Bearing Witness

It’s good to be home! As much as I enjoyed my experience of rest, relaxation and no laptop, I’m ready to re-engage.

As I lived it and as I reflect upon it, it’s clear that my experience of Alaska is a metaphor. This was my fourth cruise to this magnificent place and it was clear to me how things were ‘the same but different’, as the Hawaiians would say. The same crisp, clean air. The same vast, seemingly endless expanse of space. The same immensity, difficult to calibrate for depth or distance or mass. It was very difficult to get a sense of scale, with brown bears along the shoreline appearing like ants even with binoculars!

Much was different. Bright sun in a cloudless sky. Temperatures in the high 70’s and low 80’s. Not a drop of rain to be found in a place known for its precipitation. As I sat on the back deck, in jeans and a t-shirt, soaking up the sun, I was sure that I was in Hawaii. The weather of Hawaii in the vast spaces of Alaska. Things are changing.

We spent hours slowly circling in Glacier Bay. As recently as two years ago, when the glacier would ‘calve’, it would release a chunk of ice the size of a small car. This time, when it calved, the sharp crack of the ‘white lightening’ preceded a long, thick slice of the glacier crashing into the blue waters of the Pacific. A cheer would go up amongst the passengers on the ship, stunned by the beauty and the power of Nature. And as they cheered, I cried. How much longer would this be here? In that moment of awareness, I decided that I needed to be here, every year. I need to be present…to bear witness….to the changes as they unfold. I need to feel it…hear it…smell it…even if only in this small way.

During Influencing with Intention, there comes a time when each of the participants has the opportunity to tell their story…all of it, without interruption or interrogation; without advice or prodding or poking….a space to step into, to claim and to declare what they know their lives to have been. Those of us present commit to only one thing: to be there, silent and fully present, no matter how long it goes and no matter what it takes, to bear witness. It is one of the most sacred experiences I have ever lived.

In that moment – when the sheet of ice slid into the water – I felt that I was listening to a story; a story being told about something changing profoundly – and I need to bear witness to it.

Things are not as they were. I am not who I have been. The changes are neither small nor incremental. I am mindful that I will be 60 in three years; that I no longer wear the cloak of my culture; no longer think the thoughts of my culture or speak the words that are attached to it. I keep looking for an image to represent who I am becoming and nothing comes to me. And so I wait….

I have become aware that words escape me. And then I wonder: perhaps it is not so much that words escape me. Perhaps it is more that the words that come to me are different in both meaning and intensity than those I’ve used so easily in the past. And the thought comes to me that perhaps it is time for me to write as I would if I knew that I had only six months to live. Or six weeks. Or six days. To pay attention to what it is that is most meaningful to me and to allow it to be in flow. I wonder where that would take me.

Breathing is good…..