As I conduct my spiritual research (I am still on Yearning for the Wind…almost finished!) there have been certain passages that speak more personally to me than others. In one chapter, Tom Cowan recalls a Chippewa saying that I have adopted as my personal mantra. You will now find it lovingly inscribed on the bottom of my sidebar:
"Sometimes I go around feeling sorry for myself; and all the while I am being carried by the wind across the sky."
This particular sentiment speaks to me on so many levels. On the one hand, I have a real penchant for going around feeling sorry for myself. I have honed that to a fine art, over the years. Add to that my fascination for all things "bird," and you have an admonition that, it seems, the Universe custom made for me. An invitation to turn myself inside out. A call to raise my head from my personal hog wallow and understand that I am, indeed, being carried by the wind across the sky, as free and as blessed as any hawk or crow upon whom I have gazed, rapt and a tad envious, as it soared high over my head.
Now, I have been writing about how surprised I am by my lack of bad feelings associated with the end of my business venture. Truly, I never would have guessed I would be looking forward to Sunday with such peace, and such an understanding that this is but the end of a chapter in my life, NOT the end of the world. Unfortunately, there IS a fly in the ointment, in the person of the Intrepid Husband. It seems HE is the one experiencing all the withdrawal symptoms…from an undertaking to which he never chose to completely commit.
Go figure.
So, earlier this evening, as he began a litany of all the things about the end of our café life that are making him crazy (that he is allowing to make him crazy), I thought it might be helpful to share my precious bit of Chippewa wisdom with him.
After a pregnant pause, he looked at me and asked, dead serious:
What does that mean?
I did my best to explain it to him. I felt a bit as if I was digesting Shakespeare for a 12-year-old. After which he seemed to get it, but I could tell he had no concept of how to apply it to himself, nor any intention of wasting precious time trying.
Leading me to wonder, as I often do these days…
Who is this, really…this man next to whom I sleep every night? And what have we been doing for the past 35 years?
Sometimes I think some of us are "hardwired." Some of us know what it's like to be "carried on the wind" even if we've never heard the words. We know ther's another world just beyond the veil.
ReplyDeleteAs someone prone to self-pity, I love that quote and need to remember it. As for your husband, I think most married people have a few times when they look at their spouse and wonder where the person they married went.
ReplyDeleteWe all come to self-awareness and other-awareness in different ways and at different times. Your husband sounds a bit like my husband - not too interested in theological/philosophical interior reflection - more analytical and practical. But in some ways my husband balances me and I suppose I balance him, even as I occasionally think he's obtuse.
ReplyDeletepraying for you as this weekend comes and the direction of your journey changes...
cliches fasinate me, in so much that truth lives in them, seeps threw their edges...
ReplyDeleteopposites attract, with you it may be polar opposites.
Your soar on the wind, he looks for a wind sock and proof that there is weather at all. He gets out last years TV guide and says there is no weather channel.
Meanwhile, the wind whispers things to you that only your soul recognizes. Your heart beat yearns to touch the edges of the sky.
And for a moment you wonder why you ever noticed him.
By the way, both of my great grand parents were full blood Chippewa, died on the reservation.