Almost every day, I am called on to make some spiritual decisions about my life.
Death can be about medicine and suffering, or it be about the nature of life. Health can be about pills and doctors or procedures, or it can be a more spiritual process that involves peace, faith. Aging can be about loss and medications, or it can be a profoundly humbling, beautiful way of life. The spiritual way is a different way to look at things, an isolating way, never more so than at Christmas, when we are nearly overwhelmed by messages about gifts, bargains, news, ads, and so many overwhelming ideas about what Christmas means.
Most of us know what Christmas means, yet it sometimes feels you have to crawl into a hole by yourself to find it or remember it. We are taught to see life as a form of combat, a struggle and the inevitable phases of life as sorrows. We are taught to tell sad stories and swim in a sea of complaints. The government. Wall Street. The weather. The prices of gas. The price of good. The global economy. Congress. Them. What they are doing to us. These laments are everywhere, and if you don’t share them or listen to them, it is sometimes true that you feel alone and disconnected. What is wrong with me? Why do I see the world so differently that the great chorus of voices around me?
A spiritual life is very unnatural for me, and yet as I try to live more deeply within a spiritual life, nothing has ever seemed more comfortable. I think for me the choice is simple. I can watch the news, or I can look for the joy, color, love and wonder that is everywhere. I can age their way, downsize and take my pills, and shrink my expectations for life into a thimble, or I can set out to find love and meaning. I can buy diapers or I can have sex. I can complain about publishing, or I can answer the creative spark and tell my stories, any way I can. I can squawk about technology and Facebook or I can understand it and use both to advance my work and tell my stories.
For me, the spiritual path is not about lamenting life, but seeking to understand what it means. I sometimes succeed, and I often fail, but it is very true, I think, what they say. It isn’t about where you end up, but how you make the trip. I am on the way.
Christmas for me is a time of celebration, connection, and renewal. I hear stories of sparkle and light. My head is filled with sweet memories and bright hopes for the future. I wish everyone I see and all of you a happy holiday, and and every grateful smile back is a sweet breath, into my lungs and all the way down to my heart.