Month: December 2013

Birthing Love

Rachel Henry2 Comments

This year I actually wanted to send Christmas cards (not to be confused with the actual sending of them). Every year, as people go their various ways for Christmas vacation, I find myself wanting to connect with all my friends before they leave, whether they’re close and I saw them last week or far and I haven’t seen or talked with them in months.

I’ve been wondering why the need to be together is so strong right now and why waiting until January feels like missing a critical moment. After all it’s only a couple of weeks. No other two-week period has that sense of urgency for me.

I think it’s because the Christmas spirit, which people of any or no religion can enjoy, comes alive when we notice love being born into the world. Love is always being born into the world, but we are impatient and easily distracted beings and often miss it. Luckily, we are also ritualistic beings, and so we build into our lives times to stop and pay attention. When an entire culture pauses and takes the time to celebrate that love, you can feel it.

And when you do, you might want to send Christmas cards or drop five bucks in the Salvation Army bucket or let someone go in front of you in line. Because we are the ones who birth love into the world. As with children or art or any other act of creation, it comes both from us and through us—we participate in its coming into being but are not its only source.

We tend and grow this love in our many relationships, and so of course, when love is in the air, there is an urge to reconnect. To all of you who will probably not, despite my best intentions, receive cards from me: I love you.

Note: The blog and I will be on vacation for the next two weeks. Wishing you all a merry Christmas and joyful new beginnings at the solstice and the turn of the year.

Momma Told Me

Rachel Henry5 Comments

I don’t know why we’re designed to go two steps forward and one step back, but I’m convinced we are. Last week: Zen master. This week: whiner.

I exaggerate last week’s accomplishments, but I did have this miraculous moment of getting over myself. One of the software systems at work appears to have been designed to decrease productivity, and I generally spend a lot of time and energy hating it while using it.

This time a moment of spiritual brilliance flashed upon me. If I changed the goal from finishing the task to being present and paying attention, I could stop fighting the inefficient system because its inefficiency would no longer matter. So I changed the goal. My mind cleared up. My patience increased. My work probably improved, though I have no way to measure that.

Fast forward to this week. While working on another not favorite task, I said to myself, you could use this time as practice; where is your attention? I replied, somewhat snappishly, I don’t want to practice, I want to be miserable and complain. I clearly saw myself making that choice, but changing my approach still didn’t interest me. One step back—at least.

I kept this up most of the day and wore myself down sufficiently that, by the time I was chopping kale for dinner, I could consider the option of simply relaxing and accepting my sour disposition. Then this line from William Stafford’s poem “A Message from the Wanderer” came floating in: “Tell everyone just to remember/their names, and remind others, later, when we/ find each other.” Some days that’s all we can do, remember who we are, and that’s OK because that day is not eternal. The next day we’ll be capable of making different choices.

I’ll end with the rest of Stafford’s stanza because he sums it up so beautifully:

“…Tell the little ones
to cry and then go to sleep, curled up
where they can. And if any of us get lost,
if any of us cannot come all the way—
remember: there will come a time when
all we have said and all we have hoped
will be all right.”

The Light Returns

Rachel Henry1 Comment

Tonight is the eighth and final night of Chanukah. I’ve always loved everything about Chanukah, from cleaning the wax out of the menorah’s candle holders to eating gelt (chocolate coins) to guessing which candle is going to burn out first. My dad, the Catholic, always seemed to guess that one right.

But it’s light in the darkness, watching the number of candles grow day by day, that is the most enchanting.

Menorah on a table full of stuff

I inherited my growing-up menorah from my mom this year because her childhood menorah returned to her when my uncle died. I’ve never owned a menorah as an adult—unless you count the one I made out of a box in China—so this was the first year for me to light the lights at my house.

During the weekend that fell in the middle of Chanukah, I decided to paint my kitchen. Only I didn’t finish because of course it took longer than I thought, and my deconstructed kitchen is still occupying the dining table, the only place to put the menorah.

I restacked things and cleared a spot for it in the middle of the table and commenced worrying—that I was being disrespectful, that I would burn the house down, that it would look ugly amidst all the clutter—but I grew to like the symbolism. Even in the midst of the most chaotic disarray we can create, the light will still grow in the darkness.

And it was just as beautiful as ever, even surrounded by mixing bowls, pots and pans, and a few stray onions.