One of my favorite parts of the recent town hall with Hillary and Bernie was when they were asked to frame their ‘spiritual’ perspectives on the world. Paraphrasing, Bernie said whatever happens to the least of us, happens to us all – that injustice has always moved him deeply. And Hillary said she practices being grateful – she returns again and again to a place of gratitude.

While both of these are critical components of compassionate humanity and, I think, essential to a spiritual practice, here again we see a gentle, nuanced contrast between candidates – both are honest and lovely responses. But which of those answers resonated with you?

In my own life, gratitude saves me every day. But that’s now. I crawled my way toward gratefulness one hard knock at a time. There were many years when I was so broken down, I could not have even understood the concept of gratefulness, though surely, had I been able to, it would have helped. It would have been a very effective solution. But honestly, when I was really lost and down and out, if someone had suggested gratitude, it would have fallen on deaf ears. Worse, it may have alienated me further from the world. It would have been the right solution offered at the wrong time.

When people are hungry, and beaten, and incarcerated unjustly; when discriminated against and brutalized by war, addiction, abuse, violence, poverty or mental illness; gratitude seems like step 2. Like the thing you do after someone saves your life, or you save your own. Or maybe you say thank you, as a practice, but can’t really feel gratitude until much later. Maybe being grateful is something that happens when we have the ability or capacity to receive grace – when one has experienced a place of being ‘caught’, being held, being supported in some way. It takes a long time and lots of work and an awful lot of support to eventually arrive at gratitude – we sure can’t get there alone.

It’s interesting to me how these two heartfelt perspectives come from the same place yet from different vantage points. Bernie says, “if you are in the gutter I’ll stand by your side until you get out and I’ll protect you and keep you from going there ever again” and Hillary says “here’s a proven way out; trust me. It works.” Either way, hear me roar.

For me, I was born tuned into injustice; and have always been moved by the rallying cries to help those without. I have to work very hard at gratitude, and it took years to arrive here, but I couldn’t have gotten here at all without people fighting for me. Rallying cries so loud and for so long, that I could no longer ignore them. All the loud voices that stood up for me, helped me find my way toward gratitude.

I believe that Hillary, like Bernie, fights for the underdog and for the rights of all those marginalized; but she isn’t connecting with them as much. Perhaps it’s because she’s counting blessings, but missing the fact that many people just can’t see them, yet.

Either way, I was proud of that town hall discussion. Of the questions New Hampshire asked. Of how much we all are listening, showing up, shaking hands, and trying. I’m really moved by Bernie, and stirred to action and belief. I’m a true believer in the merits of giant leaps and revolution. But here this: I’m grateful for them both.

We the people, people.
We of lupine and snowball,
Of black fly and sea,
We of courthouse and island,
Of law and of love,
We of granite and green,
Of privilege and loan
We who believe in service and soul.

In the name of all things Blitzer and Donald,
In the name of everything foxed and fixed,
In the spaces between the Atlantic and Post
In the frenzied cycle of sound bite and sign

On behalf of the cries of Gloria and Guthrie,
On the way to breaking ceilings and streets
Whoever said we can’t be we?
Let each have its due – and
What about you?

Wherever you are,
We are too.

Gilligan is not a snow dog. Why he’s called a Boston Terrier I don’t know – he ought to be a Palo Alto Terrier, or a San Diego Terrier. Any cold and he twirls on three legs in frantic circles looking for that angry wind at his bare ass. On the other hand, too much heat and he dons a mad grin and falls on his side like a fainting goat. The fact is, he likes his porridge just right.

While his sweet spot is 71 degrees, mine is harder to pin down. Maybe it’s a middle child thing, but I often struggle to take a firm and fixed position. I mean, if you can see the advantage of both sides, how can you stand on either?

Of course there are some things that are absolutes – things you are either for or against — like equal pay, canker sores, Trump. But for the most part, life is more complex than that. So for me to choose, to make a decision, I need to think deeply and carefully about the whole –I need to really understand both sides, before I move off the middle and take my place on either side.

But here’s what Gilligan knows that I tend to forget. It’s not just about the brain. You can logically build a case for anything on paper. List all the pros. List all the cons. Study the records. Think for hours and days and months and years. You can even experience up close and personal the way things really are in the world. And still, your instincts can be calling you in a different direction. Your gut tells you the winds of change are blowing; your heart tells you you’ve had enough; your soul calls you to take a leap of faith.

What energizes you, what moves you, what wakes you up should not be ignored! Even in the face of all evidence. Do not dismiss your instincts. They’ll help you find the sweet spot in life; between all that you know to be true, and all that you dream could be.

 

 

I have the answer for you right here.
In this book.
In this story.
In this poem.
In this dogma, political party,
Bumper sticker,
In this thing I heard on npr

I will leave it on the table
By your bedside
In the kitchen
In a conversation you might overhear
In a song I turn up on the radio
In the art I hang on the wall
In the food that I eat

But that is all I can do
To help you find the answer
Because it’s your question, after all –
And after all that I love,
And always will,
And always have,

What do you?

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 bought pink tulips and put them in a white vase. I put the vase on the kitchen island.

And there it sits, surrounded by a half eaten bag of almonds, a crumpled ball of red foil wrappers, several used coffee mugs, a box of bandaids, a stack of books, a stack of dishes, a paint brush, a rawhide, scissors, sticks, salt, pepper, vitamin B12, advil, a half painted canvas, and a wooden bowl full of onions and candy canes.

It seems fitting – me trying to shove a bit of beauty into a chaotic and neglected world. It feels like where I am right now. Where my soul is. All fragile and pink and half finished and lost in a sea of debris.

My heart sinks with the weight of this ugly contrast. With the utter absurdity of pink tulips in a dirty kitchen. One or the other has to go, but I haven’t the energy for either. And since both are staying, I might as well stop painting the dividing line.

I look again and try to see the whole island as beautiful. To see it as a small city, where humanity lives in all its permeations; where diversity surrounds central park, and sidewalks are littered with surprise. Maybe the whole island is a work of art.

This idea seems a tiny bit huge to me. Because beauty lives in a white vase, or not. But art lives in the center always, from within one’s own place of perspective and intention and from the fragile pink of the soul. Wherever we place it, it belongs. Whatever we name it, it exists because we make it so.

The snow is falling sideways off the bay
So all the trees are two-faced;
Half with,
And half without —
Every branch on the left is white,
Every one on the right is not.
And every trunk claims one audacious stripe
By the grace and howl of humanity;
But each belongs to shelter and wind
No matter where in the woods you might stand.

Deep in the heart of it, beyond all of our history and experience, there is an untouched place where longing lives; where every single one of us return, at some point or another, either slowly or always. This place knows the secret of wood smoke and winter – this place is where we yearn to belong. We were made to; to live in village and tribe and cluster and to the stars and galaxies and worlds.

And while we yearn to belong to each other, we also must learn to withstand the wilderness, because we yearn to belong there, too. We relate to the single star; we search for a stretch of untouched beauty in order to reclaim ourselves and our place in it all. We know our experience is ours alone.

Yet in our modern isolation, if left to our own for too long staring at screens and talking across airwaves, we swallow ourselves whole, and become vulnerable to fear and negativity. Without sustained connection to our selves, and without true connection to others, we stand naked in a winter field, and the base instinct for survival breaks apart what makes us human, at the heart. We belong to nothing now, except endless icy depths.

And here is where fear gets dangerous and armies rise with hate; here is where we go when there is nowhere we belong; with no learned resilience to the elements, and no safe way across the great divide, we are left on thin ice, and grab the first frayed rope slung in our general direction.

We need more ways to get each to the other, and back again. This constant dance between distance and intimacy, between solitude and solidarity, is an essential part of the human experience, but we must find better ways than single-minded cause or isolating despair. There must be a way to hold the complexity of our individuality without splintering from one another completely or becoming blind to nuance and critical thought. There must be a way to belong without being bound to dogma or by our shared disappointment in humanity.

Are we truly either completely alone, or tethered to one another so tightly that we are lost forever to our own souls and selves? Are we either one, or the other, and in being so, do we splinter from the whole and stand in stupid absolutes that are illusory at best – and dangerous at worst? Is our entire world a political debate, a vote for this or that? Must we choose sides, or could we choose connection?

Why not unite from the place that holds us all – separately and together? From this ancient, eternal yearning within each of us, that belongs to only us, and yet also speaks to all of us? From this deepest, purest human desire to belong, we could span entire worlds.

Why is love so quiet, and longing so secret? Why don’t we call each to the other to say that we are here? Why don’t we let each other go in their own direction without casting them out for all eternity?

Why don’t we march toward something greater side by side, across bridges and frozen fields?

Why don’t we dream out loud?

In the winter at 5:00 pm, the emptiness is the worst. I feel a lonely draft in the corner of my heart. What I am missing, what is it I want, what makes me so sad?

Is it the gray and steady flatness of the sky and trees and field? Or the way the windows in the houses glow, while wood smoke and stars surround me?

Is it the way I feel dull and exhausted, even with Matt Damon and kettle corn and couch?

Is it the voice in my head, ever yelling and telling me I’m not half the woman I could be if only, just once, I’d get it right, I’d do it right, I’d stop being lazy?

Sometimes the world disappoints us; what it gathers around, what it gives back, what it does to hearts and minds and souls. Oh so far beyond disappointed, in the terrifying way we dismiss, diminish, marginalize, bully, cast out. The way we are poisoned by words and water and false and ugly prophet. The way we are harshly judged, and judge others, and judge ourselves. The way we drift through time, alone. And drift through space, without.

Sometimes the strip of blue sky at the end of a long winter day, caught between orange and steel, just isn’t enough. And as it narrows and lamps turn on, and TV’s too, and cars pull up to eat nachos and watch concussions and cheer for patriotism, I am sad.

Sometimes the world turns away, before it comes back again. In the dying light we see the weight of shadow, and feel the coming of the night.

Frozen grass, like the surface of a dead moon, stretches out across the field.
There’s still time before the planet dies white
But nothing can be planted
And nothing can be reaped

By standing in the groundswell of summer, with the heaves and hills
Left by tractors and time
Or in the sheltered berm
Where all the leaves are braced.

You’ve walked here before, you know every knoll and knot
All the twists you’ve wound around;
Where you landed first,
Where you fell.

And each rutted footstep marks where you used to stand
But you don’t quite fit now
In this unforgiving landscape
In this unyielding shape

Still, there’s a trail; a solid, hardened, toughened path
As proof of life
Like a wrinkle on the face of
Every early morning walk

Oh change, don’t obliterate my world!
And fall across the earth I’ve come to know
Leaving me snow blind and deep, where
Even the fence posts at the edge of space are buried!

Hold fast to gravity all that’s fixed and firm —
Infertile, yes,
But settled and solid
And set in stone!

Untether me from this frozen ground, where all my history traipses,
And I may melt into rivers and rains
And pour across the landscape
In a flood of the unknown.

They tell me spring will come and that others wait to welcome me
But first, you erase it all
and I’m left in the wild white
of change.