Beginnings, Endings and The Fledgling's Prayer

Today on my walk around the lake there were a pair of parent swans and three teenage cygnets. The cygnets were almost the size of their parents, but they were completely grey. They weren’t little and cute and fluffy. And they weren’t big and striking and beautiful like their swan parents. They stuck together and followed their mom, at least for now, and dad came and went.

I stared at them for a while because their in-between-ness warmed my heart. They had the graceful necks that would soon make them the stunning creatures that they are—and you really wouldn’t know to look at them—if you had never seen a swan—that there would be this next transition into beauty for them.

I have these transitions of growth in mind because it’s that season again—it’s fledging season—when kids go off to school—whether you are dropping your child at college, or whether you are walking them to first grade.

The thing about fledging is that it’s a period of practice and not an event. There’s the long, uncomfortable phase of growing feathers—not feeling quite yourself. And then there’s the long phase of sitting on the edge of the nest and flapping your wings. And then there are practice flights. Practice hunting or fishing or eating. And more flapping.

We need to do more celebrating of the flapping. And we need to celebrate beginnings. We often celebrate endings—things like graduations and retirements. But we don’t celebrate beginnings. There seems to be the belief that celebrations need to be earned—rather than simply be an act of grace for the journey forward. I got to see this idea in action this week visiting a German friend. Here they celebrate the first day of school with a series of events that ends in a big family party—with presents and cake and lots of fun and conversation.

And probably—we need to hold the connections between the two—beginnings and endings. These cygnets will lose this special phase of their lives soon—as they shift into their graceful regal stature. We need to find a way to celebrate both: the beginnings and the endings. The losses and the new beginnings. It’s hard to hold them both as we grow. But it’s really the combination of the two that allows us to grow.

A poem for all who are supporting growth:

The Fledgling’s Prayer

These are my wings—
Feathers and muscles and sinew
grown from your love and care,
sewn and mended
with your devotion and constancy.

And now— 
I am ready to soar
with all that I am,
rom all that you gave me. 

All flights are practice flights.
They happen in that
blessed space between us.
A space wide enough 
to stretch my wings
but not lose touch.

Tossed into the air
an arm’s length away.
Jumping off the dock,
three feet away.
Dropped off at Kindergarten,
three blocks away.
Dropped off at college,
Three hours away. 
All flights are big flights.

And how did this happen?

None of us ever knows for sure.
I think perhaps Joy and Sorrow
grabbed hands and leapt
—forming the wings
that carry me forward.
.
But remember no one leaps, really. 

I didn’t fly because I
jumped—so much as I simply
forgot for a moment to hold on. 
I did. I forgot.
I forgot because the wind,
or is it God? –
whispered in my ear,
and sang the melody of my future.

I forgot for a moment to hold tight
and the wind caught my wings 
pulling me forward.
It does. Life pulls you forward. 

You are not the wind beneath my wings
as that old song croons.

No, you are the wings themselves.
I carry you with me and 
you will always carry me.

The wind? Well that is God’s song
for each of us, our purpose, our passion.
It is the tidal pull of the universe 
helping me to find my place,
helping me to share my gifts.

And you, sitting proud and brave
on the edge of our nest.
This small prayer is for you.

May the sight of my wings flashing 
and the tales of my long flights 
bring you as much joy as they bring me.
I can hear the wind calling and my heart
is full of the hopes we have both carried. 

The fullness of myself,
the fullness of your love, 
and the fullness of the world you gave me
take up my whole being.

This fullness defies language
except to say
that it used to be the feeling
I had when I leaned on you,
when you had hold of me.

And now—oh joy—
the nest I used to rest in
has made a place inside of me. 

But for you, as for me, 
there is also sorrow.
I am sad that this prayer
is all I have to offer you
in return for my wings.

And my heart aches imagining views 
and vistas we will not share. 
Do they exist if you don’t see them too?
Do I exist, if you can’t see me?
If I forget you for a moment, 
will you remember me?

I pray that we both may find comfort
in the pages of books you read to me long ago,
that no matter what—
we are doing or 
no matter where we are flying—
we both live under the very same moon.
And all we need to do is to look up
in to the night sky
to know that we are still connected,
to know that we will always belong,
to know that wherever we are,
we are home.

— Gretchen Schmelzer

 

© 2022 Gretchen L. Schmelzer, PhD

 

Living Between Two Languages

Photo Credit: Daniela Dimitrova - Pixabay

“Mitzuwirken ist nicht Überhebung
an dem unbeschreiblichen Bezug,
immer inniger wird die Verwebung,
nur Getragensein ist nicht genug.

Deine ausgeübten Kräfte spanne,
bis sie reichen, zwischen zwein
Widersprüchen … Denn im Manne
will der Gott beraten sein.


To work with things is not hubris
when building the association beyond words;
denser and denser the pattern becomes–
being carried along is not enough.

Take your well-disciplined strengths
and stretch them between two
opposing poles. Because inside human beings
is where God learns.
”
— Just As The Winged Energy Of Delight by Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by Robert Bly

I have long loved this notion that Rilke talks about of being stretched between two poles—I am fascinated with the space between. I am a person who is often impatient in my attempts to get from here to there. And yet because I love learning, and because I have many areas that need mending and where I need to keep learning—this middle space is where I spend much of my time.

And this poem has been floating though my head because this week I am living between two languages and if attention is the act that creates our sense of existence, then language is the way we make meaning of it. And when you are living between two languages you are asked to inhabit that in-between space with a fullness that rarely happens in adulthood.

This week I am in Germany where I was an exchange student and not only is it a vacation in the traditional sense of being away from work, but living a week in a foreign language is, in a very real way, a vacation from myself. I get to live in the world with a different set of thoughts, a different way of engaging in conversation, and a different orientation to my world.  

By adulthood, so much of our thought and communication is habit. Our brains are always going and there is a constant internal chatter. Much of the time we complain about our internal chatter—but it is a highly functional aspect of being human. This internal talk is meant as a kind of inner coach: to help us pay attention, stay on track, follow the rules of the group and learn new things. We think of self-talk as our ideas—as the thing that we think—the thoughts that make us who we are.  But much of our self-talk came from others. It was ‘other talk’ that we listened to and made our own. It was the voices of parents, teachers, coaches. All language is receptive first—we are born listening—we take in everything first and learn to speak much later.

And learning and living in a foreign language is a lovely experiment in living in a different set of thoughts. I didn’t hear the same set of expectations or rules of living in German that I heard in English. I didn’t experience the same trauma and have none of the protections of internal dialogue that you create to survive it. And while I am here I am too busy trying to pay attention to what is actually being said or what I need to say to bother to translate any internal dialogue that might arise—so it fades away—leaving me only with my present work of listening or speaking in what feel like  new words.

This space between two languages is quieter—it is more open. It is a moment of living in a self that is unencumbered, even for small stretches of time, by the old tapes, the old rules.

In his first book, The Brain that Changes Itself, one of the many neuroscientists that Norman Doidge describes is the work of Taub, who discovered how the brain and body can heal from stroke. Typically, with a stroke—there can be loss of capacity on one side of the body—you lose the capacity to use your right arm and leg, for example. And the conventional treatment has been physical therapy of the affected body parts—you would exercise the weak body part which wasn’t very effective and eventually you would simply get by with the limbs that worked.

Taub turned this practice upside down. In his work with primates, he found that if he constrained the limb that worked—by wrapping it to the body with an ace bandage or putting a cast on it so it couldn’t move at all, the limb that was affected and wasn’t working, actually began working again. The brain rewired the connection to that part of the body. And when he tried this approach on humans it had the same effect. If you put an oven mitt on the good hand—the hand that still worked, and had people do tasks with their affected hand, they regained their ability to use their weakened hands. And even years after the stroke the weakened part of the body could be strengthened this way.

As a psychologist and someone who has struggled with my own healing, I have long tried to figure out how to translate this tangible and practical solution for rewiring into the more intangible psychological realm: how do you put an oven mitt on your defenses so you don’t use them anymore, how do you wrap up or quiet your habits of responding so you have to lean in to new ones?

One thing I have come to know for sure about healing is that if you can get the feeling of the ‘new thing’ even for a moment, even in a dream or in some way understand it through metaphor—you can work your way towards it in increments. Many years ago, in my own healing, when I was working to find this in between resting place I would lie in a hammock—suspended from gravity and held between those two poles that Rilke described.  

And at least for self-talk and some of our inner dialogue—a foreign language may be the closest I’ve experienced to that oven mitt. Living between two languages I am getting to see how you can live for even moments at a time with a part of the self that moves freely without the old constraints.

© 2022 Gretchen L. Schmelzer, PhD

Bonus Poem* A poem I wrote years ago inspired by Rilke inspired by the poem above

Rilke’s Hammock

 When Rilke said to take your two

well disciplined strengths and stretch them—

between two opposing poles

he was just showing us

how to set up a hammock

that might hold our whole world—

maybe even make it whole.


This hammock inside your heart,

he said,

is where God learns.

Okay, the hammock was really my idea.

But what else would you do with such great ropes

braided together with your strengths?

Besides, it was a beautiful day

and I wanted a space big enough

for both me and God to climb in. 


I don’t know what God learned that day

from my brave attempts to lean back

swinging in canvas strung from those opposing poles,

my eyes looking up into the treetops

and my weight trusting a gravity I have never known.

God seemed to rest while listening to the wind through the pines

and it was my turn to learn something about love.

Selected Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke
By Rilke, Rainer Maria, Bly, Robert
Buy on Amazon

 

Reflecting What Shines Through

Photo Credit: Ta Hai, Scopio

“A telescope’s sensitivity, or how much detail it can see, is directly related to the size of the mirror area that collects light from the objects being observed. Webb’s primary mirror is 6.5 meters (21 feet 4 inches) across; a mirror this large has never before been launched into space.”
— NASA Goddard Space Center

I began this piece of writing looking out of a window of an airport lounge with clouds reflected in a red metal roof. It got me thinking about how you can look in many directions to see what you are looking at. At what you are trying to understand. In this case, I found myself looking down as a way to look up

Reflections require light and a still enough surface to reflect the image back. And reflecting inwards isn’t much different—it requires us to shine our attention on something and be still enough to discern what we see. Reflections require a certain stillness and slowness.

A few weeks ago I came across a video online of a man dancing in front of what was supposed to be a mirror, or the outline of a mirror, except instead of an exact reflection, the man was dancing and being ‘reflected’ by a young boy—ostensibly his younger self. It’s a beautiful piece of artistry—the dance and the idea made real though art—of dancing with a self that once was—both to see it, and appreciate—have it reflected so you might see something new—understand something new—or hold something old—perhaps something you didn’t like before-differently.

Reflections make you look at something differently. Take the universe for example.  The recent images from the Webb telescope have shown us brand new things about our universe and its expanse of space and time through the power of reflection. The Telescope has 3 huge mirrors making it possible to see faint stars and galaxies by picking up their light and reflections. The power of being able to see across time at a scale that had only been theorized before: being able to see galaxies that existed 290 million years after the big bang. The ability to hold what is there to see and what no longer exists at the same time.

All of these ways and ideas of reflection and dancing with a past self are figural for me this week as I return to visit a host family I lived with in high school and the family and friends who were part of that year. When you visit old friend and family, you also visit the ‘you’ that met them and knew them. It’s a chance to be in all years at once. It’s a chance to see the past dancing with the present—the “me” that was—and to begin to get still enough to really look and see what still remains—what, literally, shines through.

I can tell you with absolute certainty that what shines through is not my German grammar. But I can say that there is something that remains constant over these many years—even through growth, experience and much change: there is something that shines consistently—is it love? Is it hope? Today I think what stood out with reflection was appreciation: If reflection’s task is to shine some light on something to be seen, it feels fitting to shine the light back—to see what you couldn’t see then with your current perspective—much like those ancient galaxies. They have always been there—but we didn’t have the reflective capacity to see them.

Today I could see a sturdiness in my 17-year-old self that I couldn’t see then, or even really feel then. A sturdiness, an optimism, and a willingness to keep trying—regardless of whether I was good at it or understood it. I think I have always taken these traits for granted but reflecting today helped me see how long they have been part of my universe—how long they have been supporting me and how different my year, and my subsequent endeavors would have been without them.

Reflecting gives you time to catch up to yourself— the way we are all catching up to the universe. Reflecting gives you a chance to take it all in: the things you like and the things you don’t. The strengths you know you have and the ones you may have missed—and even the ones you may have ignored—taken for granted—because there wasn’t enough light at the time to see them.

© 2022 Gretchen L. Schmelzer, PhD

The Hardest Part of Change is So Very Small

Photo credit: Jonathon Rieder pixabay.com

There’s a lot of energy and momentum in making change. When you begin something new you feel can feel energized and excited. You can feel the effect of whatever the new thing is. You can feel the impact of the new thing on your identity (I’m the kind of person who…..). And you can begin to imagine a future where the new thing is just part of your routine and not new.

But the shift from new to routine is a big one. This transition has to pass through that messy middle phase of learning. It has to pass through that middle phase of integration. It has to survive the all the mornings and afternoons where you believe that you can skip that day. The gauntlet of “Maybe this isn’t the change I want to make.” Or, “Was this a good idea to begin with?

The hardest parts of change are so very small. They are moments. They are quick thoughts. “I could just do this tomorrow.” “I don’t have time today.”

You start doing a new behavior—walking, or yoga, or mindfulness (or writing more frequently) and it goes along pretty well and then there’s a day or two where you have events that interfere or parts of your routine that are off and suddenly that new change, that new behavior is inconvenient. It’s not difficult, it’s not harder than the day before, it’s just not easy.

The fact that what interferes is small is what makes it hard. When we are confronted with big challenges – we often rise to the occasion. We know to muster our resources. We rally.

But when the challenges show up small. When they are simple everyday thoughts that are soothing and make sense in the moment we don’t interrupt, we don’t argue. We nod politely and go along.

The biggest catalyst to change is constancy. Staying in contact with the thing you are trying to do or learn to do. It’s about frequency rather than depth. In many ways the principle of beginning any new behavior or change is not really different than the way we need to create any relationship or friendship. You are building a relationship both with the new behavior AND the part of you that is doing the new behavior. You are spending time with it. You are encouraging it. You are getting to know it and the different things it wants and needs. And most of all you are showing up for it –even when its inconvenient—even on days when you may not want to. You are becoming a good and decent friend to it, and yourself.

If you think of the new change as a friend—then the issue isn’t whether or not you will spend time together, but how. And for how long. I have a dear friend I talk to almost every day. Some days it’s 5 minutes, some days it’s an hour. Some days it’s a text. But the important part for us is connecting at some point in our day. So the issue for change is how you can connect with it—spend time with it that day. It won’t always be the same. Maybe you are trying to make friends with walking—and it’s a really busy day of errands—can you take it along? Can you park farther away from each of your errands and get your walking in that way? Or can you walk around the block at the end of the day and use that walk for mindfulness and gratitude—and be content with a small contact with it, even if it doesn’t look like your imagined goal?

The problem with behavior change is that it is usually connected to a goal or an outcome—and there can be an all-or-nothing quality to it. There’s a ‘right way to do it.’ And on days that are inconvenient—or where we have other pressing priorities, we can fall into that do it/not do it mentality. But friendships and relationships are different. They aren’t all or nothing. Each moment of connection doesn’t have to be a peak experience. You can just hang out together. You can sit quietly together. On bad days, you can just be a comforting presence.

And that’s what we need to bring to these middle parts of change. A kind comforting presence. The ability to stay connected to the new behavior. To be in its presence. To bring it along or sit beside it—even on days where we feel a bit rushed. To be okay with it not being exactly what we hoped that day—but because it’s now a friend, confident that it will be there tomorrow. That together you can figure it out and stay the course.

© 2022 Gretchen L. Schmelzer, PhD