2012.02.26 Waiting for a Snap Day

I’ve been waiting for a day to open out, snapping cold, brilliant, sun-dried, and billowing like a freshly laundered sheet on the line—clean and pure white.

I’m waiting for a snap day. I want it spread before me.

The weather has been weirdly warm for mid-winter—distinctly New England February grey, nonetheless. Everyone smiles and says, isn’t it warm and nice. Then they hesitate, grin a little shyly. They, like me, have heard of global warming and all sorts of apocalyptic terrors and wonder.

I’m waiting for a snap day to snap the weather out of its gloomy gray and to snap me out of my energyless drear, precipitated by a rejection of my memoir manuscript. The literary agent who read it wrote an encouraging, gracious, hopeful even complimentary letter. While grieving I couldn’t quite trust that part—like the hope of resurrection in the middle of a funeral.

I looked for Godde.

My adult children brought me God in their outpouring of love, not just for poor mom but for me as a writer, woman and priest. They asked to read my book and I’m honored. Perhaps my labor is for them anyway, as it once was in their birthing. They started at the center of my body and they remain at the center of my heart, sharing it with Godde.

Then, gazing listlessly out the window immobilized, I spied a sudden flash of gray, a dash of movement. I watched five small squirrels racing and tumbling all over each other in the large tree right outside my window. Was this another batch of babies emerging out from under the garage roof next door? These grey squirts were playing. They must be kids. They were wild and amusing and lifted my spirit an inch or two.

The little squirrels were not taxed. They brought me God. I knew because my heart jumped.

Then Lo! A snap day dawned. Today. Sunday/sun day—Godde’s day, or one of them. Snap!

It takes a great leap of faith to believe in God—and an even greater leap to believe in yourself, to create, to put your faith into some work and then put it out there.

Once at a writers’ conference I attended the leader/author asked me, “Do you ever write about anything but God?” I hesitated, so sharp did his question feel, and so silenced my mind.

“Yes,” I said, then, “No. Is there anything else to write about, really, deeply?”

I had an answer then, so I know I will find one now.

And I, like my father used to say, will “snap to it.”

My Kinda Guru

There is a terrible and growing mess all over our front steps—orange shreds of pumpkin flesh and hundreds of strewn seeds. I should take a broom to it.
I've watched the demolition of our Halloween pumpkin at the mercy of the deft claws and razored teeth of squirrels. It's taken them days to get a breakthrough but at last this morning they, spelling one another, get all the way through to the juiciest innards. The chow line forms. I grab for the digital and click away through the storm door. My favorite photo shows the tail end of one of the gray scavengers whose front body is completely submerged inside the pumpkin. She looks up every once in a while, sometimes to sniff— raised ears alert, eyes darting around, head aswivel, and sometimes to sit on her haunches and nibble to satiation, cheeks flapping, tiny jaws moving faster than she can fly from branch to branch—and that's fast.
As for me these silly gray rodents are my kind of gurus. A guru is a remover of darkness. The usual image of a guru is someone who embodies tranquility, evokes and emits energy from a still point at the center of the cosmos, a point that encompasses all things and also roosts in individual souls, a point called divine. A guru in any religious tradition is a wise soul who can teach you how to live happily in spite of it all.
My squirrels don't fit the bill. But they teach me this: be diligent after that which will feed you; pursue your passions working in teams; be watchful for dangers but do not let your fear keep you at bay for too long; when you have a breakthrough savor it, then share its juices; do not overeat; spit out pitts or other indigestibles; if you make a mess do it with joy; return often to visit the holy place.
I've felt dismal today, worried about many things. My gurus have lifted my darkness. I'm grateful. Maybe tomorrow they will topple the pumpkin and have a community Thanksgiving banquet.