How Do I Consciously Decide to Live? (cw)

 

Today it is hard for me to hold on to the truths in the following words.  A dear woman I’ve known for years has died suddenly. At my age this happens! It takes my breath away. I am feeling very vulnerable, very fragile.

Earlier today, also, I had a long phone visit with another dear friend as we shared our concern and grief over a friend of more than forty-five years who is stuck in anger, grief and denial so much so their aging is lonely and painful, in part, at least, for their lack of being able to accept, to let go!

I am filled with grief ~ so I write.  

We watch small children as they learn how to turn over, to crawl, to walk and rejoice in their expanding word of possibilities, of learning, of new experiences.

As we age, moving to that time of the next great transition we call dying, the reverse begins to assert itself, abilities begin to be lost, life opportunities and functions begin to constrict and as loved ones and companions die we ~ I ~ must look, again, at my choices.

How do I continue to find my life’s purpose and love and joy, during this time? How do I consciously decide to live?

If there is one life teaching I wish we would all learn at a young age it is life throws all kinds of challenges at us. Instead of fearing them I wish I’d learned when younger that how we meet them and how we deal (or learn to deal) with them is our greatest opportunity for learning, that “happiness is not a state to arrive at, but a manner of traveling.”[1] .

It causes me grief when I hear someone saying (and I hear it far too often) that they are too old to change or they’re too old to learn. I hope~ I want ~ to always look on life as an exciting school ~ even when filled with difficulty or pain. Hopefully, we will be wise enough to be open to all the “becoming” life holds for us ~ in this life and beyond. I learned (and today, trying to keep reminding myself) that it’s never too late to start ~ to start again. God’s grace continues to open doors.

May I always have the eyes to see all the opportunities which come to me.

No matter what our age, we need to have a dream ~ or dreams! We must have passion! We also need to have “back up” dreams upon which to focus. The younger we are when we learn this, the better our life.  I didn’t learn to dream, nor did I have a dream which called forth the energy of my passion until I was in my middle years.  I pray that the new generation ~ and those yet to be yet born will ~ grow up with dreams and confidence enough in themselves to pursue those dreams, that they will be willing to look for and try new endeavors which can help them expand their awareness and life horizons. I hope they will know ~ or learn ~ that failure is just part of the process of life and that we often learn our best lessons from those times we fail.

Learning this when younger help us live creatively no matter where we are in life.

I want everyone to know to what heights all human beings are capable! We don’t have to be a genius to tap into the wonderful universe which guides and holds us ~ which will help us achieve all the dreams we are capable of giving our energy and passion to. I love a prayer in the New Zealand’s Night Prayer Service[2] which says: “Our help is in the name of the eternal God, who is making [3]the heavens and the earth.”  

May we always consciously choose to be co-creators with the eternally new-making Creator.

Writing these words is how I made a ceremony for today.

Shelah!

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[1] Margaret Lee Rurback

[2] Anglican

[3] Emphasis mine

Ceremony ( cw - #3 in series)

 

With things changing all around us in, as one woman put it, “the blink of an eye” I re-read Karen’s words about challenging cultural legacies, looking on again at what I feel about some of the values I’ve learned ~ and am still learning ~ from many sources. The importance of ceremonies and why I think so are what I want to share.

The idea of living all of life as a ceremony means, I keep being taught, to live consciously, with intention, of paying attention, to consciously choose our responses instead of reacting to whatever life presents us.  Ceremonies throughout our lives help us do that, help us be conscious, help us listen to Creator’s guidance, as we seek to consider and choose our actions, our words. It has taken me years to learn that all of life is nothing but choice. To not live consciously is in itself, a choice.

Ceremonies should be there to help us mark milestones, to remind us of who, or where we are, of what we want to be. They can help us ~ they can help others ~ to heal. I write my kinswoman that in our culture we too often do not have appropriate ceremonies and those we do have are often not conscious ~ graduation ceremonies from high school and college are too often poor substitutes for a conscious passage to adulthood. We need meaningful rites and celebrations done with intention and attention! An anonymous Native woman was quoted as saying:[1] “. . . Some people have no ceremony anymore. To have no ceremony is to fail to remember just where human beings are in the creation.” 

A friend and powerful Native trainer from Canada, Bea Shawanda, so often talked about ceremony and ritual. “There are important reasons for all the old traditional ceremonies!” she would emphasize. They’re important to keep us grounded, to understand who we are, to lead healthy, balanced lives. But,” she’d continue, “The old ways may not fit the way we live today. We must understand the concept and find new ways, rituals which fulfill the reasons the old ones were so important.”

When Kunta Kinte in Alex Halley’s Roots presented his daughter in the night to all the spirits/ancestors in the sky he was conscious of exactly what he was doing. How do we have that kind of ceremony with our children in our culture? 

I think about the “what’s” and “how’s,” the “whys” we’re not taught about life in our culture, a lack which often cause us to go stumbling blindly into and through much unnecessary bewilderment and pain. We too often have not had much to use as signposts to support us in our life’s transitions and challenges. It causes me to wonder how different life might be if that support, to recognize those signposts, were to be in place from childhood on ~ if it were to be a normal thing to talk of such things as the sadness my kinswoman felt when she realized she were no longer the “young girl in the flatbed truck” ~ a simple ceremony like the note she wrote me with my response recognizing and honoring her life passage or, perhaps, a gathering of women or a time with an elder woman. Whatever it is, as long as it is seen as ceremony ~ to acknowledge the new phase of life we are in, for us to accept it and for our family or friends to support us in life’s trials or to welcome us into this new place we have come to, to bless the person we have become.

Many tribes in North American had welcoming ceremonies for the new-born. The Original People of this continent lived lives filled with conscious ceremony. One which touched me deeply was a welcoming ceremony in Canada. It was powerful ~ sacred but filled with gentle laughter at the antics of older brother. Each of us held and made a prayer for the new little one. The presider spoke of how, in their traditional beliefs, they see a baby as having one foot in this world and one foot still in the spirit world and so, if they are not made to feel good, to feel welcome in this world they return to the spirit world. He also said “crib death” was unheard of when these ceremonies were the norm. 

Two days later we celebrated his two-year-old cousin’s Naming ceremony in which he received his name but also sets of grandparents, aunties and uncles, not blood relatives, but, like Christian godparents, people to help and support him throughout his life.

What rich supports for life!

Because of that our family instituted our “welcome to the world” parties for our new borns. That’s also why when granddaughter Sierra was tiny her mother, Diana, Vicky Wares and I hiked up to the medicine wheel[2] for Vicki to give Sierra her name.

Variation of another culture’s ceremonies ~ done in the right spirit. Again, I come back to living with intention ~ of living with attention.

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[1] The Spirit of Indian Women edited by Judith Fitzgerald and Michael Oren Fitzgerald, page 69

[2] A naturally occurring formation of volcanic racks with a wonderful view.

On Ceremony (cw - #2 in series)

As fires rage, with Covid, times of celebration and ceremony have often been stymied. For over four weeks I struggled with using a walker, and, at the wonderful weekend wedding celebration of Aspen and Kyle, I was in a wheelchair. This coming when a “hitch in my git-a-long” hit me out of the blue while gardening.  It was a struggle which had me wondering the “what if”s? What if the pain and crippled movement is permanent? I’m cause, again, to look at aging, at my aging.

 And now, I find that a dearly loved friend has discovered a reoccurring cancer with her life expectancy less than six months. 

 All of this has me reeling, while I also think about ~ or try to think about ~ ceremonies ~ think about the completion of the ceremony of life ~ where does it all fit in?

 As a result, I have been struggling with writing this blog, trying to sort through all the thoughts and emotions. First, to finish the story of that Easter Sunday of 1942. Then, in a few days, to write more about ceremony and what I have learned and am learning about its importance in a balanced life.

 Early that springtime morning in 1942 my family left San Francisco for the drive to Two Rock for our baptism and the Easter celebration dinner at my grandparents afterward. When it was time for the baptism ceremony, I remember feeling a little cheated, envious for the pastor held the babies including my brother, but because I was a "big girl", too big to pick up, he just touched my head with his damp fingers as I stood there with my parents. After dinner at Grandma and Grandpa’s we returned to San Francisco to finish moving our things from the small apartment on Van Ness to our new home, a first floor flat on Bosworth where we lived until the end of the war.

 Two important, life shaping ceremonies: the formal ritual of baptism as my parents and the congregation made promises about raising us children in the faith, welcoming us into the world wide community of the church, the other, informal; those powerful words of my grandfather as we entered the church, both introducing me to knowing I was part of a far larger family ~ where I belonged.

 I wrote the story of that so busy and life shaping Sunday a number of years ago. In the middle of the emotions of my current struggles, I am glad to have the words of these two blogs help me to remember that day ~ to remember how Ceremony ~ helped shape my life.