by Jeanne Denney
I don’t know when it was…maybe 2014? I was facilitating a series of workshops in a new program in New York called "The Art of Dying”, sitting at the back of the room with my knitting needles. Amy Cunningham, an inspired mortician from Brooklyn, was teaching about “The Inspired Funeral”. On the slide were these words:
“What is the Body For?”
For a mortician, the question of how we work with the reality of a body after death is large. Does the body have a value or a role…or do we just summarily dispose of it? Do we need to say goodbye to it? Watch a few inspired home funeralists, like Olivia Bareham, and you will realize what a powerful effect a body can have in healing grief.
But that day I was listening to Amy as a body psychotherapist, and an explorer of consciousness. Amy’s simple question “What is the body for?” went up in neon lights for me. Yes, what IS the body for?…I mean in the bigger sense. How is it that we create these physical bodies day by day through the first 25 years of so of our lives, and then slowly leave them for the rest of it? For what purpose? Thank you Amy, I am still chewing on that question. To me, these bodies seem to evolve us, and give us discipline and structure.
Hang on. I have another place I am going with this.
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What got me thinking about this now, this month, as I have gone through a major, major death rebirth process myself. On August 16 I moved from Racine, Wisconsin to Sudbury, Vermont. The issue of how we leave physical things we have been attached to has been large. Packing 5000 s.f. of house one box after another, making one trip to goodwill after another, emptying a refrigerator, a pantry, a garage. This house was home to SoULL for 6 years of its early life. In fact the house was, well, SoULL’s body. That means it was a bit more than a personal place to live! It held something more.
I remember how in 2018 I envisioned SoULL having an actual, physical space. For some reason I wanted this project to have an anchor and a ground. To have a large, beautiful space meant to move off of the east coast. I began to look. Moving to Racine, WI in 2019 was a giant experiment that confused a lot of people.
“So…why did you move here?” “You are moving to Wisconsin?!?!…Really?” Later: “And…so…why did you move here?” I answered these questions a million times, usually replying that “the divining rod just started to shake.” But there were reasons. First, I had midwestern roots. After 37 years in New York, a divorce and the 2016 election, I felt a longing to return to them. Something had clearly changed in the heartland in that time; I wanted to understand it. I also hoped that SoULL might plant a seed of vitality in a rustbelt community, and be fed by the beauty, heart and ease I knew when I was young. Far too many people fly over these plains, maybe I could invite a few to land. I knew there was depth to root into, and something that needed to be remembered. So my vision?: I would ground and grow myself, and a fledgling school of somatics.
When I found Racine, I immediately felt it the “You’ve arrived”. Racine was an exotic, fascinating, living laboratory of American history and heartbreak, alive and unchanged enough to help me return to my roots, and on a scale that was small enough to engage. I figured you could learn a lot about America and human community there. And I did! In January of 2019 I moved without knowing a single person. Shortly after, a grand home by Lake Michigan showed up on cue for about the cost of a shabby high ranch in a NYC suburb. I bought it on faith that something could ignite there. It was a great, crazy midlife experiment, which took courage but it was also…exciting.
Asked later about my vision for the house. Inexplicably, out of my mouth came these words: “I want it to be like the Jung Institute”, you know…where people gathered to share new ideas and advance thinking in new directions. I am not a Jungian. I didn’t even know where the Jung Institute was when I said that! But then I looked up a picture of it by Lake Lucerne and compared it to 304 16th St. by Lake Michigan. Dang! There is a certain….feeling of kinship.
The “SoULL House” 304 16th St. One block from Lake Michigan
The C. J. Jung Institute in Küsnacht near Lake Lucern
Oddly, both houses were moved from their original location to a lake! And these are not exactly mobil homes! Two houses, reincarnated by water.
I can’t say that I was personally very successful in Racine. I wasn’t. SoULL hasn’t become the Jung Institute. I found friendships hard to cultivate. I could not get a local talk opportunity to save my soul, not that I had time to do them anyway. And the one I did (on Terror Management Theory)? To say it was unwelcome in this anti-racist group was an understatement. I am relieved that the unhappy crowd didn’t throw food. But…I learned. I brought people in from the coasts, and a few local students came too. Little by little, the east, the west AND the midwest met in the living room and at DeKoven Center, right there in the heartland. I am sincerely proud of that accomplishment.
“So why are you leaving?” I don’t know what it was. Probably a combination of the political change, health challenges and deeply missing family, I suddenly realized my age, and the extent of my deep exhaustion. I needed kin, community, private space, ease, nature and a lot less to maintain. Also, what I had to do in Racine seemed to be mainly done. I hope it is not time for SoULL to leave Racine, but it was time for Jeanne to make a large change. So I did.
Did this experiment matter? I held that question all summer as I packed through the midwestern heat, ruminating on meaning just like people on a deathbed. It was and is a grand and beautiful house. It had anchored a wild few years of growth, but I wondered if I could have done SoULL from my laptop as I traveled the world instead. Did it matter that I came and grounded SoULL here?
As I emptied the house it was clear that this little death needed support of a community. For example, it just seemed impossible to just throw the students candles in a dumpster, or to close the door on this place alone. Too much had happened. A few friends helped me pack (thank you Barbara and Sue). When LiZhen asked me what other help I needed for my move, I said “I would love help saying goodbye to all of this…I can’t just walk out by myself.”
So the night before I pulled out of town an impromtu group gathered in the empty house with folding chairs. Friends, family, neighbors, cat sitters and local students showed up. Even the beloved driver, Janet, who ferried students from the airport. Some people joined from online. We talked about what this gorgeous space had given us, what we had given each other. Hearts opened. Gratitude was expressed. Turns out, maybe it had mattered to a few people, maybe something had changed. We lit the abandoned student candles and placed them throughout the house for a moment….a few last lights…then blew them out. I asked folks to take them home, to light them someplace else, and to take this light outward. The next day…we closed the door.
The last gathering at the “SoULL House”.
I am still with Amy’s question: “What is a body for?” What was THIS body (of a house) for? What I see is that houses, bodies and communities can help us grow ideas, anchor to earth and community and help us create very specific things. A specific place, like a medicine or a house or a lake, can arrive. Maybe we take it. Maybe it helps us heal something. Then maybe, one day, it is over. It is right, and necessary, for us to take a moment and say thank you, I love, you, I am sorry, forgive you, and I wish you well on your own journey.
To Racine, to 304 16th St. to everyone I met there. I say all of that and more. I am deeply grateful for your teaching. May the SoULL light in the heartland continue to grow even stronger. And stronger. And stronger.
For what happens next in SoULL? Well…stay tuned. We are working on it. And…its a process.
