When I feel great anxiety,
I can’t accomplish anything I’ve set out to do,
I’m overwhelmed with my choices, my options, my tasks;
at this time, always,
when I Remember,
breathe deeply,
center myself in Knowing;
at this time
When I Realize I Am a Part of You,
then profound peace pervades,
and acceptance drapes my soul.
How could I not dream of being in my paternal grandmother’s kitchen today. The roasting, cooking, and making would be intense. My grandmother Janka, as grand maestro conducting her daughter Rozsa, and assorted sisters and their daughters. Easily six, maybe more in her kitchen, working to create a masterpiece meal. The chopping, slicing, paring, sorting and washing, taking out and putting away, placement, preparation, the small, significant decisions of each step, repeated over a lifetime which happen automatically, precisely, exactly, with such total assurance, conviction, that the act of the decision and the carrying it to completion is so ingrained, repeated thousands of times in a lifetime, that knowing how much salt to add, where to make the cut, the slice, knife skill, the apples, honey, raisins, the exact blend for Charoset, the color of the onions, the smell which tells how it tastes, matzo balls able to float in soup, the stirring to the right consistency, the mixing, knowing when it’s done, exactly ready, timing, timing, hot staying hot, timing, all becomes part of who we are, what we do, how we make things happen, how we create. The thousands of unconscious decisions made necessary for creating the masterpiece meal. My grandmother Janka orchestrating.
This meal which is served at the long table, which is dressed in crisp, clean linen, with the finest china, crystal and silver as beautiful buttons and sparkling ornaments to her pressed linen dress. Wine, matzo, food telling our story sprung from slavery leaving captivity knowing again freedom, tasting sweet, bitter, salt. The familiarity and easiness of family, of Csalad, Mishpacha, relatives. Dressed finely as the table. Happy to be together. Grateful for this yearly time to hear our story, share our story, tell our story. We taste together, eat and drink together, enjoy together, laugh together, speak and share together. Eating the masterpiece orchestrated by my grandmother.
This meal made year after year, passed down mother to daughter, father to son, generation one Jew to the next, each partaking of Tradition, Haggadah, Knowledge of Liberation, Divine Intervention, Compassion, Awareness of Misfortune, Gratitude for Freedom. Gratitude for Life. Sharing Awareness, Happiness, Hope.
My grandmother at this table, before Hitler, before losing husband, son, sisters, brother, nieces, nephews, before the Ghetto, before needless death, before mass insanity, mass insanity, war, before leaving all she knew, before her long, deep depression. My grandmother vital, alive, passionate, sure, knowing, supremely capable.
My grandmother who I never knew.
Alice becomes the Heroine of her Life. As we are all charged with becoming. She uses her vivid and enlightened dream world to allow her to shape who she is becoming. And she trusts what her dream world shapes as her essence. She trusts the blossoming of her Self Knowledge, the Shape of her Self, defined, clear, direct, powerful, aware of her Strength.
Alice’s tale is the classic tale of The Hero, but told from a purely Female perspective. The animals manifest the Divine Feminine, all of the protagonists are female, the story is told with only one man whose Soul is revealed, and he is a Mad Hatter. The other men are either powerless, or allies of Alice. Alice slays the vicious Jabberwock, the Red Queen’s Negative Fury. The White Queen is able to not violate her vow of non-violence. She banishes, does not kill, her sister Red Queen’s negativity. Alice is delivered back to Her Life to extend the Power, the Clarity, the Direction given and taken by Her Dream State, by The Divine.
We are all charged with the same task. To trust in our voice, our knowing, our strength, our power, our purpose. To trust our manifestation of Divinity which is our Selves.
When was the last time you were held,
not sexually,
just held, lovingly.
Simple human touch, but more
than a hand on yours,
or on your shoulder; rather
the fullness of an other’s body holding
yours.
The pureness of contact, just holding
and feeling being held. Releasing into
the pureness of being held, becoming
vulnerable. Becoming open.
Letting yourself be held.
When last did the shower of oxytocin and endorphins
cascade down your being releasing in you
the huge, pure sigh of release, letting go.
Pure relaxation.
I would love to give this to you.
You told me, indirectly of course, you told me
when we first met.
You told me you wanted Signs.
Leave Me Signs. You shouted, ever so softly,
I could not hear until now.
Could I comprehend, could I truly understand
the sheer complexity, depth, power,
uniqueness of you.
Would I ever comprehend, would I ever truly understand
the uniqueness of you.
One foot rooted firmly in the distant past of parents’
pain, agony, horrific, inhuman events.
Never forget, become very religious, almost a Rabbi,
carry the sacred traditions, teaching, learning,
lighting candles, blessings, prayers,
always Faith, always Love of God.
One foot in the present, always the rebel,
always surprising, even yourself, with new places,
travel, movies, books, events, new friends,
open to growth, open to Joy.
Always wishing to capture the exact word, phrase,
expression of your always active, always critical mind,
on paper.
Fascination with words, plants, people, earth,
soil for your ever fertile mind, planting, growing,
knowing the patience of cycles.
Your cycles of darkness and despair, the times
your soul buried deep in words, deep in pain,
buried in the dark season of little winter light,
nourished with weekly Sabbath and Torah, tradition,
candles, bread, prayer, Faith.
Knowing the growing light brings new birth.
I will leave you signs of my fascination with you,
of my loving to be around you,
of my loving to talk with you,
of my loving how you listen and comprehend,
seem to want to understand me.
I will leave you signs of my desire to bask in the complexity,
depth, power and uniqueness of you.
One foot rooted firmly in the distant past,
the ghosts of pain, suffering of souls, unimaginable horror;
the other carrying you to a future of quiet rebellion, surprise,
Joy in each and every cell of your being.
I leave you this sign of my desire to want to understand you.
I was explaining to my grand nephew, Alex, who I love so very dearly, that he has exceptionally long fingers because his great grandfather had very long fingers, as are mine. And I told him that his great grandfather was my father; his mother’s grandfather.
As I spoke these words, I realized for the first time, the real meaning of the very short distance in time between a great grandson and his great grandfather. It hit me, this incredibly short span of years, and here I was bridging the gap. It hit me square in the heart. This 12 year old was talking to me, his grand aunt who is his grandmother’s age, and our father is this beautiful boy’s great grandfather.
Then I remembered hearing on NPR, a true story about an embroidered pillow case being donated to the soon to be National Museum of African American History and Culture. This story struck my heart, I cried hearing it; its poignancy has stayed with me. For days now I’ve been thinking about Black women of Maya Angelou’s age. Their great grandmothers would have been slaves.
A young slave hastily embroidered a pillowcase, to give to her young daughter, telling her that she will always be near her, she is precious to her, she will always love her. She will always love her. She knew she was being sold the next morning, and would never see her beloved daughter again. The pillow case was the only way she could be sure her daughter would know she was loved, she had a mother who loved her, who would always love her.
This story has stayed in my heart for days now, and makes me shudder at the sheer dread, fear, pain, heart and soul pain, earthshaking pain, howling pain, unbearable pain that the great grandmothers of women of Maya Angelou’s age went through. Maya and Black Women, African American Women of her age are so very close to a sort of pain, a societal brutality and callousness that we may never appreciate. A ruthless disruption of bonding, the dear human need for continuity, love, bonding. Such ruthless disruption made normal. We may never know the depth of the scaring of lives and souls, as close as a great grandmother.
The Lovers of God are just helpless Lovers of Love. Big weepy saps, open to their hearts and souls, open to their hearts and souls being open. Being open, honest, having integrity, revealing one’s heart. Rumi and Kabir revel in Divine Love, romp in the bed of the Divine, make love to the Divine. (As Keith Jarrett makes love to his piano….) The Lovers of God have intimate talks with Goddess and thank Her often minute by minute for Her blessings, for Life, for Her Love.
I am cleaning my desk, a forever task, but always done just when it most needs cleaning up.
Today I ran across some quotes of mine; never before made public, previously kept only on the scrap of paper used to capture a moment of illumination, imagined illumination.
Here are the snippets:
You are a part of God
and without you,
the Universe would not be whole.
April 18, 2001
Communication is one of the most difficult things humans do, and it’s often done exceedingly poorly.
(date unknown)
There is no perfection in human contact. It is always a series of explorations;
if this isn’t your idea of fun, then you’ll be stuck wanting perfection.
(date unknown)
We are all learning to be more loving, compassionate and graceful humans. In this life or some next.
(date unknown)
As in human geography and trade, so too in human nutrition/food intake:
Convenience and cost trump almost all other considerations, with the exception of taste. Taste, dictated or hopefully, not, trumps most all most of the time.
June 15, 2009
Look for our common Human connections. Look for the nod of recognition.
(early February 2010)
We’ve got to make taking care of ourselves, our beings, our bodies, easier. Convenient, cheap, everywhere we can have, can have the food which takes care of our beings, our bodies, our Selves. As we have it now with food which creates our pain, our disability, our diseases. It has GOT to be easier. It can happen in your lifetime. It must happen in your lifetime.
(fall of 2009)
I do believe that people can be attracted to the negative; who in fact relish, even find highly sexual, evil doers.
(date unknown)
Your pain means that you are not getting something. Either literally such as adequate sleep, or at least adequate nutrition; or emotionally/abstractly you’re not getting something you need.
Thus its so very very easy to feel ourselves lacking/not enough/not good enough, always. Ahhh, but of course. We lack in our basic body needs….then why oh why wouldn’t we also lack in the things which help our mind stay whole, filled, not always half. We lack in seeing our whole beauty.
(date unknown)
My prayer to Amma Ji right before being hugged by this Divine Woman: Let me come to you with Laughter.
(June, 2009)
I think often about the many many dear friends of mine who I love. I realize that the friends who I love the most, who I will ALWAYS love, are the ones who teach me, who allow me to see them, who allow me to be vulnerable with them, who are vulnerable with me. What sacredness, what wonder This Dear Life has to offer.
It is all about inflammation. We hurt, our body hurts. Times are stressful, work is hard and getting harder with increased productivity, co-workers getting fired, increased pressure, no job or looking for job/work, not resting enough, rush, rush, rush. Bills and worry about money; when will I, when can I retire, how will I make it. How will I be able to continue to just function, I hurt so. And all of this body hurt can too quickly become mind and heart and soul hurting. Daily pain is so very destructive and can make a body give up. Can cause depression, emotional giving up.
The inflammation causes immune cellular release (our immune system is called in to help quell the inflammation) and this actually makes the burning and pain worse. And makes us feel terrible. More than half of why we feel so terrible with a cold/flu/virus is because the immune system throws out funky molecules which cause us to feel bad. The same process happens with chronic inflammation. With chronic inflammation, our immune system is always actively engaged, thus always releasing, spitting out pain, and fatigue causing molecules.
The immune process is costly. It keeps us alive, but often at a very dear price: dreadful pain. And when the immune process is continually turned on, with chronic inflammation, it is dreadful, daily pain. Oh, it’s so very much a vicious cycle.
Inflammation causes our immune system to be hyper-vigilant, to fight, and release those substances which make us hurt more, burn more; make us feel weak, and sick, and not want to get up out of our chairs. So we sit. We become less active. We buy the Snuggly to allow us to sit more in warmth, and stay. Often for hours. Often watching TV, and eating.
And guess what we’re eating? Yes, but of course. We’re eating the very thing which causes the inflammation in the first place. Oh my Goddess Divine! No! I’m eating the thing which is causing the inflammation which is causing my fatigue, my burning, my pain, my need for pills, and my not wanting to do much of anything, ‘cept sit, and watch, and eat. Sex is not even considered, and the fatigue makes true effort at communication with my partner, spouse, love of my life, a chore. It means being present, and oh I so do not wish to be present. Cause present hurts. Real physical pain. Not to mention the pain of worry about money, bills, job, no job, rejection, rejection, lots of worry. And the pills don’t help, at least not for long enough. There’s always that place of wearing off before the next one/two/three kick in. So the watching, and eating is a wonderful way to not be present. To not be conscious; of my body, of my worries. If I am a Margaret, I use my out of body time to watch, eat, and to create. She would always create, always create art, in its deepest sense. Layered with meaning, as my new friend loves to say (thus notice when it is so layered). So you may be a Margaret type, and create your passions as you sit, and watch, and eat, and create. And tune out your pain of inflammation.
Know that this inflammation, this pain caused by inflammation leads to the sitting, not moving, not moving much at all, the pills, and watching, and eating and lo! outgrowing our clothes, our chairs, our lives. We outgrow our lives; our lives get shortened. The more we do not like to rise from sitting, the more we have arthritis, diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, gastro-intestinal disorders, all pain, pain; and the most dreaded, cancer. Oh, and more Alzheimer’s too. If we don’t die from a “lifestyle disease” exacerbated by, caused by inflammation, we may not have our mind. We have learned in the last twenty or so years that inflammation is the true, the primary culprit in all of the diseases which make us hurt, make our families hurt, give us pain, give us pills, more pills, then even more pills, and not want to move, thus sit, and watch, and eat. And need more pills.
Now wouldn’t one think that we’d try to eliminate this inflammation, and its etiology (its cause) in the same way we eliminated polio and smallpox. We saw illness, pain, suffering, and we found out how to release it from our world. (Goddess please, allow us to have the collective will to eliminate the other scourges which plague the developing world.)
One would think. Wouldn’t one. A rational, reasonable one would think so. Would think that we’d figure out how to eliminate it/release it from our world. For the common good, for compassion for those who suffer tremendously from its ill effects. For better quality of life, for less costly medical care, for saving money, for saving lives, for saving lives.
Sigh. Big sigh. We do know what causes this plague of inflammation (thus what causes the plague of diabetes, obesity, high blood pressure, heart disease, gastro-intestinal ills, Alzheimer’s, and the most dreaded, cancer). But we have not as yet the collective will to truly create change. And it will take the same collective will, public effort, tremendous effort to effect a decrease in inflammation as it took to create a decrease in tobacco smoke in the public environment. It took, what, easily fifty years to create a world where smoking a cigarette in a public, enclosed environment is seen for what it is: deadly.
Inflammation’s cause is in the food we have created in the past sixty years, the non-food substances (Thank You Michael Pollan) which are our food. Have become more and more our food in the past sixty years; because this non-food, or highly refined food, or too salty food, or too sweet/sugary food, and certainly much much too fatty food has become our staple. This food because of it’s too much refinement, salt, sugary, fatty manner is what is the cause of our inflammation. Yes. No kidding. The research is in. Has been for at least the past twenty years.
What causes inflammation is common knowledge (common for the people in the medical industry, and the pharmaceutical industry). In fact the pharmaceutical industry has worked lo these many years to bring us pills which can quell our fire; help turn down the heat, the pain of our inflammation. Advil, Aleve, Motrin, ibuprofen, cox-2 inhibitors (Celebrex), Aspirin, Tylenol, oh so many pill ways to get rid of our pain, caused by our inflammation, caused by what we eat. The food which we’ve made cheaply; made filling; easy to get; easy to find; this everywhere food. It lures; it calls. It tells us we can feed and have FUN, and a SNACK, and more FUN, and HAPPY, and TAKE A BREAK from our oh so very stressful lives. We can feed and have a secret pleasure. Feed our secret pleasure. And cheaply. What FUN.
These folks know that the large amount of omega 6 fats used to make this cheap, fun, filling, highly refined, oh so very easy to find food, combined with the excess salt, sugar, the saturated fats, the trans fats, all this, in the food we eat, regularly, routinely, most every day or more; this cheap, ubiquitous food, so convenient, so engineered for company profit, company profit, is exactly what causes our inflammation.
Yep, it’s this very food, this everywhere food, this ever-lasting/long lived, highly engineered food which causes our inflammation, our pain, our disease, our pill taking, wall street’s portfolios to grow, entire industries to flourish, employ people, pay professionals lots of money to prescribe more pills, cause no one pays them to tell the truth. No one pays the doctor to tell people to not eat the regularly consumed cheap, highly refined, too fatty, salty, sugary food which causes our ills. They get paid to tell us to take our pills. Take our pills. And the doctor is not even trained to talk about food. Where would she begin? Eat more fruit and vegetables. Yes, we all know eat more fruit and vegetables. Ha! Exactly how’s that done? When the fruit and vegetables are not cheap, and Oh My Goddess, this way to eat is so expensive, and not convenient. Not at all convenient. And people don’t want the truth about their food.
I want to eat what I want. No one’s gonna tell me what I can eat. It’s my choice. It’s my right. And I sure as heck like that it’s cheap, and easy to find, convenient. I like that. And it tastes good. They’ve got the right combination of refinement/fat/salt/sugar, artificial flavors to keep me coming back. Engineered to keep me wanting more. Wanting more.
But I don’t want this pain of inflammation. I’m tired and hurting and growing old before my time, and fat. I can’t move like I used to.
But I certainly don’t want the pain of that healthy food that must be cooked, isn’t easy, is hard to find, and I’ve got to learn to cook it, then clean up, and Oh My Goddess, shop for it. And watch it rot in the fridge cause as well meaning as I was, I never ate it.
What’s a girl to do?