Quiet. It is all around me. No presents. No need. No urgency. No plan. Just enveloping my morning warmth in a steamy cup of tea, and pleasurable lassitude.
What is this? The phone rings, trilling its insistent demand. I wait. Perhaps I don’t have to answer it, I am not a machine to be ordered about, a slave to jump to the chirping of digital crows. Am I? No, I am not.
I continue my tea.
It’s January, and all that had to be done is done, with nothing ahead for a few glorious days of basking about what went right and what was right all of itself.
The phone rings again. Does it seem irritated, or upset at the lack of response.
“Answer me you fool,” it seems to demand, “I know that you are there, sitting with your indulgent cup of twigs and leaves.”
I too, know that I am here, and my peace has been shattered by a beckoning into the world, a bony finger that calls me forward past the line of safe introspection.
Sigh.
But I am not ready, I protest, resentment filling my ears along with a pounding of adrenelinized blood, walking me into the fray with it’s vitality, despite my own intention or accord. I am a victim of my own habits.
But really, I am no victim. I am a collaborator with my own enemy, and therefore not any sort of sacrificial prey. For my loss of quietude, I am given much that matters deeply. Time with my close family members. Communication with my amigos. What could be better?
Holidays are a time of crisis, or difficulty in the personal lives of many of my friends. The holiday peace accords which created, then sheltered some wounds, have ended with some injuries becoming infected, it seems. The world returned to reclaim its own struggle. This, our boot-camp of spiritual growth offers opportunities to practice what I preach, to be what I hope to be, to act on my beliefs.
That sounds noble even to me, but, once again, reluctantly, the truth bites at my ankles like some mad piranha.’You know you are less than heroic, you’re small-minded, A fraud, selfish and inept.’ But, there is a hopeful piece of me that knows mistakes are human, flawed, inadequate. If that were all of me, it would be a tragedy and a waste. But, there on the horizon is the goal, the long-distance, and far away bell I want to ring. All those distant hopes mingle with the failings, and, like the compost of spring, shit rots down to become rich and useful in the world. This winter is the time of quiet contemplation and purposeful rotting. I can become compost!
We are certainly done with this year. Showing up at the final ring of the bell on the time clock was a pronouncement of the blessed words remission, given to a much-loved family member. Complete with the year, some commitments timed out. rest Some hopes are rising out of the ashes of the old, and the Phoenix rises again. Come on out, you newborn year — we’re nearly ready for you!