She Thought of Painting

She thought of painting
the morning into being,
of darkness shot with light,
a riot of royal hued color
and a rippling shimmer
 on leaves of heartbreak gold.

She wondered how to paint
the sound of birdsong,
or the scent of coffee
and wood smoke.
She thought of painting
the glory of the day
and the joy of it,
the sheer exaltation of it.

 She let her thoughts drift,
like petals on water,
and she stilled
while the sun warmed her.

For Julie
With love

Memorial: a poem for Yizkor

Lit in a moment
of in-betweens,
neither day nor night,
neither dark nor light,
this flame does not dance.

It casts no shadow
and holds no blessing,
only remembrance.
It rests upon the altar
of my kitchen counter,
scarred from years of bounty
and gentle benediction.
My empty cup
overflows with longing.

This flame burns without heat,
but there is great blessing
and grace in Your name.

Omer. Staring at 40 from the land of the 30s

This is a week of abundance and lying fallow,  of blessings and curses.

Here's my confession,  realized just now: I rarely know the difference between these seeming opposites. There are times I cling to the things I *know* are abundant blessings, only to find, somewhere down a twisting road, they are the very things that hold me in place, that drain me,  leave me barren.

And there are times that I run from what I know are curses and find out just how wrong my suppositions (and actions based on those) are.

And sometimes, I happen to be right at all - blessings are blessings, curses are curses, all's right with the world.

It's a crap shoot.

And here, on this leg of the journey, nearing the end, so close you can almost taste it, almost kiss it, it is Shabbat again.

And maybe,  just maybe, everything I *know* about that holy, sacred place - is wrong. Maybe what I bring to it, because of what I know, changes it, makes it something it's not. And maybe,  if I let it be, let it come and wash over me as it will, rather than grasping for it, pulling it close,  holding it in motionless place -

I have no idea how to finish that, except perhaps to give thanks for the blessing of not knowing and letting be.

Shabbat shalom to all I love and hold dear xo

#shabbat
#counting the omer
#omer

Omer. Day 10

Every so often, I am stopped, almost literally in my tracks, with the deep and sure understanding of just how blessed I am. Most days, I traipse about through my life, oblivious to grace in that take-it-for-granted, life-is-what-it-is, happy-mad-sad-glad, blah blah blah kind of way.

You know, that glide through days that are filled with all the living that gets done. There are bills to pay (or avoid until the notices get slightly nasty). There's the boy, part adult, part locust, part lost at that oh-so-difficult stepping off place, the one that promises dreams and nightmares, adventure and drudgery, a mysterious new world that 18 years of training still has not produced a map for easy navigation. There's the job, and the study, and the writing and the groceries and the dinner-making and wishing you still made enough money to have a housekeeper again. These days, there's the continual flabbergastedness over the insanity that has infected the world, and what the hell - Trump? REALLY?

It's the minutiae of life, all the little pieces that, sure, sometimes morph into medium pieces, and sometimes become unwieldy, but it's all just mostly unnoticed, really just barely under the surface stuff that you move through to get to the next piece, and the piece after that. And maybe I've compartmentalized a lot of it. And maybe there's a wall that's barely visible, almost not there at all really, but the wall has been in place
Ace longer than you can remember, and mostly you just forget it's there and it's so much easier to leave it just where it is than dismantle the thing. I mean, it's not hurting anyone, is It?

You just do your life. Get on with it, and there are some days that seem to shine a bit more than others, moments that sparkle or maybe tear at your heart. They are days that roll into weeks and months and while it sounds a little awful, laid out so badly here, it's not. It's a whole bunch of everything.

It's just, mostly, you don't stop to notice any one thing. You just move.

So, those moments when you are literally stopped - feet planted, eyes open, breathing deeply, and you notice each breath, and you suddenly hear all this sound that certainly had to have been there all along, but now you hear it, it's richness and brash dissonance that fits just so with all those other notes of the day, and you feel this fullness welling up within you, and you know, absolutely know that you are blessed.

And in that exact moment, you can do nothing but drink it in and give thanks,

And so we count 10.

Seven Blessings

On this day,
this holy day,
there is sweetness,
and blessing,
and love
Beyond measure,
Without end.

On this day,
this holy day,
there is created
a canopy of heaven
and sweet grass
upon which we stand -
You, who carries
the breath of God,
And I, to stand
beside you.

On this day,
this holy day,
I will bind me to you
And you to me.
Seven times bound,
to sanctify,
to celebrate
the becoming of one.

This day,
this holy day,
I bind my hands to yours.
And I will know light,
even in darkness,
In your touch,
gentle
and liquid,
like fire
or silk,
Bound together
in the ever
for always.

This day,
This holy day,
I bind my heart to yours,
To beat out
the rhythms of our lives.
This simple rhythm,
now synchopated;
Textured,
Cadenced by joy
that lives in
each beat and
Breath.

This day,
this holy day,
I bind my love to yours.
I feel the weight of it
settle, like cloth of gold.
And I am lifted,
and I find
Ease
and rest
and I am whole.

I bind my days to yours,
To the endlessness of
Time, and
Need, and
Tender
Aching
Want.
I bind my life
Within the bounds of yours
And there will I dwell
And know love.

Ascent and Deliberate Fall

I walk under a canopy of letters, 
half-formed words of script 
and block print.
They fly, like bees, or crows,
in a swoop and a swarm
of black and gray fire.

I walk, a basket riding 
low on my hip,
and a ceaseless flow of letters -
down, and up again,
again and again,
in delicate arcs
and deliberate angles, 
like the wings of angels 
that climb and descend,
flowing like time
or an absence of light.

They smell of water,
or maybe winter,
and they whisper stories
of love and shame
and the secret name of God -
which is no secret at all,
but is merely unpronounceable
as breath - so they say.

They can cut you
those letters -
all sharply angled
and razor thin, like wire.
My fingers come away bloody.
every time I reach into
that basket of blessing
and curse;
and I reach in,
again and again,
my blood mixing with
their black and gray fire,
and the swarming,
swooping canopy
of half-formed words
and graceful curves.

The basket chafes my hip
and I bow under the
boundless weight of canopied
letters that dance in magpie joy
just out of reach,
and my fingers grow
blistered and raw;
but I feel the butterfly kiss
of every letter in its ascent
and deliberate fall,
from down to up
and down again.

And I walk under a canopy
of letters, a basket of
blessing and
curse at my side.

Prayers like dry leaves

I have been collecting
prayers.
They are sweet -
even the ones
that rattle like bones
and sound like
echoes and
dry leaves.
Even those,
I catch them on the wind
and the tip of my tongue,
where they melt like fear
Or sin,
and I can taste their
Bursts of glory.
Sometimes they drift,
lighting on my skin,
where they wait,
in silent insistance,
for me to notice their gentle
kiss.
I collect them all,
let them slide and
tangle through
my fingers
like silk, like
rope -
all those dry,
rattley,
echoing bones
of grace
and sweet glory.
I savor their blessings
and sing.

Shlomo's Dream

I swam in the sea of you,
flowing like light.
And music rose in me,
a psalm of hallelujah
sung in a minor key,
carried on a current
of liquid dreams,
there in the sea of you
that was me.
Wonder flooded in, and joy,
and I could not contain
this heartbeat rhythm
that moved in me,
swept through me
as I swam in the sea of you.
My breath, sweet like water.
like Light. soft and flowing -
a benediction scattered before me;
refracted blessings,
that carried the voice
of endless night
and God,
that opened my heart
in the sea of you.

07 Nisan - Bless

I do not feel very blessed these days.

I do not feel...

And there I stop. I do not feel. All that numbness, all that ice and gray. I am locked up tight in my private tower, invisible to the eye, but with walls so thick, with neither windows nor doors, it's tough-- it's impossible-- for light to get in, or air or blessings. I tell myself that it keeps the panic at bay. But the ghostly tendrils of panic pool at my feet and coil up my legs, clinging to me like those no-seeum spiderwebs that stretch across a garden path.

It's a spiderweb kind of day.

These are the times when wiser heads than I say "Look for the blessings..." Personally, I would like to spit at those people, those know-it-all, smug and spiritually fit people. I do not like those trite little exercises, these Kumbaya moments. Not now. Now I prefer the safety of my tower, with its hollow silence and stillness.

Thoughts, though-- they have a life of their own. They skitter and slip sideways. They aren't particulate, like light, so they need no cracks, no hidden pathways to circle and whistle and draw attention to themselves. They sing, unbidden, and flit in manic disarray. 

I have been at this too long. I have listened once to often. There are blessings.

Even rooted in my tower, in the middle of whatever pain or brokenness that has tethered me to this spot (this one spot, moving neither left nor right, forward or back)-- there are blessings. Dammit. Like a soothing balm, they tumble forth, catching some inner light so that I see them all, just out of the corner of my eye, like bright feathers the color of jewels.

What are my blessings? Dammit-- what are they? I have to name them, acknowledge them, and so make them real-- for me. This is a reminder, no matter how much I whine about it. I need reminders.

• I didn't take a drink today. Life abounds with miracles.
• I have a roof over my head, food on the table.
• I have heat in the winter, clean running water, cooling when it's hot.
• I have access to medical care and medicines.
• I have skills. No job right now, but skills that I can market. Eventually. When I remember all the blessings that surround me, and leave the tower behind.
• I have friends. Real ones, the kind that stick around and care and are kind and funny and smart and they call me when I least expect it (like today), and they love me enough to call my on my BS. They're my chosen family, the ones I've found along the way who help to raise me (and each other) up.
• I have family, blood family, who bicker and squabble and sometimes play mean, but they come together, in love, when it's needed most. They let me come home again, let me rant a while, tell me stupid jokes-- and then let me go when it's time. Until the next time (and they don't seem to care that there's always a next time).
• I have a son-- a brilliant and glorious son who is growing into a human being. Proud doesn't even come close to what I feel for him. Awed is much closer, tangled with annoyed (he is, after all, fifteen). Loved beyond belief. Staggered by the responsibility and the joy of walking with him for this short time, before he soars on his own.

I have been given grace and light and hope. I have been blessed beyond imagining. The tower? It's my illusion. All I need to do is take one step, one single step and I am free. 

c Stacey Zisook Robinson

07 April 2014

#blogElul  #Exodusgram

Elul. Day Three: Blessing

After all this time, I still need to be reminded that I swim in a sea of infinite blessing.

Much of the time, I wear the world like tight, ill-fitting clothing: uncomfortable, making me fidget and focus on all the wrong things. It is so much easier to focus on the discomfort and discontent. It is, ironically, my comfort zone.

I know brokenness. I know pain. I am no stranger to loneliness or doubt or despair. I lived with them for what seems like forever.

But an odd thing happened one day, when I chose to trade despair for hope. And at first, that trade left me raw and stripped bare and vulnerable. I was still blind to the hope, still blind to the sea of blessings.

But I kept at it. I'm still not quite sure why. One day to the next, and the next after that, a long string of unbroken next days that moved me, with inexorable grace, to the unabashed certainty that I am blessed. Beyond belief, I am blessed.

There is light, and joy, and hope immeasurable.  There is pain still, but that too is a blessing, because I can feel it, feel the brokenness and fractured rhythms of my life still, but I am no longer consumed by it. I am sober, and I can hope and I am blessed.

I'm grateful, during this month of Elul, for the discipline of mindfulness. That, too, is a blessing, that obligation. Of course, the way I see it now-- it's all blessing, all of it, all the noisy, clamoring, transcendent holy mess of life. And today, of all days, on this third day of Elul, I am reminded, and I am infinitely grateful for this sea of infinite blessing.

Growing Up, Growing Old(er)

When I was in sixth grade, I read a dog-eared copy of Judy Blume's Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret. I found it in the school library, plain as day, but felt as if I should hide it (if not between butcher paper, then at least somewhere in the stacks, away from the prying eyes of the sixth grade boys). It was my guilty secret, a prepubescent Philosopher's Stone. Here at last, an unexpurgated and honest telling of my truest desire: Please God-- let me get my period. 

In a word (ok, in seven words): Please God, let me grow up. Now.

I was so quick to want to grow up. To be a woman. To be older. To skip adolescence altogether and race right into the next phase of my life. I was ready, and had been since fifth grade, when we got the first Talk; boys in one room, girls in the other. I have no idea what they said to the boys, but we girls got the Miracle of Life speech, the Changing Body speech, the Hormones and Pimples and Babies (oh my!) speech. 

All I could think was PleasepleasepleaseNOW! 

And it happened. Soon, or now, or close enough to not matter. I grew up, got older, moved from child to adolescent to woman in the blink of an eye, all with a stately and inexorable rhythm.

I think of this now, as I squint to read the not-so-fine print of my book or listen to the creaking of my  knees as I unbend less than gracefully getting out of my car. The infinity of my youth has finally given way to the dictates of entropy. 

I am old. Older. I am not sure if I am willing to concede the mantle of my youth quite yet, and trade it in for a lap blanket and rocking chair. I will not go gently into the afternoon, let alone that dark, dark night.  The sad truth, though, is that while I may rage against the dying of the light, the stranger that greets me in the mirror every day is fine with the dying of the hair. And it must be that stranger; it certainly can't be me. 

I remember looking at my mother (with all the condescension that only a twenty-something can muster for her ancient parent) when she declared she needed to have Work Done (the capital letters clearly underscoring her words).  She talked not just of hennas and highlighting, but of lifting and tucking and cutting. There were diets to follow and Exercycles to be bought (Not actually pedaled, however. Apparently, we lived within a magical force field where just owning exercise equipment was enough to realize its toning potential). Suddenly, there were creams and unguents littering her bathroom shelves, where once there had been suntan oil and cigarettes.

I listened to her, nodding and smiling (and hoping my derision was almost hidden well enough to make her think twice), thinking that I would never - never - stoop to such lows. I swore to myself that I would march proudly into my age, wear my wrinkles and folds and sagging flesh with pride. I will have earned those wrinkles and folds, damn it, every last one of them. I will be careworn and weathered because I will have lived my life to the very edges, never shrinking from adventure or passion. I would never cave to societal pressures or sadistic ideals of beauty.

She was at least a decade younger than I am now when she first made her declaration. Ugh. I felt no compassion for my mother, only pity. 

So now, I have grown into my age. The face in my mirror is barely recognizable at times. Those aren't wrinkles; they are chasms. There is paunch and spread. It is harder to see, harder to sleep. There are times when it seems as if I will spontaneously combust. I have conditions, and sometimes those conditions have conditions. I can no longer travel without carrying a pharmacy in my bag.

My body hurts, dammit. It creaks and aches and doesn't listen to my wheedling demands (as if it ever did, but at least way back then, it played nice and snapped back into shape with relative ease). There are now creams and unguents on my bathroom counter, along with appointments for highlights and hennas on my calendar.

This is not my body. This cannot be me. Can it?

When I was 11, reading Judy Blume, I wanted my period, wanted to be a Woman. Now? Funny: when I started to write this, I could have sworn it was going to be a scathingly sarcastic ode to menopause and aging. I could have sworn I was going to wax rhapsodic on wanting just ten more minutes of a different body-- younger, and firmer, more fit, more beautiful, more me-- the me I carry in my head.

Here's a surprise: I thought wrong. I wish less for something that I am not (for something that may never have been and certainly will never be again), and hope more for blessings and grace. And so I offer, not sarcasm, but a prayer:

God of infinite love and boundless grace, Let me see that the truest beauty is found in forgiveness, a kind heart and a gentle soul. Let me live a life that matters, with boldness and courage and faith-- which are far sexier than perfect skin or a toned body. These aches and pains and wrinkles that seem to have taken up permanent residence are not evidence of defeat, but my medals of honor of a life lived-- sometimes well, sometimes not, but lived, in all its messy glory.

When I was young, I wanted to be old(er). Now that I am, please, God, let me be myself.

Thanksgiving 2012

My refrigerator may be broken.  I have said this a few times in the last handful of months, with that stomach-sinking, cold-fingered dread I seem to manifest when thinking about repairing things, replacing them and  money.  Or, more specifically, my lack thereof.

When I was growing up, Mom used to insist that we had an anti-Semitic refrigerator.  Every holiday, she would begin to cook.  And cook.  And cook some more, stuffing everything into an already over-stuffed refrigerator, performing some kabbalistic ritual that seemed to suspend the laws of physics.  Having worked her magic, whether or not the ritual actually succeeded, whether or not anything else could fit, she would shove One. More. Thing. into the waiting maw:  all of it, from oven to refrigerator in the blink of an eye.

And then the refrigerator would die.

With the last gurgle and a final consumptive gasp made before a sharp and sudden silence that signified its demise, the mad scramble would begin: neighbors would be called, words would be said (mostly with the immediate admonition that these particular words should never be said by us kids, and certainly never ever said outside the house), repairmen would be summoned, money would be spent (time-and-a-half money). Fingers would be crossed and prayers would be mumbled.

Every holiday.  Without fail.

It wasn't until years later (when the holidays weren't so frenetic, weren't so crowded with extended family, fourth cousins twice removed, the best friends of the in-laws and those random holiday orphans-- friends and acquaintances who had nowhere to go, no family to be with, and how in the world can you let anybody spend a holiday alone?) that we realized that the refrigerator died because it couldn't handle the sudden influx of hot food onto it's cold, cold shelves.  Too much, all at once.  The refrigerator didn't die so much as go into shock.

Not anti-Semitic at all; rather, too delicate to survive the onslaught of our excess.

My refrigerator does not seem to suffer from that particular ailment.  I'd love to be able to say that it is my excess causing its slow but inevitable death.  Oh sure, I can keep the door open way too long while I put away the groceries, and apparently, the coils need to be cleaned more than once in, oh, ever.  But when all is said and done, my dependable workhorse of a refrigerator is getting old.  It may linger for a while, but really, it's just time.

I think I could take the whole refrigerator situation if it weren't for the dishwasher issue.  It is less a dishwasher and more a dishrinser at this point.  Sad to think that I have to wash the dishes before the dishes get washed by machine.

And don't get me started on the plumbing.  Bad pipes.  Bad water.  It seeps and gurgles way too slowly down the drain, lingering and swirling a bit malevolently, teasing me.  It lets me think that this time it may prefer, in fact, to stand at watery opaque attention rather than join its brother and sister hydrogen and oxygen molecules that go racing through drains and sewers and whatnot, racing through a complex underground network on its way to wherever it is that water drains.

What else?  Given world enough and time, I could find a thousand  grievances and glitches, all those minor annoyances that set my teeth on edge and my blood to simmer and make me twitch just a bit.  I can forget to breathe, because it's always just one more thing.  One more thing in an endless procession of things that tumble end over end and gather all together, piling in a tangled jumble of One-More-Thingness, an insurmountable, overwhelming mass of Mess.

The house.

The bills.

The car.

Nate.

My job.

The bills.

The money.

Lack of money.

The holidays.

Sickness

Health

Bills

Family

Did I mention bills?

Nate

Nate

Nate

The list is endless.  Eternal.  There is always one more thing that needs attention.  Every petty and not so petty thing on my list fights for supremacy--- notice me!  fix me!  I am drowning in this clamoring sea of minor demons.

I know, I know--- it's not as if this were an apocalypse of woe.  It's a garden-variety list.  It's the stuff of life.  No klaxon-call, no cacophony of noise, just the constant murmur, like the tide: a steady in and out, back and forth motion without rest or pause.  I tell myself I cannot breathe. I don't know where to start, which to start.  In the immortal words of Roseanne Roseannadanna: "It's always something!"

And just when it threatens to consume me, this List of all Lists, just when I think I have reached the edge and feel the vertigo pull before toppling into the chasm of tedium and pettiness, a whisper: "You have some pretty high class problems there."

It stops me cold.

I want to argue with that voice (and I suspect it is my own, an echo of some wisdom heard in the hallowed halls of AA.  Dammit).  I want to rail against the sentiment, and wallow in the pure drama of my litany.  It's bad!  Yes it is!  My life is hard!  I have issues!  I have problems!

What I have is a roof over my head.  Heat in the winter, food on the table.

I have a son I love, a job I adore, a life that is immensely and wonderfully full.

I have people in my life who give me the courage to soar.

I have a God in whose I hand I can rest when I let myself.

My mother's favorite saying comes back to me: I used to cry because I had no shoes until I met a man who had no feet.

I have blessings beyond measure.  Family.  Love.  Life.  Yeah, it's been a tough year or three.  I have mourned much, lost much.  I still miss my brother more than I can say.  It's been a couple years of tough, sure: but there's been a lot of good, too.  There has been sweetness and celebration woven into the the corners, inching toward the center.  There have been sudden moments of grace.  

I am surrounded by light, when I remember.  I can live my life as a prayer, when I remember.  I can share the blessings I have been given, when I remember.

And so, as Thanksgiving approaches, I remember that I am grateful for all the gifts that are part of my life.  The good stuff and the bad.  The people, the problems, the glitches and all the glittery, dancing hidden blessings that flit like butterflies and fill me with wonder.  All the delight, all the amazement and awe: it is there for the asking.  Even without asking, those blessings are there, waiting for me to catch up.

A final thought, as we enter this season of hope and thanks: of all the things I've been given, all the things I have, I am astoundingly grateful that I have a sky filled with sky, not bombs and missiles.  The world now is quite broken, and the bridges are all so narrow.  May we find the courage to join hands and hearts wherever we can, to find peace and shine a light into the darkness.

Happy Thanksgiving to all I hold dear.  I am grateful for the lessons you have brought me, the gifts you have given, and the grace you have shown is possible, even for me.  You have made my life richer and my heart more full. 

Soul's Fire

I stood
Poised at the gate
And sent a prayer out
On the wings of my hope.

Blessings,
  I prayed--
     and light.
Love,
  I called--
     and faith.
Mercy--
  I whispered,
     and truth.

I stood
Poised at the gate,
And a song poured forth
Lit by the fire of my soul,
Tempered by the want of my heart.

Redeem me,
  I cried--
     make me whole.
Heal me,
  I sang--
     bring me peace.
Return me,
  I said--
     deliver my soul.

I stood
Letting breath fill me
And light
And hope
They filled me and
Flowed through me

Blessings! I prayed.
Heal me, redeem me, make me whole

I stood at the gate,
So filled with longing
and light
And hope
I walked through at last
And so became my prayer.

The Holiness of Separation

As a kid, Shabbat meant brisket. I loved that. Every once in a while, my mother would get inspired and feel the need to… cook? No, she always cooked in those days. It wasn’t until many years later that dinner was more likely to be ordered than made.

But every so often, as a kid, dinner wasn’t just thrown together from whatever was in the refrigerator. Candles were lit. There was no real ritual there, and the melody we used was likely to be the one from Chanukah (because that’s the only one I knew, and I was the designated candle-lighter/singer in those days), but those thick, squat white candles that came in boxes of 48 would be given a place of honor on the stove – just in case, because you didn’t want them to fall over in whatever tumult might arise after dinner.

My bubbie (z”l), who was either prophet or witch, said to my mother in that distinct and scratchy-voiced Yiddish accent, ”You’re going to burn the house down with those Shabbes candles,” and sure enough, the candles did fall over the next time we lit them. They did a slow burn on the harvest gold Formica countertop, leaving an oddly shaped, flaky mark the size of an orange, or maybe a baseball, as a permanent reminder of her powers – which we kids were never quite certain were always used for good, even though she was our bubbie. Maybe it had something to do with the eyes, or the accent, or her refusal to talk about her life in the before – when she lived in Poland, or Russia, or whichever principality claimed the shtetl that was a pawn in skirmishes far removed from the realities of shtetl life, but seemed to impact illusory allegiances and political borders.

I am almost convinced that it was because of my bubbies that we celebrated Shabbat at all. And because of their bubbies. And theirs. And theirs again, down a long, dusty and twisted road of generations, a collection of bubbies stretching back a few millennia. It is a small taste of infinity, a forever line, connected by flame and sweet wine, by twisted bread and a thousand generations, all of whom danced on the head of that same sacred pin: a pause, an inward sigh of breath, just as Friday’s sun kisses the western horizon. They gather us all in, just as they gather in the light around them, their hands circling over and around the candles they light to usher in Shabbat. Those flames flicker and stretch and reach upwards – to God, to heaven, to separation.

One heartbeat to the next. One moment from the next. An endless next, that leads us all to that sacred space: Shabbat.

They kept it, watched over it, guarded it, remembered it – that liminal moment of joy. And in their watching, in their remembrance, they passed it on, one to the next – one heartbeat, one moment, one candle flame, one breath. Down and down, their fingers wove a prayer, and they gathered us all in. They knew, every one of them, as they stood on the threshold of that endless moment, knew and understood the holiness of separation.

It was not the brisket that made it Shabbat when I was a growing up. What mattered was the separation – the fact that my mother knew, somewhere in her heart and hands, to gather us in and surround a moment. And that moment was separate from, distinct and different from, all the other moments that led up to it. It was space, not time. It was holy, and it was Shabbat.

And for that moment, that breath, that heartbeat, we all of us danced on the head of that pin.

And today? No brisket. But there are candles and flowers, sweet wine and twisted bread. As my hands pass over the small flames, I chant an ancient blessing in an ancient language, gathering in the light, gathering in family and those I hold dear, gathering in hope. I watch, from one moment to the next, and remember, from one heartbeat to the next, and welcome in Shabbat, giving thanks for the holiness of separation.

Simple Stories: in honor of a couple of decades sober

You'd think that after 20 years, this would be easy.

Well, maybe not you, but I did.  I thought that after 20 years it would be easy to tell the story of these past 20 years.  I am, after all, a writer.  I do the words.  That's my thing.  More than most other things, I know how to tell the stories-- some filled with wonder and light, some much harder, all twisty and dark-cornered, with frayed threads, but which, with infinite and practiced patience, can be woven together into a threadbare whole until a new story can be found.  Sometimes wonder, sometimes hard and tinged with light.

You'd think, after 20 years-- of living this life and mending all these frayed and broken threads, of finding purpose and dancing with God, of unimaginable pain and unbounded joy-- of living this life, actually living a life filled to the very edges with life, with everything: love and anger and doubt and fear, failure and triumph, all the stuff of a life jammed together and barely contained-- you'd think...

So why isn't this easier?

Why is it so difficult to strip away the artifice and just tell the story, spare and unadorned and achingly simple?  Why can't I just say: There was a time, a long time ago, when time was stuck, when nothing moved and nothing changed and nothing filled me and everything failed me.  And this is the story of how that all changed.

I was taught, early on in Alcoholics Anonymous, that when you tell your story, you say what it was like, what happened, and what it's like now.  Simple.

So, what was it like?  I like to believe that that's where the story takes a sharp left turn away from simple, passing complicated in a few easy strides, never looking back.  That's the story I tell myself.  I like the drama of that, the hint of darkness and the veiled promise of lurid disarray. As comfortably as I live in that drama, I remember what a friend told me one night, early in our sobriety, as we sat in my car under cover of a midnight sky, just learning the rules of friendship in a sober world.  I told him  my stories through the lens of my living chaos theory.  And my dear Jonathan, my new and newly sober friend, he listened, allowed me to rant, took my hand when I'd finished and said "Stacey; you're not as evil as you think you are."  I may have hated him in that moment.

That's the thing, really: I want complex.  I want drama and license and chaos.  But the simple story, the easy story is this: There was a time when I was empty, and in my emptiness, time stood still.  No light.  No sound.  Just an eternity of empty. Who needed chaos when I had despair?  Who needs hope when you can chase more-- more anything, take your pick: alcohol, drugs, sex, money.  Strange, but no matter how much I drank, the empty never got filled.  All the despair, all the hopelessness, untouched.  Untouchable.  An infinite void fed by subtraction stew.

And after twenty years of forever, twenty years of standing motionless on a roiling sea of empty, I was done.  That's the "what happened" part.  I was done: I got sober.  Easy-- got sober.  Ha!  Just don't drink, right?  Easy?  How the hell do I do that?.

They told me, those people in the rooms, from their vantage points of a decade, a year, a day, an hour of sobriety "Don't drink and go to meetings."  Don't drink?  What?  How do you not drink?  How do you not chase that thirty seconds, where you finally sit in your own skin without feeling the need to crawl out of it, that singular instant of time where all the noise in your head stops and you can breathe, really just breathe? Thirty seconds-- that's all you got, ever.  Thirty seconds, where you fit and the gears didn't grind against you and you could just be.   And God, what I wouldn't give-- what I didn't give-- to chase those thirty seconds, again and again, with every sip.  Don't drink?  How the hell do you do that?

And they all of them smiled, and they nodded, and they knew-- all of them, from their lofty vantage point of a decade or three, a day or two, an hour or so--- "Don't drink.  Go to meetings. It gets better.  Simple."

I used to not believe in miracles.  I used to believe that God, if God really existed, had set me up to fail my life.  I used to believe that I couldn't live a life without drinking.

It's amazing the changes that happen when you finally can't imagine having to take one more drink.  It's amazing how infinitesimally  the universe shifts when the pain of drinking becomes more than the fear of not.  How profoundly simple life became: don't drink.  Again and again, one second, one minute, an hour or three, and you just don't drink.  No matter how much the pain of sobriety threatens to swallow you whole; no matter how exposed and raw you feel-- every minute of every day, with not even an ounce of anything standing between you and the rest of the world; no matter how much you're tweaking and want to crawl inside that bottle. 

Again and again: don't drink, go to meetings, and the seconds crawl into minutes and stumble into days and bound into years and you suddenly have time.  And you breathe, finally breathe.  My God, you breathe and the air is cool and pure and fills your lungs like light.  You breathe, and  suddenly you have a life, that moves and leaps and dances.  And you look back, and it's twenty years later.  Twenty years, and you say: simple. 

And now?  Now I have a life.  A life by no means simple or easy; it wouldn't be mine if that were the case.  It is a complex and rich tapestry that is filled to its very edges with life-- with love and light and pain and hope.  There has been despair enough to fill a thousand lifetimes, and hope enough to bring me to a breathless stop.  I have been given gifts unimaginable.  I have sought redemption and been offered forgiveness.  I have learned to live with doubt, and revel in contradiction.  I live in the miracle of a day, a day that stretches before me with infinite possibility and endless hope, filled with simple stories waiting to be found and told and lived,   I have found a life that is mine, that moves and breathes and is filled with all the stuff of a life.  I have found God, and I allow God to be.  Just be, just as I believe God allows me to just be.  

There was a time, a long time ago, when time was stuck, when nothing moved and nothing changed and nothing filled me and everything failed me.  And this is the story of how that all changed. This is the story of how it got better.  This is the story of how I came to believe that I was never empty.  This is the story of how I learned to breathe.

Simple.

For all the blessings that fill me, for God's grace that lifts me, for all who teach me, simply, to live a sober life and hear God's voice, I give thanks, with humble and profound gratitude.