Challenge Day #9

The Invitation by Oriah Mountain Dreaming

This is one of the few books I have read over and over again. I have turned to the words of the poem and the meditation at some of the most glorious and some of the most sorrowful times in my life.  I have gifted it many times to my female friends in times of stress, recommended it to husbands, boyfriends and lovers.  I have shared it with hundreds of people during workshops. The Invitation by Oriah Mountain Dreaming is a book that helped me transition from being married to being single. It was recommended to me by my friend, Larry Larson, during my divorce. 

The book begins with the poem allowing readers to settle into their own soul.  Her poetry is a gift she gives her readers. Each chapter then explores one verse of the poem by sharing the author’s life experience.  She then takes you back to your inner self through ending the chapter with a meditation.

I nearly wept the first time I read these two verses –

“I want to know

if you can live with failure

yours and mine

and still stand at the edge of the lake

and shout to the silver of the moon,

“Yes.”

It doesn’t interest me

to know where you live

or how much money you have.

I want to know if you can get up

after the night of grief and despair

weary and bruised to the bone

and do what needs to be done

to feed the children.”

At the time I first read this book I was traveling 45 minutes each way to and from work, working on my master’s degree and going through a divorce.  I was sitting in Hardee’s having a cinnamon raison biscuit because my sons were spending the day with their father and I wanted to do something special for myself. I knew if I didn’t treat the times they weren’t with me as special, I could easily find myself wallowing in sorrow. 

In the Invitation, one chapter talks about this very idea – discovering that in the midst of sorrow, if we dig deeply to find the gift and let the awareness of the gift help us, we can “do what needs to be done.”

As I sat in Hardee’s that day reading, I was at one of the lowest emotional points in my life.  I felt like I had failed – I had failed my children and I had failed by not being able to keep our marriage together.  I couldn’t see how I could have done anything differently.  I felt like I had given my all and made room for my husband to pursue his dreams.  From my perspective, there were no warning signs.  No drugs, no alcohol, no financial issues, no big fights, it was if he decided one day he wasn’t happy and it was my job to make him happy.  I knew I couldn’t do that – no one can make someone else happy.  Happiness, like most of life, is an inside job.  The one thing I could have done differently was to pay attention at the beginning of the relationship and recognize that small issues over time often grow.

My friend and business partner, Glenn Smith, often says that people at their core either believe humans are basically good or basically evil. Once we have made that philosophical decision, it colors all of our other beliefs.  As you know if you’ve read my other writings, I believe people are basically good- I trust them until they show me they cannot be trusted. I will admit I have trusted them a few times beyond trustworthy behavior.  Whereas my sons’ father, a police officer, saw people very differently – he believed people usually lie to you and you can’t trust them.  As I look back, I wonder how these two very different perspectives on the world played a role in our marriage. I also wonder if the questions asked in the poem, The Invitation, were the deeper questions in life we need to ask as we enter a relationship.

That day I realized that the gift in my divorce could be to build a deeper more meaningful relationship with my sons, Wesley and Duncan.   I could spend time and energy that in the past would have been spent strengthening our marriage and use it to strengthen my relationship with my sons. There was a gift in all the sorrow and Oriah helped me recognize that I could stand at the edge of the lake and say, “YES!”

To this day, I am grateful for this poem and the book.  Every time I read it, I find myself looking deeply into my soul and I find the dreamer I have always been.