Seeking refuge beyond the edges of fear
Top image: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration photo collage of a heat wave, drought, hurricane, wildfire, and glacial ice calving. (2021). Public Domain
I’m sitting at my desk staring out at an ancient spruce that has been on this property for over a hundred years. If I could understand tree language, what would this stalwart elder tell me? Would it repeat the history of the land, once lush with oak savannahs and sedges, grouse and red fox, and lament the coming of roads and houses and lawns? Lawns!! Those preternaturally green patches that proclaim our ownership and delineate our separateness from each other. Who razed the landscape and popularized such a strange phenomenon? Can’t you just see an eagle scratching its head with a wingtip? What the f— are these humans doing?
Funny and not so funny. How have we imagined our civilization evolving, what does our collective imagination hold? If we have a collective myth today—Who are we as a country? What are our values?—the narrative is dystopian, grim. Can we imagine beyond the edges of fear and terror to perceive what other possibilities exist?
Talking to trees, granting magical powers to feathers, rocks and shiny horse chestnuts—wishing on the moon—these were the imaginative means that sustained me through childhood’s troughs of loneliness and family upheaval. You might say my personal myth, an unconscious but guiding force, went something like this: I was born under a dark star with a troubled mother, but Mother Nature embraces me. Years later, during another difficult time, my unconscious gifted me with the capacity to write a fairy tale when the only way I could express my truth was symbolically.
That original fairy tale is now at the heart of my newest book of hybrid nonfiction, Wild Freedom: The Princess Who Found Her Name — On Fairy Tales, Imagination, and the Creative Mind. In the essay I include in the book reflecting on that period, I describe how the writing of the tale lifted me into a state of self-enchantment. What I can tell you about self-enchantment is that it’s a state of flow, of being reconnected to one’s vital source, which is the life force that runs through everything alive. Is there a time in your life when you would describe yourself as self-enchanted?
I believe we all foster personal myths. They remain mostly unconscious. Something in us longs to see and understand life as part of a mysterious cosmos in which the inexplicable points to boundless emerging revelations and beneficial transformations, rather than to a cruel arbitrariness against which we are helpless.
The conventions of our age encourage us to purchase transformation by outward means (in the form of supplements, plastic surgery, cult affiliation, etc.), but the great poets and spiritual teachers attest to the power of our inner knowing, the guidance of our daemon, our genius, our spirit to invoke inner and outer change. Jung wrote “In all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order.” That is a hopeful bit of wisdom to tuck in our pocket these days. Crisis can be a vital prompt. When the familiar breaks and dissolves, it’s crucial to remind ourselves of our innate resilience and reclaim our original enchantment with the world. One needn’t be a poet or an artist or to “produce” anything to do so.
Two great “Graces of the Good” died last month. Gloria and Dolly. They inspired us with their moxie and determination. With their humor and beauty and smarts. Let me add to their company the poet Mary Oliver, who died in 2019. She is top of mind because of the wonderful recent American Masters PBS documentary about her life, which I heartily recommend. Three very different women. Against all odds—poverty, family instability, abuse—each trusted their creative instinct, followed their passion, and became international icons and role models for people across the globe. Mary Oliver, our native Rumi, offers an enduring question: What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?
The personal stories of Dolly, Gloria, and Mary reflect the conditions of becoming a female artist and deep thinker during a certain period of our social history. Their stories show us their negotiation, or the soul’s negotiation with forces that would silence or domesticate it. The princess at the heart of my fairy tale in Wild Freedom occupies a similar position. She is one who does not fit the shape the culture has assigned to her. She must find her own name or disappear.
What about our collective imagination and its influence in shaping the future? If we’ve been wholly shaken out of our long-held belief in the so-called American Dream, what has replaced it? Even for the most optimistic among us, how can we ignore the monstrous effects of melting glaciers, heat domes, and mutant viruses? Or the incivility at school board meetings, on social platforms, or among neighbors.
Let me offer some encouraging words from the activist/visionary writer, Terry Tempest Williams, from her new book, The Glorians: Visitations from the Holy Ordinary:
“What matters to me is that I am no longer surprised when the familiar becomes the unknown, the unexpected, the unrecognizable. I wait. I watch. And I listen. The world we are struggling to understand is moving faster than our comprehension. We need time. We need space. Change requires spaciousness if we are to integrate the past with the present with faith toward a future—this is not something to fear but to face, honor, and embrace.”
A note: This newsletter goes out to a great many people. It’s always a surprise and deep pleasure to discover an email from a friend I haven’t seen in years in my inbox or to run into someone in town and learn they’re enjoying my newsletters. Thank you for taking the time to write and to connect. Those who know me know I’m all about connection!
I invite you to visit my website, where you can find links to recent podcasts of discussions with great interviewers on a wide range of topics. While you are there, please do wander around and check out writings and recent public events.
If you enjoyed Wild Freedom, I’d be incredibly grateful if you’d leave a quick review on Amazon. Reader reviews help other people discover the book. That makes a huge difference for independent authors like me. If you still need to buy it, here are some quick direct links: Bookshop ∙ Amazon ∙ Barnes & Noble ∙ Chiron Publications ∙ A Room of One’s Own (which has some signed copies).
With care and gratitude for your presence in my life,
Dale
