 |
| Some rights reserved by Tracy Holland |
I was all set to sit down and write a post about personal responsibility tonight...but I've just gotten home from witnessing a friend's reading of her memoir at Duquesne University, and I want to write about that experience. Maybe I'll really end up writing about personal responsibility after all...I guess we'll see by the end of the post, right?
Watching L tonight, I was reminded of the guts it takes to tell a story- to tell it well, to nudge the important details out of hiding, to make room for all the flavors to arrive at the table at just the right moments. It takes even more bravery to tell a personal story- to take a bit of a real and lived life and roll it about in one's hands until an idea emerges, and then roll it about long enough so that a relatable theme peeks its head out, and then to roll it around even longer than that so the story becomes not only relatable, but transformative for both writer and audience.
In writing personal experience into story, and then sharing that story with an audience, L was brave. She took her personal story, her personal pain, and offered it up, laid it on the altar of life, and thus, made it sacred.
This was High Magic. This was taking personal responsibility to the next level by Making Sacred the Wound*, choosing to let life and its pain inform and transform instead of bind and confine. The process calls to mind a seed, breaking open to reach for the light. I cannot think of a better way to discuss personal responsibility than to discuss this sort of sacrifice - the choice to take our experiences, no matter how painful, and sacrifice them to the process of living.
Tonight, I am reminded: we have a choice to reach beyond our containers. We are not root-bound.
*- More on the idea of the Sacred Wound can be found in Diana's Grove's discussion of the Cornerstones of Community in the Bones of Mystery School packet.
