Preparation
Mornings have turned colder here in the desert, and what we call winter has at last arrived. Time for sweatpants and a robe when I get up, and in the evening, even if the temperature still climbs into the mid-70s and even into the 80s now and then.
I grow sluggish when the weather turns cold, when the sun isn't there to pull me out of bed on early mornings. I still wake up, partly from habit and partly because I'm passing into that age when I don't seem to be able to sleep late anymore; if I'm still in bed at 7:30, that's "sleeping in." But partly the season slows me down--the holiday season, I mean. My childhood memories of this time of year aren't exactly Norman Rockwell, but even more than that what people do now with the holidays discourages me.
This is my cue to go on about commercialism, the spirit of Christmas, blah, blah, blah. But I don't have anything to say that you can't get from "A Charlie Brown Christmas," and there you get to watch Pigpen and his trademark cloud of dust. So I'll spare everyone my self-righteousness.
Since I can't personally transform the holiday season, I've decided that winter might not be a bad time to work on transforming myself. I've always been a believer in rituals as something that defines who we are. Maybe it's the former altar boy in me. Who am I kidding? Of course it's the former altar boy in me. I don't mean the big rituals or ceremonies, like graduation or marriage or family getting together at Thanksgiving, though those are important if the spirit behind them is real.
But the really important rituals, I think, occupy the small corners of our daily lives. Like the arrival of the Maryknoll missionary magazine my mother used get when I was a boy. I supposed they did as much as anything to shape my spirituality. Or, in a negative sense, the automatic way I've gotten into of turning on my television as soon as I get home. Those little rituals make a path--or a rut--bit by bit: smoothing the grass here, pushing back the branches there, evening the dirt with each footfall.
I've been silent on the blog during the past few weeks, in a funk, in a slump. About a week ago, I decided I need to get deliberate. So I'm meditating each morning, setting a goal of some exercise each day, getting to bed by 10:30, proscribing time in front of the computer or my notebook or a blank pad--not time that I'll necessary write, but time when I won't do anything else. I'm trying, through these small, repeated acts, to get ready for something.
Actually, that's what the season is supposed to be about. In the deepening winter (at least in the northern hemisphere; we forget that for many people in the world, Christmas comes at midsummer or in tropical heat), the Advent rituals of my Catholic childhood were about hope. They were about preparation for the time when more would be possible. So I'm trying to get ready, in all the small ways that matter most. Trying to ready my heart and mind and body for where I'm supposed to turn next.
I grow sluggish when the weather turns cold, when the sun isn't there to pull me out of bed on early mornings. I still wake up, partly from habit and partly because I'm passing into that age when I don't seem to be able to sleep late anymore; if I'm still in bed at 7:30, that's "sleeping in." But partly the season slows me down--the holiday season, I mean. My childhood memories of this time of year aren't exactly Norman Rockwell, but even more than that what people do now with the holidays discourages me.
This is my cue to go on about commercialism, the spirit of Christmas, blah, blah, blah. But I don't have anything to say that you can't get from "A Charlie Brown Christmas," and there you get to watch Pigpen and his trademark cloud of dust. So I'll spare everyone my self-righteousness.
Since I can't personally transform the holiday season, I've decided that winter might not be a bad time to work on transforming myself. I've always been a believer in rituals as something that defines who we are. Maybe it's the former altar boy in me. Who am I kidding? Of course it's the former altar boy in me. I don't mean the big rituals or ceremonies, like graduation or marriage or family getting together at Thanksgiving, though those are important if the spirit behind them is real.
But the really important rituals, I think, occupy the small corners of our daily lives. Like the arrival of the Maryknoll missionary magazine my mother used get when I was a boy. I supposed they did as much as anything to shape my spirituality. Or, in a negative sense, the automatic way I've gotten into of turning on my television as soon as I get home. Those little rituals make a path--or a rut--bit by bit: smoothing the grass here, pushing back the branches there, evening the dirt with each footfall.
I've been silent on the blog during the past few weeks, in a funk, in a slump. About a week ago, I decided I need to get deliberate. So I'm meditating each morning, setting a goal of some exercise each day, getting to bed by 10:30, proscribing time in front of the computer or my notebook or a blank pad--not time that I'll necessary write, but time when I won't do anything else. I'm trying, through these small, repeated acts, to get ready for something.
Actually, that's what the season is supposed to be about. In the deepening winter (at least in the northern hemisphere; we forget that for many people in the world, Christmas comes at midsummer or in tropical heat), the Advent rituals of my Catholic childhood were about hope. They were about preparation for the time when more would be possible. So I'm trying to get ready, in all the small ways that matter most. Trying to ready my heart and mind and body for where I'm supposed to turn next.
posted by A Pilgrim at 6:20 AM
2 Comments:
Keep going. Keep looking at the blank pad. Keep putting pen to paper. You have some things to say.
where are you?????
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