Miracle, anyone?

I know it’s difficult sometimes to believe in miracles. It’s cool to be jaded and cynical. It’s much more comfortable and familiar to not expect anything, lest disappointment creeps. There are all kinds of atrocities happening all around us, how could we possibly allow ourselves to indulge in something that seems childish, naive, uncertain?
I believe that sharing the miracles that happen in our lives is precisely the antidote to such confusion and disenchantment.
At the risk of sounding like a cheer leading holy-roller, let me offer my thoughts on divinely inspired transformations, in hopes that you will get a glimpse of how it works for me.
I am a down and dirty, lying, professional compulsive over eater. It’s true. I have been in radical pursuit of sugar and carbs ever since a magnificent breast landed in my mouth and shut the scary world out. I have elevated the art of concealed eating to a masterpiece. I was the one who cooked and ate a meal, while tasting my dishes. Second and third helpings never filled the empty hole in my belly. God just wasn’t in the fridge after all. I loved cleaning the leftovers directly into my mouth. The rule that no food be allowed to remain in pots was etched on my heart. And the Absolute Truth was the more one piled my plate, the more they loved and accepted my almost 300 lbs. body. Anything less would result in an insurgent rebellion.
Food was my lover, when the human lovers left for another. Food was my protector before and after acts of violence against my body. Food was my God in reverse, transforming life into oblivion, health into decay, relationships into isolation.
I lost homes, partners, career opportunities and myself to a ruthless, cunning disease that is still doing push-ups in the other room.
But one day I got desperate. Mine is a progressive disease. It won’t stay in remission. It expands and widens without relenting. Oh sure. I could diet and then gain all the weight back and more, feeling more lost, ashamed and out of control each time as my self-loathing grows exponentially. I could ban diets, raise my fist in a big ”fuck you” to all the fat bashers, while still getting bigger and madder.
The Universe had another option. A solution. One which continues to amaze me, because somehow it chose me and somehow I was willing more than anything to comply.
It gave me the Cambridge Greysheet. A tiny piece of paper attached to a human being that would help me build a Technicolor world, with a scope I couldn't have imagined.
It gave me parameters instead of the freedom of running wild in oncoming traffic. It gave me a mysterious one-of-a-kind relationship that I get to practice being involved with every single day. It gave me a code of honor and ethics of how to live my life amongst others in harmony. And a way to find my way back should I get lost. It is an all-for one and one-for-all myriad of musketeers doing what I do.
It defies color, gender and age differences. It is welcoming of all class, ability and mobility. It allows a belief in a god or many or none. It only requires that you be willing to put yourself first. It insists that the only desire you must possess is to stop the insanity of eating compulsively.
This way of the loving warrior has kicked my ass. Whatever I thought I knew about myself and others, it has made me question. It has ripped the weedy relationships with my loved and not-so-loved ones and helped me work the soil with lots of composted internal manure so that my garden will bloom.
I see the abundance of life and beauty and closeness that my garden is bringing forth when I look at my partner’s tear streaked face as she feels so close to me. As I pluck my child, wrestling and laughing, I am granted a meal of concentrated love fuller than any plate I have previously piled. When I encounter a challenge between me and a friend, I scrutinize my field for trash and invasive old and unnecessary weedy patterns.
These are just some of the daily miracles I get to notice now that I no longer overeat.

Aren’t you curious about what life holds for you?

A Walk in the Woods

The fog enshrouding the mountain was thick, like a wet woolen blanket. It dripped, stalagmite-like, from the scrub oaks. I crossed the small bridge and smelled the early morning waking around me. The musky dirt squishing under my sneakers. A Red-Winged Blackbird called for community or a possible mate. A scrub Jay’s cacophonous call pierced the wind. I headed towards the dark, gnarly outstretched canopy of limbs that stood, watching. The tall Horsetail, their reeds encircled like snakes, swayed on my left, concealing whatever lay. I reminded myself that I have been on this trail so often. There were no Mountain Lions. Probably. I looked for a substantial weapon. Just in case. I was aware, again, as serenity and panic played musical chairs, co-existing in my heart and mind.

I loved the mornings in this Northern California sanctuary. I knew that eventually, like all matters, the occluding fog would lift. I knew, without a doubt, that somewhere beyond this heavy envelopment, the sky was cloudless, the sun, will make me drip. But not yet. Slowly, as I climbed up the trail, worlds would open before and behind and above and within.

But that didn’t seem to ease my jagged breath, as I heard a noise. Around the bend was not a mountain lion. Or a malevolent man. It was something just as fierce. A mother turkey. Her three chicks plucking at their breakfast plate, crunchy bugs and spaghetti worms, their breakfast of champions. I waited, thanking the universe that I was not on the menu, figuring how to maneuver around the fowl. I asked them to kindly step off the trail. They did not. I softly explained that I didn’t want to hurt or eat them; I just wanted to pass and share the earth harmoniously. They ignored me, until I took a step. Their mother, a rising phoenix, warned me, looming larger, with such vehemence. I stopped. They stepped off the trail, half-heartedly – I could hear them – oppressive humans upon us once more! I realized, yes, I am, now let me through and stepped up the mountain. I passed them and then the unthinkable. The mother was chasing me, pecking at the air, only because I scrambled. She did not let up until, in that split second, I remembered I had my eyes in front, theirs on the sides. I was the predator, now get before I make an early Thanksgiving! We called a truce, each with our hide and ruffled feathers intact.

The path meandered, sherpa-like, zigzagging the mountain. The air was lifting, being sucked back into the great San Franciscan Bay. I was climbing, my muscles adjusting to the slippery terrain. My breath swirling, like Pete’s Dragon, friendly and wispy., just another being traversing where others have, lest I feel separate, unique, lonely or alone.

As it so happens, so frequently, when I am on this or any other part of the divine, a thought, a directive, an inspiration catalysts in my brain. You must write You must. You are a writer. Take back who you are. Just like you are taking back the trails on which you were violated. One trail at a time. Take back your words, your stories. Tell your memories. You have permission to make them up. Just write. What? Okay. What should I write? You’ll know. Okay. How about from the beginning? How far back? You know. Oh, right. In uterus. Now you are getting somewhere.

And so it begins. Like so many spiritual dialogues. A command from the universe, often surrounded by brambles or bushes, to act in an unexpected way, at least to one’s self. Then, it rumbles in my mind, it flitters and twists in my heart, it digs its roots in my belly, until I spew lava language that was just as expected as the season’s first purple lupine I spot.