The act of being present & disappearing

“Being human,
I aspire to be more like mountain,
Letting the world grow all over me,
Becoming so visible I disappear
Into becoming something else.”

-Sophie Wood

This morning I am alone in my house, my partner gone on an extended (multiple weeks) trip. A long-awaited and much-deserved journey of discovery. And I am here, staying put, but very much also on my own journey.

We have just recently adopted a puppy, a long-awaited playmate for the wolf-dog, Ruby Dragon Chickadee. The offering is proving successful as they develop a dear friendship and Ruby’s deprivation of this unique kind of intimacy is finally being deeply nourished after 6 long years of waiting. Finding just the right addition to the family is a magical Tetris that cannot be rushed. And finally, we found her.

But this means, of course, I’m up (very) early in the morning, which (once the initial pain of being awoken mid-dream wears off), is a true blessing. The mornings around here, nestled in the fields against the Flatirons of the Rocky Mountains, are spectacular. Each morning I come out bleary eyed and fumbling, as I struggle to get my hands through the arm holes of my robe, keeping my eyes down so I don’t tumble off the deck onto the lawn. When, I have learned it is here, as I’m just landing on the ground, that if I trust my footing and look up rather than at my feet, I will see the splendor of the early morning Sun splashing (sometimes gently, sometimes boldly) onto the Eastern saddle of Green Mountain with its red vertical rock outcroppings nestled into deep green pines. I will see the Sun stretching down the length of the fields directly in front of me. And I might even see one of the many species of fledgling raptors, somehow ruthless and playfully awkward simultaneously. This is how it was this morning. A welcome reminder that certain rhythms, and the relationships that form around them, are (at least so far) immutable.

For a good while (about 4 years) I have been in a process of un-becoming. A process of questioning and deconstruction. In the last many months this process has felt, at times, like the transition phase of birth - intense and initiatory. As I fumble along, I have been searching for guideposts, for way-showers, for information from any and all sources. I’ve returned over and over again to the Runes, and to time-tested books. And I’ve reached out anew, to things like the tarot and other oracular decks. Thanks to some generous friends I’ve recently acquired a few wonderful new options. So, this morning, I sat down with three decks and the Runes and asked a rather open-ended question…shuffling and cutting the decks and stirring the Runes, as I asked something like, what can you share with me about this particular stage of my life’s journey?

What I received from all sources had me imagining they’d discussed their play in the back room beforehand. Whether they’re right or not, I have no idea. But their singular message is a hard one to take lightly. Severance. Endings. Grief. Letting go. Death – the required first step in a much-needed transformation and becoming; likely the end of a relationship to make room for the next necessary thing; Life continuing to unfurl, which requires that some things come to an end so others can begin; but not to worry because you’re made for these times…You get the idea.

More specifically, the first message, from The Energy Archeology deck, was Lumbar Spine/Stability. It reminds me that stability comes from flexibility. It urges me to question, what/who feels stable right now? And, of course, what/who feels unstable? It reminds me that, as with all things, there are seasons when we build stability and seasons when we rely on it. My stability will be tested and my strength relies in standing flexibly true and staying in (or perhaps restoring) my alignment.

Next, from the Dirt Gems deck, I received Elecampane. I am filled with wonder when I pick this card. The deck has 65 cards/plants, many of whom I don’t have a personal relationship with. But this one, Elecampane, is dear to my heart because, thanks to my sister Teri, it is growing in my Ancestral medicinal garden as I write these words. Of all the synchronicities! I learn that this is the Moving River plant. It is the lung plant. This plant shines a light onto what we need, urging us to expel what we do not need.  This plant lives in the house of our grief (because according to many traditions, the lungs are a location of grief). I have had a lifetime of tending to my lungs, and my breathing, and these last two years have been immensely challenging as the air quality here is regularly above 300ppm. I am told that this wonderfully tall, elegant Elecampane will help me center my heart in my body for the rigor of the coming transition.

Then I turned to the Tarot. I received The Devil. Very interesting. Nobody wants to see The Devil card! Of all the possible messages I imagine I need to receive right now, why this one?! Addiction, negativity. But also, free yourself…! The Devil card can bring our attention to a relationship that no longer serves, whether with a substance or a human. The Devil card asks us to honestly examine those behaviors that are crutches, distractions, and therefore limitations to our ever-unfolding capacity to offer ourselves bravely to The World.

Then, finally, the oracle of my people. The Runes. As I swished the runes around in their velvet bag one popped out and fell on the ground, chipping at the edge. Oh goodness…that’s got to be a message of some kind!? I decided to choose two, this one that threw itself at the ground, and the next one that would fall into my hand. They both were reversed. Othila and Uruz. Separation, Retreat, Inheritance and Strength, Womanhood (Manhood), the Wild Ox. With these two I am told that a relationship will be discarded, a peeling away is called for. Here I must submit. Perhaps even retreat. Othila reminds us that we do without doing and everything gets done. Next, Uruz tells me that I must prepare for a termination to make way for a new beginning. The life I have been living has outgrown its form. The form must die. Uruz is the rune of passage, signaling a cycle of initiation. But it reminds me, the new life is always greater than the old. Here, opportunity will be described as loss. And to rule, I must learn how to serve.

This set of four messages might be appropriate for any one of us living on Earth right now. We are all in the current of a transition the scope of which is likely impossible to grasp with our rational minds. Many of us, particularly in geographic areas more impacted by drought, fires, flooding, poverty, and extractive technologies are already without reliable access to water, electricity, housing, food. But our intimate unfurlings (which can often feel like unravelings) do not stop – they cannot stop – despite being in our planetary and social distress. I have known for a while now that these four messages I receive this morning are true – a change needs to happen. Something fairly significant in my life is too small and also, something is awaiting my arrival. And to arrive, I must depart.

I have spoken boldly about how damaging the notions of privacy and confidentiality are. To me, they (mostly) feel like foot soldiers of the dominant culture, inviting us to stay in our ashamed sequestration, never sharing the fear, the messiness, the human frailty to wounding that we all carry. Here, it is so easy to have our lives become shaped by the things we desperately do not want others to know about us, things that are simply commonplace aspects of our human experience, especially at a time like this. Here, in the sequestration and shame, an even more sinister thing can happen. These commonplace things (that, were we to acknowledge them and nurture their opposite, would stay in their right-sized place and even help to inform our brilliance) actually fester, magnify and become deep fractures within the larger psyche and soma of our species.

Here, I will share that my intimate partnership is undergoing a significant – and perhaps terminal – scrutiny and evaluation. We are uncertain whether it serves either of us, and we are in such seemingly vastly different places in our lives and in our imaginings around what it means to partner. I am 56 and have the clear awareness that the greatest substance of my offerings is still before me. But right before me. It is just emerging, whatever it is. And after that, I will be slowly turning my attention away from overt contribution and into something quieter and less measurable. I feel the insistence of this (perhaps) last humble gesture of my devotion. This stage of my life will likely last another couple of decades…but it does feel like the shape I take here will be the one that delivers me into my deep elderhood. It’s my responsibility to this life to create the well(enough) ecology for the one of me who will flourish in this next stage. I have found myself questioning everything, including my intimate partnership. But this, perhaps, is the one that might require the most courageous truth-telling. I remember the Runes’ message through Uruz: the new life is always greater than the old. But before I rest into the comfort of promises, I remember that any initiation worth its weight requires that we head out, away from all that we know, with no promises about anything. Any initiation worth the time it takes to undergo it requires that the one of us setting out is very much aware that she will not return.

And there is also a reckoning ­– and a subsequent requirement – living in me, that whatever my heart, spirit, soul and body are engaged in right now be worthy of the magnitude of this moment. Whether I never teach another class or mentor another human or sit on another board or write another book, I feel an urgency to learn how to listen, and even more, how to hear the tragic and brilliant unfolding story of The World. Whether this is a pivotal, ecologically catastrophic moment or simply another (now global) empire collapsing (like the hundreds that have occurred before), or both, to me, this moment needs to be witnessed. It doesn’t need to be fixed. It doesn’t need to be saved. It needs to be seen, the consequences of it acknowledged. And the act of acknowledging needs to reshape, redirect, reorganize, and embolden. The pain and horror of what’s happening – to humans and to the wild world alike – seen and grieved. I feel the unrelenting call to nurture into being the intimate circumstances within and around me that allow me to do this and also, just as important, to celebrate the miraculous expressions of beauty and intelligence that continue to happen all across the world despite, or perhaps because of, this unraveling. To marvel and drink deeply the endless wild moments of joy and perfection.

And there is also another thing living in me, that I have watched progress from a faint voice to an imperative. But it requires that I give you some backstory. 

Four years ago, in May of 2018, I sat at the spontaneous threshold that was an unexpected and very brief moment within an adventure to Schumacher College in Dartmoor, England. I went there because it had been a dream of mine to study at Schumacher, to simply be on the grounds, actually. To bathe in the wisdom that had soaked into the old stones and mortar, the gardens and spectacular old Yew trees on that particular spot of earth. The specific occasion that finally drew me to Schumacher was a chance to spend a week with Jem Bendell (of Deep Adaptation) and the Dark Mountain folks. I was there to listen, to grieve, to write, to collaborate and conspire. Not much of that happened as it turns out. It’s an art form to create inspiring curriculum that weaves us into a momentary community intimate enough for everyone to take chances beyond what they imagine is possible––to create practices and invitations that feed our radical creativity. Sadly, my time with the Dark Mountain folks was not that. But it hardly mattered because I think I was simply meant to get myself over there for a singular moment that did happen.  

That singular moment occurred while sitting in a Redwood forest nursery. With these young giants towering over us, their trunks already like furry ancient elephant legs, an audibly imperceptible but ever-present score made by their ancient dreaming filled the air around us. There, sitting in the rain around a struggling smoky fire, I listened to Jem Bendell share about his perception of the tipping point, the no-fixing-things moment that had happened ecologically and societally in the last decade or so (according to some researchers). He shared how passing this tipping point had allowed him to get very honest about what he was, and wasn’t, doing in his life. About what was of most importance. He shared that he had taken up yoga, started an improv theatre group with his friends, and was spending more intentional time with his partner.

In that moment I received permission to overtly acknowledge two things. One, that the world has entered a process of unraveling from which there is no turning back. And two, that because of the former, those things that are now the most soulful, valuable uses of my time have almost nothing whatsoever to do with much of what I’ve been told (by my conformist consumer society) are the measure of a successful or noteworthy life. I think most of us have known that last part for a while now…but I might have discovered an even deeper layer as I found myself in my post-Jem-Bendell deconstruction. Some of the things I had always imagined were of great value have since been chucked on the pyre, to make room for a more passionate betrothal to other things that have only recently been woven into my philosophical fabric. 

In the continued process of this deconstruction, in the reckoning and the reshaping, as I find my way to true chronological elderhood, I’m asking more of myself. There is paradox here. As I whittle away the status-quo ‘shoulds’ (that are plentiful even within my own communities, not to mention the larger culture), I find the job of learning how to hear the story of The World as it unravels and dreams about its next iteration far more involved and complex than much of what I’ve been up to prior to this. Let alone what I’ve been told I should be up to. I am inspired by the soulful and iterative task of shaping (and re-shaping) ourselves into those who can hear, express, honor, dream, witness, and both deeply feel and metabolize what is unfolding within and around us, as magnificent and intelligent expressions of The World’s unfolding story.

And this morning, I am reminded that, of course, even the most intimate contracts I have made are not beyond the reach of this deconstruction, this death and rebirth. Opportunity will be described as loss. But Sophie’s words bring me back home as I remember that my greatest longing is to become “so visible, I disappear, into becoming something else.”