There are some interviews I’ve done whose significance hit me right away. There are some that have had a major impact on my work. My interviews of Gruffie Clough and of Sara Harrison come immediately to mind. Then there are the interviews that carried messages whose significance emerged over time. You learn, over time, as your own life evolves, and as you have more life experience, how much wisdom they contained. Had you realized their importance, those interviews, rare treasures, would have had a significant positive impact on the intervening years. My interview with Fritz Hull twenty years ago was one of those.

Fritz co-founded The Whidbey Institute on Whidbey Island (an island north of Seattle Washington) with his wife Vivian. We talked about the challenges of sticking with your calling during the tough times:

There is the sacrifice, but there is also the call. The call is not general, but it is a call to me, to my life. It is a graceful and yet demanding call. That is the harsh demand of it, and at the same time the promise that we are going to be okay. Grace.

Staying with our bliss, our calling, over the long haul has in fact brought me and Vivian our happiness. And that means staying with it in times of unhappiness. Riding out the storms, the times of bewilderment, and hanging on and staying with it. Coming through those periods there is a confirmation, and that inner confirmation brings the happiness that makes it all feel worthwhile.

It is like staying with something and moving through the seasons. If you do it enough times, and stay with it and move through the seasons, you learn that spring follows winter. And it happens in a way that you will have forgotten how beautiful spring is. It is happening right now in these woods. 

It requires a surrender to the call. And the call is both graceful and demanding. It requires  wholeheartedness. That is the key. It is the opposite of energy leakage, of things drifting off or being bleached away or being stolen from you. Energy leakage is the opposite of wholeheartedness. It is whatever drags me down and sideways and steals my energy. It steals my devotion. Devotion is wholeheartedness.

There is a great line from Annie Dillard which I love. She says, “The thing is to stalk your calling in certain skilled and supple way. To locate the most tender and live spot, and plug into that pulse.” Isn’t that great? It is from the story of the weasel.

To me it comes from Spirit. It comes from relationship with the mystery. What makes our heart sing? Where do we find that lilt in our hearts? What makes us crotchety? What nourishes us? What makes us smile? What makes us thankful?

It is like watching a young person grow up, watching things come into their fullness, watching things come into their time. It is how you nurture processes and individuals and bring things into their right time for flowering. We need to allow things the time to come into their own. To their moment of flowering, of opportunity, and to be there and intersect that opportunity, to be taken and lifted by that opportunity onto the next one, which will then include the next dark time. Probably. No doubt. There will be more bewilderment.
       - Fritz Hull, Heron Dance interview, Issue 35

. . .

The call involves a spiritual element.
Specific to the person who receives it.
It has a harsh aspect;
And an aspect of grace and beauty.
It is demanding.
It is scary.
If you relax into it, you will be okay.
Therein lies one the greatest rewards life has to offer.

The reward, the meaning, a harmony with
The current that underlies your life,
Come from not only answering the call
But from persisting, from sticking with it.
Surrendering to it. Wholeheartedly.
Confronting yourself during the dark times,
The times of bewilderment
When you want to give up.
The bleak winters of the soul that have come
And will come.
But then, on the other side,
Come times of happiness
Of meaning
The harmony with one’s inner life
That makes it all worthwhile.
The deep rewards that offer a human life
A deep experience of life.
Of what it means to be alive.

Some paths give you energy,
Some take it away.
Answering the call with devotion
With wholeheartedness
Is your source of energy
Devotion. Faith.
Where is your energy calling you?
Calling you because there it can grow?
Go there.
Go where your heart sings.
Go where you are nourished
Where your spirit gains power.
Go there. Grow there.
Where your energy multiplies.

Devotion, faith
And opportunity shows up
Persist some more
And bewilderment shows up.
Still, persist. Regardless, persist.

There’s nothing so unique, so interesting
So valuable as a person
Totally devoted to their work
Focused on a clear vision
On a belief in the value of that work.

Who strives to add something positive to the lives of others.
Beauty. Meaning. Usefulness.
Who seeks mastery, first of all mastery of themselves, in part through self-surrender, in part through discipline and focus. Humility.

Who works without selfishness, cunning, shrewdness.

(I’m not saying I’ve mastered all of this.
I put it here to remind me at decision points,
To guide me where the path forks.)