Thoughts for the ending of a year

I had my new year already -months ago.  So what is the lesson? 

We like to mark time, chop it into manageable chunks that separate one moment from the next: here, on this side, the world is one way; there, on the other side of that narrow, almost invisible line, that hoped-for chasm of change and difference, the world changes, is different. It is newer, freer, happier, brighter.

We hope that our burdens are lighter, our grief is lessened, our joy magnified. We yearn for new  possibilities, to find an array of different, spread before us like a banquet. We imagine that we step over that magic, nearly invisible line that marks one place to the next, with a sense of mindulness and some ceremony.

We mark that magic demarkation with celebration, and say "The before was old. This, now, is new. And into this new, into this vast expanse that is spread before me, all clean and unmarked, I will find and create and do and be and sing and love and experience-- differently. Better. More."

What we don't often stop to realize is that we have this power within us all the time. Like Dorothy and her shoes, we have the power to go home any time we want. We don't need to destroy the witch or bow down to magicians and madmen. We have the chance, no matter the day or the hour, to say "On this side, life and the world are one way. Now, in this moment, this time, from here on out, it is different. It is new and filled with possibility and potential. It is so, because I choose, I decide."

So here we stand, on the edge of a new year, ready to jump, to leap, to shed the old year like we do our winter coats when we finally come in from the cold.

My wish, my prayer for this new year: blessings and joy and wonder and love. And most especially, that we remember that a new year, a new day, doesn't need a calendar. We are given the chance to renew, to reclaim, to begin again always, when we give meaning to the day, when we decide.  We are at Sinai always.  We are blessed and redeemed always. 

The very moment we decide, that we chose it,  we will be carried through, from one moment to the next, to an endless expanse of possibility and promise.

Love and light, to all I hold dear... ♥

To a Year Filled With Wonder - Shana Tovah!

For some time now, I have been wishing people a year filled with wonder as my  Facebook birthday message to them,. I tend to gloss over the exact meaning of that. It sounds good: deep, kind of profound, definitely spiritual in some way, and certainly with a vague and unspoken reference to God. 

In actuality, I don't know that I've ever given any real thought to what a year of wonder actually means. My meanderings have been interesting. That one of them was "I wonder how I have managed to not kill my beloved boy child yet..." will give you an idea of just how far afield (and how much on the edge) I can get. My son, though, gets me closer to an answer, a better understanding of wonder. 

We were sitting in services one morning, me because I wanted to be there, he because I forced him out of bed and insisted, He's a good kid, so my insistence was not too demanding. He sat next to me, playing with the tzitzit of my tallit, listening some, fiddling some, reading some, possibly praying some. Later, after the service, sitting and kibbitzing with friends, my son informed me, again, that he didn't believe in God. And again, I answered him in the only way that makes sense to me; "That's okay; you believe in kindness. I'm okay with that."

This being the time of year that it is, I felt the need to elaborate. "Nate, you look out at the woods there behind the house and see nature in all its glory-- fractals and delicate equations and chemical reactions and set laws that are knowable and predictable. I see all that, my beloved boy, and hovering just above that field, I see the breath of God hanging in the still most. You say science; I say God. I don't think God cares one way or another what you call him (her)."

What is that leap? How do I get to God - the God of fractals and predictable science? We both looked at that idyllic scene with a sense of wonder. I think though, the wonder of it all, is the willingness to strip bare - leave the cynicism and absolute certainty off to the side. There is delight in wonder, and surprise. There is something breathtaking about it. Perhaps the difference between my son's vision and mine is that I see no disconnect between science and God. 

I want to end here. Mostly. I don't know that I'm quite satisfied with this explanation. There is some otherness that pushes one into wonder. There is a willingness to be vulnerable and naked - a willingness to disallow preconceived ideas of how things work/ There should be a sense of God, of beyondness. And I know I'm making up words, but I'm trying to pull this together and the words I know aren't getting me far enough.

Wonder is a startlement, a gasp of recognition and beauty. It is God and fractals and a double helix, twined in an intimate dance. It is a leap, from a field of liquid green laced with late summer gold to a glorious hymn to God, made of bright color and soft breezes.

And all of this may be true, but it doesn't even come close to the sense that is wonder. But there's this - I went to service with my son one morning. I, because I wanted to; he because I insisted. And there was enough love, enough trust, enough a sense of rightness and respect, that we sat, for an hour or two, praying, listening, fiddling, laughing and loving. For all the geometry and beyondness: there is breathtaking wonder in that simple and glorious  moment.

If you're interested, there's a poem I wrote a few years back, about startlement with a bit of wonder and exultation. If you've read this far, and want to read a bit more, here's the link...

https://staceyzrobinson.blogspot.com/2015/01/a-startlement-of-song.html?m=1

Shana tovah. May we all have a year filled with wonder.

The Sum of all my Baggage

Welcome 2018. Happy new year!

That said. I've already had my New Year, filled with all the pomp and circumstance that Rosh Hashanah can hold. Except this year, I was a little too preoccupied to notice much of anything, except that too-sharp focus of hospital sounds and silences. There was grief to be felt, and family to be held close. There was a miracle of healing, even within that circle of dying. 

Even missing that new year, we Jews do it right and manage to celebrate four new years throughout the course of asingle  365 days plus a smidge cycle. In addition to the hoopla of Rosh Hashanah and the birthday of the world, we celebrate the new year of trees, the reign of kings, and the tithing of cattle. We have a full service concept of years, old and new and everything in between.

Time is less a linear function, and more something with rounded edges. Today may be a beginning, and yesterday an ending, but those concepts tend to be muteable. The line between them is less engraved in stone and much more drawn in pencil. Or eraseable ink.

Never one to waste an opportunity, I will use any excuse for demarcation to, well, mark the journey. I will gladly use these perhaps arbitrary, possibly holy  and certainly randomly awesome moments to do a little diving, a little reflecting. I declare this day, this arbitrary day of firsts, to bend the light a little more, and so enter this new year a little more solidly. A bit more knowingly.

So to begin, at this beginning (at every beginning) I pause, and take a moment or three to ask my favorite question: what do I carry withme , and what do I  leave behind? I am the sum of all my baggage - carried, dragged, dropped. left behind and taken back.

Sometimes the weight of it all is crushing. And sometimes, when the wind is just right, and the scent of green is in the air, and I am feeling brave and grateful daring and fierce and bold (or any combination thereof; you get the point), there's no weight at all. I freely offer much of my baggage, all the weighted measures of stuff and ideas and hurts and pains; lost loves and lost jobs, missed opportunities and failed connections - all of the stuff that binds me, tethers me to a present I can only see through the funhouse mirror of my past (so not really a present at all) - and I let it all go, leaving it lie in a muddled heap.

This is my altar. I'm pretty sure, when I drop it all in that heap, and I set it on fire, it makes a pleasing odor to God. I'm just as sure, when it's time to move on, every single thing that went up in smoke, that released me from the bondage of my self, and my past, it's all there, ready for me to pick up again, just as bright and shiny and unscathed as it was before my metaphorical sacrifice.

It's mine, to carry it all again until the next holy bonfire.

Of course, there's a whole bunch of other stuff I can choose to pick up and carry away - things like faith, or courage, or joy. And yes, there are infinite variations of despair and anger and sundry slings and arrows of cruel misfortune that can be distracting and enticing. And yes, I have gone that route more often than I care to admit. There are times I swear I didn't do the picking, that these nasty little packages leaped up and stuck themselves to me of their own accord, really they did.

If I'm honest - and now's a good time to cop to honesty - I did the picking and the plucking and the sticking, all by myself. Ugh.

Still, there are times I go against type, and I choose the weightlessness of joy!

Things is - all this carrying and leaving and taking away - it's a thing I can do every single day. It's unbounded and knows no season. It's not tied to any new year - or maybe, it's tied to every new year, every new day that dawns begins the cycle of a new year. In every moment, I can choose, again and again and again. I can leave it all, burn it up, dip it in amber, take it with me every single, any single day. These days, this journey is a mindful trudge, and so I make a careful inspection and collection of the junk I lug around with me. I am grateful for the mindfulness. Messy as I am, I like frames, and this is a particularly good one.

So. What is it that I carry with me? What will I leave behind? What will I carry with me as I walk to the next altar, the next mountain? Today - just for this moment, this breath, I will sit for a moment, my treasures laid out before me, a sky of pewter and pearl above me, casting dull shadows on the lot. I will sit, and rest, and hope - hope that when I move on from here, I remember to let slip the boxes of pain and fear, so that I have room for a bit of joy, a bit of beauty, a bit of grace.

Happy new year to all I love and hold so very dear. To beginnings and endings and all this lovely, messy, beautiful middle.

What grace looks like - a happy new year tale

I could hear the quiet hum of the furnace. It's easy, at 3:00 in the morning, when the house is quiet, and the world seems to sleep.

I could hear the buzz of the highway, that unfolds in its great concrete planes and curves, not too far from my window that holds in the warmth of the furnace that hums in constant susurration at 3:00 in the morning when the house is so quiet and the world seems to sleep.

The cat is unaware of the sleeping, softly humming world . Her only concern is my changed breathing and therefore, my coming awakeness. She cares nothing for traffic or heaters or nighttime quiet. She crawls on my chest, purring her quiet and constant purr that covers the more quiet hum of the furnace, and nudges my fingers with her nose. She's looking for scratches and pets. She is the Empress of Night, Queen of Drowsy sun. She nips my scratching fingers when she's had enough. She rules with an iron fist and sharp, still-kitten teeth.

I lay in my bed, surrounded by warmth and just-below-noticing noise that I hear only in passing and send out a silent prayer of thanks for all that I have in my life, for all the wholeness and brokenness and possibilities that make up the life that I have been given, the life I have chosen. A sigh - six of one, half dozen of the other. I used to stress on the finer points and philosophical distinctions played out in the giving and the having and the choosing. These days, I'm learning to find grace just in the living.

Another reason for thanks.

I find that, in the stillness and quiet of 3:00 am, it's easier to just be, even if for just a moment. I'm grateful for those moments, and for that stillness. For those few minutes, before my head fills with the chatter of voices and relentless noise, I can breathe and be. There's just that moment, a slow inhale and steady exhale. I feel my soul slip in, returned from its dance with angels along the arc of Saturn's rings (or so I imagine), but returned nevertheless. I offer a prayer of thanks, again, for this gift of trust and faith.

Inhale. Exhale. And again - a handful or two of breaths that remind me that I'm alive, that there is a God (whatever That is), that I don't have to have an answer, not in this moment (or even the next). I am here, in this place, and I am so very grateful for all the blessings I've been given, even when I felt those blessings were curses. I have a tendency to find gratitude, and God, only in hindsight.

Funny - but they all seem to stem from the same place, those cursed blessings - or perhaps blessed curses. It surprises me, this place - so well hidden from view (yours and mine both), but I move, with what seems like excruciating slowness - away from the fear that tethers me in place to a moment of quiet stillness, an eternal moment of inhale and exhale. It's a very fragile place.

And from this vantage point, finally unbound, I look back, to count all those gifts of brokenness and grace that have been given me. Here, in the 3:00 am quiet, with the purr of a cat and the drone of distant traffic, with the gentle rhythm of my son's breathing down the hall, I offer a prayer of thanks for the kindness of strangers. And more - for the kindness given me by the people I know.

A decade or two ago, newly sober, still mostly feral, I was in awe of what we called the "fellowship." Drinking had always been such a salve, a slippery balm that maintained an invisible but solid wall between me and the humans. Every drink, every drug, every thing that I used to make me not feel merely bound me tighter, twisted into a tangled mess of fear and loathing - it all kept me safe. Kept me distant, untouchable. Invulnerable. And here were all these people, all these sober drunks with some time: sometimes only an hour or two, sometimes days or weeks or years (Really? Years? What the hell?), some who turned out to be visiting, feeling the need to don the mantle of Scout - those who went back out to test the waters (that were always 80% proof at least), and not all of them found their way back in - all these people, with names I sometimes remembered but mostly didn't, with phone numbers readily given but that I never called, they all of them, mostly, showed up. For each other. For themselves.

For me.

Even when I snarled, or whined, or pushed back as far as I could go. I felt like Harry Beaton, the character in Brigadoon who couldn't bear his grief, who wanted only for others to hurt as much as he did, who ran, as if all the hounds of hell were running through his head, skittering up an down his spine, trying desperately to leave , all the while doomed to stay in the same place. "I'm leaving Brigadoon," he cried, "The miracle is over!" That was me, too: I wanted out, I wanted the miracle - of sobriety, of AA, of something I couldn't even name - I wanted it over for everyone. And still, all those drunks, they showed up. For me.

"Be honest," they said. Be open and willing and vulnerable, a little bit every day. I scoffed at their naivete. "Keep coming back," they smiled, sipping coffee as the smoke from their cigarettes rose in delicate spirals, collecting in a haze just below the ceiling of the meeting room. I went back, again and again. One day, on a whim, or perhaps a dare to myself, I offered a truth or two, exposed the delicate skin of my secrets, just a fraction, and waited for the white hot pokers to come, seeking blood, sensing weakness. They never did, and I lived to tell the tale. I tried it again. And again. I shed my secrets like a shroud, felt their weight shift and dissolve, not all at once, but in time, over time, as I learned to trust.

"It's ok not to know," they said. "It's ok to ask for help." I laughed, I was too smart to fall for that line! I knew it all and needed nothing from anyone. I was the Fixer of Broken Things. I knew, above all else, that I would never be loved, and so decided that to be needed was almost the same. Almost enough. So I found all the broken pieces, all the broken people - and I fixed them all. And in all my fixing, I could find a whispery echo of the humanity I was so sure was just outside my grasp. I knew, without doubt, that only one person remained outside the circle of healing: me.

But those people, those glorious drunks, they showed up and they offered and they loved - freely, without any expectation of return. There were no scoreboards or scales that weighed my worth. With infinite caution and care, I crept away from the curse of people - the burden of their need and want and broken desire and slowly, almost imperceptibly, found grace in fellowship, the blessing of people who fill my life, and my heart.

So here now, a few decades later, looking back at a lifetime of wholeness and brokenness and breathless awe, I find grace - and God - in the kindness of strangers and the people I have gathered along the way, here in the quiet of 3:00 am.

Who am I kidding? "Looking back at a lifetime..." Ha! It's all well and good to talk of lessons learned - difficult, daring, skin-crawling lessons that you learn and then fold up neatly, put it away in a drawer in a locked room that lives down a long and cobwebbed hallway that is dusty with disuse. I like lessons like that, feel a smug humility that I can say, "Ah yes - that was hard, learning how to do that. Not that I'll do it again or anything, but I got that badge, thanks."

This past year has been a never-ending parade of learning that lesson, again and again, the one where I ask for help. I tried. I tried so hard to shoulder all the broken pieces, all on my own. God, I tried. And I couldn't do it. Time and again, I struggled, like Atlas. I carried every load I was handed, felt buried by the weight of it all, until I stood - motionless, breathless, defeated - until the pain of not asking for help was finally greater than the fear of reaching out. And so, skin crawling, face pink with heat and body glistening with flop sweat, I asked for help.

And without fail - without fail - every time, there it was. Offered not as an "if - then" statement, but freely, unstintingly. There were rides and loans and stronger shoulders than mine that could bear the weight of my fear. People showed up, offered their love, sometimes in the form of coffee and a willing ear, once or twice as a job that came as I stood teetering on the brink of financial disaster that threatened to swallow me whole. There was the offer of advice a time or two, but more often, a steady presence and a gentle hand to hold. I needed everything that was given.

I used to say, in the early days of my sobriety, that the only thing worse than not having friends was having them; the only thing worse than depending upon the kindness of strangers was depending upon the kindness of people you know. Now, just about a quarter of a century later, I still hesitate. I still shudder a little. I still stumble, making my solitary way to some desperately high ledge. But with every piece of brokenness that I cling to, I hesitate a little less, don't walk quite so close to the teetering edge. I am learning to shrug a little sooner, so that whatever it is that I think I must carry doesn't crush me under its weight.

A quarter of a century later, after a lifetime of steadfast fear and absolute certainty that my burdens are mine, that I am the fixer who can never be fixed, I have discovered a new conversation topic with God. These days, there's a a lot less "Why me, God?" and a helluva lot more gratitude for all the gifts I have been given. Why me? Sometimes, it's the choices I've made or the actions I've not taken that place me smack dab in the middle of something hard and fierce. Sometimes, there's no reason at all, a thing of fearsome and capricious chance that happens because it does. Even then - a conversation of thanks.

So, as we turn the corner of the year, in the quiet hum of darkening skies and the skitter of ice and sleet against my windows, in the end-of-the-year stillness of three in the afternoon, I offer this, my prayer of thanks, with humble gratitude for the presence of strangers and friends who teach me, every day, what grace looks like.
God of infinite compassion, who fills the world with quiet wonder and endless breath, thank You for the gift of not knowing, the grace of bending and the joy of asking.

Merry new year xoxo

Reflections and Wishes on a New Year's Eve day

I've often wondered what the big deal about December 31/January 1 is, for any given year.  To my way of thinking, any day is the end of a year (a decade, a month, an era) and the beginning of a new one.  The "official" new year used to be celebrated by much of the world in March.  Frankly, I consider the first of Tishrei (Rosh Hashana) to be my new year.

But I am willing to concede that today is as good as any to make the leap, from one year to the next,  a day on which to declare "h\Here on this side is one thing; and on the other side is a different thing altogether."  And so it is that I offer up my own reflections back and wishes forward as I straddle this watershed moment.

* 2012 was, blessedly, a gentle year for me.  After a handful of years that I'd prefer to file under whatever-doesn't-kill-you-makes-you-stronger-and-at-this-point-I-must-be-strong-as-Atlas-so-let's-just-move-on, this past year has brought a sense of comfort and ease.  For this, and for the people who walked this path with me, I am profoundly grateful.

*  One of the most amazing gifts of this past year has been seeing my son, my beloved boy, start his own journey.  He continues to question and demand, learn and grow, stumble and surprise.  In terms of milestones, he had one of the biggies, and stepped up to help lead a service and chant from Torah for his Bar Mitzvah.  He is becoming his own person, settling into his own skin, finding his own God (who may or may not exist, depending upon the day and when you ask him).  But he is thoughtful and compassionate and funny and smart and a lot of other adjectives that I will relish discovering in the year ahead and beyond.


*  My son continues to learn every lesson I have taught him, whether I intend it or not.  So, he has honed his sarcasm, made a space for a healthy (?) dose of cynicism, and is finding his own political voice, based upon equal measures of compassion and justice.  He is breathtaking in his passionate stance on equality and fairness, and if he still needs to learn to temper justice with mercy and judgement with kindness, he is well on his way to becoming a mensch.


*  I got to celebrate one of my own milestones in 2012: 20 years of sobriety.  I could not have imagined the life I am living today on that day that I, so incredibly broken, stumbled into the rooms of recovery.  I could not have imagined that I would find God or healing, and I shuddered at the very prospect of hope.  I have been given grace, and a life beyond my wildest dreams, one that is bursting to its edges with love, sorrow, frustration, wonder, awe and (yes) hope, a mess of everything all at once, and the faith to put one foot in front of the other, every day.

*  I hurt people I love this past year.  Pretty deeply.  It was not done out of spite or malice, but it came as a result of my actions.  No amount of wishing can unmake that pain.  I can only try to heal it.

*  This was the year that my father lost his voice.  Really and irrevocably.  In early September, he underwent a trachyectomy and the surgeons removed his voice box (and the cancer that had entirely coiled its way around his vocal chords).  Apparently, all those warnings written on all those cigarette packs for all those years were true: smoking causes bad things to happen.  He is alive, and cancer free, and there is no greater gift than that.  But he is voiceless-- this man who has made his living with his voice, who learned to love singing again a handful or so years ago, who used to hate talking on the phone but would always take time to chat when we called, and to whom I would not talk for days and days at a time without any thought-- I would give anything to hear his voice one more time.

*  I am now at the age when attending funerals is becoming more common, and 2012 seemed to have more than its share to attend.  The amazing thing is that, in our sorrow, we come together, as a community, to remember and mourn and comfort one another.  To paraphrase Kafka, we help each other cry, and so find strength in that.


There's more, of course.  There's always more, and 2012 proves that.  But what of 2013?  What could this new year possibly hold?  I have no idea; I gave up the crystal ball business years ago (not that I did a good job of giving it up, and can still find myself dusting it off and peering through its cracked and dusty surface for answers that just won't come).  But I do have some wishes and hopes, and I'll leave you with these:

May we remember to be kind
May we feed those who are hungry, heal those who are hurt, comfort those who are in need
May we work for peace, every day
May we strive for justice, every day
May we study some, teach some, pray some and sing some every day
May we remember to laugh and dance and celebrate every day
May we find wonder and joy and miracles 
May we find one another, and shine our lights in the darkness
May our hearts be whole.

Merry new year to all I love and hold dear.
31 December 2012