Impossible Outcomes Manifested

"...impossible outcomes manifested." I was really proud of that turn of phrase when I used it in my Facebook status to describe the lesson I took from the Passover/Easter convergence this year. I work hard on certain status updates, when I wish to express something complicated but dear to me. And I won't post something I don't believe so i choose my words carefully.

The rub is always in the living. I see joyous miracles at the heart of the holidays which just passed (and, come to think of it, the Hanukah/Christmas winter duet, as well) and I'm genuinely moved. Yet I wake up in fear so many mornings, wholly divested from the notion of "impossible outcomes manifested" in my own life. I become certain that, despite following doctors' orders my baby will be born too soon and suffer for my physical shortcomings. I tally the bad choices I fear I've already made on behalf of my older son. I fret that I've waited to long in life to want a different for myself and my children than what my current career provides. I wring my hands with worry that I've never done any relationship "right" -- friends, marriage, family of origin and design -- and that loneliness and disconnectedness is core to my personality. And I believe, on some level, that anything different than my critical assessment of the world and all it's disappointment is, well, an impossible outcome.

I was raised Jewish-ish by a Jewish father and a mother who, though raised Episcopalian, left the matrilineal bloodline favored by Judaism intact via her convert-to-Christianity mother. We celebrated the Big Days at home and never went to church unless we were with my mother's beautiful believer sister Pam. Synagogue happened only on Rosh Hashannah and Yom Kippur, and as an accoutrement to the Hebrew school I asked to attend when I was 11. I had a bat mitzvah which fell on the same day as the Kentucky Derby, so my father and uncles made sure there would be a television at the bar. I continued my Jewish education for two more years because I had an interest in politics which, at the time, meant Glasnost. If I were in religious education now, I fear, I'd drown in a morass of self-hating ambivalence over Israel and Palestine. In any event, I came out of all this with virtually no grasp of any spirituality offered by Judeo-Christianity but well-versed in the secular experiences of both faiths.

It wasn't until the end of the summer between my junior and senior years of high school that I was introduced to the notion of spirituality, as a potential antidote to my wild-child, lost girl, headed-for-disaster adolescence. But that's a whole other story, itself. Suffice it to say that since that time I've developed a personal relationship with the Universe or god or "that which knows my steps before I take them but let's me take them myself." For followers of a given faith, the notion of taking aspects of any religious canon "cafeteria style" may be offensive. In my experience, drawing from the faiths of my childhood, Eastern faiths as I've been exposed to them as an adult and even aspects of the Catholicism which infuses my neighborhood and is core to my family-by-marriage allows me to to see myself not only in the lessons each religion teaches but sometimes in the stories and characters by which values are conveyed. It also allows me to reject doctrinal notions which do not jibe with the world view I aspire to, one of relativism, responsibility for one another and compassion.

And, yes, I am also a little bit Jedi.

So the Judeo-Christian spring holidays were weeks ago and the notion has been kicking around my brain ever since. Let's look at the stories, whether you take them as truth or parable. I am quite certain that Mary Magdalene, in her grief and after the utter trauma and heartbreak of the crucifixion of Jesus, never imagined finding that big ass stone moved and her beloved ascended. And, yet, that's what she found and never, ever questioned. And whether it was the weather or the hand of god, the people gathered at the edge of the Red Sea, the Pharaoh's men hot on their heels and pissed as hell about those plagues, never dreamed they would cross on their own feet, intact. And free.

Why not me? Based on what I've read, as a total layperson and secular consumer of religious writing, Jesus loved Mary Magdelene for who she was and who he believed she could be. She, in turn, forgave herself and loved him back, so much that she believed unflinchingly in his resurrection and deification as part of the Trinity. And the Jewish slaves fleeing Egypt weren't just blessed with a short cut around the deep water or something as banal as a boat. No. For them, the sea fucking parted.

There is a line delivered expertly by Jennifer Connolly in the movie "A Beautiful Mind." Her husband, played by Russell Crowe, has decided to stop his psychotropic medications and seek other ways to manage his delusional schizophrenia. Kneeling at his feet, having just realized his decision for the first time, she says "I need to believe something extraordinary is possible." She doesn't specify what, just "something extraordinary." That bit of dialogue runs on a loop in my head for the last several months.

So why not me? I can believe in impossible outcomes if I don't have to know how they will come about or even what they will look like. I need to stop daydreaming about perfect children and people that never let me down and a house with a yard for boys and animals to play in and an "easier" job. Those are inherently binding, limited notions. Anything that comes with a mental brochure is dangerous for me. I simply need to believe that "impossible" outcomes don't really exist. Every road leads somewhere, why not believe it's somewhere incredible that I haven't imagined yet? Faith. Trust. Love. Compassion. Living in the moment. Gratitude. These should be my only signposts. Of course, I need to pray and plan and take action and learn and be of service to others. I can't just sit back and wait for the Universe to serve me my future like a Happy Meal, in a neat little box with a handle and a toy. But the energy I put in to my life will come back, in some manner of equal reaction. I will know it when I see it, and not a moment before. And where I next plant my foot (or, while on bedrest, my ass) is enough information about the path I'm on to lead me to my very own impossible outcomes manifested.