But as I was walking along the rim on my way to the shrine, it struck me how I live my life very much as a psychological archeologist or sorts, always mulling around and digging through the terrain of my life in search of fossils and artifacts buried within a family history that helps me to understand the person I am today.
One of the things I love about the Grand Canyon is how she is not afraid of her history, how she openly displays the layers of her depth without fear or shame. Her edges are rough and jagged, but there is no judgment. In fact, the magestic beauty of this canyon is created precisely because of the erosion of facades that would have forever hidden the geologic treasures beneath the surface, treasures uncovered by the most tenacious and patient of archeological pursuits.
I am here at the canyon for a reason. . . .
A few days ago, one of my Facebook friends had a birthday, and she posted this wonderful post about how her mom calls her every year on her birthday to retell the wonderful story of her birth. Such a sweet story of how the love and adoration of a mother for her daughter continues through the years, with layers of meaning being added with each telling and retelling. Such a lovely gift each year, to be reminded of how loved and cherished you are, even from the moment of your birth.
I believe that all children should be raised in environments where they feel loved and cherished, regardless of the circumstances of their parentage and birth.
I have continued to think about my own birth story, not such a warm and fuzzy story as my dear friend's birth story, perhaps, but it's the story that belongs to me whether I want that story or not, so this is the story through which I must dig to find my personal truth. But that's what's so lovely about living my life as a psychological archeologist, because I love the process of digging for the treasure buried within my spirit. And what I realize today is that our birth stories are actually a very complex interweaving of stories that hold and contain us until we are willing and able to start writing our own story. So I was born into my mother's story, as well as my father's. But I was also born into the story of each significant person at that specific conjunction of time and geography, stories that continue to shape and inform my birth story, I suppose, but these interwoven stories are actually not my story at all. . . .these stories belong to the people around me.
My story is still in the process of being writtten.
My friend Christine reminded me today how baby elephants are trained with thick and heavy chains around their legs when they are young. For the baby elephant, these chains are strong enough to restrain and contain them, and once they have accepted this reality, their keepers no longer need to use the chains. So the full grown elephant full of an unrestrainable strength is thusly restrained by nothing more than a simple rope. The full-grown elephant never question the truth of what is wrapped around their leg, because of the reality they lived with in their developing reality. Such a wonderful metaphor of how the stories we are born into have the power to become nothing more than tiny ropes around our spirits that if we test them at all would snap in an instant.
My spirit is the river that carves its glorious path through the canyon, a layered landscape formed and created out of the sediments of a history that may contain the river, but does not define the path the river's spirit cuts through it. And it is this dance between the river and the canyon that calls to me, for some days it is the canyon which shapes the course of the river, as some rocks lie defiant, like hard dying beliefs embedded within the hardened sediment of stories that came long before the river, appearing from day to day to never erode away. But the river, just like the canyon, she is patient and tenacious. . . .and the more contained she is, the stronger and more powerful she becomes. . . .and so the rock eventually yields and gives way to the undeniable strength of the never ending flow of the river spirit's path slowly carving its way home. . .