Posted on by Jessica Dofflemyer · 3 Comments

Retreat

Sometimes Grace sweeps in unexpectedly. Sends an invitation via express mail and there’s no time to even RSVP. You just have to ready for the event and head toward the occasion. That’s how it was this week.

A special remote location had been calling me for weeks. Or perhaps, I’d been calling to it. Longing for the essence of what I feel every time I am immersed in its folds. Body calm, mind clear, heart open. Steeped in its natural surroundings, I am home to myself when I am there. Humbled in the presence of the natural world, bowing to the energy that sources all things.

No phone, no computer, not even paper or pen to scratch down ideas and concepts. Just sun and stars, gathering wood, carrying water and the sound of birdsong in a stilled forest of guavas.

I got to share these sacred spaces with three very important men in my life (okay, Jeb’s still a boy, but a man-in-training, to be sure). There was my eight-year old son, Jeb, his father, Rex, (expert guide and the man I didn’t marry), and the Bohemian (specialist in traveling light and the man I soon will wed). We all orbited each other in a flowing dance of riverside wanderings and fireside chats, punctuating our days with sunrise and sunset.

Like any sacred journey or vision quest, there is an arc of experience in getting to this distant locale. There is the preparation, readying of myself to go. There is the first step in a long walk to get there.  And there is the passage, itself, in which time anything I do not need to carry simply falls away with every bead of sweat, each exhale.

Once I arrive, I am there to live and breathe all that this place has to offer me. Each visit different, as I am different every time I’m there. Insights filter through sunlight on the ginger flowers. Lessons are learned through a mist passing over the bluff. There is a remembering in the warmth of a big, flat boulder in the river and I can lay my body down and soak in everything I already know.

That’s right, I’m home.

Jessica Dofflemyer ~ all rights reserved

And then…it’s time to go.

When it’s time to part from this place, no shower is hot enough, no bed cozy enough to tempt me into leaving. I want to feel this way forever. How can I keep it with me?

I want to take everything I sense inside each cell within my body and put it in a bottle. Carry that bottle inside my heart. Uncork its contents to seep through every pore so I can breathe the fragrance of Love no matter where I am.

Store it for use when I’m standing in line at the grocery store, when suddenly the scent of wild lilikoi blossoms, yellow ginger flowers and the loam of wet, mossy stones would leak from my smile. The impatient shoppers in line, the electronic beep of the bar code scanner, would all take on the soft hue of perfection – I would still be home. And hopefully, my serenity would spread. A gorgeous contagion that would ignite the hearts of everyone in the frozen food aisle.

Or something like that.

But in this arc-of-a-journey, there is always an end. One last look back at my divine place, then the walking away. For the first mile of my departure, I am so happy, it feels as though every blade of grass that brushes me is blessing me in love. Two miles away and I begin to feel the changes. I am ever-closer to cars, street signs and the smell of laundry detergent on fellow hikers moving towards me.

I pick a lilikoi flower along the path and sniff it every time I sense my bliss fading like particles of dust behind me. Don’t forget, don’t forget.

But by the time I set foot off the trail and into the parking lot packed with rental cars and swarming with visitors in bright colors with cell phones, I know I am sliding down the slope of the that arc. I am on the other side.

What’s left are wisps of feeling. So deep, yet fleeting, and I opt for few words, as silence seems the only place where this sweetness will still linger. If I articulate, the essence scatters.

36 hours later and I am left with memories and a few photos. These words, here, that attempt to describe something I do not really understand. But I don’t want to understand magic. I just want to live it.

Remember that I’ve got (we’ve all got) a crystalline bottle of sacred light inside our hearts just ready to uncork. There is a longing that I have to seep the beauty of what I know is real and true into every action I take in this wild, messy world. How I want to smell the fragrance of Grace through all my days, no matter my locale. Beam it out. Share it. Remember that there’s an open invitation. Never have to part.

Jessica Dofflemyer ~ all rights reserved
Posted on by Jessica Dofflemyer

Breathing Apparatus

we get a new day
every day
until we get
the last

which day is this one?

fresh or tired
habitual or inspired
we truly do not know
the greatest mystery
living
in that
next
breath

Illustration by Elizabeth Shippen Green
from THE MANSION by Henry Van Dyke, 1911
Posted on by Jessica Dofflemyer · 2 Comments

Sourced by Grace – Elizabeth Gilbert’s TED Talk on Creative Genius

Immersed in a 24/7 culture that expects everything to be ready and available, anytime, anywhere, I watch my assumptions.

See that with my own creative life, I can set an expectation that I am the engine behind the production line, pumping out countless goods. And they better be good. Manufactured to perfection. Ever-ready to be consumed and distributed. I am an artist and my job is to produce.

Or is it?

I watch these unrealistic expectations squeeze all life force from the creative process. Rid every bit of magic from the experience of shaping something from nothing. It’s a delicate dance, not one that will fit within the confines of automation, emerging on demand.

Yesterday I was privy to a fascinating discussion on this topic by Elizabeth Gilbert (author of the acclaimed book, “Eat, Pray, Love”, among others). In her talk she reconsiders the source from which our creative well springs (and she suggests that each of us can tap this – not just “artists”).

The entire 18 minute “TED Talk” is great (I’ve posted it below) but I was certainly struck by her sharing of the dancer who touches Grace, and then lands back down into a very certain humanness once again:

“…O.K. — centuries ago in the deserts of North Africa, people used to gather for these moonlight dances of sacred dance and music that would go on for hours and hours, until dawn. And they were always magnificent, because the dancers were professionals and they were terrific, right? But every once in a while, very rarely, something would happen, and one of these performers would actually become transcendent. And I know you know what I’m talking about, because I know you’ve all seen, at some point in your life, a performance like this. It was like time would stop, and the dancer would sort of step through some kind of portal and he wasn’t doing anything different than he had ever done, 1,000 nights before, but everything would align. And all of a sudden, he would no longer appear to be merely human. He would be lit from within, and lit from below and all lit up on fire with divinity.

And when this happened, back then, people knew it for what it was, you know, they called it by its name. They would put their hands together and they would start to chant, “Allah, Allah, Allah, God, God, God.” That’s God, you know. Curious historical footnote — when the Moors invaded southern Spain, they took this custom with them and the pronunciation changed over the centuries from “Allah, Allah, Allah,” to “Ole, ole, ole,” which you still hear in bullfights and in flamenco dances. In Spain, when a performer has done something impossible and magic, “Allah, ole, ole, Allah, magnificent, bravo,” incomprehensible, there it is — a glimpse of God. Which is great, because we need that.

But, the tricky bit comes the next morning, for the dancer himself, when he wakes up and discovers that it’s Tuesday at 11 a.m., and he’s no longer a glimpse of God. He’s just an aging mortal with really bad knees, and maybe he’s never going to ascend to that height again. And maybe nobody will ever chant God’s name again as he spins, and what is he then to do with the rest of his life? This is hard. This is one of the most painful reconciliations to make in a creative life. But maybe it doesn’t have to be quite so full of anguish if you never happened to believe, in the first place, that the most extraordinary aspects of your being came from you. But maybe if you just believed that they were on loan to you from some unimaginable source for some exquisite portion of your life to be passed along when you’re finished, with somebody else. And, you know, if we think about it this way it starts to change everything.

This is how I’ve started to think, and this is certainly how I’ve been thinking in the last few months as I’ve been working on the book that will soon be published, as the dangerously, frighteningly over-anticipated follow up to my freakish success.

And what I have to, sort of keep telling myself when I get really psyched out about that, is, don’t be afraid. Don’t be daunted. Just do your job. Continue to show up for your piece of it, whatever that might be. If your job is to dance, do your dance. If the divine, cockeyed genius assigned to your case decides to let some sort of wonderment be glimpsed, for just one moment through your efforts, then “Ole!” And if not, do your dance anyhow. And “Ole!” to you, nonetheless. I believe this and I feel that we must teach it. “Ole!” to you, nonetheless, just for having the sheer human love and stubbornness to keep showing up.”

So, Ole! to you, for showing up to share in this journey – this following of the Thread here in these Archive posts. Some rare days, I may be graced by the Muse. Others, it is just an exercise in humble dedication to the process of showing up to the page.

May we all keep our appointment with this present moment. Open to our imaginations. Let go of expectations. Watch Grace unfurl, however fleeting. Celebrate the magic when it comes.