Category Archives: Awareness

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Solitude and Community

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Steve and I have scheduled a Summit for today.  This is what we call our periodic “relationship discussions” where we aim our canoes and talk about where we’re headed and what we want.  I tend to have a deer-in-the-headlight kind of reaction to certain phrases that have been used in these intense forums simply because I get over-anxious about coming up with a “right answer”.  One of those phrases is “on the same page”.  I hate it when Steve uses that expression, and I have forbid it from future talks. It makes me freeze up. “What does that mean?  Do I have to think the same way as you?  Do I have to be you?  I don’t know how to do that!”  So he now describes what he’s after in a different way.  Another question that is beginning to have the freeze effect is “What do you want?”  I am dangerously close to over-thinking that one, too, and getting defensive.  “What do I want when?  Now?  5 years from now?  What do I want about what?  I don’t know what I want!”  It was really helpful when he put it to me this way: “We have a really great relationship.  But we can always do better.  What are some areas where you want us to do better or differently than what we’re doing now?”  Suddenly, I began to have thoughts and ideas where before I would just draw a blank.

The first area on my brainstorm list was community.  I want to do better in this area.  We are both nurturing our inner lives very conscientiously and intentionally, and I really like that.  I also want to work intentionally on community.  This morning, I received notice of a new post by thousandfoldecho.  The quote by Orhan Pamuk described the formation of a writer’s inner life so well.  The blog author then turned that question over to musicians and asked, “What do you think of the musician’s paradox of needing both solitude and community?”  I think this is probably any human’s paradox.  We all benefit from both.  The work of finding that balance in your own life is what keeps my partner and me coming back together for Summit meetings.

So how do you go about building community, finding and developing relationships where you can be your true, honest self?  I am more conscious of being myself in every encounter now that I’m focusing on that.  I used to just slip into roles very easily without a thought.  That was the actress in me.  It was a way of life that was smooth and slippery, easy to glide by.  I would be who people wanted me to be.  Now, I’m trying to allow myself to be…myself.  Even with the grocery clerk.  And my broker’s secretary.  And my voice students.  This is a no-brainer to many people, and they wouldn’t know how to do anything else.  I think I got into “acting” very young and had some early encouragement that kept me there.  My inner life was so different.  Writing is a way for me to really exercise that inner self, bring it out of hiding without costuming it for a certain audience.  One writer whom I really admire is Annie Dillard.  I just finished An American Childhood and even had a dream about meeting her.  I love how she writes about her inner life and becoming aware of others.  But I’ll save that for another post.  For today, I’ll leave you with this photo.  I think watching waves roll into shore is a good background for musing about solitude and community.  I invite you to share your thoughts on the subject, too!

Lake Michigan again

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About Last Night…

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I skipped posting a blog entry yesterday.  We left town at 10:15 in the morning and drove to Chicago for a matinee at the Lyric Opera.  Then we went out to dinner with my newly legal daughter and didn’t return home until midnight.  That is my official factual excuse and reads kind of like the ones my mother used to write to my teachers in elementary school.  “Please excuse Priscilla’s absence from school yesterday.  She had stomach flu.”  The end.  Oh, but last night was wonderful.  I was aware of so much, and now I’m just not sure what to share, where to start, which story to begin.  If I had brought a camera with me, I might just present a series of abstracts and let you fill in the rest.  I didn’t bring a camera; I brought myself.  The data is in me, the images, the sensations, the concepts.  I am full and perhaps trying to stay that way.  If I leak a bit of the experience, will I lose it somehow?  If I try to distill the essence of the evening, will I vaporize much of what I so enjoyed?  Am I allowed to carry my life around like a secret?  Of course, I’m allowed.  The real question is, do I want to?  Why post and share and write and tell?  I sometimes hover between bursting like a pinata and hording like a dragon.  What do you do with the precious value of living?

Smile.  I’ll start with that.

Driving the Interstate with Steve, holding hands and laughing to Garrison Keillor’s radio broadcast “A Prairie Home Companion”.  Finding an alternate route on two-lane highways through the fields when we found the Interstate was closed in one section.  Settling in the upper balcony under a golden ceiling to listen to the virtuosity of a live performance of Baroque music.  Closing my eyes to the modern staging of Handel’s “Rinaldo” and imagining powdered wigs and candlelight.  Imagining what it would feel like to have those glorious high notes, trills, and runs burble out from my own mouth.  Watching my daughter talk about her life, noting her gestures, her warmth, her composure, marveling at her maturity.  Tasting truffle oil, mushrooms, garlic, Sangiovese, gnocchi, gelato – savoring and exclaiming pleasurably to one another in mid sentence.  Talking to the hostess about her Italian family, the recipes, the home country, the history.  Speaking words of love and support and appreciation to my daughter, noticing the shape of the space between us.  Riding home in the dark, so sleepy, so content.

“We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures.”
― Thornton Wilder

photo from the restaurant's website

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Too Wise

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YY UR YY UB ICUR YY 4 ME

Too wise you are, too wise you be; I see you are too wise for me.

Last night we had what the weather report called “Wintry Mix”.  It sounds like it should be a seasonal snack, perhaps cranberries, nuts, and chocolate, but it’s actually freezing rain and snow.  This morning, the sun was shining, the clouds had disappeared, and the light was dazzling.  I feel like anything that happens today is going to be amazing.  Which is a great way to feel going into a job interview.  I had an appointment to meet a brand new mom who is looking for help.  I sat across from her at the coffee shop looking into a young and exhausted face and remembered what it was like to be in that transition.  The anxiety, the lack of sleep, the hunger, the bewilderment, the change of pace, the suspension of norms, and the hope and excitement that this may actually be the greatest thing you can do with your life right now…which you too often forget.  I was ten years younger than she is when I was going through that transition.  I am now seventeen years older than she is.  I have no resume, I just have my experience, the wisdom and calm that has settled into the lines on my face and the rhythm of my breath and the desire to share that peace where I can.  Maybe this is a person who will find that useful.

Tomorrow I go to the opera and visit my baby in the big city.  I get to treat her to a birthday dinner and buy her a drink legally.  And maybe next week I’ll get to hold a newborn to my chest.  Life is precious.  I am grateful to be here.

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Situational Assessment

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Is life a problem to be solved?

I was raised by a very well educated mother who called herself a “domestic engineer” during the 70s when “housewife” was out of vogue and her peers were going out into the marketplace to get paying jobs.  She is a problem-solver, and very good at it.  She can load a dishwasher more efficiently than anyone I know.  She used to draw up construction plans for my house showing ways to add another bedroom or maximize my kitchen space.  She is a very useful person to have in your corner, provided you know what you want and what you consider a problem.   Sometimes her energy would confuse me.  Does my kitchen need to be remodeled?  It wasn’t something I’d considered.

My kids are in their 20s now.  They are making big assessments and decisions about their lives.   Grad school? Marriage? Property? Career?  The problem-solver in me wants to step in and draw up a plan for them.  My wiser self steps back and urges them to draw up their own plans.  My even more philosophical self steps back and says, “Why is this a problem to be solved?”  The only way to answer that question is to know what you want.

I’ll use the photo above as an example.  Some people would take a look at it and think that certain things have to be done.  The bank needs to be shored up and supported, perhaps by concrete, so that the steps can continue.  Some others might say that the steps need to be removed and ground cover planted to prevent erosion.  Some others might say that a more effective barrier should be erected to prevent people from falling off the edge.  And some would say, “Just let it be.”   There’s a stream cutting through here, heading out to Lake Michigan.  People want to get down to the beach from the top of the hill.  Those are the situations.  What do I want?  What is my responsibility?

I want to take photographs.  I want to get down to the beach, but I’m already on the other side of the stream where I’ve found steps going all the way down.  I like this situation the way it is.  To me, it is not a problem to be solved; it is a photo opportunity, a place to be enjoyed.  If there was a two year old who was coming down those steps, it’d be a different story.  But that’s not the situation here, so I don’t have to worry about that, even though I can imagine reasons to worry.  I think I probably do too much of that.

So, kids, when you’re thinking about grad school, marriage, property, career and feeling overwhelmed, ask yourself, “What do I really want?  What responsibility do I want to take on?”  Think of how you want to live life, not just how you will solve problems.   Follow your bliss.  The decisions you make are the threads in the fabric of your life, they will give it texture and variation and interest.  Enjoy creating your very own!

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Be Still and Know

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A gray morning.  I woke up too early, stumbled through breakfast in a fog, rinsed the dishes then lay back down in bed to “hit the reset button”.  I closed my eyes and thought of Lake Michigan.  My grandmother owned a cottage on the lake.  My childhood summers included a few weeks there each year.  My favorite thing about that time was that much of it was unstructured.  I could wake up, pull on a sweatshirt, walk barefoot out on the cement porch, let the screen door thwack closed behind me, and be on the beach without a backward glance.  Alone on a stretch of sand with the water as still as a bathtub, I could see “sand waves” under the surface and shiny stones just resting there in patient silence.  I wanted to be like one of those stones this morning.  Still and ancient, reflective.

photo credit: Gael Kurath, U.S. Geological Survey

I thought of a phrase this morning, as I realized what day it was.  “March first, ask questions later.”  That is not the way I want to live.

Breathe.  Be still.  Be quiet.  Settle like a beach stone.  Reflect.  Listen to the birds.

How do you post silence?  How do you publish peace?  How can I share the feeling of vastness that sweeps over me when I look at a calm horizon?  If you’ve ever stood in the early light and heard the rushing of your own heartbeat in your ears, you know.

You know and understand.

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Because of Love

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“In this vision he showed me a little thing, the size of a hazelnut, and it
was round as a ball. I looked at it with the eye of my understanding and
thought “What may this be?” And it was generally answered thus: “It is all that is
made.” I marveled how it might last, for it seemed it might suddenly have
sunk into nothing because of its littleness. And I was answered in my
understanding: “It lasts and ever shall, because God loves it.”

— Julian of Norwich

Why does evolution continue?  Why does the universe expand?  Why does the sun appear on the horizon every morning?  Why am I here?

Who do I thank?

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It’s All How You Look At It

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Stan Freeburg’s comedy musical “The United States of America” contains a line where a Native American remarks to Christopher Columbus that they discovered the white man.  “Whaddya mean you discovered us?”  “We discover you on beach here…is all how you look at it.”  “Y’I suppose…I never thought of it that way,” Chris replies.

Dualistic thinking, good/bad, right/wrong, is all about thinking, as my sister pointed out in a comment.  It’s not about the actual thing in front of us.  So it seems that often all we learn about the world is about how we are thinking about or perceiving it.  Art and artists play around with this quite a bit, of course.  And then philosophers ask, “What is real?”

Who knows.

Do we choose to look at things in a way that gives us pleasure of some kind, even perverse pleasure?  Sure.  I think we photographers get to do this now more than ever with all the tweaking technology allows.  We get to illustrate the story going on inside our skulls.  Here’s an example.

Sample inner monologue: “Rural life is a thing of the past.  Flat, washed out, joyless and crumbling.  There is no life left in the earth by now.  Life is in the cities.  It’s time we bulldozed these ruins and built something we can inhabit.”

Of course, you could be having a completely different monologue in your brain with this image.  Go ahead, share it with us!  Here’s another:

Sample thought: “Ah, the good old days!  Blue skies, wood, stone, a farm.  Life was simpler; it meant something back then to work hard on the land.  All you need is within reach – your livelihood, your family, your pleasure.  Who could ask for anything more?”  Another:

Sample thoughts: “The world is an interesting juxtaposition of contrasting elements – texture, color, shape, pattern, organic and inorganic.  There’s no making sense of it.  The dynamic of life is about the tension and release we experience through our senses every day.  Nothing more.  I need a cigarette!”

There’s no right and wrong in this little exercise.  “Is all how you look at it!”  Please, have a go!  Amuse me!

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Half Way

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It occurs to me that I have reached the half way mark in my 50th year blogging project.  This is post #183; I’ve missed two days along the line somewhere, and I may yet miss another, so I probably won’t end up with a perfect 366 by August 20, but I’m calling today the half way point.  Whoo-hoo!  Time to check back on my original intent:

“So this blog is dubbed scillagrace to symbolize ancient elegance of manner, action, form, motion and moral strength.  It is my goal to post entries worthy of the name.  It is my goal to avoid being dogmatic and prissy.  I want to challenge myself to go deeper into subjects that explore the ancient grace of life.   It is a lot of name and a lot of subject, to be sure.  We’ll see how it goes.”

I have also realized that in the adventure of exploring the ancient grace of life, encounters with others are pivotal.  The challenge to go deeper is often voiced not by myself but by those whom I encounter.  The elegance of the dance is significantly effected by those who come alongside to partner me.  So I want to express my deep appreciation for all those who have participated in shaping this blog by liking it and leaving a signature that led me to meet them or commenting and entering into the dance directly.  I appreciate those who were strangers to me and those whom I’ve known in person for some time.   I have truly enjoyed, benefited, woken up, reeled, puzzled, thrilled, anguished, and grown here!  Thank you, one and all.

My gift to y’all today is to share the elegance of the world to which I woke this morning.  My little corner of the globe draped in February’s glory: snow.

Have a grace-filled day, all!

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What’s Important?

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When I hung around with evangelical Christians, I would frequently hear this phrase: “be in right relationship with”.  That was a core value in life.   I agreed then, and I still agree in some ways.  I very much resonate with the value of relationships.  I am “a lover” by temperament, so to speak, and being engaged with the universe is supremely important to me.  I also have a huge desire to be “right”, but that is exactly the thing I’m now trying to dismantle.  I was a compliant kid.  I was afraid of my father and of all authority.  I wanted to be “good” and “correct” because I wanted to be praised instead of punished!  Now, I find that being “right” is not all that great of a goal.  First of all, it can lead you to be self-righteous and judgmental.  Second, how do you even know what is “right”?  Is it “right” to do everything an authority tells you to?  What if that authority tells you to harm someone else?  See, it gets tricky.  How about if I just say that I want to have a good relationship with everything?  I think that covers it pretty well.

One relationship that I am really working to improve is my relationship with God and Christianity.  It has gone through a huge change in the last few years, one that has many of my friends scratching their heads.  Some of them are downright disappointed in the change and have told me so.  Some have just stopped communicating with me.  I am most in awe of those who are openly listening, talking, challenging, and engaging with me as I rework my theology and practice.  Yesterday was Ash Wednesday.  Instead of going to Church, getting ashes imposed on my forehead, and beginning a 40-day penitential practice (which is an indication of how I participated in that relationship for 47 years), Steve & I finished reading T.S. Eliot’s poem named for the day and discussed post-modern cynicism.  Despite Eliot’s conversion, he doesn’t seem very enthusiastic about life.  This morning, we had breakfast with his Aunt and talked about her church experiences with fasting and confession and Bible study.  Today, I got another e-mail from an old friend who is willing to discuss my journey and walk with me in it.  I’ve known this person since I was about 12 and she was 17.  Replying to her became my top writing priority for the day.  So, I’ve decided to use that material for my post today.  First, a photo or two to open the mind:

What is the value of a sparrow?

A cardinal far from the Vatican

My thoughts for today:

I feel like I have a continual discourse going on in my brain about my relationship with Jesus and the Church.  On any given day, other people enter that conversation and keep it going.  At breakfast, it was Steve & his Aunt Rosie.  As we walked to the library, it was just Steve.  Now you’ve entered the discussion.  Welcome!  Come, have a place on the panel!
The Church.  So much of it is about the social aspect.  Sometimes it acts like a group of people who are all friendly, who share affinities, who enjoy being together and taking care of each other.  Seems there’s nothing wrong with that, but I’m sure that’s not all Jesus meant the Church to be.  What happens when that group disbands, moves away or dies off?  Kind of like your Presbyterian congregation.  Or what happens when that group gets visited by people whom they don’t care for?  People of a different kind who don’t fit into their social circle?  How do they behave?  Is that what Christianity is about?  There is so much intolerance, so much judgment, so much exclusion, that it just seems to represent the worst of society as well.
Theology & Philosophy.  The Church getting down to what it actually believes about the universe.  And why.  I was taught by my Episcopal parents that there are 3 legs on the stool supporting what they believe: Scripture, Tradition and Reason.  My dad held up the Reason leg when he talked about Science. In the face of overwhelming evidence about evolution, for example, there’s no need to dismiss it.  It can be worked in with the other legs.  Scripture is about the story of human life, the salvation story, the emotional story, the behavioral story.  But it’s still a story, a Myth.  It is about Truth, but it isn’t literally true.  I don’t think it’s “true” that we are all sinners, or that we are all fundamentally separate from each other.  If you look at the biological universe, we are all very much interconnected.  I don’t know if there’s any evidence to prove that a historical Jesus even existed, much less that he was resurrected from the dead and will come again.  I still love Jesus’ teaching, whether he’s fiction or fact.  I love how he goes straight to the religious teachers of the day and preaches in their faces about how they have undermined values like compassion, inclusion, humility, spirituality, and forgiveness.  I think if it were possible for him to reappear in the US today, he would go straight to the Conservative Republican Christian Right and do the same thing!  Tradition seems to be aimed at behavior, how we live together.  The thing that is so tricky about behavior is that it needs to change, it needs to be responsive and responsible.  Most people think that Tradition is about keeping things the same.  I think that keeping core values is a good thing, but the way they are expressed should be flexible.
The thing I miss most about The Church is choir!  Singing!  And I have always loved Gospel more than classical, deep down.  Yesterday, Steve put on a new CD; I immediately recognized Odetta’s guitar and voice and purred with delight.  He laughed and said, “Priscilla wants to be a big, black woman!”  It’s so true!  I love the soul, the familiarity with humanity and suffering and the confidence.  I don’t want to be brainwashed or shamed or coerced by guilt.  I want to be free and respected for what I am.  And what am I?  A white Anglo, in part. But I am partly a big, black woman as well because we are all connected here on earth.
Anyway, that’s where the dialogue has me today.  I want to tell you again how much I appreciate you taking the time to engage with me in this part of my journey.  It means a lot.  I really get turned off by the tendency, especially in politics, for people to circle the wagons or form a fortress from which to sling rhetoric while refusing to actually come out peacefully and discuss something.  You know what I mean?  And the media just makes the whole situation worse, little Tweets & comments here and there but no real engagement.  Thanks for being willing to be real, to put your story and your thoughts and your experiences in writing and listen to mine as well.  I respect you for that.  I think that’s how Jesus was, too.  I think of the stories in the Gospel of John especially, of conversations with Samaritans, women, disciples, beggars, and Pharisees.  He didn’t just knock off a sound bite for the media and move on.  And as much as anyone stayed to hear more, he kept interacting.  What a great example!

 

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Process, Procedure, Product, and Practice OR Fail Before You Bail

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I’m in the midst of a baking day.  Steve’s Aunt asked me to bake two different kinds of cookies to mail to her nephew out of state.  I was happy to participate in producing a care package.  I like caring, even if I don’t know the person.  The first recipe was written out on an index card with rather sketchy instructions.  For instance, nowhere did it suggest how long to cook them!  These are rolled and filled cookies.  I’ve never attempted anything like that before in my life, nor have I witnessed anyone else’s attempt, nor had I seen a representation of the final product.   But for some reason, I decided to plow ahead and do my best using my intuition.  Only after they were out of the oven did I look around online for images.  I wasn’t too far off, I guess, but I know I’d make some changes next time.   “But what have you learned, Dorothy?”

Edible, I suppose

I’ve learned that this kind of thing teaches me a lot about myself.  There was one point in the procedure when my brain did actually shoot off an almost audible “F*** this!” and I felt like quitting.   I have a perfectionist streak in me that easily loses patience.  I suppose that things should go smoothly if I’m doing them right.  When things stop going smoothly, I’m in danger of failing, and this is where the perfectionist wants to bail.  I often go to this conclusion even before I’ve begun a job.  I see this tendency dangling from various branches  in my family tree.  But I figure that if I continue to live this way, I am going to eliminate a lot of experiences prematurely and end up not doing much with the time I have left.   So I might as well just roll up my sleeves and dive in.

I think we live in a culture of “professionalism” and “experts” that contributes to this kind of self-elimination.  How often are we told that we can’t do something because we’re not qualified, we don’t have the skills, we don’t have the right background, or we don’t have the resources and we simply give up on the idea?  Only a charlatan would continue to try to do something he hasn’t been trained for!  But how do you get experience?  By trying something you’ve never done!  We get caught in the Catch-22 all the time, beginning as children, probably now more than ever.  If you haven’t had the 2-yr-old class on foreign languages, you’re not going to get into the right pre-school, and if you don’t get into the right pre-school…(usw)…you won’t get into Harvard!  Gone are the days when a self-taught person could go from a log cabin to the White House.   Now we think we’re not qualified to make improvements in our lives, in our communities, in our government, in our international relations, and we can’t solve global problems.   Well, maybe we actually can but we’ve eliminated the possibility prematurely because the feeling that things aren’t going smoothly is tempting us to bail before we fail.   If you’re going to bail, why not fail first so that you have an experience to learn from?  Or why not fail frequently and refuse to bail?

My kids are in their 20s now.  I hope they have the courage to fail many times.  I hope they don’t bail before they try something that interests them.  I hope I still have some of that left in my future as well.