Metamorphosis

When I was a child I learned that only the rational was real. Religion was a matter of faith and personal conviction, firmly based in historical culture. We went to church to be part of a social network, to do good in the world, and to exercise our spiritual muscles, whether by singing or by cooking for a group or by orchestrating projects to support those in need locally or globally. Church was about rules, and literacy, and belonging to a club. It was about being given nuggets of interesting wisdom to consider, accept, reject, or change. It was about teaching and learning. It was about knowing how to mark the seasons, how to use ritual to express emotion, how to celebrate and mourn the large occasions and mile-markers in life together: births, deaths, marriages. It was a way of being together in God’s presence, where God was someone remote and inaccessible, like a parent absent but necessary to please.

When I went to college I learned a different way to do religion and rationality. At a Quaker school, I found universalism, a much more diverse cultural context, greater historical depth, and more choices on the forefront of seeking social justice, much more direct action, more conversation aimed at changing the status quo rather than preserving or defending it. I found rebels. I found clashes of intents and values. I found chaos where I thought there had been only order. I found the encouragement to seek my own beliefs and develop them directly in relation to the Inner Teacher, the Light Within. I found a different level of community building, one centered on trust, a newer set of norms still malleable, and ways to mold my own environment and shape the lives of those around me.

When I entered the work world, I sought out familiar climates, in teaching, learning, and lo and behold, administration, which it turned out was an extension of what by rights I had been doing all along: creatively exercising my beliefs about being together, shaping goals, envisioning change, and leaping forward joyfully into shared ways of being. Religion retreated to the background, a cultural backdrop for setting the norms of the often-faith-based, often residential, teaching and learning communities where I worked.

When illness separated me from my ideals as a hard-working, over-achieving person, and set me apart from the world of paycheck and salary for a while, I learned the discipline of self-employment, the satisfaction of piece-work, quilting together a living through a mixture of support, growth, change, grit, labor, and gift. It was a satisfying time if not for the fear I could only be there and might never have a choice to rejoin the more quiet, stable world of regular work with regular pay. I persisted, and stair-stepped my way sideways back into that world, but with a difference. This time, I knew all could be ripped away. This time, I had felt the resonance of shaping my own life. I no longer felt bound by the strictures of authority. I was my own authority, before God, as my Quaker ideals had been telling me all along; there was no longer an illusion of protection by a system holding me up.

What also changed with illness and recovery of health was an orientation toward all living things, the movement of energy, methods of healing that did not come from the western, allopathic, battle-centered medical traditions I had been raised in, but from many other sources, all of which held in common the understanding that healing is part of health is part of dis-ease and life is part of life, and none is separable. Energy and matter are the same thing in different forms, and this counsels a much more respectful and subtle way of approaching and turning the tide of a body or emotions out of balance, a more holistic approach to the interconnected web of being and becoming. Healing becomes a journey rather than a destination, and we are all crowned as healers if we accept and step into the web.

My new jobs, since this reorientation, have been different, more light-hearted, more focused on finding myself first, while also meeting the requirements of an employer. They have acted as learning labs for healing, for myself and others, whether or not anyone around me hears me calling “Ollie Ollie In Free” in my loudest voice or murmuring it behind the back of my hand, as the case may be.

During the first of the new jobs, I met the Land, in a new way, by relocating to a rural environment. Here Spirit was accessible in the trees, in the woods, in the water, in the soil of the garden, of the farmland. The people, a more rare sect within Friends (Quakers), were both more sheltered and more open than any I had ever met before. They were held by the Land and the promise within it. They understood themselves unconsciously in alignment with its needs and principles. This gift was life-transforming. Within it in reply, opened up in me a new and direct way of communicating with land, plants, animals, people. Soon I was noticing and working with energy. Soon I was alive in ways I did not know were possible, visions pouring in, light, sound, voices, energy calling at every turn. I had good mentors and good friends and all continued well. When I wondered what these gifts were for: an energy medicine school for children, a play-space, a place of hospitality for spiritual growth, to shepherd the Earth, is what I kept hearing. My task was to become ready to embody it.

In the second of the new jobs, I migrated west to the Bay Area of California, following Spirit’s call. Personally, I thought Spirit was a little crazy. I’m not a big-city gal; what am I doing here? Turns out I did not stay long (about 18 months) but long enough to get established, fall head over heels in love with the pine and eucalyptus trees, with the redwood glades especially, and with the mountains (known as “hills”), and to flirt with the Pacific Ocean. I began organizing large, in-person events with many moving parts when what I could see most easily, always, was the way energy was shifting on the planet in response to our efforts. Always there was travel and movement; and always those occasions brought unique encounters completely off the playbook, but integral to growth.

Still traveling, still planning large events for children and adults, I felt myself swept by Spirit back to settle and build my family life, whatever that would be, in North Carolina. It took years but I found the house where I now live, with animal and plant companions outside and a wealth of hospitality beginning to unfold, indoors and out. The pandemic has changed the pace, made life much more rooted, more centered on the backyard and nearby creek; meanwhile, the large events have gone virtual and global. Energy is still moving; and what’s now moving is a shift to remain local, and lean into the spiritual gifts that have been developing since childhood, catalyzed at each stage, and now coming home to settle in and dwell within.

More on this to come; but for today, to say: For me today faith is about mountains and trees and hills and rivers and nature spirits, all divine. It’s about being with children and adults who share a sense of wonder at the natural world. It’s about being with children in change, in their lives; and with this, the children inside of all of us adults as well. It’s about naming and recording and using the spiritual gifts that have been given less standing in the rational, the workaday, the academic, and more standing in the esoteric, the magical, the interior dwelling place of mystical love. So be it.