The sky this morning is pure delight, and helps counter the sobering news of the day even as many people begin the celebration of Hanukkah and the lighting of a candle each night.
I light candles these days because I love the flickering light.
Like waves in the sea, the movement is never the same.
In the past, I’ve written a letter from the North Polar Bear to the younger people in my world. Tolkien wrote the Christmas letters to his children when he didn’t have money for presents. Each year the clumsy North Polar Bear managed inadvertently and accidentally to destroy the gifts, and the beautifully illustrated letter explained what happened.
This is such a strange year I suppose no explanation is needed, though Dr. Fauci has reassured us that Santa is immune to Covid and won’t be spreading the disease when he rides through the sky in his sleigh and slides down chimneys on December 24th.
Recently I read that Santa’s reindeer are female, not male. We know that because male reindeer drop their antlers at the beginning of winter, usually late November to mid-December.
Female reindeer retain their antlers until after they give birth in the spring. Therefore, the reindeer pulling Santa’s sleigh, even Rudolph, are female.
They need new names. Perhaps Dashita, Dancerly, Prancine, Vixtoria, Comcie, Cupida, Dondorthy, Blixina, and Ruby with her shining red light of a nose.
A friend used the isolation of the pandemic to go through 25,000 photos. I’m still prancing around and maybe like the North Polar Bear my intention to light is floating flickering over the northern ground.
On further reflection, I’ve now re-read Twas the Night before Christmas, and there’s nothing that gives the sex of the reindeer, so the original names are gender neutral, and Rudolph came later. The story is scientifically accurate, well, if you believe reindeer can fly and carry a sleigh, and maybe the point is we can name the reindeer however we choose. Enjoy the play!!
Yesterday I found myself moist with tears. I read what it is to be a nurse in the ICU right now. It’s horrifying what we’re asking of these people as they deal with the pandemic, and then, they go outside and see people refusing to wear masks. It’s so simple. It’s like seatbelts. At first, we resisted, and now most of us can’t imagine driving without one. Now, I can’t imagine not wearing a mask.
When I read that Jimmy Stewart used his PTSD experience flying B-24’s out of England during World War II to film the intense parts of the film “It’s a Wonderful Life,” I realized I’d never seen the movie. I watched it last night. More tears.
Yesterday I read that “A herd of elephants marched twelve hours to the home of Lawrence Anthony after he died – the man who saved them. They stayed there in silence, mourning for two days. Exactly one year after his death, to the day, the herd marched to his house again.”
How do we explain that and do we even want to? Simply receive.
My healing mantra today comes from Malcolm X:
When we change the ‘I’ for the ‘We,’ even Illness becomes Wellness.
Ellen Bass’s poem “Ode to the Fish” concludes with these lines.
But beyond the cliffs
a blue whale sounds and surfaces, cosmic
ladle scooping the icy depths. An artery so wide,
I could swim through into its thousand pound heart.
Yesterday my heart felt heavy. Today I allow it to expand like the blue whale heart trusting the ladle and scoop.
I spent the day decorating for the holidays, always such a joyful journey down memory lane. That contrasted with lockdown starting tomorrow and a red flag warning of fire danger from wind and dryness, so I was out watering again today. It’s odd to hum Christmas carols and think of snow while the windows and doors are open and the plants all say, “Water, please!”
I think of the word evening. I suppose each day lately is an evening, balancing, and smoothing our outlook as we balance new rules and restrictions to wipe the virus out.
This morning I refresh on the poem “Kindness” by Naomi Shihab Nye.
Tears and resolve come and then I read of the shooting death of 15 month old Carmelo Duncan in Washington D.C.
Perhaps the only way to meet these days is with tears, tears of liquid love honoring connection and the wells of grief that spring.
Merriam-Webster announced that “pandemic” is the word of 2020. “Pandemic,” they wrote, “is the word that has connected the worldwide medical emergency to the political response and to our personal experience of it all.”
Also, Quarantine originally meant “40 days,” which was 226 days ago and counting.
And from an unknown source:
Forget “dance like nobody’s watching”. Dance like a toddler. They don’t even care if there’s music.
Enjoy this fourth day of December as you honor what calls you with kindness and trust.
Right now a friend’s discarded shell of a body is being cremated at a nearby cemetery. I look into the air, receive transition, matter to air.
My neighborhood is decorated both naturally, berries on the trees, and with wreaths and lights. I love this time of year, the falling leaves juxtaposed with our, just like the trees, need and desire to open to light.
In his December newsletter, Michael Lerner from Commonweal called yesterday Wisdom Wednesday. I think of today as Tuning Thursday, tuning myself ever more delicately for this play of dark and light.
In his newsletter, Michael wrote: Many of you know that four months ago I had a major surgery for an abdominal aortic aneurysm at UCSF Medical Center. The surgery and the recovery have been a life-changing experience. I was catapulted into a new stage of life.
At 77 I am exploring in new ways the joys of what I could call active elderhood. I feel vital. I feel clear. After over half a century of thinking of myself simply as being useful, I am now discovering what it is like to take more time simply being.
Simply being – that is my tuning fork for this day.
This tree continues letting go as the fog moves in
It’s the first day of December, and those of us who love Advent calendars can open the first window. It’s also Giving Tuesday. We reflect on what moves and expands us as we choose what and where to share.
The fog floated in softly this morning. Yesterday I heard leaves falling. Today the tree is mainly bare, open to the light.
I’m with these words of Thich Nhat Hanh:
Not talking, by itself, already can bring a significant degree of peace. If we can also offer ourselves the deeper silence of not thinking, we can find, in that quiet, a wonderful lightness and freedom.
May this play of light and dark move in us like branches in the wind.
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