Little Boat Without An Oar

What I'm trying to do is say lighten up and let life flow through you, and be on the waves as they go up and down. For me, a great image in mythology is Tristan of Tristan and Isolde. He's out there on a little boat without an oar, without a rudder, on the Irish sea . . . You float your way. You drift. The essence of my approach is to be extravagantly accepting and forgiving of yourself and others. Ride the waves and let life take you where it has good things for you." - Thomas Moore

Lately I am watching several close family members, the generation below me, struggling with how to do the real thing in their marriages: how to juggle those elusive components that create genuine intimacy. I am blessed now, in my fifties, to have a good and soulful relationship, but this arrived only after I found that floating, trusting place in myself. It is not that I did not enjoy the ride and the practice; I served as muse and inspired poetry and song, because I was good at the lush part of love and skilled at seduction. But I wanted the real thing. I wanted to find home with my mate and my children, to have the family that reflected deep trust and respect, faithfulness...lightness of being. When I was young I thought if I worked hard enough anything was possible. If I worked hard enough... if I kept a perfectly clean house... if I cooked dinner every night, was a goddess in bed, if I was perfect at every task I took on. But I had no instinctive roadmap for success; my parents divorced when I was little and carried great animosity toward one another. I simply had no earthly idea how to get what I wanted. I had desire, my faith and my determination and I expected that to work. It didn't. It wasn't what I expected. Which is exactly the point. And what a life of faith really is. Faith to leap into new places of trust. No, the answer, too long coming, and one completely beyond logic, was to let go. It was to float around in that little boat without an oar.

a bright new world

It is January and seeing is believing. Even though it is frigid and wintry out, the country has elected a smart, kind, moral man, who seems to be awake. All things feel better, even in the midst of an economic meltdown of historic proportions. President Roosevelt cautioned us in 1932 that fear was the only thing to fear. Having this new President feels like we did a wise thing. Today there is hope even in the insecurity. For that I am bursting with gratitude, simply in being able to see a bright new day through this cold and wintry one.

Snaking Sea

"In sacred space everything is done so that the enviroment creates a metaphor." - Joseph Campbell

Edisto Island lies among winding rivers and curving ribbons of sea. Snakes of water. The twenty-four mile road that leaves Highway 17 and heads out into the sea, twists and turns and carries me like a song, like a psalm, in its healing beauty and rhythm. The island is called Paradise, and is chock full of snakes, real, living snakes. Who doesn't long for Paradise?

startled at the grace

When the student is ready the teacher appears. How many times have I repeated this wise phrase? But to see it anew is another. To be teachable and open to seeing the teacher arrive is the great gift. Robert Henri, the legendary art lecturer, taught, in his wonder of a book, The Art Spirit, that there are two kinds of people in the world: students and non-students. True. It has always been so easy for me to tag others when I meet them as open or not. This week I am startled at the grace that has chosen me and enabled me to see my own smug self, the resistant self, the know-it-all one. "God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference." How simply brilliant!

I have a dream

This morning from my luscious bed office I pulled out an idea journal I keep in this messy pile of bedside books. Surprising me was this quote by Walt Whitman, one I wrote down after reading Lois Palken Rudnick's book, Utopian Vistas : The Mabel Dodge Luhan House and the American Counterculture.

"We Americans have yet to really learn our own antecedents, and sort them, to unify them. They will be found ampler than has been supposed, and in widely different sources. Thus far, impress'd by New England writers and schoolmasters, we tacitly abandon ourselves to the notion that our United States has been fashion'd from the British Islands only, and essentially form a second England only — which is a very great mistake."

In light of our electing the first African American President of the United States, do you think that we are, as Americans, more than 100 years after he wrote this, finally seeing? How hopeful this feels.

the life you save may be your own

I am back in Charlotte, North Carolina, at the little house on the creek I call Belle Rive, after Blanche Dubois's homeplace in Tennessee William's 1947 play, A Streetcar Named Desire. It is a little house, made of cedar, in a bustling city of where lots of bankers live. The economy has me back, from Edisto Island, my dream diminished there by the squeeze of this economy. Dreams deferring.

I have been buried in my bed with all my books, Callings, by Gregg Levoy, which is all too worth another read, Women Who Run With the Wolves, by Clarissa Pinkola Estes, the marvelous collection of stories that illuminate truth. Lately I have been completely reimmerced with midwives and birth. I used to teach childbirth classes and my own childbirth experiences were mind blowing doors to strength and self. My journals are filling with penciled pages rapidly, as Julia Cameron taught me to do. And I awake in the night to write down my dreams, with hints of what new door is opening for me. Yesterday morning it was "Women are dying!" ...the mortality rates worldwide for women in childbirth are indeed atrocious - a woman dies every minute from pregnancy related causes. And this morning, when I awoke, I had written in my dream journal, "Are you a nurse?" No I am not. I am an ARTIST midwife. I just walked into my library and staring at me was the spine of the book, whose title read, "The Life You Save May Be Your Own".

Socrates said it best. Know Thyself. THEN give. I am on to something about giving where I am supposed to, to a bigger place. I am awed and grateful for grace today.

light in the dark

I live on a wonder of a place. An old poet and boatbuilder here once said to me that Edisto Island is a hard place to live. How could he say this, I wondered? In my life I have been blessed with love, and like Picasso, I understand the new vitality and life a new love brings to one's heart and one's art. This time I am madly in love with an island, with place. For its breathtaking beauty, for its wildness, and its surprises. This place holds the history of my ancestors, and of the Indians who lived nearby in round huts hung with pearls. You can feel this here still. The virginal forests still whisper her history in the quiet. On nights with a full moon, the dirt road is lit with white light, quiet light. But I understand the poet's words tonight in the dark. Fire ants and mosquitoes, and these flying biting things that live in jungles also live here, and they are not all insects. Life is just this whole package and some of it is dark. God, give us all the grace to prevail. God be with my young minister on the island this night, who has been overtaken in the jungle. Amen.