Another lifestyle change

I have a writing group here in Anchorage and most of the members are much older than me. Which is saying something because I'm already 58 years old, as you can read from my profile (do they have to add the astrological sign?!) Anyway, the oldest member of the group, and one of the sharpest and best writers is ninety-two. I know this because we share the same birthday and celebrated together this year. The new picture on my profile is a picture of me at the party. I have another great one of Arne (my birthday twin.)

This week's writing assignment was from Arne as well. We were each given a phrase to write about and either use the phrase in our writing or hide it and have everyone guess. My phrase was "lighting the candle at both ends" a phrase that dates to 1611. But it brought to mind a time more around 1984 (0minous) when my own life was particularly incendiary with so many responsibilties and commitments that I just burned out. As I say in the poem, I only pulled my kids (two then) and my marriage out of the fire. If we all have a false self that masks our true self, I'd have to say that "lighting the candle at both ends" qualifies in my life. Here in Alaska though, I'm much more inner than outer directed and that is good for someone who is attracted to this false self. But it is hard because my outer commitments are not like children who are around all the time, but things that are in the future, but no less real. And I have to find the motivation in myself to follow through on things that are happening in the middle of January but will be here sooner rather than later.

I don't want to "burn the candle at both ends" anymore. Wierd sort of image with no place for the candle except destruction. Maybe what I am after is to be a lit candle with a wick at my center that is the Spirit's indwelling. But I don't feel that so much today. No, not so much.

Alaska winter reflection

So unexpectedly I find myself in the big wide open where

Winter is not just a season to be endured but a state of mind, a way of living

Each day the sun ebbs and then recedes sooner and more quickly than the day before

leaving behind the pitchy black of night and a deep, profound cold.

Still and always, it is the Alaska sky, the space above me that amazes.

Just this afternoon, the sun, a great orange orb refused to go gentle into the night

without setting the whole sky on fire,

even after the sun's face fell down, slipping below the horizon.

And now this morning the sun shyly insinuates itself behind the mountains

Luminescence kindling toward a sun not yet there, still to arise.

I met a woman who lived in Palmer, just an hour from Anchorage but up on a mountain plateau surrounded by even larger mountains. Both of us were enjoying the sunset together when she said that living there is not only about beautiful sunsets. "You know," she said, "the wind blows so strong up here that you have to be careful. Last winter when the wind was blowing and there was ice on the doorstep, I pulled up to the house with my six year old twins. I managed to get into the house with a sack of groceries, but I forgot to tell my sons to remain in the car until I could come and get them. So together they jumped out of the car and blew away! Yes, just like tumbleweed they blew around to the other side of the house and down the gravel driveway. They were pretty beat-up with cuts and bruises, crying and all. But they are fine now." Who knew it was even possible for children (other than Dorothy from Kansas) to blow away?

My friend Mandy went to a church retreat
full of entitled personalities wearing opinions
acerbic and astringent on their sleeves.
Retreating from the retreat inside her home
she saw herself, in the mirror as her favorite
sweater turned inside out, all the yarn end hanging out--messy
her own self turned inside out, her personal threads hanging out every which way.
The inside process meant pulling sleeves and the
body itself right side out.
Re-discovering
comfort, colors
still there.

I used to tell my children, "Use your inside voices!"
with my big outside timbre.
Coming to Alaska I turned on loudly endlessly
public radio's nonstoptalk
longing for outside voices and words in this inside place.
filled with the fear that my own voice would be lost
to the outside
I would be left empty
mute inside and out.

But after going outside this fall to lead retreats
(a leader never able to retreat at all instead always outside for all to see)
I came back inside with a new longing
to retreat inside my own home
to pull on the soft black sweater
I wear only inside.
To turn off the talk
See from inside
outside space
clear or foggy
To hear
resonance.

I was "outside" for two weeks in September and the pace--three short workshops in three different locations and one longer retreat--seemed a little frenetic with all of the air travel and staying in so many different places. On the last long plane ride home to Anchorage I realized with no small sense of surprise that I was longing to be inside. I was actually looking forward to being inside Alaska and inside my home. I'm teaching an intensive course in the Principles of Spiritual Formation here in Anchorage, but my home is a serene, quiet spot--an inside place. Its southern exposure looks out frm a bluff onto golden birch trees. Then almost as I sit and gaze the trees shed their leaves and the view extends to the Chugach Mountains on the eastern horizon. I shed my outside self as well realizing that whatever I demand of myself, no matter what i choose to do or not do, life is simpler and the feeling of space muchmore expansive on the inside. I'm just now beginning to embrace this inside/outside rhythm as a rhythm of grace for my own life, rather than living in my fear of emptiness. And what was this fear emptiness but really the terror or insignificance. Perhaps the fear that one could travel so far inside, especially inside Alaska, to be lost to the outside world, the world of tasks and titles, responsibilities and requests for me to speak in my outside voice.
But what if the emptiness is not emptiness at all but grace-filled space where God is receiving me in love? What if the opportunity for such a blessed look is as near as my own living room window? What if this slowed down, inside view is meant to show me the way to live not just in my Alaskan home, but inside my life's home, inside myself. As my friend from the outside Rita, would say, "Who knew?"

more inside/outside

Someone told me recently that when she moved to Anchorage she was washing her windows on a sunny day and her neighbor came out to chastise her. "We don't do that in Alaska. When it's sunny we don't do any inside work." Instead you go outside to enjoy the good weather while it is here. I learned this for myself shortly after moving here myself. After a wonderful time kayaking on Westchester lagoon with a new friend she asked me to go again a week later. "It's a beautiful day, Helen, we need to be out there." But I was too busy with many things to honor that beautiful day or my own participation in it. The day passed. And the invitation didn't come again as the weather became cooler. Last Friday (my husband's day off) I reminded him that this might be the last sunny day for a while and we needed to drive to Sweard. He protested that there were so many things to do (things I had specifically asked him to do) inside the house. "But," I said, "we don't do that here in Alaska. It's sunny and we need to see the fall before it's gone into winter." We went to Sweard that day--despite the chores. The ride and the walk was glorious as was the ice cream (Huckleberry Heaven) consumed on the ride home. There will always be time for inside tasks, but this spossibly last sunny outside time with the birches still golden and before Tunagin Road is slick with snow and ice was not meant to be wasted.

inside/outside

Leaving Alaska recently someone asked, "How long are you going to be Outside?" Another person asked, "When will you be back Inside? Outside is anywhere that is not Alaska; inside is any place within this amazingly large state. This common Inside/Outside language has gotten me thinking about the metaphor that is more than just geographic but rhythmic and integral to my own Alaskan life. At first I thought living inside might mean being "inside" as in a prison or a cell, locked away. And living "outside" meant being free, able to choose anywhere, anything. But after living in Alaska for four short months, I'm not so sure anymore. What if there is a freedom inside, not found on the outside? What if the outside has its own burden of unquestioned conformity to demands that are not a choice at all? More to come inside/outside