This declaration can apply to several things this spring–I’m finally taking time to blog again! We’ve gotten our new book, The Circle Way, A Leader in Every Chair, both into the office and out the door into the world, and I’ve fulfilled a long-standing promise to myself.  With great delighted I invite you to our business website to check out the new books, both our co-authored legacy work on circle and Ann’s legacy work on Keepers of the Trees. There will be other stories that follow from these book launching months, what I want to celebrate here is the promise I kept–from the time I wrote Storycatcher.

Only after Storycatcher was published and I was reading through the book did I realize I had told three versions of “the same story.” In three different actions, I described leaving something in the earth for the future to find. In Chapter 4, I tell about burying my journal during the Cuban Missile Crisis; then in Chapter 9, I talk about what it meant for a community to decide to bury The Dead Sea Scrolls; and in Chapter 10, I wrote about putting a letter under the kitchen counter during a remodel that will be decades before rediscovery. And the idea wouldn’t leave me alone. I have remained haunted by the question “What of my life do I leave for the future to find?”

Books. I think about my immense gratitude for the words that have been passed down and down that carry meaning both ancient and modern. I love stories like Thomas Cahill’s, How the Irish Saved Civilization: The Untold Story of Ireland’s Heroic Role from the Fall of Rome to the Rise of Medieval Europe. In this book he speaks to how the monks and scribes of Ireland spent several centuries preserving the foundational texts of western philosophy and science hand copying and hiding them until Europe had restabilized politically and could house its own wisdom again. Sounds a bit like the destabilizing going on today in the US with its far-right flare ups…

So I began thinking about taking another banker’s box, as I had in 1962, and filling it with books and burying it again–this time “forever.” I bought a metal box at the thrift store, bought several rolls of cellophane wrap and aluminum foil and began wrapping books in layers of waterproofing, and then putting them into plastic bags taped shut with duct tape, and then placing these book bundles into the box which I then also taped shut with duct tape. I inscribed each book “deposited by the author, March 2010.” So there is now a collection of my writing, Ann’s writing, and a few things I thought might be of interest, including The Chronology of Human History–year by year from prehistory to 1990, buried in our yard.

A few days ago Ann and I took pick-axe and shovel, dug a hole and buried the box. Then the contractor who is designing a patio off the front of the house further buried it under the stair landing. Dirt–>box–>dirt–>cobble stones–>rebar mesh–>four inches of concrete–>stairs. It’s going to be a while before anyone is reading those copies! And in the climate of the region this is about as dry and safe a situation as I could devise. So, I’ve done it at last, and for the lasting. And I am surprised by my emotion, a tenderness walking by that spot. Here lies…

Here lies my life work–or at least the part of it that someone can find in a hundred or more years. They can read about journal writing and circle and story and the seven whispers of spiritual guidance. They can read about how much I loved nature and this place and the people of my life. And I can pray that they too will love nature and this place and the people of their lives. I can imagine someone eventually finding the box: I cannot imagine what life will be like at that time. I hope when they will sit down and unwrap this rusted container, they will find something legible that connects us across time.

Who I am will be immaterial by then. Like the craftsmen who, stone by stone, chiseled the walls of castles and cathedrals each brick providing the raw material for inspiration. That’s what I am: a craftsman who chipped some bricks into books in the Information Age. Whatever will be built from this, I truly do not know– I only dream. And for the rest of the time that I live here, I can step confidently down the new patio stairs knowing that something is under there– waiting.

What might you leave in the earth for the future to find?

Mid-January and I have emerged from the moment between the years when I rest: two weeks—from Winter Solstice to the first Monday in January. The small educational company of PeerSpirit, Inc. lies dormant for 14 days. The books Ann Linnea and I have written this past year are off to the printers after the final, final edits and proofreading, along with a lot of our hopes and dreams.

I entered these two weeks of annual retreat tired, satisfied, and sorrowful…an interesting combination of emotions. Tired makes the most sense—looking back at our workload and how the teaching, coaching, quest guiding, consulting and writing all require intense presence, creativity, and stamina. Satisfied also makes sense—looking back at the same year through the lens of output, interaction, the legacy of our work being captured on the page, and through opportunities to meet hundreds of incredible, wonderful, extraordinary people doing their best to live good lives in challenging times. And sorrowful when I look into the wider scope of things and ask questions like:

Why are we escalating the war in Afghanistan—when we could practically rebuild the country for what it’s costing us to further destroy it?

And if it costs a million dollars a year to support a US soldier, and much of our military consists of young men and women who can’t find jobs in their local civilian economies, couldn’t we more readily support them through bringing work to them that isn’t likely to maim them in body, mind, or spirit?

And why can’t we have universal health care in the US when every other country we measure ourselves against already has it?

So, what actually happened in Copenhagen—and why are the outcomes so ambiguous when the crises are so concrete?

You get the idea—I finally have time to ruminate on all those things that I have been counting on the international world to resolve while I’ve been so involved in the interpersonal world. Sorrow is ultimately restorative—like filling up the water table, not visible on the surface, yet deeply sustaining. After a week or so, I feel the shift into restfulness and after a week of rest, a shift back into willingness. That’s where I am now—in the willingness.

Part of the willingness is that I have had time to re-evaluate and rearrange my story—the way I carry forward tasks, accomplishments, work and play, relationships, and questions of my life. I step over the threshold of the New Year as though it has been freshly painted.

So here’s my story now: I remain committed to legacy transmission in what I love about story and storycatching, in circle process and transformative presence with each other, and in earth stewardship, especially supporting Ann’s book on trees. I expect this year to change radically as we go along, as the books come out, and people respond. There are indicators of this in the first pieces of work we’ve done on the road: we have integrated something through the act of writing. We stand resiliently in our bodies of work, we talk differently, people respond even more readily—and we sense that the shift happening in the room is happening in the world.

And that is the point where your stories and mine intersect: what is happening in the rooms of our lives is happening in the world. What are you noticing is different as you enter the world of your work this January?

Last December I wrote about my mother’s habit of anonymously giving away $20.00 bills to folks who look in need of a little windfall before the holidays.  (See blog entry December 1, 2008) This year she’s “reading for peace.”

My mother lives in Canada, and on November 11, called Remembrance Day in that country, there are ceremonies of patriotism and prayer honoring those men and women who have fought and died in wars. Early in the month she asked herself, “What contribution could I make toward the idea of enduring peace and no more wars?”

A friend had lent her a book of religious poetry that included sections on courage, war, and peace. My mother reports, “Many of the poems in that book were from the period of World War One, the time when Britain lost a whole generation of poets, artists and musicians. And many of the poems were heartbreaking calls for peace and prayers for help and guidance.  Reading them over and over brought me to feel they needed sharing, so I decided I would find a way to do just that.”

In the little town of Chemainus, British Columbia, up the block from where my mother is a member of a small congregation of the United Church of Canada, her minister, Fran, presided over the local ceremony. After the flags had been paraded by aging veterans and prayers said and taps played, my mother set up a music stand in the city park and proceeded to read poetry to anyone who cared to stop by and listen.

My mother is 89 years old. While this statement may conjure an image of white-haired frailty, my mother is brown-haired, sturdy, dynamic, progressive, and daring. A young friend of hers, a ‘surrogate daughter’ about my own age, helped her make a flyer explaining what she’s doing, and on December 1st she went up the highway to the largest mall in the city of Nanaimo to stand under the clock tower and read poems for peace to the shoppers.  She emailed me her plans, “Kate will be coming with me to help me setup. She made a few suggestions, such as printing a flyer to hand out, doing a choral reading out of it with her and me alternating, etc.  However, I want it to appear unstaged and spontaneous and simple but I will not be alone.” We, her far-flung children, are glad she’s not alone.

Among other selections, she’s reading from the Peace Poem, a project from the United Nations sent out to all primary, secondary, and home schools throughout the world to submit two lines of poetry on peace. The resulting contributions from 38 countries were presented on the web and if printed runs 64-pages of verse. And she’s reading from the book Christmas in the Trenches, the story of the spontaneous Christmas Truce between ordinary foot soldiers in 1914.

She’s also sent out a letter to several of the area churches announcing, “If you care to include announcement of my reading in your bulletin I would be grateful to have people know where I am and stop by. I would also be willing to read to Sunday school classes or other occasions. This is a strictly personal activity of mine and should in no way be construed as an action of the Presbytery.”

And that’s the point: that she has the courage and creativity to come up with a strictly personal activity that challenges the status quo and empowers her voice in the world.

As Clarissa Pinkola Estes says, “Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world all at once, but of stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach.”

I believe world peace is achieved and sustained by each one of us taking responsibility for the quality of what happens within a five foot radius of our own bodies, in our own lives. If there is peace in my radius and yours and his and hers and theirs—then there is peace in all of ours.

And that is the greeting that makes the most sense to me every year when this season rolls around: Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me.

What shall we each do this holiday season as a strictly personal activity that shakes up our complacency and models our ability to stretch out and mend the world within our reach?

I look forward to collecting ideas that we may share with each other.

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.

Monday morning—just about any Monday morning, but this one in September 2008 is a prime example of heading into another week of fear and anxiety. At least that is the invitation streaming into my inbox and coming over the news in dramatic announcements and making headlines on the front page of my neighbor’s newspaper—the one I glance at before he picks it up. The markets are falling, banks are bankrupt, there’s been a horrible train wreck in California, and a dog in Arizona dialed 9-1-1 and barked so frantically into the phone that medical help was dispatched and saved its owner’s life. And somehow American politics has turned into “American Idol.”

It takes me a while to notice that the sun is out, the breeze is soft, the late summer flowers still blooming in the yard, and the garden still producing squash and carrots. It takes a few breaths to look up, smile at my beloved, pet the dogs, call the grown kids in LA and Denver, write my niece in Japan—young people venturing into the world, offering their gifts to an uncertain age. In other words, life in the immediate and the moment is still good. And the “goodness,” the “ordinariness,” the “stability” of anything is impermanent. How do I make story out of this?

Today I’m looking at three aspects of story:

• Story as meaning-maker,
• Story as pattern keeper/breaker,
• Story as path-finder.

The story of meaning is how we got here, how we have strung life together thus far and arrived at our worldview, our beliefs, explained our life circumstances to ourselves an others. We make the world of our history by the stories we hold onto about who we are and how thing are.

The story of pattern-keeping and pattern breaking is how we stand at the edge of all we know and reinforce the stories that got us here, or challenge them and open ourselves to new possibilities. We make the world of the moment by discerning the values within the stories swirling around us and choosing that to follow.

The story of path-finding is how we dream our ways forward, stories of what if, and wow did you hear about the courage of someone else? We make the world we want first in the stories we share—and then in the creativity with which we face our own choices.

So on this Monday morning, I am looking at the onslaught of meaning-making that streams in through printed and electronic media, looking for patterns to keep, patterns to break, and trying to find a path forward.  Here are a few questions that might elicit stories that help:

• Do you remember a childhood moment when being an American (or whatever nationality you are) was significant to you?
• How does that moment live in you now?
• What patterns do you see around you that you cherish and want to keep? What patterns do you want to challenge?
• What or who nourished you today?

Let’s start there—

            Tell me that story.