New Year's Expectations

I heard a good sermon Sunday morning.  The Pastor introduced the topic at Children's Time when he asked the little ones gathered around him if they got what they expected for Christmas.  He got a resounding chorus of YES!! and each child eagerly told him what he or she had received.  Then he asked if anyone received a gift they didn't expect?  To the now quiet perplexed children, he went on to say unexpected gifts were often more exciting.  The preacher-man opened his grown up sermon with the bold statement "expectations are premeditated resentments."  In our culture of entitlement, we expect a great deal and take very many precious things for granted.  But I don't think he was referring to clean water, safe food, good public health, public safety and the like.  No, he was speaking about more personal expectations. Usually expectations are connected with judgments (what we like or dislike, what is good or bad). An example came quickly to mind--when I give a gift, I expect to receive a thank you and if I don't receive any thanks then I am sorely disappointed.  Judgement kicks in and I doubt whether I chose the right gift.  My unmet expectation was a cause of my resentment.

My mind wandered listening to the sermon to consider how expectations and resolutions (the kind we make this time of year) are similar.   A resolution is like an expectation we place on ourselves to make some change.  A popular resolution/expectation is to take off those holiday extra pounds.  Those who regularly work-out know the crowding at the gym only lasts a couple of weeks into January and then it returns to normal.  It is very human to fail with these kind of resolutions year after year.  I like better the idea of letting go of expectations (and resolutions) because letting go forces me into a state of open-mindedness that demands self-awareness.  It is self-awareness that will lead to making changes.   My resolution this year will be to let go of expectations and to watch with clear eyes to see what happens.  Watching and looking deeply with firm hope in the goodness of God,   it just might be exciting.

The Day after Christmas

This morning is quiet and sunny, a contrast to yesterday's low gray sky and intense excitement.  Christmas Day centered around the children.  After a long month of measured anticipation, the morning began at high fever pitch.  Presents were heaped high under the tree and late Christmas Eve, Santa brought  more presents which were ripped open with squeals of joy.  It took us all morning to open the gifts we shared with each other-thoughtfully, carefully chosen gifts.  It was great sipping coffee, watching the others be pleased with  gifts, watching the girls bounce off the walls and feasting on one superb meal after the other.  Being in Michigan, for the first time we missed Arne, Karna and Miriam being with us.  Two long Facetime calls didn't fill the gap.  Christmas was a day of abundance: abundance of love, abundance of joy and excitement and abundance of peaceful family time.  How fortunate we are and grateful!

Waiting for Christmas

I haven't really waited for Christmas for years and years.  Usually there is so much to do, I'm not conscious of waiting.  This year we are traveling to be with the family in Michigan and have experienced some serious waiting at the San Francisco airport.  Ground fog was the cause of our 8 hour delay.  While the inbound plane was held circling, waiting for the fog to lift, it ran short of fuel and was diverted to San Jose, where it waited on the ground for 4 hours.  To top it off, just as we were set to finally board, the pilot and crew announced they had worked 20 minutes over their hourly limit and we had 3 more hours to wait for the new pilot and crew.  We missed the flight to Lansing and have to wait until the same flight the next day.

The first thing I noticed as I reflected on  this long wait was that we are not in control.  At first the time passed slowly and soon my usual portion of patient waiting was running low.  Children were crying, people playing with their IPhones.  I decided to go inside to my "happy place" where I am peaceful.  There, I just go with the flow, even when the flow is blocked.  There I don't move toward boredom or stress.  The issue, I decide, is how I respond with an unexpected long wait at the airport.   My choice is whether I get upset, stressed or not.  I am peaceful.  I imagine that people spend big bucks to go on vacation to find a place where they aren't stressed.  I recognize I'm in a Zen like state, here at the airport and it was free for my choosing.   Other people are choosing peace as well.  I notice people engrossed in long conversations or just sitting back watching.  I watch and remember that watching is one of the chief tasks of Advent, waiting and watching for the coming of Christ with us.  Christ, the new light of higher consciousness, is to come.  I find in this time of waiting, awareness of our inter-connectedness to each other, to the natural world and when I expand to the Universe.  I see the little pieces of light in other people and if I sink deeply into my Zen state, I become aware of the love that is around and within us.  Waiting..........how hard it is to wait and yet in my very waiting I find the gifts of the season.

Beautiful Christmas

Arne and Karna and the grandkids came up this afternoon.  We babysat the little ones while the parents went to a Berkeley Rep play about Molly Ivins.  It was a perfect day.  We decorated a gingerbread house from Trader Joe's.  It worked out amazingly well considering it was a 2 year old and a 4 year old and gramma doing the work.  While the frosting got hard enough to hold the house together, we went to the Tilden Park Merry-Go-Round.  Made in 1911, it shone with the laughter and love of endless children, grandparents and parents.  Elsa ran round and round the platform looking for the perfect horse and climbed up on it.  I fell behind, but caught up with her in time to climb on the next horse.  We held on our brass poles and the horses went up and down and round and round.  The Merry-Go-Round goes 5 mph which seems very fast indeed.  After popcorn, we headed south to the Steam Train.  Blessed with great parking karma, the train was just ready to go when we arrived and got the last 4 seats together.  It was so much fun, cheering the steamy bursts from the engine, seeking the forest decorations and just riding in the open cars.  Elsa was entranced with the beauty of the forest, decorated with ornaments and snowflakes and icicles.  We got home in time to put the candy on the gingerbread house and start the dinner.  I sat back and smiled, watching the chaos at the dinner table and the opening of presents.  It was perfect, chaotic, messy and just the way the family dinners are.  We feel blessed.

Peeling the Onion

This morning in my quiet time, I thought about what I needed to do to prepare for Christmas.  I don't mean what's on the "to do" list, all those tasks that push us into a frenzy this time of year, rather I mean how to prepare one's heart to be open to receive the spiritual gifts of this season.  They tend to get forgotten and lost in the cultural craziness that Christmas has become.  What came to mind, surprised me.  I need to forgive.  Forgiveness is a spiritual practice one must do over and over, like cleaning a house.  Sometimes it seems like peeling an onion, layer after layer to forgive.   It didn't take me long to come up with four names.  I wrote down the names in my journal and thought about what it was that I needed to forgive.  Set an intention to forgive, to let go and do it again and again.  Bishop Tutu has a new book out (The Book of Forgiving) which I find very helpful in outlining a process of the journey of forgiving.  I know it is good for me, it's just so hard to do.  True forgiveness is unconditional and freeing.  It wipes away the hard crusty barriers in one's heart so it is clear and possible to receive the love that is the true meaning of Christmas.  Give yourself the gift of forgiveness practice this season.  I guarantee you'll see more light and be able to receive more love.

Bewick's Wren

This morning I saw a wren
in the apple tree, hidden
deep inside the branches,
gleaning insects
from the damp dark bark.
Its silent twitter
brought joy to my morning,
blessing to my day and I sank
into my morning meditation smiling.

The Christmas Bird Count

   Yesterday Bob and I participated in the Audobon's 115th Christmas Bird Count.  The East Bay group was further subdivided to at least 20 groups with each group divided yet again into smaller groups that scoured the ponds, bushes, forests and fields for birds counting both species and numbers.      
One doesn't have to be an expert, but a positive attitude is a must.  The first stalwart group met at 2:30 am to go owling and identified four different kinds of owls in the Claremont Canyon and Redwood Park including a long earred owl.  Bob joined at dawn and I joined at 9:30 am.  Our group first went to a forest off Grizzly Peak.  It was eerily silent, damp and very green with red toadstools dotting the mossy fern covered duff but there wasn't a bird to be seen or heard.  So walking on through the "burned area" neighborhood, (from the 1991 Oakland Hills fire), we found only a few usual suspects.   Driving on deeper into the canyon, we walked a neighborhood by a stream.  Again only a few birds until suddenly we came upon a bird party, oh joy (lots of birds feeding together in a thicket). It was like a heavenly treasure hunt.  There were many species including an Anna's hummingbird, wrentits in clear view, a hermit thrush, juncos, white crowned sparrows, towhees (both California and spotted) and noisy Stellar's jays and scrub jays.  We joined our other subgroups for lunch at Lake Temescal and gleaned from the data what birds we hadn't yet seen and we were reassigned and set out once.  It was a joy to hunt the paths of Lake Temescal for birds because we had so many different habitats.  There were big birds in the water (green herons, night herons and great blue herons, plus many cormorants and little birds hiding in the forests.  We came across a couple of more bird parties and caught the excitement of the birds.  As we were leaving the area, right on the grassy field right in front of us, were a couple of varied thrushes.  It was a very good day and much fun to participate in this glorious old tradition.  I couldn't help but delight being a part of the web of all living creatures, great and small.  At the dinner, all the groups reported their findings and in the East Bay, 175 different species were seen.  What an amazing place in which we live.

Preparing for Christmas

It's the time of year we get busy, preparing for Christmas.  There is always so much extra to do:  write the holiday cards, shop for presents, wrap and mail packages (I know much of this can be eased by on-line shopping but one still has to find time to do it), bake special treats, and clean and prepare the house for visitors.  All this, plus everything else one usually does.   This year, I'm doing almost none of that.  For the very first time, the family won't be coming home to Berkeley this year.  Erik has moved to England and we're going to Michigan to spend the holidays with Paul and his family.  Arne and Karna have a free Christmas Eve and will go to the SF Nutcracker and be with her family.  It's so quiet around here I'm reminded of a time years ago when I was still teaching at College Prep and at the same time attending Pacific School of Religion.  The culture of CPS was one of hard work and much stress, the more one could do, the better it was.  Everyone rushed around with intense frowning faces (as I remember) and one day I decided to just shed the frown and walk slowly, smiling, noticing the blue sky.  People thought I'd opted out of my work, that I was easing off,  but I wasn't.  I just decided to stop rushing around.  The blue sky, the students, all were beautiful, if I took time to notice.  Now in my life, I'm fully retired and the family isn't coming to visit this Christmas.  There is time to notice what is happening, but it is hard not to feel I'm missing something, because I'm not rushing around.  I have space in my life and time.  It's very counter-cultural to not be busy.  Oh, I could find things to do, to take on the affect of busyness, but I am determined not to.  My minister said I am like Mary (from the Biblical story of Jesus's friends, Mary and Martha).  I am in a Mary state of being and I like it.  It's more about attitude than how much one has to do.  Everyone has a bit of the contemplative in them.  Take a breath, and look around.  There is joy to be had in every moment, if one takes the time to notice.  

Archangel Michael

There have been big demonstrations in Berkeley on both Saturday and Sunday protesting police violence against blacks.  As many as 500 gathered at Sproul Plaza on UC Berkley campus and marched in a mostly peaceful and nonviolent way to Berkeley police headquarters, then to freeways to block traffic and when they were forced off the freeway back down Telegraph toward the Berkeley campus.  Saturday night police used tear gas to break up the crowd only a block from my church near the Berkeley campus.  These protests are so close to home that I cannot ignore them.  On the one hand, I support a unified response against racial profiling and continued excessive violence by white police officers against black men.   I understand the anger about the lack of indictments by grand juries in Missouri and New York.  Police have a complex and difficult job in our increasing armed society.  No matter how peaceful I might be, the truth is that the U. S.is a violent society.  Our history is violent.  We are the world's largest arms dealer.  The Defense budget is larger than most countries budgets.  We have been at war somewhere for much of the last hundred years and we have more guns per capita than any other country.  None of that excuses the police from the violent actions we saw in the deaths of Michael Brown or Eric Garner.  There is no question, as is said, every life matters.  I have been impressed with the actions of Michael Brown's grieving parents.  First, pleading with demonstrators in Ferguson and beyond for peaceful nonviolent demonstrations and later calling for a law requiring all police to wear body cameras and proposing the name for this law to be Michael Brown law.  The pertinent question is what will I do?

Saturday, even as protestors were gathering in Berkeley, I was at a church Advent retreat up at a farm in the hills of Sonoma.  Among our activities of reflecting on what it means for the Spirit to be enfleshed (Advent theme).  We prayed, reflected, even made crafty angels.  I had a vision for my angel to be Archangel Michael (I wasn't even sure there was such a thing, but I thought there should be).  The angel came together quickly for me, with bright red wings and garments of bright red and blue and a golden  halo.  Others remarked how artistic I was, but it was just from my vision.  I found there is an Archangel Michael in Christian, Jewish and Islamic traditions.  The name means "he who is like God".  This Chief Messenger chief call is for us to healthy changes.  This Advent I consider what changes I can make.  I am called to further study and practice of non-violence.  Protesting raises awareness but our society must acknowledge our violent ways and begin to change.   We have so much to do.  The season of Advent calls us to hope.  This Advent it is hope that empowers me to action.

Lighting candles

This is the season to light candles,  on the dinner table, in the Advent wreath, in the living room or even on the Christmas tree.  We learned to do that in Denmark long ago, but sadly don't do it any more.  Now in our living room now we've got 4 different candelabras.  Twelve candles to light if we wanted to.  Since Bob took up welding horseshoes into a great variety of creative shapes, we've had many objects d'art decorating our living space.  Lighting candles reminds me of my all time favorite Christmas poem by Howard Thurman--I Will Light Candles this Christmas:
I will light Candles this Christmas;
Candles of joy despite all sadness,
Candles of hope where despair keeps watch,
Candles of courage for fears ever present,

Candles of peace for tempest-tossed days,
Candles of grace to ease heavy burdens,
Candles of love to inspire all my living.
Candles that will burn all the year long.

Lighting candles is such a positive thing to do.  The light dissipates seasonal darkness, makes any place softer, more cosy.  We too have light in us, light that shines out especially from our eyes and faces.  When we focus on joy, hope, courage, peace, grace and love, our light shines brightly out for others to see.  On these days of waiting before Christmas, light  a candle and read this poem.  I guarantee it will brighten your space and help your light to shine.

A Day with a Two-year old

The phone rang at 7:30 this morning.  It was Arne, Liam had a fever last night, could we possibly watch him today?  And so I drove to the Kaiser Center in Oakland where Arne works, to pick up Liam.  "He'll probably sleep a lot, as he was up most of the night." said Arne.  Well, he didn't.  He never stopped all day like an Energizer Bunny.  I spent the day following him around, reading stories, watching him with wonder.  He moved the stool over to switch plates and turned on every light in our house.  He flick the switch and look up to see the light shining brightly and laugh.  Nothing like sitting in front of a front loading washing machine in the garage watching the clothes rapturously as they go round and round.  He loves to be outside, especially exploring the garden.  He remembered collecting apples from the apple tree, went over to it looking up and saying apple, apple?  And then he brought me the broom and indicated I ought to be sweeping up the fallen leaves.  When he found a bulb above ground,  he knew it was clearly out of place and it should be planted.  The little guy never stopped.  After lunch, I tried every ploy to get him to lie down with his "cozies", but he smartly declined all my attempts.  Finally at 3:45, he let me read him another book.  This time, his head began to roll around on his shoulders, just like his grandfather's does, and he fell into a deep deep sleep.  His head heavy on my shoulder, I thought I don't ever want to move.  Spiritually it is often said, we are to be, not rushing around, not doing this and that and I thought, this is it, this is just being and I don't want it to ever stop.  I want just to be in this place with this precious child sleeping against me.  Maybe this is what it is all about, being.  I was deeply blessed, peaceful and very happy.

Not a missionary

Last Spring, longing a way to  do something to help others, I asked my minister if she knew any places where I might serve.  She  had just gotten an email from a NGO the church has been supporting for years asking for volunteers.  She told me about this and I read the website, the mission statement and began to get inspired by the work being done.  I was attracted to the philosophy of the organization that emphasized the mutuality of the work, that I would receive as I gave.  It wasn't the traditional mission, which I couldn't abide.  I prayed and felt this might be just what I'd been wanting to do.  The NGO head said I needed to come over to S. Africa and with my feet on the ground, see what they do and where I might fit in.  And so began my African adventure.  I read and read as many books as I could get my hands one.  I was impressed with the S.African journey to independence and the openness of race relations.  The church's African Ministry team met with me, shared stories of their trip and the blessed my journey.  I blogged while there mostly so the Ministry team could follow my journey  http://www.julianneinsouthafrica.blogspot.com.  I invite you to check out my experience there.  While the experience was full, it wasn't what I expected.  The organization didn't meet my expectations and I found too much violence in the culture.  Capetown is an incredibly beautiful place, the I came home with clarity that this opportunity was not for me, absolutely.  With time, I became only more sure, I would not be going to S. Africa.  It became clear to me that the work that I saw that needed to be done, was work that white S. Africans need to do, not me.   That should have been the end of it, but I continued to feel badly that I had gone so far, invested my time, energy and money in what turned out to be not for me.  I beat myself up, over and over.  But my mind never changed.  And then today I received an email that the NGO was closing down, the founder had left the organization.  My instincts had been spot-on.  Why do I doubt such clarity as came to me?  I still have the desire to be of service, but feel I want to look closer to home.  There is plenty of places right around Berkeley, perhaps not as exciting, but with just as much need.  Trust myself is the lesson.