We all need the opportunity to get distance and perspective. Unfortunately, this can be especially difficult in the midst of a pandemic. Last week, I was lucky enough to get away to the North Shore of Lake Superior, to a cottage where I could be safely distanced from others while also having a much-needed change of scenery. The weather was gloomy and cold, which both suited my mood and offered the encouragement I needed to stay inside, close to the warm fire and “let the soft animal of (my) body love what it loves,” as Mary Oliver wrote in Wild Geese.
Something unusual happens when we have the time and space to just be, rather than to be doing. Often, the first thing that happens is that all of the emotions and anxieties and fears we’ve stuffed inside and refused to truly deal with come raging to the surface—which can be difficult and/or frightening at first. But if we stick with it, if we hold ourselves in that place of being rather than doing, we eventually begin to hear things we often don’t otherwise: our own inner voice and the wisdom voices of our teachers (people, Spirit, creature kin, Earth). I am normally a verbal processor, seeking words as a way to comprehend what I’m feeling, but generally these moments are wordless—full of feeling and images rather than language.
Later, I will often come upon someone else’s words that encapsulate what I’ve just experienced. Denise Levertov spoke of this in her poem “The Spirits Appeased”:
This is the way
you have spoken to me, the way—startled—
I find I have heard you. When I need it,
a book or a slip of paper
appears in my hand, inscribed by yours: messages
waiting on cellar shelves, in forgotten boxes
until I would listen.
Your spirits relax;
now she is looking, you say to each other,
now she begins to see.
Last week, in my cottage by the shores of Lake Superior, this happened. After the emotional storm of finally allowing myself to just be, after the stillness of listening to the Earth speak to me through wind and water, I had an impulse to look up Sharon Blackie’s website (Dr. Blackie was our Spirituality in the 21st Century facilitator last spring) and there, I discovered her blog piece, “Becoming who we are,” published that same day, Oct. 22. After describing the “crisis point” we find ourselves in now, Sharon goes on to say, “At turning points like this, the soul’s purpose is not about survival. It’s not about playing it safe. I repeat: it’s about risking everything.” And then, these words that spoke directly to my depleted soul:
“The first thing we have to do, to allow this process to unfold, is to stop all this despair. Stop writing the world off. Stop writing ourselves off. That’s hubris. Because we know nothing about what is going on here—other than the necessity of going on … But in order to go on, we have to wake up.”
There it was, the shift in perspective I hoped for from taking this necessary time away. Because, especially since the derecho hit us in August, I had been stuck in despair. Sharon goes on to close the piece by saying:
“For some of us, stepping forward will take courage. We might wonder if we’re ready, if we know enough. We probably don’t, and I’ve always believed that a little honest humility is everything. None of us has all the answers. But we each have a little piece of the puzzle, and together we can make a whole. Because we can’t do this alone—even those of us who are natural loners. No matter how difficult it might be, we have to build alliances, create community—focus on feeding friendships and not defeating foes.
“We are—each one of us—a necessary part of this world’s becoming; we were intended to be here, and now. But we’re not here to coast. We’re here to show up. It’s what, quite literally, we were born to do.”
Please read Sharon Blackie’s full piece, “Becoming who we are,” on her blog at https://sharonblackie.net/becoming-who-we-are/.
—Jenifer Hanson, Prairiewoods director