Tag Archives: Wettenbostel

The Wall

17 Sep

Well, here I am.  Back in Wettenbostel.  I arrived after a somewhat harried train ride through unexpected parts of Germany.  I have been here for a week now.  We have a seminar here this weekend which means all three buildings filled with seminar attendants.  Plenty of food to prepare and dishes to clean.  Breakfast, lunch and dinner.  It is sort of strange how I find some comfort in that this weekend.  Comfort in preparing the food.  Being of service.

This week has been a little unruly for me… not so much on the outside as on the inside.  Perhaps it has something to do with that wall.  That wall I constructed of maybe kryptonite… nearly indestructible nonetheless.  It seems to be coming down.  Some days that is okay.  Some days I do not like it.  And some days I just feel sad.

I think it is kind of hard, kind of difficult to live this gypsy life exploring new places, new people, new ways… with a giant wall intact.  It is quite a heavy load and at some point… it just begins to come down…And in truth, it kind of looks strange – traveling around with that giant wall.  Some of the wall began to crumble this week when a visitor, a German friend of my host in Wettenbostel met me and minutes later shared in German… “that woman is so sad.  I see nothing but sadness in her eyes.”  When minutes later this was translated and shared with me in English, I felt like I wanted to run and hide.  I was caught… me and my sadness.  Oh no, I’ve been seen.  I’ve got to get out of here… or at least get away from that man who can see the sadness in me.  As life can go, that man ended up staying around for about 4 days.  After a while it was hard to avoid… that man… my sadness… the wall.  He did not speak good English, but we had a good little chat or two… many sounds and hand signals were involved to try to get each others point across… which is ultimately… kind of fun.  And then he left.  And there I was with pieces of my wall crumbling down and my sadness exposed.

It’s not all sadness, this wall coming down.  There is still time for some play.  Last night I joined my fellow American visiting here in Wettenbostel and our host in an evening out to hear some music in the nearby town, Lüneburg.  It was good to see and feel that good music can still soothe the soul.  I love the connection to that innate desire that just wants to move and shake.  Some of the music was good.  Some was… an adventure.  We listened to really amazing African based music played with an instrument…that I cannot identify.  But it was inspiring, fun and healing.  And other music.. well, let’s just say that Billy Idol was involved.

So here I am.  It’s Saturday morning still.  Breakfast was served and lunch will soon be underway.  The group visiting this weekend are “regulars” of sorts… so some familiar faces and friends visiting.  And as for me and my wall….  well, it’s still there. Not destroyed in a day. But I have set it down for a bit… a little respite in the sun.  Some holes have been busted through and there is some… vulnerability exposed.  All too human.  But what else is one to do as a gypsy in life?  Learn and grow.  And risk.  Risk letting go and have the self be exposed.  And a little good music… and oh a little sun today… those things never hurt either.

Until next time.  Thanks for taking this journey with me!

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Goodnight, Alkmaar!

8 Sep

Well it is Thursday evening and I just returned from a bicycle ride into town.  Marijke’s home is in what we might consider the suburbs of Alkmaar.  But in truth it is not far from the center of town.  Just a short bicycle ride away.  The weather outside is cool and accepting.  It was a good night for a ride.

My time in Alkmaar in nearing an end.  I have been here, in truth, longer than I realized as time sneaks by me in my often timeless world.  Over four weeks.  But it has been good.  The time.  The connections.  And the generosity of Marijke of not only extending her home… but her consistent way of offering her hospitality and keeping me in mind as a part of her daily way.  To that I say, Dankjewel!  From the bottom of my heart!

As my final farewell and parting words to Alkmaar and for now the Netherlands, I off my appreciation in the form of the “ode to the bicycle”… Never before have I ever… ever seen such a place that pays homage to the bicycle the way the Netherlands does.  It may be normal life for the Dutch.  For me it is…well, out of the ordinary!  Just tonight I had my premier experience with the Dutch and bicycles.  It is essentially valet parking for bikes.  Okay, perhaps not that formal… but pretty good.  In town this evening we parked our bicycles in a free (gratis) underground parking garage for bicycles.  On the way down the stairs I prepared to struggle with my bicycle as is typical for me when escorting a bicycle down a flight of stairs.  But the Dutch are too smart for this.  First their premier levee system, now this.  Going down the stairs, on the outside, the perimeter of the stairs there is a… how would you describe it… a narrow, smooth track for your bicycle that allows you to easily roll it while you walk the stairs.  Incredible.  And then, when you arrive at the bottom in the garage, the friendly man gives you a numbered ticket… half on your bicycle, the other half with you.  And then you park!   Marijke’s tire was flat, so the nice man used the premier bicycle pump mounted to the wall to put a little air in her tire before she parked.  Outstanding.

I appreciate this the most about the Netherlands.  It’s persistent bicycle culture that has, indeed, put me to shame.  It wasn’t unusual to see someone almost twice my age passing me on their bicycle as I reluctantly asked Marijke, “how much longer now…”  A bicycle ride in the rain… just another day for the Dutch.  And then there’s Marijke’s neighbor… a grandpa who rides his bicycle over 20 km to work every day.

As I say farewell to the Netherlands, I prepare to return to Wettenbostel… leaving early Saturday morning. I am so grateful to have  a friendly welcoming place where I can return.  But for now I say Goodnight. Goodnight to the wind and the windmills.  The bicycle paths lined with cows and sheep.  The unexpected showers and expansive sky.  Goodnight!  Goodnight sweet Alkmaar!

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Changes

9 Aug

Cha-changes.  They seem to be everywhere.  Changes on the inside.  Changes on the outside… and not just for me… this gypsy wanderer from New Orleans…  I am sitting in room number three in the “small dojo”  at the seminar haus in Wettenbostel savoring a bowl of muesli with strawberries (erdbeeren…) and bananas.  Still sort of basking in the wake of the Friends and Reiki weekend….an extended journey in Reiki with Reiki Masters and practitioners gathering from Holland, Germany and Austria… lots of Reiki treatments!

The theme that jumped out from the weekend was…changes.  It was interesting to see that everyone at the gathering was in major life transition in some way.  We took an evening to share about our transitions.  The common theme in our changes and desire for changes was… Balance.  Balance in our lives and relationships, with our food, our family, the world around us.  Balance within.  And balance with our work and play and the way that we create and earn money in the world.  We shared and took note of what really mattered to each of us… and perhaps wondering where we went astray from that… and looking at… what is next.

For me personally, so much of my adult life has been dedicating to healing.  It wasn’t until my past year in New Orleans that I finally began to experience a deeper, quieter place in myself. A place in me where I could just… ahhh… exhale fully.  I felt the need to keep my life really basic.  This included minimal financial responsibilities, simple responsibilities with work and minimal responsibilities in relationships.   I house-sat in two different homes my past year in New Orleans.  My job was selling Shiitake Mushrooms at our local farmers market for a very kind Mississippi farmer.  The simplicity of this space gave me time and energy just to be with me.  I can recall walking by myself along the train tracks near where I was staying feeling something begin to settle in my bones.  Me.

And then of course what started to happen in my life?  You guessed it.  Changes!  My furniture in a leaky storage unit got damaged from mold… nearly everything had to be thrown away.  The house where I was house-sitting sold… yeah for the house… but what next?… and then my lovely 1996 Ford Taurus which I bought in Austin, Texas shortly after Hurricane Katrina let me know life was heading for changes.  It broke down beyond repair.  I gratefully sold it to a mechanic who was willing to take it off my hands… and then I was, well, perhaps free…

As these changes happened so quickly for me, it was a little more than my brain could sort through and organize, so I reached out for support.  I contacted Maureen Pua’ena O’Shaughnessy, a Reiki Master in Hawaii who also works as an intuitive guide, and scheduled a phone session with her.   She assured me that all of these changes at once were an opportunity to see what I really wanted – that it was indeed possible to have a good healthy work life, earn money, have a place to live where I loved and still have and cultivate the peace and soft pace I had started to love, nurture and need in my life.  And she let me know that as I became an “energetic match” for that life, that which I wanted and needed – including a satisfying but balanced and well paid work life…would show up in my world.  And if I wasn’t quite a match for it yet… if I still needed to grow, then something else juicy would come along in the meantime –  like a trip or travel… and here I am in Europe.  Growing.  Restoring.  Exploring the texture and feel of balance for me in my life.

One area of growth for me is… well in truth… people.  All of them.  Most of them… I can tend to feel… uneasy around… people.  This is not some prejudice I have towards people…  I can also be uneasy around dogs, bees and other various creatures.  But while I began to find my comfort in me, I am still exploring extending that same comfort within myself when I am not by myself.  This weekend at Friends and Reiki was an excellent chance to shake up my comfort zone a little bit and extend myself… and it was… well, uncomfortable.   I was surprised at my feeling of inner panic as if noone asked me to dance at the high school prom. I wanted to run and hide when the group arrived, like I was four years old hanging on to my mothers leg.  But the joy of the weekend came from poking myself out a bit more than usual… connected conversations, playing the drums with others, even playing a little guitar and singing together… things that I secretly desired to do with others, but prior to this had almost exclusively done them by myself all alone…  ah…Balance.

And today my gypsy is tugging at my sleeve again as I prepare to travel to a new place.  Like Mary Poppins packing up my bag and heading off… to where the wind blows. Tomorrow  I will join Marijke Lemmen, a friend in Reiki and Reiki Master as she returns home to Holland.  The situations in my life shift so quickly-like the weather here in Wettensbostel, cold in the morning, sunny midday, stormy by afternoon… except when, perhaps the sun might peek out again…  Totally unexpected.

So life moves on.  And how great it is to be connected with others… changing and balancing.  Perhaps you are too… it seems to be a phenomenon these days.  I have started sending Reiki energy to the idea of change and balance in my life and to those who were at the Reiki gathering.  A little extra support as things spin and shift within us reflected in our outside world.

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My name is Teresa…

29 Jul

This isn’t any sort of formal announcement or anything… no large declaration to the world.  Just my meanderings on my blog you know… while I am living in Germany… when just three months ago I was selling shiitake mushrooms in New Orleans.  You see, for some time now, some thing has been creeping inside of me… maybe creeping isn’t the right word… but it is there nonetheless….  that…I feel like my name is…Teresa.  For those of you not in the “feeling” world this may sound a little odd, but for some time now… perhaps the last few years, every time I say my name is Nancie, I almost feel like I am lying.  And somewhere beneath the surface I hear and feel… my name is Teresa.

Teresa, if you have read the “about me” section is not a strange name to me… not some cryptic renaming… but in fact my middle name… and my confirmation name… and also my sister’s middle name.  For years we have heard and told the story of how my mom was told by doctors that she was not going to be able to have children and she prayed to St. Teresa the little flower telling her if she could have children she would name us after her… and voila… here we are!… over the years St. Teresa has always been a friend to me… she has made her way to me through prayer cards mysteriously showing up in a book at the public library and coffee table at a friend’s house.  I even went to visit her when Pope John Paul sent her ruins on a world tour and she made her way to New Orleans.  Visiting her remains in New Orleans was more like going to a mardi gras parade than a “holy” ceremony.  I got knocked out-of-the-way more than once and people’s hands were up in the air as if expecting beads to be flung from the casket.  But at any rate, Teresa, there she was…

When I first started feeling this name emerge from… ya know… within me… I started playing with using the name as my own in New Orleans.  At the time I was assisting in seminars through an organization called Landmark Education, and they were playful enough to give me three nametags to use during the seminar… Nancie, Nancie Teresa, and Teresa… of which I could interchange and shift as I chose… A friend who I dated for a little bit in New Orleans called me Teresa and I don’t know… it was just nice.  It just felt like in being called that he saw something in me.  Something in me that needed to be seen and was convoluted with all of the “whatever” of being Nancie, nothing personal to Nancie… And so since then I have been using my first and middle name… kind of bringing Teresa into the picture so that if someday I decided to go by that name, perhaps it would not be so … unexpected.

But I put this idea away… somewhere in a drawer labeled “normal people don’t change their names…” and moved on with my life (which as you know included putting my closet full of belongings in storage, buying a ticket to Europe, and moving to Wettenbostel, Germany to live and work with Reiki Masters… sounds pretty normal to me…).

And then recently I made a new friend.  We will call him Fred.  Fred was attending a workshop here in Wettenbostel at the Seminar Haus.  During the seminar I helped out as staff, assisting with dinner, cleaning up… but other than that I was locked up in my shyness or protectiveness or something. I would do my best to smile and be friendly to folks, but mostly kept myself separate.  Then one night while I was at the end of the night washing dishes… Fred came in the kitchen and started a conversation…and I was sort of like… why is this guy talking to me… but he was nice and so… we chatted for a little bit.  I was leaving in the next few days to go to Berlin and then on to Hamburg, so I gave Fred a business card so he could email and keep in touch.  He read the name on the card outloud  “Nancie Teresa…” and I loved the way that Teresa rang in my body as he said it… “Teresa…”

As it turned out Fred lived very close to where I was staying in Hamburg so we connected and spent a little time together.  And one day he asked me, “which name do you like better… Nancie or Teresa…”.  Funny you should ask I thought… so I said, “Teresa”… and from then on to him I was Teresa.  How fun!  It was so great to get the messages pop up on facebook… “hello Teresa!…” You get the picture.

I played with it a little while in Hamburg, trying to keep track of who I told my name was Nancie already, so as not to confuse them and who I hadn’t.  When strangers I met asked me what my name was I said,… “Teresa”… and there it was, like a seed growing curiously…

A little about St. Teresa.  I can’t say that I am an expert on her, know everything about her, but I can tell you she was connected to flowers and said that after she died she would send a shower of roses to the earth.  She was a nun and lived in a convent when she was very young and was a mystic… had visions and intense connections and experiences with God.   She was also known as the saint of the little things… showing her love and dedication not through large great acts, but through the intimacy and intricacy of the little things, the daily things.

And here I am in Wettenbostel, trying to learn to get out of my way to find the joy in the little things… the flowers, the weeding of the garden, cleaning the rooms, doing the dishes.  Remembering the message from my Reiki Teacher Elizabeth to be really present and to put all of my love into the work that I do while I am here.  “Wax on wax off…” she said.

Again this is not some big declaration, but an inquiry… a curiosity, an expansion… Teresa.  And hoping my sister does not mind if I use the name in case she too one day wants to use it and then we would both be Teresa, talking about my sister Teresa… anyway, I digress…

As you may have guessed, I have returned to Wettenbostel beginning my journey back into the world of the little things.  Seeing if I can give myself permission to actually just relax and enjoy myself being here.  In some way it feels so indulgent.  I let it go for just a moment today, sitting on the porch of the “big house” watching the willow tree sway in the wind surrounded by the gardens of flowers.

We have a new visitor right now who is a Reiki Master from Holland and other guests will begin to arrive in the next days as we prepare for our next event… Friends and Reiki.  A collection of Friends in Europe who all practice Reiki will be coming next week for a few days of spending time together and sharing Reiki.  Some will arrive early to take in the sometimes slow and leisurely pace of the country and the seminar haus.

And I, well right now I am dabbling in a book called “the soulmate secret” by Arielle Ford that my American friend here lent to me.  And I had to laugh when as I was reading it a band practicing nextdoor at the village outdoor theater struck up the song “here comes the bride”… anyway… another day.  Another day back in Wettenbostel. And the little things.

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