Notes for my pockets

I was talking with a friend who has been undergoing treatment for cancer.  She commented that it's been hard to reconcile the polarity that everything has changed and yet nothing has changed. Everything--her perspective, her sense of herself, of security, the new focus on healing--has changed.  Yet she looks out her window and kids are still going to school, the seasons change as always, life goes on. Living with both realities, she said, is difficult but comforting.

She said it reminded her of "an old midrash [a rabbinic story...she's Jewish] about a sage who always kept two notes -- both quotes from scripture -- on his person...one in each of his coat pockets.  The first one reminded him that "the world was created for you" -- God set this glorious table of creation, all the wonders of the world, just for humans to experience and enjoy.  

"The second one reminded him that "from dust you came, and to dust you will return" -- individuals are so terribly impermanent, inconsequential... they come and go in an instant of history." 

I love the thought of these folded up, tattered contradictory notes keeping the wise man both inspired and grounded.

{And doesn't this little film clip demonstrate both of these:}

via Keith Loutit's Vimeo

I've been thinking about that story ever since.  

About contradictions.  

And choosing between polarities.  

Or not choosing between.  

Because sometimes I feel like a walking contradiction (and it frustrates me!): 

Shy/friendly. Adventurous/homebody. Confident/insecure. Serious/silly. Worrier/laid back. Planner/procrastinator. Hopeful/pessimistic. Wishy/washy.  Mother/student. Seeking/content. Reverent/raucus.  To name a few.

Yet choosing one or the other of the pair feels like I've left a little, other part of me behind. Some contradictions (Adam & Eve in the Garden comes to mind) certainly require choices.  But my friend's midrashic story makes me wonder if some of the other contradictions each deserve a place in my pocket.  And yours?

Hmmm. Maybe it's more about the balance and knowing when to switch to the other pocket...

 

Today's Maddy watch: en route to Beijing, flying over the north pole (maybe seeing the Northern Lights?!)

Oh, Eleanor...

...thank you, I needed that.

"One thing life has taught me: If you are interested, you never have to look for new interests. They come to you. When you are genuinely interested in one thing, it will always lead to something else."

"You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop and look fear in the face...do the thing you think you cannot do."

~Eleanor Roosevelt

Everything's relative

Last night, 7:30 p.m.

Maddy:  You know what bugs me?  My friend Kylie always teases me that if I cut my hair short I'd look exactly like Sam.  She tells everyone that, even though she knows it makes me feel bad.

Sam (overhearing & calling from the other room):  Hey! I think she's giving you a compliment!

photo from summer 2007

Beating the winter blahs

 

Idea #1 for beating those winter blahs:

Read a great book that takes place somewhere warm and exotic.  My brother Matt gave me this beautiful vintage edition of Out of Africa for Christmas this year (Modern Library edition 1952. It even came with an old folded up portrait of Isak Dinesen from a 1950s magazine tucked in the back pages) and it has helped me breeze through January as I gobble up morsels of vicarious sun and beautiful words every night before bed.  {Thank you, Matt.  Such a thoughtful gift.}

I loved this passage about an orphaned pet antelope they have on the farm.  It could easily be speaking to me, or you, or one of my children:

"Oh, Lulu," I thought, "I know that you are marvellously strong and that you can leap higher than your own height. You are furious with us now, you wish that we were all dead, and indeed we should be so if you could be bothered to kill us [well, maybe not that killing part...].  But the trouble is not as you think now, that we have put up obstacles too high for you to jump, and how could we possibly do that, you great leaper?  It is that we have put up no obstacles at all.  The great strength is in you, Lulu, and the obstacles are within you as well, and the thing is, that the fullness of time has not yet come." (p. 72)

Have a great weekend, you great leapers.  G and I are off to the Andrew Bird concert at the Orpheum tonight.  So so excited.

Bless him, bless us

..Bless us with discomfort – at the easy, simplistic "answers" we've preferred to hear from our politicians, instead of the truth, about ourselves and the world, which we need to face if we are going to rise to the challenges of the future.

Bless us with patience – and the knowledge that none of what ails us will be "fixed" anytime soon, and the understanding that our new president is a human being, not a messiah.

Bless us with humility – open to understanding that our own needs must always be balanced with those of the world.

Bless us with freedom from mere tolerance – replacing it with a genuine respect and warm embrace of our differences, and an understanding that in our diversity, we are stronger.

Bless us with compassion and generosity – remembering that every religion's God judges us by the way we care for the most vulnerable in the human community, whether across town or across the world.

And God, we give you thanks for your child Barack, as he assumes the office of President of the United States.

Give him wisdom beyond his years, and inspire him with Lincoln's reconciling leadership style, President Kennedy's ability to enlist our best efforts, and Dr. King's dream of a nation for ALL the people.

Give him a quiet heart, for our Ship of State needs a steady, calm captain in these times.

Give him stirring words, for we will need to be inspired and motivated to make the personal and common sacrifices necessary to facing the challenges ahead.

Make him color-blind, reminding him of his own words that under his leadership, there will be neither red nor blue states, but the United States.

Help him remember his own oppression as a minority, drawing on that experience of discrimination, that he might seek to change the lives of those who are still its victims.

Give him the strength to find family time and privacy, and help him remember that even though he is president, a father only gets one shot at his daughters' childhoods.

And please, God, keep him safe. We know we ask too much of our presidents, and we're asking FAR too much of this one. We know the risk he and his wife are taking for all of us, and we implore you, O good and great God, to keep him safe. Hold him in the palm of your hand – that he might do the work we have called him to do, that he might find joy in this impossible calling, and that in the end, he might lead us as a nation to a place of integrity, prosperity and peace.

~Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson, at the Lincoln Memorial Inaugural Concert 1/18/09
(thanks to my brother who sent this along via my mom)

AMEN.