Indicative of a lot of things, I spent my 40th birthday visiting my spirit-friend, Irwin Kula, in NYC. I called it my “Upper West Side Jewish Immersion Experience,” but it was a book-end visit to his communities of faith, given he had traveled 7 times to Dayton to teach with me in my community of faith, or, the seminary anyway. Something in me needed the space away from Brian’s overwhelming church-life, I knew I needed something that prioritized my wonder and delight. I was on the cusp of some fairly serious differentiation from him, from our marriage of that era, so while I would have called our marriage stable, it was also straining, about to be stretched to breaking point into a new marriage to one another. One that honored the F/feminine a whole lot more than Brian even knew how to do, regardless of his love for me. 2009, it was, then.
Irwin is one of those spirit-friends who flared into my life, requiring me to grow up and wake up, even as I was also hungry to do so myself. He and I are still deeply connected today, particularly this Holy Week period, when I begin to muse on “what I think about resurrection now.” Delightful, one of my annual practices is writing “an Easter Torah” (he would call it) to him on Easter morning. Given he’s an 8th generation rabbinic Jew, Polish descent, most relatives lost in the Shoah/Holocaust, there’s simply something whole in it, for both of us. When I visited him in 2009, I knew there was a charged energy between us–I remember wondering whether I was some version of a red sports car for a mid-life crisis–but I’ve always kept the boundaries really high with him about all that. The spirit-energies move in subterranean fashion, a sublimated holiness-fire that weaves serendipitous connection between us all the time. Most recently, I was so very sad at a United retreat (February…a strategic-planning one), watching this community become more and more insular, Pentecostal/Conservative literal, realizing how few of my own spirit-friends would be welcomed, feel seen or heard in such a space. I wrote him an email and he responded within an hour with a journal reflection he’d written the day before, sharing almost the exact same thing, from within his own Jewish circles. We set up a time to Zoom and explore all we’ve been experiencing, receiving. I love him fiercely, and he and I have been through some fires of spirit-devotion and betrayal, then recovery, forgiveness. He’s the real thing. [You might also know him as the rabbi from public television who turned the cell-phone messages from folks dying in the Twin Towers into a sung-lament…(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rb42zY8QAFM). He was on PBS for that].
Anyway…for a variety of reasons, I made my 40th birthday one I would cherish, always remember. Brian and I did celebrate together with a nice meal when I returned home, that Monday night. But it was a time in which I (needed to? decided to?) pursue the intensity of life I desired both within my marriage, and outside of it. Brian was unable or unwilling…or his energies were simply denser and less emotionally-nuanced, connectional. I dunno… The church was such an overwhelming presence in our lives that I rarely felt truly heard or seen by Brian, given my path was diverging from congregational Christianity. So, while remaining committed to him, I also pursued a web of spiritual friendships outside of ‘our shared life together.’ I spent inordinate time and energy cultivating deepening spiritual intimacies with practitioners of all kinds–Jewish, earth-centered spirituality, artists, etc. Folks whose wonder and curiosity about me fed my need to be deeply seen and heard. Men, women, queering…gender didn’t matter. I would call these connections erotic or sensual, but not sexual. There was a huge charge that fired these connections, in other words, but the relationships were all bounded, chaste. When I finally landed into Women Writing for (a) Change–nontraditional writing school in Cincinnati, OH–I landed into a more socially-visible, less charged “container” within which I could be seen and heard in my soul’s searching, growing. It became more and more apparent that my own substantial mother-wound was being excavated, cleaned out, so to heal. If never fully, at least more consciously, with greater awareness of its patterns in my life. Circle-way then became the home and vessel within which I could channel most of my intensity, passions, desires. Which finally, in 2020, with the Covid lockdown, came back together into my home, my life with Brian. Covid saved our marriage, methinks, as I was forced to bring all of my outside-life-connections into the home. I remember panicking that first weekend of lockdown, fearing I would return to being unseen and unheard once again. But I had strengthened, healed, grown…as had Brian. He was more able to receive or to wonder alongside me, by that time.
While we never know when something starts, let alone when it truly ends, I suspect my Big Splash 40th in NYC was a visible and concrete commitment to my own self-awakening(s), such that the next decade unfolded with all its sacred tumult into the blessed life I am so grateful to know today.
What would I say to my 40-year-old self today? Buckle in, baby. Learn to ask more questions before you say you are willing. And yet, had I truly known all the sacred turmoil that was about to unfold, I doubt I could have said yes to it all. I think it’s better not to know or imagine. How do I live with integrity today, in this moment? I was doing that when I turned 40. I hope to be doing it still when I turn 60, or 70, or 80, if I’m blessed with such longevity. What does it mean for me today to live into deeper and deeper wholeness, never questioning I am completely whole right now? Hmmmm….
My path has always been a return to the body. Each book I’ve written in some ‘new’ version of that same path. I joke that I’ve written the same book four times, but only my editor, Charlie, or my friend Irwin could probably sense or see that clearly. Return to the body, and return to the Land, I’d say today. I can honestly say, now that the last book is done (basically), I have no clue what my Work wants to be, needs to be, is being Called to be… My institution of United Seminary is going through its next turmoil-drama-life/death pangs. I feel little to no commitment to its assured survival or its probable decline. I’ve come to think of seminary education as shaping spiritual adolescents to curate dying institutions. Do I really want to be a part of that for the next ten years? Is that my calling? To stay steady amongst the ruins…or to make a last Harvest Woman push (55-65 years of age) for some ‘next contribution’?
Part of the reason I’ve signed onto a Women’ Fast scheduled for the end of Sept/early October, in Oregon, led by a coach I’m working with, Kinde Nebeker, of New Moon Rites of Passage. Part of the reason I’m obsessively watching/re-watching Outlander, whose more-enchanted universe touches something deep within me, feeds something I need beyond Brian’s and my “being wise for retirement” choices. Part of the reason the Wilde Grove series of novels is feeding my soul so deeply. Living with integrity in the moment, for the day. Grounding. Resting. Resisting (energetically, mostly). Grounding some more. CrossFit. Peloton. Yoga. Loving my body. Loving its movement. Honoring its need for rest. Receiving the sunshine and reveling in the rain.
I have no little curiosity whether Living on the Other Side will change my current life in unseen ways. I have a Substack newsletter I will begin, most likely, once the book is out. Exploring themes unanswered in the book, because the book is not a practical-how-to kind of book. It’s more a storytelling, “this is what I need to say on behalf of women facing wisdom traditions today.” I know I am to dive more fully into the forgiveness work, whatever that may come to mean. I know I’m resisting sacrificing myself for things I no longer value. I also know I’m so weary as to not be driving toward the Next with any urgency. Receive the Day, mostly.
Which is something you seem to be good at, dear Friend, articulated so beautifully in your own writing. You remind me, often, and inspire me to deepen in this Receiving.
No comments:
Post a Comment