Christmas Prayer 2014

I sat down today, for the first time, in this new place that is now home, and meditated.  Because monkey brain has taken over my head and created unrest, I used a mantram, repeating it over and over, for a whole ten minutes.

My stuff was all here, albeit arranged anew, to honor the new space it resides within.  I’m out of practice.  The prepping – lighting candles, incense, ringing the metallophone three times– took longer than the actual meditation.  But it’s okay.  My mind has accumulated way too many monkeys, who have been dancing and frolicking free of oversight from me over the last year; me otherwise occupied with statistics and citations, not peace and tranquility and sadly, creativity.  I will tame those who are permanent occupants and thin out those who weaseled their way in when I wasn’t looking.

Writing the one true sentence has been all but absent this year.  It has been long and hard.  Who knew?  When your days have long passed and you think you have escaped the toils of life - worn, scabbed, but fairly unscathed permanently - life blesses you with something new to ponder, to examine, to marvel at, see the beauty as well as the boils as they combine together in utter splendor.  Life is like a snowflake.  Looking deeper into the crystals and finding another piece of art within the art, this lies yet within another piece of unimaginable beauty.

Sitting with it, you speculate the reasons for its presence, now, at this point, when you thought you had dodged every bullet.  Oh, there are reasons.  Nothing is happenstance.  It was fated long ago, or, somewhere along the path you picked up a pebble in your tread and carried it out into your domain, back to your garden, where it mingled with work, play, and dreams, changing the structure of the firma that holds you upright, creating the slightest disturbance, setting off a string of reactions that forever changed what you knew to be absolute and true.

And you cried, “why me,” yet knew this is what must be to open your eyes to the alternate place you must now operate from this moment forward.  “If I only did,” is relegated to the compost heap, regurgitating and cooking into, “this is the only next step there is.”

And it provides the calm so needed as the ground rumbles beneath your feet.  Feet that ache and are unbending every morning.  “We’re tired,” they creak as you hobble to the bathroom; knowing they will walk miles today, steady you as you maneuver trays and trees, books and bad attitudes.  “Get going,” is the silent command that loosens the tendons and ligaments holding you in this one place you know has meaning yet discovered, that will carry you forward.

At the end of a tumultuous year, you are given a reprieve, God’s way of assuring you that hope still lives and breathes within.  You revel in the joys of life birthed, within and all grown up, the multifaceted gems sitting before you, precious and treasured,
and you
                breathe deeply,

knowing this is so, this is here now, to be blessed and loved as it moves through.