Praying for peace(or maybe just feeling maudlin)

Every year for the last four years I've sworn I would not spend this day with a lump in my throat and my heart threatening to burst out of my chest. Every year I've been unable to keep my promise.

I just can't help it. The enormity of that day is still so present for me. Not to mention the enormity of social and political changes that have been seeping and blasting their way into our lives and consciousness, to the point that it's hard to remember that things were ever any different. Even though I know they were.

It's hard for me to believe the whole thing even happened. I have come right out and asked my friends in NYC, more than once, just to confirm – was it really real? Did it really happen? Was there really fire and destruction and a millenia's worth of dust and debris in the air, and all those people just ... gone? I never visited that spot, or saw those buildings. I never knew any of those people. I only saw it all on tv. And every time I see it again, I get that lump in my throat. And my heart opens up so big I feel like I can hardly contain it.

It isn't despair I feel. It's more like an enormous opening, a universe-sized space that wants to be filled with something that makes sense. And there isn't anything. I guess I could call it awe.

There's also a lot of anger and sadness. Not so different from what millions of other people feel – from what all people feel, I guess, at some time in their lives.

We were watching Miami Ink the other night and this kid came in to get a memorial tattoo of his brother, who'd been like a father to him since he was small, and who had recently died. Mr. A was saying, "How sad to have lost his brother." And I was thinking, "I know – and also, how great to have had a brother like that." Not everybody is blessed with such a gift.

Beyond the experience of simply feeling the way I feel, there comes a time when I want to actually DO something. Even just the act of figuring out what to do is useful. One thing I have decided is that when my term on this current board is over next month, the next commitment I make is going to be at a much deeper, more personal level than that one has been. I have a friend who's a hospice chaplain, who told me about a new program that provides volunteers to sit with people who are actively dying and who have no family or friends to witness their passing. I worked in a funeral home as a teenager and have had lots of experience being around death, and some experience supporting people and animals who are dying. Right now this feels like something I'd like to explore. There's also the possibility of volunteering with this organization, which provides support for grieving children, and then there's the Threshold Choir, which I've been interested in for a few years now, but never had the time to go to practices. Maybe now I will.

Anyway. My motto for today: don't look away from what you feel today – or any day! There's always more than what you see in front of you, and it's never all just one way. For instance, even with all the heavyosity of this anniversary, I woke up early this morning and the light in the trees was all golden and rose-colored, beautiful. The air felt fresh. Tater was stretched out with his legs in the air and there were English muffins for breakfast, and a new kind of jam to try, and yesterday we spent an obscene (for us) amount of money on a carved silver bracelet Mr. A insisted I should have, and I'm wearing it today and every time I look at it I'm reminded of how he encourages me to go for it in life despite my anxieties and hesitations, and that's what I want to do as long as I'm here. When I'm gone, that'll be okay too.

I read in a classic zen text recently: "There is no problem. One year of life is good. One hundred years of life are good." That about sums it up for me today.

Or, if you don't like that one, here's Mother Jones: "Pray for the dead, and fight like hell for the living."