A Breath of Bliss

Have you ever experienced a momentary sense of bliss? As if you passed over a ley line, or brushed against a barrier between worlds, or something magical brushed by you – only for an instant – then moved on?

I feel such every once in a while. I felt it this evening. A brief sensation when it seems everything converges to create a sense of right-ness, right now. Always I am driving, and I get this feeling that I just passed something wholly good, and meant for me in particular. A sweet pause, that lingers, captured by inadequate memory. I have no idea what this good is. No thought or action brings it on. I have nothing with which to predict it, or attempt to reproduce it. There are no markers with which to identify the cause. It is invisible and silent and non-manifest. And, yet it gently triggers ever sense simultaneously.

I have come to recognize the ghost of a scent, a taste, a sense of pressure. And, it produces a breath of well being that is just passing by as it registers. Then it is gone, and it is so remarkable that I cannot mourn its passing.

Perhaps it is a coincidence of firing synapses and air pressure. Or a dream teasing from the sub-conscious. Or spirits playing tag.

Whatever it is, it is only for a moment. Then gone. And, I am left in bliss.

Good News Story

"If it bleeds, it leads."

That is the mantra of news.

We humans love drama, and drama all too frequently equals blood, horror, and bad circumstances that cannot be fully absorbed by the average guy or gal. We "tsk" and cover our eyes (forgive those who peek expectantly through their fingers, please). We saddle up and rally around the down-trodden whilst gossiping about their victimization and distress. We do our civic duty and wait for things to fall apart. We are the light-seekers who peer into the darkness. We are the audience for the blood-thirsty 6:00 local news. And it is the body counts that make us so high.

Then that damned good news comes along, and we don't know what to do with ourselves.

Do we celebrate the happy outcome? Sure! Yea! Another one for the good guys! Or do we crouch under the weight of our baser instincts and move on, looking for the next disaster, grousing that the body count is low?

Well, allow me to pummel you with this smiley-faced balloon:

There's this dude in Florida named James King. A girl who attended his former church went missing, and he decided to enter the alligator-infested swamps of Winter Springs, FL to find her, armed only with his bible, water, snacks, toilet paper, and a GPS-enabled phone. She was missing for FOUR DAYS. He found her, bug-bitten, dehydrated, but otherwise unharmed. He called the authorities, and brought her back to her grateful family.

Now in this disgusting social climate, we are a suspicious lot. So, James King was questioned by a dutiful police force to ensure that he was a hero, not a perpetrator. Do your recall a time when we took our heroes at face value? Well that time is not today. James King, however, is apparently a king among men, because he raised no red flags. He is a bona fide hero. Good for him.

Now I don't care what his politics are, or what his religion is (James King reported that while he searched, he recited the Bible verse that reads: "Trust in Yahweh with all your heart, and don't lean on your own understanding. And, he will direct your path.").

This man didn't have to do anything related to the girl from his church. He could have gone to breakfast, watched a game on TV, read a book, worked a crossword puzzle. Instead he went looking for a lost 11-year-old girl with Aspberger's, and found her. Alive.

"There she was, sitting on a log," he said, "looking expectantly, like, 'You're finally here.'"

How is it possible to have a better day than that?

Well, At Least We Did Not Shoot the Children.

Oh, wait ....

View Wikileaks video: http://www.collateralmurder.com/

I get it.

I know with certainty that without the brave men and women who are willing to stand watch on the wall against all aggressors, to travel thousands of miles to keep the wolves from our shores, to protect our way of life, to protect our freedom and treasure, to sacrifice blood and limb and soul ...

Without the stout-hearted individuals who answered the call to war, we would be lost. Soft targets in a dark, ever-dangerous world.

But, when these fine, brave men and women travel overseas to pick up a gun, launch a helicopter, and police an area, they take on more than the risk of life and limb, more than training and duty. They take on the responsibility for not just their lives and culture, but that of the innocents who travel within the fogs of war.

I can not imagine the pressure. I cannot image the day-in-day out twitched-muscle fear of soldiers who must measure each mission, each step, each minute in units of survival-units, waiting of the next ditch or block or citizen to be the end of everything he or she has lived for.

But, see? That just makes it more important to do the right thing. We come over here/over there with messages of freedom and justice and unmitigated rightness. Well, if we are going to take on that glowing mantle, then we have to glow.

Being stressed out, or tired out, or bored, vengeful, scared, or rationalized, or preemptive, or in need of one damned moment of humorous respite -- none of that justifies brutality or carelessness or collateral anything.

Hell no, I haven't been to war (unless you count Thanksgiving dinner), and I do not know what it is like when every act or step could be my life. That does not excuse me, just as it does not excuse you from recognizing right from wrong.

The Magic of Good Mojo

Tribune Photo by
Heather Charles

Optimism.

That bright spring light of the mind and soul. That boon from god that allows us to get up every morning, to hope for a better day, a better vision, a better apple, car, job, song, story, life. Optimism, even when leaning flat against reality, lets us believe that in the end, EVERY LITTLE THING is gonna be all right. Truly. In spite of everything else.

In spite of the darkness that lurks along our paths. In spite of the sadness, fear, hatred, anger that brushes against us. In spite of all those helpless days and hopeless feelings. In spite of all the things we think we could resist outright, if only we were stronger, smarter, better, prettier, more talented, more MORE.

Well, you have to know one thing: optimism goes a long way toward setting the stage for triumph. Just believing in something - preferably your own self - is a shield of courage that protects you as your dare to take that first step of the journey toward whatever new day that has grabbed your imagination.

And when optimism is mixed with a dream and a plan and willing people who know how to help you mix and bake your personal recipe? People who know how to buck you up when the shadows stretch across the path? Well hell. Suddenly, you find yourself much further down the road than your first dreams ever led you to believe was possible.

So, this month, Chicago's Urban Prep Academy announced that every single member of the school's first senior class - 107 of them - had been accepted to college. Young men who came from destitution and swaddled futures. Young men who had hardly dared to dream of much of anything. Young men who doubted that academic success was in their future. Young men who entered the school unable to read at their grade-level.

Now, you can sniff at the uniforms and complain about the demands and other trappings of a highly controlled environment. But before you do, you should ask the graduating seniors if the jackets and ties, the gender segregation, the extended school days, the constant messages commanding FOCUSFOCUSFOCUS, the extra English credits, and the long commutes were at all worth it. Ask them if the ability to call everyone they know to shout, "I got in!" was worth it. Ask them if forcing the shadows on the road to retreat in shame was worth it.

Class of 2010: Go on with your bad selves.

Dear God ...

What the hell is going on?

Indonesia?

Haiti?

Now Chile?

Forgive my presumptive complaining, and maybe this isn't your handiwork, but:

An 8.8 Earthquake (because a thousanth of that wasn't enough)?

400,000 made homeless in an hour?

Another opportunity to saddle up, and dig out the dead?

Another opportunity to be woefully unprepared?

Another opportunity to see our daily problems as petty echoes of true suffering?

Another opportunity to rise to our better selves?

Seems to me that someone's nudging us down the highway toward hell.

Can you point us toward a rest stop?

Go World!

photo: Getty

2010 Winter Olympics have opened!

photo: Getty

Oh Canada!

And, sadness for the fallen Georgian athlete, Nodar Kumaritashvili who died in practice opening day.

Buried - Part Deux

Sometimes, you just have to sigh and put it down.

As my Mom says when she wants us to place things in their proper perspective: "No matter what you do, the sun's going to come up tomorrow morning like nothing ever happened."

Work, politics, relationships. financial concerns, religious conflicts, disaster, oppression. Sometimes it all seems so relentless, like a blizzard birthed clear across the country, flowing eastward, eastward, Eastward, Ho! All the preparation in the world comes down to doing what you can do.


And the sun will rise tomorrow.

And we will start again.

























A few hardy souls

DO have to say one thing though:

Hey! Did you have to park so close to my car???

Buried

This is my car.

This is my car on snow.

Any questions?

This is Steph and Ry who started the community car clean-off. Thank guys!

Just goes to show, when the world or life or a random circumstance buries you ...

There's always someone to help you dig out.

Happy Shovelling ...

Snow Day!

Remember those snow days when we were kids?

We didn't have the Weather Channel, Accu-Weather, or Doppler 5, 000,000 (yes, I know. I make it sound like these technological advances are reliable). We had a guy in a plaid jacket and seventies-wavy hair standing in front of a monochrome map with cardboard suns, clouds, H's and L's waving his hands as if conjuring.

And, he gazed hopefully into the camera. Hopeful that we'd believe his forecasts, and hopeful that he would be right. Most of the time he failed, becoming a weather seducer who couldn't deliver the goods.

So we'd hear snow and cross our fingers and pray, only to wake up to grey skies and brown lawns. But, every once in a while, the weatherman would call for empty skies, and we'd wake up to steadily falling snow. Snow on the cars, snow on the trees, snow on the lawns, and - most importantly - snow on the hilly roads the school buses had to navigate.

Snow day!

My Dad would growl about the need to shovel, and curse the passing plows who undid his hard work, but Mom understood. There was nothing more magical than an unexpected day with nowhere to go and no means to get there. Snowmen, snow angels, and Devereaux Hill sled runs awaited!

See, when you are used to the unrelenting brown and grey of the southeastern Pennsylvania winter, the white winterland truly is a wonder. So today, after the weather-scientists forecasted no precipitation, or a snow shower, or a dusting maybe, the snow began to fall. Steadily.

Ooops.

Oh.

It stopped.

No, now it's started again.

What Do You Do?

Photograph:

Ivanoh Demers/AP

The sun emerged for the first time in days, but I have this cold spot within that it was unable to reach. What do you do when an earthquake or a tsunami or a war over there brings suffering on an incomprehensible scale, and a hundred or a thousand or a hundred thousand faces of immediate human misery stare blankly from a darkened world stage?

What do you do (emphasis on any word)?

Do you make a contribution? Do you say a prayer? Do you watch? Do you go? Do you slide into numbness before the videos of bodies in the streets and reports of children with shattered torsos crack your carefully crafted sense of detachment?

Do you cheer on anyone capable of lending a hand: the doctors, the nurses, the disaster coordinators, the Haitians working without sleep, the American firefighters who go anywhere anytime?

Do you publicly (or quietly) suggest that anyone who suffers that much must have committed some grave sin? Do you wish we would spend our charity at home?

Do you see yourself, your mother, your father, your child in the man/woman/child on the TV? Do you thank God it didn't happen to you?

What do you do?

• Doctors Without Borders: http://www.moveon.org/r?r=86019&id=18575-11540594-URZ84Fx&t=1

• Oxfam America: http://www.moveon.org/r?r=85998&id=18575-11540594-URZ84Fx&t=2
  

• Yéle Haiti: http://www.moveon.org/r?r=86026&id=18575-11540594-URZ84Fx&t=3

Full Long Night (Blue) Moon

It's a cold, rainy New Year's Eve, and the full moon has taken cover behind the night clouds. We can take that one of two ways:

1) Ominous signpost (eek!), as in: there's something about a blue moon not showing her face on New Year's Eve that doesn't bode well for the coming year, or

2) Crossroads signpost (eek!), as in: the second full moon in the Long Night December has withdrawn to give us a little moment to get our (collective?) acts together, and decide which way our (individual?) futures run.

Four paths converging. Which way to go?

Head north into the night, and ride it out alone in the cold comfort of some dark mixture of fear-ignorance-loathed-to-try?

Head south to the Party with the bright lights, the Hail Fellow Well Mets!, and the company of the inebriated, where tomorrow's hair of the dog competes with the sting of regret?

Head east to the measured consumption of wine and cheese, networking, home by 12:30 - "Love to stay, but the babysitter, you know..."?

Or, head west on a crooked path that meanders into God-knows-where - "but, hey is that a blue moonbeam sneaking out to shine down yonder? No? No, really, I think it is!"?

So many choices, and here we have a brief (some might say manufactured for the holidays) respite in which to pause and reflect, to decide what version of ourselves will ride the year. Is it Reluctant You, Risky You, Responsible You, or Courageous You? Is it Confident You, Clever You, Dark You, or Shining You? When we cross each other on the path of 2010, who will we meet?

Whoever it may be, I hope that we will love and help one another. I hope we see the best in each other's eyes, peeking out like an errant blue moonbeam in the last moment of the year.

The happiest of New Years to you and yours.

Post-Christmas Fog

Dear me.

The snows came and went.
The rains came and went.
The presents have been bought, wrapped, delivered and unwrapped. Some may even have been returned and exchanged for other booty by now.

And, here in Pennsylvania, the fog has rolled in. It's that post-Christmas fog that usually descends on us as a result of too much food and wine, too much song and gifting. Tonight that expected mental fog has actually manifest as real, water-suspended-in-air fog.

Perhaps all that running from store to store, all those online shopping bits and bytes, all that toasting and roasting, all those Joy-filled carols, all those Warmest Wishes for a Happy Eid, Happy Divali, Blessed Solstice, Happy Chanukah, Merry Christmas and Happy Kwanzaa actually raised the temperature here in Pennsylvania, giving the post-holiday fog a physical form.

There's something fitting in that, because fog quiets things, tones it down, slows us down like a soft, cool blanket. Despite what you hear, you can actually think within a blanket of fog seeded with sedatives. Less input to distract and all.

So before the fog lifts to let in the New Year with its celebrations and resolutions and raised expectations, take a moment to relax.

And, Warmest Wishes for a Blessed Fog.

Merry Christmas to All

Moon over Malvern

Christmas Eve 2009

May your heart be filled with love and light.

May those you love be close at hand, and if not at hand, then in heart.

May this season of light carry through to the next.

May you get the chance to give and receive, to help and be helped, to love and be loved, for it is when both sides of the equation are realized that we are truly blessed.

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good life.

Family

Rivers Family 1967

(I'm the one in the cat's eyeglasses)

Family.

We take it for granted,don't we? Those people we have grown up with. Those people we have joined with. Those people to whom we claim allegiance for all the right (and wrong) reasons.

Unless we don't have it. Or, at least the piece of it we most desire.

Then, we rail at the heavens, demanding justice, demanding love, demanding understanding, demanding some explanation for why the vision of family that somehow nestled in our heads and hearts is not the family we experience in real life.

When we are content with our families, it's all OK, all warm expectation of that existence we happily take for granted. Arguments and angst? Meaningless in the long rolling skein of time. When we are not content, we withdrawal into our own, or join another tribe, or want without fulfillment. We are disconnected. We are tribal animals that either embrace the pack, or become some distorted, pack-less, falsely contented rendition of ourselves. Or who we (think we) were "meant" to be.

Then come the holidays with their ability to illuminate and emphasize. And, they are never more powerful than when they are the winter holidays. Those chilly, golden times that begin with Thanksgiving and conclude with Happy New Year! Those times when we return to the nest, or write, or at least call to say, "As the year winds down, I remember you. I remember us. I remember what it means to be a part of something greater. And I want/need/have to say: 'I love you."

I love you.

Is that not the best of all the things that could be the expected?

I love you.

Really.

Wow.

Second Snow

2nd Snow of 2009, Malvern, PA

December 19, 2009

Eeesh! Best laid plans and all that.

I planned to take my Dad shopping, but the snow fell and fell and fell, so I watched it fall instead. I would like to say that the snow turned out to be an ill-timed but welcome respite from the rush-gush-rush of the Christmas season, but the truth is that I have not felt all that rushed. Other concerns have crowded in: work, finals, economic concerns, artistic exercises, political snits, blah, blah, blah ... Christmas is creeping up on the radar in that slow, steady way that big events travel. You know: far away, far away, far off, still a-ways, RIGHT THERE (!) in all its panic-inducing glory.

For now, I will just watch the snow fall; let the random, inescapable carol float in; admire the lights and decorations of the committed; and anticipate that moment when Christmas seeps in to fill my heart with golden light.

It always does, and it's always right on time.