In July I put this blog on pause, so I could really sink into the experience of the trail… and life. It's been quite some time since I felt moved to write more than a quick INSTA blurb for the public. Wonder what I’ve really been up to this season? Quite honestly, I’ve sunk deeply into the PAUSE. And got myself pretty stuck in the mud. Perhaps that sounds like a not so good thing, and believe me I’ll be the first to declare that it has not been amazingly glamorous. I do believe that there is a thing or two to be gleaned from the full value of SELAH - to pause… Though to take pause does not necessarily equate to peace. On the contrary, I have wrestled and quaked the whole time. It is however, if one can really sit with it, a chance for great personal discovery. I picture myself emerging from this experience caked in mud, not pouting about it, rather sporting a crazed childlike grin.
(Click the link to listen or scroll for text at the end of this post)
A sweet friend sent me this beautiful metaphor for what it is like to be in transition. I have, throughout my life, always had a plan. I'm a great planner. And I am guilty of jumping so quickly from one thing to the next that I have definitely noticed some missed opportunities... to hangout in the very real in-between places. My post trail challenge has been a continuation of the very same intention that I had set at the beginning: BOTO - Be Open To Outcome. Drop the PLAN. I have struggled to surrender, to BOTO, both on and off trail. And as I open myself up more and more to the great unknown beyond my control, it has pushed me over the edge of my comfort zone again and again and again.
Artist: Brian Andreas
In this mysterious and adventurous QUESTioning of that “next best thing” I have a confession to make. I am not very good at the whole pausing part, to actually sit and listen for the answer. Oh I’m VERY good at searching for the answer. In fact, if I described everything that I have been DOing during this intentional space for just BEing, you'd laugh heartily... or perhaps cry. I certainly have. I’ve been harboring this mentality, near self flagellation, that in this in-between time, so long as I don’t know the answer I can’t be living in abundant JOY. It’s just not possible, not allowed, without a sure sense of direction. As if anyone ever had a sure sense of direction! And sometimes, rather than honoring and savoring this season, I have acted as if my whole life were on pause. And I've done a lot of furious mud slinging.
The cultural pressures which put so much value on productivity, working toward something, earning one's keep… can cause this one to miss out on the blessing and free gift of every day life. I have mentioned in recent musings (the INSTA feed, which has continued a slow trickle since I got off trail) my model for living life in WONDER. My Grandmother. My Wonder Woman. Who practices this living in whole and present being every day. By being open to all people. Open to all situations. Without shutting down. As I reflected last month: She will see a Great Blue Heron land in the back yard and call me over to look. Every. Time. I have to catch my self if start to respond like grump. “I’ve seen it before.” “I’m busy right now.” “I know. I know.” What do I know??? Am I “too busy” to take pause? And see something anew… if only for a moment of JOY!
Artist: Me!
I am a pilgrim on the continual journey toward knowing myself, and being fully open and present to who that person is. The Blue Heron has been a symbol of how I can emerge from wading - OK, "wallering" - through the unseen watery worlds of spirit into a new balanced sense-of-self in order to embrace my potential again and again and again. The encouragement is to keep showing up in WONDER. I don’t have to know where I’m going. I can choose today to live with JOY. Bringing everything that I have discovered with purpose to the surface. This great water bird has shown up for me time and again to teach me what it means to dive deep and remerge with this discovery… no matter how many times I have to begin anew.
Here’s where I’ve been. Right HERE. Soaring through the space between the trapeze bars. And though it may not always feel so, I am confident that it is all good.
'Sometimes I feel that my life is a series of trapeze swings. I’m either hanging on to a trapeze bar swinging along or, for a few moments in my life, I’m hurtling across space in-between trapeze bars. Most of the time, I spend my life hanging for dear life to my trapeze-bar-of-the-moment. It carries me along at a certain steady rate of swing and I have the feeling that I’m in control of my life. I know most of the right questions and even some of the right answers. But, once in a while as I’m merrily (or even not-so-merrily) swinging along, I look off into the distance and what do I see? Another trapeze bar swinging toward me. It’s empty and I know, in that place in me that knows, that this new trapeze bar has my name on it. It is my next step, my growth, my aliveness coming to get me. In my heart of hearts I know that, for me to grow, I have to release my grip on this present, well known bar and move on to the new one. Each time it happens I hope (no, I pray) that I won’t have to grab that new one. But in my knowing place, I know that I have to totally release my grasp on my old bar and, for some moment in time, I must hurtle across space before I can grab the new one. And each time, I am filled with terror. It doesn’t matter that in all my previous hurtles across the void of knowing I have always made it. I am each time afraid that I will miss, that I will be crushed on unseen rocks in the bottomless chasm between the bars. I do it anyway. Maybe this is the essence of what the mystics call the faith experience. No guarantees, no net, no insurance policy. I do it anyway because somehow hanging on to that old bar is no longer on the list of alternatives. And so, for an eternity that can last a thousand lifetimes or a microsecond, I soar across the void of “the past is gone, the future is not yet here.” It’s called “transition.” And I have come to believe that this is the only place that real change occurs. And I mean real change, not the pseudo-change that only lasts until the next time my old buttons get punched. But I have noticed that, in our culture, this transition zone is looked upon as a “no-thing,” as a kind of no-place in-between places. Sure, the old trapeze bar was real, and the new one coming towards me, I hope that’s real, too. But the void between? Is just a scary, disorienting nowhere that must be gotten through as quickly and as unconsciously as possible… What a waste. Cause I have a sneaking suspicion that the transition zone is the only real thing and the bars are illusions that we dream up to avoid the void where the real change happens. Now whether or not my hunch is true, it remains that the transition zones in our lives are incredibly rich places. They should be honored, even savored. Because with all the pain and the fear and the feelings of being out of control that can accompany transitions, they are still the most alive, passionate, growth-filled, expansive moments in our lives. And so the transformation of fear may have nothing to do with making fear going away but rather with giving ourselves permission to hang out in the transition between the trapeze bars. Transforming our need to grab that new bar is allowing ourselves to dwell in the only place where change really happens. It can be terrifying. It can also be enlightening in the true sense of the word. Cause hurdling across the void… we may just learn… how to fly!'
