Making Things // Being Creaturely
Making Things // Being Creaturely
how our belonging shows up in the most basic acts
I am sitting outside doing the sunlight in my eyeballs thing to regulate my circadian rhythms. I have a baby, so i no longer have recognizable circadian rhythms, but a mother can try. After all, ‘tis the season where i try to do all things like a mother. Write like a mother, eat like a mother, rest like mother, mother like.a.mother. It’s exhausting. Elating. You get the gist. So, I am here, regulating my circadian rhythms, therefore my nervous system, like a mother…
I am also writing, surrounded by my patron saints of the week – Mary Magdalene, Ross Gay, Cheryl Strayed, Mary Szybyst, Frida Kahlo, John O’Donohue and David Whyte who are twin flames, and must currently be kept together. There are a few others hiding in the canvass bag that i’ve been lugging around.
These patron saints are here because every time i sit down to write, i feel fear well up. It’s an old and familiar companion that most days keeps me from the page, a low hum dread + resistance with the repetitive and mechanical intonations of nobody cares, you’re wasting your time, you’re terrible at this, that sentence is the worst! or a variation that says you’re so good at this & you’re wasting your talent by not working harder, faster, more. Lately, the fear has morphed into another kind of self-consciousness around truth-telling, teetering between a great act of self-disclosure and the compulsion to hide the soft underbelly of what i hold sacred, something i have painstakingly tried to do for decades. And, parts of me became very good at this pretense.
So, coming to the page feels like an act of courage or perhaps, more accurately, sheer stupidity and longing and hope. Because no one might show up on the other end of this, no one to speak across the distance to the bent ear of the maker. Or if something does return, it might just be echo, our own voice reverberating off the cliff wall of separation, returning to us softer and garbled and empty.
Friends, this is the risk of making anything. Turning what is nothing (or amorphous substance) into something. Raising your words, channeling your voice, dancing with chaos. Calling out into the void for connection, which is what all who create ultimately do.
Studies show that since the ubiquity of the cell phone (interesting: i typed self-phone) we are lonelier than ever, less meaningfully connected, less known and knowing. Less tuned in to our body and inner landscape, therefore less tuned into others. Less lovemaking, and eye gazing, and hand holding, fewer shoulders pressed against each other, and bodies suspended in laughter from experiencing something together IRL. Less walking and dancing and coffee dates and knowing the curves of another’s face, the way an iris might change colors with mood or feeling. Less hands in the dirt, and food from the soil of our gardens, and less trees and plants that download their wisdom into us, less bare feet and dirty fingernails, and talking late into the night for the pleasure of it. Less of everything that makes us human, because we hide in our houses and stay on our devices, while the body begs to be licked clean by rain and tall grasses and delicious sleep under the stars.
This is not a diatribe against technology, but more a question of how we choose to live. Creatively or mechanically? Performing and achieving and squeezing every last drop of goodness within, becoming under-resourced and eventually burned out, or … organically, rhythmically, playing with the boundaries of time, making art of life’s most boring routines. (did you know we could do that because linear time is an illusion – there are some great episodes from Brian Greene on PBS exploring this in layman’s terms)
How do we do this?
It’s one of the questions i am living.
Meaning i don’t have the specific answer for you … though i do believe we can help each other find how we might let Life live us. How we might surrender to the unspeakable mysteries -- suffering and despair, power and vulnerability, impermanence and delight.
Friend, this is where i begin --with myself, with those i love, with those i spiritually and psychologically companion: what brings you alive? Which is another way of asking, what do you love? Even more so, where do you let yourself be loved?
Or, what does it mean to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves? Which is another way of coming into our own deep knowing. The one that cultural conditioning, religion, and all the structures of empire has tried to erase.
The knowing that is rooted in the body, because this body is earth and stardust, cosmic and local, timebound and time-transcending, and the unending truth-teller. This body is the material form of your soul and your spirit, your heart depth and your mind intelligence, and as such, is holy.
So, we begin simply, by nourishing ourselves with food that gives us energy. Resting and sleeping (not quite the same thing). Drinking in sunlight and lots of water. Sitting in stillness for 10-20 minutes a day. Hugging the humans in our lives. Making something – a meal, a drawing, a spreadsheet, a poem, a list of chores, the schematics to a building, an org flow (whatever your things is.) Moving our bodies. If possible, in nature. Walking barefoot. Picking a wildflower. Praying. Planting an herb. Smiling at the cashier. Taking a shower. Humming a tune. Feeding a child. Putting clean sheets on our bed. Dreaming. Doing it all over again.
Slowly, in the silence and stillness, in the energy and movement, our inner voice will come online. This inner voice will feel and sound differently than the clamor of the other ones. It won’t elaborate, over-cogitate, explain, demonstrate, admonish, flatter etc. This voice doesn’t even speak in exact words but makes herself known in the fullness of you – body, soul, heart, mind, spirit. She is quiet and strong and unafraid. She is the unequivocal truth-teller without a chip on her shoulder. She never leaves. And, she is merciful. Brimming with Love.
This is Life in us, through us, as us, and simultaneously, more than us. Following her delicate golden thread sends us into the unified field that holds all things together and nourishes them into existence second by second. Here nothing is more real than our belonging.
This weekend with a messy house of half-folded laundry and day-old dishes, we took our girls on an evening walk to re-ground ourselves. We risked a bit because they were tired and cranky, and in the heat and mystery of their growth, entering new stages all the time and shifting whatever rhythms we might try to grab onto. A. fell asleep quickly lulled by the wind through the trees and G. found her sweet spot by riding her scooter so fast down the neighborhood hills, her dress billowing behind her like an iridescent wing, i had moments where i felt she was lifting off. I wanted to go with her.
We chased the sunset together to a cul-de-sac vantage point where the woods meet the border of the neighborhood, where the trees stand tall and crenelated against the sky, and we watched shades we didn’t have names for unspool themselves across the horizon.
There were moments we tried to name them, is that vanilla champagne ash? i would ask, and my husband well-versed in color theory would try to articulate his vision. The clouds moved through and with each blink the sky changed. Spread its silence over us.
At one point, i ran down the hill toward my daughter making figure eights at the speed of light, arms out wide, hoping, just hoping the wind might buoy me long enough for the sky to absorb my body. To let me melt in the ribbons of coded light.
A note about privilege…
This simple recipe for life — connection, belonging, embodied and spiritual care is the birthright of all creatures. It is, however, not a reality for many. As i write this, violence is unfolding in many parts of the world, peace seems aspirational, and most of us are numbed out on the onslaught of news, while those living it are being traumatized in ways impossible to articulate. It makes one want to quit.
I do, most days, and it brings me to my knees. In rage and prayer and despair. With my children safe beside me i ask myself what kind of fucked up reality is this where some of us live in (comparative) luxury, while others experience unfathomable suffering? I imagine you ask yourself this as well.
Where i land, and it’s a complicated thing, is that to be a part of the easing of human and planetary suffering, i must create the conditions in my own being to be a vessel of healing energies, a person of discernment, clarity, prayer, and a channel of love.
So, where i can, i take responsibility for myself, my wellbeing and awakening. I humbly recognize it is not all up to me, but i do have a part to play. And when i know what that is, i lean into it, remembering my creatureliness — my need to be held and aided, so that i might become that for others. Not on my own, but connected to the collective will and life force that works for the good of all.
Thank you for reading (en)WOMBED, a love letter of sorts exploring the ways we can cultivate artful participation and attentive witness to Life by embracing the full spectrum of our humanity and listening to the inner voice Thomas Merton called the soft voice, the gentle voice, the merciful and feminine. Feel free to share it with whomever you think would benefit from, enjoy, or feel deliciously challenged by these ideas.