The other day Milt cut my hair for me. (I like it shorter than most beauticians are comfortable with.) Anyway, I looked at the inches of hair falling to the floor and it looked like fur. I was joking around with my sexy stylist and told him my hair these days looked like German Shepherd fur—or gray wolf fur. In fact, when it was still on my head I realized that I have been feeling a bit like an old gray wolf. I prowl around in my head as if it were a wintery forest. I forage for food. I want to hide when I see humans.
Actually, when I look in the mirror, I can’t recognize the old(er) woman looking out at me. When I was young—first a girl, then a teen, then a young woman—I never felt the right age. I want to reach so high, make great changes in the world, but couldn’t quite figure out how to do it. I remember during the early seventies when all the world was marching for change, I felt trapped in my last two years of high school taking stupid classes that meant nothing. Later, a friend who was a massage therapist/psychic told me that I had a very old soul. It made sense to me but also seemed like the ultimate oxymoron.
An old soul in a young body.
Now, wolfish woman that I have become with my hair graying, my skin thinning, my eyes clouding, I just don’t feel my age. Now I feel like my soul is too young for this body—a young soul in an old body. I’m filled with ideas, excited to get started, marching for change—and unsure of my direction.
And sometimes, so tired.
The past couple of weeks I’ve been trying to pull my energy back inside, to decide what is most important to me. I want my body and my soul to come to terms, to find common ground—a place where I can find the balance between creative energy and on-the-ground energy. Yes, I still want to make a difference, but it probably won’t be massive, global change. (Darn!) I also want to have the time and energy to play and still feel like I have goals and direction. See what I mean? Confusing.
I know that this confusion is a winter thing, very familiar to me, very familiar to our collective memories. We are supposed to spend the dark winter months huddled in earthen shelters (or dens) to share stories, exchange histories, and reserve our resources for the coming spring and summer.
But it is also a winter thing to want the cold and darkness to pass and the warmth of the sun to thaw us and put us back into motion.
My point. Life spirals through time enfolding one season into another and then another and then another. Our souls or spirit remain true to who we are no matter the aging of the body or passage of time. Seems to make a good case for reincarnation—we need more than one life to get it all done.
Growl.
(note–as always, love to hear your “growls” in the comment box and you are warmly invited to subscribe and get my weekly posts automatically in your email. Just add your email address to the box below–your privacy is totally safe with this human.)
Here it is the middle of January, and I feel like I’m on fire.
Monday was Martin Luther King Day, and then today I was attending The Presencing Forum, a gathering in the twin cities focusing on how to help make useful and lasting change in our communities by being present and open to gaining new insights and acting from there. On the three hour drive home my mind was racing. It is like everywhere I look lately people are talking about change and transformation. It excited me in a way that makes me wish I was 25 again instead of 58–but then if I had to go back I would not have the understanding that has taken thirty plus years to gain. So, I celebrate my age and go forward.
Foremost on my mind today was the idea that we don’t really ever “change.” Rather each new experience or time of life or problem to solve is enfolded into what came before and is likewise still open to what is yet to come. This rich life experience gives us individual texture and context and forges the gifts that will later come out of that. Does that make sense?
We never totally toss away one way of being and pick up another brand new one. It’s not like a change of clothes or cars. It occurred to me that we could think of “change” more like the ready change in our pocket—the coin of our own experience, the coin of our own gifts and what we have to offer. Sometimes we have some to spend—and sometimes we need somebody to give us a little. An ex-change of sorts.
The stories I heard during this Presencing gathering we so motivating. People are working to end violence in their communities, educate parents, find new economical models, create urban vegetable gardens, and bring back dance as a community activity. Each person there was ready and willing to spend their creative coin with others—their change. They had passion and ideas and so much fire that it set me on fire.
During one of the small group sessions I saw myself and others in the room like runner on a track—bottoms up in the air, toes on the mark waiting for the gun to go off—waiting for the go. I have sensed this pent up energy in me that wants not just to leak out but to surge out. I go to write a few ideas down for my talk in a couple of weeks and twenty or thirty pages come rolling out of my pen. I go to learn about this new concept and then spend three hours in the car doing everything from composing music to composing new workshops.
A few minutes ago I talked to my daughter who is going through a lot of challenges right now. I had to smile when she said she just needed something new to focus on and so she registered for a 800 number college course on community organizing that has nothing to do with finishing her degree. Is it just in the air or what?
I also realized that she was not asking for my advice, or approval, or wisdom, or anything—the “coin” she wanted from me was just to listen. I gave it freely.
So, here is my first question for you. How much change do you have in your pocket? It doesn’t have to be a lot, but all of us have some gift or experience to offer others. Second question–what are you doing to give it away? And if your pockets are a bit light, what do you need from me or others? Don’t just count your coins, spend them. We could just begin there.
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At the end of the month I’m giving a talk in Pine River, MN for an event called Back to Basics. The title of my talk is “Dreaming a New World . . . Together.” I’ve been working on my ideas for the talk and keep stumbling across an interesting thing. Naturally, I want to dump everything I think I know into a 40 minute talk. The thing wants to become a book, but what I noticed most is the difference in the energy between what I think I know and what I want to know.
It sounds confusing, but I want to explore it. When I’m speaking or writing as somebody who “knows” it can’t help but become some kind of preachy thing that sounds like somebody just stepped up on a soapbox. Pontificating from on high. And then, every once in awhile, I fall into something that I am simply yearning to know. I honestly want to know “who I am” and “why am I here.” I want to understand the brain and how it sends us flying around. I want to know why people make war. This urge to know pushes me forward, it jerks me around, it turns me upside down, it makes me want to go numb and not think anymore. The funny thing is that THAT energy is so much more alive than the energy of “knowing.”
I remember one time while staying at an ashram in the Catskills, we were taking a course on how to deepen our spiritual practices. A wonderful teacher was running a talking circle and asking each one of us why we had come to this particular course. One woman in the group told the instructor that she “wanted to be surrounded in the white spiritual energy . . . blah blah blah.” The instructor asked her again. “Why are you here?” She gave another little speech. He asked a third time, and this time it must have cracked the surface of her thoughts. She stopped and thought—really thought—about the question. Finally, she said, almost haltingly and with such great force, “I came because I wanted to know God!” Something must have hooked up to her very soul when she said that. It raised the hair on my arms. She had cut through the bullshit of her life.
I’m realizing more and more that we know very little—and that’s okay. After having spent two weeks with kids and grandkids, it is so easy to think of all the ways they could be doing things differently. Or on doing my New Year’s inventory, it is so easy to think of all the ways I could be doing things differently. Our urge is always to advise others—tell them what they could or should be doing. In truth, we all come into each new day on our knees begging for understanding, for clarity, for wisdom and truth. And this is the right way to greet each moment. There is no time or need to judge others.
What we have learned is not as important as what we still want to know.
If there was one ongoing and powerful thing you were trying to learn from this life, what would it be? See if you can put it in a single sentence, and then stick it below in the comment box so we can share the journey with each other. Mine may just be the sentence above–or the ongoing pesky question I have of why do people need to separate and divide in order to find their sense of belonging?
Note: If you are local to northern MN, be sure to check out Back to Basics on January 28th. There will be a bunch of cool hands-on workshops and talks—it’s going to be a lot of fun. And as always, be sure to subscribe if you like my posts–and share with your friends.
A Young Soul in an Old Body: "We need more than one life to get it all done." Exactly how I feel. I cannot get my head around the fact that I am 60 years...
A Young Soul in an Old Body: Your writings always amaze me Jamie they are so right on sometimes to where I am at in my life also.
How Much Change is in Your Pocket?: Hi Maria,
Yes, I like that, too. It is so strange how we can think back to our earliest years and recognize that there has been a "self" there all...
Oyate Ta Olowan–The Songs of the People
This site features the music and stories of over 50 Native American tribes with sound samples and ability to purchase the programs. Originally produced for Public Radio International.
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