Stream of consciousness

Lemon bars are baking in the oven. The peanut butter cookies are safely stored in the Pepperridge Farms box, covered many years ago with birthday wrapping bearing the name of “Zachary.” I don’t remember how many times I have packed Zac’s favorite cookies into that box, and I contemplate telling him that it is time to retire the faded paper-covered box to the recycling bin. I’ll leave it up to him and see if the box comes back to me again.

The cookies are his favorite and I’m hoping that he feels the warmth of family and the spirit of giving in their simple goodness. I enjoyed leisurely rolling the dough into balls and flattening them with perpendicular crisscrosses with a sugared fork. Zac’s been struggling with the overwhelming reality that Christmas is about spending money and less about gifts from the heart. So, I’m hoping that the cookies hold a balance for him.

Tomorrow, following the Fellowship service, which I am almost done preparing, Stephen and I will head to my mother’s house for Christmas Eve dinner and another church service. I had disappointed her earlier this week with the news that I would not be around for Christmas. I had told her that I was going to Vermont because I had not seen my dad in a while and that I thought that his health was fragile. Ironically, that’s exactly the reason why I will not be there. He called this afternoon with the news that he is ill with a flu.

It’s probably for the best since I am struggling with a chest cold and the last thing that I wanted to do was give my father, who has had pneumonia twice in the last two years, a bronchial infection. We will get together sometime before this semester break is over.

Being home has been pleasant, despite being sick. Everywhere I go in this little community I have been welcomed back with smiles and genuine gladness. Today, I went for a walk down the dirt road past my house and breathed in the beauty of the sun shining through rain-glistening trees. The highway department has been nearly successful in knocking down the century old stonewall, which lines the edge, with their modern road maintenance.

I marvel how intimate life is here in the Upper Delaware River Valley. On my way into town a couple of days ago, I spied a porcupine walking slowly on the road. He seemed sick and I wondered if he had rabies. I wished him well as I caught one last glimpse of him out my rear view mirror. I reminded myself that there was nothing that I could do for him to keep him out of harm’s way. On my way back, some two hours later, he lay dead on the road.

I suppose nature has a way of taking care of itself and I am content within its midst in this place I call home.

First thoughts from home

The world is very green at my house. I look out any window and I see pine trees. No buildings, beyond my turn-of-the century garage, are in view. The water from the tap is cold and it surprised me the first time I tasted it upon arriving home late Saturday night.

I visited the newspaper office yesterday and it is cheerful, neat and efficient. People were happy to see me. I do my Monday evening/Tuesday morning copyediting from home and I stay away, out of respect for my competent staff and my own sense of self.

I go out for provisions for an office Christmas party scheduled for tomorrow afternoon. The two-lane roadways are empty and the speed limit seems plenty fast enough. I shop in a lovely Italian deli and a grocery store where there are no lines. The prices of the goods that I purchase are less than in California. There is no hustle and bustle energy at 11:30 a.m. on a Tuesday morning. I enjoy the quiet and keep to my singular existence.

I shovel ashes from the woodstove and remember the comfort of the dry penetrating heat. I turn my attention to Christmas cookies and daily prayers.

I feel somewhat new in this familiar place and I am extremely grateful.

Semester break

I type this post as I am flying east into the darkness, leaving three hours and the afternoon far behind me. By the time I land at Newark, it will be way past suppertime.

It’s hard to fathom that four months have past since I’ve been on the East Coast. I so clearly remember swallowing back my tears last August, as I said goodbye to Stephen on the San Francisco train and made my way to Berkeley by myself.

And if feels strange that I will be separated from my new life, and touching edges with the old for some five weeks to come. I look forward to waking to my morning cup of coffee that Stephen will bring to me. I look forward to experiencing myself as changed, in the familiarity of my home.

I pray that I will be able to keep my self-focus. I pray that I will be able to experience my days as expansive and my heart connected to my spiritual pursuits. I am clear that I do not want to re-inhabit my busyness and self-inflicted obsession with responsibilities beyond my relationship with my living.

Still, there are things that I need to accomplish during this semester break and I will be diligent and happy to do them. I have to prepare the end-of-year finances for the newspaper’s accountant. I have to prepare The River Reporter’s entry for the New York Press Association's Better Newspaper Contest. And I have to be available to anyone who wants to meet with me.

I will visit with friends, share a Christmas and New Year’s holiday, get started on next semester's reading, visit a new grandchild in Florida and continue to find myself on retreat, connected and separate, to every piece of my life that I care about.

The sky has now gone dark. The sun still shines far away in the west. Waiting, perhaps, for me to return and begin again.

For now, I welcome the darkness and the rest that it offers.

Greetings from Berkeley

If there is one lesson that I have learned these past four months as a seminary student it’s that things are rarely as simple as they seem on the surface. I learned this time and again, as I would form a quick assessment of something, only to find that opinion changed by information that I would learn the following week.

I continually reminded myself that what I did not understand was much larger than what I did.

While that was helpful to reel in my spinning mind, the most profound learning occurred when a visiting professor instructed my class to “acknowledge complexities.”

I felt immediately that that was my key to stop myself from seeking simplistic answers. I also realized in that moment that acknowledging complexities got me past dualistic thinking that set one reality against another.

Take holidays as an example.

Holidays are a great time to gather with friends and family. Holidays are stressful times that consume much time and energy. Holidays are times that we celebrate what is sacred in our lives. Holidays are secular occasions that have become too commercialized.

When we have to choose just one of these realities, we find ourselves in conflict with ourselves, and others, because we know that several of these concepts are true.

One key to navigating our way through our conflicting feelings is to allow those realities to exist in congruence with each other. By embodying the complexity, we move ourselves beyond trying to figure out which one is correct, and open ourselves up to thinking about whether we want to change our relationship to our situation. Rather than announcing that we simply “hate the holidays,” because we are so conflicted about them, we might be able to consider ways to enhance our time with family by developing new holiday traditions. We might take a look at how we can make sure that we take care of ourselves and avoid holiday burn out. We might consider a special spiritual practice or ritual to make our holiday more sacred, and we might figure out how to cut back on our monetary expenditures and give more from the heart.

Getting beyond dualistic thinking offers us the possibility to make decisions and set priorities. It also offers us the opportunity to understand that other people around us make different decisions based on their own priorities.

When we change our perspective from either/or to and/both thinking, we are presented with many more choices and possibilities. Ironically, we find that things get a whole lot simpler.

When we think about exploring the differences we find in the many interpretations of events in our world and acknowledge complexity, we find creative ways to explore the serious problems--environmental degradation, shrinking natural resources, institutionalized racism, classism and the crisis of our national identity, economy and moral values--which face our world.

We find a means to come together and communicate.

Through acknowledging complexity, we find connection, hope, possibility and perhaps even joy in successfully maneuvering through our troubled times.

Peace, shalom, salaame, right on, nameste, happy holidays and greetings from Berkeley.