There is a crack in everything. That is how the light gets in.–Leonard Cohen
I have been reflecting a lot in the last few weeks on my humanity. That sounds like a truly self-absorbed thing to write. Staring at it now, I wonder if there is any other way to write it, (please let there be another way to say this) but there isn’t.
The truth is I am flawed and messy. My failings are numerous.
There are the small things like I am terrible at making my bed. I still throw my clothes on the floor when I am getting ready for bed at night. I don’t exercise enough and I rarely eat my vegetables without an internal mother urging me on. I have other flaws that are quite ironic. For instance, I have been known to judge people for being too judgey. And then there are the big ones–the fears, the failures, the neuroses and crazinesses. The ugly parts of myself I wish no one would ever need to see.
There are times when I like to imagine myself on some sort of journey toward self-improvement. I look toward the moment when I will master patience, kindness and compassion fully and glow with some sort of inner knowing. I imagine a clean house, a fashionable wardrobe, a blog that is updated. I dream of a time when I will no longer be afraid of leaping or taking risks and when having figured it all out, everything is effortless. If I only do my lessons, and take each step earnestly I will somehow get to that holy place and I will win some sort of prize or get a tiara or angels will sing. And life will be easy.
Do you ever experience that?
And every time I think I am getting close to that place, the universe will slam me and remind me that there is no there to get to. That each day we simply wake up and do the best we can. Over and over again. Maybe in the process of making so many mistakes or in getting hurt we learn something and emerge wiser, but everything gained leads to new questions, new beginnings.
But these days I am intrigued with the concept of brokenness. And of how those cracks let the light in. I am declaring June a month to reflect on that here.
And I want to hear your stories. Desperately. Send me a note at meg (at) megcasey (dot) com if you have a story to share or leave a link to it in the comments here.
Six months after my husband left, it had become clear that he would not be contributing the money he promised to help pay for childcare and “Max-related” household expenses. He was not going to contribute to the mortgage to pay for the house we held in both our names, even though we had taken out equity in the thousands that had largely gone to Latin America to help his various family members. He was not going to be contributing at all because he couldn’t.
For six months I had been spending as though I had all that he promised. We had no savings. All our cash had flowed out to buy my husband a new van for his business, to address a huge family emergency he had. Once upon a time, when two incomes flowed into our house, we were able to get by even in times like these. The problem was, I was still stuck in that now irrelevant and practically ancient time and I was drowning in anachronisms.
I was living in a beautiful, relative well-off community and week by week, we were getting closer and closer to hungry. The checks to the babysitter bounced. The pre-school called me about the tuition payment checks that had been returned. Going to the ATM became an exercise in faith, and deep breathing to manage the stress. Colleagues left $20 bills on my chair because they noticed I hadn’t eaten lunch in days.
One night, in desperation I went up into the attic. I sorted through Max’s baby clothes, the ones I had been saving in case we had another baby, and put them in a pile for consignment. In one fell swoop, to take care of the child I had, I let go of the dream of a child to come. “Let’s be honest,” I told myself. “He’s not coming back. No partner. No new kid.” The light bill needed to be paid.
One Saturday night when I had truly hit bottom, I dragged out the change jar that was tucked in the kitchen closet. The jar where for 10 years Juan and I thrown our spare pennies and nickles, tossed them in as an investment in dreams down the line. When Juan and I were younger and poorer we would dig through the spare change jar for quarters we would use to order a pizza or buy ice cream in a romantic sort of “young and struggling” gesture. Yet no matter how struggling we were, even during those lean times, we never had to empty it. Not once.
I dragged the jar into the car and took it to the CoinStar machine at the grocery store where I turned it upside down, watching every last penny spiral into the well. When I got the receipt, I turned around and went in and used it to buy groceries. And I tried not to think about the empty coin jar in the cupboard.
What is surreal about this experience is that I had a job. A good job. Sure it was a non-profit job, but I was working for a decent salary. But still, no matter how I eventually cut my expenses to the bare bone, it was not enough. No matter how much I made, no matter how much I trimmed from our budget, it just wasn’t enough.
*****
Its taken me years to climb out of that place where I felt so on the edge of financial ruin. It is still tighter than I would like and I am not nearly saving but bit by bit I have found a way to get by with what we have now. Yet, money continues to be one of the biggest stressors in my life. I know I am in good company here.
And I continue to bury that panicked feeling, the feeling that I was standing with one foot off a cliff, that I was dangling by some imaginary tiny thread over a slippery slope that would lead to my destruction. I have kept it stuffed down and far below. I do whatever I can to keep it at bay. I don’t ever want to touch that fear again.
*****
A number of things are happening in life right now that are leading me to consider what would happen if I had to make due with even less and it has brought that fear screaming to the surface. I am toying with dreams that would require investment in tuition or an eventual shift to part-time work. “What would it mean,” I wonder “if I were to try some sort of grad school, part time, at night?” I do the tuition calculations, think about what it might mean to my income and work and suddenly I am back in that place, remembering the feeling of failure, of fear. The memories come flooding back. I can’t imagine ever going back to that place willingly. I slam the door shut.
*****
The other day I sat to talk to a stranger at the part-time graduate program I have explored. I was sitting with her because I wanted to make a financial plan to get to school one day in the future and I needed information and ideas. She had so very few concrete solutions for someone as broke as me, we were both a bit frustrated with the course of the conversation.
What she did offer was a lecture on faith. She told me that I would have to take a leap and trust that the net would appear. She told me that as much as I wanted to see it all planned out there was no way to do that and I just had to see what would happen. Just jump she said.
Suddenly I remembered the baby clothes and the CoinStar in the grocery store and the fear and loneliness I felt as panic swelled and I thought about dashing out the door while she spoke to me of attracting abundance. I had no choice then, but would I ever take Max and myself through that again. I stared at her blankly with tears brimming. “Don’t you understand how much faith it has taken me to even get to this place?” She was so kind I chose to keep my next utterance to myself, “I may lack alot, but don’t you dare insuinate that I have a lack of faith.”
*****
If I am being honest, really brutally honest, a lot of my story about the last five years does have to do with that word: LACK. Lack of money. Lack of time. Lack of patience. Lack of clean clothes. Lack of sleep. Lack of physical affection. Lack of a partner to support me. Lack of Vitamin D. Lack of energy. On many days I have taken all this lack for granted and I have stopped thinking about it in a conscious way. I shrug off the voices that come up complaining of want. I convince myself that I am a “glass half full girl” , that I concentrate with cheeriness on what I DO have. I share what time, money, energy and hope I have with joy.
But even though I can silence the whining voice, and tell myself I am grateful grateful grateful, I see that “the lack” is looming. I am trying to constantly make up for not having enough, for not being enough. I am apologizing always for what is not there. To myself, my son, my office, my friends, my family. It is insidious how “Lack” can sneak into our worldview when we are trying to live a life of gratitude.
*****
Of course, when I take a step back, when I am at my wisest, most peaceful place, I know that I dwell in a land of
abundance. I am most very grateful for all we have. We have an abundance of community and love that surrounds us. We have an abundance of cats looking for warm laps. We have an abundance of interesting and free places to explore in an amazing city. And we have an abundance of kindnesses shown to us on a daily basis, so many that I can weep sometimes to think of them all. We have an abundance of silliness and laughter and joy, an abundance of friends willing to break bread together, and abundance of hugs, of inside jokes, of campfires and music and wonder. There are countless miracles unfolding in my life–big and small–most of them arising from a random act of kindness. We have so much. I am truly blessed. Really.
I know that Max and I won’t starve as long as we dwell here.
But, as disappointing as this may be, to me and anyone else who imagines me a better person, this is not the default position of my brain. I wish it was. Of course, there are moments, like when I am listening to a friend play music or when Max is laughing or when I am sitting at a table with friends, I sink into the fullness of my life, feel its softness and ease and joy and abundance. But, most moments,well, I have to walk myself through the paces to get here, to remind myself how rich we are.
Truth is, it is why I write about my community with such relish. It is why I want to recount the miracles I experience. It is why I tell my stories of joy and sweetness and laughter over and over and over again. Writing helps me remember. Telling the stories convinces me that we are not drowning, that we are in fact, afloat in a wealth of good things. Writing calms the fear.
*****
And the thing that undoes me more than anything, is that I know that perhaps the graduate school lady is right. Perhaps the most important thing I am lacking right now really is faith. I can’t stand that that might be true.
*****
I need to make a major shift here in my soul and is a shift I don’t know how to make. If I am ever going to put that fear, that mind-numbing, sob-inducing saber toothed monster to bed, I am going to need to shift something. It is more than endlessly counting my blessings. It is more than saying the litany of all that I love about my life, like a rosary. It is more than waking up grateful and going to sleep grateful. I know because I do all these things, and still, at the end of the day when it comes to making big jumps I cannot believe that if I let go one bit of my sweet little spot on the cliff here, that it will be OK, that I won’t be dashed to smithereens on the rocks of circumstance, dragging my sweet son with me. I know this goes against everything I want to believe. I’m just sayin’.
*****
Can it be true that I lack the skills to let go of the story of lack?
*****
There are people in my life who don’t have this world view. They expect good things to flow their way. They ask for what they need and they always seem to get it, one way or another, with work, always with work, but also with ease. When insurmountable troubles or unbelievable opportunity comes their way, they always seem to have someone rush in with a check or an scheme or a helping hand. Yes, they work their butts off but the stars seem to line up too. They tell me that the stars always line up when you dwell in a place of abundance. To be honest, I am not sure even what it MEANS to dwell in abundance. I feel so silly to be so ignorant, like the one pre-teen girl who doesn’t know about the mysteries of sex, who is trying to follow the teenagers giggling gossip about the weekend before. WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT I want to scream…but instead I hang my head shyly in shame for not knowing about what they speak.
Every circumstance is our teacher. And I know that this is the lesson that is being placed before me now. I am, bit by bit, taking steps that might open up new ways of being, even though it scares me, frustrates me, leaves me completely undone and bewildered.
Let me whisper this. I think that as scary as it was to be on the edge of financial collapse, it is even more terrifying for me to leave behind the story of lack. It is an uncomfortable story but I knew it well and it explained so very much, and gave me so many excuses. A mentor and dear friend looked into my eyes once and told me that making this shift in my worldview honestly, would be the most challenging thing I have ever had to do. At the time I thought she was crazy, how could shifting to a life of abundance be terrifying? I am beginning to see what she means.
4 boxes of Kleenex. (Wishing I bought more now)
3 blankets and pillows
4 bottles of bubbles to blow out the windows if we get stuck in traffic (or bored…or anxious…or tired)
Strawberries, bananas and grapes
Bread and cheese and maybe a little ham in the cooler–the better to nurture weary travelers on the way home
Crackers and chips and a bag of pretzels
A 12 pack of Orange Fanta and a lot of bottled water
Chocolate in every form
Art supplies for the long long wait.
DVDs for when everyone needs to crash and stop talking.
Hope and love and comfortable shoes for waiting and pacing and waiting some more.
This morning I will drop Max off to school and then walk up the street with all this loot to my friend Dave’s house. There we will load the van and along with Shuttersister Stephanie Roberts, we will pick up the guest of honor, my dear friend Odette. We will drive the 5 hours to New York City, to JFK, to the international terminal where we will pick up her daughters, accompanied home by the gorgeous and unstoppable Jen Lemen.
It is such an honor to be allowed to witness this dream coming true. The night Odette first moved in with us almost 3 years ago, we talked all night about her girls. For the last four years, since she was forced to leave them on a crazy journey, my sister Odette has held their coming to join her in the US up as her truest dream. When her oldest daughter got sick, and she was unable to go home to tend to her, our friend Jen made the journey and has never looked back.
This journey has been the harder than I ever imagined possible. I kept thinking that there was no way it would ever come true. It seemed as though it was doomed to failure from the start, and it simultaneously made me sick to my stomach and hopeful at the same time.
Yesterday, I kept calling Odette on the phone and screaming, “They are coming!” “I know!!!” she screamed back and we would both laugh and jump up and down. It finally hit us both yesterday though it all fell into place last Friday. And today she will hold them in her arms in New York City rush hour traffic, while I blow bubbles out the car window, believing in miracles all over again.
Last week I was in Sao Paulo for work. Now I am back again, amidst the dirty dishes and dirty laundry and dirty floors that constitutes my life. Walking through a Sao Paulo neighborhood looking for lunch last Tuesday, my friend and colleague commented, “Isn’t it amazing. We went to sleep last night above Washington DC and now, look, here we are on the other side of the equator, here in Brazil its autumn.” One minute I was in a sweater sweeping mud in my kitchen. The next I was in sandals humming Bossa Nova under palm trees.
There is that wonderful saying (and book by Jon Kabat Zinn), “Wherever you go, there you are”. And its true. There is no escaping the fact that we can run, fly, sail around the world but we cannot escape our life which we are living one breath, one step at a time. Whether I am at a meeting of activists in South America, or a meeting of children at a karate class or a meeting of the cats desperately meowing for food, there I am.
This seems like such a simple concept when I write it down here like this. And yet, it has taken me 40 years to understand it. No matter how much I wish to be elsewhere I always am exactly where I am and no matter what I WANT to be doing, I must simply do what is before me. Sometimes that something is speaking in front of a crowd, sometimes it is loading a dishwasher, sometimes it is simply stretching out in the sunshine or dancing.
One night in Sao Paulo it was so hot in my hotel room. It was oppressive and I couldn’t figure out how to regulate the temperature in the room. So I opened the window of my 14th floor room and lay down on my bed and listened to the sound of Sao Paulo breathe, the hum and the rhythm of it. We all breathe, I thought. Even cities. It is what connects us.
One day in Sao Paulo, at a mobilization, a Brazilian colleague asked me if I wanted to take the microphone and speak to the hundreds of workers arriving at their job. I thought she was offering me coffee, so I nodded. While I can give a great wonky presentation, I am not one for motivational speaking so delivering a rousing speech to this crowd, cold without diligent preparation, was, something of a stretch. Yet there she was handing me a microphone with hundreds of eyes looking my way. There was nothing to do but push through my fear, take a breath and speak. Just do what is front of me without thinking or worrying about the outcome.
Where am I going with this? Who knows. I don’t. But writing is whats before me. And so these words appear here.
Actually, I suppose it matters simply because of this.
When I first started this blog I was recovering from the loss of a life I desperately thought I wanted. I used this space to grieve and then, to begin to allow myself to see what had sprung up in its place. I challenged myself to imagine the loss as an opportunity to imagine something different, something amazing, something adventurous. I practiced and I dreamed and I thought and I wrote about it. I moved from a space of grief to a space of great excitement. Every cell in my body tingling with the anticipation of dreams I never knew I had maybe coming true. I used this space to entertain, explore and believe in my heart that dreams can come true. To find evidence of it. To find the courage to dream, to find the permission to do so. To birth brilliant little floating orbs of possibility that shone like angels but never were quite real, that slipped in and out of view depending on the light.
I have kept many of those dreams, like sparkly little gems, up on the shelf of my mind–safe and sound and perfect–but also not real. Some miracles, like finding a deep warm loving community, have sprung up unbidden, a gift of the gods to inspire me and hold me but most of what I imagine remain ideas, hopes, wishes.
Now its time to take them down, and one by one, to birth them–make them real, true and physical. To take them from their safe and sparkly place and make them real and physical if not entirely perfect or exactly how I imagined them. Some of the dreams are small–like painting my house the colors I always wanted. Some of the dreams are big, like learning a whole new way of being. Some are quite practical, like living a simple life where I grow my own food, make my own music, and make my own quilts to keep us warm. Some are too tender and precious to speak out loud. But all of them are demanding action, like the cats meowing for their food, like the Brazilian workers demanding justice. It is enough to make me want to run and hide from myself.
But a funny thing happens. Wherever I run, there I am and there too are the dreams I carry with me.
And the only thing to do, is to do what is in front of me, step by step, bit by bit, word by word, bird by bird, breath by great big breath.
Ever since I was a little girl I wanted to be a farmer. I don’t know where it comes from, this yearning to get my food from the land. Certainly it wasn’t my parents. Just a generation away from struggle they did everything they could to convince me that the “hard work” was more than I bargained for. I grew up thinking that my dream of living my adult life in Iowa in a big white farmhouse with sheep and pigs and fields of wheat and corn and fresh green veggies would simply leave me overwhelmed, overworked, poor and miserable.
And from a political and economic standpoint, they may have been right. Growing food however called to me even as I grew. Some 15 years ago when Juan and I first moved in together, our apartment had a front yard which faced south and was bathed in sunlight. Together with our upstairs neighbors we planted herbs, flowers, and a few tomatoes and chilis. We grew lettuce in a bed in the backyard. We only lived there one year. and that was a year of lots of learning through failure. We didn’t haul in a big harvest but we did play in the dirt and the potential was intoxicating.
But then, we moved into the house where Max and I currently live. I love my house for many reasons but we almost didn’t buy it because of the lack of sunlight. it is surrounded by ancient, wide oak trees. The lawn has all but disappeared and in its place grows a thick carpet of green moss. Mushrooms and hostas and ferns thrive here. Veggies do not.
So I joined a CSA, found a farmers’ market, paid more for the organic label at the grocery story and gave up my dream of growing my own food. Well, rather, I tucked it neatly out of site.
Two summers ago I read Barbara Kingsolver’s book, “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle” and my dream lifted her head and started poking me. It seems so right to grow what we need in our own backyard. Many of my friends, much of my community have followed in the footsteps of Kingsolver and they are growing their own food. I have sat at many a table with the most delicious beets, the sweetest carrots, with salads picked right before dinner. I have shared in their bounty, bringing home extra cucumbers, tomatillos and peppers. I have made sauce from the tomatoes they could never possibly use. I have been a grateful consumer. But their generosity has only fueled my sense that something was out of place with a garden out of sight.
After years of bumping my head up against my dream of becoming a healer, I decided to take a bit of mondo beyondo advice and turn my attention to some others.
That is why, this year, I am finding a way to the garden. Magic has arrived in the form of neighbors offering unused but sun drenched space in the alley behind their homes. I am building beds where beaten down weeds and ivy and trash cans once stood. I am borrowing a corner in my friend Edamarie’s yard and setting up an elevated bed. And I am experimenting with growing my own food, if not in my own backyard, then in the forgotten corners of our community.
It started this winter, when January winds were still blowing, when I gathered with a gang of more experienced gardeners. I was a total beginner, out of my league but somehow in the sisterhood of these wise women I felt as though I could find my way. It was worth a try.
This Friday, my seeds arrived. I spread them out on my table and basked in all the promise that they offer. Promise of healthy food. Promise of heartbreaking loss due to bugs, or birds or drought. Promise that I will learn to accept what is, whether its a bumper crop of tomatoes or lost crop of peas. Promise of hours in the dirt, digging, hoping to coax something from the land. Promise that no matter what I bring home I will learn something, not only about the art of gardening but also about myself. Promise of adventure. Promise that, seed by tiny seed, I will manifest my dreams.
I will be blogging about my first year of being a farmer over here at Backyard Bounty, the web-home of Edamarie’s business by the same name. Edamarie has launched an amazing business to help people like me grow their own food. Her blog, which just launched this week, will be an amazing resource and a source of inspiration. I hope you join us over there as we watch my garden (and dreams) begin to grow.
When I went to college, I made a decision.
I decided, actively decided, that I would live in joy. That I would find the positive in each situation and that I would discover something to celebrate in everyone, and every situation.
I had some simple practices to implement this decision. One, I remember so clearly, was a promise to myself that I would not to vent or complain without first considering the impact my words would have. What would the impact be on the subject of my rant (that annoying kid in class, the teacher who was boring, the rude drunk guy) but also on the people who had to hear me vent. How would this impact them? How would it change their mood to listen to my negativity?
I was tired of the high school scene with the judging and insecurities and well intentioned exhausted ramblings that were twisted into hurts by equally well intentioned, insecure and hurting people. Frankly, the whole thing had left me depleted. I realized that I had, for the first time since kindergarden, an opportunity to start over.
I have to admit, that at the time, my motivations were not 100 % pure. Like so many young women, I was deep down worried that people wouldn’t like me if I wasn’t “nice”. College, like all things, is messy. And I messed up plenty, especially when tired, or hurt, or after drinking too much beer. But I kept this decision before, like a compass that I used to find my way.
There were many unintended consequences of this decision. For instance, the light on Mt Saint James where I spent those four years was the most beautiful light I had ever seen in my entire young life, especially at sunset. Remembering it now I feel a wave of peace. I think now, that the light in this industrial town was no more special than the light everywhere else. It simply was that I was awake enough to notice its majesty–the subtle magic. With my brain more clear of rants, past and future, as well as regret, anxiety and fear about what mess my words might have wrought, I could see the world shimmer so much more easily.
What I learned through my experiment was that happiness may be a situation but joy is a decision.
A couple of years ago I went to a workshop on healing where the teacher challenged us to presence joy. If you walk into a room, that is dull or dark or full of angst, laugh, smile, giggle, tell a story. Dance. Find something beautiful and point it out. Play. See what happens.
It strikes me as funny how this powerful play in my playbook gets lost in the hubub that is my life. And it strikes me as glorious how easy it is to dust it off.
I am renewing my vows to a practice of joy. Not happiness. Not an absence of grief. But reckless, deep, unfettered, silly, magnificent, playful, unrelenting joy. To dance with abandon and to celebrate the simple pleasure of being able to feel.
It has come to my attention
that the only thing you may appreciate about me
Is how I appreciate you.
I suppose that should make me sad.
Annoyed.
Or even mad.
But it only makes me curious.
Fear not, my friend.
I love you.
Even from the depths of this knowing now,
Even in the clarity of morning
I do. I do.
You make me laugh.
You make me think.
You make me dance.
What’s more,
I see all the glory that is you and I
rejoice
in
it.
For you are as beautiful as you desperately hope you might be.
I promise.
Some may find me crazy or
Think this perspective foolish
But
I once arrived in a town where mirrors were obsolete.
In the shadows there,
behind an ancient tree,
love whispered a secret that changed my heart forever.
She is not a wish, desire, hope to be appreciated, known or even seen.
She is not a currency to be exchanged, deserved or meted out by merit.
She abides there
Whenever I find Me
With all my messy woundedness, or my joyous silly brilliance,
humanity and Divinity
in the very same space
As You.
I know spring is coming when the energy returns, the energy that has me scrubbing floors and singing at the top of my lungs, the energy that calls me to cook lamb and salmon and greens and asparagus and serve it on the best china for some of my favorite people.
I feel a rising. The sap is rising in the trees and something is rising in me too. I feel it in Quaker meeting when I sit and listen not only to the silence, but to the silence behind the silence and feel my whole heart swell from joy as I see the bird in the window and someone asks us to hold their pet dog in the light and Max lays his head in my lap and mouths these words, “Mama…I love you.”
This past year has been many things: It has been a learning experience. It has been quietly hard. It has been about being stuck, losing my way, losing my hope and losing people I love. It has been about a dismantling so subtle that I still don’t know how to talk about it.
But during Sunday dinners, when community is gathered around the table and wine is poured and the children are in a pile watching the hockey game down in the TV room and the roast potatoes are just about crisp enough to serve, all is right with the world. And I know nothing but love. This is what is has all come down to. This is all there is. And it is perfect.
Bring it on. After a long winter, I am ready.
It is starting to snow again. And while there is a part of me that is delighted, I am also a tiny bit afraid. There is nothing like big snow storms to remind us how fragile life really is.
The snow storm started on Friday afternoon. We were well stocked with food and milk and wood. We had plenty of movie and board games. We hoped that we would have Monday off from school. We planned fun things to do that were in walking distance of home, planned to leave the cars at home. We dreamed of being shut in.
When we woke on Saturday at 7am the outside had been transformed into a winter wonderland. I lit a fire, read, waited for Max to wake so I could make pancakes. We set out to do a shoveling pass of the driveway and front walkway when the noises began, the buzzy, echoey loud sounds of transformers popping. And then, by 9am the power was gone.
As I shoveled I felt the panic just under the surface percolate. The snow had just started. We had already a foot and it seemed to be falling even faster. There was suddenly nowhere to put the snow I kept clearing from the path. Suddenly, being inside felt like being trapped by the snow that fell faster and faster. We went in only to change wet clothes by the fire and we felt the temperature in the house drop. So I breathed. And I shoveled and I leaned into the wind. And then, when half our firewood was gone by 3pm we packed a backpack and set out to find friends with power.
We found them, half a mile away. Suddenly, together in the company of several families in front of a fire, the panic lifted. The growing darkness felt festive not frightening once more. For three days we huddled together, in shifting combinations, with several families in our tribe. We laughed and played games. We socialized and were still. We walked and carried firewood and cooked and read and sat in a line working on our laptops on the one remaining wireless connection. And as the lights came back on, we all drifted back home.
And now, as the snow starts to fall again, I feel it. That sense of dread that could mean that it might all fall apart again. I feel the fear that arises from the possibility that we could be stuck, trapped, walled in with snow. And I can’t imagine how it felt in the ancient days when winter snow and ice meant darkness, quiet, stillness for days, weeks, even months on end.
The gift of storms like these is the discovery of the meaning of yin. Quiet and internal and solitary…and sometimes paralyzingly fearful. Our society has no space for such a still way of being. We keep the lights burning, we connect in thousands of different ways. We watch the storms on radar as they pass above us. But how can we gain courage without moments such as these?
The gift of the storm is a chance, even in this modern go-go society to touch the deep unknowing that comes when you are alone, in the snow wondering where you should go. The gift of that deep unknowing is the chance to touch the trust that arises when we allow ourselves to be so still. The kind of trust that allows you to set off, on foot, through 20 inches knowing you will find home again.
Build a fire.
Shovel early and often. Create the clearings even if you need to do it over and over again.
Go outside. Marvel at how the world can change so quickly.
Clear more.
Trust that when the power goes out you will find a warm place to shelter.
Pack a back pack with the essentials.
Bring wine.
Surround yourself with the people you love.
Build a snow fort. Have a snow ball fight. Catch the last of the falling snow flakes on your tongue.
Shake the snow off the cyprus.
Eat chili. Cook chicken over a fire. Make hot chocolate.
Walk back and forth.
Play board games.
Say “yes please” when you are offered a warm bed.
Snuggle with the neighbor’s dog.
Call often to check in.
Take turns cooking.
Sit together and work quietly.
Take walks.
Trust. Even as the snow starts to fall again. Trust.
