Sometimes in this work, we’re not aware of just how strong we really are; nor will we ever be aware of that strength unless we’re called upon to use it.
Other times, we claim strength – we claim power – that isn’t really there. And it’s brittle. And it’s arrogant. And it shatters at the first sign of difficulty.
Whichever the case, we’ll have a clearer perspective based upon how we react in moments of being tested…
I got a request from someone I know to carve some spoons as Christmas gifts for his wife and her sister. He said it would be nice for them to have something to pass down from generation to generation.
And so, it occurred to me that I’ve finally reached the age where someone actually came to me to ask me to create something specifically intended to reach the hands of people I’ll never meet – people who will only know me through my work.
This got me thinking about some of the things that were handed down to me: my father’s anger, my mother’s codependence. My wife and I don’t have any children of our own, so it falls to me to make sure they don’t go any further.
The work’s been long and difficult – a lot more difficult than setting knife to Butternut. It’s a strange thing to find myself in the process of creating new potential heirlooms, while doing my best to remove all traces of a few of the old ones…
Yes, there is a spiritual part in all of this, but we’re here in a physical world. And there are certain aspects of moving through this world that we simply can’t afford to ignore.
I like to think of it as an electrical circuit; more specifically, as a circuit powered by a battery. If you connect both ends of the wire to one terminal on the battery, in this case the spiritual or the physical, the circuit doesn’t work; the energy doesn’t flow.
When you stand rooted in both worlds, and you connect one end of the wire to each of the terminals of the battery, then the energy can flow. The energy of the spiritual can enter the world through us and flow out into the world for the service of all.
So, in essence, we become the wire…
How many times in our lives are we handed something that’s perfect as it is – where all we have to do is simply step back and let it be?
I think of my own experiences in carving. Sometimes, I’ll have a spoon that I really love which I’ve worked out of Cherry, or Mulberry, or whatever. And as I stand there looking at it, I think, “Ah, man, I just need to make this one more cut.” And then I do… and it ends up being the one cut too many. Suddenly, I’m left holding something completely different than what it was intended to be.
The same thing happens with my writing. Often times I’ll edit the shit out of something, and what I’m really doing is stomping the life out of it. So, I end up going back to what I originally had, and that thing lives and breathes on its own.
I’ve talked to a lot of people about this process of spiritual healing – of deep emotional recovery work. So often we get bogged down in the fucking weeds with this, and we feel like it’s never going to end. We feel like we’re getting buried.
We have these arbitrary goals that we set for ourselves: the way things should be; the way things need to be. When they don’t line up, we start to blame ourselves. We start to feel as if something is wrong – as if we’re not doing something right.
And that’s really what this whole thing is about. It’s the idea that there’s a process unfolding, and all we can do is show up for it, do the work we’re called to do, not worry about the results, and just let the thing live and breathe on its own…
It’s no lie that we’re living in difficult times right now. Regardless of what side of the political fence you fall on or where your own personal beliefs put you, it’s turbulent. And if you buy into the whole “if it bleeds, it leads” mentality that so much of the Mass Media seems to hold with these days, it’s hard – and it can be a little frightening. Especially if you’re empathic on any level or if you’re in the middle of your own recovery or healing work.
The last couple of weeks have been a real shit show for me. The healing work’s been hard. I’ve been dealing with a lot of old trauma – a lot of old fear, shame, guilt – coming up. Having grown up the way I did, that stuff runs pretty deep. And to be honest, I’ve been exhausted quite a bit.
In the midst of it though, I’ve been thinking a lot about this guy I used to work with, probably thirty years ago. He was one of those guys who was constantly at the gym, and he always had to talk about his progress. I started asking him about lifting one day. I was thinking about working out because I was a trainer and my job was pretty sedentary. I started asking him about what he was benching and so on, and he said to me, “Y’know, man, it doesn’t matter what I can lift. What matters is what you can lift.”
And I’ve hung onto that.
You take your wisdom where you can get it. And so much of that applies to that whole path of spiritual healing and spiritual recovery work.
It’s important to remember that if this work were easy, it would already be done…
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about healing, about manifestation, and about clarity.
One of the things that my wife and I often talk about as being a highlight in our lives is the opportunity that we have to gather with our community once a month for ceremony.
We did that this past weekend. And as things usually go, I got out there about an hour before hand and took some time to walk the yard and pray a little bit, to meditate, and to get things ready. While I was out there, I was greeted by absolutely piercing sunlight, and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. And with the pristine quality of the light and the openness of the sky, I knew that the intention for our ceremony would be clarity.
Those of us who’ve had a challenging upbringing because we were raised in emotionally turbulent households – maybe with alcoholism or some other form of dysfunctionality, often pray for sanity. But the truth of the matter is, we don’t really know what sanity is. We’ve never really had a good example of it; or perhaps the few examples we have had of it have been fleeting at best.
But we do know what clarity is. It occurs every once in a while. We get to see our wound. Get to see the motivations behind our triggers. Get some insight as to why we act the way we do…
When we gather together in our circles, it’s quite common that people will begin to talk about initiation and the transformations that take place in our lives. And inevitably, one of the metaphors that comes up again and again is that of the butterfly or the moth; creatures that start their lives as one form, go through a huge transformation, and emerge on the other side as something completely different – almost unrelated to the thing that they were before…
I don’t know if the caterpillar envisions the butterfly when it crawls into the cocoon, but it does seem that there is some intangible force that drives the whole thing – that guides the process…
When you intentionally enter into space, into silence; and you sit with it, one of the things that begins to happen is that all those things that we keep buried down beneath the crushing weight – the purposely assumed crushing weight – of all the noise and activity in our lives, without any of that there, those things begin to stir. And if we really sit with the silence, they can come up.
Even the mind is going to turn against us. The Monkey Mind starts to chatter, to jam as much stuff, disconnected thoughts, whatever, between us and that silence. But eventually, if you can get beyond it, and you can really begin to work at it – to slip into the silence, those things move. We can find ourselves experiencing old body memories, somatic releases, emotional memories.
And that’s the other thing silence will do for us. It can act as a container. It can act as a vessel. And so those things that now have room to move, and to come up, now, because we’ve eliminated all the external noise – all of the external static – they have room to come out.
And we get to see that. And we get to feel that…
So many of us have this idea that we need to go out and save the world. That we need to stop war; we need to stop killing; we need to stop hatred. But honestly, if we just put an end to war, does anybody really believe that it wouldn’t start again? Does anybody believe that if we stopped all the killing, it wouldn’t start again?
I have a Mulberry tree in my back yard that’s one of the most tenacious plants I’ve ever had to deal with, and I respect its tenacity a lot; but unfortunately, it’s threatening a fence, so it’s gonna have to come down. And I have clipped this thing; I have dug away at it; I have used the most environmentally-friendly chemicals on it that I could, and the thing is still there. And the reason it’s still there is because I haven’t dug it out by the root yet.
And so, that’s the thing…
When we gather in our monthly circles and we hold ceremony, sometimes there’s a lot of deep, cathartic release. And one of the things that we’ve learned in working this way – and from teachers who’ve shown us how to work this way – is that when someone is in the midst of something; when they’re in the midst of doing their deep work, if they’re crying, if they’re shaking, you don’t comfort them. You don’t put your arm around them. You don’t tell them they’ll be alright. You sit quietly. You hold space for them. And you let them do their work.
Because so often, we comfort others in their misery, in their sorrow, because we don’t like the way we feel in the presence of that. And so, what we’re really doing is projecting our own pain onto them and trying to heal it vicariously; which is about one of the most selfish things that another human being can do…
I’ve been thinking a lot about community lately. Standing in the workshop, sharpening my knives, and watching a swarm of bumblebees patrolling the Russian Sage, it isn’t hard to stay connected with this.
There’s a recognition in ceremony of those who’ve come before – of objects carried by other hands, and words by other voices. Every time I pick up a blank or a billet, and set to work roughing out a spoon, I’m aware of just how many hands besides my own are touching it.
Almost every tool I used today was a Christmas present from my wife or another member of my family. The Butternut was donated. My Carolinas were also a Christmas present. And even my apron came from a box that showed up when my brother in-law dropped off his Shopsmith.
It’s good to be aware of these things. To let them into the work; let them help in the shaping of it. Let them carry it – and be carried by it – from this set of hands to the next…
Bonja the Bodger 