Salve of Spirit

Lillian Smith Barney is an enigma to me. She was long gone by the time I entered the Barney family. Stories of my father-in-law's mother eked out over time. They weren't pretty. Like when my twin brothers-in-law were newborns. She held one of them and asked their mother, my beloved mother-in-law, "What would happen if I dropped one?" In her later years, she spent time at a mental-health institution.

That's about all I knew. When our second daughter was born and we loved the name Lily, we made sure to tell her grandmother it was just Lily, not short for Lillian.

Lillian's high school graduation

This week, we celebrated my husband's and his twin sister's birthday at her beautiful rural home. For some reason, Lillian became a subject of discussion and my sister-in-law pulled out a notebook full of pencilled poems Lillian had prolifically written about the course of her life. Cousins had recently given her the book of poems at a family reunion. She was deeply grateful because the binder she had burned in a house fire. She had no idea there was another copy. "Can you believe this is her actual handwriting?" my sister-in-law asked. The connection she felt was palpable, reminding me of the energy I experienced handling a book published in 1661 by my ancestor. [

Together, we pawed through the perfectly handwritten, barely edited stash. Wow, she wrote about everything: a sweet-16 love who went off to WWI, her only son, her grandchildren, her struggle with sanity, aging and faith. A thread of longing ran through the passages, yet I also saw hope, resilience and a deep love of family. She looked at things honestly, especially her condition, in whatever moment she was examining.

My husband's father wrote a book called "Porter Township" about his family and growing up in Wheelersburg, OH. I haven't read it in years, but pulled it back out to get some sense of Lillian Esther Smith Barney. I hadn't even  known her full name.

Lillian in 1919 at her first teaching position

Her son regarded her fondly as nurturing, resourceful and compassionate. During the Depression, she met with the county school superintendent, seeking a teaching job. She was sent 30 miles and as far away as possible while remaining in the county. Her husband, "Jake," drove her back and forth at the beginning and end of the week. Lillian and son John boarded near the country, one-room school. Her next assignment, though closer to home, was also a collection of grades, but she made the best of it. Raised Baptist, but convinced her father to allow her to marry a German Catholic, though, according to her father, his family was "fresh" from Germany, only 50 years ago and nowhere near as settled as the Smith clan. There's no mention of anything dark, except, possibly, Lillian's relationship with her father:

"I liked Grandpa Smith very much. I knew him personally and we spent many hours in each other's company ... He didn't look like the picture-book grandfather. Put a little more hair on his head and exchange the pitchfork for  a saw and you have the man in Grant Wood's American Gothic ...  I myself have heard him called mean, miserly and martinetish.

"One time when she was twelve and her mother was ill, my mother got up at five in the morning. She built the fire, prepared the breakfast for the family and got her brothers and sisters ready for school. She prepared her father's breakfast; he punished her for not putting her long stockings on properly before coming into his presence that morning.

Ends: my mother- & father-in law,  Lillian and "Jake" with infants Jim and John

"Epilogue:
My mother is gone. She is standing at her father's elbow attempting to explain her sorrow for having felt ill of him during their lifetime. He fails to hear because he is busy telling Saint Peter what a fine daughter she was and how well pleased he always was with her."

          – From Porter Township by John Smith Barney 

The epilogue chills me. Did her struggle stem from attempting to gain her father's favor? Today, there would be many non-invasive options for dealing with that. Perhaps her poetry was the one path to healing she could find herself.

Though my sister-in-law offered me the binder to take home, I felt it belongs with her, though I firmly believe we need to scan her poems. I want to spend more time with them; much more. She had so much to say.

When my Lily overheard the conversation about Lillian remarking on the possibility of dropping one  of the newborns, she said, "But don't you ever think about doing things like that?" "Sure, but you don't say it out loud," quipped her sister.

I believe Lillian examined everything out loud, even her darkest thoughts.

Loneliness Vs. Solitude

I have learned to live

with loneliness.

To cast away the doubts

and fears

of being insufficient to

myself.

In one’s own heart must

true contentment live.

Yet oft, so oft, we

feel the need of those

whom we have known

and loved in other days.

We yearn to see another’s

face which we

have loved and lost

somewhere upon the way.

To touch the hand once

held in fond caress;

to hear the voice that

is no longer heard.

For this there is no

lease.

They cannot come.

In memory only can

we have them still.

This we accept in time.

Take what we can

of pleasure in remembering.

This loneliness does

shed its harsher mood.

This loneliness does

change to solitude.

– Lillian Esther Smith Barney

• Who is your example of living out loud?

• How has that person influenced you?

• How can family, even generations back, touch us now?

• Who would you like to have known? Why?

• What legacy will you leave?

Though the treads are thin,

they still touch me,

calling me to know

this woman who struggled

yet was courageous enough

to examine her life

I wonder what conclusion

she reached

Her words show resilience,

grace and a strong sense

of Spirit as she poured

out and over her life

Spirit, the salve

for the painful parts

Listen to this post:

Strength of a rose[ie]

Lonely heart/pastel & paint on paper

Listen to post:

For days in yoga, I keep hearing a haunting song [see link below] as we’re ending practice and entering shavasana. It’s a real song the teacher spins on the dvd player.

These lines, in particular, echo deep within:

            “And it’s happening to me and you …
 

           … Where we’re bound nobody knows ..."

The subject is our wildness, to me, the terrain of the heart. It’s such a wonderful transition from the activity of poses to the coolness, winding down and turning inward of relaxation. And even though I have heard that song at least a dozen times, it always catches me … in knowing. It helped me remember something I wrote as a pre-teen, about the age of my youngest daughter. I penned these lines:

            “I am bound where no man goes.”

It was a somber piece about living in isolation, then I translated it as the Steppes of Siberia. I am coming to understand it was about my wrestling with growing up, keeping part of myself and letting others go.

A month ago, while deep in pastoral counseling, my shaman asked me to remember/visualize when I first felt less than. The image of a pre-teen girl in a fetal position immediately flashed in my mind. It quickly shifted from me to my youngest daughter and my heart sank. I know she is in the same place. Shunning the physical, psychological and emotional changes stirring. My heart aches for her as it does my inner pre-teen: the one lost, confused and feeling isolated.

This week in my monthly archetypal-astrology group, we discussed the drama of opposites with regard to astrological aspects, the angular relationships between the planets, and from a Jungian perspective. A handout carefully prepared by our teacher, discussed that “ego development requires that we reject even essential parts of what makes us whole; and this is what becomes the shadow … the road to wholeness is rough and bumpy … but we continually seek that which we have unconsciously discarded.”

I wonder what I discarded in that fetal position as a pre-teen and what my daughter intends to shed?

Two nights ago, I had an interesting dream; I haven’t remembered dreaming in months:

My twin sister and I are on a train. I fall asleep and awake in a car with her driving. I feel as if I have been drugged. She acts as if all is normal. We stop and I notice one of my daughters, some female cousins and nieces a half block behind us milling around another car. My sister directs me into a store, where we encounter my mother haggling with a woman about a cabin reservation. My mother insists she bought the cabin across the creek behind the store. The woman says she doesn’t even have a reservation.

When I first looked at this dream, I felt betrayed, as if my family tricked me into this journey. But when I explored it again, it seems as if this line of living women in my family is waiting to cross the creek into the cabin of the ancestral women who have come before. The ones waiting at the car are, well, waiting. My mother has tried and my sister has brought me here. I think it’s my turn, my work. I notice my other sister who has a son is absent as is my youngest. They aren’t part of this yet. I believe that my sleeping on the train is a key to how to get past the gatekeeper/shop owner, cross the creek and get us into the cabin.

To do so, I must traverse the terrain of the heart and retrieve my discarded parts. The song “Strength of a Rose” by Deva and Miten Premal describes that journey. Rose is my maiden name; Rosie is my nickname.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QuoQQsHUmZE  

• How have I experienced the terrain of my heart?

• When have I felt isolated?

• What parts of myself have I discarded?

• When have I also felt connected?

• What is my current calling toward wholeness?

Growing my own soul

A painting I did years ago haunts me lately. I did it without thinking; the way I create most of my work ... well the stuff that matters most to me, is self revealing and, often, universal.

It's someone in a downward-dog yoga pose with a colorful and huge, embryonic bubble or sack of something on their back. It's more the focus than the person, who appears insignificant. At the time, I interpreted it as energy ... positive energy. But it's been revisiting me and I recognize – with the help of my shamanic counselor – it's me and the bundle is draining me.

Gary, my massage therapist and counselor, has taught me about ancestral patterns and energy. How we can inherit family archetypes, unknowingly passed from generation to generation. Often, they aren't helpful.

This sack has been asking something of me that is not mine to do and yet, because it seems it's always been there, I have, like a good girl, complied. Gary explained that family souls way back can attach to living members if they did not grow their soul to wholeness within their lifetime. So they seek another on whom to complete THEIR work. If asked, they would not mean to burden one this way. Release calls for sending it back to the one who gave it in the first place and expressing gratitude for giving life. We did that. And I feel so very different. As if I can do my own (which is plenty; more than enough for a lifetime) work and not some undefinable thing that has controlled me. I am prayerful that I can maintain this awareness and not slip back into the "locked" pattern. Nor do I wish to pass it on.

I have no animosity for from whomever this originated, but rather a sense of sadness and wanting to know more about this person, their journey and why their work is unfinished. It's also a lesson to me to do the work of soul growth and not leave it to someone else down the line.

• Is there anything in my life that directs me that I do not understand that could be a family pattern?
• How can I explore that, be more aware of the archetype and return what is not mine to do?
• What would that re-patterning look and feel like?
• How can I remain unlocked/freed from the burden that is not mine?
• Can I express gratitude to the source for giving me life?


something
calls


has always
called


I'm not sure
I know a time
without it


it forces me
to behave
in ways
that are foreign,
counter-productive


now I understand


and
everything
is different


I am freed
for
my own
work


and
NOT
to burden
my progeny