Forget Hallmark, or, The Way Down is The Way Up

Something shimmers this season.  It is not the star shining in the Christmas cards, either.

In some ways this season is irritating, because of Hallmark, because it insists on traditions and scripts.
Some of us don’t think in terms of these scripts.

Today I want to talk about Not finding our lives in sync with expected scripts.  

That’s what MS is--it is living in a world living by one script of physical possibilities, but not sharing that personal reality.  

I have begun to step back from the noise of old scripts in order to let the mystery of life do its work--Not because I asked for it:  the mystery of my destiny handed me MS.

MS is the huge slice of life that destiny gave me, and in order to put it in my life I had to search for ways to both continue being me and to carry this new reality around with me.  What I am finding is what Richard Rohr describes in his spirituality for the second half of life, Falling Upward.  Failures are gifts, MS is a present, the way down is the way up.

Here is what--even though I didn’t ask for it--MS gives me.

• MS provides me with the  connection I feel with every other person whose destiny requires that they meet a challenge.
• It is the realization that because MS yanked me from another path, there is a quiet part of me who had gotten buried and is grateful for this time, for reflection, for the attention I allow her these days.
• It is the gift of new vocational passions that I found in writing and prison work.  
• It teaches me how to value fits that rub:  including relationships that are forever but are not always easy; it teaches me that life unfolds in spite of my limited expectations, what I call my Hallmark scripts.
• MS is a story that is happening, that calls me to find out new things, to connect with people I love in new ways.  The most amazing gift of my new life is the deep friendship with my daughter and discovering her amazing earth-mother wisdom.
• MS is like a road that I didn’t see coming, but now that I walk on it, it continues to provide me with grounding.  

In my own way I know what it is like for people for whom this season is a disconnect, who have stories told in different ways from the script of Christmas cards.  MS is not found in Christmas cards either, but it gives my life a unique story that unfolds in gifts I never expected to deserve or receive.

This unexpected destiny shimmers, it even fills me with wonder.
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Take that, Hallmark!