WADE OUT INTO IT
This note will turn into something more, but suffice it to say for the moment that I usually take the whole month of January to reflect on the year I've just lived, and the one I am welcoming. The one I am turning towards.
This January was, well honestly? Unexpected. Even though last year held so much goodness, so much healing and unparalleled delight, so much love. Even though I called last year my “Better Together Year,” I began 2018 with a creeping sense of sadness.
The truth is, I spent a lot of this past year with my shoulders hunched up around my ears. This whole better together thing is both possible and my heart's desire, but it's damn hard. And sensitive spirits come with side effects.
I began 2017 with great plans for a quiet life. It seems some years just don't go as planned. And so I spent much of this past year in the public square, in the honest, nothing-left-to-lose, asking for a miracle space, armed only with prayer, a few visionary companions, and the dogged sense that we do belong to one another. And you know what? I was given the gift of belonging. I did witness the beauty of dialogue. I did catch glimpses of hope and us belonging together. I did fight with all I had for peace and a meeting in the middle that still honoured the specificity of our orthodoxy and lived experience as human beings.
I spoke up and out. But living in that sense of hope requires a resilience, faith, a long view of the future, and a whole lot of chutzpah. Somewhere along the way, I realized that I mistook momentum for resilience. Somewhere along the way, I realized that I let sadness - often the sadness of others - seep into my bones, with nowhere to put it down. So for the first few weeks of January I paid attention to my spirit and my body. I tucked away. I had fought a good fight and now it was time for a rest. Not forever - as a dear friend told me - but for now.
So I stayed inside, got off social media, said no to a lot of things, and engaged in sustained introspection. And somewhere along the way, I found myself – for the first time in years – in a ballet class.
When I was a little girl, my orthopaedic surgeon credited ballet with my being spared from a risky major back surgery. Years later, I'm past the danger of major back surgery, but I think perhaps ballet is saving me all over again - in a different, more holistic way this time.
You see, the thing about ballet is that in order to do any of the positions, you have to keep your head up, back straight, and shoulders back. You have to breathe deeply, look straight ahead, and believe that iron is in your spine. You have to focus on the task in front of you, and see the smallest tasks as the foundational bits of everything that comes after. And these days, honestly? Lessons like that make all the difference in the world.
And so, tonight as I typed this at my tiny desk in the flat that has truly become home in the last 12 months, I look up to see the words of Meg Fee scribbled on a sticky note above my desk: “Quietly and softly carve out a life on your own terms. Stop apologizing. Forgive that some things take a while. Forgive the low-level, near-constant fear. Celebrate the small successes. Perhaps joy is its own body of water, wade out into it.” So that's what I'm doing this new years, searching for the small things that save us, forgiving the time and the fear and terms, finding my own joyful body of water, wading all the damn way into it.
