California winter arrives and my retreat time is a "master class" in the ongoing lesson of surrendering-into-the-moment.
We are having some real (for California) winter weather this month: cold days with gusty winds, dark clouds scudding and occasional soft, steady rains. At night, it’s been getting down into the low 30’s. At these temperatures the dew leaves a rime of soft white frost on both my tent and my car! It feels so luscious to burrow cozily into my sleeping bags (I have them in my cottage as well as my tent). When I’m reading or napping or dreaming in my cocoon in the cottage, I watch fires in the wood stove that warms the whole of my little space. When I’m snuggled in for the night with my hot water bottles in the nest in my screened tent, I watch the brilliantly starred or moonlit skies before falling asleep.
Browned sycamore leaves the size of serving platters litter the yards on three sides of my house. I don’t rake them. It’s too much fun just crunching around in them. Every few days I go into the wind swept piles of them to gather slender sycamore branches downed by the winds. These I break and stack for kindling. Wonderfully flavorful Meyer lemons, tangy little Mexican limes, flagrantly spilling-open pomegranates and incredibly juicy, miniscule mandarin oranges are this month’s bounty from the orchard. Certain trails I hike offer up the gift of windfall Haas avocados from the orchards surrounding their lower reaches.
The people who own this property are in the midst of setting in a rose garden just beyond my side yard. I’m able to watch it emerge through the windows over my desk. More than twenty tea and antique rosebushes that their gardener will tend. I’ll get to enjoy the view and to pick the roses while having no responsibility for their care and feeding. So much beauty and bounty that comes like grace. I am so deeply grateful for these serendipitous and extraordinary blessings in my life!
Much of the time in my November birthday retreat was filled (as it often is) with a profound sense of amazement and gratitude for the magic, the blessings and the gentleness in my life. I feel so lavishly taken care of by Spirit in every way. The lessons, the work on myself, the growing and deepening of my consciousness continue to unfold day by day. Through it all, I am unshakable in my commitment to going only as fast as the slowest part of me feels safe to go, to being really gentle with myself and to keeping my life simple. Always, these days, my commitment seems to be met with Spirit’s bringing my lessons to me in ever more gentle and easily digestible ways. I often feel bowled over by the wonder of it all!
Most of the work in this season of my life seems to be about listening: openly, deeply, care-fully, willingly to what comes up in my body, in my feelings, in my thoughts, in the energy field(s) around me. To listen impeccably asks that I keep letting go of, keep giving up even the subtlest plans, expectations, designs and ideas about how anything “should” be in my life or in my world. It asks me to keep trusting and surrendering into just where the energy leads me in each moment.
Listening, I come more and more to understand and accept that all there is for me to “do” is to keep dedicating myself to my intention to listen. To my intention to live as fully, as truthfully, as honorably and as authentically as I’m able. The rest is out of my hands. Letting go and giving up is an unending process of getting out of the way, of surrendering so that Spirit/my deepest knowing Self can flow unimpeded through my daily life.
My retreat time is always a “master class” in this ongoing lesson of surrendering-into-the-moment. Each year I start with a simple commitment: to unplug from all people-contact and to enter into the silence for 10 days. In celebration of my birthday and of my gratitude for all the blessings of the year that’s ending, I go into the time open to whatever comes. My retreat times often “look” nothing like what other people call “retreats.” I’ve learned that that doesn’t matter at all!
This year, on the evening before my birthday (the evening of my sixth day of silence), I found myself most of the way through collating 300 decks of Rememberings and Celebrations Cards. (I’d hand colored the18,000 individual cards during the two weeks before going into the silence.) As always, putting my own loving energy into each of these little cards before they go off into the world was a sweet and meditative process. I had a fire going and some gentle, drifty music on the stereo. I was putting the stretch loops around the already collated decks, about an hour and a half from completing the process.
Suddenly, everything felt “off.” The music felt very irritating. I felt instantly cranky, completely overwhelmed with what I was doing. I wanted to be done! I became aware of an intense, deep and sharp tangle of pain in my spine and across to under my right shoulder blade. I felt enormously tired, totally exhausted. I needed to stop dealing with the cards. I thought it might be time to begin getting ready for my birth-time.
Over the years, I have grown into a ritual around the eve of my birthday. I was born at just 5 minutes after midnight. As the anniversary of that birth-time approaches, I seem drawn to set my house in order, to freshen the flowers in the vases on my altars, to light cleansing cedar incense and to prepare my body. Usually I take a special candlelit bath, wash my hair, and give myself a manicure, a pedicure and a lotion massage. Then I dress, putting on my most favorite ceremonial jewelry and wrapping myself in that year’s most favorite fabric. Though I rarely know the clock time, I always trust that it must be near midnight when I’ve completed my ritual of preparing. Then I wait for what Spirit will bring to the ceremony.
But, here I was with a 2’ by 4’ table jutting from my desk-worktable right into the middle of my open play space. Big plastic storage tubs were stacked on the desk waiting for the completed decks. I could “disappear” the tubs under the table and cover the table with a sheet. But the table, stacked with four layers of unbound decks of cards, was way too heavy and unstable to move out of the way. I was feeling very crabby about having my space in what felt like unaesthetic disarray as I was about to begin my “preparing for my birth-time!”
I grouched around, feeling very disoriented as I tried to sort out what to do. I couldn’t seem to find the right sound environment. I needed music rather than silence, but any music I tried sounded irritating and wrong. Then, I realized that the sounds of bath water running would feel very irritating. I got crabbier and crabbier. So! I thought, no “order,” no “ablutions,” what next? Next was suddenly knowing that putting on my ceremonial jewelry would feel really hokey. Tears of frustration and pique welled up and I just sat down in the middle of the floor and cried.
And with that came the release! It made me laugh out loud! “Dinner” was arriving while I was agitating about “misprints” in the “menu!” Spirit was here anytime I could receive her, the “usual preparations” were irrelevant! Give it up, let it go, surrender!
I pulled my fluffy, shaggy flokati rug in front of the fire (there was still room enough for that!). I piled my big furry, plush pillows on top of it. I brought over my “ma roller” (a small wooden dumbbell-shaped thing I use to work on tight places in my back). I put Gabrielle Roth’s “Initiation” and “Bones” into the cassette player on continuous play. I wrapped up in my favorite cloth. Then I lay down in my luscious nest in front of the fire and let Spirit bring me Her gift!
The gift was being led into working with releasing new and old tightness and holding in my body. With the roller, the pillows of different heights and guided movement to Roth’s wonderful music I was being taught about the anatomy of the tangle in my back. And, I was being guided in a process of unraveling that tangle. It was extraordinary! It seemed to go on for hours.
With the unraveling came a body sense-fantasy of being anointed, blessed with the tender, loving application of a magical and holy oil. A knowing came with the benediction: This was to be a year for “freeing my wings.” While I would need help from my wonderful team of body-workers for the physical part of the freeing, Spirit would be helping me to liberate my energetic wings.
It was such an extraordinary celebration, gift and blessing! And then, it was complete. I was re-born into my life for another year. I slowly undid my birthing nest, putting everything back to where it lives in between-times. I made some wonderful organic chai tea. And, with my for-the-moment-wide-opened-back, I returned to lovingly binding and stowing all the decks in their tubs. I stowed the tubs and the table out in the storage shed. And then, I stowed myself and my hot water bottles out in my tent-sleeping nest!
Originally published in December 2001
