Spirit In Gear

Flame On - Lessons from Autumn

A few days ago I pull into my driveway and glance down the street.  I let out a silent awe at nature's colorful glory and grab my camera.  No matter that I've seen several dozen autumn seasons, there's no room for complacency here.

I learn an inspirational lesson from Mother Nature that hasn't previously occurred to me.  Just before the leaf dies and falls off the tree, it transforms itself into blazing color.  Nothing like going out in regal fashion before the last gasp.

What we can learn from Autumn is that it is never too late to:

- express WHO we are
- ASK for what we want
- EXPECT more
- stop SETTLING for less
- STRUTT our stuff
- or . . . you fill in the blank!

Moment of Respite

I'm sitting in my father's condo in Ohio.  It is quiet and peaceful.  The skies outside sport fluffy clouds amidst the blue.  Temperatures are delightfully mild.

I enjoy this respite.  It keeps me grounded in the present moment.  Something I find hard to do while my father lies in the ICU.  Later this morning my siblings and I meet with Dad's medical team to discuss end stage treatment.

It wasn't supposed to be like this.  He went in for surgery 4 weeks ago.  The schedule called for a brief stay in ICU, followed by a week on the surgical floor, and a few weeks convalescence in a nursing home.  For his first surgery ever in his 83 years, Dad did well.  Although the pathology report came back with a malignancy, it is the secondary infections that are killing him.

Amidst my return trips back to my hometown to see Dad, I attended my 40th high school class reunion a little over a week ago.  We were a small class of 59 growing up in a small midwestern town.  It was a poignant, heartfelt reunion.  I found myself talking  with classmates that I never talked with in high school. 

I believe it has a lot to do with being older.  Life has seasoned and weathered us with good times and bad.  We've all experienced loss, and been humbled at times.  Dare I say we have mellowed and aged with distinction and grace? 

There is something about "cycling" back through the formative years, revisiting the physical scenes of our successes, failures, triumphs, and humiliations.  It's like reconnecting with a part of myself I haven't been in touch with for awhile.  

I struggle with watching my father slowly die in the present.  I don't want to let go.  In my head I know that the older generation moves on.  We take over the elder position while watching our children and grandchildren move along the life cycle.  From birth, to life, to death, and back to life again.

Amidst my sadness and loss, a multitude of friends, extended family,  and colleagues reach out to remind me that we are all connected.  As I sit and write this, I allow their love, prayers, and positive energy to reach me, and support me.

There are many things to be grateful "for" but, as I ripen with the seasons of life, the many reasons blend into a sacred mystery. And, most deeply, I realize that living gratefully is its own blessing.
- Michael Mahoney

[Photo Credit:  Dani Simmonds]

 

Wisdom Years

Much to my surprise, good friend and fellow blogger, Barbara Sliter, posted a poem yesterday in honor of my birthday - The Wisdom Years.  She wrote it as a followup to my Shifting Ground.  Her words remind me that loss is not without gain.  Thank YOU, Barbara, for allowing wisdom to speak through you.

Her post follows:

The Wisdom Years
by Barbara Sliter

I write this on your birthday, an artificial marker
for the event we call “ life,” jarring us
into life’s profound questions

Our experiences are piled up against the door
and old hopes and dreams start to hang
in the air like so much smoke

Anticipated losses can start stealing today’s joy right out from under us long before
the real pain occurs

We watch our life shape shifting into an unknown as the familiar and the loved start to slip away growing up, growing away, passing on

We fear being left behind, left standing alone
in the middle of the empty field named for who we thought we were

But it is in the midst of this upset that wisdom is born surrendering to the mystery we didn’t create letting grace flow as it wants to do

These are the wisdom years, when we know the least...because what choice is there but to keep openingin love to what is coming 
                                                    
[Photo by Barbara Sliter.  Sculpture by Jerry Minton]

Shifting Ground

Saturday evening on my walk out with my husband, I ponder the deeper aspects of my life.  (There's something about moving side by side that makes it easier to have such conversations than when we sit across from one another.)

I wonder aloud if I'm just going through the motions of living. 

I seem to engage attentively in my day to day activities in the world "out there."  And yet I can sense that there is a lot of inner upheaval brewing.  I feel unsettled.  I feel like I'm "waiting" for something.  But what?

I could say I'm waiting til our adult daughters "land."  Will they continue to live in Chicago?  Will they marry the fellows they're currently with?  Will our younger daughter find employment soon?

I'm also waiting to see if my 83 yr old Dad passes his stress tests in order to undergo major surgery to remove a tumor.  He's fast losing weight and not doing well.  I'm not ready to think about life without my papa.

My husband (and I) are waiting to see if he still has a job this fall.  As layoffs continue, we grapple with living amongst economic uncertainty. 

Underneath it all, I'm waiting to find another "rock" of stability to show up that I can stand on.  Since I entered the decade of my 50's, loss and impermanence play a much bigger role in my life.  I can no longer pretend that earthly life goes on forever.  Loved ones pass on.  My body doesn't look like it did 20 years ago, or even 10.

As loss continues, my yearning for deeper connections increases, perhaps as a way to replace dear loved ones that have transitioned on.  That includes a desire for a deeper relationship, not only with people, but with God.

I question what I'm doing.  I wonder if I should be doing something else, something "more" with my life.  I have far more questions than answers.  I sense this shifting ground may be a permanent part of the landscape of life in middle age and beyond. 

And yet . . . what I need to remember, and what my wise friend, Deb I. shared with me today, is to stay present, and focus on experiencing joy.  Joy is the reason!

Your life is right now!  It's not later!  It's not in that time of retirement.  It's not when the lover gets here.  It's not when you've moved into the new house.  It's not when you get the better job.  Your life is right now.  It will always be right now.  You might as well decide to start enjoying your life right now, because it's not ever going to get better than right now--until it gets better right now!
- Abraham

The above quote provides good advice.  I have been duly chastened.  But not silenced.  We human beings come equipped with emotions that require acknowledgment and expression.  There is a time for me to cry in my beer.  And a time to blow my nose and move on with life.

Right now I'm ready to move on.  Until the next time when I am called to cry in my beer.

[Photo Credit:  "Miss Duckey"]

Summer is Corny

Growing up in the midwest in the '50's, I always looked forward to eating corn on the cob.  Back then, we were taught that in a well-ordered world, corn is "knee-high by the fourth of July."  It's one of those ditties that remains firmly planted in my memory banks.

I feel a sense that all is well with the world when I drive by tall cornfields, as I did in my recent trip to Ohio.  It's always an act of faith on the part of the farmer to see if human efforts will be well-partnered by Mother Nature to produce a good crop. This time I also experience amazement at how tall the corn is for mid-July - at least chin-high if you are Michael Jordan.  The economy may be in the tank, but thanks to rain (and "steroids"), our corn stands proudly.  I couldn't resist pulling over to the side of the road to grap a picture.

May we all partake of local fresh produce for as long as summer lasts! 

True Credibility

There are those who believe you must find your credibility before people will want to read what you write and what we want you to understand is that when you tune in to who you really are that's where your true credibility comes from----and that's attractive to anyone who's a vibrational match to it. In other words anyone who finds you not credible, wouldn't understand what you've written anyway.
- Abraham

It's been over two weeks since my last post.  I wonder to myself why I haven't felt moved to write ( my inner censor not withstanding).  A few minutes ago a special friend sent me this quote.  As I read the words in the quote, I find my courage emerging from the shadows. 

Now it's okay to share with you what I've been grappling with of late to understand.  In my middle-aged years I sense the passage of life more deeply.  Themes of loss seem to dominate at times.  In the space of several weeks, my cousin died unexpectedly; my best friend's sister was diagnosed with a brain tumor and died within weeks; another friend's mother died over the weekend, fanning the flames of grief over my own mother's death 18 months ago.  I still miss my Mom every day.

Living several states away from friends and family, we can't make it to all the weddings and funerals.  I feel torn about that.  I call my 83 yr old Dad up on Father's Day, wishing I could be with him.  He no longer has an endless number of Fathers Days ahead of him.

I experience an identity crisis of sorts.  I ask myself why I live where I live.  Am I creating enough of a positive impact to justify living here in South Carolina?  Am I allowed to live my life the way I see fit?  Will our adult daughters ever live close to us again?  Will I ever move off the topic of middle-age?

Amidst these loss-related issues, my husband and I laugh and relax with good friends over the weekend; my business partner and I enjoy a recent, tremendous business success; and I move through my day without getting needlessly stuck.  It just goes to show you that life goes on side by side with the angst.

Raising the above questions brings both discomfort, and relief.  Unlike the game show, Jeopardy, answers usually don't first show up without a question to pair up with.  Now that I've tossed these questions out to the great Universe, I can wait.  The answers I need will find me in time, or lead to better questions!

 

Living Big in a Small Venue

Blogging at its best creates space for dialogue between people.  It invites visitors to step in for a bit, shed their status as stranger, and learn from each other. 

Sometimes blogging leads to extended conversations beyond the post, such as the flurry of email conversations (the deep and profound kind) between Dick Richards, Dan Oestreich, and me, following our recent posts on age.  I have been wowed by the learning and insights that continue from conversations with these wise and soulful men.

Recently I've been gratified to engage in a similar email conversation with Marcy Goldman over the same topic of life in middle age.  Marcy and I have known each other for several years as subscribers to each other's newsletters.  Marcy lives in Montreal and I live in South Carolina.  We've never met in person.  She is a successful pastry chef and baker with several published cookbooks.  Marcy is also a writer whose essays I devour with delight and sinful pleasure.

The title of this post, "Living Big in a Small Venue," comes from an essay Marcy wrote, entitled Go West Young Baker.  I excerpted a portion of this essay below to highlight what we can all learn in blazing our own trails, knowing we can't all be at the top.  Without further adieu I give you Marcy -

There is no middle class anymore –there is A list and the rest of the world – in a manner of speaking. You are either splatted or saturating the media for your brief expose or a larger than life personality (for good or bad) directing the ultimate reality show: This Life, These Times. For me, as a participant who needs to feel like the creative frontier is manageable, this means hacking off a tiny hunk of gold and mining it with the love and care things that are small but precious deserve. It is also a way to survive, but to also thrive and regenerate. Between not making the best sourdough in the world and Pillsbury Dinner Rolls, there are eons of choices and levels in-between. Knowing who and where you are and what makes you happy (which is what makes you successful) is cogent, savvy stuff. It offers me stillness in a racing world.

Similarly, the frontier of self-hood can be overwhelming – the roles we all have, the hats we wear and the techno era has made our to-do list formidable. What’s great about Endless Possibility and Unmet Potential is that it is creative and exciting. What is bad about it is that you never arrive. There is no finish line and that clamor of possibility segues into a contemporary cocktail – that unhealthy mix of two parts chatter of saturation and one part chaos of stimulation overload.

It’s taken me all this time to figure out a personal solution: in order to feel arrived, I mindfully have opted to lasso only half the moon; sometimes, only a fraction of a star. I keep to ‘the program’ whether it is a spat of domestic tasks or writing deadlines. Not always exciting stuff but it does offer the reward of that sense of being finished with something. Completing something, even small, results in serenity which spawns a bit of clarity and focus. This focus in turn offers a bit of new energy. Now order and focus don’t sound like the touchstones of creativity but they are. I do not have to write my novel all today or bake up every Definitive Butter Cookie all today. The bits and pieces I manage contribute to a mosaic, which becomes a mural. In the meantime, I am engaged fully – and revelling in a certain soulful harmony.

I haven’t stopped wanting to discover the frontier. I just no longer try to chase the horizon – lest I lose my energy or discover it to be, which the horizon often is, a mirage – sometimes, not even a mirage of my own making.  

The story I tell myself lately, which is working (lately) is that I have opted to ‘live big in a small venue.’ Thing is, it was never about getting there; it is indeed, about the journey West of my own spirit. No more huge map with expansive borders. It is now about carefully going over where I have been, lovingly coloring in and shading the places I want to tarry over, making art of the details, not enlarging the outline or challenging the borderlands. 

The greater frontier was never 'out there'. There is no there, there. The greater frontier, resides, as it always has, within. It is the landscape of my own passions and those passions, map or not, I can meet up with anytime I like. I know the terrain like the back of my hand.

Here’s to living big in a small venue, inventing frontiers in your own backyard, and forging your own trail. If I see you on the trail west, please wave. I will tip my toque and bid you Godspeed.  Meet you at the A-Ok Corral, where the biscuits are hot, the coffee is scorching, and there is always an extra place set at the table.

[Photo Credit of Marcy:  Mark Fowler]

More on Life in the Middle-Aged Lane

This week I donated "Betsy," my '96 Camry, to a charity.  I felt emotional pangs as she was towed away.  Betsy wears her age well.  She still has life left in her.  I hope her next owner appreciates the value she brings.  I have never owned a car prior to Betsy that served me with such dependability, style, and economy.  Betsy, at 13 years, still gets better gas mileage around town than my spanking new '09 Honda Accord.

I can't help but think that Betsy provides a metaphor for my life in middle age.  My place on life's stage shifts to the background.  I still have a lot of life left in me, but my priorities no longer center on achievement and career, or being at the front of the stage.

In The Gifts of Age Part 2 I confess my secret desire to go gray (but I'm a "silver" wannabe) when I turn 60 in the summer of 2011.  My hair, thanks to my parents' genes, is one of my best features, and wears an attractive color via my talanted hairdresser.  Going gray goes against the cultural current, but resonates with my inner being. 

Dick Richards asked me "Why wait til 60?"   Ah, Dick, you have no idea what's involved.  First of all, it will take at least 1.5 years to grow out the permanent hair color.  While my gray roots grow out, temporary color will be used.   I also need the time to gather my courage!  To get used to the idea that other people will judge me as less attractive, and to be okay with that.

I want to try gray hair on and see what it feels like.  It will complement the lines around my eyes that I have earned from laughing.  I sense more freedom to be me.  Take it or leave it, folks!  No apologies!  And if I don't like my gray hair, I know what to do about it.

This morning I read this quote, which captures my feelings (don't you just love how synchronicity works?):

As life goes on it becomes tiring to keep up the character you invented for yourself, and so you relapse into individuality and become more like yourself every day.  This is sometimes disconcerting for those around you, but a great relief to the person concerned.
- Agatha Christie

Stay tuned:  My middle-aged Inner Goddess has only just begun to emerge.

The Gifts of Age - Part 2

The second part of a two-part post co-authored by Deb Call, Dan Oestreich, and
Dick Richards, with Dick narrating.  Read Part 1.

Whatever we believe to be our gifts of age, it seems impossible to conclude anything but that they derive from experience. This is true not only for the gifts mentioned in Part I -- freedom from making judgments, inner confidence, acceptance and fruition -- but for so many others unmentioned so far, such as wisdom, peace of mind, continued commitment to a purpose, or enjoying the fruits of former accomplishments. It also seems impossible to conclude that these gifts are given to all. There are many who have them in great measure, and who revel in them and use them wisely, but there are also many cranky and unhappy old men and women who seem not to have them at all. If the gifts are truly gifts of age, then it is probably more accurate to say, rather than that the gifts are not given to all, that all are not able to receive them.

Dan wrote, “Acceptance is not a perfect word. It does not fully convey the sense of flow, fulfillment and peace of mind that I associate with it. It doesn't fully express the sense of grace. But I like it because what I hear in it is not the part of accept that means endure but the part that means receive. As in receive a gift. If I've learned anything, it is how to receive. It was a friend, a psychic, who first told me--as I was waiting for insight at the bottom of my lonely pit--that I needed to open myself and learn to receive (was it this that changed the pit to a well?).”

  "You are trying to do everything on your own," she told Dan. "You don't trust the universe and you don't see that the physical reality of your circumstances, the physical world itself, is thin as tissue paper." She related the story of a man and his wife, clients of hers. The man was washing the dishes one evening when he heard a ker-plop into the soapy water of a bowl in the sink. Reaching in, he pulled out a ring. He had never seen the ring before. He took it to his wife who exclaimed, “Where on earth did you find that? I haven't seen that ring in twenty years!” Dan’s psychic friend explained that it had just come through in order to help the woman deal with what it symbolized to her, some unfinished business from the past.

“I'm sure I privately scoffed at the story,” Dan wrote, “Yet I would say this has turned out to be what has happened to me, too. Something, a coin, a ring, has come through that tissue paper thin wall of time and space. Its gradual recognition has had a miraculous effect. I do a better job of receiving myself just as I am and receiving others just as they are. I'm more open. The wars between me and me have diminished over time, replaced by an inner connection to the flow. I know I've embraced something - or it has embraced me.”

Becoming more open to receiving what is available to us, rather than struggling along possessed by the desire to have things our own way, appears to be a pre-requisite for acquiring the gifts of age. And Deb pointed to a few other prerequisites when she wrote, “Age brings wisdom, a commonly held belief. Although wisdom is not confined to older folks, wisdom can manifest new strains, or gifts, as we age, if we remain aware, open, and reflective.”

Aldous Huxley summed it up this way, "Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him." It is what we do with our experience that determines whether or not we are capable of receiving the gifts of age, and approaching our experience with awareness, openness, and a habit of reflection appears to be prerequisite.

Deb experiences a bittersweet quality to realizing it has taken her fifty-seven years to arrive at her inner confidence. “But some things just can’t be rushed,” she wrote, “Like the silky taste of an aged Cabernet, or the patina on a piece of old bronze.”

She confesses, “Over the past two years I have been envious of women with silver hair. Not gray hair, or white hair, but silver hair. It happened again a few weeks ago while out hiking to a waterfall. I saw a vibrant looking woman in her forties with beautiful silver hair. Contrary to our youth-driven culture, she did not look old in her silver locks.” Deb will turn sixty in 2011. “That’s my target date to have grown out my roots and become dazzingly silver-haired, whether it be au natural, or with the help of my hairdresser.”  

This September, Dan, at fifty-nine, will marry “a fabulous woman and soul-mate.” He explained, “We met on eHarmony a few years ago. I haven't been married in a decade and that will complete a cycle of some kind. I feel I am coming home, maybe for the first time. Indeed, what a lesson, learning to receive, and a ring it is that shows up. Who on earth would have guessed?”

I am the oldest of our troika. I have eight years on Deb, seven on Dan. Unlike Deb, I’ve been bald for a long time and don’t care at all about what hair I do have. Like Deb, judgmentalism feels less satisfying to me, and I no longer care much about proving something to others. Unlike Dan, I would probably not have scoffed at the psychic’s story about the ring. Like Dan, I have had to learn how to receive and was remarried at about the same age that he is now.

I can say from my “elder” position to both of them (and perhaps to you) that if you remain aware, open, reflective, and receptive, the gifts of age will keep getting better, at least for the next seven or eight years, which is all that I can speak to.

[Photo Credits:  ring - "JK;"Iris - Dan Oestreich]
 

The Gifts of Age - Part 1

 

[This is the first of a two-part, three-way post. Many thanks to Dick Richards for initiating this project. You will find the same post at both Dick's and Dan's sites.]

 

Life has a way of stripping away the nonessentials one year at a time, until we're left with our real selves, unashamed before the world, refined by experience, shaped by the things we've learned and the passions we've pursued...

--Author Unknown

I asked Dan Oestreich and Deb Call to join with me (I’m Dick Richards) in creating a post about “the gifts of age” because it seemed that we were each plowing that field in our individual blogs. So this is a collaborative effort and it has been my privilege to put our thoughts together and to act as narrator for this two-part adventure. These two posts are being published simultaneously at our blogs.

In response to my invitation, Deb wrote of a lessening of judgmental attitudes as one gift of age. “Smack in middle-age,” she wrote, “I find that life has softened my edges. With perspective I rely less on black and white thinking. Being judgmental feels less satisfying. I haven't extinguished these traits, as my husband will attest, but engage in them less frequently.”

She also recognizes another gift of age, which she calls inner confidence. “I distinguish this inner confidence as a willingness to be my "real self," she wrote. “It differs from the external, ego driven confidence I developed from accomplishments as a way to prove something to others. Inner confidence means I no longer have to look a decade younger if I don't want to. Inner confidence means I can celebrate middle age my way, even if my friends and husband don't get it yet. It’s about my recognizing whose story I’m listening to about how to do ‘middle age’.”

As an example about listening to her own story rather than someone else’s, Deb wrote, “The other day I stopped into my eye doctor’s office to pick up an order of contact lenses. I happened to glance down and see a woman’s magazine. Sally Field sat on the cover. The headline read ‘How to Look Seven Years Younger.’ I had my Eureka moment: this is an old story foisted upon American women about how to age. Who cares? Obviously I don’t anymore. The real gift of age is the one I give myself, the inner confidence that says I don’t need anyone’s permission anymore to be the natural me!”

Dan told a story which led him to yet another gift of age. He wrote, “Fifteen years ago I embarked on a major mid-life learning and change process. I thought at the beginning I was refining the work I did for pay. It did that in a major way, and it overturned everything in my personal life as well. Figuratively, I went down into the pit, the well of grief, I believe the poet David Whyte calls it, to find the golden coins. It was a very tough period emotionally, enormous highs and lows. I lost many relationships. I was often--usually--at war with myself over something. The one coin I seemed to have brought back I would call acceptance.”

Dan’s story reminded me of a friend in his late eighties who told me that he was having trouble remembering names. I asked him how he felt about that, expecting to hear a tale of frustration and loss. He replied, “Oh, I’ve accepted it. Right now I have one problem; I can’t remember names. If I don’t accept it then I’ll have two problems.”

Non-judgmentalism, inner confidence, acceptance. And I will add one more gift of age, fruition.

Fruition means, the condition of bearing fruit. Seeds planted in my mind have sometimes taken years to bear anything but anemic fruit. For example, sixteen years ago I had a sudden flash of insight: “I don’t have to prove anything to anybody.” But an insight is not a change, and for many years thereafter I continued on the path of proving various things about myself to various people. Today, while I still work at extinguishing the urge-to-prove, I finally feel confident that I no longer desire to prove anything even when old impulses to do so arise. This fruit is now robust, but it has taken sixteen years to fully understand, integrate, and practice not-proving. Those years came only by aging.

The kind of fruit we get depends, of course, on the seeds we choose to nourish. I like the following story to illustrate the point. Two elderly Jewish men, who had met in and survived a Nazi concentration camp, came together again many years later. The first man asked the second how life had been since their liberation from the camp. The second man told of a life of contentment and accomplishment, said, "I've forgiven them for what they did," and then asked the first man about his life. The first man told of a life of resentment and woe and said, "I'll never forgive those bastards." The second man shook his head sadly, "That is all too bad," he said, "It seems they still have you in their prison."

The seeds we choose to nourish, and their effect on the gifts of age, will be the subject of Part 2 in this series.

[Photo Credit:  Dan Oestreich]