Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about change.  The deep, inner kind.  The kind that makes people stronger and gentler at the same time.  The kind that makes people exude more and more patience with themselves and other people – patience with the baggage that each of us carries around, and with how long it often takes to set pieces of it down for moments, let alone days or the rest of an entire lifetime.  Change that helps people feel glad to be who they are – even excited about what this means – rather than sad to not be more like someone else, or seeking always after what others would want them to be.

I’ve had tastes of this kind of change.  Sometimes huge, long draughts of it.  I can never get enough.

So I’ve been thinking more and more about it, and have been trying to write it into my novel.  I’ve been trying to understand more about how it happens, and the kinds of factors that are usually nearby when it does.  Here’s a little of what I’ve come up with.

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Yesterday sparkled. Though it had a rough start.

For the last couple of years I’ve been pursuing the writing life.  Six months ago I finally shifted completely away from paid work (an editing job that sucked away my energy) to focus full-time on writing a novel.  But like any new (or seasoned…) writer, I’ve had my share of doubts that I can actually do this, fears that in a year or two (or six or ten) of telling people I’m writing a novel, I still won’t have a thing to show for it.  When I finally admitted to myself last week that the plotline I’ve been going with needs major alterations, my fears amped up a hefty notch.

So yesterday afternoon I was asking a lot of questions.  Like WHAT DO I THINK I’M DOING TRYING TO WRITE A NOVEL? and Why exactly was it that I thought I had something to say?  I began to feel in relation to all those hip, successful (published) young writers like a child trying to claim she’s an astronaut.  “Sorry honey.  Your credentials need a little work.”

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This is one of those weeks when so much is going on inside of me that I don’t have anything to say.  Maybe the issue is that what’s happening is going on in the parts of my brain that have no need to organize or systemetize or articulate what they’re up to.  They just are.  They just be.  Or spin or do summersaults or whatever.  And resist getting formed into words.

I wish I could talk about what it’s been like to be out in the early mornings this week, breathing in the dampness and the sunrise and the leaves at every stage of autumn color. 

I wish I could talk about reading the newspaper and feeling the hate and fear and death and dying, rising up from Al-Fallujah, and the hearts of people around the world watching it get destroyed.  About the pain and dissonance all of this raises in me.

I wish I could talk about the people I want to get to know more.  And the discoveries I’m making about myself and the things I’m afraid of. 

I wish I could talk about the wonder I feel at life’s mysteries as I read, and work, and talk, and write, and the impatience I feel in my longing for life to tell me some of its secrets - about interconnectedness, about the fluidity that time and space sometimes have, about the role I might have to play in the way the universe gets made.  I’m so curious to know more.  To understand more.  To feel much more on the inside than I currently feel.

I want to connect with all of you around these things.  I wish I had the words to make that possible.

Well, this has been quite a week.  Quite a season, really.

Tuesday’s election was a culmination of so many weeks of campaigning, so many facts and opinions and critiques and promises flung about, so many political headlines and commercials and debates. By the time I went to bed Tuesday night I was mostly just glad the campaigning was over, regardless of which candidate won.

Most of the next two days I felt very little – in relation to the election or anything else.  I was on automatic pilot. Not present to myself or my surroundings or the people with whom I interacted in the ways I’d like to be.  I voted for Kerry, and am troubled by most of what the Bush administration does and doesn’t stand for, but my response to Bush’s win was mostly intellectual.  “What a time to be alive!” I reasoned to myself.  “It’s in times of conflict, times of turmoil, times of national and international upheaval and crisis that humanity gets shaken awake from its slumber, and moves to care and act on its convictions.  The interest and turnout in this election demonstrates exactly this.  These next four years and the ongoing global consequences of them could very well make this country more awake than I’ve ever seen it in my lifetime.”  For my part, my interactions with others were painted with this attitude.

Until last night.

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My inner compass has been spinning around restlessly all day because of this election. I’m finding it hard to be present to the tasks I’m physically doing. My body feels tense. My soul feels dread. I sort of feel like crying.

I need some perspective. I need to pray.

God of all that is,
of constancy
and of continual change (which is its own kind of constancy),
of babies getting born today
and loved ones dying,
of people finding out they don’t have long to live
and those rejoicing in the news that they do,
of someone discovering something wonderful in a flower
or a friendship
or a good night’s sleep;
God of mysteries pulsing in galaxies light years away
and creatures dancing at the bottom of the sea,
of leaves the shades of fire
and the beggars I passed on the street today;
God of kisses
and handshakes
and warm embraces,
of wind
and rain
and sunlight on my cheeks,
of the big and the small
and everything that can’t be measured:

Breathe on me
Breathe in me
Breathe,
that as my inner compass turns
and my fears and restlessness churn
into tight shoulders
and fists
and forehead
I might discover a centering pattern of
In
Out
In
Out
The steady rhythm of your breath
That is and is an echo of
the universe expanding and contracting
seasons cycling
plants sprouting and being harvested
births and deaths
the rising and setting of the sun,
my own lungs keeping me alive:

Breathe in and over me this Pattern that happens
No matter who becomes president
No matter whose votes get counted
No matter how many lawsuits get filed.

Breathe, that I might feel your breath
And be comforted.
Breathe, that in this time of national uncertainty
And tension
And rivalry
And distrust
Something bigger and smaller than all of this will sustain what needs sustaining
And whisper a perspective
We all so need to hear.

Selah