Oath of Expression

Have you made or broken oaths and promises to yourself or others? Wrestled with inner callings? Broken hearts, yours included?

Listen to Pegge read Oath of Expression

This morning, texting with my niece, an intended word of path autocorrects to oath. I am intrigued when words change and often pause to see what might be revealed in a word I hadn’t initiated. In that moment, close to sitting down to contemplate and write today’s post, an aha flashed in me. I texted her, “Going to go write my column. This week is about oath.”

In the season of today, I’m making and breaking oaths—some from a lifetime—as I move on more fully into the essence and energy of being fully embodied and living a vibrant natural life of transparency, light, courage, and kindness.

Perhaps this is true for you too.

A gift of art from a friend is framed inspiration on my desk

Seated, breathing into full bodied presence, I opened my journal—I often write longhand in ink—and wrote “Oath” at the top of the page. Then decisively, my hand wrote, Oath of Expression. I wondered what this phrase could represent as it parked itself in my heart and mind. I breathed for a while, listening to its familiarity. Had I written about this? Was there a book by this name? After several minutes, becoming restless, I stepped to my computer to search documents for “Oath of Expression.” To my surprise, an excel document of my URLs listed it as a web domain I’d purchased. I checked the date, and it was recent, October 25, 2023.

I sought what I was writing near that date that inspired Oath of Expression and found an essay that same day that I’d begun in my writing group with the brilliant Laura Lentz in her Literati.Academy, and that week’s theme of “Turning Points.”

After her one-minute writing warmups with prompts, a series of list-making (great for opening up inspiration), selected readings Laura shared from the book When Breath Became Air by Paul Kalanithi, memoirs by Maggie Smith, You Could Make This Place Beautiful and Fierce Connections by Vivian Gornick, a poem by Cory Wade Campbell, and one of her original essays, during my 13-minute write, this memory made itself known, from the summers of 1990 and 1991, a time of expressing myself, making oaths on my emerging spiritual path.

Thirteen minute write about turning points …

I want to write about faith—the type that came in the form of an angel of light who seemed overblown, dark, and menacing. He stood on the corner in San Clemente, California, illuminated by a neighborhood streetlamp, briefcase in his hand. I was caretaking my friend’s home while they were away, and an unpleasant parrot who bit at my hand was caged in the corner. That parrot was feathered in red, blue, yellow, and more, and I’d put a blanket over the metal bars.

I awoke from my dream, heart pounding at 3:00 a.m. Was there a man at the corner below the house watching me? Standing, not blinking. Solitary.

No, I was safe. And when I closed my eyes, he was back. Behind closed eyelids. Simply standing, no movement, watching me.

At first light I awoke, then gratefully sunk back asleep for a few hours awakening groggily, hearing that damb parrot. I wasn’t yet married, and still with the surf photographer writer, someone who, only looking back from the hereness of life, that I could see, really loved me. Us. Yet, so much was at stake in these times, me so young, he with a struggling business, orientating to being grounded in place, a photo editor for a magazine, processing others adventures. I wanted adventure.

God was calling, wooing me, evoking a “yes” in my soul to, “Be still and know that I am God,” to meditate, contemplate, go to church, to adoration, then to the monastery, ultimately to make a choice: monk or marriage.

And I did follow the insistent inner calling, diving gently into the shallow end, for first a week, leaving the California beach to a hermitage in the high desert of Colorado, in the San Luis Valley during the summer of 1990. Then for two weeks the summer of 1991.

Entering the Spiritual Life Institute chapel in Crestone at midnight, my name listed on the signup sheet taped to the door, Meg E. 12:00-1:00 a.m., I knew no one would disturb me. It was my Saturday night Sabbath hour, and inked in a name I was struggling with.

I’m named Margaret Ann, called Peggy Ann as a baby and toddler, after both my grandmothers. At 13, I changed the spelling to Pegge with an “e” and dropped the Ann, doing my best to claim a name that still didn’t fit my feeling of me. Over the next decades I would wonder about Meg, Margo, Annie, Anna, and when a monk fetched me at the airport for the first retreat in 1990 and asked my preferred name, I shared my identity struggle on the hour ride to the monastery—which was about so much more than a name.

Brother Thomas pronounced he’d call me Meg, thus for many years, the monks would know me as Meg E. My soul sister in California still calls me Megge decades later, which I love. During those years, Craig’s affectionate nickname for me was Majii. For decades my dad called me Magpie, and in the past ten years before he died, he affectionately began calling me Pegger. My Dena’ina Athabascan best friend in Alaska calls me K’T’U’ which means winged one, and I love this, however, I’ve decided to stick with Pegge in this lifetime. There’s more about last names, but that’s a story for another time.

Map of the Spiritual Life Institute Carmelite Monastery in Crestone, Colorado, 1990s. In 1991 I was likely staying in the Day hermitage named after Dorothy Day, or Juliana, named after Julian of Norwich. The first retreat I lived in Ghandi.

At age 28, in the monastery chapel for my undisturbed hour of contemplation, I heard invitations and challenges from Spirit—the God I was getting to know in the form of Jesus, and the energy I had felt my entire life but had been unnamed. After my hour, at 1:00 a.m. I departed, silently bowing in acknowledgment to the barefoot brown robed monk waiting outside the door for their hour.

Flashlight off, coyotes howling in the distance, my body scented by beeswax candle flame and frankincense, I walked through sandy dunes toward my hermitage at the edge of the property, stars lighting my path, my soul and mind wrapped in a response and reactions of, stay, go, dare I, no way.

An invitation had been made in the stillness of sanctuary darkness in that hour: ask the monks if you can go with them to their monastery in Nova Scotia this summer when both communities gather together. You don’t have to be back to university until late August.

No way, I can’t. I cannot do this, reverberated in me.

I sensed the presence of a man standing in the darkened desert next to a sand dune and sage brush off to my right. My heart shuttered, pounded.

It was the man from that dream when I took care of the parrot. Watching me. Still in a suit. Staring, briefcase in hand.

Were those wings behind him?

To be continued…

Note to Sr. Suzie, in my wrestling and angst of knowing I needed to end two relationships and follow God’s persistent call. This copy of a note was tucked into the back of a 1991 journal.

Thirty years later…
In 2024, on a winter Superbowl Sunday morning in Alaska, I took a meander through my journals to find this time of my life and revisited 1990, 1991, and into 1992.

On July 10, 1991, at the airport in Pueblo, Colorado, beginning my return travel to Southern California after two weeks at the monastery, reflecting upon my time there, 28-year-old Pegge wrote this, and I find it’s still pertinent 30+ years later:

Fr. David pointed out I’m too worried about doing things ‘right.’ By the rules.
In some ways maybe I need to loosen up and live. As a disciplined wild woman. I think what happens is this: As lifestyles become busier and busier, to keep a hold on it you begin to function within confines and schedules that become binds that trap and enslave. How come I keep buying into doing more and more. Filling my time with non-essential things. I need more laughter, more alone time, less time spent worrying about dumb stuff. Think of all the wasted talk and time spent about what to wear to an event—as if it mattered.

I allow myself to settle for mere happiness when its joy I’m after. There is no excuse for not living. Loving. Giving. Being ravished by God and squandering yourself in love.

Journals beginning in the 1980s, pre-computer and smart phone, contain stories, yearnings, angst and wrestling, dreams and drivel, poetry, quotes, cards, photos, a life of love and heartbreak inked

Reflection sparks for you:

• Have you made or broken oaths and promises to yourself or others? Wrestled with inner callings?

• How do you live out your oaths–make them visible and give expression to them in your life?

• Can you recall wisdom your younger self might have for you today?

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