I had several days of frustration this week losing any sense of equanimity I might have had, and becoming very much the skin-encapsulated ego rather than the human of Being I occasionally inhabit and much prefer.
The frustration may have started with inner griping about daylight growing shorter in late fall. Other important life events exacerbated this negative inner itching, but also the increasing pressures of the season: my meditations, rather than quieting, seemed to be filled with to-do lists, not to mention followed by corresponding guilt over failing to do the to-do list (and I doubt I have even one-tenth the actual seasonal chores, commitments and self-imposed requirements that most people face).
So, after I got home last night, I made some comfort food (it included portions of green vegetables, because no one any longer needs to scold me to “eat your peas!”), and watched not one but two hilarious episodes of a new comedy I found that takes place in the Greenwich Village and Jewish New York communities in the late 1950s (“Lenny Bruce” is one of the characters, which will give you an idea).
I needed those laughs. When I’m frustrated like that, I get angry and reactive at the least little things, like hitting “don’t like” instead of “like” on a Pandora song, having my allergy medication cost increase by 200% in one month, or having my laptop do that strange thing jumping to another section of an email when my sleeve brushes some key wrong. And all that makes it that much harder to watch the racist, misogynistic sinking of America, much of it fueled by no less than American Christianity. Ugh!
Fortunately—providentially, that is—my son chose, while I was eating that comfort food dinner, to message a video he’d just shot with his phone featuring several minutes of my 11-month old grandson, Griffin, walking all over the living room in those marvelous, halting first steps they take. I swear when he picked up this children’s basketball, he was going straight for the Playskool hoop to make a basket, but ended up “passing” it to his dad. And it was just as beautiful to see how Griffin’s two older brothers, ages 4 and 7, dealt so lovingly and gently with their little sibling. I probably did not need the extra comedy hour after that…but what the heck!
Just taking, and noticing,
a breath brings us back to our true selves.
It was still early enough in the evening that, suddenly, moving more deeply into the quiet and the dark seemed the perfect move, and to once again remember how I also relish this season of darkness. Sister Joan Chittister calls this time between the holidays—this Advent time—“a month of contemplation,” while recognizing that the signal is so very clear in our culture that even prior to Black Friday, “the raucousness of capitalist Christmas bursts suddenly upon us [and] the wisdom of the season gets lost in the plastic world of limitless desire and limited resources.” Love that phrase: limitless desire and limited resources.
So it seems to me we have to grab, and cherish, those moments of contemplative stillness when they become available to us: whether it’s at the end of a long day when all are tucked in bed and all the machines turned off (and even then just if it’s a few moments to really feel the weariness and exhaustion), or a stoplight’s-length chance to breathe and sense into the embodiment we are. On that score, Mark Nepo says, “Breathing is the fundamental unit of risk, the atom of inner courage that leads us into authentic living. With each breath, we practice opening, taking in, and releasing. Literally, the teacher is under our nose.” Just taking, and noticing, a breath brings us back to our true selves.
All of this is what draws me to the “natural wisdom” of this season of darkness in our northern hemisphere—it is a rhythm of creation pulling us inside. Since I first ran into her work, I’ve always appreciated Lynn Jericho’s Inner Advent, Inner Christmas, Inner Lent, etc., series of soul work. For this season of darkness as we near the winter solstice, she reminds us “while nature sleeps in darkness, the soul turns inward seeking its spiritual core.” Something within our animal souls responds to this call of nature.
while nature sleeps in darkness,
the soul turns inward seeking its spiritual core.
How to deal with frustration, exhaustion—even despair—at this time of year? Maybe it’s best said in another Mark Nepo quote:
To be accepting of the life that comes our way does not mean denying its difficulties and disappointments. Rather, it means joy can be found even in hardship, not by demanding that we be treated as special at every turn, but through accepting the demand of the sacred that we treat everything that comes our way as special.
Easier said than done, but it begins with something simple: just to be aware of whatever is happening in our experience…and most often, that takes stopping for a few moments, sensing in, and welcoming whatever arises in your experience. You could call the gift of these human sensations “Christmas presence,” if that helps.
Shalom,
David
