To counteract the news, I focus on Awareness and these words of Thich Nhat Hanh:
Awareness is like the sun. When it shines on things, they are transformed.
Awareness
Becorns
Grandson has been here visiting. Inspired by the work of David M. Bird, he headed out into the yard to create his own additions to the garden. Check David out here: https://www.davidmbird.com
Governor Walz
You can watch Governor Walz speak on YouTube as he defends what this country is about and what Trump and his cronies are working to destroy. Go to YouTube and watch “Governor Walz addresses ongoing federal presence in Minnesota”. Tragic!
Gathering
The aftermath of the funeral march on Sunday at the Marin Civic Center is still with me. Over 1500 people gathered the to protest the deaths by ICE.
Robert Hubbell today: Since the first day of his second term, Donald Trump has refused to follow the Constitution. This month, Trump is asking Congress to continue his lawless reign by passing a “continuing resolution” that will fund the government at its current levels—including its current levels of lawlessness.
Congress should refuse to do so. Instead, Congress should: Defund Trump, Defund and abolish ICE, Defund and abolish the Department of Homeland Security, Defund Trump’s ability to invade sovereign nations and NATO allies, and Defund the corrupt DOJ that investigates the victims of crime and protects the out-of-control thugs wearing facemasks and flak jackets.
Is it “radical” to suggest “defunding” major agencies in the federal government? Hmm. . . let’s see. What did Donald Trump threaten to do today? He threatened to “defund” every state that has a “sanctuary city” —which means Trump will “cut off” federal funds to states representing 37% of the American population.
To be clear, Trump. has no authority to “cut off” funding to any state or city. Congress controls appropriations and the president is obligated by law to carry out those appropriations. But Trump has been violating his obligation to “faithfully execute the laws” by refusing to spend money as directed by Congress.
I just read James Rebanks book, The Place of Tides. Rebanks writes of a summer he spent on a remote Norwegian Island where he learned from 70 year old Anna Masoy, known as the Norwegian “duck woman”, about the ancient tradition of collecting eiderdown from eider ducks. Her dedication has brought the ducks back to these islands, ducks threatened by the introduction of minks and other predators. It shows the power of one woman, and right now, we have thousands of people across the country demonstrating against the policies of Trump.
Today in Heather Cox Richardson: On Sunday, David Marcus of Fox News warned that “organized gangs of wine moms” are using “Antifa tactics to harass and impede Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.” He claimed that those people organizing to protect their neighborhoods from ICE may be “criminal conspiracies.” He complained of “self-important White women” protesting “with a weird and disturbing glee.” He seemed to threaten them by warning: “if we simply allow these cosplaying would-be revolutionaries to do whatever they want…, Renee Good will not be the last to needlessly die.”
“Organized groups of wine moms”. Wow! I do love my glass of wine, but I can tell you there was no “weird and disturbing glee” on Sunday. It was a funeral procession, and my heart is still heavy with the weight and sorrow of the experience.
Democracy
Yesterday I attended a protest/vigil in Marin County. We gathered at the Veteran’s Auditorium, and walked in a long and winding line around and through the Civic Center leaving flowers in front of the sheriff’s office and next to photos and names of the 33 people killed by ICE. Our sheriff’s office cooperates with ICE and we want ICE out of Marin. We were told to wear black, and bring a flower and did, so it was a sober line that stretched before and behind me. Six coffins had been made of cardboard and painted black and covered with flowers were carried along the route. It was a sober and quiet group. The event began with twelve minutes of speeches, most of that a prayer, so we began walking after saying Amen. Volunteers carried recorders repeating the names of the 33 people killed. Tears come enough now as I feel the immensity of the event, the power of people gathering to silently speak for empathy, morality, and Truth.
I’m awake now, up in the night. I’ve been sitting outside with the stars and a sky streaked with light wondering, receiving, embracing what might be as we come to Peace and walk with others in quiet and love.
Unity
Like so many of us, I am sobered, stunned, shocked, and suffering with the continuing onslaught of horrific political news. And yet this morning I experienced the gift of coming together with a group of 72 people from around the world led by Russell Delman to celebrate our personal embodiment as well as to be part of a field of people who unite in the cultivation and sharing of Love and Compassion.
Today we grieve the murder of Renee Nicole Good, murder by ICE agents as she attempted to comply with their orders. She was a legal observer volunteering to help protect vulnerable immigrants, a mother of three children and an award-winning poet. Her youngest child, 6 years old, is now orphaned.
Both Pam Bondi and Donald Trump defamed her immediately following her death, labeling her a domestic terrorist and making gross misstatements about what actually took place. The facts are available for all to see. Their lies are exposed.
As we grieve, we unite and fight, with “effortless effort” as Dogen, the founder of the Soto School of Zen in Japan, put it, with the ease with which a bud rises, emerges, and graces the world.
The New Year
I always look forward to a new year. In this case, I’ve stayed positive despite a horrific cold and cough, and the political news which seems to get worse each day.
I’ve also learned that Teslas are at high risk for damage by rats and mice because the company uses soya protein in the engine wires, as well as peanut oil as lubricant. Who knew? Yum! Also, when the battery is charging it becomes warm, attracting rodents. Our car is kept in the garage except for the last almost two weeks because it is at the Tesla dealer waiting for a new part to fix the damage from one hungry and clever rat.
The rat has been illusive but finally was willing to accept peanut butter, and is waiting in a humane trap for a lull in the rain so it can be driven somewhere for release. I don’t know what its fate will be after that.
To counter all this, my son sent me this article by Kevin Kelly to cheer me up. It’s titled How Will the Miracle Happen Today, and invites pronoia, the opposite of paranoia.
I’m also with the wit and insight of Steven Wright: I have a large seashell collection, which I keep scattered on beaches all over the world. Maybe you’ve seen it.
Resonating
The sun was shining on Tuesday and I took a photo of the shadow of a hand-made windchime we bought at Arcosanti in Arizona. In the photo I see a Chinese character, and though the Chinese character for poetry is often translated as “speech temple”, I find myself with these words of Carl Sandburg: Poetry is an echo asking a shadow to dance.
The Weight of a Pause
Yesterday in a Sensory Awareness Zoom call, Misty Hannah led with the theme of “The Weight of a Pause”.
I kept hearing the word wait as I allowed gravity’s pull down, and the responding upward stretch, like a plant, rooted to respond to the call of the sun.
For many of us this week between Hanukkah, Christmas and New Year’s is a pause, a time to reflect and transition to what invites us to explore in the new year.
I’m with the words of Thich Nhat Hanh from the chapter Lotus Tea in his book At Home in the World.
“Years ago in Vietnam, people used to go out onto a lotus pond with a small boat to put some tea leaves into an open lotus flower. The flower would close in the evening and perfume the tea during the night. Then, in the peace of early morning, when the dew was still glistening on the large lotus leaves, they would return in the boat with their friends to collect the tea. On the boat, they would take everything they needed to make delicious, fragrant tea: fresh water, a stove to heat it, teacups, and a teapot. Then in the beautiful early light of dawn, they would prepare the tea right there, enjoying the morning and drinking tea in the lotus pond. Nowadays we may have a lotus pond, but we do not seem to have time to stop and look at it, let alone to enjoy it by making tea and drinking it in that way.”
May we give ourselves that immersion in time, and honor the weight of the pause.
Merry Christmas Eve
I rise for my journey south to be with family but read Heather Cox Richardson first, and learn how NORAD started tracking Santa’s sleigh on Christmas Eve.
From Heather: On December 24, 2025, the North American Aerospace Defense Command, or NORAD, will celebrate seventy years of tracking Santa’s sleigh.
According to legend, the tradition of tracking Santa’s sleigh began in November 1955, when a child trying to reach Santa on a telephone hotline advertised by a Sears, Roebuck & Co. store in Colorado transposed two digits. It was not Santa who picked up the phone, but Colonel Harry Shoup of Continental Air Defense Command, known as CONAD, located in Colorado Springs.
He realized this was an opportunity to promote our air defense system that protected us and Canada from Soviet bombers coming over the North Pole.
A few weeks after the young child’s call, Shoup told his public-relations officer to inform the news wire services that CONAD was tracking Santa’s sleigh as it traveled from his home at the North Pole. Reporters loved the story, and the following year they called to see if the trackers would be operational again.
In 1957,* Canada and the U.S. formed the North American Air Defense Command, or NORAD. By charting Santa’s ride, the agency illustrated the military’s mission to protect the citizens of the continent by tracking an object traveling from the North Pole, over the Arctic Ocean, to Canada, and beyond.
By Christmas Eve 1960, NORAD was posting updates and tracking the flight of “S. Claus.” It reported that the sleigh had made an emergency landing on the ice of Hudson Bay. When Canadian fighter jets stopped by to check on the incident, they found Santa tending to a reindeer’s injured foot. Once the animal was bandaged, the jets escorted Santa’s sleigh as he completed his annual flight. Since then, fighter jets have frequently intercepted the sleigh to salute Santa, who reins in his team to let the slower jets catch up.
Over time, NORAD became the North American Aerospace Defense Command, and its mission expanded to include collecting information about the Earth’s atmosphere, coastal waters, and intelligence. It is still key to U.S. and Canadian defense.
And what began in 1955 as a way to familiarize war-weary Americans with Cold War–era defense systems has become an operation in which more than 1,000 Canadian and American military personnel, Defense Department civilian workers, and local participants near Colorado Springs, where NORAD is headquartered, volunteer to answer the more than 100,000 phone calls that come from children around the world on Christmas Eve. It is a testament to the longstanding U.S.-Canadian friendship.
For one night a year, the hard-edged world of international alliances, intelligence, radar, satellites, and fighter jets turns into a night for adults to create a magical world for children.
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