It’s the time of year when we wear sweaters, perhaps hand-knit or crocheted, and then one strand stands out requesting a pull that followed leads to dismantling and unraveling what cloaked.
New lines entice direction to flow.
I intend to meet the holiday season this way, release expectations and demands, and pulling a strand, allow all that’s unnecessary to fall away.
And after that, I’ll put on a sweater or two.
Quite a few years ago, I learned of the unjust incarceration of Jarvis Masters at San Quentin. I’ve attended various hearings at the courthouse where we sit quietly to support the intention to let him go. I was thinking of him yesterday and then today I come to Rebecca Solnit’s words on why it’s important to read his book. I recommend it as we immerse in this season of love and light.
Solnit says:
Jarvis Masters’s memoir That Bird Has My Wings: The Autobiography of an Innocent Man on Death Row is a gripping, lyrical, heartbreaking account of how a black child full of hope and love, born into poverty and racism, was criminalized for running away from abuse, abused in juvenile prisons, set on the path to adult prison, and how once there he was framed for participation in a murder that has stranded him on death row for thirty years. And it’s also the story of how, there, he became a generous, compassionate, and creative person as well as a writer of great power.
–Rebecca Solnit, author of Recollections of My Nonexistence (March 2020)
A friend asks, “How do we meet change?”
I reflect as I change the candles, tablecloth and kitchen towels from harvest colors of orange, olive green and gold to a subdued crimson. I enter the season slowly, so crimson comes before a bright cherry and cheerful red.
Perhaps some transition is tossed at us, or we are tossed – a hurricane, fire, loss, and other times, we move slowly through the shift, the change.
I’ve always felt each day of December deserves a special nod, a softer, loving pat, some bringing forth of transition to full appreciation of the dark which will then swing us back toward light, “young light” as my friend Jane calls it, and yet, in this moment, all feels young, tender, fragile.
I treat December gently, but today I recall that there’s also a tinge of memory of 2005 when I began chemotherapy the Monday before Thanksgiving. We retain memories and touch, like bread dough when it’s proofed and risen enough to be ready for the oven. We touch and the indentation comes up to meet us but not all the way, just enough.
It’s raining and I love the sound of rain as I read of soil, and how properly aerated, it holds water as a reservoir for growth.
From this article by Walter Jehne:
“Without organic matter, mineral particles are packed closely together, very dense, with little or no space in between. Now life comes along, actively breaks the rock down, feeds the soil biology, and leaves organic detritus in there, and we can think of that detritus as little bedsprings between the mineral particles: they act as cements and glues, so it gives them structural integrity, but it also creates a sponge, because as those bedsprings push the particles apart, suddenly there are spaces, in the soil, full of air, and the soil grows upwards as it expands. (We know that from archeology because you have to dig down to enter the past.)
By making this change, nature has had a profound effect on that soil. By adding nothing, it has created this matrix of surfaces and voids. It is a bit like a cathedral. By having lots of bricks, and the cements or glues that can hold them together, we can make a cathedral. Now, you don’t go to a cathedral to look at the bricks, you go there to get in awe about the spaces, the voids, the nothing.“
I pause to welcome this day, still dark, with some bricks of obligations to hold it together, but really what matters is the space, and there in the space is room for transition and change.
The day comes slowly to light, softly.
I’m with these words of Gary Snyder.
As the crickets’ soft autumn hum
Is to us
so are we to the trees
as are they
to the rocks and the hills.
Enter gently this new month.
Allow the fuel of compassion to move through each touch, the living, loving song of anchoring and swinging on moving in and out, the wings and heart of breath.
Nothing on the calendar today so I sit and read and watch the rain fall and fall and fall. The hills turn green and the danger of fire is over for the year. The sound is sweet and I reflect back on my life, on moments and days, so tender, as memories sink like rain to ground and trees.
Stanley Kunitz wrote: It is out of the dailiness of life that one is driven into the deepest recesses of the self.
I see.
The day is cold, and dark, and rain is predicted to start in an hour. It’s not a time to hang clothes outside, and yet, I visualize a clothesline, expectations hung like clothes dragging it down, until dry, the wind blows through, and so this day unfolds before me, light with ease, dry to fly. Despite what’s happening outside, I’m light inside.
We enjoyed a beautiful Thanksgiving Day, and now, I softly percolate the day after. The hills were green, and the sky magnificent with clouds and light as we drove south, and then, freezing temperatures brought us all inside to feast. Now, I’m home aware that there’s one more day in November, and then we enter December, the last month of this year.
There’s a sense of pause and then a leap toward transformation and change.
In Chinese mythology, the Dragon’s Gate is located at the top of a waterfall cascading from a legendary mountain. If a carp makes the jump at the top of the waterfall, it becomes a dragon.
I’m reminded of a story I love, The Reluctant Dragon, written by Kenneth Grahame, and published in 1898. A young boy meets a poetry-loving dragon and they become friends. When the dragon is discovered by the local people, they call St. George in fear, and ask him to come and destroy the dragon.
When St. George arrives, the boy introduces him to the dragon, who is not inclined to fight. The two decide to stage a fight. The dragon is given an imaginary wound, and declared reformed by St. George. The people accept the reformed, poetry loving and peaceful dragon.
Tonight, I sit contemplating. What do I want and need in this upcoming last month of the year? I’m inspired to leap to the top of my waterfall dreams, and become what streams a fire of peace, poetry, connection, friendship and ease.
I was raised that Thanksgiving was about the Native Americans helping those who came to their land to survive. It was about giving, sharing, relationship, and fragility.
Today I read that President Lincoln first declared Thanksgiving a holiday because he felt the nation had been blessed in fighting for freedom during the Civil War even though it was still going on.
President Roosevelt changed the date so there would be more time to shop before Christmas. Read this and laugh at how silly we are:
For me, it’s a day to come to peace, to savor and rest, gather and feast, and it’s not just one day; it’s more.
I rise at five, make two pie crusts for pumpkin pies, and place them in the fridge to meld before I roll them out.
Then I mix sugar, spices, eggs, pumpkin, and evaporated milk. One pie is in the oven and the other will go in soon. I make cranberry sauce with fresh cranberries, spices, sugar, and orange juice. Cranberries pop with heat. Yum! Yum!
The house is smelling like pumpkin, cranberries, and because I always buy an evergreen wreath before Thanksgiving and hang it inside, fresh pine.
I walk outside. Rain in the night brings forth sweet smells. I’m alive with gratitude and trust that this time of harvest can focus on gathering and harvesting ease, connection, love, and peace.
Yesterday I’m sitting by the bay when four children pass by – four boys. They are serious, and the older one is explaining how to catch fish. The younger ones ask questions. This is serious play.
I don’t know why they aren’t in school but I’m grateful they aren’t. They don’t catch any fish while I’m there but that’s not the point.
A seal frolics; boats pass, and birds float and fly. Peace twines.
