Too Old

Now that you are getting older, what are you too old to do?

Fiction writer Barb Johnson published her first book More of This World or Maybe Another when she was 52. (My hero!) Before entering the MFA program at the University of New Orleans at 50 she had worked as a carpenter for 20 years. Her closets filled with scraps of writing (like my own) called out for loving attention but for a long while she was hard of hearing. She writes, "And this is the thing: the almost universal fear that an endeavor will take too long, that we will be way past our primes, our social usefulness, before we get to whatever we long for. And lurking underneath is the larger fear of not being good enough."

What is it you have longed to do but fear it is too late, that you are "past your prime", won't be "good enough"? What obstacles do you place in the way of your soul's deepest desires?

I struggle with deafness to my soul's callings. "Its just too late; there is no time; better to make more money, clean the bathroom, feel badly than do what it is you long to do just for the sheer pleasure of it."

Where I finally find the grace to give my soul what it craves is a mystery; could be sheer misery that finally drives me to try something different, to stop banging that head against that wall.

And the soul is so kind. The more she is loved the more ease I find in my body, the more grace there is to follow her lead. Surprisingly, I do not find grace through effort but in letting go. Letting go is what the soul gently prods me to do, of ever single thing (beauty, strength, money, control, joy, sorrow, love, hate, the breath) things we really don't "have" in the first place even though the mind would tell you this is not so.

Surely, I will drown in this tumultuous river, be drawn under for good, if I don't cling to the raft, the splintered fragment of wood, this shard of a life raft. "Just let go a little," my soul sings to me. There are sharp rocks, falling waters, places that are deep, cold, unfamiliar. How can it be that the more I let go the easier it gets, the less work I need to do? The river moves me away from all that I know to surprising and mysterious places. I survive, thrive even.

I see, in small glimpses, why this is so. I am the river. There are no hands for gripping, no pieces of wood to grab, no being unchanged.

Thanks Barb for your lovely reminder of this!