Now in the New Year

I don't make New Year's resolutions.  Not formal ones, anyway, either aloud or written.  My mind, however, reels from the possibilities for personal growth and betterment of the world, but I astutely avoid committing change to print.  When I was Catholic, I had some success with Lent as a time for change and successfully started flossing regularly after applying myself during this season of repentance and abstinence.  One change to make, six weeks to establish a habit.  It worked for me.

Being a bit of a curmudgeon regarding detail and personal perfection, listing my promises for the new year (a point which seems rather arbitrary to me, but that's another post), seemed a sure ticket to failure.  And I really despise personal failure.  When the resolutions remain nebulous in my head, failure seems further away.  If I never really committed to X, Y, and Z, can I really fail to do them?

Yes.  Nine days into a new year, I have yet to start writing seriously and regularly,  read the back issues of American Family Practice journal (and submit the quizzes for continuing medical education credits), actually practice a spiritual practice daily, or clean my cupboards and pantry.  I've settled issues with children in less than spirit-respecting ways, nibbled and noshed when not hungry, and, despite Lenten promises a decade old, failed to floss regularly.  And I feel the failures deeply.

Fortunately, I'm making significant progress staying in the moment.  This moment, as my fingers type these words, is the only moment I have.  When I stew over my many perceived failures or anticipate tomorrow being a more productive/loving/dental hygiene minded day, I miss now.  Now is when I have some quiet time to write.  Now is when I can respond to the seemingly endless interruptions from kids in a way that respects their essence while still honoring mine.  Now I can take a breath, then another, then another, feeling my breath rise and fall.  In this moment, for this moment, I can be in the Now, fully experiencing life as I live it. No revisions of the past (that can't be made in reality) and now promises for tomorrow (what can we truly promise about the future?). 

Happy Now.

It Takes a Year or Two

I'm not generally prone to holiday blues, but this year holds some special challenges.  I've read that it takes a full year or two of holidays after a divorce or death to form new rituals and settle into new patterns that truly feel comfortable.  While I've spent a Thanksgiving with my boys and without my spouse, this will be my first without either.  I've planned well, albeit late, and will be cooking and thanking the universe with dear friends.  I'm covered.

Still.  A lump come to my throat when the divisions of the next six weeks come to mind.  I don't care for change, and divorce is change in spades.  As a talisman against grief, I remind myself and recite the boys' holiday plans to others who ask .  Thanksgiving with their Dad (after all, I add, I had them last year), Christmas Eve with his family, Christmas Day at home.  My younger asks for the litany every few days while my older continually reminds me of the importance of waking at home on Christmas Day.  The ritual holds back my tears.

Sort of.  They threaten to bubble forth at inconvenient times.  At church. When discussing the timing of buying a tree.  In Trader Joes.  When listening to Christmas music (yeah, the boys pulled it out already). In the quiet of the night, when sleep eludes me. You get the idea.  My mind threatens to twirl out of control, spiralling into worries about loneliness I might experience without the boys and despair about my failed marriage. If I let myself go long enough, I can return to the self-blame about my marriage's failure.

Breathe.  My recourse is simple but not easy.  Reeling myself out of the abyss of loneliness, self flagellation and sadness takes my breath.  Okay, it takes many of them.  But eventually, staying with my breath, letting my feelings just be without judging or directing them, I can come back to the present. I can return to the song at church, the decorating discussion, the frozen green beans, Oh Holy Night, and restorative sleep.  Acknowledged, those painful feeling pass when ready, leaving me with peace. 

Usually.  As they say, it takes a year or two.  And that's a lot of breaths.

Universe in a Shoebox (Part II)

In the end of “Life as a Strategy for Life,” we were asked to look back on life as an experience and consider how we want to be eulogized. While I haven’t thought of it those terms, I have thought about my goals of living, and they step from my sense of connection to humanity as I discussed in Part I.

I want to have loved deeply, not just when I feel like it, not just when the other pleases me, not even only when I truly know the other person. I want to feel the compassion that goes alongside love for those with whom I share the planet. After all, we have all either been mother, we’ve all loved and lost, we’ve all laughed with delight and wept in sorrow. We all experience what it is to be human, what it means to be alive. Loving others, feeling compassion, deepens our connections to humanity, and, I believe, brings peace to ourselves and others.

This is a goal, a strategy to life. Working for that goal is work, and I miss the mark every day. As a bit of a perfectionist, examining my life for my shortcomings is second nature (and loving myself can be quite difficult, although as the cliché goes, it’s the place to start). As human, I constantly fall short. As human, I continue to strive for growth and that currently popular business term, “continuous improvement.”


Included in the sermon is this poem:
Adrienne Rich: Transcendental Etude
No one ever told us we had to study our lives,
make of our lives a study, as if learning natural history
or music, that we should begin
with the simple exercises first
and slowly go on trying
the hard ones, practicing till strength
and accuracy became one with the daring
to leap into transcendence, take the chance
of breaking down the wild arpeggio
or faulting the full sentence of the fugue.
—And in fact we can't live like that: we take on
everything at once before we've even begun
to read or mark time, we're forced to begin
in the midst of the hard movement,
the one already sounding as we are born.


— Adrienne Rich, 1984.


So I study my life, make gradual if stuttering progress, loving the life this earth contains.

Holy Days

It's the International Day of Peace, one of the only, well, created days that I can get into. Except I forgot it this year. I saw it on the calendar when scheduling an appointment for my younger a few weeks back. It was announced from the pulpit in church yesterday, along with Eid-al-Fitr, the end of Ramadan, and Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, both actual Holy Days. The real schmeal.

Since becoming a Universalist Unitarian, I feel a bit like a woman without a Holy Day. Our church mentions all the big ones and many I'd never heard of before attending UUCF. Since our congregation's focus has been on the six sources from which we draw our living tradition, I've added Holi, Budda's birthday, and Darwin's birthday to my awareness. Since so many of these are announced at services, along with the more familiar Easter and Christmas, perhaps I'm a woman of many Holy Days.

But I'm not. Those Holy days are not mine. Not as truly holy. My boys and I celebrate Christmas with songs, a tree, and gifts. We talk about the birth of Jesus and the message of love Jesus brought to the world. At Easter, we discuss rebirth and celebrate life, but I know for both we're somewhat co-opting the days, celebrating them in a way that works for us because they're big deals in this country. We celebrate Hanukkah with my mother, a Reformed Jew, the lights of Hanukkah next to the advent candles we still use to mark the coming of Christmas. The boys know the stories of these Holy Days and many others, and while we fall prey to American Holiday Greed disease, I try to balance it with plenty of homemade giving and time with loved ones.

Still, I have my doubts. These aren't my Holy Days, and I'm loathe to misappropriate customs and practices from religions not my own, but I feel a bit short of Holy Days as a Unitarian Universalist. Perhaps this explains my draw to the International Day of Peace. I'm not taking it from anybody, it's celebrated around the world, and it's in concert with my UU belief system. Not a bad Holy Day, in my opinion. I wish I hadn't forgotten this year.

Peace be.

Practicing

For the last few years, I've struggled to develop a regular spiritual practice. Intellectually, I'm quite drawn to meditation, but I've not successfully integrated it into my daily life. I have the usual excuses -- lack of time, fatigue, two kids who are continually present when I'm conscious, but deep down I know the issue is priorities. I'm loathe to wake at 5:00 a.m., although I know I'd be uninterrupted at that hour, and I'm pretty beat at the end of the day. I guess that leaves all that time in between... Hmm.

This week, I've returned to the strand of prayer beads I made last winter. I was raised Catholic, among other things, and while rosaries weren't in use in my home, I knew how they facilitated prayer and focus on the divine by adding some structure and repetition to a contemplative time. Some online searching brought me to a page on ideas for UU prayer bead use. (http://www.uua.org/religiouseducation/curricula/tapestryfaith/spiritpractice/workshop2/workshopplan/handouts/59197.shtml). A trip to the craft store, a painstakingly long examination of the beading materials, and another trip to google "making prayer beads" and I was on my way.

Creating the strand was prayer in itself, and for awhile, I was using the beads as a meditative tool, sometimes based on the structure delineated at the above UUA site, sometimes just holding them during meditation. Over a few weeks, my attempts at quiet prayer time dwindled and faded. I've spent time on my cushion here and there over the last year, but mostly it waits faithfully by my dresser, calling quietly, while my beads sat a few feet away on the dresser, beckoning gently.

This week, I'm back on the cushion, beads in hand, quiet time with my breath between more "cognitive" meditation. I'm making it my own, finding time because it's important. I like it, and, for now, it's just right. Present moment, only moment...