And so it begins

When memoir is also a witness to how we got here

“Cut through the tangle now and get on with it. Stop talking and obsessing. Just do it.” – Women Who Run with the Wolves, p. 272, Clarissa Pinkola-Estes.

I guess I’m meant to be a untangler. And I often write to work out the knots.

I write to untangle my own story, for myself and for others who have either lived a similar journey or who are confused by the tangled cords of religion, culture, and relationships that have birthed division and extremism in our lifetimes.

When I was still a toddler in my crib, I had a recurring dream. I was floating among twisted, tangled cords or yarn or some such filaments. I was trying to find my way along them, through them. Where did they come from and where were they going? The dream had no words, just cords and movement and little me. And mist. Mist that kept me from seeing far enough to make sense of it. I woke up crying every time and then couldn’t even explain to my parents what the dream was about or why it was so upsetting. I was just a few years old, but I remember it.

As a child, the confusion of the tangles scared me. It still does to some extent, but with maturity I’ve learned from nature that tangles are also normal. They are part of life, joy and pain, influences and decisions of all kinds woven together.

I have always loved trees and water. My love affair with them began with the willow tree in our backyard and the lakes my parents took us to. Trees and water give me life. They are my teachers, they refresh me, they energize my spirit and relax it at the same time. They awaken something elemental in me. I was 70 years old before I could reframe the tangles of my dream and see them like the network of roots and fungus underground and out of sight in the forest floor. Scientists now know that this network connects everything that grows in the forest and creates sharing pathways as well as communication networks much like neurons in our brains. Out of that network – that tangle – grow the trees, the bushes, the grasses, the mushrooms. The tangle is evidence of health.

“Plants are attuned to one another’s strengths and weaknesses, elegantly giving and taking to attain exquisite balance. A balance that can also be achieved in the simple beauty of a garden. In the complex society of ants,” wrote Suzanne Simard in Finding the Mother Tree (p. 130). “ There’s grace in complexity, in actions cohering, in sum totals. We can find this in ourselves, in what we do alone, but also in what we enact together. Our own roots and systems interlace and tangle, grow into and away from one another and back again in a million subtle moments.”

I’ve learned to see the beauty of my tangles, yet I continue to follow first one cord and then another to make sense of how I got here and where I’m going. Still.

In our time many people who were raised in a conservative faith tradition have experienced spiritual trauma in that culture. Part of their healing response has been termed deconstruction, meaning an examination of what was supposed to be a foundation of belief and practice that has been found riddled with fatal faults, including hypocrisy and a lack of grace. The foundation crumbles and the person builds a different kind of spirituality that is more authentic to the cries of their own heart.

I was not raised in a conservative evangelical faith tradition, but I lived in one as an adult for more than 30 years. I have never identified my own faith journey as one of deconstruction. It’s more about reconstruction, returning to the roots--digging out the rocks and loosening the soil, pulling out weeds to give the roots room to once again gather nutrients and drink from the life-giving aquifer.

My roots got all choked off for too long. My growth got stunted, and some pretty ugly stuff happened, not just to me but to my children too. We were part of something much larger that infected the American church in the last part of the twentieth century. I know I’m not unique in this experience. But I am sharing my story with you because I think our personal detangling from it is integral to the judgment that must begin at the house of God.

In my 71^st year I read Women Who Run with the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes for the first time. On the first page of the introduction, this sentence jumped out at me: “It is not so difficult to comprehend why old forests and old women are viewed as not very important resources.”

That stopped me in my tracks. It still does. It feels very personal to me.

Before starting Women Who Run, I had discovered another book, The Harmony Tree, by Randy Woodley. It’s a picture book, but it’s not just for kids. The main character in it is Grandmother Oak, who knows her stories of legacy and rootage are necessary for healing and community. This is true for sustainable forests, and it is desperately true for humans and their societies.

I am an old woman now. So I write to find my way deep into the roots and to tell the stories that need to be told. I hope others find them to be a resource.

My stories matter, yet are somehow wild in their own way, refusing to stay focused on what would seem like one cohesive theme. They are threads – roots mixed with mycelium – that provide nourishment, warning, and meaning to the whole of my life. Here I will share details of my life, which intersect with the lives of others and with cultural moments and movements, trusting that both of us, you the reader and me the writer, will unearth the truths we need for more complete, compassionate understanding of ourselves, each other, where we find ourselves, and where we’re going.

I’m anxious about this, but it is past time to “speak the truth even if your voice shakes,” to quote Maggie Kuhn, founder of the Gray Panthers. And so here we go.

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