--
(When I read the topic for this month, this earlier post of mine is the first thing that came to mind. After pondering it all month, I still think that this is my most honest answer to the question of where I get energized. So, though this has been posted in another form over a year ago, I offer it here in the hopes that it might energize others.)
“In
everyone's life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into
flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for
those people who rekindle the inner spirit.”–Albert Schweitzer
77-year-old Jungian analyst and author Marion Woodman captured my imagination with
a recent address on “Women, Power and Soul.” She spoke slowly and quietly and
clearly about the “loss of the feminine principle” in the world; she wasn’t
talking about gender, but of “an energy in the world.” “If patriarchy is a
power principle that has become a parody of itself,” she said, “what we need
more of is the feminine principle: the receptive side, the soul, the heart
side.”
“The feminine is the energy that holds presence,
the deeper and slower aspect of ourselves” she said. The feminine looks for
relatedness, asking “where are we alike?,” “how can we connect?,” “can you see
me?,” and (perhaps most importantly), “do
you care whether you see me or not?”
Quantum
physics tells us, she warned, that “the
presence watching an experiment changes the experiment.” Or, as
physicist Erwin Schroedinger put it, the act of observing affects what is observed.
“What
an awesome responsibility,” she gently noted.
During a stay in India, Marion became very sick with dysentery, captive in her hotel room for weeks. Finally, desperate to escape the room, she gingerly made her way to the hotel foyer one afternoon to sit and write a letter to her husband. Sitting quite near the end of a long, empty couch, she began to write.
Soon,
though there were many other seats available, a very large brown woman came and
squeezed between Marion and the end of the couch,
so close to her that their arms were touching, so close that it made it
difficult, even impossible, for Marion to write.
Marion scooted away, angry at the
invasion of her space. The woman scooted closer, pushing up against her. “Every
time I moved, she moved, until,” as Marion described it, "we ended up at the other end of the couch."
Once
she stopped moving away, Marion realized what a nice, big, warm arm the
woman had, and so they sat, a thin bird of a pale white woman and a big brown
woman, arm to arm. Not sharing a common language, they couldn’t speak, but sat
in silence.
Marion gave in to the broad warm
arm, the presence of the other, and relaxed into
her. The next day, she went again to the hotel foyer to write. And, again, the
woman came and sat touching her, next to her, silently. And the third day. And
the fourth day, as Marion's health improved. This couch dance continued for a week. And one day, a man appeared as the two women finished their silent, warm-armed vigil.
“You’re
all right now. My wife won’t come back tomorrow,” he said to Marion, nodding toward her couch
compatriot. “Your wife?,” she thought to herself, startled at his intimacy.
“Why is she here in the first place?”
She
was unprepared for his quiet and simple answer. “I saw you were dying and I
sent her to sit with you. I knew the warmth of her body would bring you back to
life,” he said.
It
took a moment for the magnitude of his message and the enormity of what these
two strangers had done for her to sink in. “She did save my life,” Marion said quietly in recounting
the story. “That this woman would take the time to sit with me…and, most
importantly, that I could receive it…” That,” said Marion Woodman, “is
relatedness.”
That
is what it means to hold presence for others.
That is where I get my energy. Squeeze in beside someone so you are arm to
arm. Stop moving away.
--
Patti
Digh, 37days
