Conversations with a Soul (5 page)

Most children spend a significant amount of time here.

No other person can venture here unless we give them permission and even then they are dependent upon us for guidance in order to enter into our experience.

This inscape is a place of memory but it is more than history. It is a place of silence but if you listen carefully you will hear music and laughter, conversations and whispers, occasionally a scream of rage and sometimes the quiet sobbing of someone in pain.

It is a place to which we withdraw when there is nowhere else to go. It is also where we go when we sense the hour for a new beginning is at hand.

Time cannot be measured here for the land extends far beyond out birth, beyond our parent’s birth all the way back to where time is swallowed-up in the mists of ancient history; and forwards to where what is yet to unfold is a zealously guarded secret. Horizons yet to be explored patiently await discovery.

This is the place where artists have
seen
their paintings before paint was set to canvass; composers have
listened
to their music before a note was played; architects have
watched
the building rise before a single drawing was made.

The erotic comes from this place, so too the romantic, and when we yield to their influence we grow in stature; when we despoil either we know ourselves to have betrayed something important.

In this place courage is crafted from cowardice, and inspiration forged from boredom.

Whatever vitality we find in life is a reward for spending time here while whatever despair burdens our journey is a summons to come back here and deal with our unresolved anger. Here we are encouraged to explore and name the things that hold us captive, cages crafted from fear and failure, sometimes arising from our own foolishness, sometimes from the weakness of others.

In this place the voices of our Wisdomkeepers can be heard most clearly and their presence experienced with compelling certainty.

We are all explorers and pioneers in this land and sooner or later, frequently or infrequently we have to journey through its depths.

How might your life have been different if, once, as a young girl . . . when you wandered alone in the woodlands not far from your mother’s house . . . you had come upon a small glade you had never seen before. If, as you listened to the wind blow mysteriously . . . you had seen, there in the shadows, a circle of rough hewn stones? And, as soon as you saw the stones, you sensed a wisdom waiting there . . . knew that this was a place where women had gathered throughout the ages to reflect upon their lives. And you sat down quietly on one of the stones . . . as if the stones, themselves, would teach you what you needed to know.
¹¹

Deep within, in that secret, personal territory where the endless noise and demands of everyday life fall silent, high pitched squeals of delight and riotous laughter announce that we have arrived at the
land of enchantment
.

To all who’ve become prisoners of the mundane and whose lives no longer sparkle with anticipation; who’ve resigned themselves to life without vitality and feel crushed by obligation, here’s a place that promises
re-enchantment
.

In this land imagination reigns supreme, just as it did when we were children. Was ever a forest more alive than when it was populated by wizards and heroes, when we could come across a secret glade as if set there by an invisible hand, and where life refused to be reduced to mere existence?

Of course the
adult world
will try to squeeze out the language of enchantment from our vocabulary and replace it with matters of ponderous importance. They will prescribe more pills and potions to eke out yet another year of boredom. Work, not play, will suck dry the wellsprings of laughter, and speeches about 'the real world' will seem designed to introduce guilt whenever pleasure becomes an option.

Is the world that exists outside our inscape such a garbage dump, that only despair and hard work, sacrifice and pain have any value? Why should
the real
world
be one bereft of dreams and beauty, of inspiration and laughter, of playfulness and spontaneity?

The Wisdomkeepers, who take me by the hand and lead me to experience the land of enchantment, are always persons who know how to play and who understand the importance of playing. They question my addiction to worry and the persistent anxiety that gnaws away at me and easily imprisons me in fear.

My Wisdomkeepers know how to laugh and can be caught dancing on the wisdom stones. They work to convince me that throwing myself into the dance is a an act that frequently witnesses to great wisdom.

Some of the richest moments of my life have been initiated by my children and grandchildren when they have insisted that I enter
their
world, which is always enchanted, and they have restored playfulness to my understanding of being alive.

What a pity that so many toys are marketed today on the basis of being 'educational.' Red fire engines were never supposed to teach children, or grandfathers, the mysteries of quantum physics; they have a far more important role - they bring imagination alive, and teach us how to play.

But the land of enchantment is not just for children.

There is a meeting place in the land of enchantment, where sooner or later a Wisdomkeeper will introduce us to one of the most difficult questions ever asked of anyone. At the same time it is a question crafted in the shape of a key that could unlock the portal that leads into tomorrow:

What are you doing with this one short life?

Take a seat on one of the wisdom stones for a lesson on life is about to be delivered!

Suddenly the carefully delivered insistence that in middle age we ought to settle down and find contentment in whatever choices and career paths we might have chosen (or had chosen for us); or the assumption that faithfully discharging our obligations is the supreme goal and the high road to contentment, is about to be exploded.

The phrasing of the question, the moment of awakening, has been well chronicled in legends, myths and biography yet to each of us the call comes in a unique and unpredictable manner.

An illness frequently initiates questions about the quality of life we are leading and the huge investment of time we are required to make for ends that bring little satisfaction, while those we love and who love us receive the scraps that are left over.

A change in family configuration or fortune sometimes serves as the catalyst. For others the re-evaluation of their life’s goals happens because they awake one morning to the realization that life has become an empty shell, the goals have lost the lure they once held and those who share our lives and were once a part of a grand adventure have been reduced to mere functionaries.

Joseph Campbell described the process like this:

Whether small or great, and no matter what the stage or grade of life, the call rings up the curtain, always, on a mystery of transfiguration - a rite or moment, of spiritual passage, which, when complete, amounts to a dying and a birth. The familiar life horizon has been outgrown; the old concepts, ideals, and emotional patterns no longer fit; the time for a passing of a threshold is at hand.
¹²

The Gospel of Matthew records just such an event in the life of Jesus when he ended thirty years of obscurity and went into the wilderness to struggle with options for his life’s work. After sifting and discarding different temptations Matthew wrote:

Then the devil left him, and angels appeared and looked after him
.
¹³

Angels!

Messengers!

Jesus’ Wisdomkeepers?

Robert Browning’s;
Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for,
is probably the most
,
common characteristic lived by my Wisdomkeepers. I have no doubt that it was this attitude that drew me to them in the first place. In a world where so many are more than willing to settle for mediocrity, where, as one former colleague put it;
I am just waiting out the years to my retirement
. My Wisdomkeepers exploded and scattered and shattered such sentiments. To a person they believed and lived that life is far too precious to be squandered in boredom and mediocrity, both of which come as the inevitable consequence of living a life designed by and for someone else.

Each time I have come to redefine my life’s purpose I sensed them moving into my heart and mind. Without compromise they demand from me that
I become a truth I need to live, whose time is now!

Life without the protection of a cage can sometimes be tumultuous, but always liberating!

Sometimes it’s tough to quit the seductive promises of security for a wild, insecure dream, that has waited too long to see the light of day.

Sometimes it’s tough to face up to the possibility of failure knowing that the whole world is watching my dangerous, perilous, teetering entry into a new adventure.

Sometimes it’s tough to forsake old, comfortable patterns of behaviour for new, potentially richer ones that demand I become vulnerable to others and, therefore face the possibility of rejection.

Re-enchantment is always challenging because it demands that we risk and risk is sharpened on the grindstone of possible failure and that’s the one thing we have been coached to avoid above all else.

I know that I will have to come back here again and again and that is okay because I have already glimpsed the beginnings of re-enchantment with being alive and know myself to be someone in process, surrounded by Wisdomkeepers.

There are angels everywhere you can imagine.

I saw one hiding in the closet in our bedroom once and

I invited her out

but she said she was waiting for a friend,

thank you just the same.

And the next time I looked she was gone.
¹⁴

It is not accidental that sharing a border with the land of enchantment is the
realm of creativity
.

Children are immediately at home with creativity. They build, they explore, they compose songs, they draw pictures, they invent games, they transform ordinary household implements into priceless treasures, they summon the guardians of magic to become playmates, they conjure up stories and they do all this with an insatiable curiosity and enjoy the results with unbridled enthusiasm.

All of us were once at home in this magical world.

Those who manage to survive the tortuous journey from childhood to adulthood and emerge with their love of creativity intact, continue to embrace and be embraced by the wonder of living a riotous, joyous, creative life.

They find all kinds of reasons to wrap their arms and their imagination around each day.

You can sometimes find them crafting costumes, baking cookies, helping with a school play, decorating an old drab room until it explodes with life, planning and planting a garden, arranging a bowl of flowers, drawing pictures, working at scrap booking, learning to play a musical instrument and frequently you will find them surrounded by the neighbourhood kids!

So engrossed in life, they sometimes fail to notice that they have lost the ability to articulate what it means to be too old or too reserved or when to surrender to their peer’s judgments of impracticality.

Some author books, paint pictures, carve wood, write poetry, reform workplaces and work ethics. Some express themselves by restoring old pieces of furniture or old cars; some by teaching kids to play soccer or rugby.

Some of these people, the really
crazy
ones, have directed their energies to working on the world! They often express their creativity by working in government, churches and civic organizations; they give time to support those in need; they refuse to let a vocation become routine and lifeless. They believe they can make a difference and change a small piece of their world!

On the other hand, most of us don’t survive that journey without severe damage being done to our freedom to abandon ourselves to the lure of creativity. Given the opportunity to engage in an inventive venture, the gods of censure, who reside in some dark, haunted corner of the mind, promptly issue forth a warning that we are about to enter an arena in which we are singularly ill-equipped to survive! Mind numbing terror follows the realization that our lack of creative skills, up to this point known only to ourselves, will suddenly be laid bare for all to see. Our negative self-talk becomes a screaming litany of all the things we
cannot
do! Even our proudest achievements seem to demand a display of modesty which is achieved by gently trashing the achievements themselves
, Oh it was nothing really, it’s not very good, actually my husband helped me and he ought to get the credit.