Tuesday, October 18, 2011
Can You go Home Again?
This is a personal entry. It has to do with a recent experience I had just this past weekend, when I returned to my home town for my brother's 90th birthday. I had not visited "home" for 15 years, nor had I had any regular contact with him. The event was celebrated with an open house for some 100 people, and, since I do not like crowds and did not expect to know anyone there outside of family (my brother and his wife, and some three nieces and nephews and their spouses) I was not looking forward to the event with any enthusiasm. It was a "duty visit," rather than a pleasure trip.
I was in for a great surprise. My brother and his wife, neither of whom had hugged me or even shaken my hand in past times, greeted me cordially, hugged me, and did all they could to make me feel welcome. My brother had changed considerably over the years (as had I), and now seemed to be a gentle, sweet elder, someone who had finally come to terms with life, and was happy to be reunited with his "little sister."
The open house had barely begun when someone I did not recognize sat down next to me (chairs were lined up against the wall) and asked me if I had attended the local college. I of course had, starting with my senior year in high school when I enrolled in algebra and Freshman composition at the college, for I was eager to begin my academic career.
My freshman English teacher was someone who made a profound impression on me. She was a deeply spiritual woman (Christian Science) who considered all writing a sacred activity and all writers part of the chosen ones. Her favorites were Emerson, Wordsworth, Thoreau and the like, and thus she fed my great hunger for contact with great minds by focusing on exciting writers of vast wisdom and vision. For her, these were not simply texts to be dissected, but invaluable repositories of eternal truths, deep wells to quench our thirst for connection with that which was greater than ourselves. She was the first to encourage me in my writing, and to point me toward an authentic awakening from the cultural trance (see Plato's allegory of the cave, for example, or Wordsworth's sonnet "The World is too much with us.") I felt I had entered a new realm, a world where reality as opposed to mere appearance prevailed. I was giddy with my new knowledge, and vowed to beeome a writer worthy of my teacher's trust. At age 16, I underwent a deep spiritual transformation into mystical consciousness, and the world turned beautiful in every sense, for I seemed to perceive the underlying sacredness of all objects and every person. Divine love was the key, and I felt bathed in its tender rays.
For the next two years, I took every course I could from this master teacher. I traveled with her each Sunday to her "Church of Christ, Scientist" in a nearby city and with the others repeated "There is no life, truth, substance or intelligence in matter: all is infinite mind and its infinite manifestation, for God is all in all." Although a few years later I drifted away from this unquestioning faith, I never forgot this woman, for she was indeed one of the great shaping forces of my life. I felt very blessed to have encountered such an amazing soul so early in life, and felt that i carried her blessing with me thereafter.
So--imagine my surprise and near disbelief when the woman who had sat down next to me announced, 'I remember you, for I was your English teacher's assistant and I graded your themes for freshman composition." I was, in fact, a bit stunned. How was it that this particular woman, who shared my admiration and love for this marvelous woman, had manifested beside me, as if by fate. How did she remember grading my essays some 67 years later? We shared precious memories and agreed that Miss Molly Ruth Bottoms was indeed a unique spiritual being.
But there was more to come. As various persons came by to introduce themselves, I sometimes remembered them from long ago, sometimes not. And then one man appeared, said his name, and asked if I remembered him. Indeed I did, for when our grade school performed the operetta "Peter Rabbit," he was the lead character . (I was "First Lettuce.") It so happened that I had been smitten with deep love for this boy (I was about ten at the time) though I never "spoke my love", but I confessed to him now. This "crush" (for it was never acted on or openly acknowledged) lasted for many years, and I mourned deeply being separated from him the following year when he was assigned to a different school. In fact, I grieved for this "loss" for several years, almost as if I were acting out a script of "abandonment" (how could there be abandonment in such a secret relationship?) which was to recur in actuality in my life later. (I am a Pisces, and Pisces likes to suffer.) So this relation also was an important landmark in my life, the first of many such episodes in my life.
Then "Peter Rabbit" asked if I had done my graduate work in Englsh at the state university, and I had, taking the PHD in English in l960. He said that he had also attended this institution (in another department) and knew many of the English professors there, and wondered if I had known Victor Elconin. The man he named was my beloved dissertation director, again someone who had had a vividl impact on my life. We then reminisced about the others in that department, which was, in fact, outstanding in the caliber of the faculty, who loved literature and taught with enthusiasm and dedication.
Keep in mind that this trip down memory lane includes connections from the beginnings of my life (my brother remembered the day of my birth), then as a young child, my early teen years, then my graduate school days. It was a life review in every sense, more or less like the old "This is your life" program that used to be on T. V. As one friend put it, it was like a tapestry that was missing some threads that were now restored and rewoven, the fragments now arranged in order and integrated into a whole.
I did not sleep much that night, for I had great deal to process. It was, for me, a truly significant occasion, linking past to present, memory to current life.
Where did such synchronicities come from? If I had talked with others in that room of 100 people, I don't think I would have made such significant connections. It felt as though the entire sequence of unlikely discoveries had been orchestrated elsewhere, perhaps from an unseen benevolent presence in the other realms who wished to endow me with a blessing of grace.
(The picture is of me standing in front of the "Old North Tower," on the campus where I attended my first two years of college. At that time (during WWII and soon thereafter) the enrollment was about 500. Today it has expanded into a university with an enrollment of about 15,000. The town as well has expanded vastly in geography and population (about 150,000 now). It was a little village when I was born there (about 2,000 souls). It now is one of the wealthiest communities in Oklahoma. Since I left that "village" in l946 to go away to college, my life has unfolded in many chapters, and I have become in some ways a vastly different being--through such experiences as becoming a professor, setting up an early women's studies program when such areas were extremely controversial, discovering I was a lesbian, living for 21 years in San Francisco with its vast array of cultural and spiritual offerings, and, of course, awakening the Kundalini energies in such a dramatic fashion and experiencing them play out over 30 years, publishing various books, including two (in my seventies) of spiritual poetry and one of spiritual autobiography. But I believe those early years set the tone, "planted the seeds," of all I was to become later. They were extremely important in laying the foundation for a much more complex life in later years, but I treasure them still.)
