Drenched with Possibility

On the first Sunday of the new year I shared my word for 2013: Possibility. This week I began my formal exploration of my word. There are many more definitions of Possibility online than there are in the family Random House, the dusty oversized dictionary that has resided for decades in my family home on a special slanted shelf my dad made for it. There is the common one: “the fact or condition of being possible." But my favorite is: “Potentiality for interesting results.” That one beckons me into a wide open future. It peeks, mostly hidden, from around the corner with hooked index finger. It teases me toward exploration. It sets me dreaming.

Next I pull out synonyms that roll on my tongue and bounce around in my heart: plausibility, potentiality, feasible, achievable, realizable, attainable.

And then my favorite beginning exercise: finding quotes about my word. I love the internet. I find several to record in my notebook, to pull out when I need inspiration, or a kick in the butt. Again, I have a favorite, by a woman who proclaims herself an "idea-whisperer," which is pretty cool itself: “I have a habit of letting my imagination run away from me. It always comes back though...drenched with possibilities” (Valaida Fullwood). Drenched with possibilities. Wow. That is how I want to live. Drenched, like the valley on Wednesday when the rising sun turned its winter drab to gold. Drenched, like the first rain in twelve days left the trees and moss smelling green again.

Six years ago, at about this time, just before Lent (the season that I still my busyness and make space for whatever it is I have been ignoring), I thought about Possibility. What if I bought a house? I made a list of what that would mean for my life. I didn’t so much consciously decide to do it as I did follow the beckoning finger to the garden that changed my life. Neither a garden nor a changed life were on my list. A year ago, having turned that possibility to reality, I set my sights on returning to my soul home. It was a Bold Venture. It isn’t time yet for my next venture, and I don’t know when it will be; but it’s always time to be drenched with possibility.

I just read a friend’s blog post about her annual
week-long gathering of a group of women. At their first day check-in they each shared what their busy and productive year had held. Until the talking stick reached the group’s 86-year-old elder. Contritely she confessed that she didn’t know what good she was doing in the world. Everyday she goes to the coffee shop and tries to be friendly, “to make sure everyone gets a welcome as they come in the door.” One day she rocked a fussy baby so his mother could enjoy a cup of coffee. “You know,” she went on, “people just need to be seen. Just need someone to look up and say, ‘hi; glad you walked into the room.’ Mother Teresa said the greatest disease in the world is loneliness, that if she could heal anything about being human, it would be to cure loneliness with love. I try to be like that, to bring a little love into the space around me. But I feel old. I don’t have the hearing, the energy, or the big ideas I used to. That’s all I got to say.”

Selah. I invite you to breathe deeply and read that again, slowly.

Wow. Wow. I can imagine it was hard to speak in the room after that. After a selah, my friend, with permission to comment, offered this: “You are doing exactly what the elder in the village is supposed to do! You are tending what’s right in front of you. This is the fulfillment of your days—the capacity to slow down, to see what needs to happen next, right here, right now—with the young mother, with the baby, with the barrista, with the regulars from town, with us in the circle. Through these gestures of kindly attention offered into your daily surroundings you are a messenger of your deepest values. Every one of us who is moving faster, who is busy beyond managing, who is hooked into the necessities of technology, is counting on you being here amongst us moving at the pace of guidance and paying attention in the ways that you do.”

My mother is this elder to me. Because I am her family, with all the history that comes with a parent-child relationship, I don’t always see it. But everyone she meets is enchanted by her. People tell me all the time, “I love your mother.” She embodies kindness and hope and grace. She is proof that you don’t have to do anything earth shattering to change the world. Her nearly sightless eyes smile behind her dark glasses as she straightens her ever-so-slightly bent body and speaks a kind word to a restaurant patron. That person smiles at the child at the next table, because kind attention begs to be passed on. The child stops fussing and shyly smiles back, before giving her mommy a hug. And on and on into limitless possibility.

My mother and my friend’s elderly friend are preparing our elder places. Through them I see the possibilities for my own old age. But first things first. Right now I have today. Today I can dream about the possibilities in my still-energetic years. What I choose today will pave the way for tomorrow. And tomorrow’s possibilities will set the course for the next day. And all the while I will remember to smile at strangers. It could transform their day. It could call them to possibility.

My sister recently sent me this poem by Rabbi Yael Levy:

What is it that calls us forward,
To lift our eyes
And see that everything is possible?
Just for a moment to feel a strength beyond ourselves,
A love beyond ourselves,
And imagine we can step into the river
And change its course?

Perhaps it is remembering
That everything we do
Shapes the future
For the children we will never know.

Everything we create
Fashions a world for the people who will
Some day call us ancestor.

Netzach (victory) teaches
Raise up right action
And aim toward love and generosity.
Eternity exists in each moment
There is no separation between us
And what will be.

Drench yourself with possibility today. Selah.