Month: November 2016

Tonight I will be watching election returns. This presidential election season has been painful and long, with angry, ugly rhetoric within parties, between candidates, on social media–and even between family and friends. Everyone is afraid; fearful of losing something or not having enough, or of someone else having too much, convinced that disaster is looming.

I can’t wait for it to be over, but I’m also worried.

I have liked watching our political process unfold on election night for as long as I can remember. I enjoy making a festive fall meal and gathering ’round the television to see the drama of precincts reporting and races being called when enough votes are counted, electoral votes tipping toward one candidate or the other, and California numbers finally coming in as closing time at the polls moves across the time zones. It is important; it matters who our president is.

As a child, I walked with my parents to the polling place near our house, the wobbly voting booths set up in a neighbor’s garage. It felt like a holiday, the whole family participating in this national event. An air of secrecy surrounded the little curtained cubbies; no one asked or told how they had voted. My mom was never much interested in politics, so my dad would study the issues and she would vote just like he did, trusting that he knew best.

The first time I voted in Berkeley, my husband and I had been married only five months, and we walked down the street from our little apartment near Cal to our polling place in a fraternity house. We stood in line and took our turn marking the ballot in the cardboard voting stations. Ronald Reagan and Walter Mondale were the candidates. We walked back to our apartment, adjusted the rabbit ears on our little TV, and ate stuffed green peppers as we watched the returns come in.

It always feels like a contest, but I have been certain in the past that whoever wins, we will ultimately remember that we are all in this together, and in January, we will rise above the differences and disappointments to inaugurate the new president. I am proud of the way the system works. This year, it feels different. There is a desperate and mean spirit that threatens the peaceful transfer of power.

I’ve been feeling anxious, not just about the outcome, but about the deep divide in our country, and the way we’ve been talking to and about each other.  How can we recover? There are rumors of violence if it goes one way and not another. It seems almost impossible to go back to normal life after this bitter fight.

Sunday I was feeling sick, literally.

I wanted to stay home from church and sleep, but I sensed that my headache and malaise was at least partly emotional, and decided to get up and go in hopes of finding some encouragement there. The service was fine, but there was no obvious fix for my funk. I can’t remember exactly what stirred this thought, but as the last song was being sung, a little bit of hope broke through at this simple realization: No matter who wins this election, I can keep doing what’s important to me.

Later that afternoon, I sat down to mark my sample ballot–I needed to review what is up for a vote besides the presidency and try to make sense of all the propaganda that has been crammed into my mailbox the last several weeks. It felt good to sit down with all the information–ah, the wonders of the internet!–and choose what I believe to be best.

I voted, and if my candidate wins, we’ll pop the champagne; if not, shots will be more in keeping with the mood, but I don’t even want to think about that.

The work of building community, bringing light and hope to the hurting, feeding the hungry and seeking justice for the oppressed can continue regardless of what happens in this election. I can turn off the news and keep doing what comes my way, responding to the people I meet.

That gives me something to hold onto when the future feels uncertain; it is a small way to move toward healing in my corner of the world when chaos threatens.

On a stormy weekend last spring, I walked through a labyrinth made of stones in the rain of the Santa Cruz mountains, pacing around and around, back and forth, closer and farther from the center. Giant redwoods stood all around me, silent and still except for a steady dripping of raindrops through their needles. I love labyrinths. I can’t get lost; as long as I keep moving, I will come to the center. It’s not trying to trick me or mislead me like a maze. The point is the path, staying on the path.

As I walked, a question kept pushing into my thoughts. What do I need to let go of? What do I need to release?

I collected some sticks that the storm had knocked down into the path from the trees overhead. They were covered in beautiful moss, lacy and green and curling. I chose one first, then another and another, holding them together in a beautiful moss bouquet. My collection grew, and I decided to keep them and bring them home to enjoy. As I was walking back, I crossed over a bridge with a stream below, moving fast and muddy from the rain. Water brings thoughts of time and life and the relentless forward movement of our path, our journey.

Suddenly, this thought came to me:  I don’t need to possess my moss bouquet to enjoy it. I dropped it into the stream, watched it fall, lost track of it in the current. This is what I needed to let go of: Possessing.

I try to hold on to my kids, my time, my relationships, my life. I want to freeze them, save them, preserve them. I want to avoid any change, but that is actually a state closer to death than life. I can journey through life with the people I love, but I can’t make life stop so I can hold on to them. Living is walking my path intentionally, experiencing it without wasting time trying to keep it.

I felt such a lightness letting those beautiful sticks fall, knowing that they were where they belonged, and I didn’t have to keep clutching them, crushing them muddy-handed. I took the path up and out of the woods, past several other mossy branches that caught my eye, but I left them where they were, welcoming the freedom that came from appreciating them without holding on to them .

Glacier ice is a deep, bright blue, like a giant gemstone encrusted with snow. The dense, compacted ice almost glows; there are no air bubbles trapped inside to dull the pure blue. When a large slab shears off and crashes down,  the gunshot sound of cracking ice hangs in that air as the pieces cascade in slow motion. It is breathtaking.

I was on a cruise ship in Glacier Bay National Park with two lifelong friends. We three have seen each other through junior high and high school, with its acne and Farrah Fawcett hair, crushes and breakups, fashion hits and misses, homework and dances, and assorted moments of angst and embarrassment.

We weren’t together when our huge cruise ship drew up beside the glacier for the passengers to snap pictures in the frigid air. Every railing on the glacier side was lined with tourists craning to see the huge river of ice. When the crack of the ice breaking off rang out, there was a collective gasp of wonder. After marveling at the sight of the calving alone, surrounded by the strangers I happened to be standing by, I ran to the spa to find my friends.

We had separated earlier; I wanted to sit in a chair on the deck with a lap robe and a coffee and read, one wanted to run on the treadmill in the ship gym, and another wanted to relax on one of the heated-tile spa beds. When I got there, they had already left.

I met up with them on the top deck, and was relieved that they had left the spa in time to see the calving; the runner saw the glacier from her treadmill by the window and grabbed the relaxer from her spa nap. I was also feeling guilty that I stayed by the railing to watch the glacier alone instead of racing to find them and make sure we saw it together. We were here to do everything together.

We were having a great time, sharing our little room with two twin beds and one bunk that pulled down from the wall at night. We drank wine around the table on our small balcony, we woke up to hot coffee delivered to our stateroom in the morning, served with a little pitcher of warmed milk, and we tried out all the dining rooms. When the boat docked, we took trips together to see whales bubble-net feeding, to whiz through trees full of bald eagles on a zip line, to take a gold-rush era train to the Klondike, to hike to a melt pond with clear chunks of glassy ice at the foot of a glacier, and to drink beer made from spruce tips at a local brewery. It  was beautiful and wild, the air clean and pure.

I needed a little space, though. My long time friends didn’t recognize this introverted side of their extroverted friend. It became a joke, the kind that covers a little irritation–I was trying to snatch a few minutes alone, and they wanted to hang together. We were on this cruise to celebrate our 50th birthdays, not to hide out alone.

This need to take some time alone to process and recharge, to catch up with my own thoughts, wasn’t a new thing, but I haven’t always recognized the need and acted on it. In the past, I ignored the crowded feeling inside and kept pushing to keep up with everyone until I was exhausted and cranky. It took until almost 50 to interpret the feelings and learn how to bow out of some activities in order to fully engage in the rest of the time together.

It was just one moment among many, many moments together that week, but I can’t shake the feeling that I was selfish, choosing to watch the glacier alone rather than making sure we all were included in the experience, waiting to find them until the show was over.

I do wish I had been standing beside my true-blue friends when the glacier gave birth to its bouncing baby ice bergs, turning to them in the excitement of the moment instead of the nice lady who thought I was lonely and invited me to eat dinner with her. The trick, I suppose, it to pick the right time to soothe my inner introvert.

Compression that leaves no space for air bubbles makes glacier ice brilliant. Even my closest relationships, though, benefit from some well-placed air pockets to keep them solid.