Over the last couple of weeks I've been sharing thoughts on
forgiveness, and reconciliation, and reunion versus re-union, and examining the
past from a different perspective. I’m
giving people chances, overcoming fear and hurt, and more, with several dear
friends. I've spent a lot of time thinking about their stories and
experiences, their fears, and reflecting on the pure healing energy of love
that I feel with them and that I felt at the last two retreats with the Wind
Children at St. Dorothy's. Some people have told me how they overcame
their fears and reservations about joining us at the retreat, others are still
considering whether to go to the next or not, some feel that they don't
need it and can shut the door on the past, some say they just cannot open that door.
I wrote to a couple of friends recently, "Reconciliation, full circle, and
forgiveness are a big part of this group. It's part of our DNA.
This is more than a high school reunion party."
Don't get me wrong, there is plenty of party at these gatherings, with laughter and joy and
memories. In fact, re-treat is a good term for them
due to the shared goodies that are consumed! However, anyone who's been a part of this group and survived at least one
tour knows that there's no escaping the lessons learned and the high
experienced when one has successfully navigated the Full Circle Experience.
What I’ve discovered through these last two weekend retreats is that the
reunions are more than the superficial happy gatherings of people from
casual relationships that were generated through school or work
experiences. When you were in
the Wind
Children, you were in a much more intense emotional relationship with
everyone.
We chose the Wind Children and didn’t just fall into the community
through family, the school district we happened to land in, or the
college we decided to attend. Even if
we did start off in the group as the pal of a member, our participation
was completely
voluntary and it took a significant commitment on our part. As a
result, these recent gatherings are more than a simple reunion. They
are a re-union, a re-connection of people at a deeper level who shared
experiences that no one else we know has had. It’s been an opportunity
for healing and discovery. Having a full weekend to dig in, especially
at a place as special as St. Dorothy’s, brought about a more meaningful
experience than I could have ever imagined. When I started thinking about
an SDR weekend gathering, I thought it would be a great way to have a good time
reminiscing. What happened surprised me. People let their hair
down, and in their 50s they are more courageous and willing to be honest about
their experiences, good and bad, their memories and lessons learned, and to
seek understanding and reconciliation. It has also been an opportunity to
give thanks to those who inspired, taught, or loved us. There are lots of those people present, as well. Many of us discovered that we had
touched the lives of others in ways we were not even aware of.
I bruise
you, you bruise me
We both bruise too easily, too easily to let it show
I love you and that's all I know
We touched on that love and fear thing in my last blog post, eh? Well,
it's an ever present problem. And that fear, when it's tied to
experiences in a group this intense AND during our teen years when everything is intense, is a tough thing to overcome. Here are some stories about
love and fear and re-union and re-connection.
All my
plans have fallen through,
All my plans depend on you, depend on you to help them grow
Those plans, those plans! They are so essential, especially on
tour. During tour, the group had to come together more than ever.
It required every person to be committed to taking responsibility for their own
part of tour, to work together, to respect each other, and to reach their goals
in a safe and (mostly) responsible way. (We were primarily junior high
and high school students, after all. There were mistakes.) When
problems arose, we had to work together to resolve them. When
we screwed up, we had to learn to accept responsibility for our actions and make amends.
Through these efforts, we learned about personal growth (Personal Growth
Points!) and stretched what we believed our limits to be and became better
people. Mostly. When those ideals were ignored or forgotten, when
the group failed to come together, and when the group did not have the core
support that was needed to be successful, things went awry. Sometimes in
a seriously messed up way. (I wanted to use the f-word there, but
refrained in order to keep this at least PG-rated.)
Betrayal and struggle without resolution or reconciliation is a tough thing to
handle. When those things are never discussed or addressed, when people
walk away without acknowledging (or perhaps even being aware) that they screwed
up, that can leave lasting damage. Even though it may be harder to go
full circle after 30 years, I think that it's still necessary. It's
probably even more frightening to confront that moment now than it would have
been at the time it happened. After all, we rationalize that we should just get
over it and let it go and tell ourselves that it doesn't matter. But it
does. And then we tell ourselves that we don't need it because we'll just run
into the same problems with those individuals that we had before. But I
haven't seen that happen yet. And then we tell ourselves that no one will
care anyway. But that isn't true, either.
I love you
and that's all I know.
Yeah, there's that L-word again. And it's still a
bright and shining force overcoming the fear and the hurt and the anger and the
betrayal. Love grows stronger as people recognize their part in the
problem, or realize for the first time what they have done, and make
amends. Even if reconciliation is not possible, having the rest of the group there
to support and nurture you helps.
I have truly great memories
with individuals I knew and loved - but an organized reunion or retreat is
pretty much a non-starter for me.
I have great memories, but a lot of bad ones too. I am
not sure I want to go to a reunion.
In
selecting who we want to see, we
are trying to create the only positive experience that we can imagine,
which limits the boundless possibilities of a potential experience. If I
had chosen only those people I wanted to see at the last reunions, I
would have had a
predictably pleasant short vacation. Instead, I was surprised at the
connections I
made with people that I hadn't had an opportunity to get really close
to.
I was blessed to be able to have discussions with people I'd thought
didn't
like me or I thought I might have hurt. I was amazed to learn that some
saw things in me that they appreciated and had remembered through the
years. I had been wrong all this time in my
perception and could have missed out on these opportunities to develop
brand-new and renewed relationships that will endure and benefit each of us for
years.
From 1977 in Ethete:
Very
quickly, the Wind Children went into one of those sessions where they hash out
their problems with one another. At the end of this session, we again saw some
60 odd Wind Children holding hands in that inter-weaving chain that we saw when
we passed the rock during communion. ... Everybody wanted to go to
bed that night after going to the people they had been having trouble with. It
was a time of going full circle with arguments, a time of forgiveness, and a
time of massive hugging.
And from
1978 in Dogellau:
We gathered in the barn at 11:00 am
to hold the service. The spirit of this group began in a communion
service on a wind-swept cliff in Utah and it seems that we need to come
together in this way in order to keep our perspective. It is hard to
describe just why communion services are so healing with the Wind Children.
The experience is so intimate; I would compare it to spiritual group
therapy. We passed the rock and this can take quite a long time when
ninety-three people speak their inner feelings, one by one. But out in the wind
and cold, we felt warm as we took time for airing our inner feelings. It seemed
that many had a need to get rid of some "garbage" as people confessed
of jealousy, petty feelings and anger. There was a real healing of
relationships through ventilation and forgiveness. It seemed to me that
we pulled together in our tour community through this service. We can get
so caught in the whirlwind of activities that we lose our center, but we are
always brought back together through communing.
One thing we discovered during these last two retreats is that even though we
had planned to pass the rock, it wasn't necessary for these healing moments to
take place (as shown in the example from Ethete, above). We've learned a lot over these last two retreat weekends so I believe that we will pass the rock next time. However,
that is not an absolute necessity for healing.
And we felt hit by this mighty
wind rushing us. Doors flew open, window shutters slammed; there was light,
fiery light, like tongues of fire on the people's heads. And we were together,
we were one, and we were a moving force!
Do you remember those times?
Do you remember what it felt like to be as one? Do you remember
that it takes work, and that taking the easy path doesn't lead to great reward?
I asked another friend this recently: Do you want to allow a small
percentage of your WC experience to obliterate the overwhelming majority of the
good?
One participant this year
shared with me:
Whenever I come back
from a visit to CWC friends, I am a changed person…. A significantly changed
person. [My spouse] and people at work notice it and comment on it.
It is a good feeling. To apologize is
good….to be forgiven is even better….to forgive someone else…fantastic!
When the
singer's gone let the song go on...
But the
ending always comes at last,
Endings
always come too fast,
They come
too fast but they pass too slow
What if we don't act on those
opportunities to address old wounds and allow them to heal? We could never attain the gift of understanding and forgiveness and
healing, and could carry those old "bad memories" into the
future and beyond the grave. What if they weren't really bad? What
if our perspective was skewed? What if we miss an opportunity to hear
an apology from the person who hurt us? Forever?
When
my brother died, I could not find our Wind Children family easily. I
despaired because I could not find our tribe. That anxiety compounded
everything else that I was dealing with, and Wind Children were my
salvation. Because of the presence of the many Wind Children who were
there, I was able to mourn Tim not only with our biological family, but
with our spiritual family, as well. Erik and Kirby saved me. Everyone
there did. And the thought of those I could not reach slayed me. I
have had to break that news to Wind Children family years later too many
times, and it broke my heart to do so. After Tim's death and this
struggle, I began gathering contact information and vowed that we would
no longer see each other only at funerals.
I love you
and that's all I know
One participant told me that when she heard another member was coming to
the reunion she internally shrugged. "Whatever." She wondered where that feeling came from because they used to be very close.
Then she remembered that those indifferent feelings had been deliberately sown
by herself because the other had started dating her ex-boyfriend. As
she reflected on where that feeling of disdain had come from, she had to laugh at
herself. She seriously set aside a valuable friendship because of a
boy? And one whom neither of them were even remotely involved with
today? When she saw this person at the reunion, she was able to let go of
that old memory and enjoy renewing that friendship. That opportunity
could have been lost if she'd held onto that emotion without examining it.
As for me, I
have at least one person that I feel I need to talk with, but without
these
opportunities old wounds are going to remain unresolved and unhealed.
My sense is that all parties are feeling hurt. I have a deep need to
find
out what happened to cause the rifts, to share my own pain, and to find
out if I
did something so I might be able to make amends to heal the
relationships. Sometimes I want to write a letter to be
delivered upon my death to some (yes, I consider these things!). What is in that
imaginary letter changes, so it never gets written. One version is "I forgive you," and the
other is "I never forgave you." Neither one feels right yet, though I yearn for the first.
I have lots of forgiving to figure out how to do and it's tough to do
that without an opportunity to talk with them. I still love these
people. I still want to figure out what went wrong and how we
salvage what I believe are valuable friendships.
Are those "bad memories" really "bad" or were they simply
difficult teenage/young adult times that never got cleared through that full
circle moment? Is there an opportunity
for shared understanding and forgiveness and reconciliation?
It's a
fine line between the darkness and the dawn.
They say
in the darkest night there's a light beyond
One
absolute truth that people discovered from these last two re-union
retreats has been how wonderful it was for every participant, in spite
of them having to overcome their own fears about being there. I can
guarantee you that each and every person was hesitant the first time
they attended a re-union. They worried about how they would feel seeing
some people. They were afraid of rejection or feeling left out. They
were concerned about the reaction of an old lover. Or more than one.
Or their spouse. There were as many concerns as there were people, and
each person was able to overcome those fears and recognize that this is
family. We speak the same language, have
experiences so similar they may as well have been the same, and share
the same music, memories, and story.
A
whole weekend to see your high school
friends? But just like on tour, things take time to unfold. A coffee
reunion, a picnic = polite, safe, catching up. A weekend? Reflection,
re-
union. It's okay to talk, to listen, to observe. There was no forced
sharing. You
really don't know the effect you'll have on others, how something you
might say or
they might overhear, someone you weren't even close with, might have an
impact. (One person whom I'd never even met in CWC, profoundly affected
me through conversations last weekend.) What are you
avoiding and why? If you are avoiding with respect to this group, where else
in life does that also emerge?
All
of us found acceptance and affirmation at the re-union. It is pretty
much a given that you will be "in the club." You will probably not even
be able to make it out of the parking lot before you hear joyful
greetings and are embraced again and again by people who are genuinely
happy to see you. As any participant at the last two reunions will tell
you, they were mobbed on arrival in a very good way. People stopped
what they were doing, paused conversations, to physically get up and
greet each person as they arrived. That love continued throughout the
weekend until it was time to regretfully say goodbye. Until next time.
When the
singer's gone let the song go on
Do we keep taking the easy way out and then live with regret when it's too
late? What will our lingering song be? One of love and light and
lives changed for the better, or grudges and regret?
Forgiveness and
Grace are wonderful tools that I am just beginning to understand.
Especially with what we have all been through.
We are too old to let something from 30 years ago prevent us from
restarting friendships…..
Indeed.
Let's let this be our
song. Let's remember the reward gained from honest reflection and love
and forgiveness and understanding. Let's be brave enough to go to the
reunions so we don't only see each other at funerals or memorials. Let's make room
for the good things
and let go of the bad. Let's do the work because the reward is so, so
sweet.
I love
you, and that's all I know.
Lyrics: "All I Know," written by Jimmy Webb and performed by Erik
Swerrie in The Spiritual (and by Art Garfunkel)
