This morning the sun was pouring through the bedroom window, shining through the little row of crystals hung and perched on the sill – I woke to rainbows on every wall, and in stripes across the ceiling and in northern-light-swirls across my floors. It was blindingly beautiful. I woke to a world where anything is possible, and felt entirely grateful for the peaceful joy, for the unexpected moment of dreamy clarity. This is a sign, surely!! This New Year will be THE ONE!!

And then I left my bedroom and smelled something so horrific I wanted to hurl myself out the door and sprint down the street never to return. Relocating was the only reasonable option. Seems Gilligan had a rather astounding stomach issue ALL over my house while I lay curled in a rainbow.

Seriously, New Year? I gag my way through the morning clean up, opening windows (yes, it was that bad), rolling up rugs, washing towels. I slice a lemon to help clean the air and consider sticking a few slices up my nose. I light a candle or twenty and alternately worry over the little guy and wonder why the hell I ever agreed to get a dog.

What a dramatic shift that was – to walk over a simple threshold and find reality so entirely altered. Which should I hold onto? Which will shape my day?

Well, shit happens, and always will. And really, the more I wake up, the more I see that all that’s glorious has already spilled in pools of light across my world. So I think I’ll let each moment have it’s due – on either side of the threshold, I choose to be alive

Soon comes the reckoning –
You’ve pushed it off as long as you can
You’ve had your cocktails 
And long winter naps 
And you’ve read your books
And binged your shows 
And you’ve swallowed whole tins of cookies and cakes
And now you stand with your hands over your eyes
Like a monkey emoji

Before tomorrow even comes 
The weight of it is heavy 
The days just grim numbers like your bank account
Like your weight
Like the number of hours in the day 
Like another year done and gone

Maybe you can skip it altogether with 
A countdown to summer, 
Or spring vacation,
Or a box of tissues and a tight grip on what you’ve already lost

Lets burn it all down; all our fears about what may come
All our grief about what we’ve left behind;
Put it in huge piles made of cartons and boxes and bills
Of wrappings and trappings and glitter 
Let’s gather in circles around great fires
Made of old regret and worn out decision

Let’s decide to love this life 
Wholeheartedly 
And engulf our worry in the
Heat of right now;

There is nowhere to hide in the open field
The only thing that will withstand the burn
Is the sky full of stars
And a heart full of wonder.

We’ll let the sparks climb up the darkness
In clusters and alone
Lifting us off the dread and debris,
And leading our gaze 
Somewhere new.

I wake early, with a smile of anticipation. I turn on all the window candles and the Christmas lights here and there around tables and trees and corners. In the fog and gloom of the morning, the blurred stars are shining.

I wonder what’s coming when they arrive; who will be in a good mood. Who will not. I hope they won’t be disappointed. I hope we laugh a lot.

I am full of wonder and hope, like a child again, except for that fractured belief.

This Christmas, I want only one thing: to hold compassion and let go of expectation, so that I can be in the presence of the love that’s come bearing gifts.

I promised myself I would stand outside the commerce and crush and simply light candles and breathe in and out and feel god and not broke, and feel love and not panic, and feel peace and not loneliness. I promised I would get the Christmas cards written this year, and make snickerdoodles and mint crinkles or some other adorable sounding cookie. I promised I would do art, and not Target, that I would faithfully water the tree, that I would slow down and find time to play with Gilligan.

And here I am, 2 days before Christmas, a small pile of presents wrapped and a clenching in my heart that worries it’s not enough. And already worries about January’s rent.

I am also staring at a stack of four boxes of unwritten Christmas cards, all with different designs but all with the word JOY on them. Four years, four boxes, 80 ignored loved ones, clients and colleagues. Apparently, every year I buy a box, forgetting who I am, and then repack the box with the Christmas stuff. And apparently, I’m in constant search of JOY.

As for the tree, I’ve watered it once. As for cookies, it’s adorable how many I’ve eaten.

As for loneliness, yes.

But also candles, and love, and peace, and art, and Gilligan, and my two grown and spectacular children. And such a deep sense of gratefulness. I am overwhelmed by the gifts of my life, and the love and sacrifice of those who have been there for me in hard times.

So I turn my thoughts from all the promises broken, to those who are grieving and without. I unpack my joy, and in your honor, I repack it for another day. For now, I stand with you in holy silence, and send to you my love.

Merry Christmas, everyone. And please, be there for those who are without.

A philosopher, a teacher, a minister, an entrepreneur and a writer walk into a bar….Why? Because we are all related to one another and can’t get through a conversation without a drink.

What is it about alcohol? That over-indulging is forgiven — when everything else isn’t? While cigarettes, fat, drugs, sugar and bread get shamed into hiding, would you like another bottle or two of wine before you go? It’s weird that over-drinking is so pervasive and yet more dangerous, surely, than ham?

Unless you are AN ALCOHOLIC – go ahead and drink! A LOT! I mean, who’s counting!? And what the heck is an alcoholic, anyway? Ask 10 people and every single one will give you a different answer. Even its definition is slurring its words.

Lest I be immediately crossed off your invite list — I love wine and booze. I carry social anxiety and it’s always helped ease me into the unknown. But I’ve just been watching how in social gatherings, when perhaps something holy is waiting to be noticed, we soak ourselves and our souls – we find ourselves knocked out by a rumpunch, or noggin off in a pool of our own nutmeg.

I think our souls are lonely and booze stands in for love. Booze binds people in what looks like intimacy, but ends up creating a false closeness; arms hurled across each other, lips locked, love flying. And then lost in the light of a headachey day.

It stands in for love, and it stands in for joy, but it spills across both because it has a hard time with limits. It has poor boundaries, and runs wildly across generations. It opens a door to what we’ve been hiding and lets loose the ugly. It gives you permission to be bitchy, opinionated, sobbing, or inappropriate. It gives you a reason and hands you an excuse. And it steals lives: It throws up its twenties. It passes out at the end of its days. It staggers out of parties into lonely cars on packed highways.

But most of the time, it just really doesn’t see things clearly. I suppose that’s the point — to blur the real. But I wonder why fun always trumps true? I wonder how many of us have lost a tolerance for silence, for real conversation, for intimacy? I wonder if anxiety will ever leave us alone if we don’t let courage build its muscles a bit?

I don’t mean to be a buzz kill. Honestly. I just wonder if drinking too much might be keeping us separate from what we all came together for to begin with.

Oh fucking Christmas! I stand outside the blur of commerce and all that’s bright and brittle. I also, though, stand outside all that’s good — throwing the baby jesus out with the bath and body water.

I do try. I try to bring light into my home. So the stupid halls are decked and the tree is up and the pine needles dig into my bare feet, but there is pain beneath the shiny and the green, and I prop myself up with an icepack on my knee and when night comes I watch tv with a bowl of anticipation perched on my lap, like a child come to whisper wishes, and mindlessly fill my ever-rounding belly.

I watch Elf, and It’s a Wonderful Life and Holiday Inn. And for some unfathomable reason, I even watch Hallmark Christmas movies. Seriously. I do. Every one is about a single woman/mother down on her luck, who magically finds love and her dreams and a glittering life complete with a fireplace. They are terrible, and I choose them as company over all that is true.

Give me something to think about; give me philosophy, the meaning of life, the universe!

Give me something to love; give me art, the tired, the poor!

Give me something to work for; a deadline, a garden, my children!

Oh, Christmas – give me something holy, and remove the vapid waste that is my lonely habit. Let it fall to the ground like a king to his knees and leave me without remote or reason to hide the tears that come, shining like lights, like stars, like love bearing gifts.

It’s a wonderful life, and it’s a hard one, but I think we like to take sides. There are moments before — when you are just a grumbling exhausted mess trying to make a goddamned living – and after, when angels are getting their wings and you are the richest man in town.

What’s interesting to me is how these two worlds can’t be civil with one another. Forget civil — we barely recognize one when we are living in the other. Maybe all children lose hearing in one ear or the other at some point? Maybe we start favoring one side early on? But there’s a little Pottersville in every Bedford Falls; while you cheerily lasso the moon there are those who are bankrupt and bereft. And while you lose everything you love, somewhere there’s snow falling on a small town steeple.

When you expect everything to be one way or the other, you may end up on a bridge ready to jump the first time your banister breaks. Carry Zuzu’s petals with you — a reminder that the lovely and the fallen both live in your pocket.

And remember: you know you are alive because your mouth is bleeding. The wound is real – and life is wonderful.

In the winter night
When the stars are endless
And your breath sighs white

Somewhere there’s a fire in a hearth
And a cutting board and apple
And a table being set

Outside of this
Maybe a fox behind you in the trees
And a frozen twig that breaks like glass

Beneath your lonely feet
The path is narrow
And the pine is always green

Before you go
Gather garlands of silence
And carry them home

Each time you take to the woods
A tribute to the winter night
You walked alone.

Clearly we are missing something. From one mass shooting to the next, clearly nothing is happening. Nothing is sinking in. And I think what’s not sinking in, is pain.

If we don’t deeply feel the suffering; if it doesn’t break us open; we are left in body bags and standing at grave sites and sitting in pews with our kevlar vests and our praying hands and neither works without taking the pain back into the world with a more profound understanding.

Get out of your mind with the loss of it, and if you did that, if you really did that, you would not be arming yourself for the next onslaught, but preparing for it by caring more deeply for the world.

We don’t need to be better defended. That’s a primitive response to pain and it’s horrifying to watch a nation retreat into such childish ways. We need to stop protecting ourselves and feel the fucking pain, so we can wake up and take better care of the world; why else have laws?

Suffer well, and you are the ones who will go forward and care for the world. Suffer fools, and you’ll cause the world to suffer more.