Elderwomen's Circle

Yesterday, MorningStar offered our quarterly Elderwomen's Circle.  Julie facilitated, bringing a poem, an essay, quotes, pictures, and reflection questions to seed our quiet time, discussion, and writing.  Here is the fabulous poem she shared with us written by a MorningStar retreatant during a stay at the Mother Lodge:

                                                         Pumping
                                               by Miriam Pederson 1988

We are priming the pump,

taking turns at this age-old exertion

and we laugh at the inept

ways of our modern arms and hands,

unused to such home-made rhythms, 

such resistance to our needs

The metal handle shrieks with each motion,

cries out in lament for all women

whose priming brought no water, who

never felt the gush of enough or plenty,

no matter how the hard pumping

exhausted muscle and bone. 

We who have spent our tap water lives

exempt from the labor of great-grandmothers

have this day discovered the beauty of pumping, of 

our powers to draw water

straight from the earth...

We talked and wrote about our initiations into selfhood, adulthood, and elderhood, class reunions, shifting roles, mothering/fathering ourselves, autonomy and "I-ness", and confronting the illusions of life. Excellent, as always! We meet again November 7. Give us a call if you're interested. 231-884-2789

During our quiet time, I spied this amazing creature in the garden.  As brilliant yellow a caterpillar as I've ever seen.

It was walking along this piece of old chicken wire, but it could not stay upright on so thin a wire. So it was walking along, hanging upside down with all of its 10 or 12 legs/feet holding on. Then it would come to a wire junction as in the picture and could right itself for a few steps and whoosh, it would spin around to upside down again to the opposite side.  Walking the wire, slipping to the right, pulling oneself upright, slipping to the left...what a metaphor for my own journey!

I move along on my journey of life, and suddenly it feels like I'm hanging on for dear life. Everyone and everything aggravates me, I feel resistant to all new ideas, I feel bored and overwhelmed at the same time. I just hang on and keep putting one foot in front of the other. And then something changes: something I read, some phrase someone says, some beauty in nature (like the one above), can just shift my attention and attitude. My whole being seems to right itself and move forward feeling much more grounded and sane and in my body. Until I, of course, slip off again in another direction. It seems that is what the journey is about: accepting the power available to me from the Earth, Mystery, Grace, Cosmos through community to continue to right myself over and over and over. Thank Goodness!