Recipes for a Sacred Life: True Stories and a Few Miracles by Rivvy Neshama

Author:Rivvy Neshama [Neshama, Rivvy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sandra Jonas Publishing
Published: 2020-05-05T04:00:00+00:00

Recipe inspired by Jack Rietveld,

December 7, 1953–May 24, 2007

“_ _ _ _ IS CLOSER THAN YOU THINK”

Back in the days when I would get stoned, I liked to get stoned with Norma and David. Norma would bake these amazing chocolate prune cakes, which we’d consume in two minutes once we were high. And now and then, David would utter something profound. Of course, when I was stoned, everything seemed profound. “It’s raining out,” someone would say, and I’d go “Wow!”

Well, one stoned night, David proclaimed that everyone in their lifetime gets the same amount of pain, but some people get it in one lump sum, while others get fragments spread out through their years.

“Wow!” I said. “That’s profound.” I wasn’t sure if it were true, but I learned, soon enough, that we each have our cross to bear.

My cross is anxiety, deep anxiety, and, worst of all, panic attacks. They first appeared in my thirties at a time of transition, when things seemed unknown, overwhelming, and dark. My marriage and family had broken up, and I had just signed up to go back to school. When the first attack hit me, I was on the subway at Times Square, and I feared my heart would burst or I was losing my mind. It felt that way each time it struck—at its worst, like most things, in the middle of the night.

I tried to befriend it, as some Buddhists advise, but for me, anxiety was no friend. The friends I did find, most gratefully, were prayer (“Dear God, please help me be okay”), and Ativan (anxiety pills), and sometimes both (“Thank you, God, for giving us Ativan”). I also found, as so many have, that the depth of your pain can deepen your journey, your connection to others and to something beyond.

The panic attacks eventually stopped, the anxiety diminished, and the fear became fear about fear. Yet it’s always there like a hidden wound that can take me by surprise. Which it did, years later, at a dance class in Boulder.

John was away working in Europe, my mind was adrift in worries, and bad dreams had left me ungrounded. To make things worse, it was a drop-in class, and no one I knew had dropped in. I looked around but found no smiles and remembered words my friend Karen once said: “There’s something strange about strangers, you know?” So, there I was, heart beating faster, pins and needles up my back, and surrounded by strangers.

Then I noticed some writing on the whiteboard on the wall. With a light blue marker, someone had drawn the Hindu symbol for Om and written: “_ _ _ _ is closer than you think.” The first word was too faded to read. It looked like it had four letters, but no, I thought, it must be “God”: “God is closer than you think.” A message, perhaps, to assure me: Nothing to be scared of—God is here.

I looked around the class again, and this time a young woman with spiky pink hair gave me a big smile.

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