In 1975 at the age of 33 I turned from scientific research in England to an unknown future in France. I finally became a rather reluctant university English teacher to science students. One day near retirement some 15 years ago, my students were waiting in the courtyard and as I walked through the crowd someone shouted “We love you!” and as they cheered I felt at last the full flowering of my turn. I retired a happy man.
I am remembering the time my mom asked me to drive to our local parish school to pick up my younger brother John; he was attending a CCD (i.e., religious instruction) class. I was already annoyed that I had to pick him up. But when he was supposed to be waiting for me when I arrived in the parking lot and was not there, I became incensed. When he finally came into the car, I belittled him. Then, perhaps for the first time in my life, I saw my brother and recognized his vulnerability - his humanity. I felt ashamed and vowed to not only never belittle him again, but to always affirm his goodness. Years later I wrote this poem about my brother, but came to see it was really a poem about me and, in a certain sense, about each one of us.
I am currently in the midst of a volta that has not quite run to the end to know how it turns out. So instead I’ll say that 30+ years ago I was testing the edges of blades and reading up on sedatives as my near-constant “ideation” of self-harm had moved on to “planning”. I was so close to it, then my boss had a heart attack at work, a product of overwork and self-destructive behaviours… I’ll skip the details but right now I sit here next to him on the lounge with our aged (and fifth) dog at our feet.
I had an unexpected turn 46 years ago that has left me using a wheelchair for that amount of time. It was unexpected and catastrophic and when I reminisce about it it's still is unbelievable. I have come to terms with it and have lived a Wonderful Life. I still am living a Wonderful Life but oh what my life would have been like without that term often bothers me. The drunken young man who crashed into me never looked back. Of course he was unable to leave the scene but I wonder in my mind what his life has been like. I love reading your posts. Perhaps I'll try to attend the Columbia reading if it is wheelchair accessible.
My life has been defined by two voltas that shook me to my core, that radically changed the path of the possible. Just after I turned 16 I got pregnant. In a daze, I dropped out of high school, got married and tried to figure out how to be a wife and mother while lacking the maturity and insight to do either well. But we hung in there, stayed together, chose to have another baby. It was hard and I carry many regrets, but the babies grew and became boys, then young men.
When I was 41 and feeling like the horizons of life were opening to me, my younger son, who had just turned 21, died in an accident. He was the sparkling joy of our family. I won't try to describe the abyss that opened, the years of devastation. I remember thinking, "My God, I could live another 40 years or more, I'll never be able to survive that." But here I am. I'll be 70 later this year. It's a beautiful rainy morning, the cat is curled on my lap, I have strong coffee in my favorite mug, and my dear husband is getting me a bowl of oatmeal (because we can't disturb the cat). My older son is well. I have gratitude for all these blessings. I try my best to keep growing and to hold my heart open. I try my best to carry my sorrow and grief -- and my joy and hope -- with grace.
Thursday, my 10 year old son Finn, the sensitive fierce one, had a overwhelming day at the baseball field. His Anger and emotional outbursts were uncontainable - it was rough. On the way home from the game I proceeded to lecture him about all that went wrong. When we arrived home Finn went up to his room. I stood in the quiet kitchen with my 5 year old Jones, who witnessed Finn’s meltdown and my subsequent lecture. Jones, grabs my hand and says, ‘maybe you should just give Finn a hug and tell him you love him’.
Through wet eyes, knowing a 5 year old just stated the truth in the room - the ‘volta’ (I call her Jones) swept through me. I went up to Finn’s room, got on my knees and hugged him. His fierce tense body just collapsed and gave into mine.
Pivot, Repentance and good enough.
Wish us luck today, Finn has a baseball game at 11:30am PST
They were kind, committed people who believed in the idea of seeking God's will for one's life. Following His plan guaranteed a fulfilled life. Which also meant that everything else was a mistake. As a young person, it was all about setting the course: Career, place to live, life partner. Difficult times, when the idea of a "plan" was reassuring. But those who knew God continued to surprise us with details: God wants women who let men take the lead, God wants index cards with prayer requests that are repeated weekly. What he doesn't want are clothes from India - because of the pagan motifs. It gives me the creeps. Of the kind people who care about my salvation. Of their rigidity and their fear. Of the confinement into which they tried to drive God. The Volta? I couldn't live as a puppet, I was as tired of the laborious exploration of someone else's will as I was of the anxious self-examination. I struggled to get out of this fundamentalist corset. I sought out other people, other influences, new ideas. The price? Loss of friends, probably ending up on index cards as a prayer request myself. The ground was shaking but, interestingly, I felt little guilt. In the counselling centre where I later worked for a long time, there was a note in the waiting room: There's only one reason to change things: you just can't take it anymore.
I kid you not, I was just this past week thinking to myself, "hmm, I wonder what that root "vol" means in all these words like evolution/ revolution". And then, as happens, my thoughts ambled along, & I never made it to google. So THANK YOU for answering my question unexpectedly!
My past 6 years have been one continuous experience of turning & mind-changing. About god, hearts, purposes, autonomies, structures, souls, everything. Sometimes I have felt dizzy with all the turning. One of the more recent understandings/decisions is that maybe I don’t lose people. Not really. The experience of/with them changes...but I am in love with Perdita Finn's concept of "the long story of our souls;" and this hope that we keep finding who we're meant to find, over and over, feels like a puzzle piece I have been searching the cushions for when it was hiding in my pocket the whole time.
The seventh grade boy walked straight toward me in the hallway after school carrying a gym bag, his horn case, and a back pack strapped to his shoulders. He could hardly move, burdened with so many responsibilities. Even so, he approached me with purpose and began scolding me for not greeting him that morning. “I said, “Hi Mr. Coon” and you didn’t pay any attention to me. You just walked right on by.”
His honesty and courage shocked me and got me to thinking about how many other students I had passed that morning without acknowledging their presence. The next morning, as well as the mornings after, I gave more attention to the students than my agenda. I later learned that paying attention to the present moment can be sacramental. The priestly wisdom of the burdened and brave thirteen year old was a turning point.
I sometimes describe my work life as “swimming upstream” to describe a journey to understand and address root causes of chronic health conditions like diabetes or heart disease. It is not turning, because turning would be letting myself turn around and go with the flow. It is sometimes tiring to swim against the current, and here toward the end of a life’s work, I am looking for a backwater to pause and rest.
When I was 15, my English teacher took a group of us to a Peter, Paul and Mary concert in Buffalo. I saw two neatly bearded guys, each with a guitar, next to a svelte long-haired blonde. I wanted to be them, as close as they were to a Mary as I could be. The next day I climbed to our dusty attic, where I knew there was a long-neglected guitar that a family friend had given to my older brother. It didn't turn out to be a magnet for a girl to sing with me. It - and its many successors - did become treasured friends that, for sixty years, have been constants in my life. They have seen me through all of life's turns. I often pick of my guitar and float with it through a song by New Hampshire folksinger Bill Staines. It expresses beautifully how the voltas in our lives define our flow from birth to death.
River
Bill Staines
I was born in the path of the winter wind
And raised where the mountains are old
Their springtime waters came dancing down
And I remember the tales they told
The whistling ways of my younger days
Too quickly have faded on by
But all of their memories linger on
Like the light in a fading sky
River, take me along
In your sunshine, sing me your song
Ever moving and winding and free
You rolling old river
You changing old river
Let's you and me, river
Run down to the sea
I've been to the city and back again
I've been moved by some things that I've learned
Met a lot of good people and I've called them friends
We lost 7 years when we were apart. But as Kahlil Gibran says (day 23 in Being Here) "The deeper the sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain." We have gained so much joy. And Love, wisdom and gratitude.
I've experienced many turnings in my life, both towards and away from, some turnings deliberately done, others more confusedly done. But learning through them has been the better development of who I am!!
like bolts of lightening in slow motion. After years of feeling bitterly towards a brother, I found myself thinking something warmly about him. It was a very very small thing but the light went on in my head. I distinctly recall at that moment deciding I would never hold a warm thing in my heart about someone without expressing it. It didn't magically change my relationship with my brother but softened it and more importantly I began to see how well this helped prevent me from turning me against myself and into a bitter older age. As life accumulates bitter comes easier. So efforts toward the tiniest but sincere gratitudes continue to guide me in receiving and accumulating the slow motion effects of these voltas more routinely
When I left home to go to university, I lived in a messy house share, this was the time of student revolts and such, also muesli and organic food arrived. After and during those years (sabbatical) I lived my way through various commune scenarios in Europe, more or less convinced that a communal, shared life was going to change the world for good, nothing less. My child was born at home in one such communes, a crumbling mansion with high ceilings, no heating and an overgrown orchard, endless house meetings, vast pots of vegetable stew, homemade bread, goats and so on.
A few years later, through reasons we told ourselves were purely economical, we, ie partner, child and myself, suddenly lived in a small bungalow in a far away country and I remember that moment, my volta, when I stepped out of the hot shower and looked at the shampoo bottle knowing that nobody but myself will use this, nobody will forget to replace it but myself. I don't have to live in a group.
In 1975 at the age of 33 I turned from scientific research in England to an unknown future in France. I finally became a rather reluctant university English teacher to science students. One day near retirement some 15 years ago, my students were waiting in the courtyard and as I walked through the crowd someone shouted “We love you!” and as they cheered I felt at last the full flowering of my turn. I retired a happy man.
I am remembering the time my mom asked me to drive to our local parish school to pick up my younger brother John; he was attending a CCD (i.e., religious instruction) class. I was already annoyed that I had to pick him up. But when he was supposed to be waiting for me when I arrived in the parking lot and was not there, I became incensed. When he finally came into the car, I belittled him. Then, perhaps for the first time in my life, I saw my brother and recognized his vulnerability - his humanity. I felt ashamed and vowed to not only never belittle him again, but to always affirm his goodness. Years later I wrote this poem about my brother, but came to see it was really a poem about me and, in a certain sense, about each one of us.
A yearning yawp
Echoing such a lonely melody
A hearty laugh
That’s really a cry
Pretending
Or simply unsure
A human heart
Tender
That little boy
Running
Naked in the wild
With a grin
And a sly smile
A man now
Longing for a true friend
In the messiness of things
A human heart
Hoping for a break
For something new
For something real
My brother
So close
So far.
I am currently in the midst of a volta that has not quite run to the end to know how it turns out. So instead I’ll say that 30+ years ago I was testing the edges of blades and reading up on sedatives as my near-constant “ideation” of self-harm had moved on to “planning”. I was so close to it, then my boss had a heart attack at work, a product of overwork and self-destructive behaviours… I’ll skip the details but right now I sit here next to him on the lounge with our aged (and fifth) dog at our feet.
I had an unexpected turn 46 years ago that has left me using a wheelchair for that amount of time. It was unexpected and catastrophic and when I reminisce about it it's still is unbelievable. I have come to terms with it and have lived a Wonderful Life. I still am living a Wonderful Life but oh what my life would have been like without that term often bothers me. The drunken young man who crashed into me never looked back. Of course he was unable to leave the scene but I wonder in my mind what his life has been like. I love reading your posts. Perhaps I'll try to attend the Columbia reading if it is wheelchair accessible.
My life has been defined by two voltas that shook me to my core, that radically changed the path of the possible. Just after I turned 16 I got pregnant. In a daze, I dropped out of high school, got married and tried to figure out how to be a wife and mother while lacking the maturity and insight to do either well. But we hung in there, stayed together, chose to have another baby. It was hard and I carry many regrets, but the babies grew and became boys, then young men.
When I was 41 and feeling like the horizons of life were opening to me, my younger son, who had just turned 21, died in an accident. He was the sparkling joy of our family. I won't try to describe the abyss that opened, the years of devastation. I remember thinking, "My God, I could live another 40 years or more, I'll never be able to survive that." But here I am. I'll be 70 later this year. It's a beautiful rainy morning, the cat is curled on my lap, I have strong coffee in my favorite mug, and my dear husband is getting me a bowl of oatmeal (because we can't disturb the cat). My older son is well. I have gratitude for all these blessings. I try my best to keep growing and to hold my heart open. I try my best to carry my sorrow and grief -- and my joy and hope -- with grace.
Thursday, my 10 year old son Finn, the sensitive fierce one, had a overwhelming day at the baseball field. His Anger and emotional outbursts were uncontainable - it was rough. On the way home from the game I proceeded to lecture him about all that went wrong. When we arrived home Finn went up to his room. I stood in the quiet kitchen with my 5 year old Jones, who witnessed Finn’s meltdown and my subsequent lecture. Jones, grabs my hand and says, ‘maybe you should just give Finn a hug and tell him you love him’.
Through wet eyes, knowing a 5 year old just stated the truth in the room - the ‘volta’ (I call her Jones) swept through me. I went up to Finn’s room, got on my knees and hugged him. His fierce tense body just collapsed and gave into mine.
Pivot, Repentance and good enough.
Wish us luck today, Finn has a baseball game at 11:30am PST
They were kind, committed people who believed in the idea of seeking God's will for one's life. Following His plan guaranteed a fulfilled life. Which also meant that everything else was a mistake. As a young person, it was all about setting the course: Career, place to live, life partner. Difficult times, when the idea of a "plan" was reassuring. But those who knew God continued to surprise us with details: God wants women who let men take the lead, God wants index cards with prayer requests that are repeated weekly. What he doesn't want are clothes from India - because of the pagan motifs. It gives me the creeps. Of the kind people who care about my salvation. Of their rigidity and their fear. Of the confinement into which they tried to drive God. The Volta? I couldn't live as a puppet, I was as tired of the laborious exploration of someone else's will as I was of the anxious self-examination. I struggled to get out of this fundamentalist corset. I sought out other people, other influences, new ideas. The price? Loss of friends, probably ending up on index cards as a prayer request myself. The ground was shaking but, interestingly, I felt little guilt. In the counselling centre where I later worked for a long time, there was a note in the waiting room: There's only one reason to change things: you just can't take it anymore.
I kid you not, I was just this past week thinking to myself, "hmm, I wonder what that root "vol" means in all these words like evolution/ revolution". And then, as happens, my thoughts ambled along, & I never made it to google. So THANK YOU for answering my question unexpectedly!
My past 6 years have been one continuous experience of turning & mind-changing. About god, hearts, purposes, autonomies, structures, souls, everything. Sometimes I have felt dizzy with all the turning. One of the more recent understandings/decisions is that maybe I don’t lose people. Not really. The experience of/with them changes...but I am in love with Perdita Finn's concept of "the long story of our souls;" and this hope that we keep finding who we're meant to find, over and over, feels like a puzzle piece I have been searching the cushions for when it was hiding in my pocket the whole time.
The seventh grade boy walked straight toward me in the hallway after school carrying a gym bag, his horn case, and a back pack strapped to his shoulders. He could hardly move, burdened with so many responsibilities. Even so, he approached me with purpose and began scolding me for not greeting him that morning. “I said, “Hi Mr. Coon” and you didn’t pay any attention to me. You just walked right on by.”
His honesty and courage shocked me and got me to thinking about how many other students I had passed that morning without acknowledging their presence. The next morning, as well as the mornings after, I gave more attention to the students than my agenda. I later learned that paying attention to the present moment can be sacramental. The priestly wisdom of the burdened and brave thirteen year old was a turning point.
I sometimes describe my work life as “swimming upstream” to describe a journey to understand and address root causes of chronic health conditions like diabetes or heart disease. It is not turning, because turning would be letting myself turn around and go with the flow. It is sometimes tiring to swim against the current, and here toward the end of a life’s work, I am looking for a backwater to pause and rest.
When I was 15, my English teacher took a group of us to a Peter, Paul and Mary concert in Buffalo. I saw two neatly bearded guys, each with a guitar, next to a svelte long-haired blonde. I wanted to be them, as close as they were to a Mary as I could be. The next day I climbed to our dusty attic, where I knew there was a long-neglected guitar that a family friend had given to my older brother. It didn't turn out to be a magnet for a girl to sing with me. It - and its many successors - did become treasured friends that, for sixty years, have been constants in my life. They have seen me through all of life's turns. I often pick of my guitar and float with it through a song by New Hampshire folksinger Bill Staines. It expresses beautifully how the voltas in our lives define our flow from birth to death.
River
Bill Staines
I was born in the path of the winter wind
And raised where the mountains are old
Their springtime waters came dancing down
And I remember the tales they told
The whistling ways of my younger days
Too quickly have faded on by
But all of their memories linger on
Like the light in a fading sky
River, take me along
In your sunshine, sing me your song
Ever moving and winding and free
You rolling old river
You changing old river
Let's you and me, river
Run down to the sea
I've been to the city and back again
I've been moved by some things that I've learned
Met a lot of good people and I've called them friends
Felt the change when the seasons turned
I've heard all the songs that the children sing
And listened to love's melodies
I've felt my own music within me rise
Like the wind in the autumn trees
River, take me along
In your sunshine, sing me your song
Ever moving and winding and free
You rolling old river
You changing old river
Let's you and me, river
Run down to the sea
Someday when the flowers are blooming still
Someday when the grass is still green
My rolling waters will round the bend
And flow into the open sea
So here's to the rainbow that's followed me here
And here's to the friends that I know
And here's to the song that's within me now
I will sing it wherever I go
River, take me along
In your sunshine, sing me your song
Ever moving and winding and free
You rolling old river
You changing old river
Let's you and me, river
Run down to the sea
I married the same man twice.
We lost 7 years when we were apart. But as Kahlil Gibran says (day 23 in Being Here) "The deeper the sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain." We have gained so much joy. And Love, wisdom and gratitude.
Thanks for your intuitive insights!
I've experienced many turnings in my life, both towards and away from, some turnings deliberately done, others more confusedly done. But learning through them has been the better development of who I am!!
Wrote this poem almost a decade ago; my life continues to be marked by "divine detours."
Divine Detour
I wanted to turn left to go home, but the incessancy of oncoming traffic made that
impossible.
So I turned right, finding along my circuitous route
Vibrant pinks, yellows and purples springing against green lushness
under a blue, cerulean sky -
So my heart sang in gratitude to witness such unexpected afternoon glories.
Israel was also heading to a promised home, this one yet to be known,
but fear and rebellion kept them in the desert, wandering for forty years.
Yet even so, You met them in manna, meat, bitter water made sweet,
as well as cloud, fire and darkness.
So You’ve met me, though my journey continues to take unexpected turns.
Never has my trajectory been pristine or straight- try as I might -
But Your Presence and Grace have never left me,
Even as I’ve stumbled over barren rocks and into desert oases,
Making my way to Your Promised Land by way of many divine detours.
Volta in life has felt to me
like bolts of lightening in slow motion. After years of feeling bitterly towards a brother, I found myself thinking something warmly about him. It was a very very small thing but the light went on in my head. I distinctly recall at that moment deciding I would never hold a warm thing in my heart about someone without expressing it. It didn't magically change my relationship with my brother but softened it and more importantly I began to see how well this helped prevent me from turning me against myself and into a bitter older age. As life accumulates bitter comes easier. So efforts toward the tiniest but sincere gratitudes continue to guide me in receiving and accumulating the slow motion effects of these voltas more routinely
When I left home to go to university, I lived in a messy house share, this was the time of student revolts and such, also muesli and organic food arrived. After and during those years (sabbatical) I lived my way through various commune scenarios in Europe, more or less convinced that a communal, shared life was going to change the world for good, nothing less. My child was born at home in one such communes, a crumbling mansion with high ceilings, no heating and an overgrown orchard, endless house meetings, vast pots of vegetable stew, homemade bread, goats and so on.
A few years later, through reasons we told ourselves were purely economical, we, ie partner, child and myself, suddenly lived in a small bungalow in a far away country and I remember that moment, my volta, when I stepped out of the hot shower and looked at the shampoo bottle knowing that nobody but myself will use this, nobody will forget to replace it but myself. I don't have to live in a group.