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
