Happy New Day

Do not look forward to the ineffable New Year.
Devote yourself to the mundane, fresh New Day.
There may be no countdown or confetti
but, always, when you pay attention, there is a sunrise
that is a spectacle, even through the clouds.
There is stepping lightly over the wood floor
and breathing, aware of each movement.
There is a heavy globe of grapefruit to slice,
every jewel segment savored for its
bittersweet tang, its red juice running.
There is looking into your love's familiar, green eyes
and seeing the human who steadfastly wakes next to you,
behind any tiredness or distance, a vow
of disciplined love, untapped wells of joy.
There are soft pitter-patters of small feet
and sticky hands that come to lead you
to your next adventure-lesson or struggle-insight
that will make you humble and in awe.
There is something growing inside you, kicking.
There is the daily work: a sink of dishes,
maintenance, trying a new idea, and
tending whoever you meet with reverence.
There is turning to others, inward, and seeking
the path leading to the better world hidden in this one.
There is injustice and devastation to heal, first within.
There is learning to keep searching when
your heart's burdens are ice-cold and heavy.
There are sudden, seismic leaps for Good from
the cosmic consciousness that leave you bewildered.
There are miracles that come after aeons of effort.
There is grieving, celebrating, tearing down, building up.
There is always more work, perhaps not for you.
There are relentless deaths and births.
There are countless occasions to uncork champagne,
reminisce on what the past has brought,
toast to what the future may bring,
and sip life's fizz with good, faithful friends.
There are burning stars and infinite, unanswered questions
to guide and ground your imagination.
There is never a day, or year, or life, that does not end 
with your eyes closing on a planet continuing beyond you.
Evermore, there is night leading to New Day,
darkness rising into light.

Solstice Hymn

Winter comes on darkest day
Amid such times that blacken night.
Seeking hope, we make our way
As pilgrims off to gain new sight.

Violence, famine, war, and greed
Are bitter winds through suff'ring lands;
Frozen ground yields no fresh seed
To fill expectant, weary hands.

Peace's growth in human souls
Seems stifled by perpetual gloom
As embers die in long-burned coals
That cannot warm the icy room.

Distant echoes break the fright
With ancient song and starlight chimes:
"Always, darkness yields to light -
Eternity breathes in these hard times!"

Branches quake, at last reveal
The faithful roots at work below;
Kindled hearts come close to feel
The promise settling soft like snow.

Candles burn as pilgrims hold
Love's vigilant epiphany;
Companions sing the tales of old
That herald justice's symphony.

And as Winter starts its season's stay,
Earth creatures cling to one another.
Dear pilgrims, let your spirits say,
"Turn toward the Light in every other!"

Desert Sands

We found a spot next to a serpent sculpture that appeared to dive its artful body in and out of the expanse of sand and across the plain road that led us away from the small village's lights. Mountains of rock in the distance bordered our peripheral sight; the sun set and the moon appeared in the desert. In twilight, we set up our simple camp to watch the stars come out and the meteors shower. Soon, we could barely see our serpent neighbor's face or details of the terrain. The rustle of blowing sand punctuated the soft quiet.

Husband, brother-in-law, and I leaned back in our chairs and across the car hood to watch day turn into night, to witness regal hills of stone and stark stretches of desert, humbling in their magnitude, dissolve under darkness that fell like a blanket in greater and greater silence. Soon, even the desert seemed unimaginably small, and we even smaller, under the twinkling stars, the great arc of a faint Milky Way, the blazing bursts and fleeting tails of meteors that struck our planet's atmosphere.

The absence of light around us brought these distant bodies closer. The universe deepened with each further adjustment of our eyes as stars and galaxies came into focus through our minute, organic lenses. We marveled together at the wonder of such a view - laughing and creating new constellations, I imagined the generations of humans that have gazed at this same scene. I felt my baby kick enthusiastically. As the first meteor flared like a sparkler across the sky and we all cried out at its intensity, I made a wish that my descendants would find such intimacy with the cosmos.

Soon, even the moon sank below the horizon. Under the ancient story told to our vision this night - a tale of stars now long gone but still appearing to us, a song of nebulae and novas that have yet to reach us with their light - I felt connected beyond labels of our relationships to the two humans next to me. I felt only our common delight, collective curiosity, and intrinsic courage to seek space where we felt our smallness and entered a different plane of awareness of our place on a galactic scale. This, too, is an old story, as primitive and essential to humans as those told of the temptation of serpents, the ventures into the desert to find enlightenment, the dreaming of intelligible messages and images written in the stars.

The next day, my boy picked up a nondescript clam shell I found in the bay near our home away from home. In expectation, he put it carefully to his ear. I first felt inclined to correct him - "You can't 'hear the ocean' in that kind of shell" - but caught myself. That shell, made from desert sands, elements long ago forged in the bellies of stars, brings close the expanse of natural wonders he instinctively longs to know. Although it may not resonate with his pulse to give the illusion of hearing the sea, it resonates with something more.

Putting a shell to an ear; turning one's face to the night sky; touching the beauty beyond one's finite life by letting the spirit-mind wander cosmic sands: this is what the mystics and scientists and prophets and common people, adults and children, can know at the core in any moment of transcendent connection. Nevertheless, we lift constructed sand to our ears. Nevertheless, we journey to the desert. Nevertheless, we dream of stars and imagine we are one of them.

Spirals and Evergreen Sprigs

Sometimes, a moment is nearly impossible to capture in its full spectrum of wonder. As I drove away from my childhood home this afternoon, having dropped off Oak to spend some time with his grandparents while Robby and I worked, I glanced out my window to see my dad and my son sitting under a tree in the side yard. They had been wandering outside a while before I left, so to spot them in surprise from this distance felt like glimpsing a secret gift.

I could not see what they examined together, but it was clear in their mutual posture that both were engrossed in their common activity. Tears caught in my throat at this fleeting moment of sweetness: the man who has tended to me with the boy I tend, both tending to the other. I was suspended in a space between what has been given to me and what I have given, from and to my past and future. Removed from the center of that cyclical lineage, time collapsed to a still point of amazement as I felt the tug of eternal threads that tie me to these two beings.

Later, when I returned, Dad and Oak showed me the treasures they gathered while walking around the yard: several lovely pinecones of varying shapes and a twig of holly and berries. Spirals and evergreen sprigs - infinite patterns, eternal life, symbols for an afternoon of connections made near and far in time and space. What a joy to know I am part of it. What a gift to watch it unfold beyond me in every direction. What a blessing to know who we are to one another.

Anniversary Ode

Five years ago tonight, we said "yes" to each other. 

At the time, neither of us believed we were each other's soul mate...we still do not think there is such a thing. We weren't sure it was the right thing to get married when not everyone could marry who they love. We did not think marriage is the highest ideal of a committed relationship, rather a way of life some of us wish to choose. And though we understood that this chosen path would challenge and disturb us more than we could imagine, we had no real idea of the difficulty ahead.

What we DID trust and believe on that November night in is our ability to recommit to one another each day, to turn toward one another in humility and mercy, and to strive to learn the deepest lessons of love beyond preference, convenience, even emotion, by loving each other. What we have trusted - and continue to trust - is that we hold the capacity to ask for forgiveness, to find joy in one another, and, when things are dark, instead of "Why would you? How could you?", to ask, "What will we do together to take the next step?"

The depth of pain when trust is betrayed takes much time and effort to heal. Who I am now could not explain that fully to the young couple, bright-eyed and hopeful, on their wedding night. Yet, we chose the processional song, "'Tis a gift to be simple, 'tis a gift to be free, 'tis a gift to come down where we ought to be...And when we find ourselves in the place just right, 'twill be in the valley of love and delight. When true simplicity is gained, to bow and to bend we shan't be ashamed - to turn, turn will be our delight, 'til by turning, turning, we come 'round right." Somehow, in a deep place, I think we knew we would learn.

I could not have conveyed how hard it would be to walk the journey of becoming parents together, the anger and jealousy and physical exhaustion...and the alchemy of self-sacrifice that leads to miraculous beauty. I did not know that, through 43 hours of labor, Robby would hold me up, that we would birth Oak together, and that it would be the most incredible experience of my life. Yet, we chose the poem, "The ruby and the sunrise are one. Be courageous and discipline yourself...Work. Keep digging your well. Don't think about getting off from work. Water is there somewhere. Submit to a daily practice. Your loyalty to that is a ring on the door. Keep knocking, and the joy inside will eventually open a window and look out to see who's there." Somehow, I think we knew we would be taught the way.

Allowing one another to grow and flourish on our own paths while living and learning together is a challenge beyond articulation. How could that be told to any pair of people yet to spend years together? Yet, the ring with which Robby proposed reads in Sanskrit, "Ahimsa" - "Do no harm" by respecting the deepest nature of every being, including the one closest. And the words, "Blessed are the poor in spirit...Blessed are they who mourn...Blessed are the meek...Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness...Blessed are the merciful...Blessed are the pure of heart...Blessed are the peacemakers..." reverberated on the walls of the building in which we were married. Somehow, I think we understood the journey to come.

"Wherever you go, I will go..." That is our promise. Robby, I still love you with all my heart, perhaps more because I understand what we both have given, and realize I have no idea what we have yet to give, to make it true. Walking this life with you has reoriented my heart, expanded my mind, and given me a new directive. You help me to see "La Vie en Rose." You have nurtured me, tended me, and loved me beyond any capacity I could earn or deserve.

Today, I choose you, my love, to be my partner and fellow seeker, to hold me accountable and inspire me, to work with me to make the world, and our life, anew.

"Not in the dark of buildings confining,

not in some heaven, light years away—
here in this place the new light is shining,
now is fulfillment, and now is the day.
Gather us in and hold us forever,
gather us in and make us your own;
gather us in, all peoples together,
fire of love in our flesh and our bone."

In Kindness

Today was one spent mostly in bed, trying to feel warm and keep my nose wiped, staving off aches with tea and soup. My good partner allowed me the space by tending to our boy who, by mid-afternoon, it was clear, was also sick. A(nother) day of rest at home was welcome, but also troubling, given all that is happening in the wide world.

I spent too much of the time I had my eyes open today looking at a screen, taking in the vastness of pain and suffering in our world and letting out tears. I felt so physically weak, so emotionally vulnerable. And who cares how I felt? I was unaware that an attack had happened in Beirut until my more globally-aware friends showed me on Facebook. I was self-disgusted because I didn't know, and because I did not feel immediate outrage when I heard the news of Paris. I felt grief and despair - all violence deeply disturbs me. But I mostly felt selfish annoyance at my many friends posting pictures of Eiffel Towers...because I saw myself in you.

Please don't misunderstand: I honor and appreciate the place of solidarity from which these outpourings come. That is a GOOD place, a place that connects people, that ushers justice, that makes peace. What bothers me? Your circle is too small. No matter who you are, your circle is to small. And so is mine.

I fail to realize most days how ignorant and sheltered I am. Collectively, we do not care enough about people we think are not like us. Thousands dead in Nigeria and there is barely a peep in the west. Millions of Syrian refugees fleeing from the same source of terror that, when it threatens a city we romanticize, suddenly becomes understandable in its horror...but until then, is not enough reason to make room at our inns for the families who have been threatened for months and months.

No need to look so far away. Why can't I be bolder with the truth that Black Lives Matter? Just like terror, systemic racism and white supremacy are real threats that kill real people every day. Just like terrorism, their complex roots, old and pervasive, must be acknowledged by white people for us to seek holistic solutions. Why do I struggle to find the words as a white person to call in others to look, to challenge my own, embedded racist tendencies, to change?

I fall short because I am tired. Sometimes I feel overwhelmed that taking care of my tiny circle is more than I can do. I try to be a good mother, partner, family member, friend, co-worker, community member...and I feel stretched even then. I know that these are essential works of justice and that I try to do my part, but it never feels like enough. I continue to fall into the mental, emotional, and spiritual traps that lead to disharmony and violence on a grander scale...and the cynical pitfall, "What can *I* even DO?"

As I laid in bed and cried, tucked away in comfort and cushions of care, I knew my self-judgment was not healthy or helpful. It does not serve us to say to ourselves or each other, "Our circles are too small." What helps is to say, and MEAN, "I am always trying to grow my circle of care...and I need your help." It helps, first, to be humble and to admit that work needs to be done...in us. It helps to invite each other in and hold each other accountable. It helps to make the most of where we are, who we are with, and what we are given. It helps to remind each other that it is ALL part of the bigger picture.

Yesterday was a Day of Kindness. That word, "kindness," often sounds trite or simplistic to my ears, sort of like "nice." We can be kind to someone without liking them...so I think it can be a wonderful first step. Our good acts should never depend on our subjective evaluation of another person's worthiness. Even if we struggle to feel for another, we can be kind. But that is not far enough. We also need courage. Coeur + large = courage. We need bigger and bigger hearts. We need kindness that comes when it is difficult to care, that transmutes to compassion - learning to suffer with others.

Such courageous compassion pushes against the edges of our awareness and expands our domain of attention. We begin to see people we didn't see before. The root of the word "kindness" articulates kinship, similarity. When our kindness begins to connect us more profoundly with people we did not even know we overlooked, it widens our circle of care. When our kindness helps to expand others' circles, it creates peace. "What can *I* even DO?" becomes, "What can WE do together?"

I need you to join me. Let's try to expand together. Let us mourn the victims in Paris, hold vigil in our hearts and homes, extend the love that is desperately needed...then, tomorrow, let's pay attention to the rest of the world. Let's never allow each other to overlook those killed across town or across the globe. Let's awaken our vigilance to our planetary kin. Is that too much to ask? Absolutely. Yes, there will always be too much to hold. That's why we hold it together. That's why you and I must stay courageously, radically open - to being challenged, corrected, consoled, and converted to greater compassion, and to do this for others with true kindness.

White people, call me in when I'm not being an ally. Friends of color, feel free to correct me when my view is narrow. Queer friends, let me know what I am missing. Tell me who I am forgetting to see or hear. Make me uncomfortable. Treat me kindly, but help me to love more courageously. Let me do this for you, too.

Tonight, Oak rested his head on my arm as we watched a video of Tracy Chapman perform "Imagine." Later, he proudly stacked the pictured structure that forcefully reminded me of the familiar landmark of a city in mourning. I never cease to wonder what he will dream and build in his life. Holding his vulnerable, sick body reminded me how vital it is to be gentle with ourselves and one another. Apathy or anger will not save us. Staying vulnerable and dependent on each other will. Judging the confines of my small space, my fragile body, my limited mind will only shrink them...but loving myself, and letting you see me and love me, too, will only help possibility to grow.

Rest well, my friends, and know tomorrow I begin again. I do not know if I will feel stronger on my own, but I want to be more connected. I know that, in itself, will strengthen me. Kindly, will you help me grow?

Eulogy for a Bee

Mandy Olivam 2015

I knew she was dead when I saw her. Although this November day is mild, the colder weeks preceding it have left little hope for insects to survive.

There she was, her glaring yellow fur and shiny black eyes catching my eye among green, hardy mint stalks and curled brown oak leaves. I bent closer, feeling my inside recoil as I dared to peer nearer than instinct cautioned. Her intricate legs clung to the flower, her grasp firmly set in death.

I felt spontaneous grief at the poignant arrangement. I have rarely seen a dead bee; I do not know if predators find them before I do or if the typical place bees go to die are usually unnoticed by the likes of me. But that this one came to rest on a blossom like the many she must have visited in her brief life read like a poetic eulogy.

Perhaps, whether or not she knew the end was near, she kept on doing what she was born to do as a bee and continued her rounds from plant to plant until chance led to her die on this particular one. But maybe she knew, in the way bees must know something beyond any human conception of knowing, that it was time. Maybe she sought out a green spot in a world turning red and orange, then brown. Perhaps the cold compelled her to a familiar site of warmth and summer, a memorial of her life in its glory.

Did she die with the taste of nectar on her long, agile tongue? Did she savor the sensation of petals against her abdomen? Did she want to delight one last time in the beauty that was living, to watch this holographic world grow dark from the color of springtime?

She would not even laugh at me if she could, surmising about her motives - I imagine bees do not sense humor or experience motivation, let alone sentiment, in any capacity I could apprehend. Nevertheless, something about her creaturehood, and the meticulous earthiness of her complex, still body, stirred the human emotions of love, sadness, and loss within me.

And like a human who seeks pattern and meaning in what she can never understand, I choose to imagine that she wished to make the most of her journey until the end, like I do. I think she, too, sought sweetness even as things changed and delighted in the simple pleasure of being the creature she was. Even in her death, the happenstance and choice of her existence left a mark on the world, left lessons for a stranger of another species, stirred foreign feelings to reverberate in a day of a life she could not have imagined.