DEEPLY AWAKE – CONFLICT

On Christmas Eve, my ex-husband, Jerry, picked Sam and I up at our house and drove out to my dad's. It was a quiet night, our small clan broken off into little splinters, talking, telling jokes, each of us shirking off our issues and our worries to come together and exchange gifts, kindnesses, remembrances.

We each got very nice stuff, though it was shockingly sparse all-around this year, and then it was time to go home.

I sat in the little truck cab flip-seat behind Sam. Closer to home, I felt myself becoming a little overwhelmed, a little overcome. So I put my arms in front of me and draped them on my son's chest, and I put my head down on the headrest that was right in front of me due to how small my seating space was. I rested my head, felt my hands holding Sam's chest, turned my head, and looked at the way my son's head was resting on the car window, fast asleep as he was.

Why is my position so important? Well, it's not. I guess I wanted you to know that while crammed into a child's jump seat, in a car alternately freezing and like a furnace, I had a revelation.

DEEPLY AWAKE – A NEW PERSPECTIVE

Today is Christmas Eve. Growing up, we never celebrated on Christmas Day. That was sort of the Dirge Day of the holiday season. But, oh my God, the fun we had on our Christmas Eves! I was recounting holiday memories to Sam, telling him of the wonderful nuances and delights of this season when I was his age. It felt very nice to wake up to the opportunity to chatter about Christmases Past.

But the day began for me before I opened my eyes. I have been given a gift of unusual proportion and splendor. I want to tell you about it.

This morning, upon first re-entry, that fuzzy place before full consciousness, I understood something that has been a Major Life Koan, and I have been studying intently the last three months.

See, what I was shown was sort of like the way things get distributed. I remember, as a goodwill gesture when our new team settled into our flagging nursing home, we all took tours of local businesses, and one was the distribution center for the Rocky Mountain area Wal*Marts.

IT'S NATURAL

Running Man, just like a master conductor, allowed the music, the light, within us, to come out, weave together, creating something sturdy but etheric. He, with song and dance and intention, danced us to a rock face.

We found ourselves, Lily, Sam and I, perched impossibly, in the blink of an eye, on top of that rock face. We had to have been up six or seven stories. I'd like to tell you we levitated, but in this ceremony, it was a more now-you-see-it-now-you-don't feel. One moment we were on the ground, and quite literally, the next moment found us standing on that cliff.

It would have been weird to the point of distraction had Sari not been just floating around, up there in the moonlight, waiting for this moment in the ritual.

Sari gathered us together, and we took positions in the shape of a square. We held hands. We swayed.

And then Running Man was in front of us. Sabrina was a far northern position, Eddie, far south, but all of us were now high above the ancient site we'd come to explore that afternoon.

Running Man now had in his hand a long, gnarly staff, and at the tip, little shiny bells glinted off the moonlight. He shook his staff, and clunked it on the ground three times.