“Set out, pilgrim. Set out into the liberty and the wandering. Discover your folks. Godde is way greater, wilder, extra beneficiant, and extra fantastic than you imagined.”
― Sarah Bessey
Pleasure and justice reside in grace. Thrive in gratitude. Discover fulminating llanos of miracle, may, and magic contoured in story. Etched in track. Sculpted within the untempered and unmanacled invitation of HER resplendent and resounding voice and imaginative and prescient keen us to be the very artistic fires we want to reside. To come back to acknowledge, on the time of age-ing and sage-ing, the decision to freedom.
The decision to be wage-ing pilgrimage and poetry with and due to being Grandparents, is a present SHE bestows upon us, usually when we’re not even conscious of the liminal’s want of our life’s learnings.
For a number of years, I’ve been studying tales to my Grandchildren, in addition to to the Grandchildren and Nice-Grandchildren of household, associates, and colleagues. I’ve been recording treasured books which I yearned to share with them in order that they arrive to learn about Grandparents, as a lot as they arrive to please in surprise, journey, risk. Fable and magic too. Coming to know themselves by way of story, picture, and connection.
Just lately, I learn a lovely story entitled: The Outdated Girl and the Wave by Shelley Jackson. I selected this specific e-book for a number of causes. Firstly, as a result of the expression the “previous lady” is one which my father used since I used to be a baby rising up in Guyana, South America. My father’s life ended when he was a younger man of forty, and I a lady of sixteen; nonetheless, the tone, timbre, and texture of his voice, alongside together with his love of phrases, fable, journey, and story continues to reside on in me. Secondly, the artist’s rendition of the previous lady on this treasured story is: me. Me in my sleeveless, crimson and white polka-dotted costume. Me with lengthy white hair, had I continued to develop mine. Not solely does the previous lady appear like Granny Margot, however her canine, Bones, shares a part of a reputation with one among my fantastic sons-in-law. He’s recognized by those that love him as: T-Bone. Additional, love and loving canines is a visceral reality and act within the lives of my Grandchildren. Grizzly, Jasper, and Maeve are the Grand-dogs who deliver such richness to my “nice” Grandchildren, enlivening their hours with feisty cavorting and luscious, dripping licks. These four-legged souls ever instructing of life’s poignant cycle of beginning and demise. Bacardi is ever-present of their hearts, at the same time as his demise was a number of years in the past.
The previous lady, too, is a part of the cycle. Life’s poignant cycle. An plentiful cycle of instructing and of studying. The previous lady’s new studying got here in an sudden determination she made. A wild and wonder-full determination. A HEaRt determination. Not pre-planned. Not mapped and researched. Not mentioned, debated, deliberated over time. In a flash, staring into the eyes of risk supplied in a manner she would seemingly not have chosen, she knew what she needed to do. She decided due to love. Due to her Bones. Not her “previous bones”. Bones her canine. Her love. Bones for whom she would do something. Together with risking. Risking: journey! Placing her debilitating concern apart. Doing so as a result of her profound love for him meant the time had come for her to leap. To leap into the unknown.
The previous lady and HER name to journey anew, knew one another. Knew one another in a flash of a second’s readability of imaginative and prescient. A flash that demolished the historic notion that previous womyn are presupposed to be completed with journey. Completed with creativity’s name, with threat, with surprise, and wander. The ponderous and pernicious notion that previous womyn are presupposed to be resting, weary, wearying, and cautious of life. Notions capriciously grounded in imagined and fabricated ideological views about cessation and ennui. About previous womyn being surfeited upon reliving recollections and dwelling prior to now, awaiting “their time”.
For generations previous womyn have been ridiculed, talked-over, interrupted, denied, negated, maligned, dismissed. Their Knowledge slowly swallowed by patriarchy’s dualistic platitudinous cries of divide and conquer. Patriarchy’s creation of exclusionary hierarchies of gender, age, skills, race. Hierarchies that diminish, demean, and staunch HEaRt, artwork, poetry, imaginative and prescient, story. Voice.
The phrase “previous lady” has been used as a weapon for waging exclusion and diminishment. Nonetheless, at the exact same time as this narrative, if political and ideological agenda, has been insidiously unfold, generations and generations of Grandmothers, Grandfathers, Grandparents, and Grandchildren, pay little heed. Generations of Elders and Knowledge-Keepers, of Canatadoras, Bards, Sangomas, Music-Makers, Story-Audio system, Phrase-Weavers, Spell-Binders, Story-Spinners, have continued to show, to achieve, to shape-shift imaginative and prescient. To beginning burgeoning that means. That means-making. Ever awakening.
And, as this previous lady reveals us that regardless that for a time her concern and her unconscious imbibing of patriarchy’s pronouncements had her stalled, she might and would make a selection. A selection grounded in love. Love that meant not hiding.
In a single good spark of a second, she acknowledged that her name to reply to like and to surprise surpassed the tiny, restricted, and limiting patriarchal area and scripting of being, and of changing into. Of expectations and fear-based perceptions. Of learned-behaviors. She realized about un-learning. Was open to it. Due to love. And the decision to reply it within the affirmative. By no means for a second imagining what her determination to leap due to love would deliver to her and her lifetime of hiding underneath the dreaded and unknown wave.
She knew instinctively that sage-ing and age-ing are life’s invitation located within the crucible of Sophia’s moist, salty, aliveness to say “sure” to journey. To say “sure” to and for and due to the liminal’s name to go wHERe she had not gone earlier than. To do what she had not executed earlier than. To lean into her life as a present of time’s invitation to maneuver. To maneuver ahead. To maneuver ahead along with her braveness. And along with her grace. With HER steering and delight. On in the future. In a single second, she knew what she needed to do. She leapt.
Within the hyperlink beneath, I share with you this stunning, stunning story. An expansive metaphor for every of us. Outdated souls. Outdated spirits. Knowledge-Keepers. And ever Knowledge-Seekers. This beneficiant story is an invite to step into our personal fears with boldness. With give up. Give up to the truth that every single one among us can settle for an invite to thrive. To leap into raw-rich give up to the dear Knowledge that is aware of us. That longs for us to know ourselves every single day of our one distinctive, compelling, and beauty-filled life. As love contours every step, instructing us to embrace the plentiful and wonder-full waves of wander. And surprise. The wonder-full alive, alive, alive rememberings of the Grandchildren that we have been and the Grandchildren with whom we’re bounteously blessed.
Margot Studying: The Outdated Girl and the Wave
~~~
Poem by Dr. Sr. Brenda Peddigrew, RSM, PhD, Poet.
https://soulwinds.ca/brenda.html
Given to Grace
At seventy-six, I’m swept
right into a sea of gratitude – wave
after wave after wave- do they
ever cease?
Maybe not. Maybe
the items of an extended life illumine
the years behind, but in addition
the years forward. Maybe
there may very well be no different life
than this one I’ve been
given. Given.
Not even chosen –
how might I do know?
However given – so – no different
phrase however gratitude can converse
for such a life…
And the waves nonetheless come,
sweeping by way of a wondrous
coronary heart – Given to Grace.
sending it out in waves. Maybe
my coronary heart – all alongside –
was a sea…