MY BIG ORANGE SWEATER

I knit myself a sweater a few years ago. The wool yarn is a deep orange, flecked with yellow and brown. I didn't use a pattern; once you understand how many stitches of any particular yarn it takes to make an inch, you can make things to any measurement. My sweater is very long and wide so I don't have to worry about it fitting and so warm that if a blizzard ever comes to Los Angeles I'm definitely prepared.
     A few months ago, I noticed that moths had gotten to the yarn. There were a number of holes, one of them fairly big and I wasn't sure it could be mended. I bordered on bereft; it wasn't fair that something I was so proud of, loved so much was damaged by little flying creatures that for some reason had targeted me. I shook out the sweater, put it in a plastic bin with some moth balls (which is what I should have done in the first place) and there it sat for weeks.
     I didn't forget the sweater - I kept seeing those holes, so big I couldn't wear the sweater and hope no one would notice. Somehow, leaving the sweater in that state felt sacrilegious; this was my work, I'd put in the hours and hours it took to make it - if I didn't honor all my effort, it would be because I so little valued myself. I saw it clearly and knew it was true.
     I found a reweaver and took the sweater in. Mending it was expensive but my self-esteem was at stake so I left it at the shop. I picked it up today and it looks great - if the two women who own the business hadn't left markers of where the mends were, I never would have found them. 
     I'm looking at the sweater now and am amazed to realize I feel something like joy. If I hadn't taken it to be mended, I can feel precisely the guilt I'd have every time I passed the closet and thought about the sweater in its eaten state. I'm thinking now about all the times I've let things slide, been too lazy or to full of what's-the-point depression to do the ordinary maintenance everyone has to do. But I've been trying to do better and this time I did. I took care of my sweater - I took care of myself. 

GRACKLES

Years ago, every once in a while I would stumble into a feeling I called "on the verge."  It usually happened when I saw a beautiful sunset or sat in the silence of the redwood trees, or let myself connect with the beauty of Nature. It had happened once when I had spent a few days at Zion National Park.  I'd been disappointed at how crowded the park was and on the morning I was driving out, I happened to be stopped by a road crew so that traffic heading in my direction could pass.  I happened to be the first car in the line and the flagman, who happened to be a woman, was standing very near my window. As we waited, I asked her if there were back roads in the park where tourists didn't go.  She said she and her husband went camping off a road up ahead, she told me where and when it was my turn, I thanked her and drove on.

     I found the turnoff easily.  The moment I turned right, the car and I started to climb. Parts of Zion reach over 8500 feet elevation.  I don't how how high I was but I was definitely going higher.  The sky was bright blue, the sunlight sharp, the aspens had already turned and were very bright yellow.  I was amazed when the trees gave way to an alpine meadow and there was a farm just beyond it.  One farm, all the way up here.  

     Eventually the pavement ran out and I continued on a dirt road, still going up.  The air was so clear and all the colors, the hundred different shades of green, the glinting granite of rocks in the distance, the brown dirt -- everything was clean and hard edged, beautiful.  I didn't see another car or person.  It was just what I wanted.

     Then the dirt road petered out, ended.  I got out of the car and started walking straight ahead, through some bushes and heavy growth.  I don't know what instinct told me to walk in that direction, but suddenly the undergrowth ended and I found myself on the top of a cliff with a very deep steep sided canyon below.  It was breathtaking.  There were miles of mountains falling away whichever way I looked, the wind was the only sound except for the cries of three or four huge blackbirds flying circles in the canyon. ( I looked them up in my bird book when I got home and I think they were grackles.)  I felt myself flying on the backs of those birds, circling lazily on currents of air. I closed my eyes and took deep breaths. That all that wildness and grandeur existed whether I or anyone was here to see it, was somehow comforting. When I opened my eyes, I felt again that sense if being on the verge. On the verge of what? I couldn't say but it was a big feeling, the biggest I'd felt, set off by the beauty of the world around me.

     I've thought of that feeling many times over the years.  I understand it now.  It was the yearning deep inside me to connect with the world, to be right-sized in it, to give myself over to the great mystery at the center of the world.  I saw myself laughing, wanting to pull long beautiful ribbons out of my chest and throw them in the air so the sun could shine on them. Joy. I didn't know it then but I was on the verge of joy. Years would go by before I was no longer on the verge, but opened fully, ready to walk through the door into Spirit.