Month Long Retreat

Dear friends,

I am taking August off for personal retreat. It has been an unexpectedly chaotic spring with the ending of my marriage. Now, with the legal separation details worked out and signed, and having been bought out of our shared home by my former husband, I turn my attention to recuperation, rest and renewal.

So, I will not be posting blogs in August. I will spend time in Northern Ontario camping alone and drawing on dreams from the water and rocks and wilderness I love. I may do some writing. I may stay there continuously or go back and forth to the city depending upon what my body and heart need each day for their healing.

I will resume posting on September 8. I have enjoyed doing the blog weekly- the commitment has kept me connected to my writing in a small but disciplined way and I always enjoy the comments and conversation that results here and on my FB page. I have also deeply appreciated all the prayers and support you have sent my way during this difficult time. I have felt held in the hearts of so many - and am deeply blessed by this gift of caring.

So, (and here you have to imagine me singing :-) "See you in September. . . " May your summer (or winter if you are in the southern hemisphere) unfold with joy, Oriah

Coming Home To Myself

What is this strange reunion,
this homecoming to someone I did not know I had left?
Bittersweet, it’s hard to separate
the joy of returning to myself
from the sadness of missing the one who is gone.
What is lost and what is found are tangled together,
like legs caught in the bed sheets
after a restless night of love-making or loneliness.
The dream of shared desire was a wisp of smoke, a hope,
a mirage I sought to make substantive,
a reality I tried to earn,
having forgotten there is no bargaining for faith or love.
These are by grace or not at all.
Something I am
- some essence, or awareness, or presence-
is watching this woman I am, re-member herself.
Walking on the city street,
I catch a glimpse of my reflection in a store window:
Long hair, full-skirted dress and sandals-
all three white light mixed with silver, mercurial-
fabric and hair floating around me on
the dark heat rising from the black pavement.
And the thought comes: “I feel like myself again.”
I am surprised, and a little shocked.
I did not know I had wandered so far
from who and what I am.
Far enough to have forgotten the fragrance of home-
the warm cinnamon scent
of the place where the animal self
surrenders to unguarded joy,
the place where the heart feels free
to welcome the unfettered passion
for moving quickly or being very still.
I had wandered so long
I’d stopping missing or even looking for myself.
But I longed.
Although even that became muted,
an underwater echo, blue green, and easy to miss.
Each day now a little more of who I am
is retrieved from the ocean floor:
the pleasure of my own cooking-
fresh eggs scrambled
with rosemary, and mushrooms, and sharp cheese;
the feel of silk across the back of my neck,
a cool caress to tender skin,
reawakening the need for touch;
the strength in my legs,
the joy of taking long strides with nowhere to go;
the quiet of the morning,
as I sit facing east just before the sun appears,
and then, the moment when the sun crests the horizon,
my gaze behind closed eyes flaring crimson and gold.
No recrimination for my absence
I am welcomed as the prodigal daughter
Longed for,
Looked for,
Home at last.

The Tuna Story

It’s Tuesday afternoon, and I have not written this week’s blog, so I am sitting in front of the computer screen staring at the flashing cursor, waiting, hoping for inspiration. I let my hands rest on my lap and take a deep breath. I’m aware of the chair beneath me, holding my weight. The door to the balcony is open and suddenly I hear a small child giggling in absolute delight. She is clearly having a wonderful time. I find myself smiling. In fact, it is practically impossible not to smile just hearing the peals of laughter. Walking to the balcony door I can see a little girl, about four years old, being pushed by an older child on the swings in the small park outside my apartment. With dark shining hair, dressed in a bright pink t-shirt and shorts she squeals and giggles each time the swing sends her high into the air, sticking her short brown legs and small white sneakers up toward the sky. I stand and watch for a few minutes, taking pleasure in her unbridled delight.

When was the last time you laughed, really laughed a long belly laugh that made your eyes water? Just thinking about it reminds me of my mother’s mother, Nana- how infrequently she laughed and how I loved it when she did.

Nana was a serious woman. Eldest of a large family with an abusive alcoholic father she’d had to leave school at fifteen to get a job and support her mother and siblings. She had four brothers who were always getting into trouble and one sister who was fifteen years younger than her- my Aunt Nonie. Nana had a reputation for being fierce and at times, downright harsh. She had very definite ideas about duty, obligation and what moral people did. She worked hard and didn’t appear to have very much fun. She was a formidable woman.

But she loved me. To me she was often soft and loving. I delighted in the rare occasions when I saw her laugh, really laugh. And nothing made her laugh harder than telling The Tuna Story.

Apparently, Aunt Nonie believed she had an allergy to tuna fish. Nana, as much as she doted on her younger sister, thought this was nonsense. She maintained that Nonie just didn't like tuna and so claimed to have an allergy. The bickering about tuna went on well into adulthood in the way that these things do in families. Nana married my grandfather and they had my mother. Nonie eventually married, moved away and had a family. And still the disagreement about tuna fish was maintained. Nana never really argued about things in so many words, but when someone said or did something she didn't like her disapproval was plain. She’d make a soft snorting noise, purse her thin lips and frown. Nana could frown with her whole body. You could feel that frown even if her back was toward you, could feel it in the set of her shoulders and the stiffness of her stocky, fully-corseted body. All four feet eleven inches of her was involved when disapproval was being communicated. As I said, Nana was a serious woman.

Aunt Nonie frequently visited Fort Erie, the town where they’d grown up and where my grandparents continued to live. On one of those visits she and my grandmother went grocery shopping. I don’t know what got into Nana (a woman not normally susceptible to spontaneous outbursts) but as they walked down the aisle of canned goods, she suddenly grabbed a tin of tuna and whirling around, shoved it under Nonie’s nose and yelled, “There! You think you’ll break out in a rash if you smell the tin?”

Except it wasn’t Nonie. Nana had not noticed that her sister had dropped back a little and another woman- some hapless shopper- had moved up the aisle only to have this tiny grey-haired figure shove a tin of tuna at her and scream something about a rash. The woman froze in terror, and Nana, shocked and sputtering, tried to explain. But she couldn’t, because she and Nonie started laughing. The harder she tried to explain the harder they both laughed until the two of them were doubled over in spasms, tears streaming down their faces while the woman made her escape.

When my grandmother told this story- often after my Aunt Nonie’s prompted her with, “Tell them all about how you threatened some poor woman with a tin of tuna,” we would all start laughing. And Nana would laugh that deep belly laugh as she told the story, her eyes filling with tears and her face getting dark pink. I laughed with her, for her, delighted to see that she could have a moments of real silliness- in the grocery store and in the retelling of the story.

There are a lot of stories about my grandmother that would not make anyone laugh. But this is how I like to remember her- sitting at her kitchen table telling the tuna story, laughing and wiping her eyes with the corner of her apron. Like the sound of the little girl’s giggling in the park, just thinking about it, makes me smile.

Scheduling a Breakdown

Last weekend I went up to the wilderness campsite I’ve leased for the year and set up camp.

After four hours of driving I arrive and erect two tents: one for sleeping and one as a kitchen. It’s hot. The air is filled with the scent of sun-soaked pines and sparkling water. I blow up my air mattress and collect some fire wood. I test the camp stove to make sure it will still light without exploding. I set up a folding table and unpacked the pots and pans and dishes- cast offs from my mother’s basement collection of domestic flotsam and jetsam. Finished with setting up, I put the cooler and the cardboard box full of apples and peanut butter and muffins back into my car to avoid attracting bears to the site while I am taking a swim to cool off. After floating on my back in the clear water, face up-turned toward the sun, I emerge and haul a bucket of water back up the steep incline to the campsite.

And then I sit down.

The campsite is at the top of a huge granite rock- grey with streaks of white quartzite and pink feldspar. I sit at the edge of the rock looking out over the lake below, staring. My head is empty of all thought- but not because I have achieved any kind of Zen-like serenity. I am like one of those wind-up toys whose spring has finally completely unfurled, making further movement impossible. I am incapable of thought. I have come to an abrupt halt. I can go no further. I just stare.

And then, the weeping begins. Tears course down my face. I do not bother to wipe them away. I wouldn’t say I am crying- crying seems too active. It’s as if I’ve sprung a leak, as if I am simply full of unshed tears that are now spilling from my eyes. I’m not particularly surprised at this mind-without-thought, body-incapable-of-movement weeping. I have been moving constantly for three months, dealing with the logistical and legal matters of marital separation. I have been in survival mode, barely touching upon the grief and anguish of this loss. For three months I have been like a shipwrecked woman swimming for shore. I have ignored the pain in my chest and the ache in my muscles because I must keep swimming or drown. I can feel the postponed grief waiting and now, in this moment, it cannot be fully contained.

But like the swimmer who sees the shore and still has some distance to traverse, I know I must keep swimming. Surely it is as easy to drown yards from shore as it is in the middle of the ocean. This week we will sign the separation agreement. Next week my soon-to-be-ex-husband will give me a cheque and I will sign the title to the home we shared over to him. Two more weeks of necessary details. I must be careful. I must remain flexible, able to discern between what is necessary and what puts my ability to reach the shore at risk. I had planned on being at the campsite a day earlier, but a migraine and a prolonged episode of tachycardia (rapid and irregular heartbeat) made it seem prudent to wait a day. I must continue to pace myself. There is still a distance to go. I do not so much think this as feel it- a slight tensing in my gut and an almost inaudible whisper beneath my exhale, “Breathe. Not yet. Breathe,” forestalling complete collapse.

The weeping subsides. I do not make it stop. It just stops, as it started, without my conscious participation. I get up and build a fire to heat some water for tea.

Tea in hand, I consider the surge of weeping and wonder if I am headed into some kind of breakdown. Am I scheduling a time and setting up a place of collapse, a place where no one will be counting on me for anything, where nothing has to be taken care of, where I can weep and stare at the wind on the water for as long as it takes for movement to find me? I have cleared my calendar for August and imagine spending that time here alone. Perhaps it is a sign of my survival ability that I have set up this opportunity for collapse. Opportunity For Collapse. Now there’s a catchy book title! Or how about a workshop: How to Organize Your Life so You Can Have the Breakdown You Need and Deserve! And yes, yes- people who are eager to be helpful will tell me that a breakdown is really a breakthrough. It’s not even that I don’t think that’s true. It just doesn’t help much when you know there's an emotional tsunami on the way.

The wilderness of the Canadian shield is my holy ground, the place where I am most able to simply be, to lose self-consciousness and welcome self-awareness of what is. I trust I’ll be held here. I have been held here before. And on some level, although it is a distant echo at the moment, I have faith that the Mystery will find and make itself known to me here- will let me know how I am to move forward. But before any new movement, the feelings that have been kept at bay will have their way with me, will be felt. And part of me is curious. Yes, curious- wondering what it will be like, this letting go into the place where I do not know how to continue, do not know who I am now. Perhaps this combination of holy ground and holy curiosity is what will allow something. . . some new healing or meaning or wholeness to emerge. I don’t know. But even not knowing, I will go there anyway with my heart full of hope and unshed tears awaiting release.

Just Weather

It’s hot. The kind of hot, combined with humidity, that reminds you that living in a large city is not the healthiest place to be. The air is thick with the smell of steaming asphalt, lingering car exhaust and rotting garbage. People hurrying along the blistering concrete look wilted and get easily irritated when someone is blocking their way or moving slower than they are. Strangely the heat does not seem to lift much at night. I got up at five this morning, walked out onto the balcony hoping for some relief, and stepped into a warm soup of heavy air.

There’s a saying about Canadians- that if you ask us how we are or what we have been doing, we will give you a weather report. There’s some truth to it. Maybe it’s because we experience such extremes in one place- forty below to forty above (that’s Celsius- which translates at the bottom end to just about the same and at the top to 104 degrees Fahrenheit.) We tend to keep an eye on the weather so we know whether we need snow shoes or flip flops. I like it. It makes me stay in touch with the environment, reminds me that some things are beyond my control and that the only thing I can do is try to prepare for the possible while knowing it is unpredictable. When I spent some time in Los Angeles I found it disorienting not to have to check the weather report or the temperature before leaving the place I was staying. The weather was pretty much always the same. You needed a light sweater or jacket in the morning or evening and otherwise, could simply stroll out in the same clothing each day. It made it too easy to disconnect, to feel as if my tiny human intentions and plans for the day determined everything about how the world unfolded.

Weather is particularly good at giving us perspective because it is so impersonal, so beyond our immediate control. Oh, we may complain a bit, but the truth is that we are aware that our reactions to the weather are pretty ineffectual in influencing more than our experience of whatever the weather is. That’s the point: weather just IS. If you want to go skiing but it warms up and the snow melts, it may be disappointing but you don’t take it personally (most of the time.) If you plan a picnic and it pours rain you may feel some frustration, but there’s no one to yell at, no one to blame- and that’s a good practice to develop.

So, one of my mantras when I am feeling frustrated about things that are clearly beyond my control (like, for instance, other people, interest rates, and- some days- my health) is, “It’s just weather.” Because, if it’s just weather, I know a number of things are true: it’s not personal (so there is no point in making myself miserable by taking it personally); it will pass and change; and there is little or nothing I can do about it, so I may as well do what I can (put up the umbrella, shovel the walk, wear a hat) and not suffer over what I can’t do (control the uncontrollable.)

This is perhaps surprisingly challenging to remember even when dealing with the small stuff. Years ago, when my son Nathan was about twelve, at the end of a long and tiring day, I dropped a macaroni and cheese casserole meant to be our dinner. It shattered on the kitchen floor. I stood there in disbelief, staring at the mess.

Nathan, seeing my look of frustration (and no doubt anticipating where that frustration might unfairly land) said, “Oh no. Who can we blame for that?”

And of course, I laughed, my anger dissolving in the recognition that as much as I wanted to direct anger somewhere it wouldn’t be warranted or do any good. So, I just started cleaning up the broken glass and macaroni. In some ways, the broken casserole was “just weather.”

This seems to be some kind of key to living a happy life: recognizing what is “just weather,” that which is beyond our control and will inevitably will change. Sometime when we prepare for “weather” (the uncontrollable) we guess right- we have our umbrella handy when it starts to rain. And sometimes we get wet. Either way, it’s just weather.

When Magic Happens

Years ago, I leased a wilderness campsite where my sons and I spent most of our summers. It was on a small lake in the midst of an eighty-square mile private forest and wildlife reserve in Northern Ontario. For me, there is nothing like lying on sun-warmed granite, breathing in the scent of towering pines and listening to the long mournful call of the loon echo across the clear water of a small lake. It heals all the places in me that have become bruised and broken.

But life changed. The site was hit with a tornado (while we were there- and I can say it is a surreal experience to be, even briefly, in the very centre of a tornado flinging hundred foot pines around you like tooth-picks) and my sons needed to be in the city for summer jobs. And then, I married Jeff and moved out of the city to a place in the country in Southern Ontario. Although our home was not on the metamorphic rock of the Canadian Shield it was beautiful and quiet and surrounded by a pine forest. I still longed for the northern rocks and water, but it didn’t seem sensible to maintain a second place outside the city.

Now, things have changed- again. Being back in the city full-time I have come to truly appreciate all that Toronto has to offer. But I also have a renewed need for a place outside the city. But spots like the one I had- affordable, remote, private, on a lake etc.- are few and far between. I went on the waiting list for a leased site at the forest reserve, but did not expect to hear back for several years.

Two nights ago, lying in bed listening to the helicopters sweeping over the city during the G20 meeting, I could feel my heart and body ache for the wilderness. But with all of the logistical and emotional work of my recent marital separation, I didn’t feel I had the energy (or the heart) to do a lengthy search to find some place that would meet my need for privacy and rock and water. Lying there, I suddenly remembered how the original site had come to me: I had been visiting a friend who had a spot at the wildlife reserve, and I’d taken her canoe out onto the lake. I’d lain down in the canoe and drifted with the wind, watching the sky and allowing my deep and desperate need for a place of healing to fill me. And I let my longing fuel my prayer: “Please, I need a place just like this, and I need it now. I have no energy to search, to look at places that don’t fit, to figure out how to do this. Please.” And in one week a site on the same lake became available.

Two nights ago, remembering this , I once again allowed my deep longing for the wilderness, for the healing of the grey and pink granite and clear waters, to fill me. And I prayed a similar prayer: “I do not have the energy to look. I need a place like this again. Please, help me.”

This morning I called the wildlife reserve to see if they had any temporary camp sites available for August. To my surprise, a woman I used to know when I had a long term spot there answered the phone (I thought she had moved on.) She told me the only short term sites they had were for two weeks and were on one of the busier lakes. “But,” she said, “as luck would have it, a seasonal site on the lake where you used to be just became available this morning. Do you want it?”

And I said, “YES!” and “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

So, for some of July and hopefully most of August, I will be camping on a small quiet lake, surrounded by wilderness and lying on weather-smoothed rock. I will watch the herons, and listen to the loons and the wolves and the coyotes. I will sit by the fire and may even build a sweat lodge (used to have one at the old site.) I will take my heart and my body to the land that heals me. This might mean I miss a blog entry here and there (no electricity or internet) but I will see what kind of connection is available in the village nearby.

I feel. . . . so blessed, and so very grateful. And I also feel. . . . like I have been touched, not for the first time, by sacred magic. It’s not so much that I felt magic had left my life but that in my preoccupation with logistics and survival, with the grief of difficult change and intermittent anxiety about the shape of my future, I had lost my alignment with the magic that is always there. But pausing for a moment and allowing my heart’s longing to fill me I opened. And magic reached out and pulled me back into alignment with the sacred heart that holds us all. I am blessed.

Joy

Where do you find your joy? Oh, I know- ideally, on a really good day, in a moment of Full Awareness and Spiritual Insight we can find and appreciate joy in every moment. But, I’m thinking here of the joy that can be found in a hope-I-can-get-the-kids-to-bed-before-I-collapse kind of human day. Because I am pretty sure that besides deep restorative sleep (which is so necessary) the other thing we need in order to meet the challenges of daily life and the news that oil geysers are blackening the ocean waters and the economy is wobbling unpredictably is joy.

Lately, I’m beginning to see that joy is predicated on a radical level of self-knowledge and self-acceptance. It’s about giving up the struggle to be better or different than you are, about seeing what you have to work with (mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually etc.) and, accepting this, finding what feeds your heart so you can offer the best of what you are to the world. The “Green Bough” in the title of this blog is from the Chinese proverb: If I keep a green bough in my heart the singing bird will come. The singing bird is joy that gives us hope, cultivates faith and offers us renewed energy. The green bough is the holding of who and what we are (not what we think we should be or could be some day) in our hearts without reservation, with humour and deep self-acceptance.

I find joy in lots of places and activities but never more consistently than during my early morning hours. While the city is still quiet I rise and make a cup of tea and return to bed to write my dreams, do my prayers and read something that stirs my imagination (at the moment it is Jungian analyst James Hollis’ Swamplands of the Soul : New Life in Dismal Places, and Azar Nafisi’s Things I’ve Been Silent About: Memories of a Prodigal Daughter.) I read and take notes. I am moved to write and reflect and contemplate. And I delight in the learning, the exploration, the words on the page of the book I am reading or the journal I am writing. And almost every morning, at some point, I pause and feel the thrill of not wanting to be anywhere else, doing anything else, being anyone else. I let the moment sink in- the delight and the privilege of being who and where I am. And I whisper to the dawning light with an overflowing heart, “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

I know- not everyone’s idea of a good time and an image of me in bed reading and writing wouldn’t make a very effective good-time commercial. But that’s the thing about joy- because it’s predicated on self-acceptance it happens in the places where we are most ourselves and that’s different for each individual.

Joy is the giggle of delight that releases the tension we did not even know we were holding in our necks and shoulders and big toes. Joy is what we feel when a moment of prayer, a cup of tea or well written phrase returns us to a sense of connection to our inner selves when we weren’t aware that we had wandered away from our own centre. It’s the exhale of arriving at an inner home we thought we could never forget. It is sometimes bittersweet as we realize how long we have been driving on autopilot, disconnected, not really taking in the world or our day or our own soft animal body and human heart.

Sometimes we forget that joy is the point: the deep pleasure in all aspects of being that comes when we know we are exactly where we need, want and desire to be; when we need, want and desire to be exactly where we are and find ourselves spontaneously saying, “This is good. Thank you.”

Lately, as I read letters and do counselling sessions I listen carefully, asking myself, “Where does this person find joy?” Sometimes if the person is wandering in the deep woodlands of confusion or grief or weariness I have to watch carefully for the small white stones dropped by the soul on the dark forest floor as markers pointing to their particular path of joy. Because although we humans can live through long periods of hardship and illness, of uncertainty and suffering, we cannot live fully without joy.