Category: Essays

Places Where I’ve Met God

~ Deb ~ Leave a comment

This is day six in the Seven Solid Days of Smiling Salute To the Original Unsplit Atom for bursting forth into the Big Bang of Bounty that is this life.

Day 1 – Emily

Day 2 – Music

Day 3 – Magic

Day 4 – Cheese

Day 5 – Sleep

A late afternoon winter sky when the impending darkness could either be the muted setting sun behind low clouds or an approaching storm.

Sunset at Sedona with the red rocks rimming the canyon becoming animate in the last reflections of light from just another day in just another millenium.

The forever wetness of the rocks and leaves along the rivers of the Smoky Mountains where the fairies live.

Waves the size of buildings exploding on the lava rock shore of the Big Island.

Snow sloping to the gutters on a Michigan morning.

Rain as steady as a drum and playing encores all day long.

This happy little valley I call home, where I marvel at the continuous life-cycle of leaves, and burn brush on a winter afternoon, and drink the wine of communion with the hickories and oaks and maples, and walk out to feed the dogs on cold, rainy mornings, stand close by while they eat in huge gulps, and then walk back to the gate with one on each side, licking my hands.

One last taste or gratitude.  I can never tell.

Small Magic

~ Deb ~ 2 Comments

This is day three in the Seven Solid Days of Smiling Salute To the Original Unsplit Atom for bursting forth into the Big Bang of Bounty that is this life.

Day 1 – Emily

Day 2 – Music

My grandson, Triston, is spending the night with us as I write this.  Earlier this evening he pulled a funny looking thing from the bedside jar where Susie keeps her pens for her nightly Sudoku.   The object in question is a twisted wooden stick with an amethyst on top.  It’s real purpose is to stick in a twist of hair to hold it up off your neck.  There must be a name for something like that, but I don’t know what it is.  However, I feel a personal obligation to answer any question Triston asks me with some degree of authority.   It’s the natural teacher in me, or perhaps the natural bullshitter.

“What’s this, DeeDee?”  He turned the witchy-looking stick around in his hands, perhaps looking for a writing point or an on button or a purpose of some kind.

“It’s a magic wand.”

“No, it isn’t,” and then a little less certainly, “is it?”

“Sure.  It’s Mimi’s Mini Magic Wand.  It’s for small magic.”

“Show me.”

Oh, boy.  I hesitated, but only for a second.  Triston has all the actual, factual, literal, fundamental information he needs from all the other sources in his life.  I rarely miss the chance to sprinkle a little mysticism his way.

“Okay, sit on the bed facing me.  C’mon, Mimi, join the circle.”  I motioned Susie into our midst and then held the wand in front of me, the amethyst suddenly sizzling like a campfire in front of us.  “What do you need magic to do for you, Triston?”

He didn’t have to think about it long.  “I want to fly.”

Damn.  “Well, Triston, most people don’t know this, but magic still has to work with the natural laws of the universe.  Magic can do a lot, but it can’t make gravity disappear.”  Okay, so it’s the natural bullshitter in me.  Actually, I believe magic probably could make someone fly, but he was just a child and I was only a baby spell-caster, so I thought we had better take it slow.  “What else would you like magic to do for you?”

He didn’t have to ponder this one at all.  “I want a four-wheeler.”

I started to say something to direct him away from the material world.  He had been out of sorts all night, whiny, demanding, rude, and difficult.  I knew something was bothering him and maybe he didn’t even know what it was.  I was hoping he would say that he wanted his mommy to be sweeter or his daddy to spend more time with him or his new baby sister to be fun to play with.  I was hoping for a clue about his mood.  But then I had the intuitive thought that I shouldn’t invalidate his desires, especially during a seven-year-old funkfest.

“Okay.  A four-wheeler it is.  Everybody focus on Triston’s new four-wheeler.  We are setting our intention for Triston to have the desires of his heart.  We don’t tell magic when or where or how.  We just tell magic that Triston would like a four-wheeler.  We see Triston riding his four-wheeler through a big field on a beautiful summer day . . . with his helmet on.”  (Even mystical grandmothers are still grandmothers.)  And we know that magic is working already to bring Triston his four-wheeler in the perfect way and at the perfect time.”

All night long, Triston had been distant, shut down, just not present with us.  But, I peeked at him during this “incantation” and saw an unfiltered expression of pure belief.  His eyes were squinted closed in prayerful concentration.  His hand rested atop mine on the “magic wand.”  I wondered if I could ever again believe as deeply as he was believing in that moment.   And then I said, with renewed conviction, “And so it shall be.”

This was as much for me as it was for him.  I’ll be watching for that four-wheeler to show up in Triston’s life.  I’m going to fight the urge to go put one on a credit card and leave it on his front lawn on Christmas morning just so he’ll believe in magic.  Instead, I’m going to believe in magic too and wait to see how it unfolds.

Let The Band Play On

~ Deb ~ Leave a comment

Of all the arts to burst forth from the creative spirit of humanity, there is none greater than music.  A musician is a painter, architect and thespian.  Without music, the world would be a soul-less place. 

I’ve seen music silence a room of rowdy drunks, unite a quarreling mob, change apathy to action and anger to peace. 

It is the intersection of art and science.  It’s the neighborhood bar where math buys sound a few drinks and they sneak away to copulate harmony into existence.  It’s the church social where poetry and percussion break bread together.  It’s the marriage altar of profound emotion and perfect pitch. 

Friends singing around a piano is the greatest form of communion, and wine is necessary for this particular Lord’s Supper as well. 

Music has broken my heart and healed it again. 

Love and music are the only two things I know of that can truly change the world.  They’ve both changed mine.

Oh, The Weather Outside is Grateful

~ Deb ~ 2 Comments

It’s Gratitude Week here at the Until Zen World Headquarters.   Yepper, for the next solid 1/52nd of the year this is a cynical-smartass-free zone.   Just seven solid days of smiling salute to the Original Unsplit Atom for bursting forth with the Big Bang of Bounty that is this life.  Keep your hands on the bar as we zip through the roller coaster world of whatever pops into my head for a super-sized shout-out.  Might be a person, place or thing, or D) none of the above.

And so we begin.

My niece, Emily Elizabeth Beer, freakin’ rocks.   Brilliant (grad student in sociology), talented (piano playin’ perfectionista), nurturing (cooks for her friends), and adorable (biggest brown eyes you ever saw).

But, that’s just the resume.  This is why she rocks my world:

She’s the only person with whom I have a truly adult relationship and whose diaper I changed.  (I think maybe once.  And then I probably did a sucky job and her mother had to come along and redo it.)  When I look into her eyes, I see all the eyes of all the ages she has ever been.

We think alike.  We don’t have to try to understand each other.  We just do.  I think perhaps my sister was a surrogate mother.

When I check my inbox and see an e-mail from her, I get excited.  Every time.  Without fail.

She agreed to a “blog-off” WHILE working on her thesis.  And I think she did it just because I’m her aunt and she loves me and she didn’t want to turn me down.  And I love that about her.  (You’re off the hook, Em.)

When we see each other, usually just at Christmas, she smiles.  I mean, she really smiles.  Not an I’m-smiling-so-you-think-I’m-happy-to-see-you smile, but a YIPPEE-LOVE-YOU-Gotta-run-to-hug-you smile.

I wish we had more time together.   I wish we lived in the same city where we saw each other all the time to the point where we took it for granted, not because we didn’t care, but because we just knew the other one was always around the corner. 

Emily, you’re one of the people I love most in this world, and I am so . . . so grateful for you.