The Gift of Waiting

“What are you wanting to invite more of into your life this year?” he asked. I was gazing across the empty space above our cross-legged laps into the warm, open, presence of his eyes, receiving the question the facilitator had invited us to explore together. I felt my attention drop deep into my soft belly, a little flicker of daring. The feral instinct of my body knew it could be witnessed and celebrated. I cupped my hands in front of me, lifted them slightly, a twinkle of mischief finding the corners of my mouth.

“I have a little ember in my palms,” I began, my shoulders weaving a little through the dark wood that was springing up in my mind. “I am shielding it from the wind,” I hunkered down, “and breathing onto it to keep it warm”, I lifted it to my lips. “Sometimes I tuck it into my chest to keep it safe,” I gestured. “Sometimes I lift it upward in times of nourishment, or of offering,” and my face and hands soared to the ceiling. “And I see a circle of stones to place it within,” my fingers gathered “and others offering theirs, and a bonfire rising” I stoked with wide flourishes, “until the walls tremble and the darkness outside breaks through, and we all gather up a piece,” I snatched, “and slip away into the safety of the shadows until we can gather again.”

“I feel delighted,” he mirrored after time was called. “I feel your delight.” He paused, eyes welling as the right words found him. “You are a conduit of wonder.” And I rested in the bubbling joy, the solid tap root a meter wide borrowing from my spine a mile down, of being welcomed home to myself.

Our inheritance as human beings is the expectation deep within our bones that the village would welcome us at birth, “with-ness” our wholeness, impress into our bodies that we are someone of worth and necessity. We would be met each day with 40 pairs of eyes on us, asking us what we dreamed, telling us it is time to work the soil, and inviting us to a ritual of gratitude for a good hunt. And when our fire rose up, an elder would whisper to us, “It is time”, and take us into the wilderness, or bury us in the ground, or build a clay hut around us so that the heat of our solitary suffering would ripen our genius. We would return knowing how to we belong to our clan, the land, the cosmos; what claims us, what we nourish, and how we keep the heartbeat of the earth alive in our own unique and vital way. And the tribe would rejoice, knowing our medicine is medicine for all, and that vibrant individuals and vibrant communities are mutually bound in the elegantly unfolding symmetry of sovereignty and intimacy.

Without this container of belonging, without this communal context for our ordeals and this warm welcome home as bearers of medicine for all, many of us wander aimlessly for years, stuck in compulsive cycles of loss, addiction, depression and shouldering darkness we were never meant to confront alone. And yet in our sorrow, longing, anger is an ancient memory, a secret whisper guiding us towards what we need to ripen. Despair cannot touch what is communal or sacred. Ancestors, elders, and guides exist within and around us in the wild landscapes of sensation, imagery, dream, myth. We can make of ourselves a sealed vessel so that all of the decaying material from our lives and losses can ferment, safely contained from the sorrows of the world, until they are distilled into what the ancient alchemists called the philosopher’s stone. This is not a process of self-improvement. This is not a process we control, nor something we are even meant to fully understand, but something that works on us, through us. This doesn’t make us better people, or happier people, but it does enable our pain, which is inextricably bound up in the pain of the world, to transform into medicine for our people. If we are impatient, we can crack the vessel and spoil the contents, we can tear the cocoon and sacrifice the nascent form within. Our job is to keep the material safe, keep it warm with our attention, affection, artistic expression, until Mystery shows us it is time.

This would all feel like some poetic, irrelevant sorcery, except that when Francis Weller brought me these images of the village and the alchemist, I felt a profound recognition of the process alive in my own life. These past years have gifted me with an excruciating degree of isolation I struggled unsuccessfully first to overcome and then to surrender to. I was unable to defeat the darkness or to allow myself to be consumed. All I could do was show up each day despite of its looming presence, trying to find the faith that something was working on me and that when it was done, I would know. And then one day as spring approached and the fire in me raged hotter than before, I felt the walls that had barred me from connection trembling, thinning, crumbling. Instead of languishing in another binge, I reached out to Overeaters Anonymous. After months of reluctance and forced, awkward attempts to build friendships, I reached out to the Circling Institute. In both instances, I felt soothed by a deep sense of being seen and stunned by a grounded power in my body and words of life-affirming wisdom flowing from me. The sensation felt like medicine for me brewed beyond my awareness in the depth of my darkness, and struck those who witnessed me as profound. I experienced the relief, bliss and reverence of being welcomed home – back to myself and back into the world – and of the container forged in me through the underworld being thereby strengthened by 40 pairs of eyes singing celebration of my gift.

Much of what I have learned is that its not up to me to plan my life. It’s not even up to me to figure out who I am and what I am for. Our culture offers many questionable vehicles for truly soulful, meaningful work. This isn’t something the existing establishments or teachings can provide me. This is something I re-member through the mysterious, alchemical conversation with my depths – asking, listening, acting, offering – one step at a time. This is my understanding of the 12-step touchstone of giving it all up to a higher power. My mind can’t fathom the mysterious depths of my life’s purpose. I have no control over what comes to me or eludes me. All I can do is feel into right action in this moment, gather myself up and step into an attitude of receiving what’s being offered, and watch for the bright spots that leave me trembling with awe and gratitude for having given what is uniquely mind – with the sense of fully living in this moment ripe and alive.

With this shift and opening has come an invitation to dive into healing relationship, which touches my core wound and has initiated many times my underworld descent. I have found myself drawn into conversation with past romances I had previously felt too fragile to face and new encounters I am approaching with a deeper humility and reverence. After months of being voluntary sequestered, I am awaking to a deep fascination with and draw to men’s bodies and energy, a longing to make contact, to envelop, nurture, rumble in the clash of sovereignty and intimacy. I inquire into what I need to keep my body healthy and strong, and how to safely share intimate connection, and then I honor what I am guided to do. I feel that dragon fire in me deepening, rumbling in fierce and loving defense of the sacred. I have faced death. I feel no need to convince anyone else of the version of reality I choose in order to make my life worth living. My life is becoming the answer to that question, one breath, word, and step at a time.

Mystery shaved away from my life layer after layer of everything I believed I needed to survive. It dragged me down to where I could not breathe, where my flailing was useless. It pit me against forces I could never defeat. It forced me to stop everything I had learned to do to stay alive in order to really feel what it’s like to receive community, insight, affection, purpose, guidance and faith when the time and place is right. And through the process it revealed to me the gift of waiting – of receiving what is here now, of being willing to let go, ready to receive what comes next, to step toward life and simply feel into whether this is a time to tuck my ember inside my chest, to warm it with my breath, to allow it to be nourished by others’ reverence, to offer it up as a gift.

May you receive the image that captures your sense of wonder. May you stay loyal to it through your attention, affection, artistic expression. May you trust it to guide you on a deepening journey of discovery and offering. May you feel of joy of living at the center of your own reason for being.

Nancy

“Please set aside everything I think I know about myself, my wounding, my spiritual path, and Mystery for an open mind and new experience of myself, my wounding, my spiritual path, and Mystery.” – adapted from the 12-step Set Aside Prayer