Labor of Love: The Birth of Compassionate Intelligence

The closest I will ever get to giving birth, I often feel, is in delivering a new novel. The whole process, from the initial conception to the final contractions, takes a bit longer than the usual nine months — and it’s definitely not as difficult and painful as the real thing. And while the labor of writing is arduous, sometimes grueling, it is also joyous. Deeply so.

In this way, writing novels has brought me just a little closer to that truly phenomenal, beyond-awesome aspect of feminine power: the capacity to give birth. To nurture, sustain, and finally set free a child of one’s own. To grow an inspired idea into an infant-in-arms.

At the same time, writing novels has allowed me to develop an array of strong female characters (in many cases, the key protagonists of my books). Even after their books have been published, these characters regularly stop by my writing desk — unannounced, of course — to remind me of important things. The roads we have traveled together. The places we may someday discover in future books. Or simply the sounds of their voices. In the process, they have given me a much fuller appreciation for the feminine voices within myself.

So what if I’m a man in his mid-forties? Of all the doors that writing has opened for me, the door leading to those feminine voices is among the most precious. Having walked through it once, I am changed forever.

The feminine miracle goes well beyond the capacity for birth. Still, that capacity alone is miraculous enough. Having witnessed the births of our own five children — and having tried as hard as I could, with my bumbling hands, to assist my wife — I have a profound sense of the sheer magic of that moment. And of the sheer strength of spirit, mind, and body that it demands of a woman. It is a moment of immense depth for the present — and poignant possibility for the future.

Yet long after that moment has passed, other feminine capacities live on. They shape the world dramatically, whether or not they are ever celebrated, or even given names of their own. One such capacity embraces a remarkable kind of wisdom. It is made partly of spirit, partly of intelligence, and partly of feeling. And I do give it a name: Compassionate Intelligence.

Compassionate Intelligence requires the true bonding of head and heart. It allows someone to see beyond things that are visible, into the realm of things more elusive — and more lasting. Compassionate Intelligence is, therefore, a special kind of awareness. It is the Knowing embedded in Feeling; it is the Feeling underlying Knowing.

Heartlight, my first published novel, features a teenage girl named Kate Gordon who sets out to try to save the life of her grandfather, a world-famous astrophysicist. In the course of her quest, despite her own struggles and vulnerabilities, she ends up saving far more than that person she loves. She does, quite literally, change the course of the stars. That is why Heartlight, really, is about the ability of one person — even a young, uncertain person — to make an enduring difference.

How does Kate accomplish such a thing? Because her basic emotional wisdom — her Compassionate Intelligence — is more important than all the vast stores of scientific knowledge that her grandfather has amassed during six decades as an astrophysicist. It is Kate’s ability to see more with her heart than with her eyes that carries the day.

The initial inspiration for this intrepid girl (who is also the heroic figure in two other novels, The Ancient One and The Merlin Effect) came from our first child, Denali. While I wanted her to enjoy a few stories featuring a girl like herself, I wanted even more for the stories to assure her that every life matters. That her life matters. That she, too, could one day change the course of the stars.

Now, almost a decade after Heartlight was published, our daughter retains a healthy self-concept. (This year, for her homemade Halloween costume, she is considering being the Empire State Building.) Whether or not the books about Kate Gordon’s adventures have contributed to her development, I can’t be certain — but I am positive they have contributed to my own. They have challenged me to hear my own feminine voices, my own Compassionate Intelligence.

My most recent books, The Lost Years of Merlin and The Seven Songs of Merlin, are the first two volumes of a five-book epic about the formative years of Merlin — the great enchanter who figures prominently in the grand cycle of tales we call Camelot. How did Merlin gain his wisdom, his humor, his sense of both human frailty and human possibility? That is the central mystery of his lost years — and of the epic that will, I hope, give us a new and deeper understanding of his character.

Merlin — at least, the Merlin I am writing about in The Lost Years of Merlin epic — is a real human being. He has struggles, sorrows, joys, and aspirations. And, hidden deep within himself, a remarkable talent. Or gift. Or magic. In this way, he is no different from all of us — burdened by the human experience while at the very same time exalted by it.

For just like the child who washes ashore, half drowned and alone, on page one of the epic, all of us feel lost at some point in our lives. All of us bear hidden struggles — and hidden potentials. And all of us, like the great wizard that child will one day become, possess our own deep magic.

In the young Merlin’s travels, he encounters a number of strong female characters. They include his mother, Elen, who dares to combine the healing arts and faiths of peoples as diverse as the ancient Druids, the Jews, and the early Celtic Christians; Rhia, who is Merlin’s own lost sister; Domnu, who possesses magic so ancient that even the oldest spirits can lay no claim to it; the Grand Elusa, whose power — and whose appetite — strikes terror into anyone she encounters; and Hallia, a deer-girl, who helps Merlin come to know his own deepest passions. Each of these characters contributes something essential to Merlin’s growth, and, ultimately, to his discovery of the wizard within himself.

That discovery would not be possible if Merlin did not, at some point along the way, find his own feminine voice — his own feminine wisdom. It is no accident, therefore, that his final challenge in The Seven Songs of Merlin requires him to take the spirit of his sister into his very self. This is the most difficult challenge he has ever faced. In the story, he believes that this is the only chance he might have of saving his sister’s life. But the underlying metaphor of this experience is, truly, about saving himself.

As Merlin inhales Rhia’s spirit, he breathes in her wisdom, as well. And when, at last, he exhales, some of that wisdom remains with him. An abridged version of that scene follows:

I hesitated, fearing that releasing her spirit would surely mean losing her forever. Yet…the time had come.

 

I exhaled. Deep within, I could feel her spirit stirring subtly. Then it began to flow out of me, at first like a trickle of water, gathering strength, until finally it felt like a river bursting through a dam. My eyes brimmed with tears, for I knew that whether or not Rhia survived in mortal form, she and I would never be so utterly close again.

 

Slowly, very slowly, my breath wove into the shreds of mist around us, creating a shimmering bridge linking my chest and hers. The bridge hovered, glowing, for barely an instant, before fading away completely.

 

Rhia’s forefinger trembled. Her neck straightened. Then, at last, her eyes opened, and her bell-like laughter rang out. I realized, in that moment, that I could still feel, deep within me, a touch of her spirit. A bit of my sister had remained with me. And, I knew, always would.

Merlin, in the course of these books, also learns from another voice that challenges him to align his heart and mind, his feelings and thoughts: the voice often called Mother Earth. Through listening to that voice, he comes to understand that even as nature can change from a violent storm to rain-washed serenity, so can he. That nature’s powers of metamorphosis and transformation mirror his very own.

Why, across so many cultures and so many ages, is that voice deemed to be feminine? It is a reflection of Mother Earth’s power of birth and rebirth. Of her wondrous rhythms, her perfect patterns, her circular seasons. Of her unbounded richness, wholly sensuous and wholly alive.

Recently, in a speech about the importance of protecting our last remaining wild places, I described wilderness as more than just natural, unspoiled landscape. Wilderness, I declared, is “the wellspring, the watershed, the womb, of our very souls.” That womb continues to nourish us, to offer us refuge, even when — as too often happens — we fail to appreciate its fundamental importance.

Kate Gordon discovers this for herself in The Ancient One. She finds herself trapped in the distant past, with a tribe of Native Americans who lived in the Pacific Northwest hundreds of years ago. Her only hope of ever returning home, to her own time, is to do the most difficult thing she has ever done. She must merge her own life with the life of the only living thing old enough to reach across the centuries to her own time: a great redwood known as the Ancient One. In other words, she must become a tree.

Ducking her head, Kate entered the cavern in the trunk of the great redwood, gouged out by fire centuries before. Slowly, very slowly, she discerned a sound vibrating in the hollow of the tree. It was a rushing, coursing sound, like the surging of several rivers. She realized with a start that it must be the sound of resins moving through the trunk and limbs of the tree. And, strangely, through her own self as well.

 

Then she heard something more. With all her concentration, she listened to a distant gurgling sound. It came from far below her, rising from the deepest roots of the tree. They were drinking, drawing sustenance from the soil.

 

Another sound joined with the rest, completing the pattern. Like an intricate fugue, it ran from the tips of the remotest needles all the way down the massive column of heartwood. Back and forth, in and out, always changing, always the same. This was the sound, Kate realized at last, of the tree itself breathing. The sound of life being exchanged for life, breath for breath.

 

“Great tree,” she said in wonder. “I feel so young, and you are so very, very old.”

 

A full, resonant laughter filled the air, stirring even the sturdiest branches. “I am not so young as you, perhaps, but old I surely am not. The mountains, they are old. The oceans, they are old. The sun is older still, as are the stars. And how old is the cloud, whose body is made from the vapors of an earlier cloud that once watered the soil, then flowed to the river, then rose again into the sky? I am part of the very first seed, planted in the light of the earliest dawn. And so are you. So perhaps we are neither older nor younger, but truly the same age.”

 

As she listened to the rhythmic breathing of the tree, Kate felt herself beginning to breathe in unison. A sense of her body was slowly returning, a body that bent and swayed with the fragrant wind. Every element of her being stretched upward and downward, pulling taller and straighter without end. Her arms became supple, sinewy limbs; her feet drove deeply into the soil and anchored there.

 

A sweep of time swirled past, seconds into hours, days into seasons, years into centuries. Spring: azaleas blossoming and pink sorrel flowering. Summer: bright light scattering through the morning mist, scents of wild ginger and licorice fern. Autumn: harsh winds shaking branches, gentle winds bearing geese. Winter: ceaseless rains, frosty gales, more rains brewing. Again and again, again and again. Seasons without end, years beyond count.

 

Fire! Flames scar her outer bark, charring even her heartwood. But she outlasts it, just as she does the winds, the white rot, and the earthquake that follow. In time, five-finger fern takes root at her base, mingling with the mosses and maidenhair. A doe and her spotted fawn step serenely into the glade, nibbling at the ferns.

 

Then, suddenly: A sound unlike any other sound ever heard fills the forest. Piercing, screeching, banishing forever the centuries of stillness. A shudder, a scream of pain erupts from her whole being. Stop! Stop, please. Go away, leave in peace. But the pain only deepens. The sound grows louder.

 

It is the sound of chain saws.

Judging from the people who attend my book readings, and from the letters I receive, my books are read — and, I hope, enjoyed — as much by boys and men as by girls and women. This pleases me greatly, for I believe that all of us, regardless of gender, can benefit from hearing both our masculine and our feminine voices. The wisest people I know have learned to hear those inner voices, to balance them, and to integrate them into their own lives.

That is why I feel so fortunate to have heard the whisperings of characters like Kate Gordon, Elen, and Rhia. For they have enabled me to discover some of the Compassionate Intelligence within myself — a capacity that all of us share. And they have convinced me that in finding that inner wisdom, we may also find the capacity to give birth.

Give birth to what? To an endless array of new possibilities within ourselves. And, in the process, to an entirely new world.