Author: jenion

JOY

…Though I try

to hide it I burn with joy like a bonfire

on a mountain, and tomorrow

and the next day make me shudder

equally with hope and fear.

— “Arriving” by Marge Piercy

When I was in high school, I joined an ecumenical youth group which had a tremendous impact on my life, my beliefs, and my worldview.  At one point, we adopted a practice of signing notes, cards, etc. with the acronym J.O.Y. — which, in youth group parlance stood for the phrase “Jesus, Others, You”.  If we committed ourselves to J.O.Y. (in that order) we would experience joy in our lives.

In describing my own path, I have no desire to offend anyone else’s beliefs.  Putting God and others ahead of self may be both appropriate and right.  However, when I regularly attempted this I rarely experienced joy.  In fact, until recently joy had pretty much fallen off my radar as something I hoped to experience — it was just too far off the grid of normal, daily life.

So here is what I believe now.  Human beings are meant to experience joy.  My mother was wrong (sorry, Mom!) when she told us “life isn’t about being happy”.  I don’t mean we should expect to feel giddy every moment of every day.  There will be trials, tribulations, burnt toast and stubbed toes.  Cancer and poverty aren’t going away any time soon.  But we were created to feel that deep down satisfaction that comes from being truly happy.  In order to get there, you may sometimes have to put your priorities in a different order:  oyj or yoj or jyo — or even include completely different letters in your personal joy acronym.

One day, not too long ago, I was having a really cruddy time of it.  Nothing was going right, I had experienced a big disappointment, it was raining.  For most of my life, a day like that would occasion a feeling of “why do I always have it so bad?”.   But this time it was different:  I was having a cruddy day.  But I was happy.  How could that be?

In looking at that experience, what I discovered is that one thing had changed — I had shifted my priorities in order to develop a “right relationship” with myself.  I can remember talking with a friend about how all the self-focus felt incredibly self-ish to me.  She told me that, by working on my own issues and healing past wounds, I was bringing something good to the world, not just to myself.  I wasn’t sure at the time, but now I can see she was right.

Which brings me to the poem excerpt at the beginning of this entry.  Sometimes, we try to hide the joy we feel because it can be uncomfortable to stand out so starkly from our surroundings.  Sometimes, we are afraid that it makes us a target for others who wish to stamp out our fire, and there are certainly people out there who might try.  But it is also true that  it adds to the measure of our days to interact with people who exude joy. We are energized and inspired by them.  And maybe, when it is you (or me) burning like a bonfire of joy, we will be lighting the way for someone else.  This is the hope part of the equation.

What We Desire Travels With Us

I have been thinking about this line from a Denise Levertov poem all week:  what we desire travels with us.  This is true, I think, across distances, across time, across differing levels of maturity or growth.

When I was a teenager, I spent one evening hanging out at the home of my best friend’s mother’s best friend.  Four women, two teens and two in their 50s, bonding over canned peppers (we tasted mild, hot, and fiery) and the ways we experienced our gender.  I’ve never forgotten that night, and I still desire time with my women friends, times of support and solidarity and sisterhood.

Last weekend, my cousin visited and when we got up on Sunday morning, we talked and laughed over a pot of coffee.  Some of my favorite moments have been these unremarkable early morning coffee-klatches with family or friends.  I love a solitary and reflective cup of coffee at the local coffee shop, but I still desire the unguarded and open moments of sharing before beginning the day’s tasks.

My friend Sue is a talented basket weaver and jewelry maker.  “I just want someone to do this with me,” she regularly laments, explaining why she hasn’t created anything lately.  I totally understand her dilemma, because my whole life I have desired the same — companions nearby who share my interests and schedule, who will just be physically present with me while we do our things.

There are transient desires in my life as well…sometimes I think I need this thing or that gadget.  Good Will has benefitted greatly from the purchases made while experiencing these impulses (a brown down coat that made me resemble a human-sized turd; the “Twilight” book series; a host of neon-colored plastic baubles).  But the lasting desires remain steady, even if the surface details change.  An endless summer day that winds down to a magical moonlit night is timeless, though the activities it contains may vary over the years.  The love of dear people who know us intimately is deeply desired, though each relationship takes on its own unique character.

Like the nautilus, that lovely “living fossil”, we carry our homes with us — though theirs is literal and ours is a figurative home.  As the nautilus shell curves inward, into ever smaller chambers, so do our desires:  as we strip away the outer details, we find ever smaller kernels of desire for which our hearts truly long.  And these desires are the companions of our lifes journeys, whether we acknowledge them or not.  What I am learning, on my journey, is that it is acknowledging what we desire, without judging ourselves or our worthiness, that brings us closest to satisfying our heart’s deepest wishes.

The Oracle

If you’ve ever visited Pipestone National Monument in Minnesota, you’ve seen him:  The Oracle.  A rock formation that, for all the world, looks like the profile of a wise tribal elder.  I have a postcard I’ve saved for years showing a photo of The Oracle, part of a collection of items and tokens representing places I’ve visited where humans have discovered some special “power” – predictions for the future, healing miracles, spiritual knowledge which arrives via interaction with the place.  I have always felt the pull of these magical sites, and I am not above finding some belief or power in these places myself.

In my late 20s, I visited an astrologer who drew my natal chart for me.  In my 30s, I visited a well-known psychic, who told me, among other things, that no one understands exactly how much I love the odd and unusual.  In my 40s, I had a very powerful experience during a massage with a spiritual healer.  For the most part, I engaged in these interactions out of curiosity and a sense of play.  However, part of me would have been quite happy to receive a little advance glimpse of things to come — if only one of them had been able to chart at least a small part of the future for me!

Most of my life, I’ve tried to predict the future in small ways — if I do this, what will happen?  if I put myself out there, will I get the result I want?  if I try, will I succeed?  As a result I have often opted for the safe path, the path I can predict.  Since predicting the future can only be done with success for the very near future (say, the next ten minutes) my vision has been pretty short. And my choices have been painfully short-sighted.  I have failed to try many things out of fear about the outcome.

I copied a quote years ago from a book called Ecodynamics, which was way above my head, but which contained this scary thought (scary to me, anyway):  “We may have ten possible images of tomorrow and for each one of these there may be ten images of the next day, giving a hundred possible images  of the day after that, and so on, which means that the uncertainty of the future increases rapidly as we move our imagination into it.”

Coming across this quote again recently, I realized that I’m not so frightened by it now.  The truth is, I am in love with today, which makes the future a much less scary proposition.  Do I still dream and fantasize?  Sure!  But I am learning that entering fully into each day means that I expend less energy worrying about what might happen tomorrow.  What will happen will happen — I may fail, I may succeed.  Either will lead to the next experience.  No need to consult an Oracle, or bless myself with the holy mud I carried away from El Santuario de Chimayo.

This new approach is proving to be both challenging and exhilarating when applied to my relationships.  So often, I have tried to take relationships to specific places — sometimes having whole conversations with others inside my own head as if I know before an interaction how it will go.  Imagining that I can create an “if this, then that” equation in my dealings with other people.  Letting go of definitions, of predictions, and of specific outcomes can be scary because it makes you aware of what has always been true:  you have no control over what other people feel or how they respond.  Thinking you can control others is just another form of magical thinking.

The country group, Lady Antebellum has a new song (which I heard on Pandora this afternoon) called “Ready to Love Again”, and the chorus speaks to this lack of attachment to a particular outcome.  It says:  “Yeah, I’m ready to feel now, no longer afraid of the fall down. It must be time to move on now, without the fear of how it might end…”  The future holds lots of endings, and equally as many beginnings.  My current plan is to follow today where it leads, and fall in love with tomorrow when it comes.

What I’ve Learned from Men

With the approach of father’s day, I have been thinking about the men in my life: my father, brothers, and dear friends — almost all of whom are fathers (and amazing ones at that).  They are also gifted, funny, gentle, kind and generous.  I have learned so many things from them:  about life, love and how to not take myself too seriously.  I thought that, in celebration of father’s day, I would share some of the wisdom I’ve gleaned from them.

  • I’ve learned that having guts can get you places that talent alone cannot (like the coveted first baseman spot or a semi-regular turn with the karaoke microphone).
  • You’ve taught me to stop trying to get you to talk about your feelings.  Like finding a husband or getting your first period, it will happen when least expected, and will presumably be worth the wait.
  • I’ve been to the school for male humor called “coffee with the guys” most mornings for over a decade, and I now understand that the humor of a really bad word or an especially bawdy comment resides in its shock value.  Less frequent equals more funny.
  • Men have shown me that holding on to hurt feelings is useless.  Say something (if you need to) then move on.  There is so much freedom in facing today without needing to nurse yesterday’s wounds.  Also, when men say they’ve moved on, they really have.  I’m still working on this part of the equation.
  • The wonderful men in my life have taught me that you do not need to use the word “love” to express the feeling.  They show it in hugs, punches, late night texts, carrying the ugly couch that came with the house to the basement for you.  These physical acts, large and small, are powerful statements of feeling.
  • If one of my male friends bothers to get on a soapbox, lecturing about attitude or “choosing in life”, it is important to listen.  These soapbox lectures have helped me change my life for the better in so many ways.

My dad and brothers were the first men to love me, and they have done so unconditionally (followed closely by my brothers-in-law).  The many male friends who have stood by my side in the past and the present — and you know who you are, guys — have shown me that I am lovable, not because of what I have to offer but because of who I am.

Once, someone told me that I had too much “masculine energy” and suggested that was a failing in me.  While I didn’t necessarily agree with the assessment, I also would never have taken it as anything but a positive trait.  Every day, masculine energy brings light, laughter and love to my life.  And I am so much the better woman for it.

On being a “goalie”

Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so.

After all, the sky flashes, the great sea yearns,

We ourselves flash and yearn,

and moreover my mother told me as a boy

(repeatingly) ‘Ever to confess you’re bored

means you have no

Inner Resources.’  I conclude now I have no

inner resources because I am heavy bored…

–“Dream Song 14”, John Berryman

Life, friends, used to feel a lot like this poem.  In fact, that was one of the reasons the poem resonated with me – I knew, in my heart even if I refused to admit it aloud, that my boredom and inactivity resulted from my own lack of inner resources.  There wasn’t a lot of “flashing and yearning” going on in my life.  There WAS a lot of ho-humming and “Victory Garden” watching. Yawn.

And then, slowly, things began to change.  We’re talking slow as in “at a glacial pace” (thanks, Meryl Streep).  One significant part of that change has been the discovery that I operate best, achieve more, when I set goals.  Now, to those of you who have been devotees of Stephen Covey or who knew your life’s ambitions at age 10, this is a no brainer.  For me, it was a revelation.  (Remember what I’ve said in the past about being a late bloomer?  Turns out, I am not that quick on the up-take, either!)

My college English Department faculty lampooned the seniors each year, and in performing her version of me, Sr. Pat Nolan slouched into the skit, hands in pockets, and said, “I don’t know.  Maybe I’ll be a writer…Maybe I’ll become an editor…whatever….something’s bound to turn up.”  Not a flattering portrait, albeit accurate.  For much of my life, I just seemed constitutionally incapable of committing to a course of action and then taking the steps necessary to see it through.

Now, I know I have accomplished a number of things over the years: graduate school while working full-time; a demanding and time-consuming job; making a difference in the lives of students. I am proud of these achievements.  But many of my proudest accomplishments, while the result of hard work, began as things I just sort of fell into (grad school is a perfect example, and I’ll tell that story another time if you want to know!)  The discovery that goals help me to focus my time and see things through has been a key factor in my current state of happiness.  A second eye-opener:  goals can be small!  Yes, its true — audacious goals are great, but so are the smaller lets-finally-clean-the-craft-room-type goals.  I no longer underestimate the satisfaction of meeting a goal within the time-frame allotted for it.

On Sunday morning, I was up bright and early and on my way to Palo, Iowa for the annual Pigman Triathlon.  Competing in a triathlon has never been a goal of mine, however, it was for three important people in my life and all three were competing on Sunday.  The day dawned bright, beautiful, and without the normal summer humidity.  And while cheering on my friends, I also had the opportunity to see 800 others fulfilling their triathlon goals — 800 people of every age, shape, size, and fitness level.  It was inspiring and motivational.  I did not leave with the goal to compete in a triathlon.  But I did leave with the sense that it is time to set a goal to stretch myself.  So this week, I’m enjoying my newly clean craft room, gathering my inner resources for an exciting life ahead: its definitely time for a little flash and yearn!