Blue Poinsettia

Last night I met one of my favorite groups of friends for dinner. We all used to work together once, and now we have scattered, but somehow have managed to remain a part of each other's lives. Last night was not our best. This seems to be a hard time of year for this group. I couldn't help but feel that we were all a little bit delicate, as we talked about the tattered yarn of our mental and physical well-being.
We went around the table and gave the specifics of our troubles. We offered each other serious as well as funny advice. We laughed and cried for each other. I continued to laugh and cry for these friends as I drove myself home.

We were talking about how this time of year can be so depressing, especially if you are facing a change-your-life crisis. Then one friend mentioned how she saw a woman in the grocery store buying a Poinsettia plant, painted blue, and sprinkled with glitter. We laughed and laughed about this ridiculous decoration. How ugly it must look in her house, and how she is going to find that damn glitter has gotten everywhere. What a stupid purchase!

This morning I went to the grocery store, an experience that sucked the very life out of me. As I slowly recover, I can't help but think about the woman and the blue Poinsettia. Now I am thinking she was on to something. Perhaps she was just like me, beginning her day, humming Carol of the Bells, only to find that the Christmas spirit seeped out of her as soon as she stepped into the world. As she sat in traffic, she noticed the abundance of deflated over-sized snow globes that littered the brown lawns. In the gray Cleveland morning, she could detect every mis-stringing of Christmas lights, every sign that blared "SALE" in the store windows. By the time she reached the grocery store, she could barely react to the drawn faces and quick, annoyed pace of every human. Then she saw it. Something that represented exactly how she felt. A Poinsettia plant, painted blue, sprinkled with glitter. Fake and in-your-face ridiculous, and she just had to own it.

Now I imagine that plant sits on a main table in her living room. Maybe when she glances at it, she chuckles, and her heart opens up the way it should this time of year. She remembers that she is human, that there is no way she is in control of this crazy puppet show we call life. She forgives herself for falling victim to that craziness. She sees for some reason this year, we have gone overboard with trying to cover up what is real with what is bizarre, false and flashy. And in that plant, she sees IT, what IS real: We are humans, we hurt, we are not in control...we need to find a faith in something, anything, and give it everything we have. Even if this means you chuckle in the direction of a crazy plant a few times a day. Anything. Let go to it. Surrender your control.
Out of the darkness comes a great light.

Today I am no longer laughing at that woman and her blue Poinsettia. I am simply wishing I had found one too.

Wild Geese by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

As I grow older and more aware, this time of year becomes more and more confusing to me. People rushing, planning, planning to rush, planing ahead, scheduling, looking ahead. My spiritual teachers tell me that this should be a time of joyful anticipation as well. Out of the darkness comes a great light.

Yet don't you find it to be terribly conflicting? The holidays always become a terrible antithesis to my desire to be present in the now. I am finding that for most people this time of year does conjure up feelings of dread and loneliness. Some people find they need to mourn a lost loved one all over again, or a lost period of life, such as childhood. I listen to random conversations in public only to hear over and over again that someone just needs "to get through" the next month.

I also cannot bear the commercials on TV. Everything that is shown is geared to make you want something. Something physical. Something brighter, bigger and better.
The only thing that saves my spirit is a feeling of connectedness. As Mary Oliver says, I don't have to be good, or walk on my knees during this season. I am the person who wants better things, I am the person who mourns for a lost one, and plans are invading my calender even though I vowed them away this year.

No matter who we are during the holiday season, if you just look up, you will find yourself in someone. Like it or not, we can't rush ourselves out of the tapestry of hope. So we wait. In not-so-quiet (or sober) anticipation, for the light out of the darkness that announces our place in the family of things.