what I've learned from life, by Mary Elyn Bahlert
“You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet, still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.” – Franz Kafka
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.
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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.
Joy settles into me, into my blood and breath and all of my being, as I watch the morning light change from moment to moment on the branches and the colors and the shape and form of the tree outside my window.
I have lived with this tree and watched the passage of time, the passage of the seasons, the passage of the years, through the ever-changing light of its branches and of its being. I am learning that “its being” and “my being” are not separate at all. We are part of one another. We are one another.
We humans count these minutes and hours and days by the clock. When I exercise, I make sure I know how long I’ve exercised, in minutes. When I lay on the floor to stretch, I count the seconds, my trusty clock on the floor with me. I watch months go past on my calendar, and I watch my calendar go from paper to electronic, and now I watch it sync – magic! – from one device to another. I count. We count. We all count!
This beautiful birch tree does not seem to count, however. The beauty of this beautiful birch tree is that it is in sync with another kind of rhythm, a deeper rhythm, a rhythm that is surely beating inside of me. It’s beating inside of you, too. Remember that today, and be grateful.
I have lived with this tree for almost 10 years now, and I am ever grateful for its presence in my life. This tree has taught me that change is a constant, that time is constant change, that life is moving, being shaped, changing all the time. This tree is teaching me that there is beauty in the most ordinary – and that the most ordinary is the most-extraordinary. This tree is teaching me that it is simply a tree, one complete being on this earth, and that I am simply – and wonderfully – me. This tree is teaching me that it is good to simply be yourself, and that being yourself happens without your working at it, and that being yourself is something you don’t have to do. This tree is teaching me to stand through change and the passage of time, even the time when tears are streaking across my face and the world out there is full of violence and shame and fear and grief. This tree is teaching me that the movement of time is slow but relentless, and that we are all changing in every moment, getting older, becoming more ourselves. This tree is teaching me that I don’t have to make all this happen, it is happening for me and through me and in me – and in you, and in this tree, and in all living beings, even those we call enemies.
This tree is teaching me to stand no matter what the passage of time brings – drought, cold rain, wind, sunshine that makes everything sparkle – and that I continue to stand, from moment to moment, from day light to end of day, from season to season.
“You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you, the universe is unfolding as it should.”
©Max Ehrmann 1927
