Margie Walker, the WOW of Wonders!
That was a favorite phrase of Margie’s,
Wow! Wonder of Wonders!
Margie would exclaim this intermittently whenever she was overcome by a train of thought or conversation, overcome by the joy that bubbled up her spirit at the interconnectivity in being alive. Margie would laugh, and often cry in response to her fervent intelligence seeking the connection points like tiny roots reaching out and going to earth. She rooted and was awestruck. She rooted in her emotional vulnerability in the moment and felt the sacred safety to express it; so she wept openly in her ritual of gratitude. Our conversation was littered with such exclamations and mutual rooting with one another, I had the feeling that this was often the case with Margie as she moved though her world.
Margie is a deeply spiritual woman and a storyteller. The importance of sharing a person’s story springs from her Celtic heritage and is a major factor to her calling as a spiritual director in her faith. Margie extends spiritual direction to others in relationship to the power of story. The ritual of oneself in relationship with faith. Margie is also rooted in her family, they have always been everything in her intimate community. Margie is a traveling pilgrim and has been her whole life, comfortable and curious in all settings, life a continual, joyous adventure. Margie is aware of her privilege of comfort and being cared for, respected, loved. She uses this awareness for the powers of kindness, a deep understanding of her responsibility to that privilege. Margie is amazing.
Please click here to enjoy Margie Walker’s full-length interview.
A dear aunt had facilitated an introductory email between Margie and I as I drew near to Omaha, Nebraska and was seeking women from my aunt’s community to continue the interview process for this project. My aunt’s community was connected to me in a way as my father was born and raised there in Omaha and my older sister was born there as well. Echoes of this old origin story were still alive in the community of my aunt, who had shared my father’s childhood and created her own personal and professional life that sprung from the foundation of her family’s bedrock, the Catholic Church.
The little exposure I had to the Catholic Church growing up was through my father and my sporadic visits to him in a city on the other side of the state of Washington. We settled in Washington after leaving the midwest when I was quite young, a family creating a new story in its own pilgrimage. My own spirituality was always rooted in a strong Pagan relationship with the natural elements and through legends and myths rooted in magic and allegory. I was a reader of the highest order as a child and the stories of the supernatural were always my favorite and guided my relationship with the sublime. The catholic religious experience that I encountered with my father was one of rebellion, Jesus Christ SuperStar or “Motorcycle Jesus” as I nicknamed my father in my twenties. His Jesus was the destroyer of temples immersed in commerce and the banishment of corruption, my father’s Jesus was a righteous holy man who fought for justice for the poor and downtrodden. I could dig it as an idea and not fall sway to the indoctrination.
The Catholic Church in Omaha, NE is decidedly un-hippy, but the church and the women that I encountered who worked there and devoted their lives to it, were full of compassion. Sharing a love and deep commitment to investigating the depth of those emotions in the relationship to their faith and community.
Margie Walker is a spiritual advisor for those who are wanting to join the church. She will hold your hand and listen and witness your navigation of your understanding of the Catholic faith. Margie’s wise sweetness will guide up to the door and step to the side as you walk through to the wild pageantry of the Catholic Church. If the Church held a chorus of Margies in every office, the Catholic faith would be truly a most compassionate and joyful sanctuary.
I came to Margie’s home at her invitation to conduct the interview. Margie’s reaction just in the initial email exchange was full of excitement in what I was doing in this project’s work, lots of capital letters voicing encouragement and connection to the theme of storytelling being the gateway to true compassionate understanding between individuals and their seeming differences. Lots of WOWS and an impassioned invitation to come to her home, her sanctuary and participate in the work.
And there she was, that sweet woman. When Margie opened the door after I walked up and knocked, she stood to the side with a wonderful smile and asked me in. Margie has a knack for standing at thresholds.
Homemade blueberry muffins and cool lemon water, inspired conversation in the loveliest midwestern backyard garden. Cicadas buzzed, next door neighbors kids screamed and played, and our drinks beaded perspiration in the humidity. Margie and I delighted in one another immediately. Spirit-Sisters from the get go, verbal gifts flew back and forth between us, a “Yes!” And!” of epic proportions. We both laughed and wept and stepped through that mystic connection door together with a great deal of joy and gratitude for one another and our meeting that day. Margie’s God, her self-described, “Holy One” is not a god rigid in exclusive patriarchy. Margie’s Holy One is joyful and relaxed, sprung forth from the structure of the Catholic Jesuits which encourages self examination and the innate spirituality present in the pursuit of intelligence and the wisdom of discourse.
Literally from the top of our conversation, Margie vocalized her faith in the power of story. Our consciousness that is our story and our connection to our unconscious which is rooted in the divine. Our story teases out the thread and encourages that connection to be tangible through vocalization. In giving shape to the interior emotional jumble through words and a thoughtful narrative, we can trace the pure gold of when the story drops away and we can relax into life without the tense sensation of isolation. We can access grace. Story as access to the universal connectivity that is at the heart of all life. Nothing is left out in the cold, nothing exists alone.
Margie and I spoke further about the power of story. How in sharing your story, a person can create a space of freedom by being vulnerable in speaking of what makes you feel weak. In speaking emotional truth, a person is giving the listener permission to explore their own vulnerability and the freedom of self expression. Witnessing one another in vulnerability literally creates emotional room for something more than instinctual reaction. It gives the room for letting go and learning to choose more thoughtful emotional responses to one’s fears in the future. Story and the telling creates wisdom which allows emotional freedom.
And the freedom to do and go and say and feel is a very important thing for the average American. We equate ourselves to our physical freedoms like no other country on this planet. We take for granted our freedom like no other country and due to our wealth and abundance in this country, we see our freedoms as “God Given Rights”. Whatever that actually means. The majority of Americans rarely look closely at what, “Life, Liberty, and The Pursuit of Happiness” specifically refers to. Just don’t tell us what to do. You are not the boss of me. Let me do my own thing and buy my own stuff and enjoy my own life thank you very much. A lot of unconscious defensive reaction to the connection of being responsible to anything or anyone besides oneself.
To be able to create a sense of interdependence through story and the emotional freedom that is experienced in allowing one another to surrender that guarded mentality, to create spiritual vulnerability with one another as an access point to our cultural obsession with “freedom”, feels like a massive win/win. The carrot of “Freedom” brought to you by our sponsors, Wisdom through Emotional Vulnerability. That would be fantastic. American culture takes a step forward, all of us, all the different stories, together.
WOW! Wonders of Wonder.
Margie Walker. I’d like to return to the beginning of this story. A story introducing this one woman. A sweet, wise, strong woman. A woman who is a self-proclaimed pilgrim in all of her travels and life adventure. Specifically a pilgrim and not a gypsy as Margie views her life as one long pilgrimage derived from a deep connection with her Celtic heritage, the wild mystics that flow through her veins. The connection to her god as, “Big, Gracious, Holy One” and being a child in that sacred relationship that she feels so acutely. A life long journey, a pilgrimage in her communion with story and divine love.
This is the nature of refuge.
