Everything still looks the same. There are soft shadows stretching across the floor and flickering on the wall. My stomach is empty and I need to eat, but not as much as I need to write. No matter that everything looks the same; it is different now.
Over the weekend I went up to Mt. Shasta, to a beautiful place called
Headwaters Outdoors School. I was invited there by the president of a
personal development group here in San Francisco, a group of folks I've recently been admiring from the periphery. I started meeting many of them in May after that
course I mentioned, Arete; a few of the people involved in ASF took the course with me, and I got to know them pretty well during those three days.
After I had my Arete experience, I wrote a letter to the online listserv for course graduates to share a bit about my life and ask for advice. I shared with them that I was frustrated with my job, but scared to quit; as much as I felt the deeper pull of unformed passions, I also felt the fear of leaving the safety and prestige that this job afforded me. For the most part, I wasn't feeling inspired, but I was feeling safe. Even as I felt the edges of stress bearing in on me in a multitude of ways, I was surviving, supporting myself, going along.
So I asked for advice, and I got a few extraordinary e-mails in return. One of those began with what is perhaps the finest first line of any e-mail I could hope to receive: "I've been liking you!" That was from the president of the group I mentioned earlier. In his e-mail, then over lunch, he told me about his vision for growing the work of his organization, which now includes a focus on dating and relationship dynamics, to include a focus on the ways in which healthy human-human relationships lead to sustainable human-earth relationships.
We had a great lunch. He invited me to be on the board of the organization, and to join them for their staff retreat up on the land at Shasta. Say no more, right? I'm in.
It was a phenomenal weekend. We spent time with Tim, the director of the school, and a wise old bear of a man. He guided us to climb a huge Doug Fir, blindfolded, and then to find our way into connection with the tree. He spoke to us about earth medicine, about how to ask a rock a question and then receive the answer.
And he led us in two sweat lodges. I've probably done about 5 or 6 sweats in my life, but none so intense as I experienced this weekend, and certainly never twice in a day. We completed a four-round sweat on Saturday morning, and the same on Saturday evening. The rounds lasted 10 or 15 minutes; the door was opened between the first and the second, and then between the third and the fourth. Between the second and third rounds, we all got out.
I hadn't before had such a focused experience of, literally, cooking in my discomfort. Tim runs a hot sweat lodge. We chanted with him as he beat his frame drum and poured water on the glowing, glittering stones, huge mother stones which had been culled from the mountain and heated in the searing fire. We breathed deeply, made low animal noises as wave after wave of heat met us. Welcome steam, we called. Welcome heat. Welcome, fluttering panic. Now, now, now. Only now, in the sweat lodge.
By the fourth round of the morning sweat we were all lying down, seeking some relief from the intense heat against our skin. I survived by knowing that death wasn't going to come, even though it felt that way during some moments, and meeting the moment over and over again. Rubbing mud on my face. Breathing deep and crying out. Holding a rutilated crystal against my heart, feeling my heart-space expanding outwards. There was no escape, so I stopped seeking it.
Exiting the sweat with a bow, sinking into the cold creek water, Shasta's sweet snowmelt, I didn't know anything beyond the animal shudders and coos coming from within me. The crystal, in my lap under the water, caught the light and cast rainbows on my skin. Sunlight glanced off the water. My heart broke, and I began to cry. I could hear the creek rushing and as some heart-chasm in me began to widen to meet life, the rushing became a little louder and a little faster. I felt the widening and the resistance. The tears were quiet and stilted, and I felt myself to be so held there, by the others around me and by life's gentle invitation.
This -- here -- now -- yes.
It was a quickening within and without. It ended soon. I emerged from the creek and stood shivering by the fire, opened.
The sweat in the evening was easy and sweet, compared to the morning sweat. I found myself welcoming the heat, revelling in the opportunity to be washed through. During the last round, when the pain on my skin was like bandages being ripped off, I remembered that it wasn't too long ago that women were burned alive for being powerful, for knowing secrets, for loving each other. In remembering it I could open to the heat, somehow connecting to the power of that lineage. And I felt the blessings of being alive in this time when Tim shouted, "Open up!" and we all crawled out, safe and intact.
There were so many sweetnesses this weekend.
And I knew that today was going to be the day that I would tell my boss that I was leaving. I had planned for a long time to give him one month's notice until I'd end my full-time employment with him. Feeling that, out on the land, I knew it was right, and yet I was terrified. And today I was terrified. What if this is a terrible, foolhardy decision? What if there's nothing on the other side? What if none of these feelings are real? What if I'm just taking advantage of my privilege? What if I'm just a lazy, compulsive, useless person?
These questions flooded me today. But then my friends sent messages of support, reminding me of what I
know inside my being. And so finally, at 4:54 p.m. I walked into my boss's office and told him in a gentle voice that it's time for me to follow the increasingly-insistent inner compass, which has been guiding me towards indigenous environmental justice work, toxics and women's health, healing arts. In so many words I told him that I need to see about it, to say 'yes' in whatever way I can to all the medicine that has called to me so mightily.
He understood, and agreed. With sadness he told me that he honored my choice and my passion, and that he knew on some level that it was coming. We agreed that I will stay on through the end of 2008, after I return from the Southwest, on a part-time basis. We agreed to stay in contact, to explore whatever points of collaboration might arise, which may be few but will undoubtedly be fruitful.
On the phone afterwards, my father asked me what my Plan is. I told him a few things I've been thinking. I could feel his concern: "you have to get back into the swing of things at some point, you know." Oh Dad, you'll never know what things are swinging for me, will you? And still, little by little, I feel myself letting go of the constant quest to appease him. It is an unfolding dance.
And here I sit, alone in my sweet apartment, broken open, heartbeat like bird's wings. What will become of me? What will the world ask of me? How will I give, how will I learn, whom will I meet? I can only take one step after another, and go forward to discover the answer. There is no longer any way to be told what I should do.
A quickening. An affirmation. An agreement, a surrender, a commitment. No choice but to say yes.
R.W. Emerson says:
"Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.
Accept the place the divine Providence has found for you; the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events. Great men [and women] have always done so and confided themselves childlike to the genius of their age, betraying their perception that Eternal was stirring at their heart, working through their hands, predominating in all their being."
Only yes.
