Unordinary for Autumn

It’s a bright morning in early autumn, and a few hundred of us are seated on wooden pews in a historic auditorium at the New Mexico Museum of Art. A murmurous sound fills the hall as friends greet each other beneath a painted mural of St. Francis — patron saint of ecology and animals, those who are invisible to the outer world, and this place, Santa Fe, that we call home.

Philosopher and poet David Whyte and teacher and author Henry Shukman take their seats on stage. Renowned in their respective fields and acquainted since their pub days, Henry wears slacks and a button-down, while David, in signature black, positions himself center stage.

David opens his oratory with such agility and resonance I find myself wondering about the force that calls us to the artistry of our lives. James Baldwin once wrote about the inevitability of his calling: “The terrible thing about being a writer is that you don’t decide to become one, you discover that you are one.” To be an artist seems less a choice than a truth to Baldwin, less a vocation than an unbidden command that could sweep the furnishings from your life.

David’s treatment of the word “unordinary” touches into this truth. He describes it as “what lies beneath my everyday life, like an interior seam of precious metal hidden by layers of my surface ordinariness; something to be uncovered and perhaps at times, even unleashed.”

An interior seam of precious metal hidden by layers of my surface ordinariness —

Something to be uncovered —

even unleashed —

A contemplative hush moves through the hall. David’s voice rings a bell of intimacy and longing for many of us; it’s a knowing nod to the untapped brilliance beneath the surface of our lives.

By adulthood, most of us have charted a course. Consciously or otherwise, we have put our rudder in the water. We have tied our knots. And all along this voyage we call adulthood, we must continually tack in the direction we have assigned for ourselves. This is how, as the wide-open estuaries of youth narrow into the channels of midlife, we can lose sight of an intrinsic, irreducible essence within us.

Or perhaps we make a choice. Faithfulness to the ordinary can keep us safe and serve us well for a time; it can support values like constancy, integrity, and trustworthiness. It can make us reliable and at least half-decent.

Habituating ourselves to the ordinary may work for a while, tidying up the messy surface bits even as intuition whispers from the depths. On the other hand, striving to be extraordinary is exhausting and rooted in insecurity, a cycle of fear on repeat. But to be unordinary is to be liberated from the tensions of the ordinary and the appraisals of the extraordinary. “May what is hidden within you become your gift to the world,” David says.

Pursuing an unsatisfactory life is no passive practice, however unprepared we may feel for the risk of something real. It’s a bargain against our wholeheartedness—against the undefinable yet knowable essence that, in every moment, is breathing its way into being. Beneath our to-do lists and human dramas, our grasping and avoiding, our busy peddling of wares while forgetting the greater plot, there exists a wakeful, tender, and intelligent wilderness within us.

“Dwell as near as possible to the channel in which your life flows,” counseled Henry David Thoreau, understanding that what is hidden within us will always make its way toward the light. Who can’t relate to an inner knowing that, if given the chance, would inspire courageous acts of authenticity and influence the creative flow of your life?

—

Above the pews and beyond the windows from where we sit, the Sangre de Cristo Mountains extend skyward. A pavement project along Hyde Park Road, the only road linking downtown Santa Fe to its nearest peak, has resulted in the mountain being temporarily inaccessible to the public. It’s a strange feeling for the humans who live here to be barred from the forests and rivers we know so well. From afar, we watch the face of our mountain as its hues change—first from deepening green to yellow, and now, as if signaling some secret thought, here comes a blush of crimson, cinnamon, and orange.

Most days, ordinary is the kind of person I seem to want to be; it’s the kind of person I tend to be. But this season, perhaps spurred by the particularities of my human loneliness, I long to be among the aspens with their shimmering sweep of drying leaves, each tree part of a singular organism that eats light and sends messages through tangled roots beneath the forest floor. Every day, on my way to wherever I’m going, I look toward the mountain and wonder, spared from the human gaze, what is happening beneath the veil of its exterior.

The bear who lumbered from the deep woods at the bend in Borrego last Spring — is she feasting on trout before the river freezes? I imagine black stones sighing into river beds and afternoons casting long, warm shadows across untrammeled trails. Un-startled deer walking over fallen leaves and needles, their delicate nervous systems rebalancing. Furred creatures foraging for seeds, nuts, and berries among the underbrush. Oyster mushrooms growing in happy clumps on the underside of composting trees. And birds testing their wings for long flight.

I imagine a kingdom, unburdened for a time, awakening to itself in a thousand brilliant ways.

“At no other time (than autumn) does the earth let itself be inhaled in one smell, the ripe earth; in a smell that is in no way inferior to the smell of the sea, bitter where it borders on taste, and more honeysweet where you feel it touching the first sounds. Containing depth within itself, darkness, something of the grave almost.”

― Rainer Maria Rilke

Each season reflects a facet of nature’s wisdom and offers us a mirror to reimagine our own experience of aliveness. In autumn, we touch inevitability, learning to bring forth the fruit that is ours, to surrender our leafy adornments. Loneliness and grief may be our teachers; this meditation may be bittersweet, but it will be wholly ours to claim.

Backlit by an image of St. Francis, Henry’s voice stirs the air with an invitation:

Let the quiet come —

Let the quiet come like a tide —

Let the quiet come like a tide you’ve been waiting for your whole life.

Invitation for reflection: What does it mean to you to “let the quiet come”? What unordinary awareness is making itself known through you as the season deepens? What thoughts, beliefs, habits, and behaviors must you let go of to make room for to integrate revelation, and what must you invite in?

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