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A Recipe for Wisdom

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“I do not believe that sheer suffering teaches. If suffering alone taught, all the world would be wise, since everyone suffers. To suffering must be added mourning, understanding, patience, love, openness, and the willingness to remain vulnerable.” -Anne Morrow Lindbergh, A Gift from the Sea

If suffering alone did teach, we would be so very wise right now, wouldn’t we? For it feels as if this year gone by has delivered more than its fair share of suffering. 

My own world was rocked with suffering when my mother died in March. By late summer, I had lost count of all the people in my circle who also lost a parent this year. (At last count it was 22, and I think the final sum must be well over 30.) I lost a younger friend to cancer, and an even younger one to suicide. Not to mention a host of celebrities who died in 2016. 

The Greatest Gift

I’ve had so many friends offering comfort for me this Christmas, the first one without my mom. The first one for us without any living parents. For our tiny little family it means the entire circle consists of 7 of us:  Jim and I, Brian, Nantana, Connor, and of course, Magic and Molly. But it’s quality that counts, not quantity, and I couldn’t ask for six more wonderful living beings around the table of my life.

Mending

“ Mend the parts of the world that are within your reach. Anything you do from the soulful self will help lighten the burdens of the world. You have no idea what the smallest word, the tiniest generosity, can cause to be set in motion.” --Clarissa Pinkola Estes

My dog Magic has a favorite stuffed toy named Baby that lived at my mom’s house for many years. Magic, like most dogs, loves to play tug-of-war with his toys. He like to grab them and shake them fiercely. He likes to chomp on them until he finds the hidden squeaker, and then squeak it incessantly. (He still does this, even though he’s now deaf as a stone.) 

Periodically, small rips and tears appear in Baby and his stuffing starts to spill out. My mom regularly stitched them up, and Baby has as many scars as prizefighter. Doesn’t matter to Magic - he goes right back to tugging, shaking, and chomping with abandon. And we go right on mending, because Baby is so important to Magic.

Let it Begin With Me

“Ultimately we have just one moral duty: to reclaim large areas of peace in ourselves, more and more peace, and to reflect it toward others. And the more peace these is in us, the more peace there will also be in our troubled world.” -Etty Hillesum

 I came of age in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, a time of great social unrest in this nation. Peace was the word on every young person’s lips, mine included.  I was in my mid-teen’s during those years, just feeling my oats, using the written word to penetrate a lifelong shell of mild-mannered shyness.  As editor of our school paper, I called for student participation in the Moratorium, a nationwide walkout to protest the Vietnam War.  I encouraged my history teacher to assign letter writing to our elected officials in which we could express our views on civil rights, the Arab-Palestinian conflict, the War. Because I had always been a “good girl,” and had always stayed within the bounds of good grades and good behavior, my teachers were very generous with their support. 

In those years, I read the newspaper every day, watched the TV news with combinations of excitement and righteous indignation. I yearned to be one of those marching, carrying signs, making an outward statement. But my young age, my sheltered life, my innate introverted nature  - all of those things kept my emerging activism at bay. I spent several years in a state of perpetual inner agitation, relieved only by my incessant writing about it.