Elderhood in Troubled Times — Stephen Jenkinson

It was my friend Roq that first introduced me to the work of Stephen Jenkinson and his Orphan Wisdom body of work. Jenkinson is a teacher, author, storyteller, spiritual activist, and farmer. He is founder of the Orphan Wisdom School, a teaching house and learning house for the skills of deep living and making human culture.

In a recent interview, Jenkinson speaks about Elderhood in Troubling Times:

  • the etymology of the word “catastrophe”;
  • the journey of descent into the mysteries of life;
  • the fundamental function of elderhood;
  • being awake as deep engagement;
  • assuming the responsibilities of the sixties generation;
  • the transient nature of leadership;
  • the challenge of elders;
  • the dilemma of mutual respect and responsibility;
  • the love that life has for us;
  • unconditional gratitude.

Yes, there is a lot in this interview (45 minutes).

What I love in it is that he invites a different story that requires waking from a standardized numbing that so many of us live in. Jenkinson insists on the truth telling that is beyond what mass media conveys and feeds us. It’s so easy to just give in to what is common misperception, because, well, it is so common. It’s so much easier to not go against the grain of common societal narrative. There are many days when I just want to roll over in bed and let go of the awakeness path.

And yet I don’t. Many of us don’t. Can’t, really. Can’t seem to numb away the impulse to wake. Instead, we wake for another day. We try to offer some good. We dare to change not just the todo’s of the day, but the stories that are behind those todo’s that redefine relevance and purpose.

I’m grateful for this Orphan Wisdom sharing, to encourage another day of courage and kindness in the remembering together.

The Aim of Life — Henry Miller

Henry Miller was an American Writer from the 1900s. He’s known for, among other things, breaking with literary styles of his day. He was born in New York. He lived and wrote for a significant time in Paris. He died in California.

A few of Henry Miller’s words were spoken as a closing check-out by a participant at The Circle Way Practicum that ended two days ago. It was for me a beautiful closing (the person who spoke them was in fact the last person in the circle).

“The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware … joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware.”
Henry Miller

I hope for this in myself, all of these layers, to be living. I long for the overall feeling of such aliveness and awareness. In self, and in group, and in community.

Some days, it doesn’t come so easily. When aloneness overtakes (or appears to), leaving only the next precarious step through wobbly and slippery stones of despair.

Some days, it comes so easily. Like in that closing circle when people sang, offered gratitudes. I gushed with the beauty of it, a momentary increased and awakened awareness, fed to the center by the group, and to be carried to the next circle, with gracious aim.

There Is A Field

It was the 13th century Persian poet, Jellaludin Rumi, that wrote so beautifully of fields. Of expanded minds. Of oneness. Of the less visible that is “field” that is often beyond words.

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase “each other”
doesn’t make any sense.
The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don’t go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want.
Don’t go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth across the doorsill
where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.
Don’t go back to sleep.”

Yesterday I returned from the field above, at the Aldermarsh Retreat Center. Out beyond Maxwelton Road in the Maxwelton Valley, in traditional lands of the Snohomish, Suquamish, Swinomish, and the Lower Skagit, over the wood-chip paths, through the marsh of Alder, there is a field, in which Marsh House exists. I love this little gathering spot. Bunnies hop out there. Coyotes howl at night. There is room to amble. There is space to be held. And this little building holds us in circles. On chairs. On cushions. On back-jacks. With a candle in the middle and some questions to guide us.

It’s been 20 years now that I’ve been going to Aldermarsh both to convene groups and participate. It’s the retreat center in which, looking back, I’ve done so much of my life learning from my mid 30s to mid 50s. And that learning was refreshed a bunch this last week for The Circle Way Practicum.

There is a point at which we are no longer circling, we are no longer doing the circling. But rather, we are being circled, we are participating in something much larger and energized by a deliberate and sustained encounter with one another. It does feel like the space beyond right-doing and wrong-doing.

I’m grateful.

Free Listening

I often feel that what I seek to do in this blog is to be a noticer. Of things big. Of things small. Of things that are not things. Of moments that come and go like one gentle draft of wind. Of long arcs that are so worth giving ourselves to over years and decades. I notice for myself. For others, to encourage their noticing, I hope. It’s a really rich world, isn’t it.

I notice things that are painful, like some of the conditions of runaway confrontation. Or smoke-filled skies that won’t go away as forest continue to burn. I notice things that are joyful, like the teapot sitting in my friend Sarah’s window, and the garden beyond it neighbored by centuries old Douglas Fir trees. I notice. I notice. I notice. Perhaps we all do, but just rarely find ourselves removed enough to be in the soft edges of it all.

I’ve been teaching and convening the last week. It was The Circle Way Practicum, co-hosting with Amanda Fenton, and convening with 24 of us. There’s a pile of that that I’ll share over the coming days. Insights. Impressions. Ahas. Or maybe, just the way that that encounter, six days worth, peels away enough of the tough outside to see the everyday in a more noticing way. Sorrows and joys that bring me to tears.

Well, as I scan through email that’s been coming into my inbox the past week, I see this morning Charles LaFond’s post on Free Listening. Another story of noticing. Another beautiful image. Another something to feel some delight in, or whatever within the range of human emotions that are so often packed into a briefcase or a hall closet, only to be found another day when less busy.

Enjoy…

She stands in the park during the Grower’s Market and she holds a sign.  “Free Listening.”  When I saw her, and her sign, I was so happy I could hardly inhale.

And more… on Charles’ sight for The Daily Sip.