The very first thought that forms as I wake from my dreams is, “It’s the new year.” I pull back the drapes to an inky sky still swathed in night, and no doubt still recovering from the bawdy welcome that rose as the new year was birthed. Ten minutes later dawn creeps in, and the air is filled with a dim pearly mist, the world beneath it looking quite magical and mysterious. Then ten minutes more pass revealing through the mist trees etched in frost, a sign, I surmise, that the dream-seeds of the new year truly had been scattered. And then the light came, and the etching of the branches wasn’t frost, but snow. And it’s falling still, as I write these words. Of course I snapped photos. Of course I am smiling
Exactly at Midnight, the frost birds descend to deliver the dream-seeds of the New Year. They travel from afar, their wings made of songs that sing of the limitless possibilities their gifts hold. One goes to every being on the Earth— to the curled, sleeping flower-forms, to all creatures who fly or swim, who walk or crawl, who stand rooted in the earth, or lay motionless. There are no exclusions. Those who are taking their first breath receive them, and those who are taking their last. And for one glittering moment, everything in the world feels hope.
At first, I mistook it for patience, this deep calm surrounding me as I stood here in the woods, fallen leaves and branches at my feet, a holly, tall and green, standing before me. But as I lingered, breathing the cold, moist air, listening to the silence, feeling the life of the trees, I knew it wasn’t patience— for there was nothing to endure, no expectation of better moments still to come. This, this moment, was all, whole and perfect. This all-pervasive calm was the whispering of grace.
“Well, here we are,” a voice inside me said, “sliding right into a brand new year.” Then it asked me, “How do you feel about that?”
It turned into a long inner conversation. I listed a bunch of emotions that rose up as I contemplated the question. Excited. Nostalgic. Wary. Hopeful. Open.
“How do you want to feel about it?” myself asked me.
“Open” appealed to me a lot. It seemed a little threatening somehow. It asked me to surrender the sense vulnerability to which I was clinging as if it was a trusted teddy bear that reassured me in the dark. But still, I really wanted to chose it above the all the other possible responses. I suppose it will take some practice, I told myself. But I had a sense it would be worth it.
So I announce to myself that I definitely choose openness. And myself says back to me, “Prove it. Say ‘Bring It On! ‘” I have to gulp first, and my voice barely comes out at first. But finally I say it, in a clear and determined voice. “Bring It On, New Year. Bring whatever you hold. And I will be open to it, and accept it with all the welcome I can muster.”
To my surprise, all of a sudden I flashed back to an image of my old friend Lori. When I drove her somewhere in my car, she would help gauge the traffic at intersections. She’d lean forward, looking to the left and right with hawk’s eyes, and when a break in the traffic appeared, she’ d shout, “Go NOW! It’s your only chance!” I laugh picturing her flashing eyes and wind-blown hair.
But hers is a phrase worth remembering. Whatever you want to do or be, now is your only chance to do or be it. Yesterday’s gone and tomorrow isn’t here yet. We can’t even be sure it’s going to come. Or that the next ten minutes will happen. So now is your only chance. Even if you don’t do well what it is that you’re hoping to do, now is your only chance to begin it, to be it. To practice it.
I like the fact that “practice” means both a habitual exercise or rehearsal and a performance. We do something over and over, by intention, with the hope of mastering it.
So I will practice openness. It’s one of those things that it’s better to do clumsily than to do not at all. And the more I practice, the better I’ll get at it.
I thought I’d mention this idea of practicing and beginning it now because even if you don’t make New Year’s Resolutions or set goals (and few of us actually do), we all end up thinking about the things we’d like to be or do differently, with more focus, more art, more efficiency, more dedication. If we decide to keep these ideals top of mind, we’ll find opportunities to practice them everywhere. Go ahead. Try it and see. Pick something you want to achieve and make a full, conscious choice to keep it in mind. Then watch what the world does in response.
I hereby give you this virtual clone of my friend Lori shouting, “Go NOW! It’s your only chance!” Close your eyes and I bet you can hear her right now. See? Cool, hey? You’re welcome.
She’ll activate whenever the world presents you with opportunities to practice your practice of being who you want to be.
Wow. Just imagine what could happen! Ready for anything? If you are, prove it. Say right out loud: “Bring It On!”
Wishing you a grand journey in the days ahead. May they be rich in all that you hold to be good, beautiful and true. Happy New Year, my friends. May you welcome each new moment and everything that it holds.
This is what it looked like on the last Wednesday in December, an ocean of bleached stubble rolling all the way to the edge of the woods on the far horizon.
The neighbor friend I visit each week lives at the edge of this field, sits out in his garage with Dozer, his pit bull, and watches the weather and the seasons change. Last week, he said, a flock of starlings came in, painting the sky with the graceful designs of their flight. He estimates they numbered three hundred thousand. Imagine the sound!
They come to feast on the remains of the harvest, the golden kernels scattered on the ground. And then they go, and the world is still again, with only a whisper of wind, playing the cut stalks as if they were its pan pipes.
Now that the earth is asleep it’s up to the sky to hold all the colors, the hues of blossoms and silken plumage. It does so luminously, as a gift, to remind us that glory is not only possible, but irrepressible, even in the dark and the cold.
In less than a week we’ll be into the new year. Today, the rains came, as if on a mission, as if they were sent to wash away the rubble of the passing year: the shards of suffering and anger, of pain and fear and loss– everything false– to dissolve it completely, leaving nothing behind but swaths of truth and faith and goodness, stretches of miracles and healing, and reaching for connection, the unspeakable beauty, everything–and only those things– born of absolute love. I smile at the dream and watch the raindrops with their upside-down reflections of the world slide down the window pane the way that sands glide through an hour glass. Next week, it will already be the next year.
“It’s odd weather for Christmas in these parts,” he said to his cousin, an old man near his own age, whom he hadn’t seen In years, a guest for the holiday. “We’re used to snow,” he went on, climbing the hill, pointing out rocks and roots in the woodsy terrain, “Not this fifty degrees and rain stuff.”
They pause to catch their breath and look around. “I like the snow. It pretties things up a bit. Especially now that everybody will be taking down their Christmas lights. It gets so dull and seems so gray–don’t you think– without the Christmas lights and snow?”
“Nah,” the cousin says. “I just pretend I woke up on a different planet. And I’m all curious, trying to figure out what I’m seeing. Just now, for instance, I glanced over there.” His finger points at a clump of green moss that’s climbing the remains of a cinder block wall. “See? See? It’s a piney forest of some kind stretching up into a midnight sky. But there are no stars. Maybe it’s the moon lighting up the trees. What do you think?”
The first old guy squats down, peering at the moss from eye level. “I see stars,” he says. “They’re dull, but I see them.” He’s looking hard at it now. “Or maybe,” he says, caught unawares in the game, “it’s just a different atmosphere that doesn’t bounce back light like ours. ”
The visiting cousin grins. He sees that he caught his childhood pal, snatched him right out of his world. “No! I know what it is!” he says, letting his old friend in on the joke. “It’s moss growing on an old wall, putting on a show for us two old fools.”
And they laugh and climb on, Christmas lights inside them that they have no intention of ever taking down.
It was a silent night because there are no words. Who could say its meaning? I once heard a song that said for each child that’s born the morning star sings a greeting, calling it by name. But on that night, whole hosts of angels sang. You can hear them still, in your heart, in the core of you, if you listen. Their song is right there, beneath your breath, pumping through your blood, saying you belong to the Yes and are of it, enveloped in its wondrous, infinite Love. And all It asks is that you pass it on. That’s its nature—to flow through all creation, every speck of it, even you, even me. Pass it on.
Have I told you lately that I love you? Oh, I know yours is a face I may have never seen, or maybe haven’t seen in years. I may not know your name or really anything about you. But you keep opening my little letters every week, so I know we share some things in common—the hope and aspiration that we will remember more often to be kind, that we’ll do our best to let go of mean old stories, that we’ll keep reaching for the best in ourselves, that we’ll hold on with every ounce of determination we can muster to keep faith in mankind despite the world’s evidence that mankind is a sorry lot.
It’s heart-warming to have like-minded friends. And that’s how I think of you, sitting there on the other side of this screen, hoping for words that will bolster you and make you walk through the week feeling stronger and better and maybe even happier and more at peace somehow.
I do my best, you know, to bring you those kinds of words. I don’t always succeed. But you keep reading anyway. It makes me think that you understand that we humans have our off days. We get tired. We get stressed. We catch cold. The cat throws up on the carpet again. Somebody pushes one of our crabby buttons. Yeah, you know. And so you open my email again the next week, or return here, to my blog, and give me another chance.
I imagine that you’re that way in real life, too—willing to overlook the shortcomings, to keep looking for the good, both in others and in yourself.
Anyway, I wanted to tell you that it means a lot to me that you trust me to say something valuable. It keeps me searching for scraps of wisdom that I can share, for signs and phrases that speak to the core of us and lift us up.
As I write this, Christmas is mere hours away. I confess that over the years I’ve grown more and more inclined to hold a hardy “Bah-Humbug” attitude toward the whole holiday season. It all seems so insane sometimes, the way we get swept up in some mindless effort to buy perfection, to impress. I think of my old friend, Henry, who said if he was made King of the World, the first thing he’d do is shout, “Stop it!”
But tonight, as I write this letter to you, I’m floating on a lovely wash of peace, and I have to admit that I’m getting a kick out of it all, this Christmas thing—even the mindlessness of it. I’m thinking it’s kind of wonderful, the way that people string colored lights to brighten the darkness, and how they go out of their way to entertain family and acquaintances they don’t really even like, how they spend money they don’t have to give presents because they want to say they care even when they only want to want to care. Oh, bless us all; we try so very hard!
But then there’s the other side of it, too. There’s the side that brings separated families together in a circle of love, and that opens the way for us to be charitable to those less fortunate than ourselves, that gives us a chance to say “I love you” to people without breaking social taboos, to say “I notice you” with a simple “Merry Christmas” or “Happy Holidays.” You say that to the clerk you see every week in the store and all of a sudden you fall out of your roles and are just two people, connected, and wishing each other well. There’s the part of it that lets us truly wish for peace on earth and to imagine what we as a human family could achieve if our hearts truly were filled with good will for one another.
There’s no other time like it all year.
My wish for you is that you, too, will find yourself floating on a wash of peace—if only for a moment, for a day—and feel the beauty and joy and hope of it all wafting up from your heart.
