Born of the Fire

“It’s ok not to feel ‘festive’ this year. All your emotions are welcome and darling, the feeling is the healing. Wishing you all the space and grace to feel as you do, remembering that no feeling is permanent. Allow it to move through you, and it might just make space for something fresh and new.” Suzy Reading

By: Gabriela Yareliz

I was going to write about the New York Rangers’ toxic display of stupidity on ice yesterday, but Steve Valiquette said it all. (We love an honest Steve!) So we are getting really personal today. Recently, there was a moment in worship that took me back. The worship leader reminded the church of what it’s like to look back on your life and see God’s hand on it. Joke is on him, because even before he spoke this in an interlude toward the end of the song, I had already been in a daze and reflection over my own life. Not going to lie, it made me emotional. My right eye was releasing enough tears for both eyes. (Not sure why my left eye was dry, but it was. Not sure if my husband noticed my one crying eye, but regardless, the waterworks were happening on the other side of him).

They always say the holidays can be difficult. We remember the people who aren’t around the table with us. We feel our brokenness more deeply. Sometimes, the cold and darkness outside mirrors how we feel inside. We compare ideals to what has been lost. We torture ourselves in all kinds of ways. The holidays are equally difficult when you remember horrible things that happened around them (or anything related to family, let’s be real).

Sometimes, the holiday season gets a little dark. For me, it’s like a passing dark cloud. That memory of getting ready for a Christmas Eve party and standing at the top of the stairs in tights and Mary Jane shoes (probably with glitter on my face), and having a revelation that made my entire (tiny) world come crashing down. It was a night that changed everything. Suddenly, the holiday is tied to your loss of childhood, your grief, your abandonment. Everything that strikes you in the darkness that therapy tries to undo years later.

I was moved by the worship song about God’s goodness, because I know for a fact that God has been so good to me. I see His fingerprints everywhere. His arm upholding me and keeping me standing in the middle of every storm. That goodness brings a great deal of emotion out of me. It takes me through a crazy timeline and sequence of unlikely and strange events. It reveals every miracle along the way; every bout of insane courage and grit. Every defiant step forward. Every broken pit stop along the way.

This was the song.

As I heard the song, something happened that usually happens around this time, I am stripped of my clothes, my boots, the sunglasses that shield my expressions, my bravado, and I am that pre-teen girl again standing at the top of the staircase who goes from excited and festive to scared, shattered and wondering what comes next. Sometimes, the feeling washes over me like a wave, but this year, I felt it stick around like a sticky gum on the bottom of my shoe. It was a duality of feelings– the engulfing uncertainty and loss, but also, my 30-something-year-old self standing there in strength and resilience, safe, knowing the story at a later point of the timeline. In true disbelief of the timeline that has brought me here. “He surrounds me with goodness, I have seen it.”

At times, the brokenness of the past makes the wholeness of the present more cherished. It is not taken for granted. I write this as I come out of my own funk– my own seasonal darkness that comes back to haunt, every so often. I mention this to remind you that the darkness is not the end of the story. Maybe you are sitting in your own darkness. Letting the waves of it wash over you. Feel it all. Cry. Remember. Notice the miracles along the way. Don’t stay in one point. Make your way down the timeline.

It’s officially winter. We celebrate Christmas; Jewish friends celebrate Hannukah. Persian friends celebrate Yalda. It is a season where we, at every step of the way, are reminded of the light. Not just the light, but the miracle of light that persists.

Pastor McManus reminded us this past week that “The night is far gone; the day is at hand. So then let us cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light.” Romans 13:12

Chervin (founder of Cymbiotika) wrote: “Yalda means birth. It marks the turning point when the light begins to return, quietly, incrementally, by law. The long night is real. But so is the dawn. Say this with me, ‘The night may be long, but I was born of the fire that outlasts it.‘”

In this time of solstice and of reminding ourselves that the Light of the World has come to dispel darkness forever– when we remind ourselves that the night is over (or close to over, depending on your circumstance), and we put on the armor of light– feel it all. Feel the depth of the darkness that threatens to stay, but then also, turn your face to the light. The light that never lets the darkness last– the light that is inevitable. The light that takes us and lifts us from the depths of pain, loss and fear. The light that illuminates everything it touches. The light that will shine in our hearts and dispel any dark remainder.

Today, I want to remind you that your pain, your real darkness in life, all of it counts. If you are there now, know that dawn is inevitable. If the darkness haunts you from the past, let it serve to remind you that you are not there anymore. Put on the armor of light. The feelings may take you back to the top of the staircase, but you aren’t standing there anymore. It is but a blip in the timeline of eternity. That was you, but now, here you are, singing about His goodness and His everlasting light. Here you are, knowing that you are “born of the fire that outlasts the night.”

This song and this quote– it’s my current mood. Stay with your feelings as long as you need. I finally reached the day where I feel like it has washed over me. Baptism complete. Yalda; birth. I have arrived to the present, and it’s bright.

“Say this with me, ‘The night may be long, but I was born of the fire that outlasts it.‘” Chervin

Rich

Mindful News is right— we are rich. We lead a charmed life.

“My hot water works on a dime, my a/c works when I need it too, I can go to any grocery store and purchase what I please to eat, I have a clean kitchen to cook in, I have a clean shower to bath in. Sometimes I forget I’m beyond blessed.” (Mindful News)

Never forget or overlook the blessings! It’s officially winter! #richwinter

Thank God for the warm heat and cozy moments. The hot tea, the safe bed, the stability of a roof over our heads. The fuzzy socks, the stack of books, a notebook and a pen.

Gratitude for it all.

How Does This Play Out?

“Wealth, to me, is discernment.” Mari Fonseca

By: Gabriela Yareliz

We are entering uncharted territory. We arrived here strongly during the pandemic, and we are still watching this unfold.

What happens when independent media presents hard facts— names, resumes, photos, first-hand personal testimony from people in the positions to know (many personally asked to break protocol), license plate numbers, regularly kept logs— and the mainstream media, with only half the attention on it, continues to slander, not present any facts but just unsubstantiated opinions and dig in its heels. Who wins?

And if independent media has a larger community, part of that community having personal knowledge, how do we move past this point of two lines that don’t converge. Two alternate realities being put forward with one truth. One group telling another group with first-hand knowledge that what they know isn’t true.

Is it one of those situations where people keep status quo with an awkward knowing layer of distrust that continues to thicken over time? Does mainstream become like a Netflix show we all know is fiction? What happens after truth is revealed? Are we sitting on a ticking time bomb?

I am intrigued. As always, time is our friend and will reveal all things. What remains interesting is the group of us that rejects the truth that time reveals. Ego winning that battle. Where do we go from there? Where does willful blindness take us, as a society? Does it drive us mad? What else does it lead us to reject?

One thing is certain, there is a battle for the soul out there. Truth arrives to those who seek it. We get what we seek. That is why one must be so careful to not just seek validation but to truly seek truth. If we choose blindness, we will be allowed to keep it. Times are interesting and strange. Discernment is everything.

The Jesus

“I’m interested in the radical creativity hidden beneath the stained-glass Sunday school version. The Jesus who tells stories that detonate inside people for centuries. The Jesus who rewired entire social systems with using metaphors. The Jesus who refused every role people tried to hand him: good son, political puppet, religious mascot, and insisted on being something stranger, wilder, more alive.” Rainier Wylde

On the Other Side of the Trade

By: Gabriela Yareliz

Chris Kreider and Jacob Trouba (former Rangers Captain) were welcomed back into MSG, as they arrived to play against (and slay) their former team (the NY Rangers) with the Anaheim Ducks. These two trades were among the most controversial, in recent time, steeped in drama from the players to the fans.

The Ducks won 4-1. Kreider and Trouba looked happy— happier than they did before their exit from a team where rumor has it, they both wanted to stay. The departure was hard.

There is a comedian I like, Tony Dabas. The Staten Island native does skits and believably (and kindly) can play a whole range of nationalities. His imitation of accents and mannerisms are so on point. I kept wondering where he was from, and I found a video where he discussed growing up Arab on Staten Island. After 9/11, he started to pretend to be Italian because being associated with anything Arab at that time made your life hell. What started as survival became a full-on comedy style that brings light and laughter to the world.

Bryony Basse survived a disastrous accident that almost killed her and had her bedridden in her early years of being a young adult. What literally almost killed her, plus her rheumatoid arthritis, left her to finding classical Pilates. She healed her body, and now leads one of the best Pilates fitness platforms in the world.

Often, the story is way better on the other side of our pain, loss and shame. Sometimes, it’s that “trade moment”, the moment we are ostracized or the moment that threatens to take us out that takes us to a different level. What I have found as a pattern in these stories is that beyond the darkness comes a season where you are prepared to win.

May we all win 4-1 on the other side of our trade. Shine bright and slay.

Intersections and Delays

By: Gabriela Yareliz

I was absolutely sure someone was sabotaging my laundry run by holding the elevator on the fourth floor. Here’s the thing— the only way to get the basement where the machines are is via elevator. There is no staircase. I patiently waited (my frustration mounting). I wondered if I was going to be able to start laundry at all. NYC traumas.

They are currently sanding and painting the elevator doors in my building so I knew what the hold up was. Or so I thought.

When the elevator opened, little Ms. H was there. Ms. H is 98 years old and lives on the third floor of my building. She was going to do laundry, too.

“Oh thank God,” Ms. H said as I stepped into the elevator with my laundry bag. “I can’t see well, and I was praying someone would come down to do laundry at the same time as me and help me put money on my card,” she said.

I smiled. We put money on her card and then she realized she left her soap upstairs. I offered her some of mine. “It’s my lucky day,” she said. “I count my blessings.”

I was touched that she thought so. But it was a great reminder that, so often, timing and intersection are not random. It is often an answer to a prayer.

“We help each other,” Ms. H said to me smiling as we waited to go back up. It was a long wait because of the sanding of the doors, but we made it to the washers and were both smiling. That was all that mattered.