The School for Wild Girls

"I look forward to becoming old and wise and audacious." --Glenda Jackson

I grew up among strong and beautiful women. They weren't beautiful like the sylphs in magazines. They were all shapes and colours and sizes, some quiet like deep rivers and some bold as a marching brass band. There were women with silver wings in their hair, women ample or ascetic in form, and women who relied on wheels instead of feet.

When I longed for an older sister, I scanned the choices available in community theatre, school, and church. I picked one--okay, more than one--and my choices happily reciprocated. Even though my own mother was more than capable, I borrowed extra mothers too: a couple of Sunday School teachers, the leader of an after-school arts program, and even the woman who played my mother in our local production of "The Music Man." They would check up on me when we met in the grocery store. They would invite me over for tea or take me out for lunch. They gently schooled this awkward, unsure child in the social graces. They encouraged me to voice my dreams and listened--really listened--to my halting attempts at vocational articulation.

I've always felt keenly this debt. I aspired to be like them--not only in their varied and fascinating lives, but also in their mentoring abilities. Now, at long last, I have a base from which to operate and the wherewithal to share some life-lessons and resources of my own. Conveniently, this farm even offers potential "mentees" a chance for instant payback in the form of meals cooked, beds weeded, and other much-needed chores and projects done.

This week, the farm will be transformed. Instead of a quiet two-person operation, we will become a household of four. Two young women, thousands of miles apart, recently contacted us to request short stays on our farm. Whether by providence or happenstance, their schedules somehow meshed together. Now they are both in transit and will shortly converge on this farm for a week of outdoor work, skill-building, and personal discernment. As per their requests, there will be bagpiping and Gaelic lessons. There will be experiments in group cooking. There will be a trip to a botanical garden and a trip to the beach. There will be weeding and raised-bed building, feasting and merrymaking. And amidst all of this, there will be stories. Here, in this green place, we will tell our own tales.

There will assuredly be laughter. There may well be tears. But the best thing of all will be the honesty and courage of shared struggles. We will find strength as we discover points of connection. Like my young visitors, I, too, hope to be en-couraged and emboldened. I, too, hope to exercise my ability both to name--and be held accountable to--those things which form my deepest and best self. I may be somewhat older and--perhaps--somewhat wiser than my young visitors, but I hope we shall all be equally and joyously audacious!

(photo of Barbara Cooney, Maine author and illustrator, from http://www.favimp.com/BBsample.html.)

Into the Gap...

The Bluebirds of Gappiness showed up again on Saturday. This time, it was a mated pair, flitting between milkweed stalks and fenceposts by sudden, urgent turns. I wonder how much longer these messengers will remain before they start their annual migration, leaving Wise Old Raven behind as official mystic courier of the Frozen North. Perhaps they'll make the switch at Samhainn, (pronounced "sow-when"), which literally means, "Summer's end."

It's almost time... which, as a person with so-called A.D.D., is a state of being with which I'm most familiar. (I prefer to think of myself as "multifocal," since it's not a lack of attention, but non-singular attention, that best describes my style of engagement.) One book about A.D.D. describes the afflicted as "hunters in a farmer's world." While it's true that hunters spend a lot of time scanning their horizons, I don't buy this idea either. I've never met a farmer who DIDN'T have to keep their minds on a hundred things at once.

The more I study my Celtic roots, the less my so-called disability distresses me. Celts, it seems, have always understood the complex and flexible nature of time. Celtic philosophers and theologians have long recognized time as an embroidered tapestry, a mesh of the interwoven, the knotted, and the wrapped. An old Gaelic hymn to the Christ Child includes the declaration that, "although You are not yet born, people are praising the great things you've already done." The Divine Child is both "already" and "not yet." This speaks deeply to me. It describes my state of being, much of the time. It also reminds me that, as a Chronos-bound creature, I have my work cut out for me. I know, full well, that I can't afford to stop TRYING to do things "on time." I will never stop struggling to do business promptly and show up prior to the official start-time of shifts, classes, and meetings. This may never be an arena of particular personal grace.

Yet Grace does come--and it comes, most often, when it's "About Time." It is when I am most awkward, most unsure, and most open that the Holy Spirit shimmers and flutters and blazes into view. Poet Ted Loder calls this, "teetering on the edge of a maybe." I perch on the edge of self-doubt, which strangely doubles as the edge of cosmic acceptance. Grace unfolds in those awkward spaces between naughts and oughts. I am challenged, continually, to live more fully and step more willingly into the gaps.

And now it is Almost Time for one of my favorite Gaps of all: Samhainn, the Celtic New Year. Like Christmas and Fat Tuesday, this has long been celebrated as a "time beyond time" when the shackles of society are shaken off in favor of wildness. Yes, there's a sinister side--tricks can be cruel and damage may be done--but the essence of this time is a holy one. Where and when else, in our fast-paced, artificially brightened lives, are we given permission to see and acknowledge the dark?

Like the Jewish people and many other ancient agricultural societies, the Celts recognized darkness as the necessary time/place for all beginnings. Each new day begins at sundown. The year starts when the cold creeps in, the light wanes and the hard labours of harvest come to an end. It's a welcome respite, a seasonal sabbath. Seeds rest in the soil, new life sleeps in the dark womb, and all wise people take time to laugh and rest, doing the crucial work of re-creation, singing and sharing tales among deep shadows and flickering light.

Among the shadows: not an easy place to be. Yet our shadows demand attention, as our brightness continually invents them. Samhainn may wear the disguise of No-Man's Land, but what it really offers is Common Ground, a place for honest hopes and unreasonable fears to meet. Here is one meeting I will not miss. Here is one lesson for which I dare not show up late. (Hurry! Finish the wiring in our new house, so we can turn off all the lights!) Now is the time to step into the darkness, dance and wrestle with the darkness, shake the grief loose from my bones, mourn for all things returned to earth, and dream of new life that shall spring.

Happy New Year! May this "Almost Time" become a celebration. May we dance and weep around the bonfires of loss, feast on the richness of our memories, and--in dreams--step into the future's blessed embrace.