My third read by Richard Rohr was Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life. It came to me at around the same time as Rowing Upstream, by Mary Pipher, and as they both dealt with aging, I wanted to combine them into one post.
What did they have to offer?
There are a lot of stories white people tell themselves to feel better about race.
Stories like, my ancestors were Quakers and abolitionists, the unspoken conclusion being, so we weren’t/aren’t part of the problem. Or, I live in New York State, and our part of the country wasn’t complicit in the slavery of the South. Sometimes something happens that pulls the pants down on your story and exposes it as fiction.
Enter The Comet’s Tale.
When you make a pattern a number of times, you start to know what you want to change before you even begin working on the next version. You know how to get a little closer to perfection.
By the time I finished my first two Metamorphic dresses, I had a plan in my head for a last, “ultimate” Metamorphic dress. It would be the perfect colors, and the perfect length. I’d use everything I learned from all the other makes I’d worked on this past spring and it would be amazing.
And it is. But it isn’t perfect.
I wanted to make one more Strata top in cotton, and my girls were asking when I was going to make them something.
For years, I sewed exclusively for the kids, or else for our house (quilts, pillow shams, curtains, etc.) so it’s no wonder they were confused when I spent an entire month and a half sewing for myself.
Trying to find a socially acceptable way to discharge negative emotions has been a lifelong quest for me.
As a high schooler, after watching the 1989 movie Dead Poets Society, I would regularly yawp out in nature when things got to be too much.
Since then, I’ve discovered swimming, live music, and waterfalls. All of those things are weather- and location-dependent, or “subject to availability.”
Sometimes I can let it all out in a meditation. I can’t plan an outcome for a meditation and expect success. That isn’t how it works for me. Often, when I’m at my most stressed, I’m also at my lowest functioning, and it’s really hard to be clear-headed about my options for de-escalation.
Have you been there?
