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The Invitation

Book by Oriah Mountain Dreamer · 14 quotes · 1950s, Escapist, Historical Fiction

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The Invitation Quotes

“It was the same attendant, and somehow, in the busiest parking lot in the city of over 2 million, he had recognized me and remembered my story. Our brief exchange affected me deeply. As I drove away, I felt an impossible sense of hope. This man’s willingness to extend himself to a stranger sustained me in a way I could not have anticipated. My usual defences of self-sufficiency, my wariness about receiving from someone I did not know, fearing something might be wanted in return, had been dissolved by weeks of stress and need. The truth is, I only have to receive and give what I am able. There is no risk. The intimacy, the interconnectedness of all life that is the love to which we all belong, can only be given and received. It cannot be taken. And when it is given and received, we are sustained.”

CompassionEmpathyKindness Of Strangers
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“And sometimes, when I find that sweet solitude, I hear warnings about isolation. Some summers, when I was alone in the wilderness, content in my tiny trailer at the edge of the lake, I would not speak to or see another human being for weeks. There, I could slow it all down. I felt the power of life being lived around and within me. I became like a sun warmed rock in the centre of the stream. The water parted around me, eddied in spirals, and flowed on, gently wearing away all my sharp edges. Once, a man who is my lover and friend, I wanted to be more, came to see me there unexpectedly. I had just split an arm load of wood and was carrying it into the trailer as he appeared. He stayed only briefly. Later he told me, “When I came down the driveway and saw you standing there with the wood in your arms, your face glowing from the wind off the lake and the effort of chopping wood, I thought, ‘She belongs to this place. She’s at home here, alone in the bush. She’s not missing me, doesn’t need me here.’ I felt like an intruder.” His observation surprised me. I heard the voice of my mother warning, “You are too independent. Don’t get too good at being alone or you’ll end up by yourself. Everyone needs someone.” Her fear finds a small corner in me, but I resist the idea that I will be with another only to avoid being alone. Surely, the ability to truly be with myself does not exclude the willingness to fully be with another. I do not seek isolation. The longing for another remains even when I am able to be with myself, although it is smaller, a whisper that tugs at me gently. Even there, in my place of solitude in the wilderness, I found myself at moments wanting to turn to someone and share my awe at the brilliance of the full moon on the still water, the delight of watching otters playing at the edge of the stream. But the loneliness was bittersweet and bearable because I knew myself and the world in a way I sometimes do not when I let my life become too full of doing things that do not really need to be done.”

IndependenceIsolationSelf Reliance
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“Recently, two young boys in the United States gunned down classmates at an elementary school. Less than twenty-four hours after the incident, leaders in the community were calling on residents to “begin the healing process” and “move on with life.” This is how afraid we are of the pain. Children had killed children. It was hard even to take it in. The loss was hardly felt, the pain barely acknowledged, and these men and women wanted to move around the grief and sorrow directly to the healing. It won’t work. There is no way out but through. A wound not fully felt consumes from the inside.”

IgnoranceGrievingMourningFear Of Grief
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“Most spiritual practises have been developed - and, in the past, were sustained - in community. But most of us do not live in community. Although my students and friends and I share many of these practices, we are only occasionally in proximity to one another. Doing a daily practice alone is difficult. It requires not so much a heroic discipline as a deep commitment to life, a willingness to dedicate our lives to something larger than ourselves.”

IsolationAlonenessSocietal DegredationDays Of OldSense Of Community
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“It was as if I had stepped outside something of which I had always, unconsciously, been a part of and was seeing it for the first time – this stream of life, this cycle of ordinary living that goes on within and around us all the time. I knew that in a moment, when I went through my parents’ door, I would become a part of it again and lose this acute sense of being a witness, alone and completely with myself and my own thoughts. I knew I would be swept up in the hugs and exclamations of surprise and greetings, the sharing of news and the sounds and smells of bacon and eggs and coffee – the irresistible tide of living in the world. But for this moment, I was with the world, watching it but somehow not in it. I was alone with myself. I paused on the patio outside the back door, prolonging the moment. I was alone, lost to everyone and yet not lost but there, on the doorstep. I knew that home was as much in the slow walk alone through the quiet streets as it was in the arrival at the store. Home was in the taste of being with myself, walking next to what was familiar, toward what was cherished. Then I open the door, cross the threshold with conscious deliberation, and called out, “Isn’t anyone in here up yet?” As my mother came into the kitchen, I glanced back outside, and in my mind’s eye I saw that other young woman standing there - backpack on, watching us and grinning at me. I knew I would get back to her. I had met myself walking home in the dawn, and I liked the company I kept in those empty moments. Tell me, have you met yourself? Have you been able to step outside the business of life for just one moment and look in from the outside, feeling yourself whole and separate and yet with the world?”

SolitudeOut Of Body ExperienceTotal Awareness
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“We are afraid that our failures will mean that we will not be loved. But we don’t earn love. How we treat others does, of course, affect our relationships. I do not want to be near the man who beat me. I do not trust a friend who has repeatedly lied to me. But we are loved for who we are, not for what we do. Love is larger than what we do. Love moves through us, if we let it. One day I realized that I could love someone and still decide to separate myself from them if our behaviour together was repeatedly damaging to each other. I did not have to stop loving him. And if I love another for who she is, not because she earns my love with her actions, and the same must also be true for those who love me. This isn’t a license to treat those who love us badly, but it helps us step off the endless treadmill of doing for others, trying to be what we think they want us to be, in an attempt to earn their love. It doesn’t work: we can’t earn love.”

Love And Acceptance
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“My parents did their best to feed their children’s bodies, minds, and hearts, every day, whether they felt like it or not. Now that I have had children, I am in awe of how consistently they did this at such a young age, without complaint. They made a commitment to each other and to my brother and myself, and they kept it. I do not know what this cost them. I may never know. But having had children of my own, I know how hard it is some days to do what has to be done. Many of my parents’ generation were raised with a belief that was both curse and blessing: commitments were to be fulfilled, duties carried out. There was no choice. When we are convinced there is no choice, we waste less energy on wondering what to do and railing against that which needs to be done. This is the blessing we have when the rules are clear, the duties delineated. But there is another side to the ease we feel when our duty is laid out for us. If the strict parameters of what is expected do not fit us, we must shape ourselves to meet them, regardless of the costs. My mother, if she did not by nature fit the role of full-time homemaker, successfully managed the Herculean task of bending to meet it, without losing her enthusiasm for life, her ability to experience joy. Other women and their children were not so fortunate. Behind closed doors, within spotless rooms, many of my friends mothers drowned the pain of not living who they were with alcohol and prescription drugs, and they sometimes descended into illness and suicide. Many of the women of my generation are torn apart daily by the choices available to us, choices I am nevertheless grateful to have. When I went to work, I felt worried and guilty about leaving my children at daycare. When I stayed home I thought I would go out of my mind with the mental boredom, the struggle to live without enough money, and the worry that I would never be able to go back into the workplace and make a living. I had inherited my parents’ values in a world with so many more choices and demands, plus my own expectations that I could, and should, develop my own interests and talents. So, I tried to do it all - to keep a house and care for my children according to the standards required of a full-time homemaker, to attend classes to develop my skills, and to work to provide money and financial security. And I got sick – very, very sick. One of the gifts of lying on the floor too ill to get up with two young children to look after is the ease and clarity with which you know what really does have to be done. No, when I work with men and women who are worn out with too much work and worry, you tell me all the things they have to do, I tell them, “You know, very little actually has to be done.” I found out when I was ill that cookies do not have to be baked, floors do not have to be spotless, PTA meetings do not have to be attended, the dish drainer does not have to be emptied, meals do not have to be exotic and innovative. Too ill to do anything that did not have to be done, I did the impossible: I lowered my standards.”

Different GenerationsThe Road Not TakenToo Many OptionsToo Much Choice
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“What is difficult to acknowledge is that I saw this mistake coming and second-guessed myself, went against my own intuitive judgment. It wasn’t that I had not seen the truth. I had. But I failed to find the courage to act on it. Of course, my intuition can be wrong. But making a wrong decision, acting on an intuition that is inaccurate, is a real mistake, one I can live with more easily than the mistake of failing to act on what, to the best of my ability, I know.”

IntuitionMistakesSelf Doubt
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