Herein Lies The Peace of God

Photo credit:  Jonathan Meyer The holidays are stressful for many people, because they have preconceived ideas of how everything should be joyous, and often their expectations do not match their reality. I had the bright idea to go skiing this year and leave all that behind. My husband and I took our 3 teenagers on a week-long ski trip to New England as their Christmas gift. We didn't decorate for the holidays, buy and wrap gifts, or mail out cards. We didn't even put up a Christmas tree for the first time in 20 years! It felt so freeing to break with convention and do what I really liked, instead of what I was "supposed to" do. We had lots of fun, and I thought I had outsmarted my ego. Silly me!  When we returned to our home in Virginia, my parents - who had been house and dog-sitting for us - were still at the house, and stayed to visit through the New Year's weekend. This is when my ego got it's revenge for being ignored. It seemed my mom could not open her

  Photo credit: Andrew Buchanan I read a book this year by Jeffrey Kagel, a "white Jewish kid from Long Island" and a founding member of the band that became  Blue Oyster Cult . The author was an aspiring rock musician who had a lot of personal problems and decided to travel to India with some friends in 1970. There he become a devotee of the Hindu guru Neem Karoli Baba (Maharaj-ji), who gave him the name Krishna Das. His guru exuded such unconditional love that Krishna Das spent all day just longing for an hour in his presence. The rest of the time he spent learning Indian devotional music, which is called kirtan. In his book,  Chants of a Lifetime , Krishna Das gave this account of what happened as he was about to return to the United States: I blurted out in anguish, 'Maharaj-ji! How can I serve you in America?' He looked at me with mock disgust and said, 'What is this? If you ask how you should serve, then it is no longer service. Do what you want.' I coul

Photo credit: Edu Lauton Today I was thinking about how much time and energy I used to spend on making others wrong.  I used to read articles on the Internet looking for things to correct in the comments.    I used find things wrong with the grammar, spelling, pronunciation, and opinions of others.  I honestly thought that I was somehow being helpful by pointing out their inadequacies!  I didn't realize it at the time, but I thought that my salvation lay in being right about things.  It was very important to me to get things right - more important than anything else! I used to live in fear of making mistakes, getting things wrong, screwing up. When I did make a mistake - because after all I was only human - I would beat myself up inside, even if no one else thought the mistake was a big deal. I would recall how I screwed up and make myself feel crummy for not having done a better job. And because I was so hard on myself, I felt justified in being hard on everyone else too.  Ye