Christmas Morning Prayers 2012

I am brought to my knees, once again on this Christmas morning. My heart and mind expanded beyond my home as I opened my front door this morning to the frigid air and snow covered streets. As I had my traditional Christmas morning chat with my father outside by his memorial tree, I was reminded of Christmas past when in 2001, 3 months after September 11, it seemed impossible to have Christmas Day. We had a similar feeling on Christmas 2004 when my father was lying in a bed in Sloan Kettering Hospital and refused to let any of us come see him far even 5 minutes. "The thought of all of you home with your children, opening presents, will get me through my day." He said. I learned later that the pain was so intense that day, Christmas Day was the last thing on his mind. Then a year later, after he was gone, Christmas morning again, seemed impossible. Last year, my godson Charlie opened his presents with chemotherapy drugs sitting on the kitchen counter. Sometimes it just seems impossible to have Christmas. This year my father-in-law will not e with us. We will include him in the day in other ways. And so as I pray this morning I realize there is not more to pray for that other days, it is perhaps maybe about praying more throughout the day than usual because today, for so many families, seems like an impossible day to get through.

I pray for every family waking up today in Newtown, CT
For every soldier waking up over seas 
For their families waking up here without them
I pray for every family waking up in a new place, displaced from Hurricane Sandy
For every person waking up on a cold street this morning
For every person living through this day filled with grief
For all the people in hospitals and dying at home
For all families living with mental illness at their dinner tables tonight
For every person living with addiction
For every family living with cancer
For every family living with chronic illness
I pray for all families that are disconnected from each other
I pray for all the quiet, unknown sufferings of families while they open their gifts this morning 
I pray for our human brokenness, that we turn to God over and over again for light in the darkness.

And in honor of my brilliant little Mary, I am not putting an Amen on this prayer

Merry Christmas
May God bless us with gratitude, awareness and clarity

The Treads of Suffering and Kindness

On Friday as the events were unfolding in Newtown, CT I was sitting alone at the Heartworks House. I did not know about Sandy Hook Elementary School yet, but had a moment of complete overwhelm with the suffering taking place in the world. Looking around the office space at the mixture of inspiring quotes, pictures of bald mothers, thank you notes, deceased children, our "to do" lists for families, articles describing people's illnesses, posters of families in hospitals, war torn countries and military bases, Then there is the "Thank you" art and plaques hanging on the walls from Veterans and families we have reached out to, it all seemed a bit too much. The picture of Charlie looking back at me almost knocked me off my chair. Perhaps Heartworks was  doing a lot for people. Perhaps we were not doing enough. Perhaps we are doing what I am constantly preaching about: doing what you can, when you can, for another human being. I didn't know. But what I do know is that the amount of suffering we witness on a daily basis through Heartworks can be overwhelming to say the least. 

I sent an email to Maggie Doyne, someone I feel privileged to call a friend. Maggie runs an orphanage in Nepal that she built from the ground up. Her organization "Blink Now" is mind blowing and beautiful. I needed to reach out to someone else who allows herself to be present with suffering. I was having that all too familiar feeling of "What the fuck am I doing??? Why can't I be someone who is at the mall right now? I should be home doing laundry! Why am I constantly surrounding myself with suffering? Why can't I be more light hearted? Why am I so intense?" I was feeling alone. A loser like Katie Myler in grammar school. A weirdo.At the very same time, I was feeling a bit paralyzed by Christmas shopping, holiday meal planning and finding clothes to fit me for a fundraiser we had that night. How can I be thinking that I need a new mascara while sitting in Heartworks House? How do I exist in Bernardsville with so many comforts and yet so much suffering going on in beautiful homes  and hot pink J Crew sweaters. 

I think I wrote to Maggie because I needed to connect with someone who wakes up everyday and feels the suffering without the comforts (and illusions) I have everyday. She literally sleeps, eats and lives each day with some of the "poorest" children on the face of the Earth. I missed her. I wished that her sweet face was sitting at the table with me having a Diet Coke. As I looked through my contact list for her email I needed to scroll through a lot of names. ALOT of names. I felt ashamed. How could I feel lonely with all these names in my phone? Names of women who run brilliant foundations, others who come to Heartworks House on a daily basis to heal their own lives as well as give to other people. Names of people who love me and tolerate me and have allowed me to have this comfortable, uncomfortable, blessed and full life. I started to feel connected to the world again seeing all these names in my phone. I wrote to Maggie about how much I missed her and that I was blown away by her ability to stay present with the suffering without the comforts of New Jersey. I felt like I must have done something "right" with my life if 2 people I call friends live among the poorest of the world. Without fully realizing it, I was reaching out to her for inspiration. For some clarity on how to live in both the daily, comfortable life of Bernardsville and be present with the suffering of the world at the same time.

When you are present in the suffering of the world. It can be a sense of feeling connected and isolated at the exact same time.

A few minutes after I wrote to Maggie, the texts, calls and emails began to come in about Newtown, CT. At that point the reports were about 18 children being shot at a school. I went into the meditation room and cried and prayed and begged for the presence of God to work through the illusions of the human experience and make itself known at Sandy Elementary School. I prayed for the parents gathering at the school- that they somehow succeed in the almost impossible task of seeing Christ right there before them, in the worst of horror. This is nearly impossible to do in the moments of trauma because the physical and mental cellular reaction is so intense and altering. But I prayed for it anyway. At the same time I pray that the shock they were experiencing, numb their bodies and minds enough to allow things to register at a manageable rate. Even though I know this is all but impossible as well, I prayed for it anyway. All of a sudden all the suffering that I was feeling so "alone" about - felt like the it was being experienced by the world. I knew that if I was crying, so were others. If I was praying, so were others. If I was feeling like the world had flown of its axis, others were feeling the same way. I no longer felt alone at the Heartworks House. I was no longer alone in my questions and contradictions and awe inspiring awareness of the human experience. The world was once again connected by tragedy. The treads of suffering had simply become more public, more apparent and the story on the television was more potent than the Christmas advertisements for a new Lexus with a bow on top of it that seems to be so alluring to people. 

The thread of suffering that I was feeling for all of these private families, my own included, as we move into our first Christmas without my father-in-law, as my long time friend Patti starts chemotherapy, as my sister sits bedside as her father-in-law's breath slows down and last rights are read to him. In that moment on Friday, when word of Sandy Hook Elementary school got out, all suffering was the same, just showing up in different forms. Later that night, Eddie and I sat at tables with families living with Autism. The next day I followed a friend down the stairs carrying her 14 year old son on her back because the building is not handicapped accessible and she can't get him downstairs in his wheelchair. I got news that sweet Allie's mother put up a Christmas tree and took it down the next day because she could not handle seeing the ornaments that Allie had made throughout her short life. I began to remember the importance of me staying present with the suffering, and Its not that creative of a reason. It is simply that suffering is a part of the human experience and greatly brought on by our own free will. And if I choose to be distracted from the suffering of the human condition, I will not be affective in any sort of change, or comfort or ease for another human being. As a culture it seems we tend to believe or buy into the idea that the Lexus in the commercial can help us heal something, help us feel less alone, that it can snap us out of our sleep walking, to center and ground us. But it doesn't....Columbine did. September 11th did. Hurricane Katrina did. Hurricane Sandy did. Cancer does. Images of soldiers at war does. Hanging out with Veterans does. Orphans in Nepal and Liberia do too. I wish a new Lexus did. It would be more comfortable. Leather heated seats and that new car smell. But thats not the way it works. 

On Friday after the shooting in Newtown I got a call from Darlene. Darlene is a story of bravery for another day. I met Darlene in the Convention Center after Hurricane Katrina. I was volunteering and she had been picked up from her home in a row boat and was at the Convention Center in Houston, TX with nothing but the clothes on her back. She called me during Hurricane Sandy to check on my family. She called me Friday to talk about the suffering she knew the parents in Newtown were experiencing. She talked about her own suffering all those years ago and how we sat there together in Houston, two strangers on a cot, holding hands and praying. Brought together by forces way bigger than ourselves. Darlene understands her own loss and suffering which is why she is dedicating the life she has rebuilt, to serving other people in similar situations. 

Thank you for listening to me. It is cathartic to write in the middle of the night.  Below is my favorite poem. We read it all the time at Heartworks meetings. We will read it Wednesday night at a candle light vigil for Newtown. I feel like it describes all the things I am trying to say about how being present with our own suffering is an avenue to God and each other and the healing of the world.

KINDNESS

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and
purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
it is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you every where
 like a shadow or a friend.

by Naomi Shihab Nye from “Words Under the Words”

                        

Prayer for Sandy Hook Elementary School

In this moment we pray for everyone in Newtown, CT

We pray that every person at Sandy Hook Elementary feels the hand of God on them

That every family experience a sense of the intangible, ever present love

We pray that within the shock, people's hearts, minds and bodies are able to absorb God's presence

We pray for a miracle of faith to be activated in their hearts, on this, the darkest of days. 

We pray, we pray we pray

Happy Birthday Amy 12-12-12

I am leaving in a few minutes to go see Amy in Rhode Island for her 44th birthday...how can this be? Yesterday we were 12 years old walking the hallways in "the Dungeon" of BHS, in love with Jamie Boyd (and Dave Lanzetti and Brett Kiersted and Joey Russo and Bill McCollough and David Caffery and a few others). Now we are grown adults with children the same age as we were when we met. On this day last year me, Mo and Coleen got in the car and drove to surprise her for her 43rd. We walked in the door , Amy fell to the floor and we did what good friends do when they are visiting the home of a friend on her birthday while her son is in chemotherapy treatments. You drink wine. It didn't matter that it was 3:00 on a Sunday. Time, days and social protocols don't factor in during such a winter. We laughed, we drank, we cried. We met up with Amy's friends and made fools of ourselves. I fell asleep on the couch listening the the voices and laughter of 3 of my life long friends. It was a powerful birthday fueled by love, anguish, fear, trust and vulnerability.

A year later I am driving up to Rhode Island again. Charlie continues to have clear brain scans. He turned 11 years old on Monday and I get to see him tear through the door after school today. I get to see Amy and have a 12-12-12 birthday party with her and all of her friends. I am leaving the ridiculous, fabricated "stresses" of Christmas in New Jersey. I will drive in gratitude for 4 hours to see my friend and her boys. And I will miss my girls and Eddie. The Heartworks Advisory Board will meet this morning to continue our work. Katie and More Than Me won a million dollars. Poppy visited Madison in her dream last night. A dear friend had a much needed walk to a lighthouse yesterday, and I knew about it. Thank you God for your light through the darkness life brings. As I am writing this blog, the two songs that have played "randomly" on my iPod are "Here Comes the Sun"  and "After the Storm" My two theme songs of 2012. (Way before Hurricane) Thank you God for the sun after the storms. Thank you that I have such solid family and friends. Thank you for the chance to go to Rhode Island and laugh my ass off all day and night. It has been a long year, a long last few months, filled with love.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY AMER! You are one of my great loves XOXO
As I sign off, "All I Need" by Mat Kearny is playing...another good one. Powerful.

Katie Meyler, Standing in the Egg Aisle and 1 Million Dollars

A few years ago I was in the grocery store standing in front of the eggs. A beautiful light, a girl with wavy long hair was walking towards me. I could feel her energy before her hug almost knocked me over. We had met once....a few weeks before at an Indian restaurant where Heartworks was doing a fundraiser for two brothers, Zach and Kyle Ostrander who would die within 2 weeks of each other before 3 months of age of a rare skin disease called EB. (A story for another day) We had only spoken for a few minutes at the restaurant where she told me about the children in Liberia that she was helping, and yet when I stood listening to her in Shop Rite tell me about the child soldier she had waiting for her in the car, I felt I had known her all my life. Maybe this connection came from the fact that we had walked the same halls in grammar school, though many years a part. Maybe it was the restlessness that I saw in her...that something MORE has to be done...what the bleep was everyone in our well off  town doing??? We have roofs over our head...we have more than enough food on our tables....there was so much work to be done...what was everyone doing with themselves? But what I really think it was, and I found this out after numerous conversations in the years to come- is that we have both always felt like misfits until we found our causes and were given the chance to focus on something more than ourselves. I invited Katie to a Heartworks meeting..."come be with like minded women" I heard myself saying. She walked away, or should I say danced away, as she often does, past the containers of chocolate milk and I knew my life was expanding. I knew I was on the right track, that if my path would cross with someone so ambitious and so real, I must be doing something right. I was grateful that I was in a place that I could relate to her. That I understood her passion. I felt less alone in the world that night, standing there in front of the eggs with the young and beautiful Katie Meyler.

Katie came to the next Heartworks meeting...Where Katie met Katie Borghese and Kelly Kettersen...Both of which encouraged her to start an official non-profit. Both of which became members of her Advisory Board and both of which stood on stage with her last night when her organization More Than Me WON A MILLION DOLLARS from Chase Bank on the American Giving Awards.

Those of us who know her, and Im sure those who don't,  feel healed just by watching her tonight. I have a friend who wiped out on her deck the other night and smashed up her face. I know tonight healed her. A woman called me 2 minutes after the announcement was read, she knew a teenager who attempted suicide last week. I could hear in her shouting that she saw good in the world again. My girls watched Katie and understood that they sit in the same classrooms where Katie sat- where she struggled as a "looser" as she would put it- with her bowl haircut and hand me down clothes...I said - "Look at her girls, thats what a loser looks like"
I pray to have the courage to be a loser- to just be who I am without ego or concern for fitting in with the mainstream. If Katie Meyler sees herself as a looser...I want to be a looser too.

Things have been feeling very whacked out lately. Lately It feels like most everyone has lost their minds.  My friend Holly stated with great clarity that purhaps the reason for this is a combination of Hurricane Sandy, the recent election, the unemployment situation and people just feeling off balance in general. The energy was starting to whack me out a bit in the beginning of the week. Heartworks knows of  sooooo many families we could be reaching out to and it seems like there is crisis and suffering all around us. And the truth is that there is a tremendous amount of suffering going on in the world. But what we seem to miss at times is that it is the suffering that connects us.  Its what we all have in common, the collective struggle to find God, be at peace with our own brokeness and to love each other even though we are all going to have to say goodbye one day. And that day may be tomorrow. The uncertainty of things can paralyze us if we think to much about it. This is where the choice comes to allow the suffering to give us life or cause us to walk around in a fog of disconnection. Katie Meyler chooses LIFE. She chooses to be real and alive and authentic. I love her and love that she is at home on stage on national television and at home sleeping on the side of the road in Liberia. She is at home because she knows who she is. Thank you Katie for letting us know you too.
MORE THAN ME ROCKS! And so do the other 24 organizations Chase Bank honored tonight!

The Day after a meeting

Last night we had our December meeting. Our November meeting was canceled due to the hurricane so it had been awhile since the meeting room was filled with women. 38 women showed up with the collective intention to stay out of the insanity of the season and seek balance by coming together for something bigger than ourselves. Our meetings are never about escaping our own lives, or "using" horrific experiences to find gratitude. Our meetings are about allowing our own We signed cards, prayed, wrapped gifts and signed up to help in small ways and larger ones. We are asking 20 women to commit to raising $500 within their own circles for Chrissy, a mom in a neighboring town who is getting a double mastectomy in a few weeks. We are going to raise at least $10,000 for her so that she can have live in help for her 10 month old twin boys after her surgery. WOW this seems like quite a lofty goal right? At first we had one brave soul take the challenge. Then all I had to do is speak about her and the say to a room full on mother's these words: "She will not be able to hold her babies for 2 months" and before I knew it we had 7 more women signed up.

 I would like to be able to say that Chrissy was the only story that broke all of us open last night. She was not. A house fire in Ridgefield, New Jersey that took a mother and son away from the rest of their family (sending financial support) 6 families who lost everything in Hurricane Family (sending gift cards and selling teachers gifts to fundraise)  My beloved teacher and friend of 21 years, Patti has breast cancer (sending a 5lb Hershey bar) A woman in Basking Ridge in severe pain after a car accident (Heartworkers taking her to appointments) Another Basking Ridge mom in treatment for cancer (Heartworkers making dinners every night) 3 families grieving a son, a grandson and a mother this Christmas...(3 Wreaths with these words hanging on a tag "Everyday my love for you grows higher, deeper, wider, stronger...It grows and grows until it touches the tip of where you are and comes back to me in the loving memory of you, and my heart melts with that love and grows even more."- Maureen Hunter and we filled each wreath with prayers for a gentle December) Then there is Sweet Drew, a young helicopter pilot injured in Afganistan (sending cookies and a card) and Christmas cards  to 7 children who are sick in hope that receiving a letter in the mail will make them smile even for a moment. We prayed for ourselves and for others. We cried and we laughed at our own self absorption and ignorance. We signed up for what we could and in honor of so much suffering, committed to practicing gratitude in our daily lives.
 
Last night in a small New Jersey town, 38 women drove home with a commitment to stay out of the chaos and excess of this holiday season as much as possible. We will do this in honor of mothers who are to sick to stress about a J Crew fleece arriving in the wrong size and parents to grief stricken to think about what they are wearing to a party and soldiers sleeping in a ditch away from their families.
We commit to being present and grateful and to pay attention to the wounds in our own lives, knowing that at the end of the day we are all in this together, in all different phases of the journey on any given day.