This year, I promise myself not to know how things will turn out.
I promise myself something to hope for.
And I promise to let something beautiful find me, whenever I need to feel loved.

This year – each year – working by darkness, and glowing with intention – we fling confetti and slurp bubbles and let ourselves believe that what’s passed is past. From the cusp of a moment, we leap across midnight to morning, fearless and expectant in the emptiness we crave. We take heed of ourselves as our own redeemers – as if, looking back on the events of our lives, our will might have made the difference.

The power of beginning finds us willing, but we miss its inherent truth, which is that change and desire combust only in the present moment. Instead, we make plans for the world we want to inhabit, after we achieve our new life. And, before we know it, we are the same old us again, forgetting who it was that dreamed of something new.

When I find myself at that moment – when I have filled new year’s blank slate with certainties I learned last year, and every year before – I resolve to be brave and dream again. To trust in the durability of my heart and the fertile magic of knowing that I want to begin – and I want it enough to forget everything else, but now.

We have faced the world side by side, mugs in hand, too many times to count.  Enough times to know that some things don’t get fixed.  But that does not shake our faith.  No situation is beyond the creative power of being heard.

I was saying that I am just so scared – even scared that by simply wanting a solution I have jinxed it into impossibility.  You were telling me – I think – how you have determined there are some thoughts you just won’t let yourself have.  But, I replied, how can I fend off thoughts that are more than thoughts, when they describe how my world really seems to be?

I don’t know what you said next, but an inner voice rose clearly above our conversation:

“Don’t look down. Don’t look down.  Don’t look down.”  And I realized at once that there is only one way ahead when doing the impossible is the only option.

When you are crossing the invisible bridge to nowhere; when you are in mid-flight without any wings; when you are hanging by your sweat-soaked finger nails – remember these 3 words:

Don’t.  Look.   Down.

Will you have a little Christmas with me?

Let the Spirit of Giving know what you hope for? (For me this is very hard.)

Find some little thing that opens wide your Welcome Home, and share it?

Decide that Joy belongs to you today, especially when you least expect it or don’t want to feel it – because the Mystery of Light renews itself through the Courageous Dark?

Merry Christmas all my dears, who make my heart so happy to be on this Earth, and who bless me every day.  Merry, merry Christmas.

“If we were not so far apart
You’d hear your door bell ringing
And there I’d stand – my face all smiles –
And with my whole heart singing.” – Unknown author, circa 1930

I never dreamed that I wouldn’t be able to find even 1 hour in the last 3 months to meet you here – even just to say, “I miss you.”   But there were so many words to put together, to explain the Rules of Professional Conduct, to summarize the legal issue, to tell how all my work experience means people should hire me…words and words and words and words –  mostly about things I didn’t really understand. It takes a long time to write your way into understanding the completely unfamiliar.  It took every single minute I wasn’t sleeping or reading or eating or working.  Well, I did watch the Daily Show.  But you knew that, right?

I don’t know what I learned, or if it will help me find a job –  but I’ll be damned if we aren’t together on Christmas Eve.  Santa wills it.  The silent rainy night demands it.  The little lights shining – hopeful, everywhere – promise that despite our imperfections, love is true.

And I did miss you.  And I do.

Look at how far she had to go to find her place, to catch the light, to see what is around her.  Her skinny green life-line trembles and bends, but escapes the wind and rain unbroken for now.  It’s late in the summer to be opening her flowers, but that’s what she lives to do.  It’s late in the day to be discovering her, but that doesn’t prove anything.  “Before” isn’t as important as you think.  “Now” counts, if you can get there.

My friend and teacher Rebecca Pavlenko wrote me:

“Sometimes, during times like that, I just need to hibernate, go underground and rest and let renewal find its form.”

Rebecca isn’t merely giving me advice. She is saying that to act on faith is a risk.  When I imagine stopping, a river of chills ripples through me and I think, “But what if I lose it forever?”  To withdraw takes stone-cojones courage.  Surrender is part of what happens when you grow.  And life needs time, like sky needs the rain.

******

If it’s been a good week here,  I owe it all to stormy afternoons and the Pope Farm Conservancy.  As you walk up the hill – a steep-enough glacial drumlin-y sort of hill – you watch the century old stone wall to distract yourself from the effort.  Swallows glide across the path, just a few inches from the grass, showing off deep indigo feathers and sunrise orange bellies.  By the time you reach the top of the rise, where this year’s rotation of corn and sunflowers intersect, you feel you have climbed the world.  The road noise has receded, and you feel very close to faraway things, like the stand of oaks at the horizon.  You can hear the song of your own blood in your ears, and a bright-yellow flash overhead, calling out for a friend.

To mourn is to love again. – Robert Karen, Ph.D, The Forgiving Self

Over vacation, I ate meals with my most treasured people.  What feels better than the assumption of intimacy? Unguarded arguments, words that get right to the point.  The way you asked, “What about you, sweetie?”  Or gently turned my face toward buried dreams, because there is no time to waste.  Or let me say, “I can’t believe that happened to you.  How can I help?” when help was the last thing you imagined.  I slept on your sofas, left dishes in your sink, inconvenienced you with picky eating – and worse. But to no avail.

You love me still.  And I do you.  Let’s just go on in our way, together, until there isn’t any further to go.

I have a few (fairly) Grown Up decisions to make in the next week or so – whether to accept a student loan even though I hope not to use it, how much of my medical bills I can afford to pay – all of which beg a question I often ponder: How the hell did I get put in charge of anything?

I know a few people who seem to have put themselves squarely in charge of their lives, and in their own opinions, are doing an excellent job.  This quality of agency is an important marker of mental health, apparently – which I am supposed to be striving for.  The problem is, I don’t really like being around these people very much.  I distrust their self-assurance.  It seems a glib response to the world I know, regardless of how much better it makes them feel.  In my world, losing your heart’s desire can brand you forever.  In my world, circumstances change without your consent, and you just have to grow on the best you can. In my world, believing that you are masterfully steering your own life seems to be missing the point.

Of course I yearn for a simple answer to the complications of my own heart and mind.  I am scared as hell right now – truly flying without a net (though not without a cheering section, and for that I love you all intensely.)  Yet, if that confidence comes, I think it will be from a place down low, from the very tangle at my feet.  From where all that is broken, and breakable returns to ground and yields.

“Like all explorers, we are drawn to discover what’s out there without knowing yet if we have the courage to face it.” ― Pema Chödrön

The gate to the sunflower field was closed, and the parking lot deserted when I got there at 7:30 or so.  We had rain – crazy, green cloud rain – all afternoon, and I thought the lingering raindrops and wet yellow petals might be something to see.  I’m not brave enough to trek up to the field in such an isolate situation, though – even if it is Middleton, WI. But I am “brave” enough to dawdle around the prairie restoration at the edge of the parking lot, where I can skedaddle away when (not if) I get scared.   I stayed until another car drove in, but nothing was spoiled.  I found what I came for.

*******

Lately, I’ve been surprised how much common experience I still share with friends from long ago, far away, and very, very near.  Our circumstances vary quite a bit, but we all seem to be in the same predicaments.  Our work lives have narrowed to the point of requiring some re-habilitation, either of mind or means.  Family complications are so far beyond our control that there is nothing to do but laugh and cry in the same conversation.  I don’t think we’ve changed that much. We’re the same teenaged people, facing up to life’s persistent lesson:  You just don’t know anything, do you?

I feel, for the first time in quite a while, that when I say something honest about my own ineptitudes, at least a few people will nod along with me.  The funny thing is, I think your sympathies were there all along.  Mine was the hardened heart.  How could I feel your empathy when my own thoughts were turned against myself?