Pondering Exile

I've been quiet here.

Partly that's been because life has been utterly busy. Overwhelmingly so. There has been so much and so much of it has seemed so big that words just seem to refuse to wrap around it. I've tried to put my oar in with the rest of the household and keep our small boat pointed downstream so that we don't get swamped. That's how it feels.

I know that The Master is simply staggered by the weight of all that is on His shoulders. There seems little I can do to lighten the load except support and shore up the edges and make sure that things run smoothly here and try to be as light as I can be.

So that is our practical reality for the present and for the foreseeable future. It is not good or bad. It simply is. Work and aging parents and family issues beyond our doors and political realities and the health concerns that seem to be an inevitable fact of being this age and not 30-something. There does not seem to be a break in the "weather" on the horizon, so we must learn to lean into the wind it would appear. And we shall. I am confident we shall.

Inside my head, the conversation with myself has turned on the notion of exile. For awhile now.

And I'm starting to peel away the layers of what it means inside of me.

Some of that derives from the simple fact of the geographic reality of me "here" in Ohio and not "there" in Colorado any longer. An actual geographic uprooting and so, in a physical sense, a removal from my rooted place and a transplanting to a place that feels strange in a thousand odd little ways everyday. And the passage of time has helped some on the surface, but not in the deep waters of my soul. I am a westerner in my bones and this is not that place. I will forever yearn for the dry lands and the long vistas and the high peaks.

Too, in this increasingly strident, and conservative environment, I find myself most often intellectually and spiritually exiled. One who believes in a spirit world that is not inherently Christian and not easily described with the language of the "faith" which seems to imbue our national discourse is doomed to be viewed askance in today's America. I often wonder what the founders would have thought, those men who believed in "nature and nature's god..." They, I suspect would have been more comfortable with me than with our president. Perhaps they and I would have found a place to have a quiet chat somewhere while all the Bible thumpers roared on...

Deeper though is the understanding that I've always been an exile. I was born into a family that did not understand me. Could not "know" me. I was too wild for them. Too independent. Too skeptical. They maybe wanted to love me and embrace me and take me in, but I was an alien in their nest right from the start. It is not by accident that I've taken on (been given) the name of "swan" -- the story of the ugly duckling is my growing up story. Born to a duck family, I tried desperately to fit in: to walk like a duck and to sound like a duck and to think like a duck. But I was a miserable failure and a disappointment and an enigma to them from my earliest childhood and the attempt to squeeze my ungainly swan frame into duck mold was doomed from the start. My whole life was a torment until I finally escaped that world and fled to find those with whom I belonged.

Now, I've found my swan wings and swan eyes and swan self. But being a swan has its risks. The world is not ready for swan people. And swans are not safe these days. There'll be no equal rights for swans in America. It would tear at the fabric of the family and society and we just can't have that. And swan spirituality is just too intellectual and not comfortable enough for those who profess a personal relationship with God and a savior. And even in the scene, swans and their Masters don't often do it "right."

Exile is an interesting life process about finding who you are and to whom you belong. About starting from scratch without the things you began with. About creating your life without constraint. About not looking for love and friendship in the wrong places. About not keeping the wrong company. About not settling for too little.

It is also sometimes lonely and scary and exhausting.

swan