The invisible dance of mystery

Last night I went to the Mississippi River with a group of women. I think of this river as the country’s aorta, the largest river pumping life from the top to the bottom of the country.

It’s been a big part of my life, too. I remember as a child stepping over the headwaters at Itasca State Park in northern Minnesota. For the years that I lived in Minneapolis, I spent hours and days of time on its banks, watching the water flow, the barges float along, the crows gather in gaggles, and the trees change from season to season. My kids learned to spell the river’s name because every time we drove over a bridge, we’d sing it. You couldn’t stop until you’d reached the other side so the final “I” was always a stretched-out note: M-I-S-S-I-S-S-I-P-P-IIIIIIIIIIIIII....

But last night, it was almost dark by the time we arrived at the park along the river. The sky was a rich vermillion, and the still-green trees stood surrounded by a flattened mat of hay-colored grass, long-past parched.

We laid out our blankets and ate our picnic. We had spent the previous hour singing songs to one of the women’s dead mother. She died suddenly—shockingly—when my friend was just seventeen-years-old. Yesterday marked thirty years. So we honored this woman. And we talked, as this group always does, of what matters most in our lives: of love and loss and heartache and hope and sex and good food and men and children and plans for the future and fear and doubt and ultimately, we spoke of trust.  That life is doing what it ought to be and us along with it.

The sun was well below the horizon and darkness was around us when we noticed them. You could only see them when a car drove by and the light shone across the park’s dead grass. Hundreds of white moths, fluttering and flying just inches above the ground. When the car’s lights disappeared, so did the moths. Even as I watched them, I couldn’t quite believe it. I had never seen these delightful little creatures in this way before.

I woke this morning remembering them dancing, marveling at all that goes on around us, and sometimes when we don’t even notice.

Don't take what isn't yours

When I first started developing this work of Tending the Fire Within, I was in a particular moment in my life. I had wrapped up a divorce. I was going to write a brutal divorce, but that would be redundant, right? They are all brutal in their own ways.

Mine was brutal in the “I-think-I’m-going-to-throw-up-because-I-can’t-believe-that-we-have-to-do-this” kind of way. We were both so sad and a bit incredulous that love couldn’t carry the day.

I made it through that. And more recently, I had spent several months mostly laying in my bed staring up at my unpainted ceiling. A major back injury meant that I couldn’t stand for much more than about three minutes. That injury and its recovery changed my life as much as any workshop I’ve ever been taken.

And as I emerged from that pain, as I grew in strength and purpose, a few things became clear. I needed to make some major changes in my work. And I had gained some hard-won insights into how to move through hardships and to morph them into something new and beautiful.

One morning, as I was attempting to accomplish some piece of writing that wasn’t coming together, I was giving myself a little talk. Really, one thing kept coming: “Stop f*#@ing around and be who you really are.”

I come back to this little mantra often and for a number of reasons. First of all, I can only be good if I’m being myself. And to be my true self takes a persistent awareness, acceptance, and love of what I’m seeing. When all that’s working, life flows. And who doesn’t like a life that flows?

I long-considered naming the new enterprise this mantra, but it had its obvious limitations. Still, the spirit of these words reminds me to stay clear about what is mine:  to feel, to do, and to be. And what isn’t.  

That’s why I’m telling you about this now. Because this past weekend, I had an opportunity to do some work that was all about flow and acceptance and awareness.

I spent the weekend working with Peter Devries and Constellation Works. This work is a powerful exploration of our legacy as handed down from our parents and our other ancestors. We, ultimately, get to decide what parts of our legacy are ours to carry and which we can hand back or set down. 

In this work, there is no sitting on the fence, no dodging the issues, no waiting on the sidelines to see what happens. This stuff only works when you dive in. Either you are ready to get somewhere different, or you just don’t do this work. Peter is an amazingly skilled facilitator, and we were ready to go.

As Peter was explaining to us the first night, this isn’t work you can describe in words very well; you have to do it to understand. I found this to be true; many people have told me about this work for years. Doing the work is altogether something else. Because while the work may be based on concepts and ideas and practices, the real art of the work is in touching our innermost core, where we store our unseen impulses, our surprising longings, our doubts and anxieties that stop us. Touching, at least as importantly, the places in us where we are all connected.

So, I won’t describe the work. But I want to talk about one of the concepts that I found useful. Peter told us about the idea of “healthy shrinking.” When we consider where life comes from, we see that life comes from big people to little people. Over and over again, big people give little people life. What a gift. And yet, sometimes our parents aren’t up for the task before them. And sometimes a child grows up quickly and assumes the role of a “big person” when they are, in actual life, a small person who needs care.

There is a loss in not being allowed to be a small person. And there may be a pattern that emerges of strength and “bigness.” The one who gets things done. The one who takes care of everything. There is a some good in this, of course.

But of course, none of us can take care of everything. We all need one another. We all need help. We all need the time to “be small.” And so we consider healthy shrinking. Letting go of what isn’t ours to deal with. What never was.

We give back what isn’t ours, we set it down. Then, and only then, can we become ourselves.

Green burials the natural extension of home funerals

One grave holds the cremated remains of a soldier killed in Afghanistan. Another, the remains of the body of a stillborn baby. And another, the body of a mother, a painter, and a community pillar.

These were, then, people just like people in any cemetery.  

But the graves and the cemeteries are different. They are hidden among in the rolling and untamed hills, a plot here, another over there. You could find them with a GPS, that’s how they’re plotted. But left to your eyes alone, you would likely imagine that you’re simply hiking in a pristine and lovely wood.

A tangled old burr oak stands with arms spread wide over the child’s section; there is no hint that there are bodies buried here. There are no grave markers, no neat rows, no mowed lawn, and no flower arrangements. Here, there are just the trees, the forest undergrowth, the paths, the plentiful monarch butterflies, and the birdsong of the woods. 

This is one of two giant burr oaks that frame one section at the Natural Path Cemetery.

 

This weekend, I went with a group of my colleagues on a tour of two green cemeteries around the Madison, Wisconsin, area. My colleagues and I form the Threshold Care Circle, a group of educators and guides for home funerals and green burials.

We were touring these green cemeteries so that we can gather information to begin the work of creating a green cemetery here where I live, about two hours north of Madison.

A green cemetery is dedicated to keeping a piece of land in as natural a state as possible while allowing people to bury their loved ones. The requirements vary from cemetery to cemetery, but generally this means no embalming, no elaborate caskets, no concrete grave liners. Some green cemeteries don’t allow markers, some do. 

The path to the rock circle at Circle Cemetery in Barneveld, WI.

We visited two Wisconsin green cemeteries: Circle Cemetery, in Barneveld, and Natural Path Sanctuary in Verona.  They each have a beautiful piece of land where people can bury their loved ones in this simple way. The number of green cemeteries is growing throughout the country as more people begin to understand that they have choices. 

Circle Cemetery, in Barneveld, WI, has a rock circle that is made of rocks people have brought from all over the world.

Our group, the TCC, exists to help people plan and realize their options when it comes to thinking about end of life, post-death care of the body, and burial.  

Most people today rely exclusively on others to take care of preparations for their loved ones: someone else pronounces him dead, someone else washes the body, someone else dresses the body, someone else lays him out, and someone else buries him. 

New growth is the only hint of burial sites at the Natural Path Cemetery in Verona, WI.

And there are a lot of things in a “typical” funeral and burial these days that simply aren’t required or really necessary. Embalming isn’t legally required or almost ever necessary. A casket isn’t necessary, a concrete grave liner isn’t necessary.  

Many people in these green cemeteries were simply buried in a shroud, or, in the case of the baby, wrapped in a blanket, placed in a handmade basket, and lowered into the ground. The family and friends stood in the woods and helped to fill the grave, singing, crying, and saying their goodbyes in meaningful ways. 

Some green cemeteries allow markers. This is nestled between two trees at the Circle Cemetery.

It’s easy, walking through the woods with a bunch of like-minded people, to marvel at the simple plots where the land has already begun to reclaim the area and to appreciate the beauty and simplicity of this approach. Families who take this approach tend to feel more involved and useful. For people who have lived their entire lives being conscious of the environment, this option feels right.

In those places, as a bluebird flitted from one tree to another near us, it’s easy to forget how threatening and scary and just plain weird the ideas of home funerals and green burials are for some people. So part of our work is to help people understand that this is the way that we buried our dead for so long. We took care of the people we loved. We prepared their bodies, washed them, dressed them, and laid them out. We buried them with the help of our loved ones and our communities.

This way is still a valid way. Of course, there are those who would prefer to have someone else handle the preparations. 

A child's grave blends into the natural setting at Natural Path Cemetery in Verona, WI.

But everyone I know who has been involved in the actual work of caring for their dead or being involved in the burial in some way has found the work incredibly rewarding. We don’t have to hand off one of the most important things that we’ll do in life to strangers. We can learn to do this work. With planning and help, this kind of involvement and care of our loved ones can help us say goodbye with honor, care, and love.

You can find out more about the Threshold Care Circle at www.thresholdcarecircle.org, Natural Path Sanctuary at www.naturalpathsanctuary.org, and Circle Cemetery at www.circlesanctuary.org/cemetery.