I’m devoted to my French press. Most mornings, I get up early to write, but step one is always coffee. Sometimes I think this is the best time of the day: the hot mug in my hands and the opportunity to write some words. I drink those moments down each morning and drain that cup until it’s empty, which is exactly the way I want to live.

Poet and philosopher John O’Donohue says that the greatest sin is a life unlived, and I don’t know about a sin, but I know I want to embrace my life and live it well. I expect we all do. But we run into trouble when life hands us a cup that we weren’t planning on drinking: sickness, grief, infertility, job loss, a failed relationship, a loved one’s addiction, maybe a pandemic. When you’re draining life to its dregs and making the most of things because it tastes like a cup of strong coffee or the best wine you’ve ever shared with the person you love, that’s one thing. With everything on our side and going pretty much as planned, we don’t realize what a luxury it is to make the life we want happen. But sometimes things don’t happen as we hope. We’re handed a cup called Loss and it makes us gag. We don’t want to drink it, and here we see the truth: we have no choice.

The cup of Loss burns, and if we look for a cosmic why while we’re drinking it, the cup only grows deeper and more bitter. We’ve been drinking the pandemic cup for a year, and it has burned. There has been sickness and death, economic devastation, mental health impacts, and much much more. But even as this has gone on, people have been handed those other cups of Loss, drinking them down mid-pandemic: cancer, infertility, death of a spouse. These are just the stories I see on my friends’ social media; who knows what people aren’t talking about.

I’m drinking my own cup of Loss right now and trying my best to drain it. There’s no benefit to denying my feelings, to pretending the cup doesn’t burn as it’s going down. So to you I’d say, don’t bother with pretending, or with some kind of forced gratitude or even hope. Later there will be time for real gratitude and real hope. The cup of Loss is enchanted in the worst way—it tells us lies while we’re drinking it. It says the future is ruined, that time is running out, that everyone else has what you want, that despair is the truest thing. Just keep drinking. Someday you will have drained the whole poison cup, and you’ll find that what has burned you has transformed you. I cannot say when or how or who you will be. I just know that first the cup of Loss burns, and then it ignites. When that happens, who knows what you’ll do, the life you will live. But I expect you’ll realize that the way to live is to drain every cup you’re handed and to reject any feelings of shame for what you’ve been forced to drink.

As you enter 2021, may you see the sun up ahead, lighting your path

May the sunrise each day remind you that every day is an open door, every day is a baptism, that every day you get to begin again.

May you encounter the best surprises this year, the ones that remind you that there is a time to rejoice and that hope is not foolish.

May you find the fullness of your heart and may you embrace all that you are and all that everyone else is.

May the birds remind you that the world needs your song, your words, your heart, and that we are richer because you exist. 

May the waves reaching the shore remind you of the foundations of this earth, that life is both predictable and ever-changing, that you can fall into the steadiness beneath you and trust that the tide will carry you where you need to go. 

May the seeds and plants, the fields and orchards, the fox and the hawk, the fish and the clams remind you of your place in things and the duty you owe to the Earth herself.

May you love the stranger, the person you don’t understand, your enemy, the person you hate. May you turn hate on its head and allow love to overtake you, and may that love become stronger than the hate that makes you feel strong, the hate that tells you you’re right. 

May you say yes to reality and no to pretending. May you let go of all denial. 

May you say yes to forgiveness, to unlocking yourself from your cell, and set yourself free.

May you say yes to boundaries, to protecting yourself from those who repeatedly hurt you. And may you celebrate your ability to create those boundaries and be free from guilt for doing so.

May you tend your own acre and allow others to tend theirs, respecting their acre as theirs. May you dream and plan and sow the seeds you want to sow. May you see your garden flourish.

May you see the habits that don’t serve you and find a way to forgive yourself for those habits and let go of the judgments you hold against yourself. May you say thank you to them for the way they helped you to the place you are now. May you let go of them to make room for new ways of seeing, new ways of being, and new ways of living that give more to you and take less from you.

May you find the life-giving spring inside you where your creativity resides, the desire to live out of that place, and the freedom to create without fear and without judgment.

May you lean into the seasons of your life and say yes to what is—to winnowing, to the fallow time, to new beginnings, to flourishing. 

May you celebrate every good thing, appreciate the beauty around you, and carry an expectation for goodness.

When you encounter darkness in 2021, may it be by the light of the full moon. But if it should grow so dark as a night with a new moon or a sky full of clouds, may you remember that is a breath, a pause, and not your forever.

May you greet each new day with wonder, with the commitment to live out of your true self and with the hope of loving others well. Every sunrise you get to try again.

Happy 2021, loves. We did it.

At the park yesterday morning, parts of the paved path were damp. It didn’t seem that wet, not wet enough that a runner’s shoe would leave a trail of footprints, but it was. Perhaps because I had not yet achieved sufficient caffeine intake for the morning, it felt like a revelation that your footprint trail is always behind you. In fact, your footprints are no predictor of where you will go next. You could run or walk for a mile in one direction, and with the next step you could veer to the right or left.

It’s easy enough to get discouraged by the past, to believe that things will always remain the same. At least it is for me. But we’re not limited by our footprint trail. Turns out where we’ve been doesn’t dictate where we’ll go.

The bird feeder was empty yesterday morning. This winter, as always, the sparrows and juncos and wrens have kept me with an eye on the weather forecast and another on the bag of bird seed. I hate to let them down. Continue reading “Feeding the Birds” →

This morning I cried while eating breakfast—undone by a few lines from Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson. Real life almost never makes me cry, but a book, well that is something else altogether. Stories are the doorway to another’s reality but also to my own feelings.

I read through my childhood; it was nearly all I did. In my family, we didn’t talk about things, and I was quiet anyway. It was books that taught me about people, that honed my empathy, that turned on the light.

I wrote something for a client recently, and he said something about it maybe scratching my itch to write, but words for a client will never scratch that itch. The only thing that will is my own words for my own purpose, helping me find my way back to myself, to the truth I am looking for. I’ll fix the words you write, but the ones I write are for me, and for anyone who can find their way home inside them.

Words are the truest thing about me. In the last years of my marriage, my husband resented any time I spent reading books. He thought it excluded him. Never mind that books made me, me. Never mind all the ways that drinking, drugs, and his other diversions excluded me. I was not supposed to read.

 

I was never one to keep a diary or journal. Probably there were too many things I didn’t want to know. But now I find myself grateful for every word I’ve written.

My own words are a sort of relief map— revealing the topography of my days. That was the valley, that was the winding passage. Here is where I learned this. Memory speaks, reorients me to what is true.

My life itself is a book, a sure guide if I will take the time to record what today is saying.

The older I get, the more life astonishes and humbles me. The heron standing silent in the water, biding its time for a fish. The little wren who settles himself into the corner of our back porch each evening, sleeping all night on that tiny perch. The way the eight-year-old grows, his body bigger and stronger, his character and humanity stretching. Continue reading ““I want to live”” →

Last night two friends were caught in a flash flood as they were driving home. It was dark, and hard to see, and the road was wet from rain. Then they suddenly hit water. Just as quickly their vehicle was swept into the current. When it came to a stop, their SUV was at a tilt, and the driver couldn’t open his door. Water was coming in, and they had to escape and wade through the thigh-deep water to higher ground. Continue reading “Flash Flood” →

I tried to rescue a turtle today. He was hanging out on the double yellow line of a busy two-lane road on which every vehicle travels about 60 mph. Not good. The trouble was that he was having none of it.  Continue reading “The Turtle Rescue that Wasn’t” →

In college, when my faith became much more real to me, I developed a somewhat understanding relationship with pain and suffering. It seemed clear to me that pain was a teacher, sent to help me grow.  Continue reading “Take Courage” →