CHRISTMAS IS A SPIRIT THAT LIVES IN MY HEART

The Christmas spirit — love — changes hearts and lives.

                                                                 Pat Boone

Christmas is a Spirit that lives in my heart. This past weekend I ate pie, shared stories, and wrote holiday cards with a dear friend.

We’ve shared this tradition of writing holiday cards over the years. But we also shared it often as three people. Robert was with us then. A year ago Robert passed on to that other shore.

Marie and Robert were married for fifty years. It would have been too abrupt to write holiday cards without first hearing Marie’s Robert poems, Marie’s and Robert’s Warp and Woof poems or Marie’s sojourn into new life.

Marie’s poems emerge from the bone and marrow of her soul. My heart gasps with Robert being invoked again as a living, breathing presence. He is gone...and not gone...as Marie invites in a new relatedness with her world.

Photo By Karla Boyd

At a particular rock and tree formation, Marie shared a special ‘Robert moment’. That was on our first walk. On other walks, we wended around trails and marveled at Sutro baths and Golden Gate Park gardens. On our last day, we delighted in seeing double crested Cormorants, a Brown Pelican; we shared secrets and sighed at the burnt orange sunset as the golden sun dropped into the ocean.

Photo By Karla Boyd

This past weekend, our conversations teetered at the edge of vulnerable intersections, and stumbled into unchartered waters and engaged Process as if a She. It's as if a Presence, a Soft Feminine Presence that lives within us all, called us out from mundane familiarity into embryonic encounters that engage a deeper flow with life. We opened more in its unfamiliarity. We are, to borrow Marie’s words, finding our place

in the flow, the every moving piecing together, coming together,

of things in their own way, in their own time, reassuring,

sustaining and satisfying.

Holiday cards finished, we sit at Marie’s dining room table as the last wisps of sunset become dusk. With the lights not turned on, we encounter a quieting intimacy.

         Photo By Karla Boyd

“Today, I realize how much of your careful arrangement of everything reminds me of my grandmother.” Christmas Spirit has engaged Marie and I all weekend. Christmas Spirit: A LOVING Presence unfolding warming encounters in soft, sparkling radiance.

“I felt Christmas Spirit when I was with my grandparents,” I say near the end of Marie’s and my time together. When I was five, seven and ten, alone or with a friend, spending a week with my grandparents in the summer, Christmas was there.

When alone, I’d sit at the breakfast table with my grandparents. After eating, Goldie would ask, “What do you want to do today?” Christmas Spirit lived in the ordinary way we designed a trip to the local swimming pool; or travels anywhere with my grandfather when my grandmother needed some solitude. It lived in my walking alone to the corner store to buy dinner preparations.

That common conversation of three souls unfolding our day never let us down.

My grandmother’s hearing was impaired when she was three years old. On occasion, my grandparents sat on their front porch rocking. “Karl, what’s that sound,” she’d ask. “Oh, don’t get excited, it’s just the kids climbing out the bedroom window onto the roof, listening to our conversation.” We’d scramble back into the room. I can still hear my grandfather’s laughter.

My grandmother and I would sit in a swing on the side porch, my bare feet bouncing off the wall of the church next door. My grandmother never meddled but was interested in everything I said. We spoke of simple things in the most extraordinary way.

Close to dinner, my grandfather conspiratorially called me into the pantry room. He’d reach into the cupboard and pull out sugary orange slice wedges. “Don’t tell your grandmother, now.”

Christmas is a Spirit that lives in my heart. It’s evoked every time a moment is freed into life’s deep rhythm. It’s an everyday, ordinary time made sacred.

What about you, dear Reader, have you discovered Christmas Spirit living in your heart?

THANKSGIVING / A MEAL FULL OF GRACE

I’ve made peace with Thanksgiving. I feel affection for how it became a blessing day of gratitude and sharing.

I had a few issues with Thanksgiving that I needed to transform first. (Family baggage; USA’s Thanksgiving’s historical past and The Turkey.) As a young adult, I never grasped taking a life and then giving thanks over it; so I don’t. While I can’t undo Native American suffering at the hands of Pilgrims, I can bless Native American culture. As for family baggage, it’s meant to be released.

Harvest Festivals from around the world have a common theme: blessing, giving thanks and feasts with loved ones. Embracing other harvests gave me a deeper appreciation of what’s possible.

Onam is a Kerala festival honoring a time of freedom, protection and prosperity.

Thanksgiving in Brazil is about giving thanks to God for the harvest.

Great New Moon Festival is a ceremony of the Cherokee Nation.

Many Native Americans pay respect to Harvest festivals.

Korean Chuseok is a day of thanks and honoring ancestors.    

One of my favorite Thanksgivings was 21 years ago. I invited a niece and nephew, two close friends, their friend, my sister, brother-in-law and their two dogs, to come for a few days to a family vacation home that was my turn to use. We collectively would create the meal. My dog, Nami, offered to do kitchen clean-up.

I’d just unloaded grocery bags. I turned to everyone to discuss how to organize Thanksgiving preparations. Who wanted what?

My friend, Marie, was first to speak. Her question: “Karla, what would you have if you weren’t thinking about what we wanted?”

“Well, interesting question. Because I’m a vegetarian, I’d make things like, uhm: Garlic Mashed Potatoes, Pear Salad, Cranberry Sauce, Yeast Rolls, Mushroom Gravy, Holiday Stuffing, Mashed Yams, Pumpkin Pies. Maybe another pie and a Tofu loaf.”

Marie replied: “Sounds GREAT to me! Let’s have these dishes this Thanksgiving. We don’t need the other stuff.”

Everyone agreed!

My jaw dropped. I invited everyone to co-create Thanksgiving from all our favorite dishes.

“But you guys like that other stuff!”

“Well, this year we don’t,” Marie declared, with all heads nodding. “That’s settled. Let’s make a list.”

Vegetarian Thanksgiving was in progress.

I was blown away by everyone’s generosity. Thanksgiving became about deepening connections and true giving.

Cooking that day was fun. Finally, we sat around a candle-lit table, with ocean views and sounds. We shared gratitude. EVERYONE loved the food! The conversation was warm and plenty, just like our sated bellies.

While everyone else was sitting back from the table, digesting, I watched my sister reaching generously for more food. The rest of us moaned about how much we’d eaten. We all were preparing for an ocean walk. I stopped the conversation.

“Hey, Georgie, what’s up with you? You just ate more food than I’ve seen you eat in your whole lifetime! Normally, you nibble. Are you PREGNANT?”

“Wow, Karla, you’re good. I wasn’t going to tell anyone. But yes, yes, I am,” Georgie said beaming.

My jaw dropped one more time.

And this is how I shared one of the best, happiest and most amazing Thanksgivings of my life.

So, Reader, tell me about a time when you were really happy at Thanksgiving. Who was there and what contributed to your satisfaction?

TRANSITING SPIRIT

Gismo:

I am a sound sleeper when I am nine years old. Yet when our beloved dog, a beautiful brown Cocker Spaniel, Gismo, comes into my room, late one night, I open my eyes. He gently eases his body down onto the rug. Liquid brown eyes gaze into mine. The look of pure love is there. His eyes then take me into deeper shores. Soon after, he exhales and is gone.

I lie there watching him. His big old brown eyes are now forever closed. I watch for a few moments careful to make sure his furry body is unmoving. Where once was breath, now there is none.

I lie there in witness to quiet interlude. I am too young to know those words then. Yet, Gismo’s peaceful dying remains in my heart and being.

Muriel:

I am one day away from boarding a plane for Hawaii. I’m eager for my osteopathic treatment that will help me release the sciatic pain, preparing me for travels. I have been seeing the celebrated Dr. Muriel Morgan Chapman for a few years. I know fully her miracle touch.

Arriving there, I have no time to sit under her sprawling oak tree. The door to her office is uncharacteristically wide open. Slowly, I walk over to it. I find Muriel lying face up on one of her treatment tables. Quietly she says, “I have fallen. I cannot get up.”

She requests me to help her get into her house. While her house is only yards away, momentarily I wonder how I will accomplish this, given my injury. As if on cue, another car pulls up the long driveway and parks. Together we help Muriel into her house.

It becomes clear speaking first with Muriel, and then her daughter, that no one is in place to care for Muriel during this stage of her life. She has cancer and the treatments are no longer working. Muriel is well into her eighties.

My first planned vacation in years is mysteriously rearranged. Overnight, I become a hospice caregiver. My trip to Hawaii is cancelled. I am privileged that Muriel calls on me to stay with her.

What I learn is more than I can convey. After all these years, nothing expresses the level of intimacy, stripped-down core encounter, that we shared. My life is redefined.

There is a quiet hush in the home that governs interactions. My years of meditation barely prepare me for this depth of connection. After all the communication, healing and death and dying training, I am invited to be wholly present. This is practicum. This is raw intimacy. The daily conversations are centered on real life and death concerns.

Every day I watch life around and in me move away from the mundane and into the subtle, still, sacred space. To be sure, there are conversations, dialogues, some easy, some not, risks taken, discoveries made. People daily come and go. We are also down to basics. But another aspect of life ushers itself into view as Muriel lies dying.

Daily, I take leave to drive across a bridge to work midday; it is shaping our letting go. These are not easy moments. One day, just as I am getting ready to leave Muriel’s bedroom, she shifts our dialogue from tentative leave-taking to true engagement.

“Good-bye,” she sings out in that singsong, lilting voice of hers. She is weak, yet her sparkling brown eyes twinkle as I start for the door.

“Good-bye,” I smile at her, singing our new song back to her, my hand slowly waving.

“Good-bye,” she sings out again, as I move into the living room.

“Good-bye,” I intone, voice quivering.

Over and over, our voices are singing out, one to the other, as I walk across the living room. There is no holding back this moment.

Our good-byes continue until her voice fades. I open the front door to the outside. My heart is wet with tears.

These experiences helped me be unafraid of death. They opened my heart. They opened me to deeper love. I know many people are fearful of natural dying experiences. I’ve been witness to traumatic deaths and their impact on families, friends and culture. I wrote this blog to start a new conversation, exploring a comfortable relationship with positive dying experiences.

Dear reader, do you remember when someone you loved died in a natural way and it opened your heart?