Okay, here we go.
Day 1
Greetings! This is the first day of the next 365 Days of Miracles and Accidents. Here’s the thesis: I’m going to write here every day for a year. Why? Because I am beginning a daunting task: working through that crusty and wonderful tome, A COURSE IN MIRACLES, which has a 365 day workbook, because I’ve come to a point in my life when, literally, I have no choice other than to ask for a miracle. Maybe even 365 of them. Is that asking too much?
This little person that I am is at a point where she is every bit as likely to start a vegan doughnut business as patent wax headdresses for fashionable swimmers, but very unlikely…as in, don’t bet your last quarter….to actually get my shit together. There’s really no excuse whatsoever for a person of my state to be as utterly clueless as I am.
Well, let me put it this way. To rescue myself will require nothing short of a miracle. And everything that isn’t a miracle is just a real tempting substitute for the real thing. Perhaps, that’s what my life so far has been. Or started to be… when I gave up on my random, delirious, Tina Turner-inspired solo improvisations of a seven year old on the sandy beaches of Florida’s panhandle. SEEKING TRUE SELF: LAST SEEN DOING THE WEIRDO DANCE ALONE ON THE BEACH IN POLKA DOTS, SUMMER OF 1983.
So, this morning, day 1, I opened THE COURSE, which I happened to find on a sidewalk 5 summers ago when I was strung out from a confused heart–a foreshadowing of things to come–and took it home. It is a very, very, very dense book. You think Julia Childs’ is kernelly? Try this on for size. Today my task is to sit still for just a relaxed minute or two and look only at my immediate surroundings: my leg, my journal, my coffee mug, and say, “This leg doesn’t mean anything. This journal doesn’t mean anything. This coffee, though necessary, though delicious, though life-sustaining… doesn’t mean anything. Damn it!”
Why do this? Because these actions are the bridge between the beauty of a book on a shelf—all that wisdom you conceptualize but can’t seem to live out loud–and the transformed life that I can no longer do without. It’s sort of like the difference between reading a recipe… and feeding a family of four with it.
More later. Sorry so short, I’m meeting one of my best friends for a meaningless lemonade. But remind me to tell you about what happened with the ceramic ladybug on my altar that has stood for my informal godmother Mary Parks for 15 odd years. Mary Parks, you are not without meaning, and you never will be, because you don’t know how.
Curious Subjects 