New Years 2015

“Dread was always with her, an alarm system in her head, alert
to her next disaster.
Despite being resigned to a life of misfortune, she became
resourceful.
She grudgingly noticed that things always worked out, even
when she claimed defeat.
An inconvenient truth, yet it was right there, in her face,
betraying her self-punishments and assumptions.
She kept overcoming things, dammit, aggravating herself.
She still felt so much joy, despite her efforts to be miserable.
Her life was full of miracles and spectacles that she was afraid
to rely on so she didn’t know how to enjoy, how to be thankful,
without guilt.
She didn’t want to win and she didn’t want to lose.
Ambiguity intrigued her and she found passion in the gaps
between hope and despair.”
― G.G. Renee Hill, The Beautiful Disruption

Happy New Year 2015

I am a person who likes rituals and traditions; to me these sorts of ceremonies ground us in heritage and community. Yet this year, for the first time ever - for a variety of practical reasons - I put up very few holiday decorations - there was a mini tree, a mini menorah, green festivus and gold and white kwanza lights, and a few non-denominational stain glass windows - by my usual standard that is very very little. 

By January 1st 90% of the holiday decorations had been put away. My daughter noted that I was a lot less stressed this year - and it was certainly true but I noticed that I was also less engaged in the spirit of it all. But maybe that’s the way things are - the benefit of something comes at the cost of something, and a great deal of life is deciding what you are willing to give up - and what you want to gain. 

This awareness came again for my annual New Year’s run - a tradition I have upheld every January 1 for the past 30 odd years - first thing on January 1st I don my running clothes and head out - no matter weather or state of mind -- and during the whole of this run I let my mind focus only on that for which I am grateful. 

As with the holiday decorations however, my New Year’s run was different; my daughter wanted to run with me and this delayed getting up and out - so I actually sat and had coffee and breakfast first - and it was nearly mid-day before we got out. Despite my grousing over the delay I considered if there was another lesson here about letting go of rigid made up rules - no question, I’d rather run with my daughter than stick to an arbitrary routine. 

Those routines, those things that we invest in to define ourselves, express our goodness, our character our virtue - sometimes they end up locking us in. Similarly it can get easy to talk about humanity, and people first and loving kindness but its much harder to put into practice in the day to day level when it means letting go of what we think defines us. 

Cutting back on holiday decorations may not seem like much but it was a powerful combination of feelings -  mix of freedom from a complex effort and the loss of a long standing tradition. While I was grateful for the ease, I missed the slightly frenzied over the top ‘glowiness’ it all created. Festive household attire was a part of who I was, people came to my house ooohh and ahhing about the little details, it evoked for me some vague notion of family and grandeur - perhaps hung over from more economically plush times when I had more than one tree, and plenty of rooms to fill.  These decorations - even the diversity of them reflected who I was on some level. Similarly the stark discipline of rising on New Years day, which was usually on the bitter cold side, to go run represented another me - driven, tenacious, and constant.

To alter either of these was to strip away a belief system, to remove some scaffolding that defined my being. And yet, I still stood - and I remained me.

We invest a lot of ourselves in our habits, in our customs, in our belief systems. No matter how much we think that we want to be valued for who we are we still worry about the cleanliness of our house, the title of our job, the car we drive (or not), the clothes we wear, or the some other marker that says ‘this is me, this is who I am’. And even as we may be grateful for people and things around us, we are not always grateful for being ourselves. 

So as I did my run I did indeed reflect on gratitude of the past year, on all the goodness I have known, the wonderful people who shared and cared and make me laugh and especially make me think, on the exciting new faces and familiar old ones and the ones re-connected and still cherished. I remember the acts of grace and generosity I have come to know and thought how I will never cease to be astounded by how fortunate I have been in having so many amazing people around me, befriend me, reach out to me, inspire me. . 

I also tried to be in the moment - to not only look backwards but to look around - and was grateful as well for the bright mustard color of the house I ran past, for the knobby branches of an ancient tree, for the squares of ice on the pond that brought to mind diatoms, for the way the sun pierced through the cold air and warmed the center of my back, for the tree filled with dozens of hidden chirping birds who flew off in a furious huff as I approached, for the honking geese paddling in the pond, for the tufts of yellow grass like waves across the field, for the purple flowers bursting from the center of the holly bushes, for the gleaming blood red berries in an otherwise subdued landscape, for the pine needles shimmering in the breeze and a nest of pine cones scattered on the forest floor. I was grateful for the hard crusty earth beneath my feet and the creeky knees that still attempted to run, for the many dogs I have met on these grounds, and of course for the kitties that welcomed me when I got home. 

But I was especially grateful to still be able to think and ponder, to have good things to think about and to still have dreams. And, though I recognized that there had been plenty of sadness and woe I was grateful that at least some of the time I had been able to recycle the negative into something useful. In this I was grateful to be me - flaws and quirks and missteps included - to be grateful that I was able to drink deep draughts of pleasure in grass and trees and kitties and friends and family and find this as delightful a repast as any food.

I am getting better at giving up the things that hold me back and in this way I am learning to be grateful that sometimes swimming in ambiguity is a damn fine place to be. Perhaps the paradox then is that it is this very acceptance of uncertainty that that leads one to seek understanding and clarity - only to come to a different place, and embrace again, the unknown.

We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.

                                                        TS Eliot - Little Gidding

Post Script.

As an interesting foot note - I went out this evening to walk to the grocery for dinner - its about a mile there and a mile back. It’s a cold night, not brutal but certainly cold. As I walked down the block I passed an old church that I had seen many a time - not a church I ever attended, though I recalled voting there once.  Like many of the local churches it was had a lovely architecture, the walls made of Pennsylvania granite, strong and imposing. As I passed the church I noticed a sign that it was for sale, or rather that it was being repurposed as a 4 condominiums. As I was taking this in a man exited the church and spoke to me. ‘Have you even been in this church?’ he asked. No, I said, but I see its being sold. Well come in he told me, we are taking it apart, come see it. It was late and cold and I had much more walking to do before I could eat but I followed him into the church. In side the pews and the alter had all been removed and there was mostly open space. The church itself was largely plain - the ceiling had wooden  flying buttress beams and the walls were a basic white. Yet the abundance of stain glass windows gave a glimpse into how beautiful it probably was on a Sunday morning with the strong Pennsylvania sun pouring in. There was another workman inside and the three of us started chatting. The church was almost 200 years old, but the flagging attendance forced its closure. We commented on how many baptisms, weddings, and funerals had been here, how many sermons preached and lives that had passed through. We breathed the musty air of its history and in this small way gave tribute to the memories that had seeped into the walls and stained glass and wooden beams around us. I pointed up to the balcony - is that the organ I asked. Yes, said one of the workers - I am trying to take it home with me - it’s a challenge to dismantle. I looked at him - what will you do with it? He said, quite lovingly, I wll put it in my house and play Bach cantatas.  I pondered the man for a moment - my biases about construction workers turned on their head - an organist who loved Bach cantatas? He went on to describe how he would disassemble the pipes - he clearly knew about organs. They showed me the organ pedals, which he had already removed, and we chatted a bit more.

I turned to leave and continue my trip to the grocery, smiling a bit at this delightful and unexpected side trip. Just a bit of magic to remind me not to presume things about people by their jobs or their clothes, by where they live or what they believe or the color of their skin or their abilities. Yes, the delightfulness  of ambiguity was at work once again.