October
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My head and my heart are here
“So let us pick up the stones over which we stumble, friends and build altars…”
So begins a poem I love called 'A Prayer' by Pádraig Ó Tuama.
I’m drawn to this image of making something sacred out of so much awkwardness. September has felt so awkward: the weather doesn’t know what to do, I don’t feel easy in this 'getting older’ thing — am I supposed to behave differently? Dress differently? — I don’t know how this new empty nest family configuration is supposed to work… my mind is all over the place in meditation and so on… so many stones to stumble over.
My new default is this:
Show up, and care.
That's it. Just show up and care about what you're doing, who you are with, the world around you in that very moment. Keep showing up and keep caring. I've been saying this to my actors forever in the context of training, but I realize it's just life. So I'm picking up the stones — showing up for that — and I'm going to try and honor all of it.
What does that look like? For me, it's showing up for what is happening in me and around me however uncomfortable or wonky it might feel. I'm going to try and stack all the disparate feelings, losses, worries, joys, whatever, into some sort of cairn that is guiding me to some new beautiful vista. I have no expectations about a perfect place, but I do have faith that these altars won’t lead nowhere.
I turn 57 this month and I remember my father who died in October several years ago. He was fond of describing life as an onion: many layers I guess was his point. “It's your onion. You've got to eat it,” he would say.
Onions and altars.
Love On,
Annie
“So let us pick up the stones over which we stumble, friends and build altars.
Let us listen to the sound of breath in our bodies.
Let us listen to the sounds of our own voices, of our own names, of our own fears.
Let’s claw ourselves out from the graves we’ve dug.
Let’s lick the earth from our fingers.
Let us look up and out and around.The world is big and wide and wild and wonderful and wicked, And our lives are murky, magnificent, malleable, and full of meaning.
Oremus. Let us pray.”