“When You Do Things From Your Soul, You Feel A River Moving In You, A Joy.”

I’ve been carrying around these words from Rumi in my wallet for some years now. They remind me to work from my soul, from my true self.

Metolius River Photo by Michael Kennicutt

Near our home in Sisters, Oregon – where the forest, and the mountains, and the high desert meet – is a beautiful river, the Metolius. It is a wondrous river, the locals say, because it just “pops out of the ground” as a fully developed and crystal-clear, fast moving stream. (A science friend of mine says it has something to do with volcanic action eons ago.) To me, it seems like a storybook river, one that’s just so surprising and perfectly alive it seems like one you’d read about in a story or see in a film; but it’s real. For me, the Metolius calls: “Come be here with me, you’ll find your soul.”

The Metolius helps me find my soul by quieting me down.  It even helps a group quiet itself.  Our neighborhood’s annual meeting used to be held along the banks of the river. In those days, there was a sort of a local joke: no matter how disturbing the issue being discussed in the forum, the river smoothed things out. The river calmed us.

This past summer, Karen (my wife) and I camped along the Metolius, as is our yearly practice. Once each August for about a week, we drive the twenty minutes from our home and set up camp along the river’s edge. We watch, we listen, and we learn. Somehow, in some way, we learn what’s really important. The irrelevant evaporates.

This year I found myself contemplating those times in my life when I’d worked from a soul-place and the river ran through me. When I served a school community in Evanston, Illinois, during the desegregation days of the late 1960s and early 1970s, energy coursed through me; my values and work coincided. When I worked with the Alaska Native parents in Fairbanks, I felt immersed in the strong pull of co-creating the school with them. And when I was engaged in a series of “Courage to Lead” retreats with Portland principals, there was this river… a joy.

Listening to the river’s rush this past summer, I felt another joy that’s been, and continues to be, an important current in my life. It has everything to do with story – listening and telling stories.   The free-flowing stories I’ve been told this year: Paulina’s story. Deidre’s story. Mark’s story. They’ve been others’ stories, but I have found myself listening so carefully that they’ve seemed to be my own. Maybe that’s because these stories about best friends, families, loves, and even struggles with work are so universal.

Perhaps the river moving in me these days – during my elder time – is my deepening ability to listen carefully to my friends. Maybe the joy that’s mine in this time is the realization that I do not have to make a point or offer some clever thought. Possibly, the river’s lesson for me this year is: I am just to be with my friends, with my best friend and partner, Karen, and with all the others who are here with me – now.

As a leader, the best advice I was ever given came while on a walk with William Stafford through Totem Park in Sitka, Alaska. We were attending the Sitka Writing Symposium. Since we were both early risers, we were out for our morning walk/run. I was “in a fog” about how to proceed with my work as a principal. I had used up all of my graduate school knowledge and felt that I didn’t have a clue as to how to make a difference in my school – for the children, for the teachers, for the community, or for myself. I was stalled.

Bill Stafford listened to me patiently on loop after loop throughout the beautiful park. And then, in front of a particularly striking Alaska Native totem, he looked me straight in the eye and shared with a quietness that feels soft and easy even today, “David, I think that you’re stuck in your brain. You’re trying to grind out an answer. That’ll never work. Go to sleep tonight asking this question: Who are these people you’re with? What are they calling for? Tomorrow morning, when we’re on our walk, tell me your answer.”

Well, every morning over that next week of early morning walks I responded to, what I was calling the “Who are these people?” question. I talked about how lots of the people really didn’t want to be in Fairbanks, Alaska, and in this school because of circumstances, like the military, or in the case of the Alaska Native people, lack of “cash work” in the villages. I talked about all the clever ways that the parents were trying to smuggle their children into what they thought were the better schools. I talked, and talked, and talked and William Stafford listened. He smiled: “I believe you’re getting somewhere, David. Keep on talking.”

I did keep on talking with Bill. But, the big turnaround came when I was back at school. Once again with my people, the wondering began, and so did the questions. I asked questions of everyone in our school community – children, teachers, neighbors, but especially, parents. I found myself wanting to know everything about them. What brought them to Fairbanks? How did they find themselves here in this neighborhood? What did they like best about our little school community? What did they think wasn’t working  with the school? And (what turned out to be what I called “the million dollar question”), if you weren’t talking with me at this moment, what would you rather be doing? That question usually led to: What are the most creative things that you do in your life?

Question after question. I probably asked thousands of questions over the years. And somehow, with every question I asked, it felt like the school became more alive to me. It was like the school “woke up” as I inquired: Who are these people? What are they calling for?  Maybe it was me who was actually waking up to this school.

It’s been years since that Sitka walk and William Stafford’s soft spoken remark: “David, I think that you’re stuck in your brain.” These days, I sometimes still find myself trapped in my head. But then, all of a sudden – whether in a crowd or at suppertime with my closest family and friends – that question appears: Who are these people? What are they calling for? And, I try to listen very carefully.

In my first post, I wrote a bit about being an encourager as a birthright gift – that is, a core quality of my being since the earliest days. Other gifts have come to me from experiences along the way of my life. It’s not the holiday or birthday celebrations, with the presents that they often brought, that come to mind. It’s those more significant occasions of surprise that, often or eventually, I’ve come to understand as life-changing gifts, both small and large. For instance, there was the time William Stafford, the poet, gave me a great question to ask about my work. I certainly did not perceive all of those moments to be gifts at the time. However, with the passage of time – and sometimes following decades of time – I remember those occasions as the most important minutes, hours, or days of my life.

I find myself remembering those important instances and calling them my “homecoming gifts” because they have brought me “home” to myself. Those events and experiences have somehow merged and congealed – along with my birthright gifts – to become the core of my being over time. In most cases I did not ask for these gifts; they came to me on the breeze – sometimes the windstorm! – of serendipity. Of course, I continue to plan and arrange because I’ve always been the “thinking ahead type.” But more and more I’ve come to trust “just what’s happening” because it’s the surprises that have helped make me who I am.

And so, in the posts that follow (read on!) I will share some stories about those “homecoming gifts” – those times that, over time, have been life-forming and life-giving for me. I’ll share what’s been important and significant as I see it at this time of my life. As I indicated earlier, “that magic time” allows earlier days to be clearly illuminated; it’s a time when I am truly able to make sense of the “homecoming gifts” that have gone before.

This is a personal account. Yet, I want to invite you on your own “magic time” journey as well. After each story, I’ll ask: And, how about you? What have been the surprises in your life that, on reflection, have been life-forming and life-giving? I hope you’ll enjoy these stories of mine. And, I hope that they might evoke and encourage your own memories that will – somehow and in some way – bring you home to your true self. May remembering some stories of your own homecoming gifts bring you further along your own homeward road.