I’m just back from Canada, had one day to do the laundry and say hello to the dogs, and then I drove down island to the retreat center that is our home ground, The AlderMarsh on Whidbey Island.  There I spent the day meeting with a core group from last year’s December session of “The Self as the Source of the Story” who had regathered for a week of writing and remembering. 

These writing seminars are so magic. I know it is a great synergy between how I hold the circle, the applicable writing skill development and content, and the longing in each participant for the ability to birth their own story. I have been teaching this seminar since some time in the late 1980s–I actually cannot remember when I started it–and it is a profound responsibility and honor to serve as a midwife to so many tales. 

So, eight made it back. And this time they trusted each other to peer facilitate, to set just enough structure in place so they could write, and enough ease in place so they could revel in the experience of being together. They’d been with each other 5 days when I rolled in this morning and the energy was incredible. They were riding in a spaciousness of love and acceptance and honor for each other’s journeys. As we sat down and checked-in, passing a stone around the rim and each one speaking to the week, I knew were in the heart of the world… the kind of space many people don’t know in their whole lives, where they can be fully themselves and fully accepted. The level of empowerment released in such an experience is amazing… and what a teaching for me, the usual teacher, to come into the end of their time together as an honored guest.

So they read to each other and to me the output of their writing. We critiqued and encouraged and sent them off to the work of living as writers. And the space is already booked for next year. And in a few weeks, I’ll be gathering with another new group heading into the journey of claiming themselves as the source of the story.

I’m up in London, Ontario as I write this. Ann Linnea and I just gave a speech on the ages of women’s wisdom. It was a lovely event, no podium, no power points, just an evening of conversation. As an extroverted storyteller who does this fairly often, I am comfortable in front of hundreds of people, but Ann, as an introverted storycatcher, finds the invitation to offer a speech daunting. She does it well, but it costs her a lot of energy. So when Brescia University College asked us both to speak, since both our books are well known to their intended audience (check out Ann’s classic, Deep Water Passage, A Spiritual Journey at Mid-life, on our company’s site: www.peerspirit.com) we wanted to design a way for both of us to be comfortable. We came up with a kitchen table–where so many rich conversations occur–and asked Brescia to arrange the stage that way with two lavaliere microphones, a pot of tea and two cups, a candle… Ann and I sat in chairs and talked through the topic of the evening, and then jumped down into the audience to open up the dialogue.  It went over so well, I think they will establish this arrangement as the new format for their annual Sophia Lecture series.

And as a gift at the end of the evening I got a new and intriguing story. One of the women told me that when her son was in First Grade, his teacher invited all the children to bring a treasure from their lives that they would be willing to part with and together they’d put all these things in a time capsule, marked and storied, and buried in the school yard–with the agreement they would dig them up at their tenth year high school reunion. The woman’s son, now in his mid-20’s, can hardly wait to return to their hometown for this reunion and the chance to dig up the box. 

The more I thought about this story the more I loved that teacher for her insight and farsight, and for trusting these children to keep a covenant with a future that they could not imagine at age six.

One of the chapters in my book, Storycatcher, starts off with my burying a box for the future to find when I hid my journal during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and at the end of the book I write about hiding some treasures and a letter in a gap under the counter when the kitchen was remodeled in 2004. I think there is a theme here: that most of what we know about the past, particularly the far, far, past, comes from people intentionally or inadvertently leaving treasures for the future to find. So, I invite you to think about what you might want the future to find from your life–not just the landfills full of plastic and styrofoam, but messages… maybe to yourself twenty years hence, maybe to your grandchildren, maybe to the seventh generation. 

I dug up my journal, buried only for a week in the midst of that crisis, but I’m leaving my letter under the counter, and sometimes I look for other ways and places to hide things that I will never see again but that I hope pass into the stream of time and the mystery of the never-ending story.

In the fall of 1938, my father went off to college of Salem Oregon, leaving his family in Montana–his first major venture into life beyond the farm, the small town, the honey business, and the small city of Great Falls where his parents sometimes wintered over as they worked to get all 8 of their children–spanning an 18 year spread in age–college-educated and into the world. My father, #7 of those 8 children, left for Willamette University and grew lonely for his far-flung family. Many of his older siblings were already married and raising families, and he wanted a way to help keep everyone in touch. 

He came up with the idea of a “Round Robin” letter that would circulate among his parents and the homes of all eight young and adult children. The idea was simple: there was an order of who you received the letter from, whom you sent it to, and you had the chance then, every few months, to read news of the whole family, take out your old letter, put in a new one, and send it on.

Of course each one was supposed to receive, read, write, and send within a week… but I remember as a child there were times the robin got buried on my parents big desk and with a shriek they’d find it a month later… and sometimes it seemed to disappear for such a long time that everyone in their Christmas cards would inquire as to its whereabouts. Then in the mail it came again: full of handwritten or typed pages, recent photos, news clippings, recipes and other bits of communication.

My father is 88 years old now and has only one older sister left alive, but the Robin continues around– and as one uncle after another has left for heaven, the responsibility for writing has passed to the next generation. So a few days ago, my cousin Don, age 70, my cousin Bill, age 67, myself age 62, and my father were all at dinner and listening to this history. We marveled, in the age of email and cell phones, that this packet of family material is still circulating–and our delight in this old fashioned idea of getting real mail. There was talk that many of our aunts/uncles/parents saved all the letters they wrote in the Robin–and what an interesting archive this is in itself. Now we want to find and collate what we can.

We are committed to the Robin’s continuance, to educating our children to its significance, and saving what we can of its history.