the price of gold and water

good morning relatives  


its really cold today   the high will be -2  right now it is -13  the dogs and I are making coffee and wiring on their rice to finish cooking   we have a fire going and Im listening to the UkeTubes christmas play list on the computer    

there is so much pressure in the air this year    its pressure on my tear ducts   its weird and relentless   like my eyes are leaking tears and my heart is melted all out my chest    

I thought about avoiding you relatives  i thought about what can I write that is uplifting or encouraging or insightful blah blah blah  LOL  you see every time I write I have to face that little ego buster door prize  and get back to writing for me writing what is  you see its always been my bent  my nature to seek the path through the snowy woods    why why why   how come  was and is how Mary is made  and the blog the writing began as an answer to someone asking me why and how come and continues still for that reason

so yesterday when a patron of the stop and rob where I work came by and flipped in one instant from being a regular after church god squad straight white male getting some gum then one instant later was a violent raging man who was throwing things and vomiting verbal trash all over the counter as I stood there stunned watching this display of violent violent overreaction to not getting the kind of change he wanted    over two pennies   I finally asked him to take his violence and leave  the store   and I turned away from him

and I think it was that relatives    the turning away from him that broke my heart somehow  

somehow in this season of giving and of joy whether manufactured or handmade or just simply expressed so beautifully by the snow and the light and the crisp crisp air outside    did you know that when i take the dogs out when it is this cold that the tears running across my eyes allow me to see perfectly without my glasses   thats a cool physics project isn't it  

somehow in this season of give and take this man accomplished something that is for me a terror   turning away from another being and shutting myself out from them

I have been unable to stop crying since then and unable to stop feeling broken somehow    you see usually when someone comes in the store or on the street or wherever I am able to get a sense of them and come to a balance in how to relate to them  its like being on an ocean that ebbs and flows and we all navigate our little skiffs or punts or ocean liners or yachts along our way and interact pretty well  even if there are crashes we accept that  we struggle mightily with each other at times  but we can sense it  we can adjust and remake our connections so that the flow the circle the sphere remains intact

but he was a blank  like an animated thing with no affect  his words and his presentation didn't give any sense of anything to me and so I hesitated to engage with him over his money  I hesitated to accept his lead in providing what he wanted in the form of change manipulated by his desire  and that was when he broke open into this violent hateful thing right there in the store in front of me    something in side of me something little like the still small voice kept me from pleasing him and in doing so it cracked him open into a raging monster  

my supervisor told me that people forget that we are all engaged in an exchange that is a privilege not a right  that even in customer service there are limits to a customers rights and when that ambiguous line is crossed and they demand that a privilege change into a right they have crossed a line  its not uncommon relatives for people to be grumpy or angry or pissed when they cross that line and we or I hold it and they are left with what they didn't want   which is what they came in the door with

its like the man at Lame Deer  the one who tried to kill me at the fire in the night  he wasn't really trying to kill me he was trying to kill what was inside of him  what he carried around every day and if I had taken it when he thrust it at me over and over and over that long night in July back in 2012 if I had picked it up or got on his bus or taken it from him he would have killed me to get rid of it forever only it wouldn't have worked would it have relatives  it would only have perpetrated what he hated that he carried and it would have made it grow

I think that i didn't expect or think about until today that the fire at Lame Deer is the fire that is always burning all around us and between us even at the stop and rob    GMa Margaret taught me that we are remaking the world when we are in the lodge and the fire is the center of the intention of the Lightning Strike Beings  and thus we, when we are in the lodge are recreating our world   and in ceremony it is easy to remember to hold that fire    it is easy to remember to hold it between those who gather for like minded intentional work  the gmas gatherings   or in circle  it is also easy to remember to hold it between myself and one other either on the phone or email or in person   to hold that fire   but it has obviously eluded me until today that holding it out in the world  out in the parade of life amongst the situations and people that are the unseen everyday mortar between the sacred bricks of time spent in prayer it is in the mortar that the life the joy the doing is held together or it is lost  and yesterday relatives it wasn't that man who lost IT  it was me   I lost it and my eyes knew it and my heart and the hole in the holiness of my universe began to leak in a way that kept me from avoiding or from covering over or from ignoring this thing that was lacking in me  lacking and unfinished

the circle the sphere of connection is broken  is leaking like a great big sieve and it for me is intolerable to cut myself off from that circle  it is like my action flipped me into the place that is the mirror opposite from my intentional self

and as a veterinarian we used to say that we practiced medicine we didn't know it  and in our practice it is from our deepest most regretful unknowings that led to the most heart shattering mistakes that we found out whether or not we had the courage to be doctors or not  its not that you won't fail my friend and teacher taught me its what will you do when that happens that will make all the difference in the world   and yesterday i failed   relatives    and today I am looking at it  and I see again that all the practice all the work all the falling down or holding fast  all the strands that are on the loom making the weave are and did lead to that man and me and my little place of undone untranslated grace  i dint hold the fire  it didn't occur to me that being at the cash register is the same as being the fire keeper at the big ceremony at Lame Deer  and yet today I see that it is  

you see its like the price of gold and water  if water is going to in the future cost the same as gold  the answer is to devalue gold   to stop placing exclusionary limits, fantasies, attachments on gold    and so it is with the fire  with work  with ceremony  it is not to raise everything to a level of sacredness and hold it  its only to hold the moment  only the moment like that   no matter the moment  no matter the person no matter the exchange  to hold it  gently and without expectation of being followed appreciated rewarded or condoned  just hold it because that is the work that is the joy that is the doing  and it is even in the mortar and the grain of sand the nuance of breath between us  

thankx relatives  for listening  for helping me get back to the fire and helping me get back to understanding about the fabric of the universe   its not so hard to hold it  and to let others be what they may and to watch as someone vomits into the fire what they hate about themselves  but it took a long time to understand that it mattered to me  and matters to me if I hold me  intact and if I have love and compassion and grace and just hold the fire and be in ceremony  be in prayer be at Lame Deer and at the counter at the stop and rob all the time

I am grateful to the man  and to all the work I put into all the days of sussing out what was and why  its a good christmas present I think  to figure this out

peace on earth good will among men and keep the home fire burning

love love love
mary