Dichotomy vs. The Divine: There is Plenty of Amniotic Fluid for Us All
By Jane Tawel
January 8, 2026
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We have created a false dichotomy-ridden world — my team vs. your team, your politics vs. my politics, my god vs. your God, us vs. them. Our dichotomization of the world we live in extends to our philosophy, theology, worldview, plan for living — whatever you would like to name that which claims you and how you think and how you behave. We give these various worldviews names so we can contrast them, own them, follow them, when facts or life seem to intrude on the mysterious truth of our Meaning. We feel we must have something to fight that gives our achievements the savoring quality that metaphorically, a plain diet of bread and water does not fulfill. Competition becomes the spice of our lives whether we know it or not and creates sound-proofed walls around our religions, our national loyalties, our genders and races and economic statuses, and around our football teams. But here is the thing I have been learning, small little nibble by small nibble, in the works of people like Walter Wink, Paul Tillich, Richard Rohr, and Marcus Borg among others: our dichotomies have almost severed our relationships to other humans and to The Divine. We are hanging by a thread to the Real, which some call God or Spirit or The Divine or the Universal. There are several causes of this, and I am sure I am not at all smart enough or aware enough to know them all, but the number one cause, I think, of our estrangement from God is that we see God as the distant over-seer of a dichotomized belief-system. And what God says over and over in the Hebrew Bible, in the Christian Testaments, in the Quaran, in the Hindu Vedas, and in the glorious, achingly beautiful scriptures of the Natural World is this: God/Spirit/ Divine/ Creator wants loving, compassionate, truthful Relationship with every human being — a relationship as close as our heartbeat, as close as our breath, as close as a lover, as close as Mother’s womb.
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Imagine if we thought of every immigrant, every Palestinian, every person of color, every unhoused person on our streets, every differently gender-identified person, every person from the other team as swimming in God’s Womb with us? Picture it: Here we are floating along together in Mother’s care and there is plenty of amniotic fluid for all of us. Or imagine that we begin to see God as a Father who doesn’t love any of His kids any more than His other children? And this God-Father, that allows us to call Him, “Daddy”, “Da-da”, always sees us as His little innocent baby who really can’t talk all that well because our words are limited, and really can’t think all that well because we can’t see much past our own little toes and we can’t reach much further than Da-Da’s Face as He holds us, and as Daddy places us in Mother’s arms, which are the same as His arms, we can’t really get nourishment from anything other than God-Mom’s ever-flowing- with-Life-giving-nourishment Breast. Is this not what all the teachings of Truth, True-Truth, try to show us with metaphors and parables and myths — all those human creations that struggle toward those Realities beyond the material and beyond our egoic-minds and beyond the struggling wrestlings with the limits of language that give us just an inkling of our own created creativeness in the image of the Creator?
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Let’s be honest: relationships can be tough. I don’t know about you, but I have never had any kind of relationship: friend, spouse, child, parent, relative, co-worker, boss — you name it — that has proceeded in a lovely little straight line forward, like a smooth road with no hills, no bumps, no muddy potholes. And some of these bumps and potholes are frankly of the other person’s making and lots and lots more of them are of my own making. But if you commit long-term to being in a relationship as I have been privileged to do with my hubby, my children, and a few close companions on The Way, then you can see the trials as part of being a human being who is meant, like all in and of this lovely Creation/ Nature, meant to let go in order to hold on to something new, to get lost and seek in order to find, and to, just as the trees who lose their leaves to grow new ones do, to die daily to our old sense of self in order to be reborn to new life. And to find a more intimate loving relationship with Another that without those bumps and trials and vulnerable achings would not have been possible yesterday.
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When I read what now I have come to think the Bible was supposed to provide for us — stories about real people’s struggling relationships with The Divine Real (God) — I realize that much of my life and hence, my belief system, has been about making God into my image. God is so often only close if I think of God as an “It” that can fit in my heart, kinda like Jesus, and be used as needed. But God is also so often been at the same time, a distant figure Who has dichotomized the world into haves and have-nots, thems and us-es, good and bad, my religious team against their religious team, and heaven-bound folks against the hell-bound. God has been for most of my life a powerful patriarch of my own religious views that I need to beg for what I want, that judges my every action and thought, and that I hope will forgive me enough to allow me as I am to live forever as I am, while sending to hell the people whom I deem unworthy. And then I throw Jesus into this mix as someone who was God but died and “paid up” all my debts so I don’t have to worry about my connection with God any more because Jesus had a special relationship with God on my behalf. And when you put it that way in words — it sounds as crazy and insincere and messed-up as it is. Right? Because what The Divine/ Creator / God — whatever you can still with love call Spirit in and of, but also beyond and above this material existence — what Parent-Spirit wants is not our sacrifices, not our offerings, not our achievements — but our loving hearts connecting to THE IAM Loving Heart.
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As a parent of four adult children, I can confirm: when I am filled with true love (compassion, desire, care, obsession, commitment, adoration) of my four children, now adults — when I am full to the brim of That Which Loves and Only Loves — then all I want is to Be with them, in relationship, in relationship, in relationship. Why can not I trust, have faith, that God in the Purity of His Grace, wants this with me, Her child?
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There is this old rock and roll song and one of the lines about the romantic relationship between the two lovers has stuck in my mind all these years. It is partly because I grew up when you had to figure out the lyrics to songs by hearing them over and over on the radio or sometimes on the LP you had bought. Ah, life before computer screen immediacy of information — how sometimes I do miss it! So, for this song that we heard on the radio, the important line was a bit hard to understand, and we had a friend one time riding in the back seat of mom’s car with us, and she was adamant that the catchy line was: “For you are Amanda and I am Steve”. And you know that works for what I am trying to say about God. God wants to be our Amanda or Steve to our Steve or Amanda, depending on which gendered name we want to identify with. The Divine wants to be as close as a lover in the act of loving the beloved — God wants to name us and be named — and this understanding of God is all over the Bible texts and many other spiritual texts as well. But the true lyric of this song, which eventually we preteens in the back of that car finally figured out, reveals something also true about what The Divine wants us to understand about Her which is also metaphoric and anthropomorphic, because of course God is incomprehensible and beyond our human understanding, despite our centuries of boxing Him up and defining Her in controllable, bite-sized bits. We still laugh today about our confusion about what the lyrics actually were to that song, which were: “For you are a magnet, and I am steel”.
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Today I am on a journey by way of, not fighting, not running or even walking, but of Being — being in the kind of relationship with what I call God, that people throughout history have sought with The Divine Mystery/Reality. I am letting go of my striving in small moments as well as I can to find: “resting”, “cradling” and “hiding in”. I am asking The Divine Creator to “create in me a new heart”, to “hide me in the Rock”, to be the “Mother Bear to my cub-ness” to let me be the “chick to Her Mother Hen”, “the son returned to the Loving Father”, and the “little lamb to the Shepherd who lives among us sheep”. These are all metaphoric relationships found in my primary Scripture, the Judeo-Christian Bible, but they are true to all True-Truths throughout our known history of humankind. We just have either forgotten or neglected that Truth and chosen to set up the golden calves of our preferred individualistic idols that have led us, like the lost sheep, astray.
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The next time I feel the old dichotomies of us vs. them rise-up in me, I will try to remember that in Christ there is no us and them. The next time I want to cling to the black and whites that seem to build a foundation for me I will remind myself they are foundations built on sand, and like the sands of Time, they melt away in the Flow of Eternal Truths — beyond space and time and where black and white are forever, only Light. The next time I feel what I call God is distant, needy, controlling — a monarch to be feared and to whom I must beg — I will lightly touch my breath and pray, “Spirit of the Living God, fall afresh on me and breathe into me Your Life”. The next time I feel angry or alone, I will let God know how I feel, just as I would my most intimate lover and I will trust that my relationship will grow through honest vulnerability to He Who Loves me. The next time I despair at all I think or fear all that I feel, I will thank my Mother-God, that She holds me safe in Her Womb, safe in Her arms, and safe in Her Love. In fact, she “holds the whole world — tree, rock, lizard, bee and my enemy — in her loving hands.
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And I will ask Love to let me begin to see the Universal Christ not as a small, locked security-deposit-safe, but as a free-flowing Ocean of compassion for all — not just enough, but so much that it breaks our nets of prejudice, and spills out of our baskets of miserly grasping, and runs to our prodigals with forgiveness and joy and connection — just as our Father runs to embrace and welcome us.
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Relationship. Scary, isn’t it? Yes, one hesitates in any relationship to be vulnerable. But I have found that a life of putting on the armor of constant battle is exhausting, confusing, and leads to a life of negativity. I am trying bit by bit, to unshackle myself from old ideas, and to free myself from the battlements I have let my thoughts create. I ask The Divine, to create in me Her Spirit, and to be unarmored except with the “the breastplate of faith and love, and a helmet of the hope of salvation”. I appeal with no small amount of trepidation but also quite a bit of excitement at what I might discover about the Lover of My Soul and That which longs to live not just with me but within me. And I can call this “Other that is All and is My Truest Self” God — or I can call it Mother, Father, Divine Spirit, Creator — or I can call it Amanda or Steve. True Lovers have lots of names for each other. But no matter what names we use, I want to learn, day by day, hour by hour, breath by breath, to be the longing heart of Steel to the Magnet of Universal Compassionate Truth that draws all the world, all of us, to The Pulsing Heart of the Eternal Lover.
Today I am struggling with this conundrum. I grew up in a pretty different American Christianity and very different America — in the “heart-land”, “Bible-belt” of the Midwest (for you Coastal folks, that’s still your fly-over zone). Were there problems? Yep. Was there error and misunderstandings about Christ’s life and message? Our Mea Culpa. But there was one phrase — (God bless whoever first came up with it) — that became a reminder, words of instruction and wisdom along the way, and shorthand for everything we were supposed to do to walk in The Way of the Christ. People had bumper stickers and acronyms on necklaces and t-shirts and for those of you young-ones watching the insanity today of people claiming Christianity as their belief-system or you who did not ever hear the catchy Catch-phrases of a Christianity once trying to live like Christ, this is what we thought was really the basis for, as Francis Schaeffer once wrote, “How we should then live”. What we said to ourselves and each other in moments of decision was this: “What Would Jesus Do?” WWJD? * I was so very happy to see the priests, and pastors, and rabbis, and imams gather in MN — coming from near and far, just as the Magi did — to stand for what Jesus would have stood for and did with his life here on Earth. I am heartened to see so many people, in Minnesota, in Maine, in Los Angeles, in Oregon, and throughout Europe and Canada and the world — who may have never really heard much about Christ and also those who have a different doctrinal worldview or what we call “religion” and who are standing up for what all people of God believe in: Love above all, Sacrifice for Truth and what is Right, and treating others as you would want to be treated. And of course, for some, that includes What does God want me, as a human being who loves and serves Him, do with this one small life of mine? WWJD? * If you have never read about what we know about Jesus and what he taught and did, it is worth a look — some even believe it is worth risking their own lives for, as Renee Good did and as many who have been abused and beaten by the long arm of an evil empire are doing today throughout the world and in our own backyard. I am trying to take a new look in my own life, at what this very intriguing and unique person, Jesus, actually did and said and thought. He had a different kind of wisdom about how to live and I think it had a lot to do with “how we humans should now live” according to what is not just God’s way, but Our true and best way. Smart guy in a strange kind of “smart” Way. Rumors have it he was even the Son of God. So it makes sense if you know about him and think he had any valid points to ask yourself: What Would Jesus Do? WWJD? Right?
* And so I ask some of you who I think you think you still “believe” in this idea of Christianity and of Jesus as The Christ — beyond what you believe — what do you think you should DO? Are you saying you are no longer of the opinion that when you see someone murdered for standing up for what Jesus called “the least and the lost” that Jesus would condone that and support it? Are you saying when you hear the words of hatred, racism, violence, and verifiable and endless lies and you repeat them and give them credence that you can say that is what Jesus Would Say? When you see children, the children that Jesus said “let them come unto me” and whom Jesus said that “unless we become like little children we cannot enter the kingdom of God” — are you saying that Jesus would say that’s okay because he didn’t mean that color of chlld, or a child of those kinds of parents, or…. ? Please forgive me but I am just so confused about what you say you believe. WWJD? * You can see, my mind is truly boggled. Because I sat in your pews, and I ate at your tables, I taught and thought and bought it all — and I talked the talked with the best of them. But I just didn’t realize that we were not Jesus’ disciples, but the “blind guides” and dead cemetery stones, just like the Pharisees and Sadduccees of the days of Jesus’ own history here on Planet Earth. Mea Maxima Culpa. But I thank God, that I left “Christianity” in time to hopefully find Christ. I hope you can too, my friends. I really do. * Maybe it is too hard for some of you to admit you were wrong. We used to have another belief in the Christianity of my youth: “If you will confess your wrong -headedness (sins) and turn from your evil (broken, mistaken, selfish) ways, you will be forgiven and cleansed from all unrighteousness (misguidedness, greedy, self-centered, egotistical or just plain foolish choices)”. I know it to be true, because as a great “sinner” myself (broken, wrong-headed, miss-stepping, tripping over myself, ego-driven, and weak-spirited, and very, simply struggling, learning often the hard way, Human Doing), she who has “sinned much” has been forgiven much.
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It took only a handful of people to spread the Good News of the human being we call Jesus (for you young ones, that was before internet, cellphones, and Tik-Tok. Yes, I know, it’s going to be okay — have your parent get you a cold glass of water and lie down for a while. You’ll get over the shock.) I hope and pray that today’s “handful” of people who are trying to turn this Titanic around will succeed — I believe it has been done before and so I have to believe it can be done again. The Davids of this world have defeated the Goliaths before. It happened during the civil rights movement. It happened when the Berlin wall fell. It happened in a stable in Bethlehem. But for the rest of us — maybe for some of you reading this far — I just have to ask…
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What Would Jesus Do? * Can we try to recalibrate our beliefs and hop back on the Narrow Way? Can we start making popular again in our pews and synagogues and mosques the idea that we should be asking not what we should believe but how we should now live? And can some of us, who at least maybe when we were children, used to ask ourselves What Would Jesus Do? Can we ask it — and mean it — and start to step out in faith doing it?
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I am not proselytizing, so please hear these words differently than you may have heard them before from people who want to “save” us but don’t want to suffer with us as Jesus told us to do; as Jesus did. He suffered with us. But he also partied with us. He experienced everything we did in life and still came out believing in a God of Love and that all we had to do to live the right way was to Love. So I ask this with humbleness of those who don’t know Jesus and those who say they do: Who is your Jesus? Who is your “Savior”? Maybe it isn’t the man we know as Jesus that some call The Christ. Maybe it is but by a different name in a different culture in a different part of the world. Maybe it isn’t any one you can name or think of or even believe in. But if you are feeling that today, in your world, in your life, you need someone to show you a different, better, more sustainable, wise, caring, peace-giving and love-promoting way; if you are feeling that today, you need some kind of radical and very different kind of Hero, than the wanna-be saviors and heroes today masquerading as emperors with no clothes or rich people with no souls; then I have a humble suggestion. I am finding it enlightening and wonder-full (full of mysterious Wonder) in an anxious, fearful, sorrowful world to read about the life of one man who was called Jesus and to ask myself moment by precious moment:
I like traditions — well, many of them I do, (not a real fan of having a colonoscopy every 5–10 years, but I do it). This is one of the most tradition-full seasons of the year, at least in America. And yet, America and other kingdoms on earth are now undergoing, as never before perhaps, a time when traditions are being bucked to a rather outrageous and dangerous degree because truth and love are being bucked to a dangerous and insane degree. But one of my long-held traditions, as many of you have, has been writing a letter to friends and family that wish you felicitations for the season we call Christ-mas or Holy-days and to encourage you to have a good year in the next reincarnation of our calendars. And so it is this year, that I write again.
Sometimes I don’t feel like writing, especially when this season’s exceptional story of God’s Love seems so far from the religions and nations that claim it to be true; but I do appreciate all the traditions that try to keep this story alive — the nativity sets, the fragrant Ever-greens, the car rides to see neighborhoods decorated like electricity was free this time of year in honor of The Light of the World; the candy and cookies and sleigh bells ringing, the carols about Peace on Earth; and songs about St. Nick, giver of gifts to rich and poor alike — all the symbols that speak of joy and community; and of freedom, and kindness and generosity and care; of sacrifices for future generations and humble righteousness defeating power and greed for the benefit of humanity and the human good; and of love that has no barriers, no agenda, no judgement — because it is the love told and symbolized in the story of a helpless baby and his struggling mother and father. It is a Love that endures this life’s suffering and pain because of anticipated joy. I was incredibly blessed to go through the pain of child-birth four times, and let me tell you, there is nothing, no pain as agonizing as letting a new little human being struggle her or his way out of your body into the world — but the anticipation of going through that pain to the absolute joy you experience when it is over is worth every excruciating moment. I love that this season centers around that pain leading to joy because of love: the universal, very human story. As a long-time Literature-Geek, perhaps most of all, I love the symbols and metaphors and True Truths of stories and story-tellers that have those themes and unseen, but not unrealized, truths that transcend the place, time, and culture in which they were written and become ever-living testaments to what all humans seek and all wise ones find. And this season has some of the best stories ever written which can point us to True Truth — if we know how to listen with our hearts.
For me, though, the best part of this season has always been the anticipatory aspects of it; I love Advent. Traditionally, this year, my hubby and I gave all our adult kids Trader Joe Advent calendars. I have squirreled away stocking stuffer gifts from “Santa” and look forward to the family opening their stockings on Christmas morning (sometimes more like noon now by the time they can gather from their homes), and some of “Santa’s” gifts will be met with the surprise of “Oh, I love this!” and some will immediately mentally go into their “To be regifted later” pile. I don’t care; it’s the journey to the opening that counts. The house is decorated with all the traditional things in “hopes that St. Nicholas soon will be here” — the tree has ornaments the kids made in Sunday School, although some of the stars are missing a point, and the glitter ratio on most is diminished; I have the little ceramic table-top Christmas tree that lights up that a neighbor gave me years ago which reminds me of the one my Grandma Gladys used to have; and the nativity that my Mom gave me my first Christmas as a mom myself; and a ratty old four-foot stuffed Santa I have had since I was a one-year-old whose stuffed body has seen better days (as has mine, which is maybe why I like it so much). But my favorite tradition that I keep year after year, despite the fearful rumblings in the world, despite the personal trials or tribulations, despite my age, or despite the suffering of people I know and of those I don’t know — the tradition I keep despite any of that, despite my very own self — is the tradition of Anticipation. At odd times, like when I am doing the dishes, or lying in bed wondering if today will be the day the world’s insanity stops and we will all choose to turn it around in time, or when I am convincing myself that “yes, I do really want to head out at dawn again for my run”; or when I am snuggled up next to Raoul thinking about not a whole lot except how glad I am to have him with me all these many years and also just in this very present moment — sometimes — out of the blue — my heart will start pounding like a little drummer boy, (and at my age, you do worry when that happens); but then I remember — that is how one’s heart feels when there is a sense — not a thought — not a belief — not a doctrine — not a law — not a government instituted program — but a Sense — that something Good is coming. When the heart flutters like a butterfly taking flight, it is a sign that wherever and whenever human beings still anticipate that good things are just up ahead, that no matter how dark things may seem, that the Light of Truth will “Dawn” and that a Star will always dispel the darkest night, and that the truest symbol of all our truths can be found in the story of a mother giving birth to a New Life. When we can trust that the Heart of Love never lies then we can anticipate that tomorrow will shine forth with what a little baby-in-a-manger story teaches us — that Love wins. Love always wins.
Happy Advent: the season of the heart. May the stories of this season, and the examples of all those who came before us bringing truth, goodness, peace, and love, fill you in unexpected times and inexplicably joyful ways, with hope and peace — enough for you to give birth to your own renewed, and eternally-blessed Love.
May we live in the hopeful expectation that just around the proverbial corner, one day we shall have Peace on Earth and Good-will for All. May your hearts flutter at unexpected times with a sense beyond words, beyond explanation even, that God is Good and that we small, little specks in the Cosmos, we here and now and on-call-today human beings have what it takes to bring heaven to Earth, because somewhere deep inside, just like the story of heaven incarnated on earth in the manger scene, we each have the divinely-given desire and capability to Love. And Love always wins.
My Small Lizard-Self — A Mish-mashed Essay on Meaning
By Jane Tawel
I am but a small, small person, living in an age of gigantic egos, no matter the reality of who they are, and no matter the justification. And the biggest ego of all — the biggest problem of all — the biggest complaints and worries and angerings of all that make my life miserable and fraught and painful is my own out-of-bounds, out-of-control, out-of-all-proportion Ego. People, who know me, may think they are being kind and truthful when they poo-poo this statement about me. And all the world’s psychologies and philosophies and spiritualities will try to help me or dissuade me from this albatross of my understanding of what the world’s problems are. Oh, I see the world’s problems and wrestle daily with the knowledge that if only every single person — my family members, my friends, the government, the religious leaders, and the silly squirrels and rather stupid lizards and one-minded ants would JUST LISTEN TO ME — well then truth, justice, and correct behavior would be universal if everyone would just listen to this darn smartness I have about how to fix everyone and everything. And you know I am right, because that is exactly what you think about yourself, right? (This is where if this were a text I would put a laughing hysterically emoji. So, I will just say –ha! ha!).
See what I mean, though, about my ego? And after the last years of studying the Greats — those who realized that their ego was a burden to let go of and that only by “laying down their lives” could they truly have Abundant Life and be their True Self — I have imbibed a lot of good hints about Who I Am meant to be and How to get there and What the real purpose of all our lives is and Where I should be using my desire to give and be of good use, and above all Why — Why I should gladly “die to my small self, the ego” and Live to the Spacious Self, the Deep I, the unattached Buddha, and the Love of Enemy Christ. (And yes, those capitalized words are the penultimate, Ultimate and well-documented for effective truth-gathering “Investigative Questions”.) And I love learning all that important stuff about The Soul of myself and The Soul of the World, and God, and my True Nature — and then I go out and just snuggle back down into the bed of my narcissistic, ego-driven, comfy little lumpy small self.
My ego’s biggest fears right now can be reduced perhaps to two: First, I see that we humans are literally intent on destroying the world, people and planet and all; and this makes me fearful and very sad and very angry because humans can be incredible and none of us (don’t lie to yourself) none of knows what really happens to humans when they or all this world are gone forever (Great humans = Mozart, Dickinson, Usain Bolt, Ghandi, Teresa of Avila…). And also the planet is the most beautiful, awesome thing I have personally every experienced (Trees! Aforementioned squirrels, lizards, and ants. The Ocean. Little streams that make their way around rocks and fallen branches. Rain and also, sunlight falling on an open page. My children’s hands and our knees — aren’t knees amazing!? And flowers — I mean, Why God? Why useless, lovely things like flowers? Oh, this glorious world!) And none of us really knows (don’t kid yourself) if there is some other place somewhere that is anything as glorious and delightful and awe-inspiring as this dear, dear place we call Earth with these unique creatures from bees to rhinoceroses to people. I mean Jesus said it — The Kingdom of Heaven isn’t out there, it is here on Earth, among you, within you — earth and humans = Perfect World. But of course, it isn’t. Cuz — well, our egos. We don’t want the perfection that is or at least could be, because then we would all have to give up our egos and just share it all with each other and love each other and be joyful and peaceful and how boring would that be? (See Book of Genesis for allegorical proof of this should you need proof.)
Secondly, my biggest fear can be reduced to one word: Time. Running out of it (from being late to not getting a project finished on time to dying — the ultimate running out of Time). There is also the constant monkey-mind fear of not being present in this moment of time and constantly trying to anticipate or actually anticipating what it might or might not bring me tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow as it “creeps in this petty pace from day to day” (Yep. Shakespeare — Another great human to mourn the possible eradication of from the memory of the Universe if we kill the planet and ourselves.) (Does the Universe even have memory? Does it need memory? I don’t know. Stop asking me these hard questions. I’m tired.)
And the ego has long accepted platitudes and mockeries of faith to shore up its sandy shores upon which I have built the house I call my home — my ego, my small self. And it is only in small ways that I have started to piece together a new shelter, a shelter cobbled together from bits and pieces and wrecked ships on past shores of desire and dreams and beliefs, and my soul or True Self has begun to seek that which creates in me a small sanctuary, created from moments of mystery, the calm of curiosity, the unfailing truth of Unknowing, and in lighting the small wick of Love in my small self for all people, all things, and all that is “not me” and perhaps is God. And for a few little seconds at a time I can dwell in the difficult but loving reality I happen to achieve in nano-seconds of letting go, of opening up, and of quieting and lovingly rejecting all that races as a false reality in my ego-driven mind, and I stop momentarily the babble of my brain and with my heart I listen for the Still Small Voice of “peace that passes understanding”.
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Last week I was in and out of my back door hanging up laundry. My husband and I like to hang up laundry when we can because not using our dryer is pretty easy in California all year long, (it rarely rains, alas) and it is a small thing we can do for the environment. It has also become a rather “Zen” activity for me and gives me a sense of connection to eons of women doing small tasks with our hands in the open-air, praising the sun and breeze as gifts for our good and our pleasure. Our back French doors are a bit wiggledy-woggledy, and if you aren’t focused and careful, there is a slight crack left open when you sort of swing it shut which you have to kinda’ do, to be honest, with a basket full of laundry in your hands. I hung the clothes and came back in to find a small mama-lizard (I know it was a mama by the size — in SoCal you get to know the lizards in your yard — the baby ones are soooooo cute!). Mama-lizard had rapidly, sneakily, foolishly, crawled inside to warm herself on the warm sunny grey kitchen floor. Now, that would be fine, but eventually, the lizard would realize that once inside she didn’t really have escaping capabilities (or brains –I am not being judgmental here, cuz well, lizards, well… evolution, people. Lizards — not meant to be all that high up on the smarts chart.)
I hate for anything to be in danger of harm or especially danger of death. On walks, if I see a silly squirrel start to dash across the street with a nut in his mouth, unconscious of oncoming cars, I call out: “Don’t do that, Silly. Be careful.” I often caution the deer who come down from the foothills to be safe out there and try to head back up as soon as they can. And my dear bees who throng busily around my lavender are such marvels, but they do buzzily worry so when I come in the evening to water the plants. I always let them know to stay up high (“When I go low, you go high!” To paraphrase Michelle Obama, another great human). “I won’t spray you, dear girls. I love you. (Bees busily buzzing in their beautiful business around our plants are girls — I used to call them “guys” but if you think about it, of course those lovely busy honey-giving, plant-pollinating nurturers are Female! I mean, it makes me feel sorry for Queens to think about the queen bees having to stay inside doing nothing but making more baby bees with AI drone bees. Makes me happy to be born one of the female worker bees out here.)
So, the mama-lizard gets into the house, and I realize I have to get her out. If you have ever tried to catch a lizard — well, you will have a clear picture of just how fast I failed. So, if lizards are stupid, what does that make me? I was actually very smart. I quickly got a colander (air holes) and a thick piece of cardboard (sturdy). I cornered the scampering (well, sort of quickly slithering, to be honest) lizard but then — I choked. I knew the lizard could grow a tail again if I accidently bashed the colander down on it but I am really rather mechanically challenged and I feared I would clang the pot down on its head and I didn’t think lizards could regrow their heads, even though they do have very small, barely functioning brains. And when I choked, mama-lizard dashed under the washing machine. End of lizard. End of story.
Except it wasn’t. Because speaking of small-brained dingbats, the next day I left a crack in the French doors and Another Lizard Came In! Wash. Hang clothes. Repeat human stupidity. I came closer this time with the colander/cardboard trick, but this lizard got back behind a cabinet. End of story. End of my saving lives. End of my Mother-Teresa-ing it, and doing great things with love by a small person.
I spent the rest of that lizard-losing-and probably-dying day mourning mama and papa lizard and all lizards and all lives and feeling like a failure and thinking all kinds of Nietzsche-esque thoughts about the meaningless of life and in particular the meaningless of my small self- life. I mean who can’t manage to wield a colander and piece of cardboard to save someone’s life? Ugh! Useless me.
But the next day, a miracle occurred. Because miracles are really just those moments when you have given up your small self and ego enough to just not know anything and so all the walls and doors and boundaries and ideas that close you off to something happening can happen– despite yourself, despite your beliefs, despite your accomplishments and also, well, — just “despite” — and when you give-up, then a small little crack in the unreality you have created about yourself and the world and Nature and God — opens to the Reality and through that little crack, the miracle of one, small act of Grace can sneak in.
Here is proof of miracles. The next morning, one of the lizards came out from hiding and sat patiently waiting for me in the small shaft of sunlight coming through the crack in the door and I said to the lizard, “Please don’t run away. May I just open the door for you?” And my small little nobody of a self, quietly, calmly, without overthinking, opened the door, skooched behind mama-lizard and with one small, old, very-human foot gently guided forward and through the door-crack one small lizard — back into her lovely, lizardy world and home to her waiting, anxious family.
***
I don’t know the meaning — neither the small little meaning of why I was allowed to be born and live this long, wonderful life I have lived, nor the meaning of why I was graced with saving one life of one lizard, or why I was given the gift of my family, and friends, and my particular Space and Time on this planet; and I don’t know what or if I will have any meaning after this body and brain die; and I definitely do not know the Meaning of “It” “All”. And the biggest tragedy of my life is nothing any one has done to me but rather what I have done to myself in thinking I have to know too much of anything at all and not just live as much Love as I can, embracing all the wonder, all the beauty, all the gifts, and all the joy — in just the miracle of being alive, in just this moment.
Maybe the sole reason I have lived was to witness the salvation of one small lizard and to know that in the end, there is nothing I can do but accept the miracle of grace by opening to the small cracks that let in the Sun. In my smallness is the greatness of grace. And therein, I may find the truly miraculous meaning of it all and a stillness and peace with a mind like a small lizard that needs to know very little, except how to open my heart to everyone and everything and with Love, follow the Light.
Jane Tawel 