Spring and the Moon of Liberation

Shabbat gratefuls: Rain in the forecast. Cancer. Clinical trials. Samantha. Dr. Josy. Ruth and Gabe. Ruth, 20 in a week.

Rene Good. Alex Pretti. Say their names.

Sparks of Joy and Awe:  Shabbat

 

Kavannah: Wonder. Malchut. Knowing myself, my world, my now. Shekinah.

Tarot: #17 The Pole Star. Embrace myself, follow my soul’s purpose.

One brief shining: Having that struggle. Again. Still. What am I, who am I? What is my soul’s purpose? Is it about what I can do? Or, is it about who I can become? Am I stuck in these questions, using them to distract myself from living?

 

College. The moratorium years. I spent them in a fluid, fluxing milieu of protests, carrying my green book bag, The hours in the library, in my favorite carrel. All-night shifts in the guard’s hut at Magnalite.

I came out of college with two majors: philosophy and anthropology. Two disciplines I still love.

Married Judy. A mistake. Unsure of myself. Wandering from silly job to silly job. My mind the same, always escaping from the work I was doing.

While working as a rag-cutter at Fox River Paper, I would spend hours unclogging the cutter, moving bales. Needing stimulation beyond the physical labor.

No direction. No purpose. Frustrated with myself. This went on into seminary, into my stint in the ministry. Oh, I found things to do. Managing the independent living program. Organizing. Consulting. None of them seemed my soul’s purpose. Organizing came the closest.

Yet even organizing fed the wrong wolf. The angry guy was not who I wanted to be. I had fed the same wolf in the polarized protests of the late sixties. I found myself in a constant scanning for injustice, for leverage, for communities willing to fight. Not a peaceful existence.

I had become a clergyperson because I did not want to cut rags anymore. Not because I’d had a sudden reconversion to the faith of my youth. It was a job with a paycheck.

Flailing. Celtic myth and legend. In writing my doctor of ministry thesis I found myself writing a novel, not the thesis. Something in me had stirred, moved me far away from the ministry. Made sense since my Dad was a writer. But. I didn’t like my Dad. Dissonance.

The novel and a turn toward an earth-centered faith led me out of the ministry. Looking back now, twenty-one years of Ancientrails, nine novels later, I’d say a primary purpose of mine is writing. Ancientrails has a body of daily work that not many can duplicate. That’s writing. Every day.

I have another purpose, less defined perhaps. Deep, honest conversation with others. Tara and I, her kids, mine. Gardening. Judaism. Dr. Josy, the joy of animals, her mission to deliver affordable care in-home.

There’s also the gardener, nature mystic. Fed by the green world. Planting. Communing with individual trees, plants. Loving the mule deer, the elk, black bears, mountain lions. A mountain man.

So here I am at 79. A man who writes about paying attention: to self, to others, to mountain life.

I guess those questions, about purpose, about who I can become occur when I feel I’m not doing. Not doing enough. A pox on those thoughts.

Doing is overrated.
Becoming.

Enough.