HALLUCINATIONS OF THE SOUL The longing for things that you could not have, the yearning for places you were not destined to arrive. Wistful memories of what was not ever meant to be. Regret for not being who you thought you would become. These hallucinations of the soul are agonizing prisoners that must be pardoned and released.
Clear the room. Open the door and let them leave. And in this space, you’ll paint a glorious existence of being here with presence and contentment for what truly is a relevant and meaningful life.
– Susan Frybort, Open Passages –
Still in the first month, Frybort’s poem speaks to me of a tender way of approaching the new year. Not bound by resolution making, or even fixed on a word for the year (though comfort, grace and gratitude continue to accompany my focused breaths), the imagery of pardon and release, of allowing discontent an open door from which to leave, invite a softening and deepening into possibility. Evoked too for me, is a favourite from Rumi, The Guest House, as rendered by Coleman Barks.
It’s been a challenging month. I’m happy to be home to days that are ever so slightly growing longer, especially in the late afternoon, and to temperatures rising to comfortable from last week’s frigid depths. My family and I are relieved that my mother is home, regaining her strength.
Discerning “guides from beyond” from “agonizing prisoners,” balancing hospitable welcome with unabashed leave taking, giving gratitude its due, we all make our way.
I’ve been thinking about the way, when you walk down a crowded aisle, people pull in their legs to let you by. Or how strangers still say “bless you” when someone sneezes, a leftover from the Bubonic plague. “Don’t die,” we are saying. And sometimes, when you spill lemons from your grocery bag, someone else will help you pick them up. Mostly, we don’t want to harm each other. We want to be handed our cup of coffee hot, and to say thank you to the person handing it. To smile at them and for them to smile back. For the waitress to call us honey when she sets down the bowl of clam chowder, and for the driver in the red pick-up truck to let us pass. We have so little of each other, now. So far from tribe and fire. Only these brief moments of exchange. What if they are the true dwelling of the holy, these fleeting temples we make together when we say, “Here, have my seat,” “Go ahead—you first,” “I like your hat.”
– Danusha Laméris –
I’m anticipating, weather permitting, that my mother will be discharged from hospital to home today. Like a cat with nine lives, she has made a remarkable recovery from her doctor’s sobering announcement two weeks ago that we prepare for the worst. Relief is mingled with realistic concern that she may not yet be out of the woods, as the crisis – impacted bowel, diverticulitis, pancreatitis, and a pancreatic cyst which is diminishing – the consequence of three years on Ozempic has lingering, if not long-lasting implications. Has she now entered her 9th and final life, having used the rest? Will her bowel and pancreas recover? Is she able to tolerate a gain in weight to return to health? What are the consequences for my father’s well-being? These are pressing, significant questions.
One day during a hospital visit, upon the recommendation of a patient recovering from leg reconstruction after a harrowing motorcycle accident last fall, we walked down the hall to the little tuck shop for homemade egg salad sandwiches on toast with sides of bread and butter pickles. That patient wheeled himself down for a coffee, saying he preferred it to Canada’s caffeine mainstay, Tim Horton’s, stopping regularly for one and to visit staff before his own admission. With a kind word for everyone, a twinkle in his eye, freshly showered, shaved, and dressed, admittedly bored and itching to be released, I sensed and said how he must bring a much-welcomed kindness to the overworked nurses with his amiable nature.Just one of the kindnesses that abound in hospitals, those “true dwellings of the holy.”
We’re home now, having arrived late Wednesday night to still frigid weather. But yesterday, enough warmth mixed with sunshine made that hour walk outside a healing balm. Too, sleeping in our bed. I’ve caught up on correspondence, letting friends know how my family and I are faring. Your small kindnesses – expressed here, on social media, in emails and messages – have most certainly created another “true dwelling of the holy,” for which I am beyond grateful.
He said, “One life on this earth is all we get, whether it is enough or not enough, and the obvious conclusion would seem to be, that at the very least we are fools if we do not live it as fully, and bravely, and beautifully as we can.”
– Frederick Buechner –
This was a new one for me from author – theologian – minister, Frederick Buechner. I always appreciated his oft quoted definition of vocation – “the place where God calls you is the place where you deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”
Sitting at my mother’s desk, having arrived yesterday from the ridiculously frigid temperatures at home to the balmy “banana belt” of Niagara with its 30+ degree difference, I’m hours late posting today’s photo and poem feature. We made a quick trip to visit my mother in hospital last night and see that while weak, tired, and thin, she is rallying, with the original prognosis of preparing for the worst, modified. Tomorrow is the MRI and ultrasound, which will help us know what next. My father is relieved for this development, happy for our presence, and my sister can step back into her life.
With hours of waiting – at home, in the air, here – I’ve had plenty of time to think…about family patterns and dynamics, history and story, roles and rules. I smile to myself thinking that undergraduate degree in family studies and social work graduate degree specializing in individuals, families, and groups have served me well. Distance, too, has long been double-edged, giving me space, clarity, and perspective, all helpful in navigating liminal terrains such as this, an eldering landscape. I found Buechner’s quote earlier this week on Facebook, one of those “right place at the right time” sightings. It fits.
Thank you for the kind and thoughtful comments here and on social media which hold and support from afar me and my family.
It seems you love this world very much. “Yes, I said. “This beautiful world.”
And you don’t mind the mind, that keeps you busy all the time with its dark and bright wonderings? “No, I’m quite used to it. Busy, busy, all the time.”
And you don’t mind living with those questions, I mean the hard ones, that no one can answer? “Actually, they’re the most interesting.”
And you have a person in your life whose hand you like to hold? “Yes, I do.”
It must surely, then, be very happy down there in your heart. “Yes,” I said. “It is.”
– Mary Oliver in Felicity, 2015 –
This wasn’t my original selection for my first Friday photo and poem for this new year. Initially, I was moved by Gregory Orr’s “Aftermath Inventory,” a short, unflinchingly exquisite poem from his collection, The Last Love Letter I Will Ever Write (2019), one posted this week on another poet’s site. It was the final line “My scars?/Someday/They might shine/Brighter than stars.” that stirred because of how I and many are feeling about this cusp of ending and beginning.
I chose not to write my “irregular” regular Monday post which would have dropped on New Year’s Day. Enough inspiring, heartful, hopeful, earnest prayers, blessings, quotes, and memes that I had nothing to offer to the mix, not wanting to dilute those kind and loving intentions. Though can there ever be too many prayers and blessings? Considering Orr’s poem, I thought of it as a humble gesture of my acknowledgment of the suffering of others, close and far, in war, illness, climate disaster, bereavement, poverty, homelessness, addiction. To stand in that unflinchingly, sorrowfully. Grateful for the hands I have to hold, for this world I still find utterly beautiful, loving it very much.
Many times, I start the year with a word. Choosing to forego the practice this year, life had other plans. Sitting one morning having my conversation with God, an Anne Lamott kind of help, thanks, wow conversation, I found myself inhaling to the word “comfort,” exhaling to “gratitude.” Over the days, it’s morphed to asking for grace on the in breath and giving gratitude on the out breath.Words, a mantra, a grounding for my being, body, and breath whispered many times a day. A voice from I don’t know where, or I do, having asked and been heard.
Much love and kindest regards, dear friends.
May this new year bring you all that is good and true and beautiful, with grace and gratitude aplenty, and the courage and compassion to withstand its inevitable heartache and challenge.
I counted my years and discovered that I have less time to live going forward than I have lived until now.
I have more past than future. I feel like the boy who received a bowl of candies. The first ones, he ate ungracious, but when he realized there were only a few left, he began to taste them deeply.
I do not have time to deal with mediocrity. I do not want to be in meetings which parade inflamed egos.
I am bothered by the envious who seek to discredit the most able, to usurp their places, coveting their seats, talent, achievements and luck.
I do not have time for endless conversations, useless to discuss about the lives of others who are not part of mine.
I do not have time to manage sensitivities of people who despite their chronological age, are immature.
I cannot stand the result that generates from those struggling for power.
People do not discuss content, only the labels. My time has become scarce to discuss labels, I want the essence, my soul is in a hurry… Not many candies left in the bowl…
I want to live close to human people, very human, who laugh of their own stumbles, and away from those turned smug and overconfident with their triumphs, away from those filled with self-importance, who does not run away from their responsibilities… who defends human dignity. And who only want to walk on the side of truth and honesty. The essential is what makes life worthwhile.
I want to surround myself with people, who know how to touch the hearts of people… People to whom the hard knocks of life taught them to grow with softness in their soul.
Yes …. I am in a hurry … to live with intensity that only maturity can bring. I intend not to waste any part of the goodies I have left … I’m sure they will be more exquisite, than most of which so far I’ve eaten.
My goal is to arrive to the end satisfied and in peace with my loved ones and my conscience. I hope that your goal is the same, because either way, you will get there too. ”
~Mário de Andrade~ Brazilian Poet October 9, 1893 – February 25, 1945
Standing on the cusp of a new year, many of my generation are in the season where we have counted the years and realize there are less now going forward. Fewer candies in the bowl, we are savoring more care-fully what is left. In the last week I learned of the too soon passing of a colleague, life threatening illnesses beleaguering same-aged friends, and terminal illness ready to snatch all the candies from others. Seldom arriving at New Year’s threshold with a feeling of ease, this one accentuated by both the many harrowing and hallowed events, I, too, find myself more care-fully discerning and winnowing to essence. I, too, want to end satisfied and in peace with my loved ones and conscience, hopefully after tasting deeply from that candy bowl, and, as Thoreau wrote, sucking out all the marrow of life.
I’m at a loss as to what to write for tomorrow’s (today’s) post. I started something and put it in the draft drawer, my “kill the darlings” file. No traction…no energy. Maybe an idea whose time has not yet come, or too soon too tender to write about.
Even though it’s Monday, not my usual day for posting a poem and photo, in the spirit of the season, I’ll gift forward a quote from a friend who shares my love of Rumi. A friend who I met years ago at our first writers’ retreat. A friend who made and gifted me and others with clay rattles during our vision quest retreat. A friend who recently published her first book, Solo Passage, the seeds of which she planted in that circle. Thank you, GG.
“You have no idea how hard I’ve looked for a gift to bring you. Nothing seemed right. What’s the point of bringing gold to the gold mine, or water to the ocean. Everything I came up with, was like taking spices to the Orient. It’s no good giving my heart and my soul because you already have these. So, I’ve brought you a mirror.” – Rumi
Look. See your reflection. Know you are loved.
And my annual Solstice blessing, originally written in 2017, timeless and ever relevant:
May this Holyday season bring time to cherish all that is good and true and beautiful. May its dark days invite rest for reflection and renewal. May Nature welcome you to its beauty, magic and wisdom. May good health be your companion, relationships enliven and encourage, work and pastimes fulfill and affirm. May strength in body, mind and spirit allow you to embrace life’s uncertainties. May patience, love and kindness – given and received – be yours in abundance.
God speaks to each of us as he makes us, then walks with us silently out of the night. These are the words we dimly hear:
You, sent out beyond your recall, go to the limits of your longing. Embody me. Flare up like flame and make big shadows I can move in. Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final. Don’t let yourself lose me. Nearby is the country they call life. You will know it by its seriousness. Give me your hand.
– Rainer Maria Rilke – Book of Hours: Love Poems to God, trans. Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy, Riverhead Books: 1996
In a week’s time it will be Solstice, winter in the northern hemisphere with the longest night, summer in the south, with the shortest. Dark and light, day and night, advancing and receding. Never final. May yours bring you hands to hold as you go to the limits of your longing.
Sometimes if you move carefully through the forest, breathing like the ones in the old stories, who could cross a shimmering bed of leaves without a sound, you come to a place whose only task is to trouble you with tiny but frightening requests, conceived out of nowhere but in this place beginning to lead everywhere. Requests to stop what you are doing right now, and to stop what you are becoming while you do it, questions that can make or unmake a life, questions that have patiently waited for you, questions that have no right to go away.
~ David Whyte ~
Coming on the heels of Monday’s post on midlife and eldering questions, Whyte’s words speak to the power of such questions. Questions which, like the white fluff of feather caught on the leafless limb of the red willow bush I met a couple of weeks ago, might easily go unnoticed. Soft and tenacious, in stark contrast to its surroundings and time of year…is why it caught my attention…had me stop to capture its moment and possibility. This is the stuff of questions that matter, that wait patiently, sometimes in obscurity, for our us to stop and notice and make something of them.
What might be some of the questions waiting patiently for you? Perhaps in the growing dark of these December days, with its invitation to go slow and look within, they may appear to you.
a blessing for living between. Between miracles. Between answers. Between formulas.
Blessed are you who live here, this space between simple categories and easy answers.
You who wonder why this is your life, why you got this diagnosis, or why you still struggle with infertility, or why you haven’t found your birth parents, or why you can’t kick the addiction or why your kids haven’t come home.
Blessed are you who build a home on uneasy ground, who, despite your trying, your asking, you’re searching, haven’t found the satisfying feeling of discovery.
And blessed are you who never will. This is not an easy place to live. Outside of certainty, outside of knowing, outside of the truth.
But blessed are you who realize that love and beauty and courage and meaning live here too. Amid the unease and the frustration and the sleepless nights. In the way love and courage show up through people, through presence, through laughter.
May you be surprised by your capacity for ambiguity, for the way it makes you a great listener and a good friend, for you are someone who knows how to feel your way around in the dark and squint for the stars.
I wish it were easier, dear one. I wish I could hand you the answers you seek.
But for now, may you find comfort in the fact that you are not alone. We are all learning to live in the uncertainty in the unknowing. So blessed are we who live here together.
~ Kate Bowler, November 19, 2023 ~
A dear friend, well acquainted with grief, having lost her step-daughter to cancer a few years back, introduced me to Kate Bowler, herself close friends with cancer. I’ve listened to a couple of Kate’s “in your face with honesty” podcasts, and an interview on On Being. This recently posted poem speaks to me of her no holds barred, compassionate experience of living in the liminal – rife with challenge, rich with gifts.
I’m not sure why I felt moved to share this poem today, after many months’ pause in my Friday photo and poem posts. Maybe because right now – again – so many near and far are living “outside of certainty, outside of knowing, outside of the truth.” That our world, human and the more than, is living in the indefinite pauses between miracles, answers, and formulas. That we might each find comfort in knowing we aren’t alone, and in the blessing we all live here together, near and far.
I am home. Met by my husband in sunshine and mild temperatures last Saturday after nearly 24 hours awake, most of those masked in the minority, I arrived safe, sound, very tired and with my checked luggage. It’s taken about a week to recover from jet lag and feel my soul return to my body. I’ve been grateful for another prolonged autumn, warm enough to get back on the pickleball courts and try out my foot after trekking 220/237 km on the Via de Francesco, and close to another 100 km wandering through Florence, Assisi and Rome during the days bookending my walk. I played so-s0 after five months off court, and while my foot felt OK, I realized it’s too much, too soon to resume play daily. Saturday found me in our still colourful river valley walking with my Camino group. It felt wonderful to tie on the boots I’d worn up and down those paths in Italy, now with a much lighter pack, and gloves, toque and a down coat given the sudden shift in temperature…to be reunited with friends who, too, had trekked this past month in Portugal, Spain, Germany, Italy and Eastern Europe
Edmonton’s River Valley – Whitemud Creek towards Snow Valley
“Solitude is one of the most precious things in the human spirit. It is different from loneliness. When you are lonely, you become acutely conscious of your own separation. Solitude can be a homecoming to your own deepest belonging. One of the lovely things about us as individuals is the incommensurable in us. In each person, there is a point of absolute nonconnection with everything else and with everyone. This is fascinating and frightening. It means that we cannot continue to seek outside ourselves for things we need from within. The blessings for which we hunger are not to be found in other places or people. These gifts can only be given to you by yourself. They are at home at the hearth of your soul.”
John O’Donohue
“After this recent month-long journey, bookended by several days of solo wandering, I can assuredly say I am friends with both.”– posted on Facebook, October 20, 2023
Too, I can assuredly say that combining a small group experience with solo time prior, after, or both, is my favourite way to travel. I experienced it most recently in Morocco this past spring when I arrived solo in Casablanca and then extended my stay in Marrakech after the small group excursion. When I think back to having flown into Florence late that Sunday afternoon – finding the tram to take me from the airport to the SMN train station, to then making my way to the monastery I’d booked for the week (all first time experiences) – the combination of trepidation and accomplishment – in this case particularly so as I knew my way better than the local I’d asked – delightfully got me off on the right foot.
Having been to both Florence and Rome several times, I felt confident in my ability to get around. I’m “old school,” preferring paper maps – this trip using a terrific popup version that tucked away in my purse – and I’m quick to ask for help, understanding that in the encounter made, people enjoy knowing they’re needed. I loved wandering early in morning, and suddenly, for example, coming upon the Duomo to be enthralled by the sunlight breaking through the clouds. Countless moments of “moving at the pace of guidance” – going where I wanted, when I wanted – enjoying my own companionship, not missing a soul, the boon of solo travel.
early morning at the Duomo, Florence
That being said, I know, too, what a well-travelled friend had called “low pot” days: when fatigue, feeling overwhelmed, displaced and lonely create inertia, low confidence and anxiety. Its remedy: to acknowledge and either sit with and rest, let be or move through depending on the situation. This crept up on me during my time in Trastevere, when after two weeks of companionship, walking alone together, I was suddenly alone alone. And I was tired… from the exertion, not only of the actual trek in the glorious hot late summer, but too, from the hundreds of kilometers I’d walked in preparation. The inevitable “come down” from the accomplishment and all it took.
So yes, I am intimate friends both with solitude and its gifts of sustenance, renewal, rest and creativity, and too, with loneliness and its sharp edge of separation and self doubt.
A well-established practice of self-care, I’d spend at least an hour daily editing the day’s photos and writing a description to post on Facebook, this time to soothing instrumental Spotify playlists. While it became THE chronicle of my experience (as the very small journal I brought often remained empty for days at a time), in those moments of solitude and occasional loneliness, the comments from friends shored me up to remember the gifts that can only given to me, by me.
at the Trevi Fountain, Rome
Dear friends, if you were among those who followed my journey, and perhaps commented, thank you for the lifeline.
A Wabi Sabi Life 