Sailing

I have been doing some thinking lately; that is no revelation...

Yet my thoughts have ventured far enough from my usual patterns that I had to concede that making myself understood to everyone at every stage is not feasible – and disruptive. The olive grove image, which concludes the pivotal “He Wept” entry, remains a critical metaphor. My attention has turned to a long history of tension between orientation to outcomes and to process, for years not realizing the depth of the distinction. In summary, I think that neither is more innate than the other, to me, but I worked strenuously to orient to outcomes. I am sure Western culture helped lead me there. I never realized I had the potential for another ‘way of being’ all along. Being divided within myself this way used to scare me into denial but I am choosing, right now, to believe it is not a pathology but a precipitation, as each nature rises and separates from the mixture.

I want to submit a maritime metaphor. Several people advised that I “just live my life” as a way to escape the need to ‘solve’ myself and reach resolution. They suggested what amounts to living an open-ended life, which is a topic I may write about too. My initial reaction was peaceful, since that would mean sliding into the small things about life that I inevitably enjoy. The secondary reaction was more potent and negative. It cannot do it justice without profanity. I told a friend that it was as if someone had told me to go sailing when I did not understand the wind. Suppose that I have lived a long time on the water, shuttling from place to place. The wind has been something in my face, causing me grief. More accurately, there might have been a time that I knew how to sail but I ran into too many storms in a row (truly bad times) and installed a massive outboard engine. For quite a while, it has been drift or drill. I go until I run out of gas. When I do drift and let the engine cool, its equivalent to apathy – I worry where I will run aground. Sometimes, I need a tow but I have inevitably refueled, serviced the engine, and started motoring again and again. Throughout the past five years, I have become more a mechanic than a sea-man.

There is nothing fundamentally wrong with having an engine to get you around in tight spaces, or out of a jam when the wind is raging. There is a certain security one feels, with the capability to take a straight tact in any weather. Yet it seems that I am not a steamer or icebreaker, after all. My engine is only big enough to shuttle me into port, not take me all the way across the oceans in my life. There are sails around here somewhere and I have romantic notions of using them. Nevertheless, it is easy to see what is frightening about trusting the wind when one has seen both the squall and the doldrums. My dedication works against me. Not to mention, the sense of power that comes with going against the wind and currents.

The more peaceful, restful, and natural way is to allow for the wind and be patient with my tackle, if you will allow the pun. It means I have to accept I might end-up ‘somewhere else’ while I learn – that the feeling of being lost (which I keep rediscovering) will be a companion rather than a stranger. Where I once burned energy I will have to burn time instead. I will have to accept taking the longer tact, even doubling-back sometimes, and reimagine what it means to ‘try my best’ at risk of losing recognition in Western culture. My thoughts on the topic run onward but perhaps I should allow the wind to take this metaphor in all your minds – let it sail.

Another friend wondered what the genesis of these paradigm shifts was. I told her. Exploring a little deeper, I found that Palestine is enabling me to see alternatives more easily. I reminded myself that I only have to tip the motor up into the stern, not throw it away. If a jam surfaces, I can drill again. Still, I do not fully understand how to harness wind. For my first clue, I re-understood (yes) another concept from the Pauline epistles, about “praying constantly”. Dutifully, I try to do that but prayer is an unfurling, a source of drag. If I have given myself over to drift, perhaps this ‘drag’ can take on a new meaning. No word, yet, on results.