Coming Home to Story

Chris Seeley was a global citizen. Her circle of belonging was wider and more various than anyone else I’ve ever met. She belonged to many self-chosen categories and communities: artists, intellectuals, clowns, dancers, yogis, runners, cooks, consultants, dog lovers, teachers, gardeners, ursophiles, tweeters, travellers, writers, teddy bear afficionados, knitters, homemakers, poets, and spouses – to name those that come immediately to mind.

What was extraordinary about her however, was not just the breadth and variety of her passions, but how she brought them together in a unique integration. Conventional boundaries dissolved as all aspects of her life came together in one creative flow. Her friendships were deep and constant and her friends too numerous to count; her tribe was manifold and I am proud to call myself a member of that continuing fellowship.

Twice we visited paleolithic sites (once in France and once in Spain) to look at cave paintings. The animals and hunting scenes were magnificent but it was the simple, domestic gesture of the handprints that delighted her most. “Look,” they seemed to say. “We all belong here, together.”

Chris longed for a modern form of indigeny, intimately connected to people, place, and planet. Shortly after we got married, she wrote a beautiful piece about this on her Wild Margins website, from which we read these inspired words at her funeral service:

Perhaps we yearn for an impossible dream, to belong here and now, to each other, to be the roots and the soil, to grow from place and tribe, to go out and perform as a troupe performs and return home to be greeted and fed and then to sleep…

My home is now, during my turn on the planet, passing through with this tribe – this troupe of wonderful creative, vital people alive at a time of astonishing loss.

[Image: Cueva de las Manos, Santa Cruz, Argentina]