A Song for Youth & Age--Part 2

 

My previous posting detailed a few of my post-convent years. Accompanying that posting was a video of Judy Collins singing the song “Turn, Turn, Turn,” for which Pete Seeger used eight biblical verses. Those verses have woven themselves into the fabric of my life.

Today, I’m returning to one line: “a time you may embrace, a time to refrain from embracing.” I want to share how that line impacted my life in 1967 and on my recent birthday. 

 

When I first heard Seeger sing those words, I’d just been released from the religious vows I’d taken in 1963. I’d taken them in good faith, trusting that in living them, I would more deeply abide in the community of Oneness. 

 

By November 1966, I was mentally ill, hallucinating, yet holding myself together so that I wouldn’t end up in an insane asylum. In a stupor, I walked away from my home of nearly nine years. I’d embraced that home, that life, those vows. Now it was time to cease from embracing them. But, oh, the feeling of failure, the disdain I felt for myself.

 

In that time of internal turmoil, Seeger’s song eased my mind. Trees embraced leaves in Spring; in Autumn, they let go of those leaves. Nature embraced; then refrained from embracing. 

 

Nature let go. Left the past behind.

 

“Turn. Turn. Turn.”

 

I, too, was part of nature. Given that, I began to think about the vows taken in marriage. For thirty years, I’d accepted the Roman Catholic’s teaching on divorce. If there was a season in which I could let go of my vows, then why not those who were married? Didn’t all people change with time? Weren’t they drawn inexorably to a fulfillment that they hadn’t even recognized at one time?

 

And that, of course, was the path to looking at all that I’d accepted as irrevocable. To look. To examine. To question. To let go of the rigidity of my certainity and to open myself to possibilities and alternatives. To see flip sides. To become, in a real way, a critical thinker willing to examine all my beliefs about everything and discover what, if anything, was immutable. 

 

That one verse on embracing led to the overturning of much I’d accepted as unalterable and helped me begin to let go of the judgmental attitude that there is only one way to be, to think, to act—and it’s my way! 

 

Flash forward to my recent birthday: A friend treated me to lunch. As we ate, we talked about aging. She expressed regret because she didn’t get more done each day. I found myself saying, “You know for everything there is a season. During this past winter, you made quilts for your daughter . . .”

 

“I haven’t quilted since Christmas,” she countered.

 

“Maybe,” I offered, “you’re in a new season, one of taking care of yourself. You’ve set a walking goal, and you’re accomplishing it!” 

 

Once home, I considered my own new season. As I’ve posted before, for decades, I believed I had to accomplish something every day to be worthwhile. While encouraging others to be gracious to themselves, I’ve demanded results of myself. What a masochist!

 

Ah, there it is: For decades, I’ve talked the talk; now has come the season to walk the walk . . . of letting go of always feeling that I am not enough. For me, now is a season of contentment in simply being; a season of delight in holding dear who I grew up to be.

 

At 10:30 PM on my birthday, content with where and who I am, I lay on my bed, put in my eyes the final drops of the day, and said to my mini-google, “Please play some music for me.” 

 

And guess what? 

 

The song Google chose, one I hadn’t heard in years, was Pete Seeger singing, “Turn, Turn, Turn.” 

 

Mystery and peace.

(PS: It's another mystery to me why white appears behind so many lines!)