“Are you sure you don’t want a ride to the camp? You can just skip the rest of the kilometres for the day, rest up, stay off your blisters for awhile, and start fresh tomorrow.”
We heard that often along the 100 km. walk. Well-meaning organizers, volunteers, and medics wanted to help us avoid some of the pain we were experiencing. They wanted to give us short-cuts, assuring us there was no shame in missing a few kilometres.
Every offer only set our resolve deeper, though. It even made us reluctant to visit the medics when the blisters got particularly ugly. We weren’t there to do 87 km – we were there to do 100.
Yes, it was painful. Yes, there were toes on our feet that were hardly recognizable as toes anymore. Yes, there were moments when there didn’t seem to be a single muscle in our body that was exempt from the overwhelming ache.
But we were there to complete the journey. We were there to test the limits of our endurance. We were there to be present in every painful step.
We live in a culture that likes shortcuts, especially when it comes to pain. We try to rush through grief, thinking that we’ll be better off if we can just put a bandaid on it and get back to real life. We over-medicate, thinking a dulling of the pain will help us feel “normal”. We short-circuit the birthing process (both literal and figurative), with unnecessary c-sections and inductions. We over-consume, thinking that shopping therapy will dull the ache of loneliness or heartbreak. We clamour over quick fixes and fill our lives with cheap throw-away solutions to our problems.
We prefer ten easy steps to one thousand painful ones.
But it’s the thousand painful steps that will change us. It takes those thousand painful steps for us to grow into what we’re meant to be at the end of the journey.
In ten easy steps, we can build little more than a house of cards, not the rich, beautiful temple we are meant to become. A strong wind blows away the house of cards, but the temple withstands the storm.
A fascinating thing happened at the end of our three day journey. We three women, walking together every step of the way, always within about 100 steps of each other, all began to menstruate before the end of the day. In just three days, our cycles aligned (though I wasn’t expecting mine for another week and a half and I’m not sure about the others). Interestingly enough, the next day was the full moon.
I’ve lived with enough roommates, daughters, and sisters to know that it is not unusual for women living in community to end up with cycles that are in sync. I’ve never seen it happen in such a short time, though. Three days of sharing an intense, painful experience, and our bodies were in tune with each other.
Extrapolate that story forward, and you have three women, living in community, whose bodies are preparing to go through the pain and glory of childbirth together. It’s a beautiful, poignant story. Expose three women’s bodies to shared pain and they find a way to support each other that goes much deeper than words.
Women, we are amazing vessels. We birth children and carry each other’s pain. Every month, we shed blood – our little painful sacrifice for the beauty we bear within us.
As an added element to this story, it was pain and childbirth that brought these three women together in the first place. Cath’s loss of Juggernaut led her to a place where walking helped her live through the pain. Christina’s deep compassion for her story and sharing of her pain made her want to support Cath on the journey. My own story of the loss of Matthew bonded me to Cath and made me want to be with her for the journey as well. It was pain that bonded us, pain that we journeyed through together, and pain that caused our bodies to align themselves with each other so that we could most fully support each other.
Our bodies carry wisdom that our minds know nothing about.
Our bodies understand the value of pain.
Without the pain, we don’t have the beauty. Without the blood, we don’t have the birth. Without the sacrifice, we don’t have the growth. Without the sharing of agony, we don’t have community.
We can’t shortcut through the pain. It’s not serving any of us. Shortcutting through our own pain makes us careless of other people’s pain. It makes us careless of the pain we cause Mother Earth.
Mark Nepo talks about pain as the tool that carves the holes in our bodies to make us the instruments through which breath blows and beautiful music is made. When we are present in the pain – when we don’t try to take shortcuts through it – our holes are seasoned and polished and the music comes out sweet and rich.
Imagine an orchestra playing on half-finished instruments, with holes that had never been polished and strings that had never been pulled tight. The music would be dull, lifeless, and out of tune.
Pain begets beauty.
Pain shines the edges of the holes through which God breathes.
The next step may be painful, but it must be taken nonetheless.
I only hope that your next painful step will be taken in community and that you will be supported in your pain.
And when the pain subsides and you can stand up straight again, let God breath through you and make your music beautiful.
“In stories and in life, pain is our friend. It’s an unwelcome friend, but a friend nonetheless. The good news is if we make friends with our pain, it won’t stay long and it will leave us with a gift. But if we avoid pain, it will chase us down until we finally accept the gift it has to offer.” – Donald Miller
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Note: Full disclosure – I did take a few painkillers along the way, so I don’t want to paint myself as some kind of martyr. AND I do not want to stand in judgement of anyone who accepted a ride – we each must choose our own thresholds for pain and our own values and reasons for completing a particular journey. There is no shame in being supported through the roughest parts of your journey.
Another note: Cath has created a beautiful offering to help you walk through your pain, called Remembering for Good. She is letting her pain be turned into music.
See those little pockets of green all over my neighbourhood? I’m attracted to them like a magnet to steel.
Since this has been my summer of wandering (and the summer of beautiful weather), and training for my upcoming 100 km walk, I’ve had a chance to explore a lot of green spaces. It’s become a habit of mine – scan a Google map, find a patch of green I haven’t explored yet, and go.
Sometimes I find lovely parks I didn’t know existed, with manicured paths, and child-filled play structures.
Often though, I walk past the manicured parks to the next green space.
My favourite discoveries are not the parks. My favourites are the untamed, unruly, un-manicured spaces that scream out to my inner child “EXPLORE ME!”
And explore them I do, these little pockets of wildness. I climb over underbrush, hop over puddles, shimmy under fallen trees, and push through thick branches, until I am so deep inside the green box on the map that the city just outside the boundary ceases to exist.
Inside the green I find hidden streams, magical trees, colourful mushrooms, raucous wildflowers, and – when I’m lucky – deer.
What I find most of all, though, in those untamed green spaces, is my own wild heart.
I remember what it means to be wild and unruly. I remember what it feels like to be free of the tidy little boxes I let society place me in. I feel the lilt come back to my step that tells me I am following my heart and not the expectations of others.
From the moment I step off the well-traveled path and into the green square on the map, I am transported back to my childhood, when I used to roam the woods on our farmland, imagining myself a gypsy or an explorer.
The child in me revived, I revel in each discovery. I stare in awe at the leaves quivering in the breeze and twinkling in the sunlight. I marvel at the patterns in the bark of trees. I giggle at the bare patches where it looks like fairies have danced. I look deeply into the magical eyes of deer.
It doesn’t take much to give my wild nature space to breath. Just a little green shape on a map.
Sometimes the right words show up at just the right time. This is what showed up this morning:
Suffering makes an instrument of each of us, so that standing naked, holes and all, the unseen vitalities can be heard through our simplified lives.
…In every space opened when what we want gets away, a deeper place is cleared in which the mysteries can sing. If we can only survive that pain of being emptied, we might yet know the joy of being sung through. Strangely and beautifully, each soul is a living flute being carved by life on Earth to sound deeper and deeper song.
Imagine that. These deep gashes in my soul from broken relationships, a son who died before he was born, a father who died before I was ready to let him go, a mom fighting cancer, a husband whose demons have nearly killed him twice, a rape before I knew what sexual intimacy was… these are all holes that make the instrument that is me sound beautiful and sweet.
With time and healing, they let me sing a deep, rich song that may be just the soothing ointment needed for someone else’s fresh wounds.
Often we get caught up in identifying our strengths and our giftedness and we spend all our time trying to figure out how those things can uniquely impact the world.
We forget that it may very well be our pain that will let us sing the sweetest songs and soothe the greatest hurts.
2. Grab your camera and a journal. (And sunscreen and a bottle of water if necessary.)
3. Wander down the street.
4. Get totally distracted by the fascinating paint strokes of the clouds against the sky. Imagine the Creator having fun with a paintbrush.
5. Stop to stare at some flowers.
6. Stare a little closer at the flowers, and notice that there’s a spider on one of them.
7. Take the road less traveled.
8. Stare at more flowers. Be thankful for the people who had the vision to protect this piece of nature despite the development all around it.
9. Get even further off the beaten trail.
10. Be utterly amazed when you find a deer staring at you. Stop to stare back. Get lost in its eyes for a long, long time.
11. Follow the deer into the meadow, and stare in awe at the beautiful shape of her body.
12. Leave the woods and step into the prairies. Marvel at the depth of the colours all around you.
13. Walk a little further and notice even more colours, shades, and hues.
14. Follow a butterfly around for awhile and try to capture it in flight. Give up and simple watch in awe.
15. Notice how stunning the wild grasses look against the blue, blue sky.
16. Stop to look a little closer, and notice a bug on one of them.
17. Stop by a stream and marvel at the way the light and shadow play with the reflections on the water.
18. Stare at a wooden fence for awhile and imagine yourself setting up an easel in that very spot to paint what you see.
19. Get captivated by the artful way in which plants dry up and release their seeds.
20. Stare at foxtails for awhile and remember the fun you had with them on the farm when you were a kid.
21. Find a bench in the shade, put down your camera, and just stare at the beauty all around you. Pick up your journal if you want to, or just stare. Give yourself over to the moment.
22. Say a little prayer of gratitude to the Creator of all that you have seen.
There are few things that nourish my spirit more than a meditative wander through nature with my camera.
Mindful photography is for me what prayer or meditation is for others – a time to connect with the Creator through the tiniest of details on a leaf or the grandeur of the waves crashing on the coastline.
Unfortunately, in winter, I too often forget to do what I know will nourish me.
Yesterday, I remembered.
(Note: Video includes music from my friend Steve Bell.)
My sister and I took my two teenage daughters to see the movie Eat Pray Love this past weekend. It was enjoyable, if for no other reason than that it gave this wanderer lots of pretty location eye candy to feast my eyes on. And, as a mother who sat watching with her teenagers, I was glad that the producers chose to keep it G-rated. All in all, it was a pleasant way to spend an afternoon.
But… (you knew there was going to be a but, didn’t you?) the fact that I brought teenage girls to the movie also made me cognizant of a few things that concern me somewhat about not only the movie, but the bigger picture of what this movie & book represent. I couldn’t help but think what messages my 13 and 14 year old daughters are picking up in this era of what Bitch Magazine calls “priv lit”. Here are some of my thoughts on that subject:
1. The movie (even more than the book) does a poor job of establishing why the character is wracked with such angst that she has to ditch a marriage and walk away from her life for a year. The impression that you get in the movie is that Gilbert is just a bit bored and needs to inject some enthusiasm in her life. Well, call me old fashioned, but I don’t want my daughters to believe that you leave a marriage because you’re “a bit bored”. When you’re in a relationship, you commit to it and you work damn hard at making it work. I’m not saying every marriage is going to work (or that they should), but leaving is not a decision that’s made as lightly as the movie would imply. (Granted – they didn’t have a lot of time to tell that story.) Not so long ago, my daughters watched some of that commitment at work, when my husband and I put the whole “in sickness and in health” vow to the test and decided that love was worth sticking around for. Hopefully they’re watching us more than they’re watching the movie screen.
2. I’m all for self-improvement and “living your best life”, but… well, just how dangerous is the message that we’re communicating to our youth that we as women are “entitled” to spending hoardes of money traveling around the world and finding ourselves? What about the “giving back” part of that? When do we remember that our rights have to be balanced with responsibility? Sure it’s good (and important) to spend time growing in our spirituality and learning more about our giftedness, but then what? Then we get to flit away to an island with a sexy Brazillian and never have another care in the world? I guess I’m still too committed to the idea that we find ourselves in order that we can better serve the world. (And… you might argue that Gilbert is doing just that by writing books, etc., but my point is that my daughters only pick up a one-sided view by watching the movie.)
3. Along the same lines, I can’t help but sigh a little about the “luxury of angst” when I have met women in Africa who have to walk 10 kilmetres to fetch water for their families, or women in India who’ve had to give up their daughters (and lose them into the sex trade) to keep the rest of their families alive. Is it right that we get to spend so much of our time and money on ourselves “because we’re worth it”, when some of the luxuries we’re enjoying are on the backs of the poor?
4. As this article so eloquently suggests, maybe all of this priv lit that represents the post-feminist era is actually sending us backwards instead of forwards. “But though Oprahspeak pays regular lip service to empowerment, much of Winfrey’s advice actually moves women away from political, economic, and emotional agency by promoting materialism and dependency masked as empowerment, with evangelical zeal.” Maybe, while we get lost in this culture of “self-enlightenment for our own sake”, we’ll miss the bigger picture of how we can impact real change in the world.
5. And a bonus quote from the article linked above… “It’s no secret that, according to America’s marketing machine, we’re living in a “postfeminist” world where what many people mean by “empowerment” is the power to spend their own money.” Does spending money make us empowered? Really? Maybe we could seek empowerment instead by simplicity and generosity and justice. (I couldn’t help but notice that, although the main character left New York with just a duffle bag, she was still wearing a different outfit in nearly every scene of the movie.)
It’s not that the movie was horrible – it was actually quite enjoyable and there were parts of it that genuinely inspired me. However as I continue to imagine what gifts I’m going to offer the world as I build my consulting/writing practice (and dream of workshops, retreats, etc.), I find I have to examine some of the self-improvement/self-enlightenment/mindfulness work and determine which of it is moving us forward. Which of it is snake oil? And which of it is making us an even more self-centred consumerist culture than we already are?
As I’ve said in the past, I want to imagine what it looks like if “Sophia Rises” and we all learn to trust our feminist wisdom more deeply and let it impact the way we interact with the world and each other. Contrary to what I may have said above, some of it will mean that we have to take lessons from the Elizabeth Gilberts of this world and focus more of our attention on beauty, spirituality and relationships. Those are all very good things and they will help us see our way forward. BUT we have to guard against the temptation to turn these things into self-serving pleasure seeking consumerism.
