from the introduction to The Soul's Red Thread: Emerging, Transforming, Trusting
The Way It Is There’s a thread you follow. It goes among things that change. But it doesn’t change. People wonder about what you are pursuing. You have to explain about the thread. But it is hard for others to see. While you hold it you can’t get lost. Tragedies happen; people get hurt or die; and you suffer and get old. Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding. You don’t ever let go of the thread. – William Stafford
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. But I have so much more to say. 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 color, 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; tending to the ill and the elderly. I practiced 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 ached as the life force of red faded away, be it 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 so clearly during the four-day ceremony of a desert fast. Now I take others to the same landscape so that they can enact a ceremony of self-discovery, while being held by the wide-open desert. This spaciousness mirrors back the same expansiveness that lies within each 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 your own life 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 emerge from it. 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. I often wear a crimson red protection cord about my left wrist, often given out at the end of a longer 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 2,500 years.” The ceremony is simple. While each student is holding a cord in hand, the teacher invites us all to tie three knots into the cord, one for each of three intentions to be carried back home. On this day, I recall a simple, yet powerful description of the three gifts offered by Buddhism. I tie a knot in the cord for the first, spaciousness. The second knot is for insight. The third is for compassion. I then have the person beside me tie the cord about my left wrist, and I do the same for him. “Why is it called a protection cord?” asks one of the students. “Why?” says the teacher, her mouth flirting 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. Naming its color and describing its three strands are only the beginning. I also want to say something about what these strands have meant to me over a lifetime. To do that, I need to tell stories, and stories take time. The stories I’ll tell will span the many years that I’ve spent in service to this red thread. First discovering it, then following it, and finally learning to trust where it might lead. And so these are the three sections of this book:
The First Transition: Emerging It took me nearly thirty years—the first third of my life—to have enough of a life story to make contact with this red thread. The first strand revealed was becoming a physician.
The Second Transition: Transforming The middle years were all about transformation: about tracking this life thread, deepening a connection with it, and—in the worst of times—trying to never let it go. In this second third of my life, becoming a wilderness guide was central.
The Third Transition: Trusting I am now in the third third of my life. I’m ever more aware that the strands of this red thread have started to fray and are threatening to snap altogether. Despite Stafford’s admonition—“You don’t ever let go of the thread”—the challenge now is learning how to do just that: learning how to let go. No choice, really. I’m a mortal animal. Learning how to let go is learning how to die, and to do both I must learn how to trust. The teachings of the Buddha will never be more important than here.
If you’re willing, come with me as I follow my own red thread. Together, I hope we might discover something more universal: about why a person tells stories, about the individual identity created by all that storytelling, and about the life thread moving through. After all, we humans are storytelling animals. It’s what we do. And what about you? What color is your own thread?
fromThe Soul's Red Thread anticipated publication date: 2024
Scott Eberle, M.D. Petaluma, California seberle@sbcglobal.net 707-772-5404