Sometimes it takes being anonymous to discover who we are.
I was 54 years old before I ever was away on my own. The devout Mormon culture I grew up in thrives on togetherness. Even in prayer. Attendance at meetings is an index to being attuned to the Gospel. Missionary companions are never alone; they travel two by two day and night. Living an inner life is seldom the topic of lessons or reading. To cultivate both belonging and a need for solitude in the same woman is rare.
I've always lived with people I loved. Growing up beneath the Utah Wasatch Mountains with my happy, affectionate parents and adventuresome brothers was a passage to easy friendships and an entree to group after group that I liked. At the same time, being the only girl, I had time alone in my room where I could read or write surreptitiously in my diary or just look out the window to the sky.
For years I was the mother in a home for seven that I was very good at "keeping." We had meals on time and clean clothes and music lessons, along with boating and cabin times, work parties and friends for sleepovers. We played, laughed, cried over illnesses and lost loves and went to church together.
I dreamed of a day between Sunday and Monday that no one knew about but me, to just be. I finally learned to stay up all night one night a week to write or finish furniture or bottle raspberry jam -- just to be quiet and get to the end of a thought. I'd always choose a night when I'd be busy the next day -- not sitting in a meeting! Then I'd go to bed normally and be just fine.
I insisted every day that each of my five daughters had an hour alone. No friends, no phone calls, no TV. Just choose whatever persuaded them -- reading, studying, drawing, practicing their violins, flute or piano -- but doing it alone. As grown women they have thanked me and now love solitude themselves.
I traveled with my husband and family and with tennis players and members of boards. I spoke to groups across the country, always to be met and taken care of. My life was full. And I was dying. In all my busyness, something was missing that I could not name.
When I was accepted for a poetry symposium in Port Townsend, Wash., with some persuasion, my husband agreed. There, just an anonymous one of dozens of poets, living in a sparse single room in an old barracks, I learned to find space to pay a different kind of attention. I had time to focus on details and moments, not generalities. I had time to reexamine, to revise, to reinvent my sense of the world. And it was joyous fun! On the saltwater shores of Puget Sound, I learned to breathe in the "full measure of my creation."
Knowing is a process, not an arrival. Coming home, I struggled with how to be available to the many and the much I love and still be true to myself and to what solitude had offered me. The clarity of what I had learned pushed me to find spaces to be alone. I rented a little studio close to home to go to one day and night a week. I was accepted by writing retreats in Virginia, Illinois and Florida that were sponsored and inexpensive enough that I felt guiltless about going. I accepted offers from friends to visit their unused places. My family adjusted to my absences and learned that spaces in our togetherness made room for more relished time together. And I claimed the space to be all I can be.
Even now at 86, overwhelmed by an abundance of dear ones and things I want to do, I still struggle to find the delicate balance where what I love most does not get neglected. I still take a "sabbatical" to live at our cabin in the mountains. On June 1, I smile to my accepting bishop, "I'll be back in September." My husband Mel likes the city and his swimming and is up and down the 10 miles from home; family and friends love to visit; and I get to be the earth creature I learned to be growing up in that canyon, in touch with my mountains and my God who created them.
My spiritual life withers in too much togetherness, just as it thrives in quiet. Alone I find my link to the verticaI, the divine: I meditate and pray and walk and dream and write by the hour anything long. I meet myself and my creator again. But I could never be content without also being connected to the horizontal, my people. Because I know I'll get to occupy both worlds, I'm content in either, with the heavenly balance of both.
Emma Lou Thayne - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A Woman of Gentle Strength - Continuum Magazine - Winter 2002 ...
I am heading for a time of quiet
When my restlessness is past
And I can lie down on my blanket
And release my fists at last
I am heading for a time of solitude
Of peace without illusions
When the perfect circle
Marries all beginnings and conclusions
I'm a semi-recluse today
wouldn't have it any other way.
I've been out there, looked around
felt the ups touched the downs,
enjoyed a-lot of what I've seen,
this blue blue planet
I like it green.
I'm a semi-recluse today
wouldn't have it any other way.
I'm a recluse of necessity
an alternative style
from the cities ... you see.
I need space room to move
burnout's out, I'm not amused!
My space is my sanctuary
it lets me be what I must be,
me in life ... always me!
I'm a semi-recluse today,
wouldn't have it any other way!
Daniel (a very ex-mormon)
It was an awakening, it is not about family the LDS Church, it is about the Church, and total Church control. -- Best in getting the 'few' moments away.
life is a process not an arrival. few understand that and think when they go to a heaven there is no more struggles or learning. that would not be bliss but a form of hades. discovery is the delight of the Infinite for the Infinite without an involution process would have nothing to discover.
we are expressions of god, not that god made in the image of the human ego but a god we know little about. our intellect fails daily in knowing this god but our awareness can get a slight look and feel for this Infinite that cannot be defined.
the materialist has yet to figure out that their intellect is not what it appears to be. the quiet time in the mountains is a blessing indeed. even jesus needed some quiet time away from the crowds.
This is a lesson for everyone that has less to do with god or the divine, and more to do with "rebooting"...something that everyone needs, but mothers in particular, rarely get.....
Kudos to you for having a strong family structure that allowed you to find that time...so many mothers in our world, single or working, do not get that luxury, and should...
Lovely, well written article
When I saw "Mormon poet" in the title, I thought it was going to be about Carol Lynn Pearson. I love her poetry. She also wrote an amazing book titled "Good-bye, I Love You" about her marriage to a man who eventually confessed he was gay and left their marriage. Then he got AIDS and died--and he died at her home being cared for by her, their family, and their friends. It is a wonderful book.
As for the cracks about "magic underwear", they are garments with special symbols on them to remind Mormons of promises they make to God. Anyone who wears a cross, Star of David, or similar symbol is doing the same thing. There's nothing weird or magical about that. Some Jewish people wear Tefillin as a symbol of their faith. Some symbols are worn outside and some inside. Anyway, God looks into our hearts. That is what is important to Him moreso than what we wear or don't wear.
The Star of David is merely a piece of jewelry with personal significance only. Some people will where the hamsa as jewelry while others will wear it as a talisman. As to Tefillin also known from the Greek as phylacteries, this is a requirement for every Jewish male thirteen years and up to wear while praying the morning service on weekdays (Sundays included). It is in conformity to the biblical commandment of wearing it as sign upon the frontlet between the eyes (actually wresting over the pericarp of the ajna (Sk.) chakra --place of the inner eye) and upon the hand (actually referring to both the hand and arm aimed at the heart). There is a widely held tradition for the men to wear a four-cornered garment with tzitzit (knotted fringes) to fulfill that commandment in the bible. Usually worn as an undergarment some will wear it on top of their clothes. The yarmulke which is Yiddish for fear of the queen (yes the deity is understood through both genders) is worn as a reminder of one's obligations to God. Some follow the practice of wearing a double covering for the head not too much unlike the Sikhs. This yarmulke (kippah in Hebrew) serves not only a reminder to have fear of heaven in one's heart but also serves as a protection of the crown chakra.