Windows and Wombs: The Rensing Experience
I sit, with the Guest House’s round, bubbled window offering me a portal into the small of the wider world. A tiny, dried up spider corpse remains plastered to its external surface while ants, some the length of a quarter, scurry across its smooth protruding surface. Busy, busy, busy… they are always so busy.
I can relate to their rush, the sense of responsibility to the wider community, the need to be part of the colony, pulling my weight.
I have come to this place to try a different way. To worry less about the clock. To think less about productivity. To try something other than the grind of playing my part in the never ending ant parade. To create. What I didn’t know when I planned to come (packed my bag full of books and writing tools, added in a package of dried split peas in case there was no food to be found, stuffed dehydrated coffee flakes into baggies, and tucked in a bit of makeup…just in case), was that everything I needed was already here.
On my second evening at Rensing, I ventured up the path toward the Pottery, clueless as to what I would find. Ellen, on her way down from Evelyn’s, encouraged me to hike down to the waterfall. “Look for the ‘chain link’ guide marker then follow the trail to find Shelby’s colored karate belts. Go along the pasture. Don’t stop until you get to the platform. It should only take about 10 minutes.”
I am, I should note, a city person and am used to the world of maps and guidebooks and phones with GPS and the ability to call someone if lost. I hadn’t planned on departing the gravel path so was wearing sandals and didn’t have a phone or watch with me.
I walked, timidly, for what felt like 20 minutes and saw no pasture, no karate belts, and no waterfall. I was a bit on edge. The sun was setting and I felt uneasy, uncertain as to where I was and where I was going. I turned back, wondering if anyone would notice if I had never returned.
The next day, with plenty of light, better shoes, and a fully charged phone, I went back. I was one more day in to my decompression, my entrance in to a way of being that could roll more easily with the punches, that wasn’t on the clock, that was about discovery rather than productivity. I breathed deeply, I looked up and around, I spotted the karate belts and the pasture (which had been there all along), and found the deck. I stayed for hours. I timed the walk back…it only took me ten minutes.
I had been so off kilter the night before, the fear of the unknown warping my ability to tell time or notice details. On this third day, however, I was finally settling in. My Rensing dwelling was becoming like a womb, nurturing new parts of me to be birthed while here. Slower parts, solitary parts, the internal eye that’s finding it ok to be more concerned with my own noticing whether I’ve returned home than with others taking note.
Like this widow that reaches out into the wild, I have found myself venturing further and further into the unknown parts of myself in these three weeks at Rensing. Being here has turned my attention from the minutes that pass and the number of words that I write to the exploration of that which has been “out there,” just beyond the self imposed boundaries that make up the me that I present to the world. Just as this bubble brings the sensations and sights of wind and rain, flora and fauna, insect and squirrel inside, I have discovered, here, a window into my own self in a powerful new way. I now see/feel the markers on the path to my own being…just like a series of chain link, karate belts, and, pathways lead to the waterfall, I am becoming aware and attuned to the journey inside. I’m getting more comfortable with it, more available to the process.
I have found loves here…Ellen, Evelyn, Ashley, Ron, John, Will and so many others. I have been inspired by them and by the residents that I have been honored to share space with. More than anything, however, I have begun a journey toward loving my self, honoring my need for solitude and silence, and finding a new voice in my writing…the reason that I am here.
May every one who graces this space be filled with its peace, inspired by the creativity in every breath and blink of those they encounter here, and be cocooned, as I was, in such a way that they are able to give birth to new ways of being.
May it be so.
(Thank you to Ellen, and her team, for selecting me for this experience. I am leaving a part of my heart here to return to in time. I will never be able to say thank you enough.)
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