Tuesday, January 27, 2009

"Right"

"What she had begun to learn was the weight of liberty. Freedom is a heavy load, a great and strange burden for the spirit to undertake. It is not easy. It is not a gift given, but a choice made, and the choice may be a hard one. The road goes upward towards the light; but the laden traveler may never reach the end of it."
Ursula K. Le Guin                The Tombs of Atuan                1971

Change occurs even as we seek it. The memory of what we had, what we were, what was and is and always will be, lures us back in increments. The 'change' may appear as illusion or dream.
But it happened.
Happens.
Is.

Friday, January 16, 2009

"The Raw Material of Drastic Change"


I'm thinking there is no event - no matter the significance - that has not been already in the process of occurring. Which, of course, is more marvelous than less. The moment then, is a shuttle sent time and again to the shed. To ignore our position as we warp and weave is a foolish conceit.  Who among us can afford to be a thread removed from the fabric?

Give me the courage to change
the things I refuse to accept,

to know the wisdom of deference,


Thursday, January 1, 2009

Serenity in the Active Voice


I did not purchase our Christmas tree this year. Did not trek to the lot and cull the choices. Did not load up the tree and take it home. This year, I was not the one to lug the tree into the house and wrestle it into the stand in the annual Protean struggle. Nor did I slither upon the hardwoods to tighten the bolts into the trunk - turning one first to the left, and then again: diagonally.

This year, I did not locate the boxes of ornaments hidden away in those secret places where I am wont to hide ornamentation. I did not unravel the mysteries of the lights. I neither decorated the tree nor cloaked its foundation.

Not one gift did I place beneath the verdant boughs.

I watered the tree. Once. And plugged in the lights. Once.

And when the time came (as time always seems to do), I did not unwind the strands of lights, vowing that next year I would make sense of them rather than stuff them once again into a grocery bag. Did not gingerly wrap the globes and glasses, placing them into boxes as if they were hummingbird eggs.

I did, however, release the Christmas tree from its shackles. I did lift up the tree and carry it butt-first across the threshold of the front door - a breech delivery all the way to the curb.

And with squirrels as my witness, I saluted this bristling Fir, recognizing how I had been defined, once again, by the activities occurring around me. As the wizened needles sighed towards the asphalt, I whispered, "Give me the courage to change the things I refuse to accept."
amen.