Last night, I lit candles, made a fire, and opened a bottle of wine. Neighbors across the valley put on a light show. We opened gifts with our family on Zoom.

This morning I rise early and as the day comes to light, there’s pink in the sky. Outside, taking pictures, drops of rain fall, and as I turn, a rainbow in the sky.

We are part of this universe; we are in this universe, but perhaps more important than both of those facts, is that the universe is in us.  
– Neil deGrasse Tyson

I like to leave this day open to reflect.  I honor the solstice pause.  On December 21st, the sun, that appears to us to stop moving southward, pauses, and then moves northward.  

The word “solstice” comes from the Latin words “sol” for sun, and “sisto” for stop.

Even as I pause, I feel myself “champing at the bit” to get back to “normal” in this new year.

My doctor daughter-in-law keeps cautioning we’re in this for a long while.  The vaccine requires two doses, so even when I qualify which is probably months away, I’ll still wear my mask and curtail my activities.  

I think in each of us, there is a felt sense of the change in light, and a movement toward the bud to ripen and grow.  I want to be the opened flower picking off the petals of my life to reach the fruit.  I think I’ve handled isolation reasonably well, but today I feel frisky.  I want to romp with family and friends.

And now I look up and a squirrel is running along the branches of the redwood tree outside my window.  Who wants to romp, squirrel or me?  And now I look at the trunk of the tree.  Let contentment root.  Birds are tweeting and threading movement in the sky.  There are no clouds today, and the blue seems still until a hawk, crow, raven, or vulture sweeps through.

May birth spin within!

Perhaps it’s winter awareness of the night sky, but today my eye is drawn to the book Grrrrr, A Collection of Poems about Bears edited by CB Follett.  

Perhaps it’s also that bears are hibernating right now so something in their dreams growls in my heart.

Maybe all animals are asking us to come together and save their habitat.

In the book, Doug Peacock writes: The richest, most diversified grizzly bear habitats were found in the state of California … The only incontestable fact about California grizzly bears is that there aren’t any left.  We shot them all.

Tears come and then there’s a knock on my door – Tom and Maggie stand there, stand back, wearing masks, bearing a Christmas bag of homemade cookies. We used to go with them to cut our Christmas tree, now we stand back and exchange.

This is hard.  It’s Christmas and we can’t see family and friends.  May we all unite in gazing up at the sky tonight.   Maybe we’ll see bears!

We’ve now slid into the excitement of the December equinox with the addition of two planets coming together to form a star.  I’m taking the meeting as an omen, as I dance and prance on these words of Albert Einstein.

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”

That’s my guiding star for the day.

In the northern hemisphere, it’s the shortest day of the year.  For me, it’s a day to balance on light and dark.  What calls me now?  What paths open before me, and yet, as Antonio Machado wrote in “Traveler, your footprints”: 

Traveler, your footprints

are the only road, nothing else.

Traveler, there is no road;

you make your own path as you walk.

As you walk, you make your own road,

and when you look back

you see the path

you will never travel again.

Traveler, there is no road;

only a ship’s wake on the sea.

“only a ship’s wake on the sea.”

Last night I watched the movie “Within the Whirlwind”.  I plan now to read the book.  It puts what we’re going through into perspective.  It’s a true story with a happy ending.  

It’s a powerful look at how we meet what comes, no matter how horrific, painful, unfair, and unimaginable.   

As we stand on the cusp of a new year, I’m with these words of T.S. Eliot:

“For last year’s words belong to last years language

And next year’s words await a new voice.”

It’s still dark this morning and I revel in the velvety folds.

A friend’s dog was put to sleep on Friday.  Her pain and the loss are with me.  We may jokingly say, “A dog is man’s best friend,” but it’s true.  My two cats are sensitive to the loss, extra sweet and cuddly.  We don’t know what surrounds the love we share.

I read Heather Cox Richardson every morning.  Today I am struck by what President-elect Biden’s nomination of Deb Haaland as Secretary of the Interior means. 

Richardson writes: 

Haaland is a member of the Laguna Pueblo people who have lived in the land that is now New Mexico for 35 generations. She is the daughter of two military veterans. A single mother who earned a law degree with a young daughter in tow, she was a tribal leader focused on environmentally responsible economic development for the Lagunas before she became a Democratic leader. 

Her nomination for Interior carries with it deep symbolism. If confirmed, Haaland will be the first Native American Cabinet secretary and will head the department that, in the nineteenth century, destroyed Indigenous peoples for political leverage.

Richardson goes on to name the horrific ways the Native people have been treated, and how now we acknowledge and move forward for ourselves and the generations to come.

She continues:

The Interior Department today manages our natural resources as well as the government’s relationship with Indigenous tribes. Placing Haaland at the head of it is more than simply promoting diversity in government. It is a recognition of 170 years of American history and the perversion of our principles by men who lusted for power. It is a sign that we are finally trying to use the government for the good of everyone. 

“A voice like mine has never been a Cabinet secretary or at the head of the Department of Interior,” Haaland tweeted after the announcement. “I’ll be fierce for all of us, our planet, and all of our protected land.” 

A new world struggles to be born.

And on our planet, tomorrow the light returns.   May that light shine in all ways.  

As we approach the solstice, the words of T.S. Eliot guide me.

At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.

I’m out early this morning to have blood drawn.  With an appointment time, all goes easily and well.  I welcome the rising of the sun and the play of clouds.

The garbage truck is out with a wreath on its hood shining bright, colored lights.

The day floats easily and I find myself floating in the holidays, the holy days.

This comes: 

Fingers widen sky

Tides embrace inner rhythm

Pillared, lengthened time.

Words stand between silence and silence: between the silence of things and the silence of our own being, between the silence of the world and the silence of God. When we have really met and known the world in silence, words do not separate us from the world nor from other[s], nor from God, nor from ourselves because we no longer trust entirely in language to contain reality.

— Thomas Merton

I sit with the words of Thomas Merton this morning, absorbed in the sound of the heater warming our house.  It’s still dark as the solstice continues on approach.  I love the clarity that comes with honoring the shifting of the light.

With the pandemic, I feel less dependence on words, almost as though I could let them go like leaves released from trees, and yet here I am wondering what to share.

I close my eyes and allow the top of my head to open and lift.  Jupiter and Saturn come together on the 21st to form a Solstice star.  This conjunction in the sky is another sign we are coming together to embrace what’s new.

With all that Trump has done that I find despicable, this with executions is the final slash.  The good news is that this act of cruelty may end the death penalty.  We come together for change.

A friend recommends the book The Power of Focusing by Ann Weiser Cornell.  It’s been sitting here calling, almost like a demand,  but in this month of December, I rise early to meditate and today, after immersion, I reach for the book.

My heart has been feeling heavy with the weight of the world.  

Today, I read to listen to myself, as I would listen to a friend.

Listening  to my body and the weight of my heart, I say to my heart: “Hello, Dear Friend Heart, thank you for being here for me.  I’m here for you. I’m here to listen.”

Heart responds. I feel my heart as a giant thundercloud filled with water that with my listening, releases.  Ah, rain, fluidity, renewal.   Roots fill and reach.  Tears that have been held moisturize and dissipate.  Breath!

Breathing!

Breathed!

I don’t need to carry the world’s pain in my heart like a thundercloud.  I can welcome, expand, and tenderize what constricts and holds anger, misunderstanding, and fear.   I can become the ocean and sky and allow clouds to flow through me with ease and release.  I say, yes to the marriages I carry within. I do.

It’s an emotional time of year, a time when darkness invites us to enter the sanctuary we are. Enter and listen. The light is here.