Thank you visiting me in my virtual world! Most likely you are here because you’ve read a book or two of mine, and I thank you for that. I’d like to share a bit more with you about where I live now, and the work that I do. Perhaps our paths will cross someday...
For better or worse, it has always been my habit to move. Sometimes I uproot to follow work, or a loved one, or because of health or financial challenges. Sometimes, I just get restless in my skin. I am a bit of a gypsy that way. I take after my paternal, Hungarian grandmother, who would have looked at home in any gypsy caravan from any era.
Today, my bedroom window looks out into the woods of Indiana, a state of red cardinals, limestone, and tulip trees. The forest out my window is not one of pine and spruce, but of hardwood: deciduous trees with leaves of every shape and size. The trees are tall and wave in the wind like reeds: beech, maple, hickory, poplar, hemlock, and paw-paw. In the fall, leaves tumble down in showers of gold and scarlet. Birds I had not known in my years in the west sing and cackle in the trees overhead. At night, thousands of night insects and seven different kinds of tree frogs hold concert in the branches, and foxes make strange cries in the creek hollow below.
Wherever I live, I put up feeders for the birds. It has become an instinct, this compulsion I have to hear the wild songs and poems of each landscape I inhabit. The sounds of each place—its creatures, leaves, rain, wind, waters, and human-made sounds—are a language, a unique dialect of a particular place and a particular moment in history. Part of me is always fine tuned to the sound of that language, needing to hear, to decipher, and to be part of that mother-tongue in any way I can.
In my upstairs office, I write next to a meditation space filled with treasures from my life, and from many traditions: my Chinese dragon birth symbol, a silver Celtic knot, my Lakota medicine pipe, and a collection of what I call my “mother dolls”—Quan Yin, a grinning skeleton figure called Bone Mother, Peli, and a Black Madonna. There, too, lay snips of hair from my beloved animal companions gone long, alongside the ashes of my father.
By circumstance or fate, a desire to live close to the Sacred has been the siren call drawing me forward since I was a child. Do you remember being very young and utterly enchanted with the stars, the butterflies, or with the tiny peeper frog in your hand, and perhaps asking yourself, “Who made THAT?” It’s a question big enough to guide a lifetime, and it’s guided mine for five decades.
Animals and nature have always been my mentors along the way. The self-possession, authenticity, and guilelessness of nature and her others offer untainted reflections of how to live a more fully human life—a life more aligned with what I call “the holy.” The other day, an interviewer asked me, “What priority are animals and nature in your life?” The question startled me for a moment, because I can’t frame my relationship with creatures or creation that way. They ARE my life. They are the lens through which I frame every challenge, every decision, and every important relationship in my life. If I was a bracelet wearer, I would wear one that said, “What would Nature do?” and I’d be rubbing and turning it constantly on my wrist.
Another major influence on my life was a diagnosis of terminal cancer many years ago. There are no words for the kinds of lasting changes such a prognosis bestows upon a person: no area of my heart, soul, or psyche remained untouched. There are tenfold blessings and terrors that remain with me from that time, and a perspective that comes only with a prognosis of death. Nature and her kin—and the memory of my old dog, Keesha, who had died of cancer—supported me through my cancer odyssey in a way no human could, as cancer supported me in my continuing quest for self-awareness and healing as nothing else could.
As a writer and retreat facilitator, I use what I have to help restore people to themselves, and to the healing power of the living world: I am a storyteller and so I teach with stories—the telling and the writing of them. I am a writer, and so I teach with words on paper about ways to better discover and grow ourselves through a gently cultivated relationship with the living Earth. I am a lover of ritual and ceremony—ancient paths to new perspectives—so I teach, too, with simple ceremonies.
I use these tools in an atmosphere of awe, because I believe that all the ills of the world could be healed if we only lived the spirit of this one tiny word. Awe was never meant to be the passing fancy of a child. It is a gift from the universe that holds the key to living a decent and respectful life for all of our short years on this planet. If you have lost your sense of awe, I implore you: do whatever it takes and go wherever you need to go to find it again.
You live, perhaps, on a different side of the country (or the world) from me. Maybe you dwell in a landscape far different from mine, yet we share so much. We share the ground beneath us; the stars, and the night sky, and full moon. Like me, you know the sound of a stream running, of a bird calling, and of the wind whispering secrets for you alone.
Whether we stand on pavement or soil, beneath mountains, trees, or skyscrapers, nature finds her way to each of us through any pathway she can find. Beneath cracks in the asphalt, she sends her green shoots. On concrete buildings, she laces vines and spider webs and stacks birds’ nests. Under any piece of stone, her civilizations of insects occupy secret worlds unknown to most of us. At night, crickets sing in alleyways and meadows alike.. In acknowledging them, we connect ourselves back to our roots as humans, when nature was our best and only teacher. In listening to them, we connect to a world of wisdom, insight, and peace unavailable to us in books, newspapers, or universities.
Often ignored for their commonness and plentitude, the creatures who share our urban lives are no less remarkable and astounding in their dignity than is the most noble wolf poised, howling, on the most spectacular cliff. I know this because I’ve seen both the sparrow and the wolf, and each has a profound tale to tell us. We have but to listen closely, with awe, to learn their sacred language and hear their sacred stories.
I invite you to join up for my email letter. It is also the place where I announce most of my workshops, lectures, or retreats, including some new “web workshops” I’m developing. And send me your stories, please. We all need stories—to tell them, and to hear them. They, also, are a birthright of our humanness, and nourishment to a hungry heart.
Nature’s Blessings,
Susan
Susan Chernak McElroy
Monroe County, Indiana
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