Holy Woman, Holy Life, The Power and Beauty Of Aging, And My Work Now…

“This blessing takes
one look at you
and all it can say is
holy.

Holy hands.
Holy face.
Holy feet.
Holy everything
in between.

Holy even in pain.
Holy even when weary.
In brokenness, holy.
In shame, holy still.

Holy in delight.
Holy in distress.
Holy when being born.
Holy when we lay it down
at the hour of our death.

So, friend,
open your eyes
(holy eyes).
For one moment
see what this blessing sees,
this blessing that knows
how you have been formed
and knit together
in wonder and
in love.

Welcome this blessing
that folds its hands
in prayer
when it meets you;
receive this blessing
that wants to kneel
in reverence
before you:
you who are
temple,
sanctuary,
home for God
in this world.”

Jan Richardson
“Blessing The Body”

Oh my dear loves, to begin I must say a couple of things…

1. First of all the above extraordinarily beautiful poem I found at the end of a book that is just a powerhouse for women. It was the heading for the conclusion of the book I have been reading and studying the last few months, “WISDOM BODY: A Contemplative Journey To Wholeness For Women” by Christine Valters Paintner. I cannot recommend it, and all of the other works of the amazing Dr. Paintner, highly enough.
2. I experienced a shock, a deep realization, in the parking lot of Costco yesterday. This post may be considered Part 2 of the two posts I have written on this subject, the post last week, “Embracing The Fallow Times,” and this one, wherein I am coming to terms, and almost, well, kind of shocked, about how very disabled I have become. And still, I am, despite everything, excited about the work that is before me, the work that I believe I was born to do, the work that will make me whole, the gift that I have to give. My writing and my art are about wholeness, even amidst brokenness, unlimited, unbounded possibilities even amidst perhaps many seeming limitations (I am coming to this in due course later in this blog post) and those that are very real. I believe that as long as we have breath in our body and a mind that is able to express what we feel, what we know, what wisdom we have gained, we will be, heart, mind, body, and soul, more blessed than we can possibly imagine. It is this that I am learning in ever deeper ways, it is what the book I am writing, Days At Dragonfly Cottage, is about, living my way into each and every day, open to the lessons that will come and allowing a kind of alchemy to happen wherein the most mundane things are our teachers, and even in our losses their are gains. (I will be publishing this book in 4 parts, all of which my Patrons at Patreon will receive quarterly-ish beginning September 1 as PDF downloads. At the end of this time it will all be woven into a book and published on Amazon. Patrons at the 2nd tier will receive the whole book as a complete entity when it is finished and published.) And so this is where I will begin…

I wrote in the last blog post about the mishap in the garden that led to the EMT’s having to come to help me up and into the house and the ensuing ripples of revelations about what it all meant. I have worn a “Fall Pendant” for 2 years since, in July 2019, I fell in the garden and couldn’t get up, I lay in the dirt for over half an hour before I could reach neighbors that could help and they, a very dear older couple, had a very hard time getting me up. When they finally did I was badly shaken, a bit torn and bruised, and very frightened. I knew I could not live alone with feet so disabled that I might fall at any time without the ability to get help if I needed it so I ordered the pendant that I now can never take off. I have taken falls in the house where I was hurt, badly hurt last October and laid up for 3 months, but I had never had to use the pendant to call for emergency help until 3 weeks ago and the effect of the whole thing, EMT truck racing down the road with lights flashing, left me feeling so vulnerable and afraid I didn’t know how I could move forward. But I have, slowly and carefully, and having fully come to the realization that life as I had known it has changed, irrevocably, and I could curl up in my recliner and never do anything or I could, with great care, dust myself off and figure out what was what. That I have been doing these past weeks.

A week ago yesterday I went to Costco for the very first time since the pandemic began. I went there March 1, 2020, and it was the last time I left the house to go anywhere except, after a few months, driving over to pick up groceries at the little store just a few minutes from me. I didn’t have to get out of the car and I was there and back in less than 15 minutes. I did not go anywhere where I would have to get out of the car and go in some place, nor see anyone except my family who lives locally and would do my errands for me, and the dear woman who continued to come help me, masked and socially distant, twice a month with a few household things I can no longer do. I actually left the house for the first time in March of this year to get my vaccinations, but I didn’t go anywhere except for the 2 times out to get the vaccines. Still, I have rarely left the house and seen almost no one. But finally I wanted to try to do the once a month Costco run that my daughter had been doing for me for a year which is when I have to get my medications filled and a few things at Costco that I use that are cheaper than the grocery store. I had a rather big list because I not only hadn’t gone myself to Costco in over a year, but have become very strict on my diet again and needed a number of things, especially having become vegetarian again. I have been on the ketogenic diet since 2017, lost 75 pounds and in over a year of Covid I gained it all back. I was profoundly depressed over this and decided I had to get my life back on track. I’ve had a complete physical now and am feeling better just from the change in diet, and, when you are prone to falls, carrying the extra weight only makes things worse. I have begun the journey once again to lose the weight, all the weight I need to lose, and do everything I can to be as physically healthy and strong as it will be possible to be given my age and physical disabilities. But still, it all feels daunting, and I am still afraid.

“…Holy even in pain.
Holy even when weary.
In brokenness, holy.
In shame, holy still...”

I have been in pain, nearly always, I have been weary, and broken, and filled with shame, the kind of shame we feel simply because we are older and unable to do the things we once did, the things that others can do, but where does that get us? We have nothing to be ashamed of as we grow older and the body changes. We have, I believe, a responsibility to ourselves to do whatever we can do to be as whole and healthy and as strong as we can, and I’m trying, but I will still never be able to do many things that I loved, that were important to me, again. How do we deal with this? We deal with it by not just “accepting” it. (In part of course we must come to acceptance with losses that we cannot control or change, but in a way that is very hard to explain and deal with, there is a part of acceptance that is a kind of giving up, no longer trying to be, even if only a tiny little bit, better than we perhaps thought possible.) My feet are not going to change, there is irreversible damage, but if I can do things that make me as healthy as possible, even to finding a way to exercise, just a little, while sitting in this chair, something I have tried before and given up on because I felt somehow less than being unable to exercise in any normal way. I cannot even walk for exercise anymore because I am at risk of falling. But what am I to do? Give up? No, I need to find out what I can do, and do it.

“This blessing takes
one look at you
and all it can say is
holy...”

So there I was, last week, in Costco, getting gas in my car, and then going in and standing in a queue waiting to pick up my meds, and then going through the enormous store getting all of my groceries. I swear a football field would fit inside a Costco! So much walking, bending, lifting, and putting things into the basket, lots of things, having to get help to have 2-25 pound bags of wild bird seed put in the bottom of the cart and then the cart, already getting unwieldy with the weight of everything in it, felt almost impossible to push, but I carried on. It took me 3 hours, from the time I left my house, drove the 20 minutes to Costco, got gas, meds, and a boatload of groceries and household needs, checked out (always a bit of a horror at Costco, waiting in long lines when it feels like your legs are going to give out just standing there, leaning on the basket handle and praying that you will make it through and out to the car, and knowing that you would have to have help to get your things out and in the car, which they are always very kind to do) and when I was once in the car all I could do was close my eyes and lay my head back against the head rest and not move. My whole body felt as if it had been through a physical ordeal that I barely made it through. When the nice man was wheeling my cart out to my car I had to walk alongside him and hold onto the cart. I didn’t think I could make it. I did not feel, in any way, shape, or form, holy. And then…

When I got home I was so completely exhausted, and hurting, I was near tears. The air conditioning had been running and the car was cool so after I pulled into my garage and put the door down all I could manage was to get out of the car and into the house to Molly. I had no earthly way to get those groceries and things out of the car and into the house, and in fact it took me 3 days to get it all in. But for 30 minutes I just sat here with my feet propped up holding Molly and just sitting here, trying to find some spark of life in me that would propel me up out of the chair to get the things that needed to go in the refrigerator and freezer in at least. I finally got up, and out to the garage, got the large tote bags I keep in the back of my car for grocery hauls and lined them up. I pulled everything out that needed refrigeration or to be put in the freezer and divided things up into different bags. Anything that didn’t need to be gotten in right away I just left in the car. For 3 days. Getting things out little by little. I was grateful that I only need to go to Costco once a month when my medications needed to be refilled, it was quite an ordeal and took more out of me than I can tell you, but finally it was done, all done. But, the next day, I realized 2 things. One, I had been overcharged by $25 because three items had been charged twice for some reason, and the new medication I was just put on was mistakenly filled wrong. I was only given half the pills I was supposed to get. I made calls to Costco about the refund, and the medication, and they were very kind and sorry and as accommodating as they could be but there was nothing I could do except go back. And yesterday I did, dreading it, and worried, but there was nothing for it but to go.

It was hot as blazes yesterday, just awful, but thankfully with air conditioning in the car, bearable. However, it is a bit of a walk, even being able to park in one of the closest possible handicapped spots, to get into the store, where I first had to wait in a queue for customer service to get my money back, and then in another queue, rather a long one, to pick up the medication they hadn’t given me last week, and then I got a few groceries I had forgotten the week before, but thankfully there wasn’t a lot in my cart and I managed to get through the checkout line and to my car under my own steam, but the heat was so intense and just loading things into my car took so much effort, I once again had to just sit in my car and rest before I could drive home, and in that moment I realized two things. First that a simple trip to Costco, one that, even though I am agoraphobic and have rarely left my house in many years, I rather enjoyed doing for some reason (I had to be medicated to go, but the medication helped me be able to.) because I didn’t have to do it often and walking around Costco I always felt rather like Alice in Wonderland looking with awe at the enormous amount of everything they have there, I think there is almost nothing that they don’t have there, and I enjoyed, just once a month, looking at all there was to see. Now, however, just the act of navigating the store with their very large carts and getting the things I need and waiting in lines takes every bit of everything I’ve got in me to manage. And that’s when, secondly, as I sat in the car with the cold air from the AC blowing on me, trying to get my bearings and my energy up enough to drive home, I wondered how much longer I could keep doing this? And I just sunk into a kind of despair.

Fortunately I didn’t have much to carry in, some of what I had could be left in the car for a day or two before needing to be brought in, and I was quickly able to get Molly out, change my clothes, and sit here snuggling her to try to get past the panic of the realization, another layer of realization, again, that I am now far more disabled than I realized. For over a year, not leaving the house, not doing the Costco runs myself, just driving, every week or two, over to the little store where they had shopped my order and loaded it in the back of the car, I hadn’t had to do anything that would show me that I was, in fact, unable to do these things, or that I would only be able to do them with great effort, or that doing them would take such a toll. It was a shock. And then I wondered if I have gotten this seriously impaired because I haven’t been doing these things at all, and only gardening again when spring came got me out of the house and more physically active, but when I am at risk in the garden, when even that is a challenge, what am I to do? Simply put I have to examine everything, very carefully, I have to look at what I can do, as I said above, with diet and gentle exercise to build a bit more strength back at least, but how much is possible? At this point I have no idea. It is a new journey I have begun, and I am afraid, but determined to find out. And then there is the point I mentioned at the beginning of this blog post — “My writing and my art are about wholeness, even amidst brokenness, unlimited, unbounded possibilities even amidst perhaps many seeming limitations…“ — and it came to me that yes, while I do have very real limitations, physical, financial, and otherwise, what if, just if, having arrived at the state that I am in, I am only able to do work, achieve things, go ever deeper with my writing and my art in a way that I never would or could have if I were just blithely going through life (pandemic notwithstanding) unencumbered in any way, with no challenges that kept me from doing the things I love, the things I long to do and can’t, what if only now, that I have these limitations, will I be able to achieve the riches (spiritually), the depth, the wisdom, the power to heal, and to reveal, all that being a woman in her later years means, only now, maybe, exactly as I am, may I be able to reach the depths of all that I have ever wanted to achieve, or know, or dreamed possible. While one would never wish for limitations that were physically painful, or being impaired in any way, what if we can’t achieve that which we were born to do without continuing to rise above that which seems impossible, even if it only means we can stretch a bit further, because maybe that bit further we can reach is where the true gifts we were born to achieve, to receive, are. It’s like that old story about people giving up just when they were on the brink of succeeding, never realizing how close they had come. What if, just what if, I am that close, wonky feet, aging in ways that have felt graceless, not graceful, what if I only need to hold on a little bit longer to find my way into the next phase of life where true joy lives? What if these seeming limitations are truly blessings in disguise?

“…Welcome this blessing
that folds its hands
in prayer
when it meets you;
receive this blessing
that wants to kneel
in reverence
before you:
you who are
temple,
sanctuary,
home for God
in this world.”

What if the true test of faith is continuing on under all circumstances, and, not leaping tall buildings with a single bound, but, as Zen Master Katagiri Roshi once told writer Natalie Goldberg when she was going through a very difficult time that all she needed to do was to, “Make positive effort for the good.” He told her just getting up in the morning and brushing her teeth was doing just that. And what if making positive effort for the good is simply getting up in the morning and doing what you can do, what if it is writing this blog post to you today, with my feet propped up, aching from my 2nd trip to Costco yesterday, and preparing for my children to arrive, my two children that live out of town with their families, so that we all might be together for the first time in over a year and a half? What if just getting up in the morning and doing whatever it is that we can do is the way that we build the temple, the sanctuary, the home where we will meet the God of our understanding, where perhaps our whole life’s purpose may be realized? I think, I believe, this may be true, at least I am going to live my life on the assumption that it is, and if I am right, perhaps maybe I am holy, perhaps I am temple and sanctuary, perhaps I am right where I’m supposed to be, in this body, with these feet, wearing this Fall Pendant and writing this book and creating the art to go in it and hugging my children and my grandchildren and doing whatever it is that I can do in my garden? The only way that I can live and move forward is to embrace all of these assumptions and just do my work, to the best of my ability to do so.

But today, this day, what I most look forward to doing is going out into the garden to pick a basketful of flowers to put all over the house to welcome my family, to share with them my joy of just being alive, to treasure every moment we have to be together, and to embrace all that is good in this world despite all that is not. And I think I will leave you with the beautiful words in the poem I have shared, with many gracious thanks to the amazing Jan Richardson who wrote the poem, and Christine Valters Paintner in whose book that I found them…

“…So, friend,
open your eyes
(holy eyes).
For one moment
see what this blessing sees,
this blessing that knows
how you have been formed
and knit together
in wonder and
in love.“

I wish for you that you may still be able to see the world with eyes filled with wonder, and that you may know how deeply you are loved, for you truly are. I send you my love, and now I shall take my basket to the garden. It is time for this and all the rest.