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Paths and Soil
Mar. 30th, 2024 09:23 amIf I wait until I have the time, energy, and privacy to write what and how I want, I will never ever write. Attempting to write this morning includes breathing through the impatience in my miserly heart while my beloved family wrestles literally under my desk and over my head.
I just want to pin up the handful of associated things sliding around in my noodle that a more skilled and learned mind could glue together into coherent parallels and interesting contrasts. The ways I smash them together, like kissing Barbie dolls, in my mind while I'm in the shower seem so compelling until I want to recreate these supposed moments of brilliance out in the light with my clothes on. Maybe it's the relative privacy of the tiny shower stall's frosted glass. Maybe it's the illusion of wisdom that comes from not having to actually articulate any point while idly pondering. It could be I'm just cleverer naked. Or all three.
The cousin concepts dancing in my head like marionettes lately, I may as well just name them aloud, and then either the thoughts drift back out into the ether for another to pick up some day, or they will ferment here in this little blog post and become something new for me later.
There's this waxing and waning concept I keep encountering. Kazimierz Dąbrowski's idea of positive disintegration in his superexcitabilities model, which changed my life when I found it eight years ago. The "dark night of the soul" by St. John of the Cross. Thomas Berry's assertion "the dark periods of history are the creative periods." I keep finding this feeling of composting, soil making, decay leading to growth. It feels relevant from the belly of a crumbling rotten empire. Not necessarily profound or revelatory to anyone else, but we all start somewhere, and this is a path of thought that calls to me, and I won't discount that.
The other friend that keeps whispering to me is a twin spirit, Grace and Humility. I've attached this voice somehow to turning 40 years old, an age that as a child I did not expect to reach. Yet here I am, and I've brought that child with me, with all their own inner children. A nesting doll of surprised instant selves. But that's an entirely different work I've been doing.
Multiple times this past few seasons I've been humbled, in loving, kind, generous ways. I've encountered patient, understanding, strong-hearted teachers and teaching, which is a new experience for me. Tiny moments for everyone but me, who was changed in the moment. It feels goofy to put some things into words when you're not a poet, but this dance of grace and humility, what these ideas mean in my heart. Reaching without certainty. Releasing the burdens of judgement and bad faith towards oneself. Finding more open-hearted ways of being with others.
There have been so many tiny moments of revelation for me stretching through the years. They stand like bright stars in the timeline of my life. Standing in line in gym class, the younger girl with the unusual name casually mentioning she'd stopped shaving her arm pit hair; that's a thing we can do?? The other girl with glasses in my undergrad physics classes mentioning her brother who will not eat Reese's Cups or anything else with partially hydrogenated oils; we can make this choice?? The epiphany I had standing in my college dorm room doorway as a neighbor described to a small group of us the horrors of shaving her pubic hairs and yet encouraging us to do so; my brain reflected for a fraction of a second before deciding we weren't shaving anything ever again because it all seemed equally stupid. A now ex best friend who suggested I respond to someone's lies-filled foolishness with not responding; it had not occurred to me I was allowed to do that!!
Every one of these tiny moments was an eye-opening gift of pointing into other paths and ways of being, as trivial as they sound when voiced. When your world begins very very small, when it is kept artificially small by the powers in your life, then the smallest gestures towards other paths are treasures.
None of which addresses grace and humility. Because I don't know what I have to say about them yet. I am still listening and waiting, but not idly. I am working my way down the path I hear them speaking from. It just feels good to leave a trail behind me as I go.
I just want to pin up the handful of associated things sliding around in my noodle that a more skilled and learned mind could glue together into coherent parallels and interesting contrasts. The ways I smash them together, like kissing Barbie dolls, in my mind while I'm in the shower seem so compelling until I want to recreate these supposed moments of brilliance out in the light with my clothes on. Maybe it's the relative privacy of the tiny shower stall's frosted glass. Maybe it's the illusion of wisdom that comes from not having to actually articulate any point while idly pondering. It could be I'm just cleverer naked. Or all three.
The cousin concepts dancing in my head like marionettes lately, I may as well just name them aloud, and then either the thoughts drift back out into the ether for another to pick up some day, or they will ferment here in this little blog post and become something new for me later.
There's this waxing and waning concept I keep encountering. Kazimierz Dąbrowski's idea of positive disintegration in his superexcitabilities model, which changed my life when I found it eight years ago. The "dark night of the soul" by St. John of the Cross. Thomas Berry's assertion "the dark periods of history are the creative periods." I keep finding this feeling of composting, soil making, decay leading to growth. It feels relevant from the belly of a crumbling rotten empire. Not necessarily profound or revelatory to anyone else, but we all start somewhere, and this is a path of thought that calls to me, and I won't discount that.
The other friend that keeps whispering to me is a twin spirit, Grace and Humility. I've attached this voice somehow to turning 40 years old, an age that as a child I did not expect to reach. Yet here I am, and I've brought that child with me, with all their own inner children. A nesting doll of surprised instant selves. But that's an entirely different work I've been doing.
Multiple times this past few seasons I've been humbled, in loving, kind, generous ways. I've encountered patient, understanding, strong-hearted teachers and teaching, which is a new experience for me. Tiny moments for everyone but me, who was changed in the moment. It feels goofy to put some things into words when you're not a poet, but this dance of grace and humility, what these ideas mean in my heart. Reaching without certainty. Releasing the burdens of judgement and bad faith towards oneself. Finding more open-hearted ways of being with others.
There have been so many tiny moments of revelation for me stretching through the years. They stand like bright stars in the timeline of my life. Standing in line in gym class, the younger girl with the unusual name casually mentioning she'd stopped shaving her arm pit hair; that's a thing we can do?? The other girl with glasses in my undergrad physics classes mentioning her brother who will not eat Reese's Cups or anything else with partially hydrogenated oils; we can make this choice?? The epiphany I had standing in my college dorm room doorway as a neighbor described to a small group of us the horrors of shaving her pubic hairs and yet encouraging us to do so; my brain reflected for a fraction of a second before deciding we weren't shaving anything ever again because it all seemed equally stupid. A now ex best friend who suggested I respond to someone's lies-filled foolishness with not responding; it had not occurred to me I was allowed to do that!!
Every one of these tiny moments was an eye-opening gift of pointing into other paths and ways of being, as trivial as they sound when voiced. When your world begins very very small, when it is kept artificially small by the powers in your life, then the smallest gestures towards other paths are treasures.
None of which addresses grace and humility. Because I don't know what I have to say about them yet. I am still listening and waiting, but not idly. I am working my way down the path I hear them speaking from. It just feels good to leave a trail behind me as I go.
