This world requires technological knowledge which is why I often call my son for Tech Support.  Today is one of those days.  I was getting email messages asking why I wasn’t responding.  It seems that over 105,000 messages have been stored in an account I don’t check because it forwards to another account.  It was full, which I didn’t know, so now those over 105,000 messages are deleted, and all “should” be working as before.  I say “should” as I thought all was working but there was one more snafu to overcome which I discovered when my sent emails were returned. I believe all is currently working, and if you haven’t heard back from me, that’s why.  

I’m grateful I just posted about being water so I could crash on a shore of adjustment and sink into the sand of passing time.  Does that make sense?  Probably not since my brain fries with computer glitches and then I pour water on, and now I’m water-logged.

I’m grateful I have a son who can “take over my screen” and fix problems from afar.

Okay, back to different forms of water as I now work with organizing files and papers to prepare for the new year.

Peace and ease as I move gently and forcefully into 2022.

Perhaps because I connect with my pagan roots, this day after the winter solstice, begins a new year for me.  

I’m on the ninth floor of an eleven story hotel looking out over Silicon Valley in the rain.

I wake at four and open Mary Oliver’s wonderful book, Owls and Other Fantasies, which I highly recommend.

She begins with this quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson from “May-Day”, which invites me to simmer in myself that perhaps each day is a day to ask, “May I”, as I feel into what answers my needs. 

Emerson:

Beloved of children, bards and Spring,

O birds, your perfect virtues bring.

Your song, your forms, your rhythmic flight,

Your manners for the heart’s delight.

Oliver’s whole book invites us into presence and the revelation of transformation that is death, but one essay in particular, “Bird” tells of her rescue of a gull, and what she, and therefore we, learn from the life and transition of this bird.  

Oddly, this posted first on my Breast Strokes blog. Perhaps, it, too, asks for acknowledgment and reception of light.

I woke this morning thinking of Richard Bach’s book Illusions and then drove to McGinnis to look for birds.  It was early and muddy and beautiful.

We’re getting our tree today.  The weather is crisp and clear.   

Holiday joy abounds as we expand in gratitude and connecting circles of grace. 

In December, my book group meets for an overnight in the city but, of course, with Covid changes, we didn’t meet last year, and now, today we are journeying to San Francisco for lunch.  We’ll take the ferry. I search for my Clipper cards and find four.   Then, I dress up, well I dress up for me, and put on clothes I haven’t worn in all this time.  Very exciting.

We never took our gatherings for granted, and yet, these days, there is an even more intense awareness of gratitude for ability, connection, togetherness,  and health.  

Emily Dickinson: Beauty is not caused. It is.

It’s a day to gather within ourselves and with others and give thanks. My father used to chop the celery and onion by hand the night before and cook down the giblets, but now with the aid of a food processor, I rise at five and do it in the morning. Click, zip, whiz, and now the turkey is stuffed and roasting in the oven.

Yesterday I saw four river otters playing in the bay. I also sat in the rock garden at Flamingo Park near me. The rocks are decorated by families in the neighborhood. Gifts abound.

A peaceful and joyful day of Thanks to All!

What’s that sound?  The creek is running again.

We enjoyed a fire in the fireplace, savored the comfort and crackle of flame, not as fear but as warmth and entertainment.

What a lovely entry into my new year.  My birthday was Saturday and I felt and feel the shift a new year brings, the entry into wonder as all the years gather together like an unfolding fan.

Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche:

When we trust our creativity we encounter a supreme kind of enjoyment – an amazement at the natural unfolding of life beyond our ordinary way of looking at things.

We won’t take the buckets out of the shower and we won’t go back to a shower every day but what a gift to hear and see moisture falling from the sky.  Our cat Tiger doesn’t understand and keeps asking to go out different doors hoping for a different experience but it’s raining everywhere in his sphere of what’s outside this house.

And I, honoring the shorter days and longer nights,  sink into the place of roots, absorbing and weaving what moves through the soil of my being, the living within and beneath.  

Because of Covid, my driver’s license was renewed automatically, no need to go in for the over seventy test.  I’ve got four more years and the rain pours down and I’m grateful for a roof and a sacred place to be.