Senior News August, 2004 Vol. 25. No. 8

 

Published by the Humboldt Senior Resource Center in Eureka, California. HSRC is a non-profit community-based organization offering services for senior citizens, multi-generational families and caregivers.

Kathleen Kistler has learned to wait and hear her inner voice

Sign up for the Over-60 Program at HSU

Nero burned while Rome fiddled

Sandi Fitzpatrick to head California Commission on Aging

Berg to unveil an aging master plan

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Kathleen Kistler is no stranger to reinventing herself - and her organizations. That is her expertise.

The executive director of the Sequoia Humane Society has just shepherded that group into becoming a "no-kill" facility as of July 1. Reinventing situations is an art and a skill, some of which she honed through her degrees in psychology and a Ph.D. in higher and adult education and psychology.

"It's what I do. I'm a catalyst for change, always have been," said Kistler. "I'm comfortable with change. I'm able to develop a vision and then work with people to implement it."

Kistler, 57, has taken a complex journey to return to where she graduated from HSU as an undergraduate in 1968. She spent 19 years at College of the Redwoods and eight more at Shasta College where "I changed jobs within those organizations every three years. I went where they needed some change." She has served as head of humanities, fine arts, equal opportunity, Center for Excellence, and vice president both of academic affairs and student affairs during her community college years.

"But my basic nature was quiet. I would run off to the monastery for retreats as often as I could."

The monastery was the temple of her teacher Daizui MacPhillamy at a large acreage outside of Gasquet in Del Norte County. With only three in residence, it was the retreat for the monks in the Order of Buddhist Contemplatives out of Shasta Abbey in Mount Shasta.

Shortly after she turned 50 she "finally thought it was time to focus and honor the quiet and contemplative part of myself and see what came up next," she said. "Working for the college was a great job, great pay, but that's not what was important. I had to make sure I was making the best use of my life - and that can only happen when you pay attention and rediscover yourself."

So in 1999 she gave away everything. "If you want something new to come in, you have to clear the decks. I thought giving away my stuff emptied it out, but it was only one layer. That was the beginning of clearing the decks." In the monastery she spent time meditating, in silence, in the simple repetitive tasks of a meditative life. "It's amazing what bubbles up," she recalled. "It's far from quiet internally. You're finally hearing all those voices that you had covered up before."

She discovered that her main task at the monastery was to learn to wait, to learn patience. "I was afraid. Waiting is hard. I was 54. What if I could never get a job again?" She was hoping that she would discover her mission was to be a monk in the order, to live in a quiet peaceful setting "and not have to face all the messiness of the world."

But twice, Kistler said, "something picked me up by the scruff of the neck and said, 'nope, gotta get out into the world.'" So she left the monastery with no idea what she would do next. "I hadn't figured it out while I was in there. All I learned there was to wait."

Forcing herself to go slowly, she thought of what she really loved - animals - and soon learned that Brookings, Oregon, was hiring a director for a newly built no-kill animal shelter. She applied for the job. When she asked a friend on the Sequoia Humane Society board for a letter of recommendation, the friend urged her to apply here. But recurring nightmares about the traditional approach to animal shelters kept her at arm's length.

In the interview, she said, she made it clear that she could only take the job if the board would consider over time the idea of becoming a no-kill facility. Even with that agreement, the nightmares plagued her for the first six months. "It was the hardest job I've ever had - and I knew it was exactly where I was supposed to be. It took everything I've learned in all my other jobs."

After house-sitting for the past three years, she has also discovered her own place to live - a tiny house she has built overlooking Big Lagoon near the ocean.

"One of the troubles with discovering yourself is that it isn't easy. But this (the Humane Society) really is my monastery. And nothing is picking me up by the scruff of the neck and saying I'm not supposed to be here."

Barbara Clark is editor of Senior News.