Category Archives: God/Spirit/Light/Love

[The opposite of fear is love.]

The prediction of 7 (7!) major hurricanes this year in yesterday’s paper was still very much on my mind when Allison, my California daughter, called. Predictably, this forecast had left me blue; hearing my daughter’s bouncy, animated voice cheered me up. Still. . .

When, after catching up with her exciting news, I’d admitted that I’m struggling with, you know, a pervading sense of DOOM, Allison responded perfectly. Not “Oh, Mom! You’re such a downer!” Not “I call you from 3,00 miles away and I get this?” Not  “I don’t need this right now.” No way.

Instead, my California, always waiting for The Big One daughter asks me: “Do you have an emergency kit?” And then gently coaches me on how to prepare for disaster.

So, yeah, I’ll start to put together the things she suggested and other items that just make sense in case we lose water or electricity. I’ll get ready.

But what do I need in my spiritual kit? That’s a question I’ve started asking, too.

Stay tuned.

Yesterday, leaving NYC on a Peter Pan bus, heading home on I-95 N, a truck caught on fire just ahead of my bus. What a scene! Billowing smoke, screaming fire trucks somehow getting past the backed-up traffic and, in very short time, a complex, beautifully organized rerouting process involving stopping all the traffic on I-95 S and miles of backed-up cars and trucks and buses on I-95 N—like the one I was on—crossing the median strip to get on I-95 S—and, presumably, alternative routes. (And yet my bus eventually arrived in Boston only a half-hour late.)

Having just left the Big Apple, where every newspaper I saw screamed something about the Time Square (botched) bombing attempt, I immediately assumed that truck fire was a terrorist attack. How could I not?

Well, here’s how: all this month, I’m going to write about fear and its antidote: love.

Keep reading.

. . . with your one wild and precious life?” [from “The Summer Day” by Mary Oliver.]

Here’s how extraordinary Nesto Monell is: he’s now asking himself, “What am I supposed to be doing with my life, now that it has been given back to me? How do I give back?”

May all of us, transformed by Nesto and his story, listen to what the Universe is saying when we ask the same questions.

Christmas preparations are 95% under control (next year I really do have to figure out how to simplify this thing—for real) so am going to try to say something, here:

First Off/Let’s be Clear: I am not saying that Barack Obama is Jesus Christ, okay? In this season of both glad tidings/hope/ “Oh, come let us adore him,”  and seriously compromised effort (the health care bill, what didn’t happen in Copenhagen), however, my president and my Inward Teacher have weirdly blended together in my mind.

I’d been hoping to bring this confusing co-mingling to meeting for worship this past Sunday but the big snowstorm and very few people showing up meant I played one of the Wise Men for our Meeting’s Christmas pageant instead. So bear with me; I haven’t gotten very far.

Re Obama: Like the “Jesus Christ Superstar” song goes: “He’s just one man.” Again and again while campaigning, Obama told us: “I am not going to do this (whatever promise he was taking about) alone.” But I, weary at heart, was oh-so-yearning to worship and adore. (And, let’s be honest, the fact that he’s our first president of color means my belief in the guy verged on hero-worship. As readers of Way Opens know, I do this.) So when President Obama commited 30,000 troops to Afghanistan and didn’t single-handedly pull off a Christmas Miracle in Copenhagen, I was crushed.

Re Inward Teacher: My take on the Good News is this: Again and again Jesus was telling us, reminding us that God/Spirit/Higher Power is here, is now, is present. His followers, then and now, weary at heart, yearned/yearn for him to take away the sins of the world, to give us rest, to comfort, to save us. But I believe he was trying to say something quite different: God’s love is within you. Open your heart to that love. That love, that power is your salvation.

What the world learned from Copenhagen is the same message that our former community-organizer president is telling us and what Jesus—and Ghandi—taught: Change happens inwardly first, it happens when two or more are gathered, it often happens in spite of elected officials—and, might I add, when women and children’s voices are heard and supported. “When the people lead, leaders will follow.” A global response to climate change will happen because voices from non-super powers will make it happen.I truly believe this.

Our Inward Teacher, aka the Prince of Peace, brought us glad tidings. Spread the Word.

On my couch are lovely, artisan pillows from Armenia, Greece and, now, Turkey, souvenirs from countries with centuries of hatred towards one another. In Istanbul last week, walking a few paces behind my sixteen-month old (step) grand-daughter, seeing the soft, “ahhh” eyes of Turkish men melting at the sight of this adorable, determined toddler, I remembered the many horror stories told by Greeks and Armenians of “those horrible Turks.”

How do we relate to one another from that gentle, loving, “ahhh” place, I wondered in worship on Sunday. Good question, huh?

On my way to Meeting on Sunday, I had walked past St. Anthony’s just as the congregation was singing a hymn I’d fallen in love with in Cuba. Hand on my heart, I stood on the sidewalk and listened. I don’t remember the words to that hymn either in Spanish or English (I vaguely recall something about Jesus and boats). Because, somehow, the hymn’s words don’t matter. It’s the melody which directly and profoundly speaks to my gentle, loving, “ahhh” core.

When we put language to that-greater-than-ourselves, that’s when it gets dicey. Love, Light, Peace, God, Christ, Allah, “There is a Spirit that delights to do no evil;” whatever word(s) represent our gentle, loving, “ahh” core, may we speak from that place to one another.

The problem with not writing for The Somerville Journal anymore AND taking a break from novel-writing is that everything, EVERYTHING becomes a possibility for this blog. The early morning light sparkling through the massive icicles hanging from our neighbor’s porch? The overheard comment at a Somerville Avenue gas station  today? A (probably Arabic-speaking) guy pumping gas said to an SUV owner: “You’re better off with a Toyota than that thing.” The politics of who makes way for whom when two strangers approach each other on a narrow, snowy sidewalk pathway?

But in honor of Hannukkah, I think I’ll talk about light/Light. Which, as I’m sure you’ll recall, was the theme for my Christmas stocking gifts last year. (This year’s theme: From Around the World.)

[FYI: Something like what I’m about to say was said yesterday at Meeting by dear friend/Friend Mehmet Rona:]

It’s a miracle, isn’t it? As of yesterday, the days are getting longer. Right at this moment, the sun’s starting to melt our icy sidewalk. When you REALLY contemplate the miracle of light, then it’s pretty easy to accept that, yes, it was possible that only enough oil for one day miraculously stretched and stretched, right?

In honor of this miracle, today at Cambridge Naturals, I bought Sunbeam Candles, 100% beeswax, as stocking gifts.

“Wait a sec,” you say. “Light was last year’s stocking theme.”

Oh. Did I fail to mention that these candles were “Created with Solar Power”? How People’s Republic of Cambridge can you get?!

Yesterday, at Porter Square Books, I ran into Wendy Jehlen. In her mid-thirties, daughter of good friends Alain and Pat Jehlen, mother of two beautiful daughters, Wendy is a gifted dancer who’s also an interpreter for the deaf. Seconds before she’d entered the bookstore, apparently, Wendy had learned that the mother of one of her daughter’s friends had just died. “She was my age,” Wendy said tearfully.

The grim faces of the people I’d passed on the way to  Porter Square very much on my mind (people, I’m guessing, suffering from what’s happening to the economy), Wendy’s sad news, and knowing how many of my own friends and family are presently going through hard times, I commented on what a challenging Christmas this was going to be.

Wendy’s face brightened: “There’s a wonderful piece written right after Pearl Harbor,” she informed me. “I’ll try to send it to you. But basically it’s saying ‘Christmas happens even in the midst of hard times.’ ”

Ah ha! We’d talked about exactly this same concept in yoga class last week. Annie Hoffman, our amazing teacher, had read us something about how we’re essentially and fundamentally joyous beings. Sounds like the Quaker construct of Inner Light, doesn’t it?  Put in another way: Within each of us is Joy, Light, That of God, Love, or as this shiny, hopeful, loving and generous whatever-it-is thing is sometimes called at this time of year, Christmas Spirit. (Since we’re talking constructs, here, I can be a little sloppy with language, right? YOU try writing about the Unexplainable!)

That’s the thing about essential and fundamental: Like the sun, it’s always there. Even at night. A New Yorker short story about a deeply unhappy family on a ski trip who, to their surprise, were touched by the spirit of the season, ended: “Christmas happens.”