Commitment to Ageing with Purpose (cw)

 

For me, this Fall time has been one impacted by turmoil, political, the pandemic and my thoughts as I approached, and passed my 82^nd birthday.

Years ago, at the Alaskan Healing Gatherings held in early summer I accepted stakes. The ceremony was based on the plains Indians who would stake themselves to the ground as a commitment to fight to the death. These stakes were given as symbols of our fight for healing for our families, communities, and the world. The first one was my initial commitment; I accepted the others as a renewal and reaffirmation of that vow.

That time of ceremony continues to influence my life. With our move to the lower 48 and my separation from the heart friends and companions of those times, I struggled as I looked for how to keep those promises. In some part of my being I accepted that the sense of lost-ness, loneliness and struggle was part of a necessary process.

And, as is so often with life, with Spirit, when I came to that point, I became willing to open my eyes, to listen. Answers began to come ~ life began to change.

As I approached a birthday, I realized that struggle had come again. As an older person and alone, I again look for new ways to carry on my life’s calling and commitment.

Alaska was my place of calling, a place of visions. Living in Alaska was a wonderful thing ~ a blessed time. It opened me to new experiences and to new realities, to come to realize that the energy of life, of my life, is sheer potentiality. I found Adventure waited for me, so many opportunities, people who blessed and challenged me. I was stretched to go far beyond anything my imagination could even begin to dream of ~ to do so much more than I thought myself capable of ever doing.

 I want ~ I need ~ to remind myself of all that during this passage which, right now, with all the tumult of this year, sometimes has seemed a bleak and barren place, but I also know there are also so many opportunities ~ with time to think, time to look at how to live ~ how do I live ~ during this time in my life as an old woman, during this time of all that is taking place around me.

I’m coming to see perhaps challenging Cultural Legacies may become a primary focus, not only in my writing, but in my own thinking as I study, think and learn. Dr. Neil de Grosse Tyson’s thoughts in the series Comos, along with Mirabai Starr and Mathew Fox’s course “Julian of Norwich A Bold, Gentle Visionary on Living in a Time of Pandemic” excite me! They fill me with thoughts, fill me with “what if’s”, leave me with a sense of purpose and joy! There are not enough years for me to learn all the wonderful things there are!!

 I’m not finished with the theme of ceremony, but, during this season approaching Solstice ~ with all her sacred ceremonies, of celebrations ~ it seemed fitting to share these thoughts with you.

 Shalom Peace and joy to you!

Living the Ceremony of Old Age (cw - #4 in series)

 

Vicki, when we talked yesterday, you challenged me with your comment that ceremony has to have a purpose. It took me until later to realize that when I talked about what to do for a ceremony for this time, I was also talking about my life’s ceremony.

We talk about our being “two old women”. We can choose to look at this as living the ceremony of old age. The endings we talked during our phone visit, with the accompanying loss and grief is ~ they will be ~ part of this period of our life.

It's now Fall ~ with all her cycles of dormancy, of (ready or not, I’m finding) endings. I remember your words in your first blog, writing about living a long life, where you said:

“What could be the purpose for outliving my old life? What gifts do I have to offer? We’ve listed Ilchi Lee’s book, I’ve decided to live 120 Years among our favorites. If I’m planning to fill the rest of my days with purpose, that means I have 40 more years to work on it! Seems like a lifetime! What a different perspective this lends on those years looming ahead!"

"On the other hand, though defining my purpose seems a daunting task, I must admit that I am enjoying a sense of freedom that’s a new experience for me. I have more time for reflection on where my life is going, could go, and the significant changes I should be preparing to meet. And how exciting to think of the books I haven’t read, the thoughts I haven’t thought and planning for a new adventure. (You know I love to plan). Ironically, I have more time to invest more quality into fewer years ahead.  This time is a gift.”

So, with this time being a gift, how do I live it? How do I deal with, what do I do, to live with these struggles and events in a positive way?? The past almost three months of needing a walker, I came to a point where I wondered if it was to be a permanent condition. As when Don was on Hospice those four years, to look on this time as another time of ceremony, helps me, helps me be conscious, helps me open to learning more about myself.

Just as my wise indigenous friends taught me about welcoming a new born, of the ceremonies of identity giving, through events like the formal ceremony of my baptism and Grandpa’s telling me that all the people in church that 1942 Sunday morning were “all my relatives”, the ceremonies
I’m looking at now are often ones of endings, of letting go, and, hopefully , of accepting and being blessed in what comes to take their place.

Earlier this week, in rush hour traffic, I waited for an opening to make a left-hand turn onto a highway filled with zooming cars going toward or coming from the freeway. As I waited, the “knowing” I am no longer able to safely drive a motor home, leaped into my mind.

Today as I write that “knowing” is still with me! It’s difficult for there was joy and challenge in my thirty-three-year RVing adventures.

It’s now a time for me to “make a ceremony”, to acknowledge the new phase of life I am in;  for me to accept it, to allow my family and friends to support me and welcome me into this new place I have come to, blessing the person I have become.

Today is a beautiful Fall day filled with wonder, filled with blessings! In this time of change and chaos all around us I write for myself and, I write for all my relations.

Beneath the Sweater and the Skin - a poem (CW post)

 

 

Beneath The Sweater And The Skin

How many years of beauty do I have left?

she asks me.

How many more do you want?

Here. Here is 34. Here is 50.

When you are 80 years old

and your beauty rises in ways

your cells cannot even imagine now

and your wild bones grow luminous and

ripe, having carried the weight

of a passionate life.

When your hair is aflame

with winter

and you have decades of

learning and leaving and loving

sewn into

the corners of your eyes

and your children come home

to find their own history

in your face.

When you know what it feels like to fail

ferociously

and have gained the

capacity

to rise and rise and rise again.

When you can make your tea

on a quiet and ridiculously lonely afternoon

and still have a song in your heart

Queen owl wings beating

beneath the cotton of your sweater.

Because your beauty began there

beneath the sweater and the skin,

remember?

This is when I will take you

into my arms and coo

YOU BRAVE AND GLORIOUS THING

you've come so far.

I see you.

Your beauty is breathtaking.'

~ Jeannette Encinias

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!

---

[1] Margaret Lee Rurback

[2] Anglican

[3] Emphasis mine