Let's begin

Again.

Living life is not the same as crossing a field.

—Boris Pasternak, Dr. Zhivago

Image: unknown

The novel Dr. Zhivago begins with death. “Who has died?” “Zhivago,” is the reply. In Russian, the word Zhivago relates to an old Russian word, ‘the living one.’ From the root word, which sounds like zheet, which means to live.

Yuri, the novel’s protagonist, is a young boy at the beginning of the novel. He has the misfortunate of losing both his father and his mother. The book begins at the funeral procession of his mother. From there, the book brings us face to face with themes of life/death/life —through loss, through love, through pain, through beauty. Through apocalyptic-societal revolution. Through the ancient grandmother-mystery of death. It isn’t death, as we knew it. It stretches my way of seeing death.

New Years Day. Before the before, in Ancient Roman times, Janus, the god of doorways, was honored at the start of the year. In Ancient Rome, every part of the doorway was mythopoetic. Hinges. Thresholds. Each part of the doorway also connected to a god or goddess, to pray to at the altar. At the new year. At each turning of the month.

Janus -he who stares into the past and simultaneously stares into the future. January is named after him. Reminding us, we must look back before we look ahead.

Every winter, I hold an ancient (and gnostic christian) practice of the twelve holy days (and thirteen holy nights) between Christmas Eve and Epiphany -a time in which my reality has a quality of ‘thinning’, in which I track and read signs -in nature, in art, in dreams, in my day. Each night, a reflecting back on a month of the year, while simultaneously looking ahead to a month to come. To both integrate my year in this backwards glancing (Rudolf Steiner said that looking back in this way is an act of love, but also, brings us closer to the spiritual world). And a looking ahead towards what is to come. Dreaming in. Planting seeds. Dropping wishes.

Because of its proximity to the Winter Solstice -the ‘low point’ of the wheel of the year, in which the sun is at its lowest strength (‘high point’ being summer solstice), I feel I am already in a time of dark, deep, quiet, cold, hibernating-listening. I want to move slowly like a tree. In tree time. They say that the earth is holding its breath at this time. That we are closer to the voices of stars, cosmos. In my cosmology, this is true. I feel deeper inter-relatedness with cosmos. Star beings. Angels.

On the first of January, we left our home -my partner, daughter and I -for a sledding adventure in Estes Park. About 13 minutes north out of town we encountered many fire trucks and police cars, and witnessed the remains of a jeep roll over accident that occurred hours earlier. It wasn’t good.

I learned later that the two passengers in the front -both the husband and wife died. Their two children survived the crash. Their beloved family dog died. Something about the confrontation landed extra heavily in my heart.

Within several days after, we encountered death in our community. Suddenly. Unexpectedly. Too soon. Catalyzing our community into a net of grief, pain, love and beauty. Into Mystery.

A few days into the New Year, I was also hearing stories from friends -of a couple other young women —one, a well known storyteller, the other, a well known herbalist who had died suddenly, unexpectedly, seemingly out of the blue…just after the start of the year.

It has brought me inward more. To the listening place. Less words. More heart. Less out, more in. Heart forward. Feeling the terrible and beautiful fragility of this moment. Here. Now. As we begin, again. Into the new. Holding hands with Beauty and Death. Life and Death. Finding ourselves smack dab, raw and tender in the middle. Grief and Beauty. Celebrating Life and witnessing Death. Apocalyptic Fires. So much change. Sudden. Long in the making. All the while molting. In a kind of collective transition. Old stories dying. Old paradigms unravelling. Shedding. Stripping away: Identity. Names. Skins. Forms.

Living life is not the same as crossing the field.

This is a line from a poem in the novel Dr. Zhivago -also translated as:

To live life to the end is not a childish task. Or,

To live a life’s no easy task.

Any way that you say it…it is true. To live life is not the same as crossing a field.

The image below makes me think of it poetically, differently. Each of us has a destiny path. It is so mysterious. I feel tenderness at the mysterious awe of the unknown ways our paths unfold -alone and together, during times of pain, times of beauty. As we find our way back home. Together. Alone. In community.

Image: Lucy Campbell

There will continue to be pain and beauty along the path, in the field…and sometimes we have to get on our knees and breathe our way through both in the same day. It’s a strange kind of alchemy. To hold both together, tenderly -the pain and the beauty and allow the heart to experience its natural rhythm -to contract and expand, contract and expand again and again as the mystery sheds us, molts us, changes us…and somewhere hopefully, we find ourselves heart forward, led by wings we cannot see, leading us step by step, wave by wave, beyond the mind and its need to figure out what cannot be figured out.

We just are made to do this. Again. And again.

The 90’s Russian rock group DDT said it this way, about life and death, loss and life, in my favorite ever Russian rock song, Eto Vsyo. (This is It)

Zhizn ni sakhar, a smert nam ni chai. Life isn’t sugar, and death isn’t tea.

There is so much to be grateful for, and we are surrounded by much loss and grief. At the start of my New Year, the grief and loss felt amplified. But also, in the next breath, or rather, in the opposite hand beauty. And more beauty to behold. To lean into.

now I walk in beauty. beauty is before me. beauty is behind me, above and below me.

-Navajo prayer and song

May beauty be an even more integral path -because of and despite the challenges we will continue to face. Beauty. Alone. In community. In the natural world. In relationships. In the mythopoetic and down to earth inbreath/out breath of the living one that is life/death/life.

Image: Kindra Nikole

I was talking to a wise woman friend yesterday, about how Malidoma Some (the Dagara medicine man/healer) shared about how when death came to the village -everyone came to honor the dead one. Everyone from the neighboring villages came even if they did not know the person who had died. Because death is something so so much bigger with the capacity to transform everyone in its wake. Death also reveals to us what we have yet to heal in our own personal mythos and story —in our own unresolved griefs from other losses or deaths. It shows us something so vulnerable.

After Yuri becomes a doctor in the novel, Dr. Zhivago, he has a moment with an older woman who has taken ill and fears dying. And he says to her something which I have tucked close for a long time:

You in others, that is the meaning of life.

“And now listen carefully. You in others-this is your soul. This is what you are. This is what your consciousness has breathed and lived on and enjoyed throughout your life-your soul, your immortality, your life in others. And what now? You have always been in others and you will remain in others. And what does it matter to you if later on that is called your memory? This will be you-the you that enters the future and becomes a part of it.”

All this to say -go tenderly into the new year. Be brave. There is a lot of change moving through rapidly. Suddenly. Unexpectedly. May you continue to walk with beauty and dance with the both/and of life/death/life. We will continue to face difficult things. One after the other. Perhaps in quick succession. Loss. Death. Pain. Grief. We are so human. We may lose friends or loved ones. We may witness greater natural destruction. But also -this life -this living life, this living one…even when it dies, it brings us nose to nose with mystery. Again. And Again. In a new form. In a new understanding. In a new story. It brings us closer to the beauty of being human. To the soul of our shared humanity. The raw, ache of our human condition -its loneliness, and belonging.

It’s a lot to be human right now. To lead with the eyes and heart of transformation. heart forward. To celebrate life in one hand and hold death, tenderly, with awe and humility, in the other. To say yes, I will allow the mystery to teach me, to guide me, to lead me forward. Heart bright. Eyes open. Listening. Loving. Leaning in.

image: Kirsty Mitchell