Turns Out

In Loving Memory of Zoe Mabel Palmer

November 7, 2013 - March 30, 2014

It is a gift to be able to return for some embodied perspective as I write this final post- to sit at the table where I sat down exactly nine months ago today, after I walked away from my apartment for the last time and started my sabbatical.

I rushed in and out of this café for a coffee & croissant hundreds of times on my way to work. I strolled here on Saturdays for a mocha and apple turnover, while Mishkami made friends on the porch.

I expected to feel nostalgic, but it is more like that song – now you’re just a café that I used to know. This neighbourhood was a perfect place for some recovery when I first came out of the North, but I’m so grateful that I left when I did, ecstatic this is not where I will be tomorrow.

The occasion is sobered greatly by the recent death of little Zoe, the beloved daughter of my friends Lise & Dave, whose wedding I had the honour of serving as celebrant at last summer. Zoe was born prematurely and in the end her heart and lungs were not able to sustain her. During her life she was able to grow many pounds, and I have heard that she had already begun to hold her head up and make eye contact with her favourite people.

I’ve also heard accounts of Zoe’s fighter-spirit, how she would make grumpy sounds and disrupt procedures she didn’t like. And also how she made sounds of drunken pleasure when she had milk by mouth and was an insatiable cuddler. I was so moved to learn that in her last couple of weeks Zoe’s family came in from afar and worked in shifts to ensure she was constantly held. I will forever hold the memory of this little spirit and all my heart goes to her parents’ who are suffering an incomprehensible loss.

It seems almost like everything should stop. Like traffic and pedestrians should stand still and mourn together, a baby has died. I think I shouldn’t even write. What difference does my journey make, while such devastation is occurring in my friends’ house?

…

..

.

A feeling that I’ve been nurturing on this sabbatical is now unignorably before my eyes – the preciousness of life, and the primacy of love. I am reminded how all else is distraction, irrelevant in the final answer to what does it all mean?.

I stop in the sun reaching to me between the buildings,

I stand still and open my coat to inhale the light.

I hear protons whispering through the windows of my skin –

how we are dignified, each of us, by the very improbability of our existence.

I feel the light of my own spirit open to meet this sunbath;
I stand a little taller.

Whether by design or random chains of occurrence I am buoyed to feel

the royalty of being a creature of the earth.

Exhaling, I relax downwards a little, give myself to the counter-
gravity of the earth

and to the One, that unnameable song to which all the stardust dances.

My body remembers with loving acceptance, that these are the forces to which I will return, in my eventual decomposition,

back into the fabric that weaves everything seen and unseen around me –

the bricks behind me, the light upon me, the dirt below me, the apple in my hand, the bird hovering above, the child passing by.

***

So as I close this chapter of my own book, I must report that it turns out I wasn’t on a sabbatical after all... I’ve come to realize that the sabbatical was a transitional concept I needed to move towards a life that was more ‘me’. I see now that the container of ‘being on a sabbatical’ gave me permission to devote to the trainings, practices, beliefs and intimacies I had been struggling to prioritize. Having a word for it helped me to make sense of a risky and unconventional way of going through the world.

But the final step, it turns out, is to outgrow this holding. Speaking with my friend Lynnea who is an amazing life coach I realized that I had locked myself into the implication that ‘afterwards’ I would go back to my ‘normal’ life. It’s like I keep finding myself in jails I didn’t realize I was in.

I’m moving ahead today, unsure exactly what this new life will look like. But then again any surety is simply illusion in this world n’est pas? I hope I can make my way as a freelance consultant, organizer, facilitator, creatif. I know it is risky to commit to this kind of life with neither savings nor a specific plan. But I’ve also learned in the last nine months about how little I actually need, how to trade my way, how to listen to my heart and trust the process. And when all that fails, I will remain heartened by the end of Robert Frost’s famous poem.

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I –

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

Certainly the sabbatical did give me a period of time that was more introspective, and I will continue to hold one eye towards this inner gaze. I aspire to give thanks for each breath as it comes and goes from my body, even as I move through the world.

But I also feel a re-emergence into the world. I am refilled with energy and hungry to live out the calling(s) of my life. I’ve recently finished reading “The Great Work of Your Life”. It’s about finding your own dharma (truth / calling / divine gift). I was moved by this passage near the end, it felt like it was speaking exactly to this transition:

The yogi’s chief concern is with the art of living, systematically cultivating energy and health. More than anything [s]he is concerned with living an optimal life…But for the yogi, this concern comes with a proviso: Optimal health and well being are not for their own sake, but rather to be used in the service of others.

(Cope, p240)

Though part of me is still awaiting and inviting a clear calling. Like Jeanne D’Arc hearing the voice of God “You will cast the English out of France!” and so she went fiercely unstoppable, a courageous leader, completely assured and clear in her purpose. Until such time, I will keep exploring, creating and moving in the direction that feels right. I noticed that most of the exemplars of dharma-fulfilled lives in Cope’s book actually followed a series of smaller callings. Often it’s only looking back , even after death, that the pattern of the life snaps into a clear statement. As Lynnea had been coaching me - maybe don’t start with “What’s my life calling?!” but “What’s my calling right now?”

I hope to get into the habit of being in dialogue with the spirit of guidance, to follow the breadcrumb trail of my dharma wherever it leads and trust the process. However, my callings seem to come not as directions but as wonderings - How do we all learn to get along? What prevents us from getting on with enjoying the trials and miracle of life together? By what means do we create heaven on earth? But I will need to find some concrete and focused actions, to use my skills, a friend offered to help me make a website for myself…

This blog has been a scrapbook of my inner experience during this nine-month experiment. I told myself even if no one ever read a line, it was the practice of putting my voice out there, and documenting the journey that mattered. I was so surprised that people took time out of there own busy lives to read me, and so moved by all the comments and emails I received.

Thank you so much to all of those who’ve read this, for hearing me and loving me.

Thank you to all the confidants who have helped to guide me along.

Thank you for your notes of insight and encouragement that helped me feel not completely bizarre.

Thanks to my family for seeing me as I am.

Thank you Frankie for being my editor and the nesting place for this nomad’s heart.

& Thank you, thank you to the Great One-ness, for this life.

~sab

Montreal, QC

Impasse

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood…

~Robert Frost

Thirty days left on my sabbatical and I find myself at an impasse - a stand off with the various futures of myself.  Here in the North Carolina countryside, at most crossroads you will find that the way is very helpfully named after the towns at either end. To get to the nearest grocery store, we go down to Siler City - Snow Camp road and turn right. I wish the choices I face within had such handy labels. It has definitely come time to make some kind of decision. What will I do next?

Certainly one way ahead is a road more traveled. I am good at managing community projects, I can manage grants and write reports, and network well. I could continue to climb the non-profit ladder, doing righteous work and procuring enough money for organic food and vacations to reclaim my Irish and Italian heritage. That seems a very good life.

But these last nine months I have climbed out of some boxes that held me. It took months for my conditioned stress and managerial responses to dissipate. I realized it was bad when I caught myself admonishing Frankie that we were an hour behind schedule to head into town for errands one day. Seriously? Does this really matter? I wondered… What is this really about?

I realized it wasn't actually about anything, rather a habit of my urban working life. It’s hard to imagine putting myself back into the lifestyle that led to that mindset again. Feels like putting my body back into a machine that I know will eat me slowly, but to be fair it would feed me well all the while.

Over the months I have emerged into a whole new territory of life. Everything is uncertain, financially risky and yet I feel quite alive and stronger than ever. The old fears and worries remain with me, but there is also a shy new courage.  But for what exactly? I don’t even know what this other way looks like exactly, I’ve wandered down it and back a bit, but it is too wildly overgrown to see far ahead. I am emboldened, however, to notice that the chickadees keep heading that way.

You will end up alone, disillusioned, broke and there will be no coming back.

They will burn the bridges behind you.

This is the nature of my impasse. Fear and pre-emptive nostalgia for what will be lost if I go one way and not the other.

Synchronicity is one of the gifts that seems to emerge as I open my heart to the universe, in lieu of detailed and well managed plans. A couple weeks ago, for example, at the Shalom leadership training I was given a teaching about impasse. I was already coming to my impasse as March 1^st loomed, beginning the final countdown - thirty days left on this sabbatical.  The pressure and stuckness were with me, but I hadn’t named my situation clearly. Impasse. What a difference it makes - a thing rightly named.

We see it almost every time in the healing work. That moment when something stops the journeyer, pulls us back. We become still, a deep contemplation comes over us – not of the mind, but of the body and heart. It is the place where we hit the edge of who we know ourselves to be, yet feel torn, hearing a faint call, some lost fragment of ourselves beckoning us further.

Do I really go there? Shall I expose this wound to your, my attention? Will it be worth it? It is too painful. I feel as though I might die.

In these moments, our teacher said, it is important not to push, not to let your own excitement or impatience make the decision for them. Name the impasse, give it the time and space it needs.

I’ve seen people living way outside the box, in my travels. I passed through and felt a mixture of desire and judgment, longing and confounded sensibility – How do they make this work?! Impasse.

I admonish myself, it is a privilege even to stand in this question. I fit decently well into the boxes of society. I’m white and middle class. My body is able and matches my gender. I’ve been to university. No mouths depend on me. I should go on, settle down, use will to discipline this wanderlust. Do something my family can understand and respect. Go find a full time job with benefits and a pension plan. Stop moving around so much. Build a wealth that I could share. Buy a house, think of my retirement years so that I do not end up a burden to someone else.

But here is a buried faith emerging, that I'm meant for a different life. Deeper than the choices of where to live and what to do, is the Who am I?

My sister gave me a book that I’ve been devouring this week – a modern reflection on the Bhagavad Gita . Krishna’s teaching is paraphrased - encouragement to find and live by our own dharma, in the truth of our self that goes beyond our self, the divine gift that is our own unique calling. Apparently it should be right under my nose.

So here I will stand, sniffing the air in all directions and ruminating like the cows just over the fence from where I write. I’ll try coaching, structured decision making, counseling, visioning, journaling, reading more about personal dharma, contemplating and praying.

Prayers like,

Great Spirit, I feel as though my whole life has brought me to be standing here today at this impasse, help me to see the proper next step in my journeying.

Amen.

With love to you on your journey,

~ sab

Frankie’s farm, North Carolina

Past the Point of No Return

Here is a deviation from form. Seven months into my sabbatical, big changes astir – but the this new self is a shifting tapestry, dancing on the horizon, blurred by the rising sun… let me try to share from within this dazed vision.

I swear I tried, for what I imagined to be your sake, to contort myself into some sensible pattern – an essay, a poem, a rant... but something has unlocked inside and at this moment I shant apologize for nonsensibility.

befitting this inner state I will offer some sort of stream of consciousness highlights travel log with lots of missing parts. Lots of  ‘…’  

the chickadees have escaped and are dancing wildly in many directions, circling back suddenly at odd angles… the order has lost rhythm,

I am unfrozen and not yet reformed enough to speak clearly,

still lots wants to come out and meet you!

…opening of the spaces between things, the not quite sure how this ends, the wait and see what emerges in the next moment, a profound relaxation of bounds, I am learning to surrender into the flow that has taken me…

I feel quite separate from ‘real life’ these days. But then again,

the deeper I go,

I seem to be meeting people more truly.

Encounters are

 brief , but

cut

right to the heart  

remembering,

what matter is here

our lives

&

love.

That’s where I left you last, with the desire to love better… at Shalom, working inside the notion that one can learn how to do that-how to practice better loving.

In the January training this meant the return of

“No.”

“I changed my mind.”

To my inner child… lessons and ceremony to resurrect my self protective instincts. Helped me see why I’ve continued to make myself prey…next day I wake up with a new whisper bouncing around my head “I’m precious and worth protecting”.

Then 10 days at the Abode for Sufi teachings. Some days I wanted to scratch out of my own skin, to run … sitting still, staying silent, on the edge of sleep... mind slipping into oblivion, losing hold. Other days holding on too tight, awake, assaulted by alpha waves I can’t break under...

How to float in the middle?

How to receive the teachings there where they hover at the threshold between waking life and the dream world?…

Then it happened one morning.

I was entranced.

Vividly conscious and focused on the transmission,

yet absorbing it from far within, the room itself vague and distant.

I’m not exactly clear what he is saying, but suddenly I feel the slipping away of something covering the front me, inside…

as if there was a second skin just inside the front of my body…

thin and flexible, but energetic and strong.  like a sheet, or…

is there a veil in me falling?

Yes falling towards my feet there is a moment of wanting to clutch at it, 

but so moved by the Pir’s open and speaking heart I breathe carefully, fully, 

I trust, and let it fall.

My whole being becomes vulnerable, 

body is quivering, 

I am a giant exposed organ…

 a heart. with tears in my eyes, 

I am a fountain weeping at the beauty of being.

A new sense of grace and god entered there and spontaneous prayers have begun to show up in my daily life as I learn to be unveiled and talk directly to the one(ness).

Prayers like

 “Oh Wow!”

“Please, guide me”

“Yes universe, yes!”

“Thank You!”

In a light snow fall I am driven from weeks of cloistered temple spaces to the train. Peaceful landscapes covered in fresh powder – I am sitting still and watching heaven roll by me for hours. The shift sneaks up on me as the sun sets and we approach Toronto. I am getting cranky and contracted. Suddenly it is dark and I am struck by the site of a Red Lobster the size of a small mountain - parking lot is full! Full!.. other big boxes, the 401 highway – rigs and cars, dizzy me the lights zooming too fast for feeling. My breathing quickens, the veils return but it is heavy and hard like concrete…

Serendipitously timed, the next day I am invited into a gathering of playback practitioners from Ottawa, Montreal and Toronto. We meet in a Cedar room with windows into the sky, I forget Toronto is outside. Stories, play, people working hard in the world to listen to each other, crossing cultures, genders, sexualities and life stages… I am reopened somewhat.

Then for weeks I move from home to home, city to city - Montreal, Hamilton, Buffalo, Chicago, Boston, Granby. I try to stay as open as I can. I come with the time to listen and the desire to practice love - I touch into, I witness, I see the deepest issues of the heart – the struggle to parent a premature child, fleeing an abusive partner, how to reclaim a life, how to say I’m sorry, negotiating a divorce, advocating for an aging parent’s care, addictions… Wow. I feel like I’m wading through the most real of real life, even though my current path is out of the bounds of supposedly normal life.

I got to shack up in a fancy hotel room with Tionda while I did a small gig at a conference. Long lost best friends with just a few days to soak each other up. Work I believe in, helping teachers access resources to teach the missing histories of Aboriginal peoples in Canada. And now I can afford to keep going on my journey. Prayers of thanks.

I got to dress up in my new unicorn underwear and give a speech at the Flying Beaver Pub - about how I ripped Gab out of the closet ten years ago. People are laughing and I love touching the microphone and carrying it down off the stage to be close with the people. 

 When it’s over I bond with a burlesque performer – we tell each other “I love you!” and she gives me some tips for burlesque – “Number one is just do everything slowly. Like if you’re taking your glasses off, that can be totally sexy if you just slow it right down.” I decide I need more stage in my life. Yes universe, yes!

I got to see a river curving widely through a city, Chicago – who knew it was so beautiful?! Inside a glass building I hear a lecture on how Walt Whitman conceived of ‘bodies’. Wow God. I find myself at tables with artists, performers, writers, I touch into communities that care. It makes me hungry for a place.

Back at shalom a few days ago and this time it is my woman self claiming her ‘no’,

“Fuck you”.

“Fuck you”.

“Fuck you”.

 a paradigm shift from violence to consent is afoot, from submission to surrender, from tantrums of resistance to boundaries that paradoxically bring me closer to the ones I love.

Whether it is my heart’s unveiling by Pir Zia’s words,

 or the reclamation of my little girl’s ‘No’, and my ferocious Fuck You,

or the heart-glow of all these friends receiving me, 

somehow my tolerance for intimacy has dramatically increased…

What a miracle

 to say what I think and feel,

share my interior world as best as I can and feel lovingly heard and seen…

following the threads of mine and others’ souls,

drawing them out of each other’s mouths and bodies,

stitching ourselves and the torn blanket of humanity back together.

I see healing, connection, intimacy, realness.

We look in each others’ eyes and feel the touching inside.

It gives me a rush.

Dancing in the front yard of Eros' castle.

...With less than two months now til the clock strikes done on this sabbatical, I notice my psyche begin to turn towards life afterwards… to a more stable situation, a room of my own, a bed, a dresser, a spice rack, a house, my bike, a community of place. Ambitions to join things and convene things…

preemptive sorrow - that walls and routine will replace this movement

fear too - of being fed back to the machine of modern society, that I will be overwhelmed rejoining the ranks of all the people breaking themselves against the world, suffering and exhausted.

and Hope -  beginning to dream of a middle way...

I got to land into the familiarity and rambunctious warmth of Natalie & George’s family home last week.  discussions about attachment parenting and unschooling, I realize that my sabbatical has largely been about attachment reparenting with god and unschooling myself. After I dump the content and reflections of the past month all over Natalie’s fully attentive body she reflects that a year ago I wouldn’t have said all this out loud. Then she sums my life state up for me simply,

“It’s like you’re past the point of no return.”

“Yes! That’s it!” I cry.

That’s it.

Fly Cry Love

Fly

After the quietude of Frankie’s farm, the month of December tossed me around like the ball in a game of piggy in the middle played by several hurricanes. I’ve been stuck in at least three towns due to weather, barely escaped two major storms and somewhere along the way vowed never to fly again if a train can take me there within a day’s trip.

In the first case, just a few hours after leaving Frankie in NC, I was stuck in the Dulles airport in Washington, DC. I was supposed to make a quick transfer there, but instead was trapped for twelve hours first sitting on tarmac, then in a fast-food, neon-light, recirculating-air, overly packed with grumpy people hell. I realized then that I left my computer cord in NC, and without a cell phone this left me feeling very suddenly alone in the big bad world. I’m used to a lot of independent travel, but something seems to have changed. I feel done with isolation, ready for community and caring, ready to lean into others when things go awry.

In the middle of it all Mandela’s death was announced and I stood in a mix of mournfulness and celebration of his life under a TV for a while. In the midst of my bourgeois suffering breakdown a reminder about his life story gave me the perspective to pull myself together somewhat.

Cry

I haven’t always been a crier. In fact when I started to become conscious of my self-injurious behaviour and went looking back at my life, I found a reference in my grade 5 journal that surprised me. I had no memory of it, but there it was in my bubbly handwriting with heart-dotted “i”s - documentation of my young decision not to cry anymore. After describing a bullying incident in which I was thrown into a large garbage can as a “joke”, I go on to say, “I felt like crying but I didn’t want to. I don’t want to be weak.  I punched myself in the face to stop myself. I’m gonna do that from now on when I feel like crying.” And so it began, escalating over the years from self-bruising with blunt objects, to knives, to razors, conditioning myself to be dull to my emotions.

My healing began about fifteen years ago, around the time I was confronted with a book at the used book sale at my university, the simple red title “Cutting” jumped out at me. Picking it up set me on a snowballing path of re-embodiment that I am still on. The first few years were spent learning to connect emotions to events. I filled out hundreds of worksheets with the four columns: “What happened”, “What I thought”, “How I felt”, “What I needed”.  At first it was slow. It could be weeks between an incident and realizing I had an emotion about it.  After a few years I started to cry again, but only in private, usually in the dark, under covers, always very quietly.

So you will celebrate my success with me when I tell you that a few weeks ago I couldn’t stop myself from crying – quite obviously, right there in the middle of the Dulles airport. Frustrated to be stuck, lonely, overwhelmed by the environment after three months on a farm, and hurt that the airline was going to deliver me into New York at 1am with no help for a hotel, and sad to be missing the first night of the Shalom training. I walked right out of the secure gated area - face puffy, eyes red, doing that rapid inhaled moaning thing to get some real air. I gave myself a pat on the back for emotional presence as I found a tree, a poor spindly little thing sticking out of concrete by the taxi pickup area and leaned onto it, wrapped my arm around it and cried for both of us stuck there.

Love

After a good cry I felt sulky and hungry, so I sat down on a bench and dug out my little insulated lunch bag. I pulled out a bag of celery sticks with almond butter. Frankie had sliced these up for me the night before, and I could feel their loving energy, each bite like a little hug from inside my mouth. I looked at the sliced ends and thought how right there Frankie’s intention for me to be healthily nourished on my journey had surged through their body with the will to take the celery out of the fridge, wash each stalk and cut them. I felt loved and “with-ness”, which of course prompted me to start bawling again, adding salt to my snack.

A week later, at the Sufi school – I was deep cleaning the kitchen for my work exchange when I encountered a poignant 8x10 image of Mother Theresa with a quotation printed below it “Love is the reason for my life.” I stared into her eyes and a dream I had 7 years ago came rushing back. In the dream I was shot in the gut, after I turned back to face a hooded, faceless creature. On the ground, my partner at the time knelt above me. I felt my life force fading quickly. As blackness collapsed in on me from all sides I knew I had only a breath left before my connection to the world would be gone.

As I stared into my lover’s eyes my mind grasped frantically at what might be worth saying with my last breath and just as the blackness caved in on me I whispered, “Tell everyone I love them”. A moment later I was sitting bolt upright in my bed, sweating with the devastation of being killed, now relieved to be alive, my mind clutched this gem of insight. But what does it mean exactly? I wondered. Why is love the key? Who’s everyone?! You can’t love everyone… can you?

Mandela thought so. I saw the new film with my folks a few days ago before I left Victoria. The movie ends with a quotation narrated to long rays of sun setting above the grassy plains of a Xhosa village as he runs with a half dozen young children along a tiny path. The whole scene is an image of hard-won freedom. His words ring out, that no child is born hating another for the color of their skin. He said hatred is learned. And thus, we can teach ourselves to love.

So here I sit in another east coast blizzard, at Shalom Mountain for the second month of the Retreat Leadership Training - a student of the healing art of love. I am living into that old insightful dream. A key lesson here is that love is an intention, played out in action. (Actions as simple as cutting up some celery!) At our course last month we dug deeper into the skills of loving – how to see another person, how to stay, how to listen with our bodies and hearts, not just our ears and analytical brains.

And so this is the intention for my path in 2014 – to continue reaching towards an all-pervading love, actively routing out the fears, hostilities and grief that may block my way. Oh, and to give up coffee.

Blessings of closeness to you and your beloveds,

Sab

~Shalom Mountain, NY