COLOR MY SOUL: December 2015

window sill in winter -full of sprouts and cuttings

I'm listening to Christmas music while packing up scarecrows and leaf art, eating dinner from paper Easter egg plates, and growing cuttings of lilacs and roses; not even sure what season it is. Moving confuses you; mixes up your life, your sense of time. It is a tyrant worse than a long holiday to-do list.

Was it a season like this …when everything seemed mixed up...when Christ came?

It’s unseasonably warm here. Makes me feel like planting garden instead of cleaning out the beds and borders in preparation for both winter and moving in the spring.

Moving requires reflection on how you gardened in the past, how you may want to redo things at the new place. It forces your family to reflect too. My grandson, Jude, helped us strip the garden and yard of Nana's treasures – bird baths, statues, and whimsical cement animals- to take to the new house. He picked up shells, rocks to load in the truck. Suddenly, he called with an urgency that made us all turn from our tasks to look at him. His knees and arms were wrapped around our tiny weeping cherry tree; he was grunting with effort gasping at us to help him pull this out! The little tree, surrounded by Irish moss is part of my cancer survivor garden, and his treasure, since he played under it. Poignant moments happen daily, in this season of pulling up well entrenched roots and relocating.

Was it a season like this …not here-not there...when Christ was born?

So many things still hold my heart here. I feel like a pioneer women tucking into the ‘wagon,’ flower seeds gathered from dad’s hibiscus and grandma’s 80year old prim roses. Oh, and I must bring shoots of black raspberries that my grandchildren love!

My insides do not match the Christmas cheer being thrown around everywhere. My soul holds snapshots of sad eyed refuges. My husband and I are choosing to uproot; we are dreaming and happy about the move, yet the goodbye-ing is brutal. How much more so, if war or men with machetes chased us out?

Was it a season like this …the world a mess, horror upon horror...when Christ was born?

I read social media posts of friend and family celebrations, happy homecomings, gorgeous decorations, while writing this in my journal:

Someone is coming to buy our grandson’s toddler bed. Jude's, toddler bed. I want to cry; I can’t watch it go. Granddaughter, Avery writes me notes saying how much she'll miss me after we move. I'm a mess these days. I’m a split personality; one side laughingly eager to live our dreams, the other side overwhelmed with grief.

Hallmark movies always have happy endings. In reality, Mopsy is still not flying out of the lagoon. His ‘Maybe’ mate left him for a mallard that could fly away with her. I may move and never see him fly.

My mate, my hubby’s shoulder surgery and recovery is delaying our packing up. Frustration mounts as I try to do too much myself. Moving, like other stresses, often requires much vulnerability and letting go. Just a few months ago I led a women’s retreat and spoke boldly about learning to accept what is. I even co-wrote a book about having a spacious heart.

What a fraud!

My heart is not always open and accepting. Some days it’s curled into a fetal position or shaking a fist, shouting “enough!” All I can do is observe with compassion, talk to my spiritual director to laugh and cry as together we witness and honor what is presenting in my life.

This morning, I listened to an ON Being podcast while packing books into boxes. What a fun interview of Martin Sheen, a beautiful soul! ( http://www.onbeing.org/program/martin-sheen-spirituality-of-imagination/8257) I was soon laughing with him, with interviewer Krista Tippett, as Sheen quoted Thomas Merton on the birth of Christ:

"Into this world, this demented inn, where there is absolutely no room for him at all, Christ comes uninvited."

Sheen said this is his favorite Christmas quote. With a raspy belly laugh, Sheen adds: "THIS IS CHRISTMAS!! --- Into this world, this demented inn, He comes uninvited. We all think we are seeking, but in reality we’re not." We choose comfort over stretching. Ease over vulnerability. "This is the deepest spiritual practice - accepting the cup as offered, not as it is altered." When Sheen receives the cup, he always wants to ask, “can I have it less full? Or with some extra sugar?”

Ah, I recognize myself in him. Into my chaotic world, into this demented chaotic world, Christ comes. Love comes. Hope exists. This truly is the deepest level of spirituality, to love deeply in spite of being human.To be grateful for our humanity, for life. To accept graciously the work and discomfort that is waking up, opening, deepening and change. To risk being vulnerable and human.

We are all just doing our best to cope, to live as fully as we can. Including me, including you.

Christ came as a human. Into a demented inn, a chaotic world. Chaos comes before new birth, before creation, before transformation. Hope exists. I hold that in my soul, too.

So, it was a season like this…