Broken-hearted, Broken down, It's Called a Break-up Because It's Broken, but also Broken Open (How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow) - the name of an important book by Elizabeth Lesser that I read immediately after the breakup with Patrick. Today is a big sky day. If I have time I'll take my camera to the lakefront and get a picture of the towering clouds. There is something energizing about a big sky day - do you feel it too? When the sky looks so huge, it should make you feel small and insignificant, but for me it has the opposite effect. It does make me feel small but it also humbles me, makes me realize I'm not the center of the universe. The French have an expression, "mise en place" which translates to "everything in its place". On days like today, I feel like I am an ingredient in a professional kitchen. I am just where I should be, doing just what I should be doing. Mise en place.
The last time I euphorically experienced a big sky day, I was driving back from Wisconsin. My older cousin, Judy, had invited me to spend a weekend with her in her summer cottage near the Wisconsin Dells. She loves it up there and spends the better part of every summer enjoying the country. I knew it would be humble but I like simple so I looked forward to meaningful one-on-one time with her in a bucolic setting. When I got there, I knew I was in trouble. She had a small trailer surrounded on four sides by corn fields (one skinny access road through the fields). It was sweltering hot and the windows in the trailer were sealed shut and there was no A/C or ventilation. Her carpets were ripe with the smell of incontinent dogs and she had almost no food in the refrigerator, nor did she ever leave the premises. I knew I wouldn't survive for three days so I did something horrible. I staged a series of calls to myself describing how my daughter was having wild parties in the house complete with visits from the police. I told Judy I had to hightail it back to Chicago before she did any more damage. Yes I felt awful for the lie, but when I drove back, the sky was huge and I was free. I vowed never to let myself get like Judy - 400+ pounds, diabetic, barely able to move, living with just her memories of happier days gone by. I was healthy, alive, making heroic progress in resurrecting my life, and I was tooling home with great music in the car and a huge sky full of possibilities in front of me. It was an incredibly happy ride - I need to never forget that cautionary tale. I have since lost touch with that side of the family - the Frisbies - an incredible story (for another day) that most of you know.
So - Broken Open. I earmarked one especially meaningful section. I will share it with you:
The philopher William James wrote that there are two kinds of people in this world - the Once-Born and the Twice-Born. Once-Born people do not stray from the familiar territory of who they think they are and what they think is expected of them. If fate pushes them to the edge of Dante's famous dark woods - "where the straight way is lost" - they turn back. They don't want to learn something new from Life's darker lessons. They stay with what seems safe, and what is acceptable to their family and society. They stick to what they already know but don't necessarily want. Once-Born people may go through life and never even know what lies beyond the woods - or that there are woods at all.
Perhaps a Once-Born person awakens one morning and feels the beckoning finger of fate loosening disturbing questions: "Is this all there is to life? Will I always feel the same? Do I not have some purpose to fulfill, some greater kindness to give, some inner freedom to taste?" And then he gets out of bed and dresses for work, and he doesn't attend to the soul's questions. The next morning and all the next mornings he lives as if the soul was a figment of a flighty imagination. This inattention makes him confused, or numb or sad, or angry.
A Twice-Born person pays attention when the soul pokes its head through the clouds of a half-lived life. Whether through choice or calamity, the Twice-Born person goes into the woods, loses the straight way, makes mistakes, suffers loss, and confronts that which needs to change within himself in order to live a more genuine and radiant life....Twice-Born people use the difficult changes in their outer lives to make the harder changes within...they harness adversity for awakening. ....I also know that every single person in this whole wide world is offered - over and over - the chance to take the voyage from Once-Born to Twice Born wisdom.
The challenge today is to appreciate the big sky and be inspired by it. Whether you see the clouds as manifestations of a loving God, or whether you simply feel "mise en place", like a brushstroke on an incredible painting, feel something when you look at the sky today. And if you are at a crossroads, wondering, "Is this all there is to life?", rejoice that you have enough self awareness to even ask the question. The next step, as Elizabeth Lesser would tell us, is not so easy. It's the hard work to become Broken Open.
Peace,
Sarah
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