The bigness that never leaves us
    the access to the sacred that is uniquely our own:

                     “what is our superpower?”

                                                             We all have
                                                                our unique superpower.

        The thing that
     once we understand it and how to work with it,
           supports everything in flow

           the same thing that
        when we don’t understand it and try to override it or force it,

              its inescapable presence                                           which never stops calling us home
        when we don’t understand it,
              stops us at a profoundly-rooted depth                                  which cannot be avoided.

                   Once we recognize it
                             own it
                          celebrate it

                        then everything can suddenly dance forth …
  

                      … for me it’s

                                 silence.

                                                                                  This revelation is huge.
  
  
  

Without silence, we cannot listen.
Without silence, we cannot hear the voice of the sacred.
Without silence, we cannot bring forth
                                                                       the words,
                                                                           the stories
                                                                       the offerings
                                                                                    which are ours to give.

     Without silence, we cannot do the work we are here to do.

      What has tripped me up,
   tied me up
blocked me and tangled me and stopped me

              is my own incomprehension about it.

                            About the place of silence.

       I have known I must trust it.
       I have known
              even in the midst of my own compulsive noise-making
                                                  (as I try to not-hear what there is to be said)
              that I cannot circumvent the silence.

                           I have known that sometimes outwaiting it works.
                                 I have known that when I am silent enough,
                                        for long enough,
                                 new heart-openings do become possible.

                    I had thought it was slowness and time that made the difference.

And I do know it’s true
     that it’s only in aligning to the rhythm that is not my own
                                                                not what my cogitating mind would prefer it to be

                                                   that we can move into the dance.

     But I am thinking now
          it’s not slowness that is essential.

It is silence that is.

           It’s silence itself, that is the gift I have to give.

                             Not understanding my own gift
                             not understanding that which I have to give

                                  has meant it has given itself to me
                                       forcibly
                                     and I have been silenced.

                                                   I do not write
                                                      I do not speak
                                                         I do not share
                                                            I do not give.
 

 
           But that is not a thing-that’s-wrong,
                     that is not a problem that needs to be overcome before I can speak.
                That is a thing-that’s-right, simply misunderstood.
                          That is the speaking itself.

That is the silence that’s simply been waiting
      with inexorable, inescapable kindness
   for me to understand…
 
            

                                     …so that it can come
                                             forth
                                               through
                                        in my speaking.

       I push,
              and
                               incomprehendingly
(like a mule perhaps)
                   I do not understand why
                                              I do not move.

There is the shame in not yet being.

“There’s art in mending,” she reminds
                                                         re-mends
 
 
                                                                 And I remember

 
            there’s art in the mending
                        there’s gift in the healing

                                                  and I will not be able to give forward

        this mended moving on
           this healing forward on
                              unless I myself move
                                                 moving on, moving through

                                                  the slow process of healing.

Already having been where I wanted to be
(what the shame shouts in my ears)
                              means that I would not need healing.

               Not having needed the healing myself
                                           means that there would be no way to move

                                                                 in offering it to others.
 

       The healing is in the movement itself
                       not in the already having moved.

                         This struggle
                              this pain

                                         this re-mending
                                             re-minding
                                           re-membering
                                                re-moving

(as warped as this feels to acknowledge
                                                                      from the midst of my mulishness)

                                                                        is a gift
                                                                               that moves
                                                                                               on.

for Jacque

A friend of mine adopted a dog earlier this year.

Mason was rescued, with a group of other dogs, from the fire in Bastrop this past Labor Day weekend. It turned out, however, that Mason had not been a family’s pet. Clearly she had been a stray, on her own for some time.

My friend took her in, cared for her, discovered the sweetness of this particular dog’s soul, and fell in love with her. And Mason slowly but strongly returned the love, and she thrived.

   Dogs are bridges in their very being.

Ever straddling the divide between animal and human, somehow dogs give of themselves to us, in a way no other animal does. A dog without other dogs in its life is a lonely and sad thing, but a dog who does not love a human is also forever hampered from the full expression of its soul’s purpose.

 
In Hebrew the word for dog is kelev – כלב. There is a folk-etymology which says the word kelev is actually combined from two other words: kol lev – כל לב – all heart.

                                  Dogs are all heart.

And they give us their heart. Us humans, us alien stupid beings who never seem to get it.
Unceasingly, unreasonably, they cross the species bridge, give of themselves to belong to us unlike any other animal does, and they love us.

For so long, Mason had no one to love.
And then she did.

“Sometimes hearts break to the roar of a wrecking ball.
Sometimes hearts break silently,
with pieces falling to Earth like snowflakes.”
My friend. All heart.

And I weep for my friend, and for her heart.

From a shamanic point of view, there is no such thing as time.

          There is just now.

And from a dog’s point of view as well,
there is just now.

The present can genuinely heal the past, in fullness.

I weep, so grateful that Mason did not leave this world abandoned and alone.
I weep, so glad that Mason left in love.
I weep, so sad but so grateful for my friend’s broken heart,
because that means Mason mattered.

The story of Mason’s life, if dogs think in such a way, was surely a hard one, a broken one.
So are many of our own.
But her story ultimately was a good one.

        Cherished. Known. Loved.

The present can genuinely heal the past, in fullness.

We all matter. Every thing, every being, every sparrow.

When a sparrow dies, it falls to the rich being-ground of Earth.
The story of its life is a lovestory told to the soil, the trees, the sky.
The sparrow matters.
The heartstory is complete.

But the heartstory, the bridgestory, of the mattering of a dog
is inextricably bound up with humans.
Without the human story, the dog story is not complete.
Without my friend,
Mason’s heart would not have been complete.
And she would have died, abandoned, alone.

But no matter what,
the combined heartstory that is the dog-and-human story
is in its very being a tragic story, a broken story.

They take us into their hearts, you see,
and we take them into our own.
Different species,
evolutionary partners,
forever speaking, at best imperfectly, across an evolutionary divide,
unlike our relationship with any other animal.

The story of that heart is forever divided.

The story that is the heart of the dog+human bond
a bridge thrown across that evolutionary divide
in its very being
is forever a story of broken-heartedness.

There is no way around it.

And whether Mason had died yesterday or had lived for another 5 years,
still
whenever Mason’s story would have reached its completion
still my friend would have stepped forward
unceasingly
unreasonably
wholeheartedly
into the grief.

And my friend absolutely knew it too, well in advance,
when she opened her heart to this dog.

Still, she opened her heart.
In spite of pain
bound up with love.
And Mason opened her own
and they joined in story, together.

In spite of pain
bound up with love
still we open our heart.

All heart,
dogs cannot close theirs.

We are all heart too.
And yet we can close our hearts
burn the bridges,
cripple the stories uncompleted.

We do not have to turn to each other.
We do not have to reach out in love.

We can close down, turn away, kill love.
And we can die abandoned, alone.

                      It is a choice, for us.

The present does genuinely heal the past, in fullness
but only if we walk the bridge
only if we open our heart.
And when we do, our heartstories will become broken stories too.
There is no way around it.

We will hurt
we will grieve
we will love.

There is no way around it.

Our heartstories will be hard stories
broken stories
but like Mason, her story completed in love,
our own stories will ultimately be good ones too.

And we absolutely know this too, well in advance
when we open our heart.

So the grieving is love
and the love is grieving
there is no way around it
in the mattering of each other’s hearts,
in the bridging of each other’s stories

inextricably bound up together
forever brokenhearted, forever wholehearted
in love.

I am participating in a year-long course in shamanic herbalism.

                        The experience is like nothing I have ever done before.

                                                      (hmm, a thought arises as I write those words; interestingly,
                                                           the only thing that seems at all akin to this, was studying music.
                                                 That was also like nothing I had ever done before.
                                                                That also tapped wholly new domains of being and aliveness within myself.
                                                           That also changed my life.)

   
       This is the path of the Plant Beings.
            The Rooted Ones
    the Green Ones
             the Sprouting Ones.

         Their tangibility and their generosity take my breath away.

Plants are the givingest beings in the world.

           The songs they sing
       and the music that thrums in their veins

                               are suffused with tangibleness and love.
  
  
There is a painting by Mary Cassatt which I have loved for many years.

   I have spent hours       
looking into
  the bowl of water
      in the painting;

  the mother’s hand
     the child’s feet

   and I have delighted
in the artist’s hand
      making water
           visible

making love
   visible.
   

              Love is so often invisible.

It’s something felt more than seen.
     Evanescent more than tangible.

The plants aren’t like that.
     The plants are entirely tangible.

They exist in a solidly thisworldly sense

         as hard as tripping over a tree root
      as profound as saving a life.

As real as the water in Mary Cassatt’s hand.
  

Last week my husband came down with a scratchy sore throat.
   I made him up a batch of homemade Elder berry syrup.

Elder is an ally of the body’s immune system
                    especially for colds
                respiratory infections
                        sore mucus membranes.

   She soothes and eases and strengthens
with a gentleness sufficient for even a child.

                                                 a child
                                                              bare feet
                                                          in the water …

I made up the syrup and gave it to my husband
      his scratchy throat never developed into anything worse
   it went away after a few days.
I also took it myself, to protect myself against his bug.

  
This morning, while my stepdaughter and her boyfriend were still with us for the holidays, I spoke about my studies in herbalism. Shared with them some of my delight in it. Shared with them some of the Elder berry syrup.

…and Elderberry syrup is in fact, truly delicious…

  
And then it suddenly occurred to me,
      that I could give them my syrup to take home with them.
   So they could use to protect themselves this winter
      so they could use it to lighten the impact of any colds they might catch.

   It was a wholly new thought
a wholly different way of seeing what I’m doing with the herbs.

      Not just something pulling deep at my soul inexorably to explore
      and experiment with on myself and my husband

the herbs were suddenly a gift that I could already give others as well.
   Give with the same tangible thisworldly givingness
a rooted and sprouting generosity
      as given by the plants to me,
   so that I in turn could give again on, to others.

     Love made visible.

  
In the painting, the love we see is not just the love of the mother for her child.
We also see Mary Cassatt’s love for the mother.
     For the way she holds her child on her lap, heavy and awkward,
                                                                full of quiet patience.
     For the way she is unconcerned that her dress may get wet.
     For the words that pass between her and her child.

Full of ordinary visible love.

  
The love the herbs give us is
           the love of a mother
        for other mothers.

The love of a caregiver
       for the other care givers themselves
   rather than the recipients of the care, as precious as they may be.

The love with which the plants shower us
   the love which the Earth herself drenches us
a bathing in liquid love from which we never truly dry
        itself is the givingness, the sacred tangibleness in these acts of care.

   Music of the heart
a song of the tangible beingness of life.

                   Thank you, Elder.
                      Yours is a gift of rich and hushed honor
               to be given on again, to those whom I love.

                                                          Thank you.

I have written about listening
     I have spoken about the way the world is constantly talking to us.

We ourselves are also always talking to us, too.

The trick is to catch the moment and listen to ourselves too,
the same way we can listen to the world around us.

      To listen to the quirks, the habitual situations
              the stumbles, the second-guesses,
           slips of the tongue
                 typos…

I often accidentally mistype trustyourself.biz
                                   as trystyourself.biz.

           This too, is a listening.

When I mistype my domain name like that, I am reminded of the need to tryst with myself.

       To meet as a lover, with myself
       to keep an intimate rendezvous, with myself
                                                        the rendezvous revealed in noticing the typo as meaningful

I look up the words trust and tryst in an etymological dictionary.
Both come from the same Indo-European word that birthed the word true.
                                                        pledging one’s troth is part of the same word family.

                              I and myself pledged a troth a long time ago
                                          probably when I first came into being

                                   As did you and yourself.

Geneen Roth says, “Awareness is learning to keep yourself company.”
               that is the troth we pledged to ourselves when we came into this world.

       We often lose the truth
            miss the tryst
                  break the trust

                   stop listening

                But trust is as easy to regain as is
            the listening
                the noticing
             something as simple as
                            a typo.

            Tryst yourself.

       Trust yourself.

And keep listening to the truths and troths which are        spoken to you,
                                                                                               pledged to you,
                                                                                        promised to you

                                       all around you
                                           all the time.

Thanks to ManyMeez for her love-filled photograph from Flickr

             I am afraid of awkwardness

   I am afraid of being   
      awkward   and     gawky and    ugly
          the kind of awkwardness
      that is so uncomfortable in my own skin
                      that it makes other people
                          uncomfortable      
                                                 just to watch.
  
   
                                        Sometimes I am that kind of awkward.
  
  

      I love it when I am in grace

   
     When my words and my actions
   flow with a simple soft elegance

             when what I offer to the world
       is so natural and perfect

         that no other option
             no other way of being

       seems like it would be possible.
  
   
  
   
   I cherish the compliments I receive from moments of being in grace
      times I am thanked for my graciousness.
   I hold them to myself in self-comforting reassurance,
      after the giver has long-forgotten what they told me.

                    I remember the times of being painfully awkward long afterwards as well.

                                        I wince in long-held memory.
  
  

  

   
   
               When the question of me-in-my-own-skin
                          feels so self-same
                                        that no other way of being is even imaginable.

         When I know who I am with such matter-of-fact synchrony
     and my trust in my essence is so anchored
                     in   the     Now

                           that simply breathing     feels like        blessing
                                simply sensing touch on my skin     feels like          truth.
   
   

   
   

   

   
   
   And    sometimes,

                    sometimes,

the awkwardness is, itself, a sign of truth.

Sometimes
   the wincing away from my own being

        hides the truth that the awkwardness is simply a sign of newness
          a mark of learning
             a demonstration
                     that I am still   finding     my rhythm.

Sometimes

   it’s simply

                  uncomfortably

       real.

                I get frustrated sometimes

   
                              at     other   people’s       awkwardness.
   
   
   

   
The way they seem

  to fumble
bumble,

clueless
oblivious

through
      their days.

                                   I wonder sometimes

   how they manage to keep from creating
      calamity and catastrophe around them
          like Pigpen from The Peanuts
   debris from unhandled consequences
      dragging along behind them.

                       or how they manage to keep from
                          killing themselves
                                by tilting at windmills
                                       like Don Quixote
                                             out of sheer cluelessness
                                      at what the real danger is.
  
   
   

                                                                                                                          (Not particularly gracious things for me to think.)

                                             Is this just my own self-doubt I see

                  frustratingly

                      uncomfortably

                                         reflected
                                                                 back to me?
   
   

                             If I were to relax
                                   relent
                                                     on pushing this awkwardness away from me
   

                                                      relinquish the scars
                                                                from my own Quixote battles of cluelessness
                                                                       with windmills
   
   

                      If I were to

                  trust myself

                             a little more

   
   
                              it would probably be easier to be graceful

                                         it would definitely be easier to be real…
   

   
   
                         …where are you graceless?
                                           …when are you real?
                                      …how do you keep dancing?

                              …share your thoughts in the comments
                                       may we all help each other in finding our rhythm…

With gratitude to Edgar Degas and the following sources and photographers for dancing with me:

Images from www.Edgar-Degas.org

Images from Degas and the Ballet: Picturing Movement and a review from The Ballet Bag.

Wikipedia provided the following:

     
The following photographs are by Quinn Dombrowski, on Flickr.

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]]> http://www.trustyourself.biz/graceful-awkward-real/feed/ 7 http://www.trustyourself.biz/sailing-the-signals/ http://www.trustyourself.biz/sailing-the-signals/#comments Thu, 15 Sep 2011 16:27:17 +0000 Karen http://www.trustyourself.biz/?p=1857 Continue reading →]]>
   
The other day I saw them

            radio towers at sunset  

  

 
 
 
   
 
 
 
   
 
  
 
 
   
   
  

 
 
   

tall ships on an electronic sea.

 

This is a place I drive past on my way to and from work
I see these radio towers almost every day

                           and yet I do not see them
                               I did not see them at all

   until they were as masts to me

                                tall ships
                                         asail

tacking and jibing with the web
buoyed by ties and tides
running windward on seas of information
on the world wide waves.

  
A daily messenger
coming with information

     It’s less my seeing the radio antennas

               more the instant unbidden meaning I took
               the image my listening deeper-self gave to my mind

                                                             of tall ships at sea.

 

I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky    
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by    

  
  
  
  
The shamanic practice of

                                          the daily messenger

is to notice
     every day

               at least once

something in the world around you that you notice.

  
                        It’s a noticing of what you notice
                        what catches your attention

                an animal
             a bird
          a picture on the side of a truck on the highway
       an overheard song

or radio towers at sunset.
  

       Everything can be your messenger.

       Then welcoming that as your messenger
    letting it speak to your listening,
  let it echo into your depths, let your deeper-self rise up in answer.

I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky

  

must go down to the seas again     
the lonely sea          

  

  
the sky               

  
  
   
   
  
The John Masefield poem came to my mind as well, rising in echo response

I must go down to the seas again to the lonely sea and the sky
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by,
And the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song and the white sail’s shaking,
And a grey mist on the sea’s face, and a grey dawn breaking.

       as did a fragment of an Adrienne Rich poem

       I have been standing all my life in the
       direct path of a battery of signals
       the most accurately transmitted most
       untranslatable language in the universe

                          I am a galactic cloud so deep      so invo-
                          luted that a light wave could take 15
                          years to travel through me       And has
                          taken                   I am an instrument in the shape of a woman

    
translating pulsations into images
for the relief of the body
the reconstruction of the mind

  
    

This is the dream.

This is the waking dream

the sunset sky with the radio towers
     my deepmind image of tall ship masts against the sunset sea
          the two poems 

(and then the gifts from the photographers of Flickr,
these photos I find, exquisite with resonant perfection…)

This is the waking dream.

go down to the seas again

          the direct path of a battery of signals
  
                    the most accurately transmitted
                 most untranslatable

                        down to the
                          down
                            down to the seas

       So notice what you notice.

    Take it as a dream.
           And listen, then. Listen.
        Deep.
              As to a dream.

                     down to the seas again
                                 the tall ships
                               the sky
  
                listen in
                listen down
  
                                down
                                down to the seas
  
                                          and the sky

  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  

  

Don’t worry about translating it.
Don’t worry about what it means.

most accurately transmitted
most untranslatable

 
   
  
Allow it simply to sit in your being              unfolding
                                                                                                 unfolding

                 allow the transmitted signal to settle, silent in resonant echo

          not for how it translates to your rational mind
          but for how it engages with your listening heart.

Because the world is always speaking to us.

   Tumbling over itself, giving to us, drawing us ever more into sacred resonance
   drawing us into the conversation

                       the world is always speaking to us.

    The deeper we are listening,
    the more we are engaged in the conversation

mind trusting heart          

feet trusting path                        

              the easier it is for us to hear           our own heart

                                 and know        our own path

     The daily messenger is a practice in listening
         a practice in noticing

                         a training in resonant alignment.

     The gifts it gives are seeds that settle into our own being
and rise up in answer only after the planting.

And then with those rising answerings, the process has the same flavor.

     Notice what you notice.
     Listen to what catches your attention

          without translating
          without worrying what it all means

               simply allowing the alignment to resonate

                         over time.

In my own case,

   radio towers at sunset

I notice:
     my website is like the signals transmitted across world wide waves.

          I notice:
               the ship I sail though unknown waters in what I am creating here.

     I notice:
          my need to go down, into it, into the seas again, the lonely sea and the sky.

I notice:
     myself as the instrument in the shape of a woman
     in the direct path of the signals      accurately transmitted

          I notice:
               this blog post as a resonant response

     my gift of gratitude back to the Sacred.

          My gift out into the sea,
               out through the webbed waves of information,
               out into the lonely electronic sea in the sky.

And I notice
      I know
   my own longing need to set out
go down to the seas again
   no matter how long this travel may take
      sailing 15 years through a galactic cloud   so    deep     so       invo        luted
           through lonely seas and sky

my need to let myself be drawn into sacred resonance right here right now
             to sail my own signals

                       out into the web.

 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  
  
  
  
I also notice how perfectly Bruno Girin‘s Flickr photos resonate in alignment with my own signals. Thank you.

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]]> http://www.trustyourself.biz/sailing-the-signals/feed/ 4 http://www.trustyourself.biz/the-sunset-moment/ http://www.trustyourself.biz/the-sunset-moment/#comments Fri, 08 Jul 2011 05:57:26 +0000 Karen http://www.trustyourself.biz/?p=1850 Continue reading →]]>
In the medicine wheel tradition of my lineage

          the medicine circle which centers me and grounds me

          West is the place of darkness.

     West is the place of endings.
      West is the time of sunset,
       West is the time of twilight.

         West is blending
          West is merging

            West is fear
             West is death.

     West holds the age-old wisdom

                  that when we merge and move through the darkness and the fear,
          allow the old to die and fall away

                                         healing comes.

                                             West is also the place of healing and well-being.

                                              West is the source of Wisdom and Understanding.
                                               West is the origin of Realization.
  

    Together

           the angelbeing Raphael
                    (r’fa el   רפאל
                          “my healing is the Sacred”)

    joined with

           the Wild Bull
                   (shoor   שור
                          “ox, bull”
                                     _also_
                          “behold, regard” / “leaping up” / “core” / “umbilical cord”)

    hold the space of the West.

   
     My lineage: delved back through my Judaism
                     to the archaic-shamanic traditions
                            of the indigenous peoples of the Middle East

    joined with: modern spiritual sensibilities
                     contemporary shamanic practice

    hold the space of the Sacred.

   

   
    Behold!
     the irrepressible wild-bull energy of Realization
            fierce earth leaping up from the core —

                     — life-energy
                                at the umbilical moment of birth —

       Behold!
           pregnant within the darkness and the endings
                  held quickening-heavy within the fear and the dissolution —
  

                                        wisdom bursts forth
                                                well-being flows
                                                    the Sacred heals.

  

   

        Sunset
                            is
                                      approaching,

   

           the light  colors    and      shifts,
  
                         the     time         is               ripening.

  

We are facing a threshold

       a change,
  an ending,

                   a healing,

           a transformation of wisdom
     a birth of understanding.
  

  

                                                         Sunset approaches,

                                                                     twilight shapes our time,

                                                                                night’s deep birth is near.

]]> http://www.trustyourself.biz/the-sunset-moment/feed/ 3 http://www.trustyourself.biz/apologies/ http://www.trustyourself.biz/apologies/#comments Thu, 30 Jun 2011 05:09:32 +0000 Karen http://www.trustyourself.biz/?p=1837 Continue reading →]]>
This is a funny world we inhabit out here, this world of tweets and blogs and mirrors.

There is so much we reveal, and so little we have to go on
     learning the cultural mores
     the local customs

out here in the cybercosmos
     strange attractors and fertile-dark energy inhabiting the seemingly empty space
          punctuated by twinkling bytes and blinking cursors.

     Presence and absence flicker back and forth
turn into each other and back again

as we stand at the edge of an old map
                                 edges curling

as we walk with our hearts held high
                                                 as lanterns
                                                                                               into uncharted territory.

               It can be hard to sense each other true.

      It can be hard to trust

and the errors in trusting can be costly,
     out here where paypal buttons float by in the dark intergalactic dust
                                                                          as freely as the share buttons.

              “Here there be dragons.”

     It can be hard to find one’s way
in this dusty and dark hall of mirrors.

Sometimes what looks like safe ground
           suddenly turns into a sharp-edged place in a formerly-flat world
           and nausea abruptly rises
           as we fall
                stupidly, nakedly,
           into painfully-3d reality.

I have chosen to trust my intuition as I have made my way
     sometimes groping mutely
     sometimes dancing with song

and even if my intuition has been clouded by flickering mirroring dust
     I have chosen to make my own mistakes
     rather than take other people’s words for the dangers.

     Mirrors tell true
but only what is reflected in them
                       and sometimes what is reflected is a mistake.

     Mirrors tell true
but sometimes we don’t like what we see
                     and sometimes when we see ourselves reflected in the silvery dust        
                     and intuition gets confused with projection
                                                                         when we judge another.

We are always mirrors to each other
and what we think we see in others tells a story of us
         and sometimes that’s so uncomfortable
that we project it outward again

                  “that’s not me, that’s them”

      back out into the world of words and the hall of mirrors.

“You see, your blog isn’t just some neutral formless page out in cyberspace; it’s a projection of your consciousness, an externalized, virtual room hung with mirrors. It’s a world of light and shadow, conjured out of your own imagination. As such, like all projections of the psyche, your blog is going to test every personal edge you’ve got.”
Amy Oscar speaks true.

And sometimes it’s that personal edge
     which turns into the flatland border
          where we sail off and drop down
                                                                                                      into sickeningly-3d reality.

There are two apologies I want to make.

Two places where I was confused by the flickering light and shadow
in this odd online world of presence and absence
     and fooled into forgetting that mirrors reflect true
     even when I don’t want them to.

Two places, two people

     where I suckered myself into judging…
                                                                …myself.

Not them.

           There is a quality of being that I do not like when I find it in myself

           a mixture of self-aggrandizement and bravado
           that pretends to be more than I am
           out of discomfort with what I am not.

                                                       As if others cannot tell, anyway.

As if it’s impossible to sit patiently and honestly with what I am
     welcoming and sharing our simple vulnerability all around
     embracing it and each other
          which is all we ever want, really.

               But I ducked out from that circle of welcoming
               into that hardened stance of frightened self-aggrandizement

And with these two women
         of profound beauty
                     and wisdom
                     and depth

                                 these two women who I am apologizing to

                                                      aroused in me
                                                            I aroused in myself
                that awkward braggadocio
                                                                    which I then projected onto them.

This was not them.
This was me.

However earlier this week I received gifts afresh from both women
     which allowed me to re-see myself
     and re-see them
          a little clearer.

My judgement was punctured
     and I was able to sit with my simple vulnerability
     a little better
          even if I didn’t like what I saw.
    

Because of a beautiful post from Lindsey Mead on Monday
at A Design So Vast
about naming our mothers

                       I found myself back at an old post of Julie Daley’s called Lineage of Women
                                           from last August.

                                           Almost a year ago.

                                          (Odd to realize I have been inhabiting this world so long,
                                          when I still feel so raw and clumsy so much of the time.)

     I had commented, then, last August

I am Karen,
daughter of Phyllis,
daughter of Anna,
daughter of Pearl,
daughter of a woman who was funloving and irrepressible,
daughter of a woman who was a Talmud scholar,
daughter of a woman who had been brain-damaged at birth.

I am Karen,
mother of ideas,
mother of gifts,
mother of words,
mother to those I inspire.

While I don’t have any children of my body, your heralding our matriline makes me see that what I bring into the world is nonetheless that part of my lineage that carries forward in time, all the same. What a strong clarion-call of legitimacy, for me, to feel that.

Thank you Julie, daughter of Joan, daughter of Pauline, daughter of Clarissa,
mother of Jacqueline and Jennifer, mothers of Lucas, Aveline and Jamison.

     and Julie had responded

Karen,
“What a strong clarion-call of legitimacy, for me, to feel that.” Tears are falling after reading these words of yours. Legitimacy. Oh, yes. What you bring into the world no one else can. It is from your lineage, from you, from your sacred gifts that only you can share with the world. Thank you Karen, daughter of Phyllis, daughter of Anna, daughter of Pearl, mother of ideas, mother of gifts, mother of words, mother to those I inspire. Blessings to you.

     
and as I re-read those words the other day
              tears rose afresh

     humbled by the gift, the simple, rich and generous upwelling
     of Julie’s bedrock kindness to me
          and the sincerity of her love

and I thought           what the hell is my problem here?

Julie, I am sorry I got all stiff and weird and awkward around you.
     I have felt guilty about it, but I still did not let it go.

                          Please forgive me,
                               please forgive me.
    

The second apology I want to make is harder.

Amy Oscar writes,
“Every time you catch yourself envying or competing with someone else’s success, remind yourself: this is guidance that I want what s/he has. Then, reach out.”

Amy,
     I have struggled with my feelings towards you since I first met you during Reverb10.
     Your work is so luminous and so similar to what I want for myself
          that I got very envious
          and sometimes (what felt to me as) blatantly rude to you.

But this post of yours, which I have been quoting from,
     has been a gift of recognition
          of gentleness
          of possibility.

Amy
     I am sorry for my envy
          my competitiveness
          my awkward stiff braggadocio.

          I would like to make amends
     and hope to start again
new possibilities of relationship with you.

                                      Please forgive me,
                                           please forgive me.
     

     I know there are greater sins in the world.
     I know that there are worse things I have done in my life.

But I also know both of these women are sensitive and perceptive enough
that I do not think they did not notice.

          And I also know I want to find my way to a deeper honesty
          a more real vulnerability

                 out here in this odd world of bytes and lights and shadows.

These relationships we form out here in the ether are real.
     They are powerful,
          they are substantial,

                      they are tangibly real.

Many of you have shown up in my dreams
these women I only know through Twitter and blogs

     yet your presence in my mind and my heart is strong enough
     that you inhabit my dreams just as much as the people who share my physical reality.

          This world is real.
          These relationships are real.

                             And so are my apologies
                                              necessarily
                                                            real.
    

The other reason why I wanted to make these apologies
     and make them publicly,

          is that I think especially for women
     this world has its trickeries and confusions.

     Occasionally people comment that it’s like high school
these friendships and alliances that dissolve and resolve and turn and return
          amidst @mentions and RTs
               it gets dizzying at times
                                      disorienting
                                                       blinding.

We women want to be nice.
We have been endlessly trained
                 to be nice.

We have never been trained
                to be real.

Out here in our corner of the blogosphere we do genuinely love and respect each other, I believe, on the whole.

But it gets confusing
     when we do not know how to be real

     and all we know how to do is exchange compliments
          for what is, in fact, genuinely and powerfully beautiful

          and we hide our confusions
               and our sometimes-real and sometimes-deserved distrust

               because we have no way to talk about
                    confusion                   ambivalence                   distrust.

Earlier this year Bridget Pilloud started a series of powerful posts
     importantly breaking taboos of niceness
     to say some strong things about necessary and deserved distrust.

I am not saying that either Julie or Amy deserved my distrust. This is important — I want to make it clear I do not think either Julie or Amy did anything to deserve my ill-feeling. This was me, not them.

But my efforts to give expression to my own awkwardness and ambivalence and confusion
     I hope breaks a similar taboo.

                          This strange and new world is what we’ve got.
                          It matters so deeply to so many of us

                                            and many of us make a living
                                            or hope to make a living
                                                  out here in this sustaining web.

           It is real.
                We are here.

Awkward, and ambivalent
     loving, and distrusting

we might as well make our peace with it

     we’re none of us going anywhere

                                               and that’s a very blessed thing.

              Thank you, Julie. Thank you, Amy.
              Your gifts have enriched my life
                                 even when I begrudged it.

              Thank you to all of my beloved friends here in this space
              I am so much stronger, so much richer
                                 because of you.

                                                           Thank you,
                                                                thank you.

]]> http://www.trustyourself.biz/apologies/feed/ 17 http://www.trustyourself.biz/a-story-of-a-story-part-1/ http://www.trustyourself.biz/a-story-of-a-story-part-1/#comments Wed, 29 Jun 2011 04:38:23 +0000 Karen http://www.trustyourself.biz/?p=1817 Continue reading →]]>
There’s a way of living in rhythm with the Sacred,
where all that goes on is a dance of meaning and relationship.

Where everything that happens, is all just the steps in the dance.

Where it’s not about good or bad

          “Should I worry?”

where it’s not about being okay or not okay

                             “is it going to be okay?”

where it’s not about a judgement about what will happen next

                                            “what does this mean?”

       but
              simply
                                      the gentle curious participation in the dance itself.

Meaning isn’t an assessment about what happens,
         meaning is the movement of unfolding happening.
   
                           Meaning is the movement of story itself.

Here’s what I mean.

             Here’s one pas-de-deux as it unfolded in my life.
   

the story

   

   
   
We have two hens, a tiny backyard flock. Charlotte and Scrappy are not brooders – they lay for us, delicious eggs, but they have never sat a clutch.
   

   

One of our neighbor’s hens began to hang around our yard too. A little white hen.    

 

The roosters come over sometimes, too, cruisin’ the girls. Young turks, strutting about. While our two hens gladly dallied with the roosters, a little slap and tickle, a little peck and flirt, they’ve been girlishly uninterested in tying the knot, slipping coquettishly away from the oh-so-boring task of brooding a clutch.

   

With Sam The Rooster, a gorgeous gray bird, she hatched a single white chick.

   
   
   

Our neighbor’s hens will bring to hatch 6 or 8 or sometimes more. I don’t know why all she could manage was one.

But she showered her attention on the little chickling, busily pecking and scraping our yard, showing it how to hunt for bugs.

Then one day we noticed her chick was gone. Sadly, little ones like that are tasty prey for predators. We never knew what got it, and our yard is not truly set up to be predator-proof, especially for chicks. We’d need to build a whole coop, covered in hardware cloth, rather than letting the girls simply free-range where they choose, and we have not done this.

The white hen decided to make her permanent home in our yard.
My husband and I never named her.

   
Our hens have little patience for this lonely hard-working girl. When she comes near their food, they rush at her, all self-important huff, and run her off. She contents herself with their leavings, consoled perhaps by the dreams of a family her tormenters don’t even know to yearn for.
      
   
The predator problem has another dimension. The neighbor’s dog has discovered how tasty home-grown chicken can be, and he has killed a number of birds, including both Sam T. Rooster and Young Turk.

To protect the girls from him, I doubled the livestock fence that surrounds our back yard with a layer of chicken wire.
   

Chickens are homebodies, they wouldn’t actually have any interest in leaving home for good, but they are curious birds, and before the chicken-killing dog had entered the scene, Charlotte and Scrappy had eagerly hopped through the chicken-sized mesh of the livestock fence to see what newer possibilities and juicier bugs might lie beyond.

   

But the doubled fencing has kept them in the yard, and kept the dog out. The roosters, more daring flyers than the hens, had braved the World Beyond The Fence and paid the price for it, but our hens have been safe. The fence has more-or-less kept the peace for months.

   

We noticed recently that the white hen had hatched another single chick. Some other rooster must have come a-callin’, flashin’ big promises. The chick was gray with an incipient little black mohawk. I hoped she’d be more successful at raising this little one, reward and recompense for her loneliness.

   

   
Then one day, nearing dusk, our girls were not around, and I noticed that the white hen, wise to an opportunity, had taken her chick into the hutch our girls usually sleep in.

   
   
   

Oho, I think, aware of the social confrontation to come, and look around for Charlotte and Scrappy.

Ah, it seems they have made a break for freedom, they have somehow gotten through the chicken wire, and are in front of our house where the neighbor’s dog can get to them.

I go out front, aware of the dog in sight, and try to persuade our hens to come home. They will have none of it, greener pastures are much more interesting than our backyard, even though it is nearing dusk and they should be wanting to come home to roost.

I know they are thoughtless and rash, and will peremptorially sell their grand plans for freedom short for a handful of chicken feed, but I’m reluctant to go in to get it while the dog is watching.

   

Suddenly from the back yard I hear loud agitated squawking and scrabbling against the hutch.
   
     Something bad is happening with the white hen.

   

I glance at the dog and run in, get the chicken feed and run back out.
Fortunately he has not attacked them in those few moments.

   
   
   

I lure our hens back into the backyard, and once they’re safe,
I go back to see what’s wrong with the white hen.
   

   
     There is a snake in the hutch
   
       …and I can see it has the chick in its mouth.

                                                                             Ohhh.

   
The mother hen is racing around the hutch from the outside, squawking and occasionally trying a run in at the snake.

This is one of the downsides of single-motherhood in the chicken world, because roosters do watch out for predators, and will attack in defense of their hens, but this poor ostracized hen has no one but herself,

     and she’s already lost this battle for her child.

   
But my eyes now are for the snake. In this circulating story of predator and prey, the terms suddenly shift because I am worried that this is a rattlesnake. It’s a little too shadowy inside the hutch for me to tell, but I do see it vibrate its tail-tip and I get scared for myself.

     

I run up to the back porch, well out of reach of the snake, and think what can I do. I am afraid to try to kill it, because it’s still in the hutch and I doubt I can get in there to successfully kill it without risking it biting me. I can close the door of the hutch from here, safely, from 6 feet away, using a long-handled garden cultivator, and maybe the snake will be too wide to get through the mesh of the door, and at least it’ll be trapped, and maybe we can kill it later.

   
   
   
   
   
   
But I’m also not sure what to do about the chickens, who will be instinctively wanting to roost in the hutch for the night, and I don’t want to let them in while the snake is there. As prey they are too large for the snake, but it still hardly seems a healthy idea.

     
   

  
   
   
   
    
   
   
   
  

   
And my heart is turning over for the sake of the poor distraught mother, still running around the hutch from the outside, still, hopelessly, trying too late, to save her chick.

So then I do what any self-respecting hen would do. I squawk to my rooster for help. I call my husband, who is still at work (and would be 30 minutes away, even if he were to leave at that moment), as if he could somehow make it all right.

   
While I’m on the phone with him, the snake suddenly appears out from the hutch, and takes off down-slope, away from the house, into the dusk. Ah, well, not trapped after all. I can see, also, that it’s not a rattlesnake. Its color is all wrong for a rattlesnake, it’s a light almost-yellowish brown; it’s thinner, longer and more tapered than a rattlesnake, and in my mind’s eye memory, I realize when I saw it vibrate its tail-end, it was just a thin-tapered tail, silent, with no rattle. And I have seen rattlesnakes before, I do know what they look and sound like. This is not a rattlesnake. And it’s gone, now, anyway.

I open the hutch door for the hens to roost for the night, and go inside to ask for help from a different authority, a less atavistic impulse than calling my husband for rescue; I google for pictures of the Texas Rat Snake. Yes, sure enough, that’s what it was, even down to it vibrating its tail, that’s also something rat snakes do. And rat snakes (also colloquially called chicken snakes) are good predators to have around, I know. They will not hurt people, and they will keep the rat population down. And I would much rather have a rat snake outside around the house anyway, than rats in my kitchen.

   

So.

There we have the story.

     stay tuned for part 2, the story about the story

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