Life's unfolding

reflections on this unpredictable and beautiful life

Welcome to A Capacity for Wings, I am glad you are here. Today I am departing from my usual form of writing and sharing this essay I wrote awhile back. Life continues to unfold and I have to choose again and again how to respond to all that life brings. I hope you have a few moments to sit with a cup of your favorite drink and consider your life and what you are being invited into. Or if you prefer, don your headphones and listen to these words read over you.

We begin folded, knees into chest, back rounded as we float in our mother’s uterus. We are forced open to measure our lengths, then folded back into position. Infants will sleep with legs tucked under their tummies or curled up on their side in what yogis call fetal pose or parsva savasana.

Augustine has said we are born incurvatus in se, curved in on ourselves. Our natural tendency is to bend all things inward, making life all about us and for us. When we encounter the vicissitudes of life, we rail against them, seek to set things right, arrange all for our comfort. We grab for anything that will give us a sense of permanence and stability.

As children we begin to open up to the world around us, soaking it all in, embracing all there is to learn. But somewhere along the way to adulthood we get hurt, we are disappointed, we learn the world does not work the way we thought it did, and we begin to curl inward again.

We learn to self-protect from the harsh words of school-yard bullies, from the criticism of teachers and friends. It may not be visible, but we curve inward once more, perhaps with the unconscious longing for life to be as secreted and safe as in the womb.

Is life a carefully wrapped gift, with treasures only to be found through the unwrapping, the tearing, and the exposing? “We work so hard to keep our lives wrapped up in a specific way, even when God, the Author, understands the best stories unfold and the greatest gifts get to be opened” are the words I read recently.

Her life is slowly unraveling; the seams splitting, edges fraying. The losses add up, grief over the deaths of friends and relatives year after year have now come closer; the griefs personal and daily. Her husband is slipping away as his mind becomes more muddled with each passing day. Her companion over a lifetime disappearing into the fog of Alzheimer’s. Meanwhile she struggles with mobility, unable to do stairs, bend over, or tend the garden she loves. Now the woman hobbles and her world closes in. She becomes a prisoner in her own mind and home.

Life has come undone. The one they spent so long building is crumbling, the ideals shattered. Her vision of the future drifts away leaving little to cling to. She does not welcome this unfolding, she wants to go back, desperately clings to “what-ifs”, fights against the march of time. She sees only the darkness in looking forward.

She seeks attention, but does not want to leave the prison of her misery. She holds onto her independence and pride. This woman has curved inward, shutting out the hands that would help. Her version of the story to come includes only further desolation.

I watch as my mother fights against life’s unfolding.

A second cousin on my dad’s side of the family was a young lady named Nancy. She taught at Clark Boulevard Public School where I was a student entering Grade 3. As fervently as any eight-year-old could, I prayed she would be my teacher that year. I thought her the most beautiful woman I knew. She had hair and a voice like sunshine and her warm smile would greet me whenever we met. She had the most beautiful clothes; I was smitten with her. She was the teacher I wanted.

Instead, I was assigned to Mrs. H’s class – If I were to tell you her full name, you would agree it sounds like one Disney would invent to depict an evil witch. In my memory, she was cold with straw-like over-processed hair and nails long enough to begin curling inward. She was hard, all of her softness squeezed out after years of teaching or a difficult life beyond the school walls.

I had no affection for her and yet still attempted to please. As I tried to hush my friend one day when she was talking in class, Mrs. H caught me and called me up to her desk. I shot my friend a look which indicated I intended to seek revenge at some point.

What she did next would be considered abuse today, but all I remember is the mortification and damage to my pride. I was unceremoniously put over her knee and spanked in front of the class. Oh, the waves of shame which washed over me in that moment; I wished they could carry me away so I would not have to face anyone. And yet it was in this moment that a defiant spirit rose up within me. I would not let them see how I felt. I would swallow my emotions and hold my head high, no matter the cost, I would hide the hurt.

When protecting a tiny flame from the wind we tend to curve our bodies around it, hand cupped to shield it. This is what I began to do with my emotions. I kept them close, hidden behind a wall of my own making; I built a suit of armor around my heart.

According to Japanese legend, anyone who folds one thousand paper cranes, which are a symbol of good luck, will be granted their wish. Folding becomes a way to reverse their fortune. There is a famous story of Sadako Sasaki, who was a child in Hiroshima when the atomic bomb was dropped. She survived but later contracted leukemia from the radiation. She began folding paper cranes hoping that it would bring her health.

For Sadako, life was going in ways she did not expect nor desire; her folding was a way to fight the progression of disease and death. Reports differ as to whether she herself folded the required number of cranes or if she had help from her classmates. Regardless, she was buried with her folded paper birds. A monument now stands in Hiroshima dedicated to the children and to peace.

As humans our automatic response is to seek to control our lives. We become Sadako and try to manage, contain, protect, and worry as a way to assert some control, to fold up the bits that seem to be unraveling.

Control, according to the Cambridge dictionary, “is to order, limit, or rule something, or someone's actions or behaviour”. If I am honest, I will admit that I have a desire to rule, to assert control over the choices my children make, or to manage the outcome of my work, to have the last word in a conversation. I joke as I step out of the door some mornings saying, “I am surveying my kingdom” as I stand in the garden. There is a part of us that grasps for sovereignty. We have difficulty praying, “not my will, but thine be done”. We desire to gather into ourselves all the power and the glory.

It may not be the specific events of our lives, so much as the timing of them that we have difficulty accepting. There are times we feel the trajectory of our lives is too fast, we want to slow the pace. This is often the case with aging. Every year billions of dollars are spent on plastic surgery in an attempt to reverse the signs and maybe even deny the inevitable progression through life. More common perhaps are seasons we would rather skip or at least fast-forward. This is especially true in the times of waiting. Waiting to grow up, to get our driver’s license, waiting to meet the partner of our dreams, have children, climb the ladder, retire. The temptation is to chase down what we want, to strive and exhaust ourselves in the pursuit of what we are waiting for, but life soon teaches, we are not the ones in control. Rather than fight and struggle to pull apart the pieces, trying desperately to separate the layers and iron out the paper so we can see how life will go, we learn to allow the unfolding to occur.

I watch as my daughters’ lives unfold before them. They are at the beginning stages of adult life, filled with excitement and adventure. Partners to be found, careers to be launched, and the idealism to believe that good will come their way. They open themselves up to life, welcoming experiences and trusting this process of unfurling.

During the pandemic, one daughter chose to embrace the dismantling of life as she knew it to see where it could lead. As a response to the uncertainty of events, she went inward, not in self protection mode, but as a way to process and learn. As she considered all that was happening to her and around her, she uncovered the truth about herself; her desires, dreams, talents, and fears. The unraveling revealed much that could not be seen otherwise. She embraced the authentic self that emerged, rallied to find a way forward, helping others in the process. Her story of the unfolding of pandemic life became one of growth and redemption.

I am in the middle between my aging mother and two young daughters. I notice these disparate postures to life. With experiences like baggage I carry around, is it possible to release some of the cynicism which has grown and embrace the openness to life I see in the young? Is there a way to continue gracefully into old age, to welcome the unfolding of new seasons?

I look back at the little girl I was in grade 3 who armored herself against pain, and I see how, over time, I have begun to peel off the hardened layers, allowing an unfolding of my heart, opening up to both grief and delight.

I have negotiated the murky waters of releasing grown children into the world, a process which seems impossible to prepare for. It used to be our lives were entwined— each day was a shared unfolding of the life of our family. Now it feels as though a rending has taken place. I must continually learn to accept that decisions and plans are made without my knowledge or approval, that their lives are evolving separate from mine. I consistently fight my inclinations to meddle, to hold on to the ways things were, and instead relearn each morning what it means to let go.

I have watched recently as one I love, has stepped into her identity as a queer person. Over years, slowly and painfully the façade has unraveled revealing the truth of the beautiful person she truly is. She had been hidden behind expectations and social norms and the unfolding of her true self came as relief. This was not without some wrestling on my part. It required an examination and reconstruction of long-held beliefs, an unravelling of harmful mindsets, and an opening to broader views.

All throughout the growing season in the garden, I watch as leaves and blossoms slowly emerge. This gradual unfurling is filled with hope. I monitor daily the progress as the peony bud goes from green orb to one ruffled with pink edges, to the full bloom in all its glory. This unfolding happens in its appointed time, neither too early or late. Once the blooming has finished the plant begins to store the energy needed for next summer’s flowers. The plant surrendered to the rhythm of the seasons.

How does one come to the point of being like the peony bush? Glorious in its time of blooming and accepting of its times of dormancy? Trusting in the ways of nature, the passage of time?

“It is our resistance to things as they are that causes most of our unhappiness”, says Richard Rohr. Our fight against the natural rhythms of life, against the playing out of our story. In the space between seeking control and relinquishing all to fate, we need to find a way to navigate life with a balance of work and surrender. I think our friends in the Twelve-step programs have gotten this right. They control what they can by making good choices, taking responsibility and making amends, while also letting go of the things that are beyond their control. They have found a balance between giving in to the current of the river while steering their canoe to their desired destination.

Can I accept the view expressed by Madeline L’Engle, “it’s a good thing to have all the props pulled out from under us occasionally. It gives us some sense of what is rock under our feet and what is sand.”

What will the aging woman find beneath her feet? There are many in similar life situations who manage to gracefully navigate these years. They know the inevitable and yet live each day with joy and gratitude. Maybe in nearing the end of their days they find the present moment enough of a buoy for the rapids they face. Could my mother discover there is something solid upon which to stand? Maybe she will find the love which has seen her through more than her fourscore years will be sufficient for the remainder of her days.

As I sit in the middle of my life, heading inexorably into the future, I want to live into the unfolding like the swimmer of Denise Levertov’s poem, The Avowal,

“As swimmers dare

to lie face to the sky

and water bears them,

as hawks rest upon air

and air sustains them,

so would I learn to attain

free fall, and float

into Creator Spirit’s deep embrace,

knowing no effort earns

that all-surrounding grace.”

Grace to meet the unexpected, the unplanned for, and all that would knock us off-balance. And grace to tell a story of redemption and hope amidst all that is being revealed.

As life unfolds, I pray you have the capacity to unclench your fists— to receive.

May your heart be unarmored, allowing goodness and beauty, grief and longing to enter.

May you hold the tension between what is and what could be,

What you dream and long for,

And the seeming barrenness of this moment.

May you find joy in the surrender.

Feel yourself carried on the air,

“a feather on the breath of God”.

And may you find within the unfolding

a surer ground beneath your feet.

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If you have found something of worth in these words, please share them with others.