I think I need a dose of the detachment Buddhists talk about—that ability to notice emotions like fear or grief or anger or disappointment, but not be so controlled by them.  This has come to my attention in the last couple of months as I’ve spent an inordinate number of hours on the internet and phone dealing with health insurance companies.  My self-perception as one who can navigate life’s rougher waters has really been challenged (yes, I know health insurance problems don’t seem like they qualify as rough waters, but believe me, they do).  I’m to the point that my blood pressure instinctually rises when I notice a health insurance letter in the mail.

Why is it that it takes so long to learn this simple lesson:  life is neither perfectly smooth, nor perfectly rough.  I spent my childhood believing it was all smooth, the first half of my 20’s believing it was all rough, and now that I find myself in a really wonderful life season, I get all bent out of shape (read uptight, afraid, depressed) when things go wrong.  As though I thought I had woken up from a bad dream, so what in tarnation are bad things doing here?

Truth is, pretty much none of us get out of this life without some sort of suffering, some sort of joy, and some sort of in-between-those-two.  The sooner I embrace the suffering part and stop being surprised by it, the sooner I can unclench my fists and just go with it, with life, unburdened by that impossible dream of an unscathed life.  The sooner I can open up my mail and then get on with things.  Peacefully.

So I’m thinking about Christmas this week. 

When I was a child it seemed like it didn’t start until after Thanksgiving.  This year Christmas displays were up after Halloween.  I love celebrating things, finding excuses to do things special, but I have to admit I resent all this yuletide splatter.  It feels forced on me by people who want to sell me stuff.  “YOU MUST CELEBRATE!” everything pulses.  “YOU MUST BUY BAGS OF HERSHEY KISSES, HOLIDAY POPCORN, COOKIES FOR DIPPING IN TEA.  YOU MUST GET RED AND GREEN SERVING PLATTERS AND HEARTH-WARMING WREATHS AND LOTS AND LOTS OF PRESENTS.  LOADS OF PRESENTS!  FOR EVERYONE!!!”

I leave stores feeling assaulted.

So the weird thing is yesterday while running errands, all that stuff initially brought a wave of nostalgia.  Memories came flooding in of the childhood rituals that made Christmas magic for me, and smell so much like heaven:  stringing popcorn for the Christmas tree, clipping greenery to dress the staircase, making peppernuts (a German-Mennonite Christmas cookie) and listening to the Messiah (…or Amy Grant’s first Christmas album).  Traveling to my aunt and uncle’s place to bide the endless hours it took for morning to come and breakfast to get eaten and one of the gospel Christmas stories read before gifts could get opened.  It was magic.  So full of familiar.  So full of things I could count on.

But my nostalgia quickly turned to bewilderment.  I’m all grown up now.  The traditions of my childhood have mostly disappeared.  It’s up to me to try to turn my nostalgia into new traditions, new ways of making the season holy. But here’s the rub:  apart from that initial reminiscence, when I’m out on the streets and in stores, I mostly feel rebellious, bucking at Lord Consumerism.  "Stuff” is hardly what I want to pour celebratory resources into—monetary or otherwise.  My mind turns to Jesus, and for just that second I wonder how to celebrate this wondrous hero, this embodiment of what I most admire, when in the very next breath I’m bucking all over again, and this time at the Church.  Something about making of Christ an idol, making from his life cathedrals and choirs and committees commissioned to legislate goodness, making industries of music and books and tapes and training institutions that say, in Christ’s name, who’s in and out and on God’s side, making all the glitz and glitter of Advent a larger than life affair—something about all of that feels too much like what I see at the mall.  Too much like a good idea blown way, way out of proportion, turned into something far from its seed.  If blessing those we love with gifts can be turned into assault, I guess the commemoration of Jesus can too—this man who stood in solidarity with underdogs and challenged most things rich, most things religious, most things institutional and people sure they had God figured out.  This guy who refused royal treatment and was shy to be named or lauded too loudly.  Is there not irony in this?  Irony in the accounts we have of him, juxtaposed with the ways we think to honor him?

I want this Advent season to have magic.  I want to not take myself or our crazy culture too seriously.  I want to be like a duck, and that pulse to buy and to idolize Jesus like water, forming a pond for me to play in without getting wet, rich mud-banks to mine for grubs.  I want to not mistake that pulse for nourishment, and neither its flip-side, righteous indignation.  I want to take the irony of an anti-Christ Christmas—religious or not—and laugh at it, even as I go about trying to honor the season and the man with the values I hold, the company I keep, the stories I tell.  I guess if I’m able to do all of that, I’ll be seeing all the magic I could wish for.

I want to try to write something here every day for a while–an experiment in mindfulness.  I’m feeling blase lately.  Sort of not myself.  I want to kindle a greater sense of wonder, eyes that see more meaning, the sense that I’m connected.  I think a daily thought in this space might help.  Consider yourselves forewarned.

In my last post I promised a show and tell.  I’ve been working the last few days on a collage, first just in my mind, trying to imagine how to respond to The Eye that wants me not to try anything too risky.  I decided I wanted to treat it as a scared child who needs to be held and reassured.  I considered fighting it, like a warrior, but concluded that would only keep it kicking.  Violence and rejection are the very things she’s afraid of, so giving her a dose of them would only mean her fears coming true, and her drive to try to protect me from them needing to intensify.  The gentle approach won out. 

I thought of depicting hands holding her, and the hands being made up of all the things I can do to reassure her—self-care things, like journaling, dream work, therapy when needed, conversations and connections with helpful others.  Attentiveness to what’s inside.  In the end I took a picture of my own hands.  When I see it, I think of all of those ways I can protect my inner self.  It’s a commitment I’m making to The Eye:  I’m going to take care of us.  You don’t have to do it any more.  Rest.  Relax.  Be held.

My next task was to imagine what it might look like to risk—how in the world I might live if not bound by fear.  Jumping off a cliff.  That’s what that felt like.  How could I make such a leap?  Here’s what I came up with:  1. If I trust that what I’m leaping toward is worth it, and 2. If I trust that there’s a safety net, able to catch me if a fall is too long or hard, or the thing I’m jumping toward is further off than I expect it to be.  Again I saw hands as I imagined this, this time much bigger than mine alone, ready to catch me and hold me—even clap or cheer when that’s needed.  I pictured them made up of all of the people in my life who love me and believe in me, people I know, and have yet to know.  I pictured faith, which is really what taking that leap requires.  I pictured G-d, and the pulse of the universe, and all of the lessons that nature surrounds me with, buoys me with.  And the pulse of my own soul, which has been since the beginning, and which, despite all set-backs, tenaciously keeps on living, calling, speaking, prodding, pulling…thriving.  I can trust these things.  They hold me up.  They won’t let me fall.  Or fall to my death, rather.  And, though sometimes surprising me, they’re often as familiar and known—mundane, even—as my own two hands.  That’s how I depicted them.

Across the top of the page I wrote Safe to risk living Bigger, imagining bigger to mean all things opposite of fearful, apologetic, ashamed, controlled, predictable.  Things that could make people depend on me.  Things that could make me well-known.  Things that would involve voicing my opinions and convictions publicly.  Heck—things that might involve a lot of hard work to actually get good at.  Living bigger means letting loose the tight control I’ve tried to have over everything and just seeing what’s possible.  The flowers and their surrounding brightness are this beauty and bigness I’m leaping toward.

Yay!  I stare at this picture with joy.  I feel fear, too, but it’s those hands that make that be okay.  Safe to risk.  Safe to risk living bigger.  Yeah.  That’s what I think I am.

This has been a really important week for me.  I started the Artist’s Way this week, which is a kind of workbook/recovery book for people whose artist-selves have gotten thwarted along life’s way.  I’m pretty sure the author would say the book is for all of us.

With the help of some guided meditation questions, I’ve been identifying some really important stuff that’s kept me living small most of my life—living with a lot of fear, holding me back from thriving in all my glory (that sounds so pretentious, doesn’t it?—all my glory?  It does unless you think everyone has it.  Which I do.).  I’m feeling so hopeful and energized.  Something new is underway inside.  Something really good.

One thing I’ve noticed this week, and which only adds to my conviction that important things are happening, is this weird…Thing has woken up.  It happens nearly every time I have a break-through in inner-work-type stuff—every time I feel that zing of fear going away and the accompanying magic of knowing, even for a moment, what it’s like to confidently pursue my dreams.  Or to have dreams.  I’ll have a day or two, maybe three, of a natural sort of high, and then as that starts to level off, I’ll feel like I’m being watched.  Quite literally.  I’ll find myself looking to see if someone’s in the room.  No one is there, of course, but It is.  I’m pretty sure It is a projected persona from inside myself whose job it is to keep me from doing anything risky.  Anything at all.  When I start to imagine doing such things, it shows up.  A nebulous threat.  An Eye, making sure I know I’m being watched, sure I know I better not do anything great or fantastic or free, or I’ll be sorry.

My pattern has mostly been to try to ignore The Eye (think Tolkein’s depiction of it), to try to keep doing what I set out to do.  But would you believe that within a day or two of it being set on me, all the fears and insecurities and reasons to get depressed and deflated about life I’ve ever known have been set on me as well, and I have a minor melt down.  I recover from it, but as I do, it sets me gently back into the smallness of life I was originally so happy about leaving.  Mission accomplished.

Yuck.

So anyway, that whole cycle happened again this week.  But here’s what’s really great:  In the midst of my minor meltdown last night, my husband got mad.  He got mad.  Not in some stereotypical male way, but in the "I’m on your team and I hate this cycle right along with you" way.  He said he was tired of me coming up against freedom and then backing down.  He said I’ve got to fight.  I’ve got to face that demon, that Eye, and push through to the other side.  I need to do it.  He (my husband) needs me to do it.  Our son—our whole family system needs it.  “You’ve got to do something to stand up to it!” he said.

At first I was just annoyed.  I don’t like being told what to do.  And frankly, I don’t like having to stand up to this Thing.  It’s really scary.

But you know, I think my husband’s right.  And I sure as hell would rather be told what to do in this instance, by him, than be told to live small every day of my life.

So here’s what I’m aiming to do.  I’m going to make a collage.  I’m going to make a collage that depicts, somehow, me standing up to this Thing and proceeding to thrive.  Some signpost of what I want to do and what, with any kind of luck (read help from God/Spirit/Universe/husband/friends/inner muse), I will do.  I needed to write this post to make public this commitment.  I’ll show you what I come up with when it’s done.

Fran posted a delightful 20-things-about-me meme and invited others to do the same.  Here’s my (skeletal and written when I’m tired and in no particular order) list:

1. I have a minor obsession with weather.
2. Fall is my favorite season (gingko trees in full fall color make me dance)
3. I sometimes make a clicking noise with my tongue when I’m happy
4. I like designing and building and repairing things (I’m giddy in hardware stores)
5. I want to learn to play jazz/blues on the piano
6. I’m almost six feet tall
7. I like the smell of snow (and yes, despite all arguments to the contrary, I do believe it has one)
8. Good Will Hunting is my favorite movie
9. Van Morrison is one of my favorite musicians
10. I eat A LOT. More than most men that I know.
11. I wish that my wardrobe was more colorful and artistic and daring than it is.
12. I love to nap
13. hummus and pita bread!
14. homemade guacamole!
15. I played volleyball in junior high and high school and in college intramurals.  Middle blocker.
16. I took piano lessons for 11 years and practiced at 6:30 in the morning for much of that time.
17. I’m witty when I feel comfortable.
18. I hate leaf blowers
19. I love watching animals (including humans)
20. I married my soul mate

I’m in a strange season right now.  I’m loving my baby so much.  I’m loving the time I’m spending writing each week (three afternoons).  Out of necessity I’m feeling more efficient with household tasks than I’ve ever been, which for me is a real accomplishment (just ask my husband sometime about my issues with laundry…).  And I’m enjoying good friendships and feeling hopeful about new ones on the horizon.

At the same time as all of this, I feel like I’m in a waiting stage.  Waiting for the baby and us to develop some predictable eating and sleeping patterns.  Waiting to feel more in touch with myself (seems like every time I go to journal, I’m either too exhausted to go through with it, or the baby needs something one paragraph in).  Waiting to reconnect with my public and intellectual lives.  I feel restless in all of this waiting, and also just too tired to actively do much about it.

So this here blog will continue to wait alongside me, I guess.  For inspiration, for insight, for words to put to the things going on in and around me.  If posts are fewer, it’s because of the nature of this season.  We’ll see if in the midst of all the sparseness a few fat fruits spring up.  Like all those plump persimmons sprinkled through the trees.