Rooted
Grace Notes #12
On Mother’s Day, a client sent me an email containing this painting, with the message
To one who nurtures and holds space for both the brokenness and the beauty within.
The painting and her words touched something deep in me.
What do you feel when you look at the painting?
The question is not what you look at, but what you see.
— Henry David Thoreau
For me it brings to mind Mary Oliver’s words from Wild Geese
You do not have to be good…
…you only have to let
the soft animal of your body
love what it loves
The woman in the painting is doing that, I feel. She is at one with nature, with the stag: they are the same, peaceful, in the moment, surrounded by love.
For most of my life I believed that I HAD to be good, my whole life was oriented around the pursuit of goodness, before I ever thought to ask who had defined what good was. Before I ever considered it was only an opinion.
I spent decades trying to be good - everything from diets, exercise, self-improvement projects of every kind and a long spiritual search through the world’s religions and philosophies. What was I looking for? Did I ever really ask myself that? I just never felt good enough. I wanted the souped-up version of Susan, the one everybody would love, not the fish out of water I felt myself to be. I thought there was a better version, a healed version. The one who has finally arrived at the peace that was promised just over the next horizon. So I kept on trying until Mary’s words stopped me, before I even really knew what she meant.
Slowly, slowly, slowly, at the speed of Grace, I learned that peace was never over the horizon. It is always here underneath the striving, patient as a tree, wild as a stag, just waiting for us to drop all our ideas of how everything and everyone should be, how I should be. And then simply find out for ourselves what it means to let the soft animal of the body love what it loves.
Do you know? Most of us don't. I have noticed after eight years of sitting with women, that no matter where we start, whether we meet for life coaching, spiritual direction or end of life work, we always land in the same place, with four versions of one question:
What do you really, really want?
What does your heart long for?
What matters most to you now?
Who matters most to you now?
Answering these questions, which may take months of self-inquiry, determines the quality of our days and the quality of the energy we share with the world.
Why does this matter?
Let’s consider the butterfly effect, from chaos theory. The metaphor used is of a tiny butterfly flapping its wings in the Amazon rainforest. The tiny disturbance ripples outward, through weather systems, across continents and influences a storm forming on the other side of the world. One small movement and the field shifts.
If you are a Maths geek like me, this is worth a watch:
Now let’s consider the 100th monkey. In the 1950s, Japanese researchers observed a young monkey on the island of Koshima wash her sweet potato in the sea before eating it, something none of the others had ever done. Slowly, one by one, other monkeys started to do the same. When the behaviour reached a critical number, the so-called 100th monkey, something remarkable was reported: monkeys on other islands, with no physical contact, began doing it too. As if the idea had entered the field itself. As if knowledge, once it reaches a tipping point, stops needing to travel by ordinary means. The story is more myth than science, but myths carry their own truth and women have always known this one.
Perhaps you have felt the effect on your nervous system and your surroundings, when you sit in stillness and breathe with tenderness toward yourself and the world. Perhaps some of the stillness and peace you feel was caused by another woman on the other side of the world doing the same thing.
Or perhaps you have not experienced this but want to. Like me, you have become exhausted trying to be a better version of yourself. Tired of trying to change yourself , other people and the world. You want to be steady, so that when the storms come, and they will keep coming, you are not buffeted but rooted. A wise woman who has built her house on the rock of inner wisdom and loving compassion. A wise woman who knows, from the inside, that she can be with whatever comes, with whoever comes to her door seeking solace. One who is ready to take her place as an elder.
This is why the 100th Woman Project exists.
We meet once a month on Zoom. The May meeting is this Sunday 17th May at 5pm BST (noon EDT, 9am PDT). We listen to music and poetry and meditate together, using practices such as tonglen and metta bhavana, ancient technologies that are thousands of years old, not as self-improvement tools but as a way of training the nervous system and the heart to meet life as it is. To breathe in what is difficult. To breathe out what is kind. To discover, slowly, that the capacity for peace was never something we needed to acquire.
We tend the spark together, in the words of our invocation:
And we will care for each other
As the world around us unravels
And we will tend to the spark
Of hope that lives within our grieving hearts
And we are here now, in this present moment
Lifting our voices and hearts
And we are here now, we have come together
We are tending the spark of hope
Oh may it grow
- from Tending the Spark by Heather Houston
We are the butterflies flapping our wings, the 100th monkey learning a new way, the woman in the painting. She didn’t build the tree. She didn’t tame the stag. She simply stopped, and rooted, and let herself be.
Will you join us?
If you have been watching from the edges, if you have been meaning to come, if you have been saying maybe next time, will you come this Sunday?
62 of the 100 women are already here. Will you add your breath and your love? Will you be the 100th woman?
She is not someone else. She is you.
Join us this Sunday.
Register here
much love
Susan 🌹
P.S. Something new is brewing: Being a Wise Woman in a Crazy World. If the phrase pulls at you, hit reply and I'll tell you more when it's ready.