BLACK FRIDAY

I hate the name and I may hate the concept as well. I try not be disdainful  as friends spell out their strategy to buy the most, the cheapest, in the fastest way possible to cover lots of ground. It carries such a frantic naked sweaty greed. And it taints Thanksgiving for me. If it were just more old fashioned festive. And slower.  If only it were Bing Crosby-esque.

I am a present giver. I love to give spontaneously and often and give the 'just right' thing. I don't even mind when it is obligatory like Birthdays and Christmas. But this year I want the quiet peace of Silent Night rather than the Holly Jolly-ness.  Presents seem almost grotesque as the world struggles with poverty and hatred and profound unrest.  

One of the stories in history that I find so poignant is of soldiers/enemies on Christmas Eve singing Christmas Carols together during a cease fire (whether formal or not) knowing that the next day they would go back to trying to kill one another. Soldiers described it as a holy moment of common human connection.
How do we create and extend that kind of moment?  How do we get our energy there? 

Yes to the start of the many holy celebrations of the season. Yes to lots of giving.Yes to joy. Yes to the wonder of children being surprised with gifts.
Yes to lights and hope to make it through the darkness. Black Friday to me seems like a kick-off in the wrong direction. Wrong goal post

THANKSGIVING MENU

Like many of you, I honor my relatives with carrying their dishes forward on Thanksgiving in the US.
I do wish every country celebrated a "thanksgiving" on the same day.
Food and family as a break for peace

MY THANKSGIVING MENU (and those who first made or inspired the dishes) 

Spiced sweet and salty nuts--me
White bean hummus with rosemary--me
Dark Swedish crackers--daughter-in-law

Turkey--17 pounder--dad
Stuffing--mushroom, celery, onion, turkey seasoning from cute yellow box--my mom's
Mashed potatoes and gravy--my mom's
Candied sweet potatoes--sauted pieces in butter and brown sugar glaze-my mom's
Brussel sprouts--new
Green Salad with pear and walnuts--new
Creamed onions--my grandmother
Rolls--my sister-in-law 
Relishes--regular ol' black olives and Spanish olives--my dad
Canned cranberry jelly-who knows
Cranberry ice--my mom
Cranberry relish--with Lime and Jalepenos--mine
Pumpkin cheese cake with gingersnap crust--my daughters
Pumpkin pie with whipped cream--my mom

Mandatory walk on the beach and then home to leftovers.

HATE? WHAT ON EARTH TO DO?

A colleague of mine sent me the following link with her comment:

http://www.collective-evolution.com/2015/11/17/the-dalai-lama-tells-everybody-to-stop-praying-for-paris/
"Not to mince words with the Dalai Lama, but to "Pray for Paris" doesn't necessarily mean those prayers are asking "God to fix it." Also, maybe he is too attached to the concept of praying to a being - assuming that that is the only mechanism at play in prayer. The power of the quantum physics of emitting loving and healing prayers for Paris may be one of many important tools towards creating peace." 

The colleague, Ariette, is my partner in creation for my writing and work. We have labored to get my book I PRAY ANYWAY; Devotions For The Ambivalent out the damn door and into the marketplace. We have discussed and debated every comma and concept of the book together.
We often talk about the goals for the book and my various blogs and it comes down to wanting dialogue and conversation with readers. How appropriate to hear from Ariette as a reader and contributor.

My response: Prayer can take many forms.  Too often it's the "gimme, fix it, make it right" with a tiny 'thank you' to ensure the results.  Not necessarily wrong.  For a great example read Anne Lamott's HELP, THANKS, WOW.  

I am a prayer explorer so I read and talk about it quite a bit. But what I am sure about  is ONLY my experience.  When I manage to enter a prayer place it is all about peace and deep joy and compassion. It reorients me from irritations and anxiety and meaninglessness so that I can enter the secular with my peace battery full. Meditation is a different animal for me. It does help me see more clearly. It does create calm. It is full or empty. Prayer, is full of peace for me  and a peace generator beyond me.  

I think Dear Dalai and I are in agreement and to pick at differences is exactly what the world does not need.  We need whatever paths take us to peace and compassion and active giving when we feel hate.

THIS NO TIME TO BE BASHFUL

Mama, mama, mama.  
So. My book(iprayanywaydevotionsfortheambivalent) will be available on Amazon the first week in December. Yes, I wrote it in a blur on purpose.

I want everyone to read it. Sort of.
Maybe everyone that I don't know.
So shhhhh.  Don't tell anyone about it, ok?
Is this some reverse marketing ploy?
No. It's me being bashful.
It's me wanting to wait a minute til the book is just like I want it.
It's me wondering why I didn't write a book about leadership where I have some expertise. I would not be one bit bashful about that.

So why bashful?
Or reluctant?

Here are my demons:
-I don't care if you pray or not. I didn't for years. I wrote it to talk out loud to myself, I think, and decided to share it.
-It does have 365 prayers, thoughts, poems. I still don't know what to call them.
-I've been told it's very intimate and revealing of who I am. Readers ask if I'm worried about that. (Not until they asked)
-My daughter tells me I'm not ambivalent. Well that kind of kills the concept doesn't it? 
-The cover doesn't fit the content but I like red (wait til you see what I chose)
-I cringe so often now that when I read it for corrections  I have to ask  my writing colleague to make the decisions. (Normal writing demon, I think)

But there comes a time. Worrying about this book is sort of like obsessing about what to wear to a wedding when you know only the bride will be looked at.
Most books don't get read anyway. (I'm being so bad)

Please buy and read this book.
There.
I have to get used to saying that sentence.

I asked you to push me off the diving board. Here I go-------

AUTUMN ELEGY

Fall is absolutely my favorite season and it drives me a little nuts. It carries so much beauty and exuberance and sadness all at the same time. It is the extraordinary burst of brilliance before the shutting down of Winter. 'Poignant' is the word I'm looking for.  Anyway, here is a poem by my friend, Liz Swenson, who refuses to be published but enriches me by sending me her poetry.  This captures the unease as the end of autumn approaches. Bittersweet.

sometimes within is a mere

reflection

of without.

an overcast morning in

late autumn when

curled and spent

leaves silently forfeit their 

grip 

and float haplessly to 

the ground.

to be blown by the next

vagrant breeze,

to be mulched by the 

final autumn mowing,

to reveal the bare thick

and thin

branches that have 

nourished and supported them. 

i, too, lack initiative,

self-direction and 

determination.

i linger,

i drift,

suspended between then

and now,

now and to be,

looking for the 

nourishing soul-food that 

will set me again in motion,

reaffix me to the perennial and 

immutable

branches of life.   

"THE WORLD IS TOO MUCH WITH US" Wordsworth

I like to write. Actually, I don't write. I talk. It's like I have a quota of words I need to get out of me in order to take in more, through listening or reading.

So I sat down to write (to you, my conversation word partners) and I balked.
I looked out the window from my writing corner and saw the gold of a sun close to setting and the October black silhouette of a tree stripped of half of it's leaves and I fled. That is exactly how if felt. I fled. I escaped.  

I charged to the car, leaving a quick note for my husband and followed beauty.
I drove from one gorgeous Fall tree to another, stopping to walk when I couldn't stand being contained.  I stayed mostly in neighborhoods. I was starved for nature and hadn't known it and hadn't listened to it. It scared me to realize that a gorgeous Summer and Fall could be lost to me. My interior world had gotten too much attention. It was the kind of panic I get when I know I've wasted time or that I think I  missed the most important thing.  

Think how it must feel when you are dying and know it!  Did I spend time right?
Did I 'get' the beauty of life when it was right there for the taking?  Did I ignore the fact of an ending.  

Too philosophical about looking at Fall leaves? Not to me. Thank Goodness I have a kind of bullshit buzzer that goes off when I am betraying myself in some way and it nudges and nags and stymies me until I suddenly take action to 
have what I need.  We all know better.  We pledge to live more fully every time we realize there is an ending. 

Ninety minutes of unplanned meandering in beauty set me right.  Check your own bullshit buzzer's batteries. Turn it to loud. Respond. Reduce regret. Live.