Reflections On Emergence
The secret is out. The celebration is overflowing its banks. The joy is becoming too great to contain. The pain has grown too urgent to ignore. The earth is cracking open, and the women are rising from our hiding places and spilling out onto the streets, lifting the suffering into our arms, demanding justice from the tyrants, pushing on the patriarchy, and activating a paradigm shift such as the world has never seen.
-Mirabai Starr (Wild Mercy: Living the Fierce and Tender Mercy of the Women Mystics)
Lifting my eyes from the laptop screen as I try to conjure the opening lines of this story, I fix my gaze on the familiar white cross nestled among the evergreens on the far side of Kanuga Lake. The view from the porch of the conference center has not changed much since my first visit in 2014 as a first-time attendee at the Haden Summer Dream & Spirituality Conference. However, the world and my perspective certainly has.
As the emerald waters reflect the trees and sky above, I find myself reflecting on my journey since that first visit. I recall writing lines from John O’Donohue in my journal back then, “May you have the wisdom to enter generously into your own unease…to discover the new direction your longing wants you to take.” I might have underestimated the amount of unease my longing was calling me towards, but here now these many years later, I see every bit of it was, and still is, necessary.
For four years straight, three times a year, I made the nearly six-hour drive from Nashville over the Great Smokey Mountains to tend my soul and my dreams—preparing myself for what seems to be called for in this moment. Certificates in Spiritual Direction (2016) and Dream Work (2018) now sit framed on the bookshelf beside volumes of O’Donohue and other poets in the room I had originally prepared to welcome seekers to come share their sacred stories and listen for the movement of the divine in their lives. Due to the pandemic, that room has yet to fulfill its intended purpose. Instead, it became the cocoon that held me during this forced cloistering as I searched for meaning, grieved profound losses, made peace with my past, reckoned with reality, and confronted self in the shadows.
I must admit I am as surprised to be sitting here writing among the blooming rhododendrons and mountain laurel, as I am to be in the company of maskless (fully vaccinated, of course) friends, sharing meals, sitting in dream groups, and gathering in the evenings to sing our songs, laugh, and share hugs. How I have missed trees, water, earth, sky and communing with soul friends! So, when it was announced that Kanuga was opening to dream conference participants even though it was still virtual, I reserved my fully vaccinated self a room at the inn immediately.
What is remarkable about it all is how quickly I let go of worry about germs and airborne death droplets, unselfconsciously extending my hand or opening my arms for a hug. It almost seems as if the past year-and- a-half was some strange fever dream from which I awoke relieved to find myself in a safe and familiar world. Almost, that is. There is no denying that the world is different. We are different. I am different. The illusion of safety well and completely shattered forevermore.
Thomas Merton, in a journal entry dated June, 1963, described emerging from the solitude of the monastery like this:
Like waking up, like convalescence after an illness. My life here in solitude is most real because it is most simple…The more I reach out into “the world,” the less simplicity, the more sickness.
Having spent the pandemic mostly indoors from the privileged comfort of my suburban home with its treeless landscape, being ensconced deep in the mountain forest has stirred in me a longing to pick up stakes and move to the woods—to live in solitude, away from the complexity and sickness of a world in relentless turmoil. I’m also aware that solitude is a privilege in itself. Although grateful for respite and retreat, there is simply too much work to do. As conference presenter and wise elder Catherine Meeks put it, too much work “to sit on the porch and drink tea.” Merton reminds me that my hermit nature is yet another false identity that I must release in service of the work. He continues…
Identity. I can see now where the work is to be done. I have been coming here into solitude to find myself, and now I must also lose myself: not simply to rest in the calm, the peace, in the identity that is made up of my experienced relationship with nature in solitude. This is healthier than my “identity” as a writer or a monk, but it is still a false identity, although it has a temporary meaning and validity. It is the cocoon that masks the transition stage between what crawls and what flies.
I emerge from this conference with a deeper understanding of how I have suffered from and been exploited by patriarchal systems as a woman, while I have also benefitted from and been protected by the same system on account of the whiteness of my skin. The both/and-ness of my embodied existence in this lifetime cannot help but foment the unease that O’Donohue urged generosity towards. I’m here for it.
Now with my bags packed for the return trip over the mountains, I re-enter a world that is opening again and calling me forth to walk in a new way. I, too, return to “the world” with a greater sense of the work to be done. My compass having been recalibrated slightly by wise teachers, I have a better idea of how to move forward—imperfectly, of course, but with authenticity, humility, and deep gratitude.
The rustling leaves overhead now seem to be waving goodbye, as I notice the smooth waters begin to ripple and sparkle in response to the gentle nudging of the trees. The time for reflection is over. Time to get moving.