Darkness and Light 25

On Christmas night I'm thinking aboout babies, the beautiful nativity story and babies in general, how each is a little spark, a light that can be nurtured or snuffed out, and how each is unique. and none is of more intrinsic value than any other. That is the lesson my Uncle Rudy taught me. He was born very prematurely and lack of oxygen had affected his lungs and his coordination. Things like ...making change were hard for him and he had terrible asthma. he also had music in his every cell and was a drummer for his high school band and the Texas Longhorn band. But none of that is my point here. My point is that I was raised to be way too achievement oriented and success oriented and by high school must have been pretty snooty about academic success. Uncle Rudy and I were pulling weeds together one morning and I said something, don't remember what, but something stuck up and mildly contemtuous regarding school performance. And he looked me straight in the eyes and told me to remember that not everybody has the same advantages and I needed to stop judging. The lesson took. It was years later that i thought about that lesson in reverse. I sure don't have Rudy's musical ability or naturally outgoing nature, and he never held me in contempt for those lacks. So on Christmas night I'm thinking about babies, and how each one is a unique spark, to be discovered and nutured, not judged.

Darkness and Light - Post 24

I've been reading posts of Christmas preparations in the homes of many of my friends, and remembering wonderful celebrations I have attended throughout my life.. All the baking and wrapping and choosing and decorationg - all the care of presentation - love in the act of making a holiday is a beautiful manifestation of ove, and one I'm not great at.. Hostessing in general  is not a gift of mine, but that means I value it more not less. I celebrate the light of hospitality tonight and feel gratutude to all who have made me feel at home and look forward to being in Bob's parents' home in a few dayus.  Those two have a real gift for hospitality, both of them..

Darkness and light- Post 23

Now that the light is returning I want to focus on people and ideas who/which have brought me light. Today, as I busied myself for shutting down everyday life and getting on the road for the holidays, I especially thought about my Grandma Anna. There is so much I could write about her. She taught me that being quiet was just fine, that love can smell like cinnamon ...and brown sugar or like potatoes in butter or like fresh peaches. She taught me that having endured losses doesn't have to make you bitter even if it leaves you sad. And so much more. But today I was mostly thinking about how she taught me, when I was really small, to truly enjoy making order, drying dishes, putting things where they belonged. She took deep and quiet pleasure in doing everyday tasks well and taught me not just to do the tasks but to feel that same contentment in having done them. It wasn't quite as fancy as "Whistle while you work.", but it definitely was a message of "Simple work is satisfying." I am thankful for that lesson and for all the love with which my Grandma Anna treated me every day we had together. She, with her quiet wisdom, was a great light in my life and is still.

Wow! It's my sixty second birthday, and a good one. This is my first birthday in which Face Book messages have played a major part. I got a bunch of messages some of which were sweet and total surprises. I feel so happy to have gotten that attention.  Birthdays were celebrated in my girlhood home, but played down, and that never bothered me.  But the more years my birthday gets played up, the more spoiled I get. It feels good to be noticed as present and desired in the world.  I'm trying to get better at noticing the birthdays of those I love.

 

My day here was great - l slept late, which would have been enough all by itself, had brunch with Bob at Trudy's buffet, which is my very favorite with hashbrowns and enchilladas of four kinds on the same table and a ginger mango mimosa and my guy's hand to hold.. Wow! Bob and I spent some time in the country looking for a rare bird (fork tailed fly catcher up from Mexico) we didn't find and watching the sun set brilliant orange and purple. We went to a cool museum IMAX theater to see the Hobbit 3D. I enjoyed it but felt the battle scenes took up too much of the film compared to the book. Glad I went though, and had every opportunity to hide my head in Bob's shoulder. If I interpret sounds from the kitchen right, there is still cake to come. 

 

PS, not cake, but better, Chris' gingerbread trifle, my all time favorite dessert - this time with a candle in it.

Darkness and Light - Post 22

- The light is beginning to return. The days are getting longer, inperceptibly, first move in new direction. It's my sixty second birthday. At sixty I wrote that sixty didn't feel different from 50. The process of aging like the process of spring coming, has it's own pace. I still have plenty of energy, but my knees are noticably stiffer and wiggling out of tight spots takes more effort. My movements are slower and stiffer. I'm OK with all of that, fair price for being here. I don't like the wrinkles on my face and arms, but that comes from working in the sun. I do like my increased patience, tolerence and wisdom. My current task is task is to see aging not as the enemy but to take it on its own terms, caring for my body, keeping up with new trends and technologies as much as possible, continuing to learn and grow, and also to make as much sense as possible of the lessons life has taught me and pass them on.

Darkness and light, Post 21

 Shortest day, longest night. Right now, tonight, the pattern of the seasons reverses and the light begins to return. Winter solstice born, this is my favorite moment of the year, the bottom of the well where resurgence happens. We will not see hte green shoots for months yet, but the on first day of winter the sun sets its pattern back toward spring. In my part of. the world the air is cool and the stars are bright, the half moon ringed in green. The darkness of this night holds infinite mystery. Tomorrow is a question mark and it's always possible I may not see tomorrow, and yet, on this long night I always feel hope pushing through the mystery and uncertainty. Tonight my words are for all who hope and all who are afraid to.

Darkness and light - post 20

Tonight Bob and I and KK and her friend visited our city's trail of lights along with hundreds of other Austinites. I've done this off and on (mostly on) since college days and spun under the gigantic tree made of wires of lights of every color. It was fun tonight to be out in the cold with people I love among well behaved strangers celebrating sparkle. I watched. the two girls walking ahead with their arms around each other's waists and felt fear for them, both because we are all so vulnerable in the world and because each has possibly serious medical isuues.


I also though about how awful it would be if a shooter targeted the trail of lights. I've never thought that before. I wonder if many people stayed away for that reason. Clearly many people, with their small children wrapped up and in strollers, came anyway. I'm glad of that. Tonight's lights are, for me, trusting an unsafe world enough to participate fully whatever may or may not come.

Darkness and Light - Post 19

- Still the days get shorter and I am discouraged having just read an article about people using the shooting in Connecticut, and other recent shootings, as ways to scam money, pretending it was for victims' families. That kind of mercenary behavior shocks me and provokes ethical outrage in me. It dims my hope. But I had lunch today with a friend who reminded me tha...t if most people didn't make honorable choices most of the time the world would be much more unsafe than it is. I would get mugged every time I walked home from the bus stop after dark (Its never happened). The waitress today would not have told me that I had mistakenly given her a fifty dollar bill instead of a twenty. I hang onto this light. Most people make honorable choces most of the time. I have power over my own choices.

Darkness and light - Post 18

Tonight in the wake of Sandy Hook, on the brink of the fiscal cliff, in the middle of finals for the high schooler in my house, while waiting for diagnostic test results, in the midst of trying to get holiday gifts and rituals right, I think about fear. There's the fear my granddaughter voiced tonight that the lock down drill at her school would probably not work b...ecause the shooter could just knock down the doors to the fear of forgetting to send someone important a Christmas card, to the fear of making a lower than desired grade on a final, the fear of not getting it (whatever it is) right enough. I could list on and on the fears that haunt me and those around me. in addition to our economic and safety fears. It is a time of the year where many of us press even more than usual to be perfect. I believe strongly that perfection is an iilusion. Real is better than perfect. For now I strive to do what I can to raise the odds of my safety and the safety of my family and community and to work and right and life according to a high standard, and then to let go of striving and accept limited control and uneven performance. I strive to act out of hope, not fear.

Darkness and light - Post 17

- I'm thinking about imbalance and balance tonight. Work play and rest. Thought and feeling. Argument and faith. Change and stability. Justice and mercy. Tenderness and hard truth, curiosity and acceptance of mystery. I know balance one day is imbalance the next day. For myself, I will focus on finding my balance points, day by day on all the various axies, and on accepting that balance shifts constantly and always will.

Darkness and Light - Post 16

Hanukah is over and the days still get shorter. I miss lighting the candles in the early darkness and am daunted by the task of dewaxing all eight mennorahs, but hte light was worth the work. I'm still full of feeling about what happened as Sandy Hook Elementary and full of thoughts about how to move toward a world where such horrors are less likely. I don't want to fall into helplessness or fixate on an oversimplified solution. I really believe everything is multidetermined and complex problems require careful, openminded study and multifaceted actions. The darkness I want to illuminate is the darkness of oversimplification. For mywself I'm focusing on thie issue of violent acting out in our culture and looking at it from as many angles as I can with as few preconceived notions. And I hope to use that open mindedness in all areas of my life.

Emotional response to Sandy Hook

I've been reading responses to the Connecticut killings this morning. The intensity of both the suffering that results from this massacre and the intensity of the need to create a kinder, gentler world in which such shootings and other horrors are less comon. I feel strongly committed to working hard to turn the intensity of my reactions to this shooting into the energy of working for change. Einstein was right. Energy cannot be destroyed, just converted from form to form, purpose to purpose. That knowledge gives me comfort when the energy of suffering is great. We all have a choice of what to do with it. Anything that happens to us or around us, I truly believe we have the choice to let it diminish us or to add it to ourselves in some way that serves. We can even use good things to diminish ourselves, by becoming complacent, judgemental, enttitled. Using the energy of pain to grow is hard. For me, the most effective forms or energy to turn pain into have been plain hard physical work, service sometimes oriented to reduce the cause of the pain for others, sometimes not, and art.  I'm surprising myself by writing no poetry about Sandy Hook. I think I'm going for service/action this time - to fight contempt and acceptance of meanness and violence anyway I can.  I know management of weapons and better care for the mentally ill, as well as a better way to figure out who is likely to be dangerous are all part of the needed change, but my own focus seems to be on the underlying attitudes, especially of contempt.  So readers beware, you will be reading that word alot in my writings.   

Darkness and Light, Post 15 - Eighth night

We had dear friends with us for the last night of Hanukah, lit all eight candles in all eight menorahs, shared curry and lattkes and opened presents together. Liam and Ruth put together his cool gift of a Lego ambulance complete with paramedics and patients, and my mind jumped again to the real ambulances and horror yesterday in Connecticut. Innocence... and safety are so transitory. I don't want to watch Liam laugh and cuddle up to his Mama and list in my head all the awful ways he could die. I stop myself when I start doing that kind of crazy thinking, but I have to stop myself more frequently than I'd like. Life is uncertain. Life is hard. I light tonight's candle for all of us who choose to live fully and love intensely anyway.

Darkness and Light - Post 14 - Candle 7

 Tonight before dinner we lit seven candles in each of seven mennorahs. Before Liam lit the first helpercandle, Ruth flipped off the single remaining electric light, and we were plunged into thick black darkness - alot of darkness. Candle by candle, light began to illuminate the darkness . The first thing I noticed was that I could begin to see the family faces clustered around the candles. I felt less alone with each candle that was lit, more connected. And I thought about the horror of the school killing today in Connecticut. I felt helpless and isolated regarding that horror and those which have preceded and will follow it. I don't want to sit isolated in horror and hopelessness.I want to keep lighting candles and looking into the faces around me. And I dedicate tonight's candle to everyone who fights the urge to give up on change at any level, personal or global.

Darkness and light -Post 13 - Candle 6

This morning I awakened to intense, repetitive banging and voices right outside my window shouting unintelligbly (Spanish my awakening mind recognised groggily). It sounded like war outside my window, or at least like someone was trying to break into my room. That wasn't the case. The workers fixing my neighbors plumbing had gotten an annoyingly early s...tart, but I couldn't get my mind off the experience, what it must be like when it really is war outside one's window, or post traumatic st4ress episodes of war replaying in one's dreams. I know both of those things are reality for way too many people. So tonight's candle is for all affected by war and especially for the peacemakers.

Darkness and light - Post 12 - Candle 5 -[Defensiveness

One of the faces of darkness I find most seductive is defensiveness. It's so easy to just want ot explain my point of view and why I'm not really all that wrong, even if I really am. Defensiveness shuts doors and blocks intimacy. It doesn't make me any less wrong. So tonight I commit to listening when I start to feel defensive and I light tonight's candle for all of us who work to listen to feedback without defensiveness and admit when we are wrong.

Darkness and light - Post 11- Candle 4- So a man in Portland put on a white mask and picked up a shotgun and walked into the mall and shot up winter wonderland. And in out family, we attended our community's wonderful Christmas sing along, a tradition I've come to love, Jewish as I am. The atmosphere was friendly and happy, all sorts of voices raised in song. Then we came home and lit our four mennorahs, with four candles in each and sang together, put the young ones to bed. And through it all I was haunted by the idea that somebody felt something that made him need to go shoot up winter wonderland and kill innocents. I go back to Dorothy Satten's teachings about emotion. Anger, hurt, and fear are a triad of emotions which are pretty interchangable. Think of the parent who, terrified, grabs a toddler out of the road and swats the kid's bottom. Fear can sure look like anger. And anger can look like fear or hurt if you've been taught long enough that "nice girls don't get mad" or hurt or fear like anger if your lesson has been "big boys don't cry." But there's a deeper triad, helplessness, rage and shame. We can talk about anger, hurt and fear, and we can aim them. Helplessness, rage and shame are too deep and primal for words or directionality. The paralyze or explode. As helpless or ashamed someone has ever felr, that's how much rage that person has. So when I think about today's mall shooter and all the other shooters I am terrified by their rage and deeply saddened by their helplessness and shame. And I know that earlier this afternoon, because I felt helpless to make the transition from a busy work day to a busy family evening smoothly and ashamed of how helpless and incompetent I felt, I lost my cool altogether and yelled at Bob and KK, neither of whom had done anything except point out my inefficiency by their efficiency. I hurt them even though I had no intention to. I commit to whatever physicl and spiritual disciplines I need to stay away from the edge of overwhelm and exhaustion, that place where I behave badly. I dedicate tonight's candle to all who struggle to contain and heal feelings of shame, rage and helplessness.

Darkness and light 10 - Third Candle - for those who are ill

Darkness and light 10 - Third Candle - Tonight it is cold out and warm and full of light and the aromas of good food in our house. We have our sorrows worries and stresses, each of us in this house. We all know that life is uncertain. At dinner I watched Liam throw a minor fit because he was required to eat a tiny bit of kale before icecream. And I thought about a little girl Ruth knows who di.ed of cancer two days ago,  just about a year older than Liam. Later, for Hannukah gift exchange, we sat on the floor in the livingroom and treasured gifts of jewelry from our beloved Heidi, who died of cancer in September. I wear her moonstones as I write and they lay warm on my chest. I light the third candle for all those who are seriously ill, whether with cancer or some other life changing or life threateneing disease, and for those who love them and fear and hope for them.

Darkness and light - night 9- Second Candle for decision makers

Darkness and light - night 9- Second Candle - This year I will let the second candle be for decision makers, which means its for all of us. I am awed by the number of decisions an ordinary person like me has to make every day and the impact these decisions have on quality of life for me and those my life touches. When I think about people in positions of greater power in the affairs of nations, especially want to draw light to their decision making, to help them see clearly and choose wisely. For myself, I think of an image my daughter Ruth has been using lately. Desicion moments are like siding doors that slide open for a moment, and then shut again. I choose to work harder, especially when I'm feeling tired and overwhelmed, to pay attention to each moment and the decisions it offers.

Darkness and light 8- first candle for those who mourn

-I love the song that begins "I light one candle for the Macabbee children..." and from that song have developed the habit of personally dedicating each candle to a people in a particular circumstance. So tonight I dedicate the first candle to all who mourn. I've been writing alot about grief, and so that dedication seems right. Each of you who aches with loss, may you find comfort and light in the darkness.