Day Three 2016

Last week I told a friend I was feeling haunted.  I’m walking through this holiday season and everywhere I’m feeling the presence of people I have known and that are now gone.  This feeling of melancholy is not unfamiliar, it just hurts that there are so many recent losses.  I talked about Geraldine yesterday, but there is also my cousin Chris who passed this summer, and the losses my friends have experienced this year, Heather’s father, Tammy’s mom, Renee’s dad, Amy & Erica’s grandfather, and on and on.

These are not my losses, I am not the person most affected by these peoples absence. But I am carrying around sorrow for the people who are.   

I don’t want this to be one of those Christmases.  I know there is Joy, and there is Hope, and I am looking it.  I think about my Mom, and I can hear her voice saying “I know”, but what I don’t hear is her telling me what to do, how to fix this.

I’ve been reading Rumi tonight.  Maybe a 13^th Century Sunni Muslim Sufi mystic poet and theologian isn’t the best way to find my back to some ‘Christmas Joy’ but it is helping me find some peace.

Be grateful for whatever comes.

Because each has been sent

as a guide from beyond.

Sounds too much like ‘this is all preordained’ or ‘God has a plan’ and to be honest I never find comfort there.

So maybe all there is tonight it this; My Mother often told me, “when you are thirsty have a drink of water.” Meaning it is ok to feel what you are feeling in the moment, that it is ok to honor that and then let it go.

I’ve got the feeling it in the moment down pretty good, but I am struggling, really struggling to find a way to let that go.