Just This

It's cold here today. Now when I say cold, I'm not even going to mention a temperature because it doesn't sound that impressive but let me say that people visiting here from "Up North" where the temperatures are impressive say that this cold is different.

I don't know. Why do we always need to be the best, the worst, the coldest, the hottest, the strongest, the sweetest, the oddest, the quirkiest, the funkiest, the craziest, the sanest?
Why do we need, this time of year to make lists of the best, the worst? Movies, TV shows, books, political moments?

I don't know.

Join my tribe. Or, alternatively, you don't look like me, act like me, think like me so get away and stay away. You are NOT my tribe and I don't recognize you.

Humans are weird but not quite as much if you know anything about the great apes or even chickens or ants, for that matter. We are all, and you can damn well take my word for this, animals. We may be able to invent and operate iPhones and genetically alter plants but plants have been doing a good job of genetically altering themselves for eons, thank-you very much. They don't need an app for that. We humans like to think we are all that but when you think about it, we're just walking-around-life with swollen brains and swollen egos and souls that can hate, that can love, that can come up with stories and music and poetry and paintings and for this we are different, but at the very bottom of it all, we are here trying to hold on to life, to make more of us, to keep our young safe and fed and warm.

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It's been so long since I started this post that I've forgotten where I was going with it. I should just toss it. There's nothing here I haven't said before. Probably repeatedly.
I guess what I wanted to say is that none of us is the best. None of us is the worst. We try to hold ourselves up to impossible standards. I am never going to be either Garrison Keillor or Susan Sarandon (WHY did she and Tim Robbins break-up? WHY?) and neither are you. We are not going to be Stephen Hawking or Richard Dawkins, thank-you, Jesus. We are not despots or saints. We are imperfect and we are glorious just as we are in that imperfection. I do not recommend that we wallow in our imperfections and call them glorious perfections of ourselves but I also do not recommend that we wallow in our self-conceived sins and self-hatred.
In fact, I think I would do far better for myself, my world, and my family if I could get out of that fiery, messy pit of self-hatred and find some rhinestone rose-colored glasses to view myself in a bit more often.

And you?

Okay. This writing is muddy and far from pristine. Don't go looking through the depths for pure glowing jewels of meaning. There aren't any.

But look- that camellia? I grew that. Or, to put it another way- I bought a plant, I planted it in my yard. I kept it alive. It rewarded me this morning, this cold winter morning, with that jewel of a flower. If there is anything I am slightly good at, it is merely keeping things alive that eventually reward me royally. Kids, plants, chickens.
Bread dough.
You know.

Not a gift in any way or a talent, either. Just life. I'm just a woman. I struggle every day of my life with wondering why I'm still here. I talk out loud about that struggle. I celebrate the moments when I know why I'm still here. I despair in the moments when I forget the reasons.

That's me. Are you in my tribe? Am I in yours? We don't wear certain colored hats and we don't have team colors so we must recognize each other in more subtle ways. We celebrate and despair together.

I'm struggling today. The camellia gives me at least something to pause and wonder at, to give me the least feeling that yes, I have done something. I kept that plant alive. I don't need rose-colored glasses to see that pink glory in that.

And now I'll go make soup.

The Church of the Batshit Crazy is in session. 2010 and we're still worshipping and we're still swaying in tears.

Same as it ever was. Dinner on the grounds. The music is good. The flowers are not on the altar, they're in the yard. So are the chickens. So are the greens and Mr. Moon and Jessie have just gone out to pick some to put in the soup. Greens, not chickens.

One day at a time. One moment at a time. Let us try to remember that. Neither the worst or the best. Just...this.

Good enough.
Close enough to heaven to glimpse the light, far enough away to make the journey interesting and daunting.

One step at a time. One breath at a time. Don't borrow trouble, the sky is not falling, we cannot know what tomorrow brings.

Rubies and tears, joys and fears.

We are the tribe of people who understand that.
Peace unto you as you work through all of that for yourself, as you share it with your tribe.

That's all. Just that. Just this.