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“Storm-waiting”

Mary Elyn Bahlert

American Robins are fairly large songbirds with a large, round body, long legs, and fairly long tail. Robins are the largest North American thrushes, and their profile offers a good chance to learn the basic shape of most thrushes. Robins make a good reference point for comparing the size and shape of other birds, too.

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“Storm-waiting”

You are silence on the branch

outside my front window – you and your beloved,

hidden one.

You  shrieked all morning,

calling me to the window, bewildered.

You are silence on the branch

in the storm-waiting air.

Occupied now with waiting,

we sense the approaching storm.

You have disappeared into this vast,

eternal,

rich,

full – moment of waiting.

The air.  You.  Me.

We are full-of-waiting.

 

meb/12/2014

 

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Into the Darkness

Mary Elyn Bahlert

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The days are still growing shorter, people in colder climates are dressing with warmer clothes, winter-proofing cars, and carefully navigating days when the temperature hovers around 32 degrees Farenheit. Here in the warmer climates, those of us who come from colder places have a longing for colder days!

This time of waiting – of waiting for the light, the longest night and shortest day, which will relentlessly move into longer days, one moment at a time – is a time, as I wrote in an earlier post, to go into the deeper, darker places of ourselves.

Maybe we do this naturally, without guidance. Many women in particular confide that as the days grow shorter, they do some “cocooning,” going inside, baking, cleaning the dark spaces in the house, taking care of things that in the sunshine days did not seem important. In this season of darkness, there is time and space for taking care of these things.

What do we find in those cobwebby, shadowy places in ourselves? We often find tears there. We discover grief, even grief that has been forgotten, or set aside. We may find things we didn’t ever want to see again. We find things we didn’t want to remember, perhaps. We see the faces and the memories of those who are no longer with us – how we wish we could see them again, one more time! Words may arise in us, things that were said; perhaps those unsaid things arise in our thoughts, as well. We have carried those unspoken words with us, hanging in the air between us and another.

When we go into the darkness of ourselves, we may find things we don’t want to find – or to see! We may discover some feelings we wish we didn’t have: jealousies, hates, fears, terrors. We may remember someone who abused us, someone who tried to keep us from becoming our truest selves, because their own dark places were never explored.

Or we find confusing things, things we will never understand.

Sometimes when we go inside ourselves, we may discover something with complete clarity, something we’ve always known. There, touching it again for the first time in many years, our knees on the hard wooden floor of our memory, we begin to see it glimmer. Maybe that clarity is something we need desperately, now. We are grateful.

During this season of this year, there is much talk about the system of racism that pervades us as a country, as a people. Liberal or conservative, socially progressive or longing for values that don’t seem to exist anymore, we seem to be having a conversation we have needed to have for a long time. We may be hopeful, we may find hope as a people in those under-belly places of our collective psyche, or we may find even more hopelessness than we have now. As you think about the happenings of these past few months, I invite you to listen to the Bill Moyers’ interview of journalist Ta-Nehisi as he frames the nation’s history of slavery and white supremacy in challenging terms.

Sometimes when we go within – as a people, as individuals – we may find unresolved things that cannot, will not be easily resolved. We may cry or shout or rage again and again, and this may never end.

***
It is interesting that this season of darkness that brings us face to face with the light is associated with hope. Maybe it’s more appropriate to call it Hope, with a big H. We all need this hope, and it’s something we can’t buy at the stores, at the busy malls. I think maybe Hope arises from that journey into the darkness.

“All shall be well, all shall be well, all shall be well.” Julian of Norwich, mystic.

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A Time to Wait

Mary Elyn Bahlert

 

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As each day passes, each day becomes shorter at this time of year. We are in the season of darkness. In ancient days, the coming of the darkness made people move inward, into their warm places, into their huts, into their caves, where fires were lit to keep the dark at bay.

The time of entering the dark is with us, as well. In the ancient tradition of the Christian faith, the time of entering the dark is called Advent. Darkness is entered with the expectation that this time is the Advent, the Coming of the Light.

More earth-based cultures than ours awaited that longest night and shortest day, the Solstice, which would be celebrated with bonfires, dancing, and ceremony.

It is no mistake that the festivals of Light, Hannukah, of Christmas, of Solstice celebrations, take place at this time of the year.  These festivals of light emerged, I am certain, from people who were eager to turn to the Light as soon as it emerged.

 ***

We are not a people given to turning ourselves over to the darkness. We are so afraid of darkness! A cultural trait of Americans, for example, is that Americans tend to be upbeat, to smile, to put a positive spin on all things. There is no place in our native psyche for darkness.

Darkness, though, is part of life. To deny the darkness is to be in denial of reality. I like to say: “there is no way through except through.”   By that I mean, one must descend into the darkness of the self in order to grow and to become richer and deeper
in all ways. The journey toward wholeness, toward being fully ourselves, is a journey that includes a descent into whatever darkness each one of us holds within us. And when we have taken that journey into darkness – as Persephone did in the ancient, ancient, ancient story – we emerge, complete, whole. We come into the Light as our true selves, the Light we truly are.

We cannot be free of our darkest selves – and we all have those dark places! – until we have gone to that place within ourselves where we face the darkest place and learn to love that place.

Life is a cycle, a cycle of good and bad, of true and untrue, of dark and light.  Life is a cycle, and each one of us, whether we are conscious of it or not, is taking part in the cycle.

It is also a truth that when we do not face the darkness within ourselves, we will project that place onto others.  Many of us recall a former President who called the then-Soviet Union, “The Evil Empire.”  If we are honest, we know that we are the evil one to others who do not share our values, our history, and our place.  Unless we have faced our own darkness, we will continue to look to others to be that darkness for us.

Early last evening, I heard demonstrators on the street.  I went out onto the porch to see hundreds of people marching, chanting:  “I can’t breathe… I can’t breathe… I can’t breathe…”  People are out on the streets of the United States now, protesting, as loudly as they can, against our own national shame of projecting darkness onto those who have dark skin.  We are them.  They are us.  We are one.

We cannot know one-ness, we cannot know whole-ness, until we have taken that descent into our deepest, darkest places.  Until we do, we will only expect from others what we are not willing to expect from ourselves.  We will not know true freedom, and hope, and love.

I trust that you will not avoid this time of darkness by running for the nearest light!  We do that, of course, when we play Christmas music in the malls in September, when we only want to hear good news, when we do not allow others the space to cry and to grieve, when our saddest and difficult feelings are not honored, because we do not allow these things in ourselves.

Take this time of Advent – of the Coming of the Light – to go deep, to travel deep within, to go into the darkness.  Acknowledge your own dark places.  You will find, as I have, as so many others who have taken this journey have – that there is only Light in that darkest place.

But you have to descend to know.

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“Bow to Service”

Mary Elyn Bahlert

 

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Charles Eisenstein has written in  Sacred Economics, (Evolver Editions, North Atlantic Books, 2011) of a man who struggled to do his never-ending work of owning and running a care home.  State regulations made his life miserable.  Every day he looked at his desk and didn’t know where to begin – and didn’t know how to make it through the work, necessary and important.  His attitude and his approach to the work itself began to change when he learned to start each day by “bowing to service.”  When he offered his work in the spirit of service, when he surrendered his need to control and manipulate in order to get the work done, he found that his days flowed smoothly – what was needed was accomplished.

Indeed, each one of us is called to be of service, in whatever work is ours.  Most of us make our lists and fill our calendars with important dates and appointments, all focused on getting the work done.

How many of us choose to “bow to service?”  I heard Eisenstein speak on Veronica Entwistle’s weekly radio show on BBSradio.com, “Paradigm Shifters.”  When he spoke of “bowing to service,” I was touched and moved.  In those words I  see an action, the action of bowing, of offering, of surrendering to what is needed.  And I  feel the movement of “bowing to service” as much as see it.

Today is the day after the Grand Jury’s announcement in Ferguson, Missouri.  Last night I cried as I heard the Jury’s decision read.  I cried for all of us.  I cried for Michael Brown’s parents, who will grieve the loss of their son forever, even as they call for honorable action on the part of protestors.  As I went to sleep last night in Oakland, I heard helicopters circling overhead.  When I awoke this morning, an early-morning Twitter stop flashed pictures of businesses burning in Ferguson during the night.

This world, our world, this world that is yours and mine to steward, to serve, is in need of those who will “bow to action.”  Our young people are in the streets, begging through violence for justice and hope they may never have unless those of us who keep wisdom “bow to service.”

So often we hear calls for justice.  So often what the “calls for justice” really speak to are calls for fairness.  I doubt we human beings really know justice.  I know I am not wise enough to know what justice is.  But I also know that so much of what we take for granted is built on the shoulders and the lives of those without privilege.  That is how things work in the world as we know it.

So my call today is for us to “bow to service.”  Bow to service to serve something higher or greater or more wise than ourselves.  Bow to service not as a “do-gooder,” serving some forgotten voice that has controlled your life forever; bow, instead, to service that will guide your actions, move you to act in ways you may not have thought possible.

This is Thanksgiving Week.  It is good practice to be grateful.  My thought is to also, in this week when we honor abundance – we who live in the midst of those who only suffer want – that we “bow to service,” whoever we are, wherever we are.  It is good practice, to be sure, to “bow to service.”

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