Sanctuary

Back at Nancy Rigg’s house in Camarillo where Jean and I were staying, a fire was crackling in the fireplace and a bottle of rare forty-five-year-old port sat on the table. Jean and I walked in around midnight, after a quiet moonlit drive along the Southern California coast. The night was easy, the sky clear. The full moon gleamed sweet and strong–another sister, singing. Unlike the hour-long drive north along busy Route 1 to Santa Barbara, filled as we were with details and preparation for the evening program, we slid back towards Nancy’s house like riding a gentle wave. To our right out the window, the mother ocean eased in and out of the shore, illuminated by a flute of moonlight sluicing through the ocean like a beam.

We traveled through the gorgeous hills of the Santa Susanna Mountains to lovely Camarillo, and to Nancy’s street, tiptoeing up to the door. We imagined she’d likely gone to bed after the long night, and planned to slip into her spare room with little fanfare. How sweet to be met at the door by Nancy and her beloved dog Fiona, the fire crackling and the brandy glasses waiting. And oh, who indeed could truly sleep? As we settled into the generous armchairs by the flames, each with our small glass, Nancy poured from the bottle of expensive port that her father, dead six years, had himself purchased fifteen years before--a rare treat they keep for special occasions.

It was indeed an evening worthy of ceremony, and we sat back to revel in our Sisters Singing readings in Los Angeles and Santa Barbara. Nancy had invited her friends and family to the Santa Barbara reading that evening, and in the front row her 84-year-old mother had sat beaming happily, along with several friends. Nancy's mother was once a concert violinist, before marriage to a gifted, unique man who brought his family to an abandoned western town in Colorado to work his own mine. Nancy grew up high in the mountains, watching her father go off to pull gold, copper and silver from the land. Her mother never seriously played the violin again, a story heartbreakingly familiar to many of our mothers. Yet the family instrument, over a hundred years old, is still with Nancy. And as is probably not surprising, she can play. At the reading that night she opened the second half with a melancholy Celtic tune, so that we were brought all the way in to the soul, as if deep on our knees.

Nancy's mother, despite a recent stroke and its many hearbreaking repercussions, was there to see it all: her violin brought out and played before an audience, Nancy reading about her healing journey after the loss of her fiancé to flooding whitewaters almost thirty years ago. And how lovely it must have been to beam upon her daughter, to admire Nancy's work in the years since then creating the Drowning Support Network for families whose beloved ones die in water-related accidents. Over the years Nancy has witnessed and carried countless stories of shattering grief, including people who lost family in the 2004 Indonesian tsunami and Katrina. Our last morning there, she emerged from reading her email with tears in her eyes. Families members had written about the loss of their beloved ones, and how difficult it was, even after long periods, to believe their daughter or father was dead and not on an extended journey. Nancy told us about some of the stories, her voice breaking. “I’m not usually like this,” she said, wiping her eyes. “It must have been the poetry last night, and just, oh, everything.”

Yes, everything. I embraced her then, for a few long moments, and we were both held within the sweet sanctuary of her profound good heart. Here, I think, is the currency in all of the Sisters' networks. Sanctuary. Nancy’s spare bedroom, a glass of fine port, a hug, the many support networks we all carry, a poem read over breakfast, a meal, a place to sit and rest. This is the sweet, unexpected blessing that Sisters Singing has given me. I don't think I knew the world could be so welcoming. Again and again, those who only know Jean and I slightly have housed and fed us and treated us like kin. Gifted people with ordinary life foibles and difficulties, yet a true generosity of spirit that holds hearts and feeds lives and saves the soul.

Several years ago I wrote a vision which become the Afterword for Sisters Singing. It envisioned a web of safe houses in which we all nourish, hold and heal each other. A web that is invisible, world-wide, and netted together into one organic whole: each personal web connected to the next, and the next, and so on throughout the planet. What I did not know is that the process of bringing out the book would require me to enter this web as traveler and guest. We have accomplished a national book tour with few monetary resources; the gift of this is that we had to rely on the kindness of friends and the help of the Sisters.

One sister who first heard me read the essay "Safe Houses" aloud and encouraged me to publish it was Ayelet Berman-Cohen. Ayelet saw in that piece some essence of her own life vision: to provide a safe house for visitors, children, guests and travelers. And though she and her family were away the weekend of our visit to Los Angeles, they generously opened their home to us–a true safe house indeed.

Again and again, it has been the same. Good people, solid lives, safe houses. The worldwide network of Safe Houses is as strong and indelible as the vision suggests. Our existing connections and generosities have created a web that is held together by good, good hearts. There is nothing in the universe stronger than this.

And that night by the fire, Nancy, Jean and I sat re-visiting it all, like fingering prayer beads, beginning with our luminous evening at the Unitarian Universalist Church in LA in a sacred sanctuary, 150 people with us, such celebration, such applause! The sanctuary had a glow at the end, as a dozen of the Sisters stood before the audience and bowed together. Deena Metzger and Jami Sieber had just finished their set of joint poetry and music, Deena reading poems from Sisters Singing and her new collection Beauty and Ruin, Jami doing what only she can do, snaking her luminous cello through the poetry so that the words and the music dance together. Deena’s poetry, Jami’s music, two gifted women who love each other beaming their love like starlit galaxies across the stage.

Oh, the goodness of it all. Deena and Jami followed an already full evening of women's sacred writing. There was Danelia Wild, who was at the core of creating the reading itself—finding the venue, handling details, and in her usual way, creating a wonderful spread of flowers and food–then reading beautifully of her mother leaving Ireland as a young woman, yearning and longing dancing through each lyrical line. And Lawrie Hartt standing before the audience with her great and glorious resonant voice, sharing her poetry of journey, spiritual insight and reconciliation. Deborah Edler Brown, stunning the audience with her reading, including the searing “Women’s Work” which broke open everyone’s heart. Reem Hammad and her lovely piece about her grandmother and the care with which she’d been tended and raised by strong and caring women’s hands. Carmen Rita Menendez opening the evening with “Beets of Life”, with the wisdom and rare wit that is hers alone. Sharon Simone giving a beautiful reading of her ethereal poetry in the hushed and expectant room. Lori Levy, who I met for the first time that night, reading her poem “The Blue Embrace”, clear and lovely. And ending with the shaman Valerie Wolf/Grandmother White Bear, reading her dream “The Peacemaker’s Gift” about grief and hope, and the work we must all do to bring forth a peaceful future.

Yes, the room glowed and our ancestors hummed through the centuries as we stood together that night at the end of it all. It was the same on Monday evening in Santa Barbara, where many of the same poets read their work. And we were joined by two new voices that night. The luminous Holly Metz and her family joined us, her young sons running up into her arms after her beautiful reading of her piece "Owl." And Maria Papacostaki, poet, healer and racounteur, had traveled from Philadelphia to Santa Barbara, where she studies depth psychology, to read with us that night–her poetry beautiful, melancholy, juicy as ever.

It was Maria who brought us to Lori Pye and the Institute for Cultural Change, who had sponsored our reading, found the venue at the Montecito Library, and spread the word in Santa Barbara. It was a real delight to meet Lori, to turn again to find a friendly, intelligent and wise sister, to see that there truly are sisters and brothers all over the world. I had marveled at Lori's work fostering inner change and cultural transformation on the Institute's lovely web site. Hand to hand to hand, one to one, we find each other.

Around the fire long into Monday evening we lingered quite a while on one other gathering: a Sisters circle on Sunday at the quintessential safe house: Deena Metzger's home. The Sisters shared a meal and spoke our stories, doing as we do, carrying the thread. How luscious to introduce Nancy Rigg and Reem Hammad to the community at Deena’s home, to see Reem slide into the group as if she’d always been there, to hear Nancy and Deb Brown jamming on guitar and violin like old friends. And then that next night, sitting with Nancy in another Safe House friendly by the fire. Oh the moon, oh the ocean, oh these worlds of Sisters. And at the essence of it all: sanctuary. That is what our book provides, and what our extended community offers. Together, we are learning how to walk another way, hands extended, arms open–the body, the home, the pages of a book becoming sanctuary, safe house, that embrace that flows through all human meaning and warms us, the wise grandmother in the center of the web, dreaming us all.