Hi all.  Just wanted to send a note to say I’m still alive, and hope to get back into my writing groove soon.  I’m increasingly recognizing what a contemplative I am, and how much I need quiet space to connect with all that makes my soul sing.  When I have it (the space), my time with busyness and people is an extension and expansion of that song.  When I don’t, I feel increasingly out of touch with everything, disconnected from myself and other people and all that’s going on in the noises and silences happening around us – even when I’m smack in the middle of them all!  I go numb.  Can anyone relate with this?  Holidays can really be intense. 

I’m so grateful for the good things with which my recent weeks have been filled (travel, time with friends and family, leisurely hours with my husband), but am sensing in my soul a real need to renew.  To be quiet.  To return to the daily rhythms that help me hear Life’s song again.  When I do so, I hope my writing voice will wake up and have again a thing or two to say.

Until then, and fondly,

Kristin

Oh.  My.  God.  This post on writing is too fabulous.  Cheers to the Real Live Preacher (the guy who wrote it)!

In the yard next door sit two enormous pines.  Their tips are something like 80 feet up.  Unlike many of the giants that surround our place, I haven’t known how to relate with these two.

Early in our stay here, I greeted the other trees, quite literally, nearly every day.  Hard to explain it; they all just seemed so awake and alive.  They brought out my inner St. Francis.  I even tried naming some of them, though that didn’t last; naming such enormous, elegant, aged beings pretty quickly felt wrong – too presumptuous, or controlling somehow.  The few times I used names, the response I felt from the trees made me think of God telling Moses, “I am who I am,” rather than anything more specific.  Names are wonderful things, but can also be limiting, constrictive.

In any case, I’ve moved in my relationship with these others into a mellower, more familiar coexistence, where I don’t say hello, but feel with them a simple understanding.  As though our hats are always tipped to one another even when we aren’t externally doing so.

But these two, these two that sit directly opposite my office window:  I’ve not known how to be with them.

For one thing, they only sit a foot apart.  I suppose it’s only respectful of any pair that close to leave them well enough alone.  Their arms and legs are tangled together, and though I can’t confirm it, near the bottom I’m sure their trunks are touching.  Such intimacy seems really like a private thing.

But that’s not all that gives me pause with this pair. 

One of them is nearly dead.  Its partner is full of lush, green fur from top to bottom.  But this one is nearly naked.  Nearly dead.  Greeting such an oddly intimate, dead-alive pair, just, well…hasn’t ever worked for me.  I’ve just glanced at them occasionally from a distance, puzzled, silent, giving them their space.

This morning as I gazed from my window, though, they inspired a different thought. 

For a couple of weeks, now, my inner world has been a tango between strong, capable, adult-Kristin, and a far younger version of myself.  A Kristin that’s afraid of the things my child-self was afraid of, and that copes with fears the ways that child coped.  I shake my head sometimes at what disparity exists between these two, and how strange it is that they both can live so fully and powerfully within myself.

As I looked at those trees this morning, I thought of these parts of myself, and the ways all of us develop means of coping in the world.  Beginning in childhood, we establish habits of thinking about ourselves, ways of interacting with people we like and don’t like, patterns for dealing with (or trying to avoid) conflict or the things of which we’re afraid.  Our habits serve necessary purposes, and are grown in the first place to help us survive.

But often there come times when one of these habits, or even quite a few, begins acting less like a lush, green tree, taking in waste and turning it into life-sustaining “oxygen,” and instead turns into dead weight.  A coping mechanism backfiring.  A means of self-protection that actually does us harm.  Not everyone of such and such description is untrustworthy, for example.  Or not every conflict is a bad thing.  Or not everyone really wants to hear us talk for hours at a time…or, conversely, not at all.  Sometimes the very relationships or thoughts or actions we most need to cultivate can’t be done without a certain type of dying.  A dying of old habits that once lived well and served good purposes.  A dying of that which overshadows all the “light” and “rain” and “sun” we really need to thrive.

I look at that pair this afternoon, and see in it a reflection of myself and those around me, living and dying at the same time, carrying within ourselves a complex entanglement of things flourishing and things wasting away.  I’m warmed by this marriage, glad for the ways that death itself can be evidence of a more significant thriving.

Today I nod new greetings to that pair across the way, discovering in them not puzzling, awkward strangers anymore, but friends.  Regally, unabashedly, hopefully, they show me who I am.

I’ve just finished reading Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist.  Wow.  What a book.  The whole way through I had that sparkly feeling I get sometimes when I’m reading something or having a conversation or thinking a thought or noticing what’s around me and sense that whatever I’m doing/thinking/noticing/talking about is somehow deeply significant for me.  Like that conversation with my Gypsy friend, and the talk by Rachel Remen that followed it.  The feeling says, "Pay attention to this, Kristin.  Pay close attention."  It doesn’t usually tell me why.  But it perks me up, and gets me taking note.

The story is a fable about a young man in pursuit of his Personal Legend.  Here’s a taste of the story that also describes a little bit about what a Personal Legend is.  Just before this scene the young man (a shepherd) meets an old man (a stranger) on a park bench who turns out to be a kind of guide, sent by the universe to help the young man find his truest way:

"I’m the King of Salem," the old man had said.

"Why would a king be talking with a shepherd?" the boy asked, awed and embarrassed.

"For several reasons.  But let’s say that the most important is that you have succeeded in discovering your Personal Legend."

The boy didn’t know what a person’s "Personal Legend" was.

"It’s what you have always wanted to accomplish.  Everyone, when they are young, knows what their Personal Legend is.

"At that point in their lives, everything is clear and everything is possible.  They are not afraid to dream, and to yearn for everything they would like to see happen to them in their lives.  But, as time passes, a mysterious force begins to convince them that it will be impossible for them to realize their Personal Legend."

None of what the old man was saying made much sense to the boy.  But he wanted to know what the "mysterious force" was; the merchant’s daughter [a woman the boy had a crush on, and whom the boy hoped to soon be seeing] would be impressed when he told her about that!

"It’s a force that appears to be negative, but actually shows you how to realize your Personal Legend.  It prepares your spirit and your will, because there is one great truth on this planet:  whoever you are, or whatever it is you do, when you really want something, it’s because that desire originated in the soul of the universe.  It’s your mission on earth."

"Even when all you want to do is travel?  Or marry the daughter of a textile merchant?"

"Yes, or even search for treasure.  The Soul of the World is nourished by people’s happiness.  And also by unhappiness, envy, and jealousy.  To realize one’s Personal Legend is a person’s only real obligation.  All things are one.

"And when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it."

They were both silent for a time, observing the plaza and townspeople.  It was the old man who spoke first.

"Why do you tend a flock of sheep?"

"Because I like to travel."

The old man pointed to a baker standing in his shop window at one corner of the plaza.  "When he was a child, that man wanted to travel, too.  But he decided first to buy his bakery and put some money aside.  When he’s an old man, he’s going to spend a month in Africa.  He never realized that people are capable, at any time in their lives, of doing what they dream of."

"He should have decided to become a shepherd," the boy said.

"Well, he thought about that," the old man said.  "But bakers are more important people than shepherds.  Bakers have homes, while shepherds sleep out in the open.  Parents would rather see their children marry bakers than shepherds."

The boy felt a pang in his heart, thinking about the merchant’s daughter.  There was surely a baker in her town.

The old man continued, "In the long run, what people think about shepherds and bakers becomes more important for them than their own Personal Legends."

*  *  *

So there’s a little taste of the story.  I imagine it speaks most strongly to those of us whose Personal Legends may not look like anything anyone’s ever heard of (including ourselves!), and we need a little boost (or numerous big ones) to help us pursue it anyway…despite our fears that we might not succeed, or that we’ll look a little foolish trying.

Then again, the book may actually speak to anyone who’s even just a little in touch with the desire to live into who they are in a deeper, more meaningful way, however conventional or unconventional that might turn out looking.

I’d love to talk about it with anyone who has (or chooses to) read it.

I want to talk a little bit about people, and the way I’m coming to see them.  I guess you might call this my emerging anthropology.

I think people are fundamentally good.  Like the rest of creation, we’re wondrous and amazing and full of all kinds of potential.  We get plopped into the universe and just by nature of existing go about the business of being miracles.

I think we’re also – every last one of us – plopped into a web of violence (Rene Girard and co. have some pretty brilliant things to say about this, in my opinion.).  Other words could be used here instead of violence, like dysfunction or woundedness.  But for me they all boil down to this end:  by nature of existing, we get hurt.  It can’t be helped.

So in addition to all of our sparkle and glory, we all of us become wounded creatures, acting and reacting in ways appropriate to the nature of our wounds.  We develop holes inside, that crave love or belonging or respect or control or power or beauty or tenderness or attentiveness or whatever other things got broken out of us or into us in the course of our lives, or never were given enough to us in the first place. We thus become compelled to try and fill our holes.  Or keep ourselves from developing more.  Or prevent our originals from getting gouged out or eroded any deeper than they already are.

Often times this means pursuing life passions and vocations that actually make the world a better place – really wonderful organizations and institutions and laws and books and classes and conferences and entire social movements have been the offspring of painful personal experiences with life’s darker side.

But our attempts at filling our holes and/or protecting ourselves from developing deeper or new ones don’t only spread light.  Just as often, I think they end up becoming part of that web I spoke about earlier.  The violent one.  The one that hurts us and only perpetuates itself and all the things from which we want to be free.  One can think of any number of poster children from this camp, including any number of world leaders, past and present.

The tragic thing about our world is that this web is so ubiquitous.  But…the wonderful thing about our world – the thing that gives me hope and gladness and inspiration in the face of all of the horrible, horrible yuck – is that darkness and violence aren’t the whole story. 

They aren’t the whole story.

There is goodness in our world.  And light and love.  And despite some major and persisting set-backs, these have quite the tenacious life-force.  So much so, that when they die or get snuffed out, they pop up again. Maybe not in the same place, but still…  Life out of death.  Resurrection.  It’s that pattern I wrote about some time back. 

The Story, as a whole, as I see it, is one of darkness and light, and in humans, as in so much of creation, a miraculous potential for healing and growth and change.  And everywhere a life force, a kind of Holy Pulse, that pulls at us toward realizing that potential.  Again and again.

To me, this way of understanding people and all the layers of violence and light that populate our planet feels radically different from one that sees humans as fundamentally evil.  Rather than scolding fingers, it causes me to want to point compassion toward myself and toward humanity.  Wounded animals need lots of tenderness to heal.  And the last thing they need to be told is that they’re bad for trying to protect themselves.  Or for trying to get the things their broken selves genuinely need.

I have a hunch that if we truly understood one another’s wounds, we’d find it very difficult to condemn.  Anyone.  Destructive behavior would still need to be addressed and contained, but I wonder if the goal even then would shift from punishment toward redemption, or a chance at healing change.