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Last night as I was sleeping,
I dreamt—marvelous error!—
that I had a beehive
here inside my heart.
And the golden bees
were making white combs
and sweet honey
from my old failures….
– Antonio Machado, c.1939

I feel less like a sweet, old grandmother and more like a gritty, scrappy person who is finally mellowing – wizening perhaps – as she matures. I find that I’ve never been one who generally “fits in.” I’ve tended to struggle – with myself and others in creative ways. The places of true community and belonging have been few and far between – but when I’ve found my Tribe members it has been pure joy.

There have been many people to love though – folks of all kinds, at all stages of life, and from all classes and cultures. My deepest bonding has been with others who, for a wide variety of reasons, were engaged in their own struggles. I’ve never known how to fully relate to those who have it together and are cruising through life – I gravitate toward my fellow travelers inhabiting the dimension of “still dealing with stuff.” These affinities may arise from my early years of sitting in smoke-filled rooms with coffee in hand, discussing things like recovery and codependency – not a culture of putting on airs around those tables.

These days, I’m still loving gritty, down-to-Earthers, but now I’m also gravitating toward those who find themselves moving through various stages of spiritual transformation. My “people” these days are a little out there. As my aunt commented to me recently, “You are indeed your father’s daughter.” I think that was her way of saying that my dad got a little “out there” after years of a more traditional journey, too – yoga, Esalen, Alan Watts, Alpert and Leary, Maslow, DeRopp, Gurdjieff, Buddhism, Hinduism, Sufism were the positive influences of those days (the mind-altering substances and other addictions were ultimately the negative). But my aunt is correct, I’ve kind of come full circle in some ways.

I’m finding that some of the wild and crazy teachings of my childhood were true…and then some. My mom always claimed that Dad was “ahead of his time.” Yes, he was…and a little nuts. But he would be the first to admit that from whatever other-worldly perch he inhabits these days. My mom was the one who discussed all of these teachings and concepts with me over breakfast from ninth grade on. It is no wonder I didn’t fit too well with my rural Minnesota peer group when we moved there from the Bay Area!

Instead, they taught me Transcendental Meditation and hooked me up to biofeedback. They filled me full of stories about people they met and saw on film at the Menninger Foundation – meditators, shamans, faith healers, physicists, who demonstrated vividly and compellingly that what we know in this three-dimensional plane doesn’t explain everything. There is more – much more – than we see or comprehend going on out there and “in here.” My parents gave me a lot to contemplate and consider alongside the apparent dysfunction and frequent crises in my family. So there was plenty of grist for the mill – spiritually, emotionally.

Fast forward thirty or so years and we arrive at today, where I’m finally coming to the conclusion that it is all good – the way-out philosophies and the family dysfunction, the mountain top experiences and the tragedies…good, good, good. Obviously, I’m jumping over a few steps – giving you the Reader’s Digest version of it all – but I love the full-circleness of things.

I spent many years sorting things into baskets of good and bad, healthy and unhealthy. The process I’m experiencing now takes all of it in one giant basket – or maybe one giant kettle – and puts it together with a recipe of love, forgiveness, gratitude, joy. Strangely enough, the sacred process of loving transforms all of life’s experiences. To my great surprise all of it turns out to be good, good, good. Crazy, gritty Good.

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