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.

Last night I lit a fire and sitting by it, opened two new books I recommend.

One is Together in a Sudden Strangeness: American’s Poets Respond to the Pandemic, edited by Alice Quinn.  It’s filled with juicy, comforting and provocative offerings.

In the fourth stanza of George Bilgere’s poem “Facetime”, I learn this.

While in the closed down Tokyo Aquarium

these tiny eels – garden eels, they’re called –

are forgetting what we look like.

The aquarium keepers are worried

that the eels are getting lonely,

so they’ve hung iPads on the tanks.

They ask on their website, “Could you please

show your face to the eels from your home?”

And of course everyone is phoning the eels

which makes sense and is reassuring.

Part of me didn’t want to check if this was true, but then, I did and, yes, it’s true.

https://www.sciencealert.com/tokyo-aquarium-needs-your-help-reminding-their-eels-to-not-fear-humans.

Then, such a treasure,  I open Barack Obama’s book, A Promised Land, and settle in with his humor, openness, and intellect.  The book begins with two epigraphs.

The first is from an African American spiritual.

O, fly and never tire,

Fly and never tire,

Fly and never tire,

There’s a great camp meeting in the Promised Land.

The second is from the Robert Frost poem “Kitty Hawk”.

Don’t discount our powers;

We have made a pass

At the infinite.  

And then I travel back a few years in time and place. Steve sends me a photo from a tram soaring about the Rhine in Rudesheim.

And the rain pours down on a Sunday of King tides and no need to be outside.

It rained in the night and the morning is quiet and calm.  I look out at clouds and trees, graced in exchange. 

Edgar Degas wrote: Art is not what you see but what you make others see.  

This morning I balance on these words of Ruth Bader Ginsberg.

“To make life a little better for people less fortunate than you.

That’s what I think a meaningful life is.

One lives not just for oneself, but for one’s community.“

We have a president-elect who lives for and creates community. May kindness, love, and generosity prevail.

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!!