Piano Concerto in front of me, the first movement with its audacious lines and demands. I was going to learn this piece for a competition to be held up at Bowling Green State University. The prospects of such a daunting mountain to climb appealed to my affirmation-seeking girl-self, even as the esteem in my father’s eyes widened when I brought it home. I practiced and listened to classical performances of it. The months unfolded and the time for the competition drew near. There was a piano on the stage in a huge room, with a couple people I didn’t know sitting about midway back, in the dark. I had eaten my piece of cheese, so to counter the adrenalin rush that would come at the start of the performance. I played, but not well. Or not well enough. Or…I failed…at something. I don’t even have much recollection of it, to be honest. Remembering it now, I feel mostly shame and sadness. Mrs. Warner spoke of “pushing me too soon.” We both failed, this seemed to say.

 

So I don’t sit at piano benches anymore. I evade the question in some fashion, when people ask if I play piano. “I don’t play piano anymore,” I will say if pressed. Or “I used to.” Or “I used to play, but no longer. I can’t even sight read anymore.” I was never very good at that anyway, even at the top of my game.

 

I do not know any easy way back to the bench, you see, though there are curious windows in my life opening here. The grand piano on which I ‘grew up’ rests, rebuilt and retuned, in the sanctuary of my husband’s church. I could go in pretty much at any time, even during the pandemic, to play, if I wanted. I am blessed to have access to our electric piano at home, with weighted keys. Yet to even sit at the bench today is mostly discomfort, sadness, shame, anger, fear…

 

I don’t sit at piano benches anymore.

I don’t reach my hands out to touch the keys.

 

And yet I wonder...why am I writing about it?

 

The Hard Easy Freedom Road to Fitness

Humans are complicated animals, I know. Vexing. Frustrating. Even enraging. The better part of me yearns to hold all with compassion, understanding, empathy…and then there is the better part of me that needs to mirror what she sees, hold what she knows close inside so to not lose it, forget it…amidst the pressures of all else.

I have learned in the last year that my life is more peaceful, steadier, more grounded and curious when I do not consume sugar. Added sugars. Sweets. Desserts. Whatever. Same thing with carbs like bread, rice, pasta, couscous, quinoa. When I’m intentional about eating good food, not processed, protein and plants, higher fat, I’m the happiest woman I’ve ever known myself to be.

I don’t spike up and crash down during a day. I don’t get shaky-hungry, requiring an immediate ‘something’ to stop feeling like I might pass out. I don’t feel afraid of hunger anymore. (I used to fear it like the plague…like something was wrong with me). I don’t visualize meals that would offer reprieve from said cravings, spiking up, crashing down, shaky-hungry spells. I’m not very receptive to billboards and digital seductions of desire, food-porn, or quick-fix. I know a food-freedom that I have never known before…a way of being in my body that opens me to a much steadier presence all around me and within me. This is a choice-for, not a choice-against or -without. For-life...

Now, most people I know would hear this collection of choices as a life of deprivation and self-denial. A woman of strong-will who has learned to diet for the rest of her life. I get that, as it has been internalized into me too, for most of my life. But it’s simply not the case for me. Still, there is almost nothing I can say that can convince otherwise. (Including my husband, sad to say). Most cannot hear that eating good food, avoiding processed foods, eating mostly plants and protein, more fat, makes me the happiest woman I have ever known I could be.

So it remains exhaustingly challenging to maintain, to continue to know this freedom inside…

For instance...Brian is delighted to have found a new spice for our pork meals—tenderloins, chops, shoulder in the slow-cooker. He used it for last week’s pork shoulder and we both enjoyed the change of flavors. So tonight was either going to be pork chops or pork tenderloin, “bicentennial rub”, the new spice. While slow-cooking the bacon for breakfast, however, I began to put the new spices into the cupboard. On a hunch, I checked the label of the new bicentennial rub. Argh. Cane sugar. The rush of irritation and feeling of being unsupported, exasperation at this, our difference. Why can he NOT check the labels, knowing as he does that it matters to me? 

Next step then...venturing into the difference and advocating for what I need while he gets irritated and frustrated with my so-called rigidity about sugar and carbs. A couple post-workout exchanges, beginning to check in with one another about the possibility of a walk to the preserve with Nala, our dog. The psychological terrain feels steady enough for the naming of what I need. 

Adopting a nonchalant tone of low-anxiety: "Oh, and we better choose pork chops for tonight. The Bicentennial rub? It’s got cane sugar in it and I’m trying to get back on Plan for several days in a row, remember? You can use that rub on yours, and let’s use the Adobo on mine, okay?” Tensive pause as he looks at me, a bit crestfallen. "Sorry. I didn’t think to look," he says. Biting my tongue, I hear inside my head, “No, you didn’t. Again. How freakin’ hard can it be, for someone you love and live with, who has made these choices for over a year now?!? Any chance of you being supportive of me, given you see the fruits of it written all over my body?" 

But saying aloud, “Great! Let me get my walking shoes on. Ready to go in 5.” 

This is why eating good food, avoiding processed foods, and avoiding 'added sugars’ and carbs like bread/rice/couscous/quinoa etc. is so freaking challenging! I admit I am envious about those families who have made the move to on-plan eating together. While it is just Brian and me—no children, by choice—I get so very weary having to make the choices again and again amidst his refusal to support me in it, his neglect of what I have demonstrated I need, his resistances, his own disregard of his body, his increasingly fraught use of food to numb out or avoid his higher stress levels with work and the world.

And yet it is his own journey, his own body, his own freedom that I want to honor, protect, too. I don’t want him making choices for me, so I don’t make choices for him either. And yet…. And yet… Sometimes…just sometimes…I wish the living into the freedom I know would be just a bit easier, with fewer obstacles from those I love.

Humans are complicated animals, through and through. My own tenacity gets refined by his neglect and refusal. My conviction grows as I watch his own body deteriorate from the inside with high sugar, acid-reflux, and more… I wish he would take better care of himself. I wish he would love his body in a way that is healthy for it. But that will never be my call, in the end.

Freedom is what freedom is, after all…

Change that is also not Changing -- what I am learning...questions and all

What am I supposed to learn in this new free-fall, that has elements of things NOT changing alongside elements of things that feel to me, perhaps to her, VASTLY changing…? When is a collaboration interdependence, healthy for the parts and the whole, and when is it dependence or co-dependence, unhealthy for one or both, and the whole? Do I get to celebrate my capacity for collaboration, even as it may lean into dependence, at times, all without shame or blame but simply difference in need, rhythm, flow? I count on my companion and soul-friend (in this case, Lisa, but surely others in the past and present or present-to-come) needing different things than I will, do; I fear loss and loneliness when change comes, grieve what had felt safe and secure, as change arises with its force and freedoms.

If I’m honest here, I too knew a static was rising in me, a stasis and even numbness in me in times with Lisa in which we had circle or leadership things to tend but I was also yearning inside, locked into something, somehow. The grief around all things Women Writing Cincy/Mother School (I’m always careful to write now because of MaryPB’s pain body and accusations…) was becoming a rut I could not escape. Cannot escape, as is? In the #StayAtHome orders but early on, Lisa came over for a Tuesday afternoon that fed me so, nourished us both, I’ll venture to say. There was no work to do, nothing 'other’ to tend with either responsibility or a sense of fear/uncertainty. We could be just as we were, figuring out this pandemic rhythm in families, friends, work, play, food and home. I could feel the peaceableness in a gaze with her, which we simply fell into, without aim or intention. My body whooshed with all the memories of the Nook, our space upstairs which is my space but womb space, Our space, Her space too. We sat on the porch and enjoyed many of our spaces. Enjoyed some Chardonnay and sun. I felt a returning I still don’t know how to name, some for fear of boxing it into old ways of thinking or feeling. A returning is sufficient for the flow here...and a breath of fresh air too, as ever, as we welcome what-is, together.

This morning, I get to sit here at our little Parisian table, pretending to be at a coffee-shop, listening to Spotify ‘peaceful guitar’ pieces chosen by a random calculus. I get to bask in the familiar yet tender shared-listening Lis and I did this morning about the circle tomorrow night. Tender because I know how to craft agendas by myself AND I so trust her gentle way with prayerful-circle-way currents too. I value how a free space opens up for both of us when we allow it, even now, in the tender of the New, Unknown. I am coming to appreciate with more intention, if I cannot feel as she does, the burden she carries, has carried, in these seven years. I won’t even try to describe it, except to honor it, honor her fidelity and willingness in it.

Can I come to words about the burden I am increasingly aware of, for me? Not with respect to collaboration with her, though of course there are differences that I consciously choose to hold with a fierceness and care...weighted sometimes. That’s what spirit-companionship IS, in my experience, and it always serves a holy Flow each needs. But what do I know as burden in this bodacious, abundant and Sacred circling Life I’ve gotten to live, to grow in, to mature and heal in?

The administration of the business is burden for me, though it’s also been an area of tender rage, new growth, curiosity of actually focusing on doing it well. I’ve never tried to be a business woman, and am not sure I want to, really. The passion, the birthing work, the gathering work...those are the things that come naturally and are not heavy to carry, for the most part. Some can be, of course, but not the bulk of sisterhood relationships. I thrive in those energies, my extroverted-introverted self, both.

Being loyal in containers that I outgrow is a burden, given my devotion and need to be known as loyal, fierce-for… For me to choose myself over a web of relationships in which I felt safe and held and seen? For me to realize that I am not feeling safe in a place where I used to feel safe and seen? Incredibly difficult for me. Refused grief, then, becomes the burden...until something or someone, like Lis in this case, knocks it center stage and I have no choice but to face it inside.

Being so fierce for the creative life of women (and some men), in writing, in SoulCollage®, in Spirit, I have lost track of how to risk creatively for myself. How to play, for no ostensible purpose whatsoever. The burden here is a refusal of innocence, a refusal of beginning again, a fear of not being enough, not being seen…even failing, whatever that might mean.

A private creative life, in Spirit, in prayer…? Feels foreign to me now. That private life used to be ALL I had, in some ways. No one in my work environment could honor or see such things as valuable in time or money or product, and I was largely publicly identified in work things. So I did my thing privately, started new hobbies, played in artist-dates and kept a solitude I’ve long forgotten in these years. I doubt Lisa can even imagine that prior self very easily, because it is not remotely who I am now, who I can be with her. Brian would give me a hard time, projecting his envy onto me as my ‘waste of our resources,’ or ‘waste of my time.’ I learned to hide most of it from him. Then spirit-friendship opened up in a way I never knew. The Artist’s Way with a friend, (Kate then), diving deeply into our spiritual lives and weaving intimate experiences together in a new energy I knew but did not know. Then the lessons of attachment and the suffocating damage it can do...into a more balanced devotion-and-nonattachment for sake of each, both, all.

In the beautiful intimate life Lisa and I know, I re-entered and knew the deep satisfaction of diving deeply, being seen, being companioned and One in the journey that scared me so, us so. Creativity. Birthing. Re-birthing again and again. But also mothering, providing-for, being mothered, being provided for, in ways I always needed but never could know. It is now natural for me to feel the urge to share anything lively, often sharing it all...often before I’ve had time to even receive fully for myself. Classic Two thing, which is both a seed of deep intimacy, interdependence, joy...and can be a shadow of grasping for what is already inside (when I can no longer feel it myself), for holding onto, for avoiding risk, vulnerability, New.  Lis has learned more fully for herself, how to pause, how to discern what she will share with me...and all that she does not choose to share in her journey now, even as what we share remains...whole, energetic, lively...

Is that something I am to learn for myself? Or is that simply a difference between us? Is there a new Center that is beckoning for me here, a returning inside myself that when stronger, will feel free in sharing certain pieces only with her? Friday, I chose the ‘be strong and trust your own Center’ so it seemed, holding back and trying not to share. From this side of it, I can see/feel now that part of me was screaming inside, beginning to lose the battle with the fearful voices, the 'cut bait and run’ voices in my own head…'cut bait and run before she does' kind of energy. When I feel that energy, then yes, I am to reach out, methinks. Which I did. And we ‘sat on her deck/my deck’ together, in the sun… I needed to come to speech about yes, what a big deal this is for us both, and how I want to have it all together but will not, probably for a long while. Tears arise in me now with that admission. I hate my intensity being a burden for her, for me, for anyone...which ultimately circles around to accepting it simply is what it is, me accepting me. I also love this intensity in me...if it could just NOT be a burden for anyone, me included…? And around and around we go...

...is that part of what I need to be learning in this freefall/not-freefall? Are our differences increasingly hard for her to hold inside herself? Is my largeness prohibitive of something deeply necessary and growing Inwardly for her? These are questions with her, my wonderings of her, at the center, I know, so not really anything I can do about or hold. They may not even be her questions at all. But I do carry their energy with a sense of weighty dread. I never want to be prohibitive of what is most Inward for her, what is most Lively for her. This deep belly feeling-awareness is the gift that Kate and her daughter Rebecca remind me of, even today. I cannot be other than as I am, which Lis honors and is fierce for too. I cannot fear growing larger or deeper as the Path beckons, and most days, I do trust that we will be right there, in our kayaks, drawing close and bumping into one another, flowing away, finding the eddies and currents that are Creatively selected for each of us, by the One who calls us into this Spirit energy here and now...except the moments when fear does take hold and I cannot seem to allow it or process it or welcome it or....

A slightly different angle then...How am I to hold the deep conviction in my Heart that I am a stronger, deeper, wiser leader when in spirit-led/leading companionship with her, her insights, her freedom to play and create? How does this not become a burden for her or a need? sole-desire? only? for me? I mean, she’s not the last thing since sliced bread, I know. Others will bring other gifts, their own energies and offerings, which woven into collaboration will be gift for the world. I know this. I can collaborate with others. She’s been pushing me to collaborate with others. And I can do that. Will do that, as I learn more. And yet… There is an utterly Created-Creative distinctive Liveliness that comes into the world when we both surrender into it. Maybe surrendering into BOTH its birthing and unraveling purposes, as this strand is about unraveling as much as about what is not changing between us... We would not be a whole fidelity force unless the whole birth-life-death-rebirth were active in us too. Whatever is dying-changing-letting-go just hurts more, feels hard.

So...a smiling nod to my own burdens, the questions that rise, the ways I can be attentive. Yes, I will share with Lisa, because it is who I am as a writer and as her Anam Cara. And yes, I will enter into this creative stream beckoning me, however it will, learning to pause and discern before sharing with her, with anyone.

I’ll only ever get a sense of this Invitation if I explore it with intention...she's got nothin' for me in that, as I do not for her...

Do You KNOW?

She paused for a moment, as both of us knew our phone conversation was coming to a close so she could run with her daughter and I too could workout for the day. She asked me to pause and listen for ‘the question.’ I honestly didn’t have anything arise right away, for what she might be about to ask me. What flitted through my mind? Things women-circling, things writing, things tender from how the universe is stretching us these days. Though it has been a familiar, even liturgical or ritualized question, for the years I have known her, I was not prepared for it. 

"Do you know?" 

Gut-tensing tears arose immediately, from deep within my gut, clutching at my throat a bit. I let them come, glad I had not clicked onto the Zoom invite link for my CrossFit time. The tears made it up to my eyes, a bit down each cheek. A sadness in my belly, though not sadness as I once knew it. Not the familiar sense of emptiness or void, of being left behind, forgotten, abandoned. This sadness seems to be at the root level of my being...some part of me that is still able to be surprised and disbelieve that I can be loved so deeply, so dearly, so fiercely. How is it possible that disbelief can rise, still? Where can my disbelief come from, given that I DO KNOW I am deeply loved? Could there ever be a life I could live in which that disbelief would no longer to rise?

Before the question, I wrote in some pages this morning about a disbelief or belly surprise that Lisa would want ‘being time’ with me this week. Even as it rose, I also heard in my own voice—Really? You wonder about that still? Really? But then...I will no longer be holding a work container for her sacred evolutions in her own calling(s). In one sense, I never did, but in another very real-world sense, I have. For us both, for years. A viable public entity in which she and I could be held and serve a broader community.  There is no longer any regular financial or work-development container through which she needs me. So I found myself awakening to the wonder and curiosity that she wants ‘being time’ with me. When I read the Enneagram insight for the Two today, I almost laughed aloud. I had already written my pages about this, and there it was: your basic Fear is that you are unloved, unworthy of love (or some such phrasing).

I’m embarrassed by this inner dialogue, of course. After everything, after all these many years, I am embarrassed that some part of me remains ever vulnerable to the self-accusation: you are unworthy … no one will love you unless you.... unless you are serving, sacrificing for… It’s like the very structure of my soul cannot be reshaped or reformed without unworthiness being there at some foundational level. Which feels awful, again and again, even though it is so familiar, a longstanding way I have known myself from without... 

Is that what this sense of unworthiness gives me then? A way of knowing who I am, in who I was accused to be, for so long, in the refused grief of my own ancestral lineages? The theological traditions that disempower, even as they hope to transcend and offer grace too? The earliest self-help gurus I learned from would ask me, "So what does unworthiness give you then? What are you getting out of it, that you hold onto it so tightly?" Their gut-instinct, perhaps wisdom: You wouldn’t hold onto it if it wasn’t giving you something in return.

When paired with those who struggle with this too, I can receive assurance, affirmation, that I matter, that I am seen. For a short while, at least, until the vulnerability gets touched again, and the cycle must then repeat. Ad infinitum. Feeling unworthy can also motivate service and action on behalf of others. Most religious traditions I have learned from have some component of this, in some fashion, though Christianity in the West has a particularly difficult version of this, with sin, depravity, shame, etc. Right now, this feeling of unworthiness is a drive...it is creating words on a page, looking backwards, within, beyond…

Something a directee said last week has stuck with me; it feels relevant here. In the abyss of quarantine (for her), she is learning that Love is right there, within her. Because she lives, Love lives. She need not reach outside herself for it at all; it is always right there, within her. … And then, without awareness of the paradox/irony, she spent several minutes diminishing her own ability to be on the Path she so desires. All while she was living it, speaking it, teaching it to me. I did smile inside, even as it touched the sadness she and I both know at our root, wondering if/whether we matter when we are not serving, helping, providing...

I could feel the double-bind of it for her, for myself, for what seemed like ages in our short hour together. I wrestled whether to mirror any of what I was seeing, sensing. Would my mirroring play into her need for assurance and affirmation, thereby disempowering her from knowing what she already knows? I held onto most of my own observations, refusing to mirror or play into the affirmation yearning I know all too well. At the very end, however, I did name my own experience of wrestling, also discernment, to say at least this: The energy in your words, your eyes, your life right now is stunning, beautiful, so very powerful. That’s all I said. 

Love is right here, within me. Love lives, because I live. These words do bring tears into my awareness, if not all the way up to my throat this time. I know this. I mean, I really know this now. I have for well over a year, with seeds and blossomings of it for nearly seven years. At the same core level that the vulnerability and abandonment rest in my ancestral lineages. Yet gut-tensing tears arose to nudge me into something...something I don’t know too, or don’t know anymore. 

The formation of the Women Writing circle communities, community up here in Central Ohio, has been an incredible labor of love, for both Lisa and me, for nearly seven years. It has shaped me into a woman I would not have been without her, without it. These years have also shaped me into a woman I no longer know, really. I don’t know how to be present to myself, alone, for me only, on the page. I don’t know easily how to play anymore, in color or in puzzles or in fiction that has no purpose but to amuse me. I don’t know who I am in this season of my life, more whole and healed than I have ever been, peeking out now from the inside out. 

So...do you know? I know I am deeply loved, even when that love needs to be expressed in ways that terrify me, force me to look at some things I am afraid to see. But I don’t know who I am as a woman in this season of my life. I know I have birthed and participated in the birthing of women’s voices, surrounding me now with their own journeys and desires, their own strengths and frailties. I know we’ve been birthed in a motherline and way-of-being that nourishes me less and less as I experience the More beckoning more and more. I know the work I do in seminary streams is gently simmering in categories that feel livelier in me than I want to let on, for fear of being insufficient to the tasks ahead. A form of unworthiness, it would seem. And I know I don’t know how to proceed without being bound up in others’ energies, needs, desires… I know I don’t know how to proceed as a woman, herself, in this season of life. 

I do not want to be accused of abandoning others, of course. I feel a deep affection and confidence in most of those who have woven their journeys deeply with mine, with Lisa’s and mine, in this circle-way. My heart opened and expanded as Lisa spoke her passion that "the circle needs to grow up now." Yes...it does. They do. And so...

Do you know? She asked. Yes. With her, my Anam cara and spirit-friend of Old, I know. I am unfamiliar with ‘being time’ anymore, so shy and a little fearful of being found out, vulnerable, unsure in her presence. 

Do you know? She asked. No, as me...I don’t know. I don’t know how to proceed to re-acquaint myself with who I am as the woman I am today, in this season, in this moment in time. 

The ways I know to fake it til you make it feel forced, less genuine for where I am right now, though I welcome their familiarity too (Julia Cameron, tarot, work...). So I am moving slowly, sitting with the questions as they come to me, contenting myself with the deepened awareness that I am the only one who can answer for me in this season, who do I want to be...?

My best friends refuse to answer my question of me, after all, simply smiling at me, in Love.

* * * * * * * * * *

Addendum, wanting to be kept and known, yet also only as an addendum…

Independent of any of this, I realized this weekend that I wanted to put together a Start-up Facilitator’s packet for all 17 of our leadership sisters, inviting everything from brainstorming themed circles to more self-directed core-circles, marketing tips and timings, all the Create the Container and usual resources to encourage getting this circle-way more into the world, wherever a certified circle-holder lives. I want to empower everyone to bring this into the world. I became aware of a desire to make myself unnecessary in significant ways. I need to be unnecessary, for me to sit with who I am in as a woman in this season of my life.