There’s a thread you follow. It goes among things that change. But it doesn’t change . . .
You don’t ever let go of the thread.
excerpt from “The Way It Is" by William Stafford
If you are willing, come with me as I follow The Soul’s Red Thread, retracing this life journey of mine. Along the way, I will look to offer more than just one person’s story. I want to speak about universal themes: about why all humans tell stories, about the identity each person creates with that storytelling, and about a life thread moving through. My own life thread is red. Lifeblood red. Redrock desert red. Crimson robe of the Buddha red. “You have to explain about the thread,” says Stafford, and so I begin by telling you its color. I have so much more to say, though it all begins with learning the language of red.
Red is the color of blood. Which is to say, I am a physician. If human life were to be expressed as a single hue, it just might be the intense, hemoglobin red of blood. “Red is the most joyful and dreadful thing in the physical universe,” says G.K. Chesterton. Joyful because red sings to us about the grand possibilities of a human life. Dreadful because, with the slice of a knife or the rupture of an artery, precious life can bleed away. I started off as a family physician: delivering babies, caring for children, and tending to the ill and the elderly. I practiced medicine in service to the life-giving force of red, doing what I could to keep blood vibrant and flowing. Later, I became an AIDS physician during the worst of that epidemic and, later still, a hospice physician, both in service to the sacred act of dying. I watched, listened, and cradled the life force of red as it was dissipating, be it as a slow seeping or a sudden hemorrhaging. I say again: Red is the color of blood. This is the color of the thread I’ve been following.
Red is the color of desert rock. Which is to say, I am a wilderness guide. Years ago, my own life thread was revealed to me during a four-day fast in the desert. Now I take others to the same landscape so that they can enact this ceremony of self-discovery, all while being held by the open desert. This spaciousness mirrors back the same expansiveness that lies within each desert initiate. Death is ever-present in the desert, which means life is too. If you have the courage to sit there quietly for days, then what matters most about living and dying will be more clearly revealed. “Red is the color of water in the desert,” writes Terry Tempest Williams. Water flows through colored dust to become the red water of life. I go to the desert, over and over, so that I (and others) might be nourished by this arid landscape and by the life stories that are told in this setting. For me, these stories are as precious and life-giving as water. I say again: Red is the color of the desert. This is the color of the thread I’ve been following.
Red is the color of the Buddha’s robe. Which is to say, I am a student of the Buddha’s teachings and a spiritual seeker. I have often worn a crimson red protection cord on my left wrist, given out at the end of an extended meditation retreat. “The color of the cord is red, a symbol of the Buddha’s robe,” I hear a teacher explain. “I hand you this cord, teacher to student, just as the Buddha’s teaching have been passed down for over two thousand years.” The cord-tying ceremony is simple. While we students are holding a red cord in hand, the teacher invites us all to tie three knots into the strand, one for each of three intentions to be carried back home. On this occasion, I tie a knot in the cord for each of the three fruits of Buddhist practice. One knot is for spaciousness. A second, insight. The last, compassion. The person beside me ties the cord about my left wrist, and I do the same for him. “Why is it called a protection cord?” I ask the teacher. “Why?” Her mouth flirts with a smile. “The cord is meant to protect you from yourself.” I say again: Red is the color of the Buddha’s robe. This is the color of the thread I’ve been following.
I want to explain about this thread of mine, but naming its color and describing the three strands are only the beginning. I want to tell stories, and stories take time. I want to speak about where this thread has led me over the past half-century: from when I left my parents’ home at seventeen, to the age of sixty-seven. Looking back now, the rite-of-passage guide that I am divides this long journey into three transitions: the three thirds of this book.
The First Transition: Discovering It took me nearly thirty years, the first third of my life, to have enough of a life story to recognize my own red thread. It was the first strand of the thread, becoming a physician, that led me up the canyon of my early career.
The Second Transition: Opening In my second third of life, the thread brought me to a great open plateau and a whole new way of living. Central to this midlife transition was becoming a wilderness guide, which then taught me how to better serve as a physician-guide. All the while, I kept tracking this life thread of mine, and as Stafford admonishes, in the worst of times I tried to never let it go.
The Third Transition: Trusting I am now in the third third of my life. I walk this path fully aware that death is on the horizon. I also understand that that the strands of this red thread already have been fraying (I recently ended my career as a physician, though I do still work as a wilderness guide and a rites-of-passage counselor). Now, the great task is learning to trust—to trust ever more deeply—where this thread will lead me. The teachings of the Buddha have never been more important.
If you are willing, come with me as I follow The Soul’s Red Thread, retracing this life journey of mine. Along the way, I will look to offer more than just one person’s story. I want to speak about universal themes: about why all humans tell stories, about the identity each person creates with that storytelling, and about a life thread moving through.