Estés begins each chapter with a myth, fairy tale, or story and then takes it apart, exploring the deeper meanings that it holds. I knew I would love this chapter because it begins with selkies, and I have had a fascination with those stories for years.
(While searching for a free picture of a selkie that I could add to this blog, I found this beautiful digital painting by Elizabeth Sherry. To me, it perfectly captures the longing for home, the sea.)
(Here is a stunning picture I found of a seal. Now I really need to quit looking for something free I can put here and just write.)
In her introduction to her literary version of the story, Estés says,
"The story tells about where we truly come from, what we are made of, and how we must all, on a regular basis, use our instincts to find our way back home."
Estés gives examples of how we lose our pelts.
"The soul-skin vanishes when we fail to pay attention to what we are really doing, and particularly its cost to us." (page 286)
"The issue is not about these energic cash withdrawals themselves, for these are an important part of life's give and take. But it is being overdrawn that causes the loss of the skin, and the paling and dulling of one's most acute instincts. It is lack of further deposits of energy, knowledge, acknowledgment, ideas, and excitement that causes a woman to feel she is psychically dying. (page 288).
We lose our pelts when we give continually, but have no season of replenishment. We lose our pelts when we do what we think we should do rather than trusting the voice within in us telling us what we need to do. We lose our pelts when we hold back instead of taking the steps that will move use forward. We lose our pelts when we isolate ourselves from our soul-selves.
"So, in a hunger for soul, our own ego-self steals the pelt." (page293)
I love her discussion of the ego and the soul-world. It is too long to copy here, but read through pages 291-293. It made me wonder if perhaps her description of this struggle between ego and soul is what Mormons mean when they talk about the natural man. This makes much more sense to me than how I have previously interpreted that scripture.
On page 306, Estés lists numerous ways we can return home, recharge. In church, we may talk of filling our lamps. I really think we are talking about the same things here, just using different terminology. What is home? It's not just what happens after we endure all the mess of this life. It is a place that we can go to here and now to give use strength for what happens in this life.
"Home is a sustained mood or sense that allows us to experience feelings not necessarily sustained in the mundane world: wonder, vision, peace, freedom from worry, freedom from demands, freedom from constant clacking."
Some of us may need to return home more often, or stay longer in order to cope with our daily lives. And by daily, intentional return to home, we also bring a little of that world back with us.
Like the selkie kept from the sea for seven years, if I do not feed my soul by returning to my home, I too will become weak, crippled, and blind.
Discussion questions:
In what ways do you lose your pelt?
What is the voice that calls you back to the sea?
How do you return home?
My answers:
The most common way I lose my pelt is by trying to live according to other people's ideas of what I should do. Too often, I stay too long on the land because that is what other people expect of me.
I don't listen very well, so often I miss those gentle calls in the night asking me to return to the sea. Instead, I don't often go to the sea until an illness or injury drags me there.
I know where home is. I know how to get there. Beauty (nature, art, music), simplicity, reading, writing, and quiet are the keys for me. A nature walk, or closing my eyes to listen to the sound of a favorite song, or listening to my own breathing can take me there. I'm one of those people that has to go home often, which means I need to make more time both for the long spa day approach and for the quick little escapes.
