We got some 3 inches of snow yesterday—slowly. Sometimes you get that in 3 hours flat, and sometimes it takes the day. I put birdfeed out (we have some 6 feeders out, not including suet and the handfuls of feed we put on top of level surfaces for nonavian varmints–yes you, squirrels).

You think you’re something for feeding so many, trudging dutifully each morning out to the front, then to the back, hands freezing as you ladle sunflower seeds into the feeders, and then you look out the window and realize that, as Rumi said, the world was set up to care for you.

“It’s rigged – everything, in your favor.

So there is nothing to worry about.”

Please don’t evoke the people with no medical care, no food, no shelter. I used to do that bigtime—Oh yeah, I’d say, what about Hitler? It was a way of not examining my own life and it didn’t help anyone. By all means, care for everyone. And this is a good time to thank all of you who bought 74 out of 75 gifts for immigrant children. They will love them. Last I checked there is one more, and you can find it here. Rumi might say that your generosity is also part of the set-up, this rigged world.

Think of your own life. A man and a woman come together to bring you and me into the world. We get born at home or in a hospital, we get care, we get food, a few toys, usually lots of attention. Maybe not as much as we’d like—Why didn’t he encourage me more? Why weren’t they at home more? Why didn’t I get more?

I stopped complaining about my parents long ago. The cataclysms and events they lived through were amazing, I doubt that I’d have done a better job than they under those circumstances. Instead, I look at birds (who don’t seem to complain about the frigid weather), at the white snow, at a full refrigerator, at my housemate walking again after a disastrous accident almost two years ago, look forward to teaching the Zen Peacemakers’ approach to peacemaking this evening on Zoom (you can register for that here), and take Rumi’s words to heart.

The world has been rigged in my favor. Even when the car didn’t start, a bad stomach infection over 10 days including Thanksgiving. Even though I never became a great writer.

“She’s the perfect dog for you,” Leeann Warner, fabulous dog walker and trainer told me when she first met Aussie. “You couldn’t have done better than adopting her [I thank Bernie for that], she’s smart, well trained, not needy. Just don’t mess it up.”

So, I messed it up. Figuring she’d do well with another canine companion, I adopted a Mississippi hunter called Henry, who fought Aussie over food, jumped through open car windows to chase chickens, horses, and any live form of mobile life, and the two ran away all the time. Found a beautiful alternative home for Henry, and Aussie went back to being what Leeann promised: the perfect dog for me.

But first, I messed it up. There was good intention (isn’t there usually), but also out of ignorance and habit. Greed often comes in (If this is working so well, let’s have more!), impatience, a funny life-long restlessness.

Even walking Aussie in this frigid cold, grumbling about putting on heavy coat, boots, hat, gloves, and scarf, once I’m out there I know the world was set up for me. I have what I need. If that sense disappears, I have learned to look at myself first before looking at others.

“What is working wants your praise,” the poet Rachel Hebert wrote. So just see how much is working. Life births more life, and more life, and more life all the time. Doors close, new ones open, we die, more are born. What did I do to deserve that? Nada. Who and what owes me? No one and nothing.

And before you remind me of my good fortune at coming to the age of 76 with basically good health and a strong body, let me say that I have heard more about joy and gratitude from people living with and dying from serious illness than from almost anyone else. As I’ve written before, I spent 35 years studying with Bernie Glassman, including 20 from up close and personal, as his wife, and I never learned as much as I did from his last three years after a major stroke paralyzed half his body. He walked his talk like no one I ever saw, though he couldn’t really walk.

This is my quarterly time to ask you to please support this blog. If you feel it adds value to your life, if it adds a healthy spice to the day, an ingredient you enjoy three times a week, please support it. A little or more than a little, everything is appreciated.

I am constantly encouraged by readers, you help me sit down to that white screen and push me to look more deeply into both the personal and the impersonal. As I get older, the personal recedes and the impersonal, life just as it is, gets stronger and more dazzling by the day. This is what I try to share with you, and appreciate any gift you make towards this effort.

And having said that this life is rigged in our favor, I will put my Zen Peacemaker hat on in teaching this evening about other situations that are rigged in other ways (you can register here if you’re interested). There is still the old voice of protest that hasn’t been spiritually squelched but rather spiritually fired up on behalf of the many, many who can’t count on the things I (and maybe you) have, so stay tuned for the Wednesday post when I’ll  have lots to say about that. But never lose those crucial ingredients of joy and fun at being alive. Aussie, patiently waiting for her daily shivery walk, will call you a crybaby.

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