Days of Accidental Beauty

Wow. It's been a long time since I posted or even really have been here. I realize that I've been dancing between the hamster wheel and the pit of despair. About a week ago, I started having this weird, non-specific anxiety as I got ready to get into bed and have not rested well. I can see it in my face. I'm dragging myself everywhere I go, whether it's to the grocery store or to another Zoom meeting. I show up with my happy mask for work and create uplifting, inspiring content for my congregation and then sink into exhaustion when I'm not "on" (writing, posting, filming, doing live video, taking meetings, calls, and the like). My usual rhythm of writing in the summer has vanished into thin air, or is hiding in plain sight behind some kind of veil.

I spent a day and evening on Saturday, sitting in meditation with Jon Kabat-Zinn (an on-line retreat with time on and off line throughout) and lived an achingly beautiful day, completely in synch with my desire. There have been other days of accidental beauty. At least one I can think of. I am painfully awake around where I am, but when I try to lift my body out of the mud it feels more like I am in hardening concrete.

Perhaps awareness is enough for now. But even as I say this, my addiction to happy endings rears itself. Beautifully aware is not enough.

So I ask myself, what is enough just for today, maybe just for this moment? Can writing this and reaching out be enough for now? And does it give me energy to get dressed and go to the farmer's market? And might that give me energy for the next life-giving thing today?

This tiny essay ignited my writing practice again. I shared it with a writing group and received so much love back from people. I did not even realize I'd written an essay until someone reflected it back to me. People shared that they were here as well, dwelling in this odd place after months of isolation and quarantine during a global pandemic and societal unrest. I saw us as this beautiful array of dusty, disheveled women who suddenly realize that they are not alone. And that they are alive.

There's a sense during this time that we've been waiting for the next shoe to fall, the next disaster to be announced. Jokes are going around on social media about it, about aliens and Godzilla and other nightmarish things showing up out of nowhere to add to our collective suffering and fear.

But in the middle of all this, now four and a half months, sheltering at home and interruption of our patterns, I am finding days, sometimes moments, of respite. Like the mindfulness meditation retreat I gave myself a few weeks ago. Like looking out my kitchen windows while writing, and gazing at the blues of the skies, the greens of the tree canopy, the white, textured clouds moving on winds out of reach. And even as I note this, the winds closer to home rise and catch the leaves on the trees and pull them into the dance. 

So this new daily writing practice begins, and my heart feels light. It's taken me ten days to get here after deciding to come. Today is the final deadline to begin so that I can finish on the last day of August. My task -- forty days of noticing. Why noticing? Because four and a half months have slipped by nearly unnoticed. 2020 feels like the lost year and I am hoping to find myself again in the detritus. 

Days of Accidental Beauty: 40 Days of Noticing is a daily writing practice. These are always about discovery.