Waiting

Today is Christmas Eve. Fifty one times I have experienced this day ... and for the first time in my memory as an adult I feel perfectly okay with the day. I'm not focused on tomorrow, I'm not focused on the gift-giving, or the family drama-du-jour, I'm not focused on what I haven't done, and I'm not focused on any fear at all.

My family is still pretty much the same, and it occurs to me dimly in the depths, that my ideas that it was "them" that were causing me all my problems may not have been all that insightful or true. Because today they just don't bother me that much. The level of irritation I feel is so small and so lacking in energy, it simply dissipates upon acknowledgment. I find that a minor miracle. It shows me I have some work to do in the new year - some reflection, journalling, meditation on the ideas I held as 'basic truths' and what may replace them. But that is for the new year.

Today is about the waiting. And even though this will be busy with food preparation, last minute this-and-that, watching my grown kids play Wii and will finish off with me trying to stuff too much into the stockings, I feel drawn to the simple act of waiting.

One of my most favorite quotes from TS Eliot comes to mind:
"And I said to my soul be still. Wait without hope, for hope would be hope for the wrong thing;
Wait without love, for love would be love of the wrong thing;
There is yet faith,
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not yet ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing."

(from East Coker)

I offer that to any invisible reader. But mostly for myself, a piece to ponder. And maybe to come to know peace.