I thought I had to be there at 11. It turned out, I didn’t start until 1. I could have slept in. I haven’t been sleeping well, been waking up in the night, restless when I do sleep. Those extra hours in the morning are precious. Or, if I woke early anyway, I could have relaxed on my sunny balcony with a good book (The Delight of Being Ordinary is wonderful!) and a cup of tea. I could have walked by the river all the way to the Forks and had a slow cup of coffee there.
However. It turns out that my messed up head and endlessly wrong calendar may have had a meaning that (gasp) was not all about me.
With two hours empty in front of me, I decided to go home. I took the bus to save every open moment of my free two hours, and goodness, did I feel impatient waiting for the light to change a block before my stop.
The bus driver chatted through the open door with a waiting passenger at the bus stop. They spoke another language, and the passenger looked concerned, very focused on the driver. He seemed to offer a hand of comfort as the light changed and the bus carried irritable me to my stop.
“Not a good day for me,” the driver said.
He told me that he’d been in an accident earlier that day. The car scooted in front of him and he couldn’t stop in time. Those buses are huge. I don’t think I could drive one.
My perspective changed quickly (and about time, too). I stopped looking at miserable me and looked at him. He was worried, scared, and still had the rest of his shift to get through driving the monster. The only time I was in an accident, I was terrified of driving for months afterward.
I felt an enormous sweep of compassion for him. I don’t know if scientists are ready to say that shared energy is a thing, but I shared it anyway.
Blessings, sympathy, prayer, good vibes, strong energy: I let all of that goodness pour in a soft swirl to lift him. I saw his face relax. I felt my sorry gut relax. It could have been only my smile that did it. I don’t know.
“I’m sorry,” I offered. “I’ll be thinking of you today.”
I walked home for my brief respite before work. It would have been nice to sleep in this morning, but I think I’ll sleep better tonight than I have in a while.
Also, I met this squirrel.
I think he had something to tell me.
If you like the idea that prayer works, that energy can make its way through the air to someone far away, that quiet, good thoughts can make their way to someone who needs a boost, could you give some of that loveliness to the bus driver now?
The way I see it, even if my skeptical friends are right and it’s all malarkey, your meditative moments will make you feel calmer, more peaceful, happier. And that will touch the people around you today. Who knows, maybe one of those people will be the bus driver’s supervisor, or his wife, or the driver of the scooting car.
I had to give her some credence for knowing what she was talking about. In a hospice bed, saying goodbye to life, memories of sitting in the chair beside the bed more times than anyone should have to as she watched two husbands, two sons, and two parents drift away over the years, and yet she carried a soft glow that could not be other than convincing.
She smiled at me and opened her hand, inviting me to gently put my hand on hers and let our palms touch. Not too much pressure in the touch, because of the pain everywhere in her body.
I waited for her to catch her breath as her blue, blue eyes shut with the effort and her silver hair across the pillow seemed to dim. This is the same woman who told me the joke about dressing for the job you want, not the job you have. I wonder what she’s going to tell me this time.
Her eyes opened again, her hair shone, and she nodded slightly to let me know she was still here, still breathing, still hurting.
“And still happy, you know. Even now. I want to tell you about happiness,” she said. “There are only a few times when happiness has to give in to grief. When the grief comes, let it have its way at first. Then let happiness wash in. Don’t be afraid. That’s the most important thing.”
She paused for breath again and let me follow my embarrassed thoughts, thoughts which she too seemed to hear in my silence.
Oh, hi, said Melvin in the forest. How you feeling? Melvin is a therapy dog whose human partner was distracted with a dog in training. So Melvin decided to go with his intuition.
Happiness and I had a careful relationship. I didn’t ask too much of happiness in hopes that happiness wouldn’t feel hard-done-by, imposed upon, or overburdened. What if I allowed myself to fly around on happy wings, peacefully sipping a cup of tea and watching the river just when a bad thing was happening to my family and I didn’t know yet? What if happiness had a snit at my demands and made a fool of me, laughed a terrible, happy laugh when it fled from the bad news?
“Maybe grief will arrive, gobble you up, go away, come back, maybe it won’t. Don’t push happiness away. Not ever, not for any reason. It’s always waiting.”
The seagull and I paused together. Let it go to the river, he said. See what the river brings.
What if I was delighting in the beautiful efficiency of pieces fitting together in my life, joyfully babbling about my job, my holiday, my dinner plans, right before some sombre-suited person walks up and tells me I’m laid off, the holiday company’s gone under along with my giant deposit, the restaurant is closed and the man I’m dating likes someone else better?
What ifs aren’t real. Each moment of happiness is.
“And don’t pretend, even to yourself, that disappointment and discontent are grief.”
Happiness. I’ll take a moment now to oil the happiness hinges, push some of the debris out of the way, and start to clear a path. I hear that happiness packs a mighty punch when it comes to clearing out dross, dregs, and detritus.
Today, I thanked Anxiety. I asked her if she could step aside, let me deal with it.
“It” was finding myself having to address that person. You know the one. It’s hard to meet their eyes because of the taste that seeps into your cells. You don’t want to remember their existence, but there he is, there she is, alive and secreting the sour mind-stink that makes your mouth turn down and your anxiety turn up.
Sometimes, it’s not so much that person as it is the thing that person represents. Either way, you don’t want to admit them to your world, and you try to look away, to preserve your mental health.
I suppose I did have a choice. But making the choice to avoid him (we’ll say “him” this time around) carried other choices. Sometimes, when a situation is so far awry that addressing it makes you sick, the only way out is through, even when your anxiety tells you NO. Sometimes, you have to say words, you just have to, and he was the one who had to hear what I had to say. (A lot of had to going on, and it was hard.)
So, I breathed.
Lately, it’s happened that a few mindful breaths, now and then, pile up a space of wide, soft air all around me. Anxiety dissipates, and I understand how this meditation thing could work. There really is blue sky above all the clouds, and the clouds are so soft to lie on. They thread and swirl and braid in my easeful fingers.
For a moment today, I found myself up there in the blue sky. And, he was on the other side of my shiny ring of clouds, so blurred and insubstantial I could hardly see him. Fresh, clean air in my mind, and calm, clear certainty radiating from my gut. Lovely.
Anxiety wasn’t so sure I could do it.
She pointed and tensed and crouched, but I could see how small and helpless she was, although ready to fight to the death to protect me. So, I lifted her as gently as I could (claws like a spitting cat), and put her safely outside my shiny ring of clouds.
Thank you, Anxiety. I know how much you want to protect me, and I appreciate it. You’re always there to make sure I know the danger. You’ve done your job well! Now, I’m ready. I can do this on my own.
I did. It was good. Thank you Anxiety – I’ll never forget you! 😉
Today, I am thinking about releasing guilt and making boundaries.
Guilt Needs Some Boundaries Too
Time to think about boundaries, about making boundaries for the surging misbehaving guilt that leaps and nips at me.
It would, given the chance, sink its teeth right in and not let go. It would, if I let it, tear my seams and bedraggle my hems.
I think about the Tibetan Mastiffs I met yesterday. One was much smaller than the other (although still large. Very large.) and he wanted to prove his strength against the world of me and my tote bag. Nibble. Tug. Nibble. Attention finally caught, I looked down at his enormous jaws.
“Szzt,” and a snap of my fingers stopped him, surprised. More importantly: a shut door in my mind between his naughtiness and my tote. His people make no effort to restrain him. Instead, they chuckle and tell me how he tore open their friend’s jeans.
Indeed.
Guilt is like a big unruly dogwho loves you
I find myself wondering, again, why it is that people invite big dogs into the family but do not think it necessary to acquaint them with the rules, to teach them where the boundaries are.
And immediately, I see this giant’s lesson for me, the lesson he held in his drooly teeth when he reached through my debilitated, feeble boundary and nibbled my tote bag.
I will remember this mastiff monkey-monster, and I will call him Guilt.
Yes, Guilt, I’m talking to you. No more tugs on the corners of my soft, struggling new peace; no more nibbles along my almost-fraying edges.
I understand that you have things to tell me, are afraid I haven’t heard the things you tell me. I see your worried eyes following me and your wanting paw upraised. Thank you, but it’s okay. I heard you. It’s time for you to go chase squirrels, Guilt.
Go on.
And shame is the sheep your guilt dog herds!
You’ve done your job, you’ve herded my scattered shame-sheep and brought them out from all their dark mountain caves and hiding spots. I see them, and I speak their sorry names out loud.
[Oh, hello, reader. Join me, if you like. Brene Brown is so right. When you speak Shame’s name, it loses its imposter power.]
So here’s a name for one of my sheep (see the one over there, covering under all her ratty wool?):
I was not the good and loving mother you think. I was probably a terrible mother.
And here’s how I will rename my ratty sheep and fluff her wool:
I was, however, the best that I could be then, in that place and time, scrabbling for a hold on the greasy sides of the pit he dug for me with his sharp-edged shovel of disparagement and discounting.
Guilt, you panting, overgrown, teething puppy, you brought us together, my shoddy sheep and I. Now, take them away.
I’m ready to stop shearing their tiresome, bulky fleece. I’m ready to stop endlessly carding, hopelessly spinning; I’m ready to stop wearing their rough, itchy wool. There’s much better wool on the Sheep of Honour Myself. I’m off to knit a shawl.
My Aunt died this week. She was 101, active, and happy. Beautiful with her years and, though I have not seen her in decades, suddenly missed. Thinking of her passing put me in mind of another passing, another end of life, this one sad and reluctant in life and death. I find myself thinking deeply about the two lives that turned out so differently, thinking about the choices that led away from the same place down two divergent paths, wondering about lessons they have to teach me.
You cannot choose the prison of your senile old age, they say. When dementia takes you over, it devours you and spits out your essence, your lost self, as waste. They say.
I’m not so sure that is the complete answer. I think that we spend a lifetime building the walls and windows of the places we wander at the end.
“Life is a choice,” according to Arnold. It’s so true. There are choices in every moment, and every one of those choices is an opportunity to build our capacity for happiness.
Some choose iron bars and concrete blocks for their building materials. They bed down in their little cell, leave the door cracked open just in case, and learn to like the familiarity. Over the years, they come out less and less. You can watch the change in their eyes when they realize they’ve wandered too far from the comfort of sadness. You can watch them look around, take in the sunshine and loveliness, think about it—and say no.
I watched the old person I know so well do that as she crouched in her wheelchair at the end of the hall. She looked at me, she saw me, she heard my singing, and she touched the tips of her fingers to the shine of happiness in the air.
But she found the space too open, too frightening, too strange, and she missed her hard little bed in the dark cell. Goodbye, said her blurred blue eyes.
And she was gone again.
She wrapped fear and anxiety around her thin shoulders, scurried away to her darkness, and peered out through her fingers at the blinding light outside. She saw things that weren’t there, things she’d carried with her for decades, things she’d fed and cosseted inside her mind until in her age and weakness they chuckled darkly and came out to play.
There in the nursing home, I tried to drown them in my music, to shoo them away, to firmly point them out the door, but they just stuck their warped claws into my flesh and sought to drag me deep into the stinking prison where they live. And she turned away her head, reached to draw her monsters close around her, snuggled them under her stiff blankets, sucked in their bile, and spat it at the world.
I sang to still my soul and weave a shawl of peace around me while I watched her. I thought about the years, the long years, of branching paths along her way, the paths she refused.
No judgment. It’s hard, so hard, to walk away from the path your elders trod ahead of you. The ground underfoot is invitingly smooth (or so it seems in the dim light), while the unfamiliar paths wind under thick and tangled trees, around rocks, through flooded streams.
Those other ways will lead you to strange hollows and foreign towns. You don’t speak the language. And you are, you believe, alone. So many reasons (or so it seems to your terrified soul) to walk where your parents walked.
Her choices took away so much from me.
Even more from herself.
But now, nearing the end, she has a gift for me, and I think that in some shuttered corner of her soul she knows about the gift, caresses it, polishes it carefully before handing it to me wrapped in her bruised love.
Her at-last gift is the gift of knowing.
I open the invisible card that comes with her gift and read her shaky disappearing handwriting:
Do not be like me.
Choose happiness at every breath and branching pathway.
Learn while you still can.
This is good enough for me. I accept the gift. I will choose differently.
He was standing apart from the other children, swaying, looking down and away from the activity of the room. Amid the noise and clatter, it was the quality of his silent, absent presence that held my attention.
I was at the Children’s Development Centre setting up my harp for a demonstration. Most of my gigs in those days were office parties, receptions, dinners, a lot of weddings, and occasional school music classes. This was different.
The staff were having a hard time finding people who were comfortable bringing their instruments and making music for this group of children. All of the kids at the CDC had developmental issues, and many of them struggled painfully with bewildering rules of a world they couldn’t understand and their inability to communicate their frustration, anxiety, or simple curiosity.
You never knew when a child might be triggered and start screaming or throwing things. And some of the children were very physical in their unpredictable affection: too-sudden sticky fingers on the instruments and awkward harp-tumbling hugs!
I admit it: I was worn out with teaching and gigging and being a mom in a failing marriage. I didn’t want to say yes to such a difficult, draining gig. But these children deserved a chance to hear the healing harp. They also deserved a chance to touch the resonating wood, pluck the strings, and make their own peculiar music just like all the more privileged schoolchildren and wedding guests I taught and entertained.
So, I said yes.
After I explained the interactive nature of my work, the startled CDC staff said I should limit this gig to playing only. They warned it might not be safe to let this group near the harp. But, however reluctant I was (very), it felt like a thing I had to do. My own two boys did without so much in the chaotic atmosphere of life with a narcissistic father, and my thoughts were an endless train of regrets over the things missed, experiences I couldn’t give them. I didn’t want to abandon other kids whose need was even greater.
I remembered so clearly (and still do) the first time I played an Irish harp, the delight of wood vibrating close to my heart, the wonder of strings singing in the wind, and the peace that instantly calmed my spirit. Very old Irish mythology has stories of harpers who evoked laughter, tears, or sleep with the magical geantraighe (happy music), goltraighe (sad music), and suantraighe (sleep music); they are stories, not history, but I’d seen and felt the extraordinary effect my harp music could have on those around me. It became a healing spiral spinning between my hands, my listeners, and my heart. I learned to let the music flow intuitively, to allow listeners to receive it and heal in whatever way they chose.
People came to talk after a performance, wanting to tell me how peaceful, calm, happy, and just beautifully better the harp music made them feel. At weddings, I often found myself playing the recessional with a parent and child crouched nearby, soaking it in. Wherever I played, I always invited the children (and adults, if they could overcome their inhibitions!) to run their fingers over the strings. They rarely needed reminders to be gentle, since the harp seemed to create gentleness in them.
As I lugged the harp from gig to gig, doing the same things time after time, I tried not to notice that I’d lost something of meaning and purpose along the way. It was always great actually playing the tunes, and I still felt a flutter of satisfaction with the kids’ enthusiasm, but there was something missing.
That’s when Barbara arrived for her piano lesson, flustered, hurried, and direct. “I know you’re very busy…” (they always start like that I thought, irritated), “I know you’re busy, but tomorrow at the Children’s Development Centre we’ve had three musicians cancel. It’s a special day for the children…please, please, please could you come for half an hour?”
So here I was in this unfamiliar space, pulling the harp up close, uncomfortably aware of a swaying little boy across the room who seemed to be altogether unaware of anything at all. I admitted that, right or not, I didn’t want to be there.
Barbara saw my glance and murmured, “Charlie’s not having a good day. He probably won’t even realize you’re here.”
I tried to keep my focus on the harp strings and the music. “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” rose to my fingers and to the rescue. Stillness filled the room even amidst mumbles, whispers, and creaking braces. One little girl, placed close by in her wheelchair, reached out her finger and touched the bow of the harp, smiling delightedly at me the whole time. Somewhere deep inside I felt a tiny, nearly forgotten tingle and I smiled back at her as I played.
That was it. This show had to be like all the others. These children needed to touch the harp and feel the strings quiver under their fingers. I finished playing and asked Barbara to make it happen. The staff hovered nervously, but the children approached quietly one by one, reached out their little hands, and made music. Even the boy with the thick glasses and angry scowl, the one who slammed toys against the wall if they didn’t work right, who hit his therapist as she tried to guide his hand towards the harp; even he slowed to delicacy as his fingers touched the strings.
The line came to an end, and suddenly there was Charlie standing in front of me, no longer swaying, and staring intently at the harp. There seemed a huge silence around us as his hand came out tentatively and sank back slowly. I waited. Then he touched a string.
“Twinkle,” he said, very softly, but clearly.
That’s all he said. “Twinkle,” again, a breath louder.
I looked at him and he looked at the harp, enormous patience in his eyes. So I put my hands on the strings and played “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” as if it were a concerto and a love song and the only music in the world, my heart speeding and my breath quick in the boom of his intensity. He stood absolutely still, and he listened. When it was over, there was a fleeting glance of his eyes directly into mine before he turned and shuffled slowly away, swaying again with each step.
The huge silence pushed my lungs as Barbara and another therapist helped pack and carry gear, both of them with shining eyes and wet cheeks. Outside, as we put things in the car, Barbara turned quickly towards me and touched my arm. “You have to know what happened in there with Charlie.”
“Yes?” I said, so confused and hesitant.
She shook her head, tears rolling down her cheeks. “Charlie is autistic,” she said. “He’s five years old. He has never spoken a single word.”
That tiny tingle inside me fairly boomed. “Never?”
“Never. Twinkle is Charlie’s first word.”
That was years ago, and I am desperately glad that I decided to do that difficult gig. The mythological, magical geantrai, goltrai, and suantrai flow through my fingers, the magic is back where it belongs, and “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” makes me cry every time I play it.
I have only just realized that I’ve been paying an extra three months for a service that I don’t want.
Have you ever done that?
It’s always annoying. This streaming service, that subscription, the small donation that you thought was a one-off…sigh. Or, you know, a service that isn’t very good, that I’ve been looking forward to concluding when my contract was up.
And this time around, it was a chunk of money that made me blink a little. How could I forget to cancel it?
I keep giving myself the pep talk: well, of course you forgot. The company didn’t send you any kind of reminder, any kind of thanks for doing business with us at the end of your contract. No upcoming bill notice. And I’m back to work full-time, still madly studying for two intense courses, finding my way through the daily life threads that tangle and knot all of us sometimes, and dealing with an injury. (Well, two injuries since I managed to fall skating and made the first injury quite annoyed with me again.)
Oh, and there’s a pandemic going on.
The pep talk isn’t working. I can try to get a refund for part of it. You never know. I don’t have the energy to pursue it very far though. That’s why I hired the company to begin with! (Oh, and here’s a tip I should have followed: buy local.)
There I go again. I don’t want to feel this way. Trapped, helpless, letting that negative self-talk monster out to play, becoming so tangled in those daily-life threads that my energy is all about escape instead of peace, simply being, gratitude and happiness, and allowing life to be what it is.
Allowing! Thank you.
I’d forgotten that gem,
as I forget it nearly every day
until something taps me
on the shoulder
and asks for space in my life.
And gratitude.
That’s a tough one to practice in the dark times, but it’s tough on the dark murkiness too. Gratitude is a mop and broom, a scrubbing brush and a jug of disinfectant to murk and discouragement. I remind myself: there was a time, a most-of-my-life time, when this blink-inducing amount of money would have taken me over, filled me with instant, stomach-grinding, paralyzing fear.
Now, things are different, and so is my acquaintance with fear.
(Fear is, in fact, weak.
And I am strong!
So are you.)
I don’t want to forget about that money.
But I am so grateful that I can choose to forget about it. I can choose to let it go. I am grateful that at this place in my life, I’ll still be able to buy my groceries, take an Uber, order pizza now and then, and enjoy my lovely little riverside apartment if I choose to. I am grateful that if I notice my energy draining away into a prolonged fight for a refund, I can stop. I am grateful that I don’t even have to start that fight if I don’t want to!
I can choose to pay the piper and enjoy the tune or walk away with earplugs in and make my own tune.
And I am grateful that I have learned to recognize these knotty experiences as just things that happen, things that float by and unravel, things that have consequences and effects but that do not control my feelings and actions. I used to see them as enormous boulders made of all the knots and threads, petrified knots that would crush me if I did not resist, fight back, and obey fear.
I won’t ever try to tell you that your experience is the same as mine, that your condition is your problem or your fault and you can fix it all with gratitude. That is not true. The world can be hard and cold, and we are not meant to be bearing the burden of the cruel things that came our way as children, that come our way now as we navigate the treacherous ways of healing from trauma.
I only want you to know that gratitude, if you can find it, can help you make it through. And I see you, I hear you, I love you, I am grateful for you.
(And–I should just point out that the shysters in the featured image at the top are some kind of relatives, uncles perhaps, Irish or Italian, New Jersey, quite probably Barnums. My family is not unacquainted with scam creative business people.)
That’s the new handmade sign on the tree at the end of the riverside forest path, right before a short but steep snow-covered hill that leads from the forest to city sidewalks, cars, and apartment buildings. I love finding art messages on my walks, and I’m always pretty certain they’re meant for me! Ok, they’re meant for every person who reads them, and I always read them.
Press on!
Not necessarily something I want to hear, not necessarily something that’s helpful to hear. For instance…
At the beginning of our first shut down, I decided to do yoga, just like I used to. Feel that stretch! Make it happen! Dig deep!
And I gave myself bursitis.
When it happened, it sounded as if every muscle in my hip tore. It felt as if my leg was hanging, unattached, but not quite falling off altogether. It hurt too much to walk. How much hurt is that? I don’t know how to measure pain, but I do know that I fell asleep between labour contractions. So.
It took months of physio before I could face that hill. Months of learning how to use my body, discovering I’d become used to a duct-tape version, worn duct-tape barely holding together neglected bits and pieces, catching in the non-act the muscles that were having a drink with their feet up while other muscles, not meant for the job, worked too hard and got hurt.
As I take some photos and enjoy a few more precious minutes of the frozen river and the tiny sounds of winter wildlife, I think about this new message. I wonder if the artist had that steep and slippery hill in mind when they hung the sign. Which kind of press on did they mean? Or did they want to leave that up to me, show me the possibility of a new way to press, dig in, demand more of myself?
Pressing on can serve you, and it can also harm you. Brene Brown talks about her experience of digging deeper, of pressing on, pushing herself to the point that her whole being stopped functioning and she had a breakdown.
But, we all know of circumstances where someone made a huge and beautiful life-changing contribution by hanging on, pressing on, digging deep for that last burst of energy.
So, what’s the difference? When should I, and when shouldn’t I?
“Men and women who live wholeheartedly do indeed dig deep. They just do it in a different way. When they’re exhausted and overwhelmed they get:
— Deliberate in their thoughts and intentions through prayer, meditation or simply setting their intentions;
— Inspired to make new and different choices;
— Going. They take action.
I spent far too many years digging deep in that old, exhausting way, pushing through to survive another chaotic day in the debilitating, possessive circle of a narcissistic, abusive husband (now so joyfully divorced for many blossoming years!), somehow coping, though not well, with raising two beautiful boys.
Now, I know the difference. I see that sign and I see the steep, snowy hill. The hill must be climbed unless I go all the way back to the beginning of the path–and, even if I do, there’s another hill! It must be climbed, and I can climb it. But I won’t huff and puff and slip and slide and climb it obstinately at any cost.
Instead, I pause to check in with my body, breathe deeply with the trees and the slow, frozen river, and make sure that the core of my being, the part that endured all those years of digging in, the part that is energetically and physically the centre of me, is engaged and ready.
I breathe and begin to climb, step by conscious step, grateful for my life now, grateful for the learning of my life then. I can see and appreciate the ever-changing perfection in my chosen path of deliberate, inspired, active intention. My morning walk on the forest path is a gift every day. I am blessed to be here. My body is stronger each time I walk the path, more ready each day to climb the hill. (My spirit is too.)
The quiet little sign with its handmade lettering and stenciled dove still invites me to press on every day. Whatever the artist intended, I’m grateful they made their offering here, where I can see it and be inspired.
Today is holy in many cultures. Here in North America, we’ve nearly lost the holiness in a mess of candy chasing and best-costume prizes. This year is different as COVID rages and people choose to — or are made to — stay home. I would have anyway (solitude is my refreshment), but I have rarely felt so deeply the need, on this day, for spiritual connection. Pandemics can do that to you.
Ghosts of October 31 past grin at me from the wind storm shadows and tossing branches outside my tree-top windows. Many Hallowe’en parties, many All Hallows Eve vigils, some Dia De los Muertes (thank you Mariachi Ghost!) celebrations, some Samhain gatherings. But this is the first time I’ve watched the full moon rise and understood the meaning of the night, looked for the ending and beginning that my heritage (Irish and Catholic) teaches me.
Samhain moonrise
My grandmothers and great-grandmothers for generations prepared in vigil for the Feast of All Saints on November 1. They would have kept, and slowly lost, the memories of an earlier time, a time when the great fire festival at Tlachtga in Meath marked the passing from the light half to the dark half of the year.
I imagine wandering back to Ireland, slipping into their Rosary circle, letting their prayers lead me deeper into memory, to ancient times, until we glimpse the brightness of the Samhain fire far across the island from my grandmothers’ homes.
“This is a momentous time in the lives of a people to whom the changing of the seasons was a matter of life and death.”
https://www.newgrange.com/tlachtga.htm
What did they do when they saw the beautiful light? Samhain was the end and beginning of the year, the last gifts of the precious harvest stored, the thinning of the veil between this world and otherworld, a time to honour and welcome ancestor spirits and protect from harmful spirits. There were rituals to be followed in those ancient times just as there were for my grandmother and her vigil with her ever-present Rosary, just as there are for each of us if we are willing.
And, I think there must have been private, hidden, silent words, soft thoughts and barely articulated feelings. Whatever the ritual then or centuries later, I think they said, thank you.
Thank you for the promise of the sun once we’ve made it through this long darkness,
thank you for the promise of light and new life,
thank you for
this dark night to let our sadness out and watch it disappear into the dark,
this thin veil to release the grief of the year past,
the sorrow of unwanted goodbyes,
the end of things we would have held closely.
Things change, and we need a holy place and time to make peace with the change. Our beings rest in ritual, relax in familiar prayers. We do well when we can set aside time and prepare a particular, separate space to give thanks for change, to allow, to rest without resistance as the seasons shift, as darkness and light circle in their long dance, and as the moon rises on this holy night.
This one was a difficult one to write, and it’s full of that tricky word, I. That’s because it’s also full of that tricky activity of peering intoIto see what’s up in the darkness.
I’ve been thinking about preparedness. I missed something important in my dog-walking lesson. This is what I missed:
Sometimes, now and then, my expectations outdo my readiness, and sometimes they take me in a not-so-good direction.
(You know what they say about expectations, right? No? Here: An expectation is a premeditated resentment.)
“Being prepared for life means living the kind of life where the things that I am preparing for don’t need preparation. I don’t always know what will happen or what other people will do, but I can choose to always know what I will do.”
The something important that I missed is the foundation of all the rest. Guess what? I don’t always know what I will do. I only know who I will be.
The peace – presence – power paradigm I wandered into a few weeks back is real, but now I’ve discovered something new about it. It only really comes true when I let go of expectations and let myself rest in absolute acceptance of who I am, where I am, when I am. When I reach that place, what I do doesn’t matter so much. I know it will be okay, whatever it is, so long as I’m okay with me.
It turns out that in the strange meeting where I expected to be businesslike and professional, I had unbusinesslike things to say, unprofessional pain to express, fair criticism to communicate, and tears to cry. So that, all of that, is what I did.
I thought, before I went to the meeting, that the magical three Ps (peace, presence, power) were direct routes to fulfilling my expectations: I expected to say important things with untouchable and frightening detachment. I was going to be unbreakable, unshakable. I was going to teach them a thing or two.
Instead, I found a voice I didn’t know I had and strength to let tears come along. I cried from beginning to end (soft tears running from my eyes), but my heart was untroubled. My tears, my friend said later, were there to clean up and carry away my weakness.
I like that.
I let my weakness fall away with my tears, and I said important things with honesty, clarity, and a vulnerability that I would never have planned in my quest for superwoman. My walking-the-dog self stepped aside, lifted the mist, let me speak and held my hand so that my steady voice said everything that had to be said. Steady and soft, but I felt the floorboards tremble as my words sank slowly to the ground.
My weakness wasn’t my inability to be an unreal, unblinking woman of steel. My weakness was my determination to be someone I’m not.
There may have been lessons learned by the others in that room. That doesn’t matter to me. The important thing is that I learned. For one thing, I let go of my expectation that I will act the part of a person I’m not. I don’t want to pretend that tears are weakness. I don’t want to pretend that professionalism precludes personhood.
