Shedding the Shell

In October, I attended and co-led a Seeking and Listening retreat at the Whidbey Institute. One exercise that we do every retreat is called GOING OUT TO GO IN. Basic instructions are go outside, wander, look around, stop - without thinking about it - when something grabs your attention, sit and simply look at it. After about 10 minutes ask yourself the following questions:

How does this touch me?

What do I FEEL when I look at it?

How is this place/thing/object like me?

Is it like my life in some way?

What can it tell me about myself?

How do I feel connected to it?

What gifts does it give me?

When you feel that you have gotten some message or insight for yourself, thank the object/place and slowly leave it. Return to the retreat house and create something to reflect this gift and time.

This exercise proved to be a pretty powerful one for me. I've done the exercise before, but never has the message or insight stuck with me the way it did in October.

Our retreat team was one member short this fall because sweet Rebecca was down for the count at home with the flu. She usually runs the kitchen and in her absence Shannon and I were doing our best to get meals on the table and tend to our normal duties. We almost didn't "go out to go in" so we could have a little break, but Trudy in her infinite and assertive wisdom insisted that we do the exercise. It rained most of the weekend, so I put on my raincoat and rain pants and headed for the outdoor labyrinth.

Slowly walking the labyrinth path I came upon a slug. A beautiful, translucent slug. I stopped and stared at it for awhile. Squatting down to get a closer look I noticed the slug had a kind of amphibious like perimeter with a pattern of dots encircling its main body.

I felt really tender hanging out with this slug. It was on the labyrinth path rocks headed in the same direction that I was, feeling its way along, so vulnerable without a shell, moving at its slow ass pace, not able (to my knowledge) to move any faster than it was, stripped of its only defense mechanism - blending in, out here in the clearing, bright white on the wet, charcoal colored rocks.

I feel like this slug in a lot of ways - slow, gelatinous in shape and consistency, beautiful, mysterious creation, slow, vulnerable, did I mention slow?

I am observant by nature, a 5 on the enneagram - I have a need to perceive and think about things and this need slows my ass down. Not always a bad thing, but in some arenas I want to take it all in, greedily collecting as much information and knowledge as I can before making a decision or making a change. And I prefer to do all of this from a camouflaged location. I exhaust myself and others with this behavior, this slowness, particularly regarding vocation. I started architecture school in 1992 and since then I have been wrestling with myself and what I'm going to do "with my one and precious life" during the work week. Architecture has never felt like the perfect fit. Which isn't to say I haven't enjoyed it, been blessed by it, or experienced moments or days of flow or joy in the studio or in practice. But, if anyone is counting with me that's 17 years +. What the f*. I've judged myself for being such a chicken shit. What do I have to lose making a career change? I don't have a partner, kids, a mortage, or a car, I'm healthy. Not to mention, over the past couple years I've developed a pretty good, if not fuzzy, idea of what I'd like to do with myself. I have no excuses except I've been afraid. I use the past tense here not because I no longer have fear or self-judgment, but because that God spot in the center of my gut is getting stronger, louder, and more courageous.

As much as I already feel akin to this slug in pace and shape, I also have a lot to learn. I heard that sweet slug saying to me "Be gentle with yourself. You can not go any faster than you're going, but you've got to keep moving. You're already you, you can not be anyone other than yourself, but you've got to shed that shell. Get out here in the rain with me, FEEL your way along, stop thinking so much."

Thank you, slug.

After a spell laying down on the grass in the center of the labyrinth face up to the sky, I headed back to the house and took a seat at the art table. Tried to draw a slug with some pens, but didn't like it so I started using watercolors and lost the hard edge. Much better. I painted around 8, here's one of them.

"All slugs are descended from snails that gradually lost or reduced their shells over time." - Wikipedia

I could go on and on in this one post regarding what more I'm learning from the slug, all the metaphors and stream of consciousness pathways my mind is going down, connections I'm making, what ways I can integrate these learnings beyond my mind life into my lived life, but I've decided to take a year to do it instead.

Sarah posted a beautiful, if not comment controversial, Happy New Year post over at In Praise of Leftovers. She talked about adaptive challenges and technical challenges.

I'm adopting "Shedding the Shell" as my adaptive, umbrella style challenge for 2010, maybe for my life. This bumbershoot covers a lot and I'll articulate what it covers in future posts.

I'm adopting this blog as my technical challenge. Something to put on my calendar and hold myself accountable to at least once a week. A way to get out of my head and keep moving. Sara says that she can spend hours working on a blog posting that may in the end only be published as a few sentences or a couple of paragraphs. Check out those worthy sentences here. A few hours later at the internet cafe I can see she's right and I'm looking forward to the process of culling through all the stuff that doesn't need to be published, but will be helpful for me to get out.

This is your invitation to join me and hold me accountable if you see I'm lapsing in my weekly commitment.

Love to you all,

Em