This morning I was reading a passage from Simple Abundance: A Daybook of Comfort and Joy by Sarah Ban Breathnach. The author describes the book as a “walk through the year, beginning on New Year’s Day.” I have attempted to digest the book as a day-by-day devotion; however, there are the days when I re-read an appropriate passage for the day’s particular need or set of circumstances.
Today was one of those days. Scrambled or Fried…Scrambled or Fried…I thumbed through the pages frantically. I had to find Scrambled or Fried. After about fifteen minutes of perusing the 366 essays, I found Scrambled or Fried on date September 3 (as the pages are not numbered). Whenever I feel completely crazed and overwhelmed, this is one of the passages that I re-read.
Scrambled or Fried is an essay about a secret fantasy that many women have, and according to the author, “it focuses on the forbidden.” I know what you’re thinking. I thought the same thing, until I read the second paragraph. The essay speaks of “the overwhelming impulse to disappear without a trace.” She calls this fantasy of running away, “the waitress fantasy.”
When I first read the essay, I felt such a therapeutic release of guilt! I am not alone! The author says that “contemplating a plan of escape is an imaginary mechanism to let off steam from life’s pressure cooker.” She also writes, “When you think you can’t take it anymore, a life that revolves around asking customers if they want their eggs scrambled or fried holds a certain appeal….When our waitress fantasy surfaces, we’re physically, emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually exhausted by the struggle within and without that pulls us in a hundred different directions. We’re seriously wounded by the ancient enmity between daily life and the Great Work. Band Aids don’t work anymore.”
I wish that I could copy the entire passage word for word as Today’s Big Story. Every time I read it, I feel a cathartic response, as though I have been to a physician. Over the years, I have entertained the fantasy of running away – my own disappearing act. I call my imaginary impulse to bolt, “the Blowing Rock fantasy.”
Years ago, I read a book series by Jan Karon entitled the Mitford series. We were living in "the Big House" at the time, and I internalized my own imaginary escape and retreat as I read the stories. The books are based on the lives of normal people in the fictional mountain town of Mitford – a setting based on the actual postcard village of Blowing Rock, North Carolina. OMG! How does a person begin to describe Blowing Rock, North Carolina? Even before I had the unbelievable opportunity to go there three years ago, Blowing Rock (Mitford) had become the destination of my run-away fantasy.
The methodology of my fantasy has always been the same. I begin by literally searching the online classifieds of Blowing Rock newspapers and printing out jobs for which I could apply. Then, I check out temporary residences where I could live. My fantasy evolves to include a small store front building that I eventually buy to open a children’s book store. (I actually have a picture of the building and a telephone number to call.) By that point, I have moved into the second story apartment above my little shop around the corner. After a couple of hours of indulging my Blowing Rock fantasy, I float back down to reality, face my real life to do list, and start the process of bringing order to chaos.
The date that I am writing this blog is December 8, so I instinctively flip the pages to read today’s passage. The essay is entitled Tidings of Comfort and Joy. The first sentence reads as follows: This is the week that women’s shoulders begin to droop as their list of holiday “should do’s” becomes as long and heavy as Jacob Marley’s chains.
The author continues, “For many women, this is the season of misery and angst: tears, tantrums, screaming, yelling, hustle, bustle, cash conflicts, royal-pain relations, and holiday humbug.” Wow! I thought, how fitting! What better time for a run-away Blowing Rock fantasy than the frenzied, materialistic, chaotic rush of the holidays! As a matter of fact, my last fortune cookie read, “An enjoyable vacation is awaiting you near the mountains.”
I have said so many times this past year, “I can only do so much. I am only Human.” But Christmas reminds me that I am not only human. I am Spirit, also. In the anthology, The Book of Comfort, Elizabeth Goudge asks herself the question, “What are the sources of comfort to which we turn in what Saint Augustine…calls our mortal weariness?” The answer, she writes, is that “our existence is as light with comfort as it is weighted with weariness.” That is not just an answer for the holiday season, but an answer for all our days. Whenever my human heart is in danger of total collapse from the weight of my own weariness, a heavenly offering of that which is perfect always appears. The perfect gift may be as small as a pass-along box of earrings or as big as an answered prayer; but I always recognize the Divine lightness that comes with it – a welcomed intervention that brings unexpected comfort and pure joy, whether the source is human or Spirit.
Oh tidings of comfort and joy! That is the true message of the Christmas story – a world of mortal weariness existing together with Divine lightness. So, even if I do as much as humanly possible to make the holidays perfect for everyone, I can never make the eternal Christmas story more perfect than it already is. In the last sentence of today’s essay, Evelyn Underhill is quoted as saying: I do hope your Christmas…has a little touch of Eternity in among the rush and pitter patter and all. It always seems such a mixing of this world and the next – but that, after all, is the idea!
A little touch of Eternity – not an imaginary run-away fantasy – but a good and perfect gift that comes from above.
Comfort and Joy!
Dianne ; )
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